From a customer POV, that makes total sense. Plenty of times I’ve stopped going to a store or restaurant because I was annoyed and I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way to communicate my issues with them. I really didn’t care at that point. OTOH, from the store’s POV, if customers don’t let them know their employees are screwing up orders, they can’t fix it unless they just so happen to catch it. A quick email or facebook message might be all it takes for the manager to fix the problem.
That’s why I called. Otherwise they would have just been ghosted. Hopefully it was the manager or at least a worker who will report to him, “(X) screwed up taking a customer’s order and he was really upset about it.”
I didn’t say fix their business, I said fix your order.
Mistakes happen, and they are going to happen anywhere you go. If you write a place off because they made a mistake then you will soon be out of places to go. Mistakes like what happened to you happen every now and again, no matter how well run a store is. If you go somewhere else, most likely it will not happen for a while, but that is also the case that if you didn’t go somewhere else.
Every time I have either called in a complaint, or fielded one, you didn’t have to come back right now to get your replacement, you could get a credit that was good more or less indefinitely, to be used at your convenience.
That you called them means that you either wanted to let them know what they did wrong so that they could prevent doing it in the future, or it was to shit on a service worker for making a mistake, and you just said that you have no interest in helping their business.
So, I guess in response to the OP, maybe one of the reasons is because people take mistakes personally, as if the service worker did it to them on purpose, and lash out in response, wanting to hurt the one who offended them.
To be honest, in my experience, the people that lash out the most are the ones who were the ones that made the mistake. They didn’t order properly, and when they got what they ordered, rather than what they wanted, rather than admit that they were in error, will become extremely hostile. I suppose it is a coping mechanism to keep them from having to admit to not being perfect themselves. The thought that they made a mistake, rather than this useless little peon in front of them, enrages them. And keep in mind, as crew or as manager, I never told them that the mistake was theirs, I just offered to fix it. Usually, the more adamant and hostile that they were that we made a mistake though, the more likely it was that the miscommunication was on their part.
The only person I ever had to call the police on to be trespassed off my property was one of these. I had heard his order myself, and what he ordered was not what he insisted that he ordered when he came storming into the dining room and flung his sandwich in my cashier’s face.
In the end, it is because you can treat a service worker in a different way than you can treat just about anyone else. If you treated your peers that way, you wouldn’t have friends, if you treated your love that way, you wouldn’t have a significant other, if you treated your boss or co-workers that way, you’d be unemployed, if you treated a random person on the street that way, you’d be arrested. But when it comes to these low paid workers, it’s fair game. What can they do to you? You can shit all over them, and face almost no consequence.
My “favorite” was the people that would throw their drinks in the window. The first time this happened to me, I was horrified and bewildered. “Why am I now covered in fruit punch, what did I do to deserve this?” After the first few times though, I had good enough reflexes that almost all of it ended up in their car. Maybe I’d get splashed a bit, but I have a sink to clean up in, and their upholstery is ruined.
Oddly, people do find it worth a couple bucks to pay for a drink for the sole purpose of throwing it at some random person. They are less likely to want to shell out for detailing their interior.
I worked Taco Bell for 9 years, mostly at one store. We had to be firm or we got scammed to death. We went through managers like crazy and we’d get transfers who were all “well, just give them X for free. Good customer service!” Two weeks later, because word would get around, they’d have to put the kibosh on that.
Everyone should should have to work in retail or some sort of customer job early in life. I did. And it informed not only how I treat service workers, but also, as highly trained professional in a management position, manage people.
Bad bosses are also something everyone should experience early in life.
That’s one of the reasons I love having cameras. A lot of people call because they were rung up for something and they didn’t have it in their bags when they got home. They’ll insist that we do this on purpose to rip people off. Usually I can keep them talking long enough to find them on the cameras and watch the transaction play out. At which point I’ll interrupt them and say “Did you have a pineapple and some bananas as well”, they’ll confirm they did, “okay, the grapefruit was in that same bag”. I swear 9 times out of 10, if the thing they’re missing is spherical, it rolled out of the bag and it’s in their trunk or under the seat. If it’s not spherical, they already put it away OR, they never bought it, I’ll see them on the camera put it in some random spot in the store to abandon it, but they forgot they did that.
In any case, yeah, a lot of people will outright accuse us of doing something deceptive instead of considering that they did it themselves and forgot.
I had a guy call me the other day to ask if we have any of “that Italian pasta salad with the rotini noodles” in stock. I told him we have one called “Italian Rotini”, is that what he’s looking for. He got all pissy with me and said “No, I want that one with the rotini noodles and cheese and the pepperoni and the olives and a bunch of other Italian stuff in it”. Some how I was the asshole for telling him that we have the one he asked for, but not knowing that it wasn’t what he wanted, he wanted “antipasto pasta salad”.
And that brings up another question I ask myself a few times a week. When a customer is buying something or asking for something, but you know it’s not what they actually want…do you correct them?
For example, when this was still being packed in a 750ml bottle, I knew (usually due to overhearing them talking about it in the store) that they thought it was wine. Do I tell them it’s beer, or do I leave it alone?
That’s just a random example, but there’s plenty of other ones I can think of where I know if I’m right in my assumption that the thing they’re buying isn’t what they actually think it is, I’m gonna be the asshole, in their opinion.
