Hooray for you, WSLer. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when some jerk cuts in line, and the clerk on duty is too apathetic to do anything about it. I wish I had been there when it happened.
What about rude, arrogant behavior from an idiot customer?
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner! I have read countless customer rants on this board, and a huge proportion should actually be manager rants. A good manager will not bat an eye telling a customer to go away in an effort to protect their staff.
I’ve occasionally been in long lines when I’m in a hurry to get somewhere (usually at the Waldenbooks at the train station, when I spent too much time browsing and I’m in danger of missing my train) but it would never occur to me to pull that “the line is too long” crap. Unless, of course, I had permission from all the people who were already in line to go to the front ahead of them.
We’ve never, even at back-to-school time at the business supply store at which I am employed, had so many customers and so few cashiers open that there was a long line. Therefore, I’ve no line-butting stories to share. However, customers HAVE blamed me personally for the lack of an ATM and/or a public U.S. Postal Service mailbox in the strip mall where we are located.
Also, a few days ago, a woman went ballistic on me when I pointed out that she was trying to get a large credit refund on a card whose numbers did not match up with the ones on the receipt. She flipped out, screaming at me that I’d made a mistake and this was the only card she ever used (probably what had happened is that her husband or someone had actually purchased the item she was returning, using his own card, but she’d forgotten that; hopefully she realized when she got home and felt sorry for throwing a temper tantrum).
I really, really wanted to get sarcastic back at her. “Yes, ma’am, the computer that reads the numbers off the credit cards read the wrong ones, and then the credit card authorization people ignored the fact that it was the wrong numbers and charged YOUR card anyway. This is because everyone hates you and wants to screw you over. Goodbye.”
I didn’t have to, however, because my manager (alerted by the girl at the other register) came over and took the situation over from me. Followed, after the customer had left, by a long speech about how I should call him if this ever happened again, because he was paid to be yelled at and I was not.
I’m glad I have good managers.
I appreciate smarmy sarcasm in all its forms.
I think that rather than “giving her a semi-incredulous/pissed off look, but not saying anything” then saying, “Well, your water can’t just have broken, and you can’t have just been shot, so why don’t you stop being so rude and take these books and go to the end of the line and try and behave in a semi-civilized manner.” a better action would have been to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am; but as you can see, the lines are moving. I’ll have to ask you to return to the line. Or perhaps you might come back later when it’s less busy?”
I mean, it’s funny to embarass a rude person; but IMO it’s better to not bring any sense of impropriety upon yourself.
The most memorable thing that happened to me while working retail:
I was working in a shop at Six Flags/Magic Mountain when a girl came up with an item and said, “Haomushdicaw.”
I said, “I’m sorry?” to which she repeated, “Haomushdicaw.”
Still not understanding, I asked her to repeat herself again and she said, “Hao mush dih caw?” Aha! The penny dropped and the gumball rolled out. I pointed to the price tag on the item she was holding.
She said, “Shi’!” and went away.
Another time I was working at K-Mart when an old woman asked me for “Nothin’”. I said something like, “I’m sorry, you’re looking for nothing?” “No,” she said, “Nothin’!” I asked her if she would write it down, and she wrote “notions”. I still didn’t know what she was asking for. Where do we keep our ideas? I asked the lead to come over, and she directed the woman to sewing supplies. Being a kid living with my dad, I had no idea that “notions” meant “sewing supplies”.
Okay, those weren’t examples of “stupid customers”. I don’t think that my not understanding certain dialects made me a “stupid staffmember”. They’re just things I remember.
On the issue on non-supportive managers (aka: people whose jobs depend solely on balance sheets and other reports reviewed by upper-management who never set foot in the store / aka: people who recite the mantra “the customer is always right” to a clerk who has just had a latte* thrown in her face):
If the other employees harass and abuse a fellow employee, and if that is duly reported to and ignored by the manager, the manager can be sued for allowing a hostile workplace to exist.
But what if the manager allows this same level of abuse to come from the customers?
*does latte dripping from your face count as “flare?”
I don’t work retail but I work with the public all day. The woman was in the wrong but as soon as you get nasty and sarcastic you are in the wrong too. The way I see it, part of my job is to cope with the people who come to my desk, and if I let them make me behave unprofessionally I’m not doing my job well.
You don’t serve her out of order. If necessary, you call security or the cops. But once you get snotty you just double the jerk population instead of decreasing it.
Fifteen Iguana
Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines once sent a letter to a jerk customer saying “I regret to inform you that you are no longer a customer of Southwest Airlines.” What’s better than having a boss that stands behind you? Having the BIG boss stand behind you…
…Or, in the words of an old boss of mine, “WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT? WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT??? I KNOW WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO. I WANT YOU TO PICK UP YOUR SHIT AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SHOP!!!” For full effect repeat that for a full hour until the customer leaves (yep, it took that long.)
Sorry, I totally agree with what he did, especially since he was the manager. Customer is always right, my ass. Retail workers get enough shit on a daily basis that, every now and then, they DO have to strike back in some way. It’s not like we all like pretending we give a shit about your “absolutely vital” purchases and grovelling cause yer “always right”.
