Apology accepted though not really needed.
Reminds me of the movie Roadhouse where Dalton the head bouncer is teaching all the wannabe bouncers to “be nice” as they throw someone out the door…
I have a great method of preventing rudeness in customers. I used this while working the drive-thru at a BK while in High School.
Act mildly retarded. Not really really retarded, but just a little bit “slow”. It takes an exceptional asshole to be mean to a “special” employee. This tactic isn’t good for all situations, but it seems tailor made for fast food as they make a big production of hiring “special” persons and there seems to be an inordinate number of rude customers there. I doubt it would work for most other forms of retail.
I had a customer in retail pharmacy once throw a complete FIT because the phamacist stepped away for a moment to help another customer who had a heart attack two aisles over from the counter. This man was LIVID that the pharmacist could just “walk away” like that and what about HIM and what HE needs???
I was so upset by is behavior that I got this blasting, instant headache from my bloodpressure skyrocketing. It ended with him screaming at me and me calling security to escort him out. For the record, he was not getting psych medicines, either. He was just a mean motherfucker.
That was, by far, the worst example of customer assholishness I’ve ever witnessed. I can still remember the disbelief I had that he clearly understood the situation, yet didn’t give a fuck. Amazing.
Another customer had a heart attack right there in the store, and this asshole complained about it? If I read that right, holy fuck.
I work in a college bookstore, and a few weeks ago we were hip deep in pissed-off people all trying to find the same Spanish workbook. A coworker and I decided that one fun way to deal with asshole customers would be to fall to the ground sobbing, saying “This is the worst birthday ever!” Particularly if the sales associate was a guy.
And that’s why people have learned not to squeeze Charmian!
[Ducks and runs away crackling madly. . . . ]
Um … no. I would strongly, strongly recommend avoiding this technique. It’s wrong on many levels.
I have read exactly three stories of the Gord. And I swear, I’ve not laughed this hard in days. This should keep me good and entertained for a nice long time!
As for me, I work in a knife store. Kitchen knives, pocket knives, swords and whatnot. While no particular incident of extreme rudeness sticks in my mind (which may or may not be because I’m rather large and have access to many knives, I don’t know), there are a couple of constants that I get.
First, you get people asking for illegal stuff. This being a Canada-wide chain in the middle of a mall, I really don’t have anything ‘under the counter’. No, really. I don’t. No, I don’t know where you can get one.
Secondly, mostly in the swords and daggers area, sometimes in the sport knives, and occasionally in the kitchen knives, you’ll hear someone exclaim something like ‘Imagine how many people you could kill with that!’. I actually had a guy the other day ask me how many people he’d be able to kill with a particular sword. A dull sword. With a perfectly serious face. His dad was right there, smiling. I felt like extracting his tongue.
Finally, and perhaps the best of the bunch, I see a few times a week. These are the guys who bring in their girlfriends and, when they ask said guys what they want a sword or whatever for, the guy says to them ‘To kill you.’ Or something similar. Always said with a big grin. I was shocked when I first heard this one, and yet, it’s so COMMON. Unbelievable. Sometimes they look at me, as if to say ‘You know where I’m coming from, don’t you, eh?’ and wink. I tend to either glare, or shake my head and look away.
Sigh.
I work in tech support for EA. They told us in the training class that if the customer starts ranting and raving at us on the phone, we can tell them (politely) to knock it off and then end the call if they continue. I’ve heard other people around the office give the warning, but for me I usually manage to defuse any incidents before they get started. Stuff like, “Well I understand you’re frustrated but I’m trying to help you” or whatever. But there are some nutcases out there. One guy was threatening to sue us because he thought terrorists were hacking his computer through one of our game servers.
I had worked in a grocery store and there is plenty of insanity to go around then, as well.
Especially when the off brand frozen pizzas ring up $1.79 instead of $1.50.
Ditto.
She was rude. But hey, just tell her to go to the end of the line. If she refused, ask her to leave the store. If she didn’t, call security. If I had heard that coming from a manger over the loudspeaker I would have been shocked. Talk about slicing butter with a chainsaw.
