Recently I stupidly hit the supermarket in its peak hour. I wheeled my trolley up to the shortest line (3 trolleys and a woman holding a jar of coffee), I waited and waited, then another trolley appeared and I thought was taking up a position behind me, the coffee woman turned to me and said
The friend then edged her way in front of me. A passing manager type gently took my elbow, lead me to the unstaffed register next to the one I had been waiting for , placed the sorry, closing after this customer sign up and rang up my purchases while having a lovely chat about the weather and my addiction to diet cola. The pair of gits were not spoken to at all and I was long gone before they were through. I peeked over my shoulder a couple of times, they weren’t happy campers.
I was once behind a couple at a deli counter who couldn’t figure out how thick or thin they wanted their bologna. I waited patiently while they rejected several slices, then a woman came up with a manager bitching about how the cake she bought should be on sale. She was waving the sign in front of the clerk’s face, while they patiently explained to her several times why it wasn’t on sale.
So, when it was my turn, I got a few bucks shaved off my order for having to wait.
On the flip side in Europe, my SIL and her husband were there for a year while BIL was taking some university classes. She said several times that she was given poor service because of her American accent. She’d be standing in line, and as soon as she got to the counter and stated her request, the “On Break” sign would be slammed down and the clerk would walk away.
She theorized this was because it was a small town, and that if they were in London, which is used to tourists, she wouldn’t be treated this way. It happened more than once, and the only thing she could think of was it was her accent. (No, it wasn’t her attitude or tone. The only time she went ballistic was at a Quincy’s when a man yelled at her two year old daughter for sticking her fingers in the salad, and no, the two year old wasn’t even tall enough to reach that far.)
Naw, I tried that when I was in London. Went into the nearest pub, and said to the barkeep, “'Allo, guv’nor! Oi’ll ‘have a pint o’ yer finest, pip pip!”
They didn’t seem to appreciate it much. I don’t know why; it worked so well for Dick van Dyke. And they really didn’t like it when I asked them why the sign out front said “Football,” but all the TVs were showing soccer.
I worked at a video store in Ireland for a year and a bit, and if you think that this was backwards, you ain’t heard nothing yet.
My BOSS told me that customers had been complaining that I wasn’t “happy enough when I was serving them” and that “I didn’t know what I was doing” - this was after two days at the job.
I’ve been shouted at, I’ve had things stolen from the store, I’ve had people yell obscenities at me, and I’ve taken more shit than anyone I know. Mostly because I was unlucky enough to get all the freaks and weirdos.
Luckily for you guys, I’ve been documenting them for a whole year and almost six months at my diary. I suggest any of the following entries:
And yes, <b>WSLer</b>, you were very justified in your actions. No customer is right if they can’t respect the fact that people are working hard for not just them, but for others, too.
Had I been one of those people this bitch cut in front of, and WSLer had served her, I would have read him the riot act. Since he took the action he did, I would have tipped him a fiver and said “keep up the good work”.
You keep your good customers happy. Bad customers? Fuck 'em.
You should have stayed polite with the customer the whole time. The business owner is paying you to help the business make money, and by publically humiliating that customer and ensuring she did not purchase those books, you not only lost getting the sale of those books, but any future sales that customer may have made.
Beastal, that’s all well and good, but if this imaginary business survives by allowing its workers to be treated like doormats, abused and insulted by customers, all in the interests of never offending the customer, they might have a hard time selling anything, as no one will wish to work there. Their labor costs may go up, or they might have turnover problems, ensuring poorer service due to less training/experience, and then the customer suffers too.
It would, perhaps, be best to find a balance between employees and customers. After all, a successful business needs both.
I was in at my OB/GYN, checking in at the counter. In front of me was a pregnant woman.
Receptionist: “I’m sorry, your doctor just got called to the hospital to deliver a baby…we tried to reach you, but you’d left already. You can see one of the other doctors, or we can reschedule you for later in the week.”
This caused a tirade from the woman in question. How DARE the doctor leave. She had an APPOINTMENT. She finally stormed out (I don’t think she even made another appointment).
I said "You handled it better than I would have. I’d have smiled at her and said “You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say this. We will just note here on your chart that when you go into labor, we should just wait until the doctor doesn’t have any previous appointments before we send him to the hospital. You wouldn’t believe how many people expect the doctor to drop whatever he is doing and leave for the hospital just because they are fully dialated.”