If you’ve never worked retail during the holiday crush, you have no fucking conception of what it’s like, Iguana. Customers get so aggressive sometimes you wish you had a whip and chair, or maybe a cattle prod to keep them from killing one another or the other employees. The OP wasn’t a jerk. He gave her ample opportunity to take her books to the end of the line without anyone else having to hear what a bitch she was being, as well as fair warning as to what would happen if she refused. She chose to continue being a jerk about it, so she got her promised reward. End of story.
By the way, I’d really love to know what went out over the intercom. I’d also love to know Ms. “The line’s too long” mended her ways or bitched for months about being called on her jerky behavior. I know which option my money’s on.
No, he shouldn’t have been so rude. As Fifteen Iguana said, he just doubled the jerk population. (But I still wish I’d been there to see it!)
Possibly apocryphal, possibly done by many. I have heard my friend’s mother (a flight attendant) tell the story of her doing that herself.
Gotta love those with sarcastic wit and an intercom 
I for one am dying to know what it was you said, WSLer.
What I am also dying to know is what the hell she was thinking. ** "The Line was too long… " ** is an incomplete sentence. She is leaving something unspoken, and in her strange and fevered mind, she expected it to be understood automatically. For the life of me, I cannot imagine what she meant to be understood.
The line was too long…for The Queen Of the World to have to wait?
The line was too long…to be tolerated by the Mistress of Fantastickness?
The line was too long…and she was on the brink of pooping in her pants?
The line was too long…because she was on her way to perform brain surgery?
I mean really… I would have probed her on this issue. In what universe and by what bizarre logic does she think that she should not have to wait like all the other human beings?
Also…is there anyone here who has missed ** The Ultimate Customer Freakout of All Time, Never Ever To Be Topped. Ever. **?
It’s old, but it’s so very speshul…
I agree with Johnny L.A. It’s always much better, whenever possible, to maintain propriety while still holding the line against jerks.
I work in a service industry, so not only do I get unreasonable requests (spraying insecticide on someone’s plates??!!), I also get requests to do illegal applications (no, I can’t spray down the drain, it will contaminate the sewer line and it’s illegal). I am also sometimes treated like a low-class moron simply by virtue of the fact that I drive a truck, spray for bugs and sometimes have dirty knees and fingernails.
I’ve found that the best response in any of the above situations is to totally bedazzle these people with my knowledge, my expertise, my above-average communication skills, and my outstanding level of service. If I maintain my own high personal standards, it can’t help but raise the standards of those with whom I come in contact.
I am also fortunate to have managers who will stand behind me, for all the right reasons, chief among them being that they recognize the kind of high-quality technician and honest individual I am.
I will put myself on the side of those who say that the customer is most certainly not always right. In very extreme cases customers deserve some serious wrath. That being said, I’d really like to know what exactly the fuck you said on the intercom. Don’t keep us waiting.
Haj
By the way, I shoulda disclaimed: that link is to an MP3 file that includes some harsh language 
Stoid what the fucking hell was that? All I could really decipher was “I’ve been on the phone for one fucking hour” the word “now” a lot, and something that sounded a lot like “I want him dead!” Where did you get that, and what was this woman’s problem?
Oh, by the way, sometimes the customer will freely admit they’re wrong, but still insist that any problems are the employee’s fault. My personal favorite example is a family I waited on once at Cracker Barrel who cussed me out and complained to a manager because I had the temerity to bring them exactly what they ordered. For those of who’ve never been to a Cracker Barrel, the breakfast menu has a sheet of different breakfasts you can order, and they differ from one another in the number of eggs and the choices of meat that come with them.
All six people order one of these breakfasts, and of course I have to drag out of them how they want the eggs cooked, what meat they want, etc. The two teenage girls order the breakfast that comes with eggs, no meat. I don’t ask them which meat they want, which should have tipped them off that there was no meat to be forthcoming. I bring the food out, and the girls just look at the plates and don’t say anything. Their father turns to me and asks, “Where’s their bacon?”
I reply that they didn’t order any, but I’ll get rush order out to them asap. The cook tells me he’s got an order (one destined for someone else’s plate, of course) nearly ready, so it’ll just take a minute or two. I go out to tell these folks it’ll be right out, and the guy gets really snappy with me, accusing me of incompetance. I tell him that they didn’t order bacon originally, and that there’s an order nearly ready, and the only way I can get it out any faster is to bring it out undercooked, which I absolutely will not do.
Of course, this brings on a demand to speak to the manager. He asks what the girls ordered, and they tell him. He explains that that meal doesn’t come with bacon, and they say, “Oh, well, we thought it did.” By then they’ve got their fucking bacon, and you’d think everyone would be happy. Oh, no, they then proceed to cuss me out for my slowness in getting the bacon, for not having an extra arm to carry another tray and having to make two trips to get all their stuff out them in the first place, and anything else they could think of. They didn’t tip, of course.
CCLady, it is an old sound file that was passed around among Mac folk for years, because the company is Apple, and the lady’s computer is toasted. She is screaming that she wants Jack dead, and that it’s WAR, BABY! I WANT HIM DEAD! She’s a little disturbed about the fact that she apparently toasted her computer without having a backup and some important stuff got lost. And this is evidently Jack the customer service guy’s fault, so she would like Jack to be dead.
She is obviously a very troubled person. I think the customer service guy she’s talking to is a model of amazing calm in the face of an insane assault. If you listen carefully, though, you can kinda tell that he’s so stunned by her abuse that he is trying to keep from laughing.