In fact, in this cookie cutter corporate world we live in, I’m suprised that type of behavior would be tolerated from a manager.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Sorry to pull up a post from the first page, but I happen to know the particulars of this story.
The company was Adobe, not Apple. Adobe outsources a lot of its customer service and technical support calls. I worked for the outsource company when this call came in. I was in tech support, and the call was taken at customer service, but I can tell you that the guy who took the call was the hero of the whole company. The fact that he kept so cool was just that, so cool.
The surprise was that this crazy lady had called many times in the past. You can hear her ask to be transferred directly to Jan Matthews, who was (and may still be) Adobe’s main person for dealing with customer problems. The caller had been transferred to Jan’s level a few times in the past. Each time, she had had some sort of screaming fit, though of course this one was the worst by a good margin.
The thing is, that each time she got worked up over some problem with her software, someone on Jan Matthews’ team would calm her down by giving her free software. Then they’d hook her up with tech support, which would generally find that the problem was something easily fixed (as long as the tech and the caller are both civil and sane).
The moral of the story is: “Don’t reward bad behavior, or it will be even worse the next time.”
The good part, though, is that after the call you have the recording of, Jan Matthews sent the woman a refund check for the software she’d paid for, and sent a courier over to her house to take back every Adobe product she had. She was told that she was no longer an Adobe customer.
I did this a lot when I was working at DQ. I got extremely nice. Like, UBER nice. So nice my eyes turn into little inverted Us, my mouth to a triangle. Yes, I became Chibi Matt, and flowers cascaded from my every speech bubble. It’s hard to remain irritated when your counter clerk turns chibi on you.
Also, chibi are indestructible.
Does everyone remember this one? (Warning: foul language on this .wav.)
(Oh – If anyone knows another site that has this, can you let me know? Thanks.)
And piss off the other 10 customers in line…as employees in any business we are part of a community. A community that is plagued by people who abuse the position of customer. If we as a community refuse to indulge or reward this behavior, all of us will benefit in the long run.
If I was a customer in that line I would have saved you the trouble by saying loudly…“if you help her after she cut in line I will set my purchases down right here on the floor and go to competitor x down the street”
As a present day person working amusement park security, when they ask me what I do I say “I have the best job in the world, I get to be an asshole to the customers who deserve it.”
Two wrongs certainly do make a right. Just ask Homer Simpson.
She was beyond rude.
She was inconsiderate.
As far as calling security, I have to tell you that Barnes & Noble is way to cheap to employ their own security force. The shopping center that the store was located in had security but they didn’t do jack except sit in their brick house watching porn and occasionally taking their security vehicle on a drive thtough the parking lot. Oh yeah, they would come into the store and hand us a clipboard which we were supposed to mark to show that they had in fact stopped by.
Call security my ass.
Sheesh.
I would have gotten a faster response if I had called the police, which would have been an extreme waste of the police’s time, which could be much better spent giving tickets to speeders and stopping domestic violence and stopping actual crimes, not breaches of etiquette.
Actually this woman is bringing a halt to commerce that pays licencing fees to the city to help cover this type of service. Unless something serious is going on elsewhere cops will take this very seriously.
The issue isn’t her cuting in line but she is causing a disturbance. Cops usually don’t like bitchy annoying people any more than retail clerks do. Also the cops are not going to give a rats ass about the “level of service” she recieved. They will most likely tell her what we do at the park. “If you feel so poorly treated, you should take your business elsewhere.” Our greatest fantasy is that everyone we toss out becomes a regular for our competition.
My Greek wife continues to try to teach me modern Greek but it seems that the only words that stick with me are the obscenities…which amuses her family back in Athens no end when I happen to pick up the phone for a call from them. 
And, malaka, I have to say that I love your user name…
I’ll add in my own here… my husband used to work at GNN and this was once left on the support voicemail. I’d forgotten all about it, but this reminded me to convert the wav to mp3 and upload it
(click on the GNN Voice Mail link)
I think that everyone should be required to take classes in school on how to act like a good customer. If people could learn how to shop correctly and treat retail workers with respect. Then maybe there would be less ahole customers out there…
CustomersSuck.Com <-- This is my favorite Customer Rant site.