I’m pretty sure I posted this somewhere before but I don’t know where it is
I used to be the Animal Care Manager and Assistant Store Manager of a pet store.
(I’m not particularly proud of selling dogs and cats, but as the Animal Care Manager I had some veto power over certain sales and such)
One February afternoon, I sold a Shaded Silver Persian kitten to a woman. This cat sold for $500 and she also bought a litter box, litter, food, and some toys. I think the total was around $600 so this was a nice commission for me. Packed up the kitten, gave the woman some pamphlets on kitten care, the number for the vet and off she went.
Hours later I was in back working on payroll when one of the salespeople came to tell me there was a man in the front, demanding to see the manager and making a huge scene. I was the closest thing to a manager at the time so I got to go talk to the guy.
Guy, it turns out, is married to the woman who bought the $500 kitten. He is IRATE. $500 for a kitten? What kind of rip off is that? He was going to the media and reporting the store! Wants all his money back. Guy tells me the whole thing is my fault for selling his wife the cat. Now, I never pushed animals on people. I only sold an animal if a customer SPECIFICALLY SAID, “I want to buy a cat/dog†and this woman came into the store specifically asking for the Shaded Silver Persians. How was this my fault?
Guy’s answer: “She’s from Iowa. She doesn’t know any better!â€
Well, who can argue with that kind of reasoning? Lord knows I don’t want a kitten living in THAT house! I told him to bring the kitten and everything back and I’d give him a full refund. He says he has the kitten with him. Where? I don’t see it.
It’s in the car. By itself. At night, in February. Good God. He went and got the cat and I gave him the refund. After he left the store, I apologized profusely to the kitten and felt really, really sorry for that guy’s wife. ‘Course she’s from Iowa, so she probably didn’t know any better when she married him.
I was working at a motorcycle shop. Someone called and asked how big of a tire he needed for his bike (hint: it’s on the side of the tire.) We told him the nominal size, warned him that tire sizes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and invited him to come in and let us help him pick out a tire.
The guy went to an auto parts store, picked out the cheapest tire on the market and brought in the bare rim and tire. We put the tire on the rim for ten bucks, and he went home and put the wheel back on his bike. The tire rubbed on the bike’s frame, so he came back the next day and threatened to sue if we didn’t make things right. My boss took a grinder to his bike and ground off the metal that touched the tire (that was ok by this guy) and yelled out that line every time the idiot started to open his mouth.
Used book stores. 9 out of 10 times the owner will knock a few dollars off the total–or just estimate it on the low side–if you’re pleasant. In fact, I so rarely pay the marked price that I can only assume that they put them in there as an excuse to charge assholes more.
Yeah, but every other customer in the store that day is now a Customer for Life. Plus, evil psycho woman will never return, which is well worth the loss of a few book sales.
Something similar happened to me when I was getting some work done on my car one weekend. The place I went to didn’t take appointments, so I brought my school books with me and prepared to wait (I had hours of reading to do anyway).
After I had been waiting for several hours, a student who had dropped off her car about 45 minutes earlier returned to pick it up. She threw a tantrum when the guys behind the counter told her they had other people ahead of her and hadn’t finished hers yet.
When the girl finally stomped out of the store, the guy behind the counter thanked me for waiting so patiently and told me I didn’t have to pay for my repair. The store even threw in a coupon for a free oil change. Sometimes it pays to be patient.
As someone who as worked in many retail sorta jobs . I think that if a customer was being rude beyonds a shadow of a doubt, that you have a right to say whatever you feel right to make them realize how rude they were. The job with some of the rudest people IMHO anyway,is blockbuster. There are so many people trying to get out of late charges and such
Some customers will cost the store more business than the paltry few dollars’ worth of stock that they buy, in which case they should be shown the door and told not to come back. A customer who drives other customers away or induces them not to return is such a person. I think that the OP was rather over the top in his treatment, but I can certainly sympathize.
I think that we, as a society, are FAR too willing to accede to a rude customer. Bad behavior should not be rewarded.
All you had to do was refuse to serve her, and you certainly were justified in doing so. IMHO, insulting her as you did makes you nearly as big a jerk as she was.
And I am apalled that so many people here think you did “exactly the right thing”. This is “mall rage”. You’re lucky she wasn’t even nuttier, and armed. It is NEVER a good thing to surrender your civility because someone else has. It is also dangerous, because it may lead to escalation.