It’s a fine line. You can be taken advantage of, but it’s not that hard to spot the scammers. And if a few scammers occasionally get something free, it doesn’t really hurt the bottom line.
Good customer service means not punishing your good customers due to the actions of the bad ones.
Ah, malicious compliance.
Depends on circumstances and context. When I was working drive through speaker, I delighted in it. Now, I wouldn’t always, but so many people came across with a superior attitude that I wasn’t about to question what it was that they asked for.
So, they tell me, “What I want, is a hamburger…, with cheese…, bacon…, lettuce… and tomato. Can you get that right?” Now, I could ring them up for a junior bacon for $.99 (this was when they still had the 99 cents menu), or I could ring them up for a jr. hamburger at .89, plus add cheese for .25 and add bacon for .30. I did enjoy charging them the idiot tax. Petty, but fun.
As a manager, I had a bit of a different perspective on it, but I still would give someone exactly what they ordered if they were insistent enough.
Now that I have my own business, I’m not a fan, especially since I’m working with other people’s live animals, their love and pride and joy. I had a receptionist that played that game, and I had to get rid of her because she wouldn’t stop. Client would complain about the haircut, and she’d say, “Well, that’s what they said they wanted.” But, I do not feel as though I am here to give them what they ask for, but rather what they actually want, which often does require a fair amount of empathy and communication on my part.
If I have a problem with a client, I may fire them, but I won’t take it out on their pet.
At our store, we’ve always guaranteed everything. If you get home and you find out the cantaloupe you have is bad, bring it back and we’ll take care of it. However, we’ve always maintained that you have to bring it back. And, like, you have to bring back most of it. I’ve had people walk in with empty lobster tail shells telling me they were bad. But you still ate two of them?
Years ago, I had someone tell me they got a watermelon and it was bad. I told her that if she brought it back, we’d happily refund her. She snapped ‘well that doesn’t do me any good’, to which I replied ‘I can’t hand ten dollar bills out to everyone that says they got a bad watermelon’.
And with what I said above, our good customers, the ones that have been shopping here for 40 years, the customers I invited to my wedding, the ones that are practically family, the ones that I’ve dropped off and picked up from colonoscopies because their ride flaked on them (yes, really). I don’t make jump through those hoops. Got something bad? Just let me know, I’ll fix it.
I had one in not that long ago, he was returning some grated cheese because it was bad. Fine, whatever, grab another one. A few days later he comes back with it and again tells us this Parmesan cheese is awful. I take a look at it and explain to him that it’s Romano, which is why it tastes off to him. He insisted it’s what he always gets and wants another one. He’s absolutely insistent that the it’ll be fine this time. So I explain to him, again, it’s not Parmesan cheese like he keeps saying. And, even if it was, I can see from the labels it’s all from the same batch. Since he was started to get agitated, I told him to take it, but also told him that he’s not allowed to bring this one back, it’s his.
For sure there’s a huge difference between the manager who’s an owner versus the manager who’s trained in actual management vs the typical franchise barely trained counter worker labeled as “manager” now.
A lot of stupidity is big corps too cheap to hire real management, so they try to write rigid but unworkable policies for the manager-labeled droids to follow. Who in turn are forced to unskillfully navigate those unworkable policies in the face of hostile customers. In all a recipe for anger, recriminations, and bad press all around.
I don’t know if I could have summed up the 20 years I spent working for other people any better. 
Always glad to be of service. I realize now that after “hostile customers” the sentence should have continued “and indifferent workers.”
Truly the franchise or corporate storefront shift leader “manager” is a special job from hell besieged on all fronts by idiots.
And again, I wasn’t really cheated as such; except for buying the fries and drink at retail instead of the few cents off as part of a meal, I got what I paid for.
Even had they said, “Oops. Come back and we’ll give you give you a quarter-pounder for free,” I had no interest in driving three miles to fetch it. Call me a big meanie if you like, but there is no ‘next time’ when alternates are available.
A classic example of an entitled customer is Angela vs Jen from the Appleton WI Bath & Body Works. That moron Jen didn’t have HER candles when she said they would! Can you imagine? Her three-wick Winter Candy Apple and Iced Gingerbread candles! God, Jen, get it together!
Yeah, worked my way through undergrad doing retail and there were definitely chronic assholes. Some people didn’t buy anything, or if they did, it was:
“Show me this! What’s that?”
“Can you take it out of a box so I can see how it works? I might wanna buy it, ya know!”
To which, in my mind, I replied, "Ohh, fuck off! You have no intention to do anything other than waste my fucking time by inflicting your misery when I work on commission and my co-worker is now going to ring up a $2000 sale because I had the misfortune of waiting on your sorry ass while he happened to be available for the next available mentally well-adjusted soul that walked through the door. Fuck you ten times with someone else’s dick."
So, just yesterday there was a customer in the store, we could hear him being super high-maintenance from the backroom. Things like “These are in packages of 2, but I only one, can I have one?”, “These little tiny potatoes aren’t small enough, do you have smaller ones?” and, my favorite “I don’t need an entire bunch of cilantro, is there any way I can get just a few leaves?” FFS man, just buy the cilantro, toss what you don’t need.
Anyway, at some point someone said “ugh, that’s the same guy from a few years ago that kept returning the romano cheese”…the guy I mentioned a few posts up.