# Work in a store? Bitch about customers here! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 16, 2004, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970 "2004-11-16T01:14:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![todd33rpm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@todd33rpm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/todd33rpm)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/81 "2004-11-17T10:00:13Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Um, _why_? What would be the point? To hide evidence? Because he/she didn’t approve of Snoop? Yup, to hide evidence. We followed the kid, who had shoplifted the disc, at a not-quite-discreet distance, all the way from the store to the men’s public restroom…he goes into a stall, DOESN’T EVEN DROP HIS PANTS, unwraps the CD and proceeds to try to flush the wrapping and the CD separately down the toilet (WTF? Like it would go down easier if the wrapping was flushed by itself? :rolleyes: ). After attempted flush number six, we got the security guy. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/82 "2004-11-17T14:24:50Z")
> [@mcott](#): > > Here’s my take, one from in store retail, one from call centre retail. > > I used to work at a grocery store (the largest Canadian chain - not naming names to prevent people from getting ideas, but you can figure it out), at the Customer Service Counter. One night a guy comes in with the **wrapper** from a $23.00 pork loin. Nothing else. No recipt, no meat, that’s it. He tells me that his wife bought it last week so he could cut it into chops and freeze them. He opened the package and the meat smelled bad, so he threw it out. Now he wants his money back. My first reaction? Sorry, but no - no product, no refund, never mind no recipt. “Call the manager”, he says. > > You can guess where this is going, right? > > Yep. Full refund, and [Apu] Thank You, Come Again! [/Apu] I had a couple of managers like this (and a couple who were so hard-assed that if you bent the rules even slightly for a nice customer, they would let you know if they found out). Anyway, once such a manager was identified, I quickly learned to never say “No.” I always said, “Let me ask the manager.” I’d face the manager’s wrath…jobs paying what I was earning were not hard to find and we both knew it and that otherwise, I did my job well and conscientiously. Another tale, one that has been repeated but not to such depth: I am of Sicilian/Native American/Black/English/etc. descent, in that order (50% Sicilian, so that predominates). Of course, given the mix, I ended up looking, to many, Hispanic (although a few have mistaken me for South Asian…go figger). I was working on ‘LawngIsland’ at a time when the Hispanic population was very sparse. One day, a family comes up to me and starts speaking Spanish. This was the first time I had experienced that phenomena, but I politely responded that I don’t speak Spanish. What a mistake! Suddenly, one of the women goes on a loud rant (in pretty good English, mind you) about me being embarassed by my heritage and forsaking my forefathers, weaving Jesus somewhere in there (this was over 20 years ago, so forgive my forgetting the specifics). I couldn’t get a word in. As she winds down, being a smart-assed teenager (half of that is still true, guess which half), I sarcastically reply that she is correct, but that I have tried to get my father to teach me his native tongue, but he’s too lazy (true) to teach me…(pause for effect)… **Sicilian** \* I then haughtily tell the frog (as in leaping to conclusions, not French) that I am not hispanic, and to the best of my knowledge, my ancestry is not hispanic (although one never really knows where East Coast Native American ancestry intermingles with early European settlers). They made their purchase quietly with another sales associate and left. Never saw them again. \*About 1/2 a dozen years before this incident, I once “mistakenly” referred to myself as Italian in front of my Old World Sicilian grandmother and her sister, my Great Aunt. They let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I was not ‘Italian’, I was **Sicilian**. Since that time, nearly three decades ago, I have never referred to myself as Italian, both due to childhood trauma of a usually very nice grandmother verbally exploding on a young, impressionable boy AND out of respect for her opinion on our heritage. We won’t talk about what she thought about my other half…she just pretty much ignored it was there. ---
**Author:** ![mcms\_cricket](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@mcms\_cricket](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcms_cricket)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/83 "2004-11-17T15:44:07Z")
> [@infamousmom](#): > > Oh, and if you’re a high school kid who has an assignment to find an article in a magazine or newspaper about a particular subject, guess what, you have to tell the staff WHICH magazine you want… we’ve all passed the 10th grade already and we’re not going to slog through the Readers’ Guide for you. You get to do that all by your liddle old self. Well, actually, no. I gotta disagree with you here. It is part of a librarian’s job to find information for patrons. That’s what we do! It certainly helps if you know what magazine or newspaper you saw the article in, but it is not always necessary. That’s what we’re trained for. What with the Internet and with the number of subscription databases around these days (Ebscohost, Proquest, etc.) that can search multiple titles, it’s not really necessary to use the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. I don’t think I’ve needed to use it once since library school. It seems that most times these days people remember the article but not where they read it. However, I do admit that people who get annoyed because I’ve exhausted all possibilities and still can’t identify their vaguely-remembered book (" it was green and about dogs") really bug me… ---
**Author:** ![Anonymous\_Coward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@Anonymous\_Coward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anonymous_Coward)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/84 "2004-11-17T17:08:10Z")
My wife and I were at Blockbuster, and we watched (to our dismay and disgust) a little kid barf on the floor, and the mom says “I bet you feel better now!” and continued to look for a movie. There’s so many things wrong with this. First, the mom must have knew the poor little guy was sick and took him out anyways. Second, she made no attempt to clean up the mess or even inform an employee, and finally she continued to ignore the child. Argh! ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/85 "2004-11-17T17:14:01Z")
> [@Anonymous Coward](#): > > There’s so many things wrong with this. First, the mom must have knew the poor little guy was sick and took him out anyways. Second, she made no attempt to clean up the mess or even inform an employee, and finally she continued to ignore the child. Oh, don’t even get me started on parents who treat their kids like shit in public! I mean, if they’re like that in public, how much worse must they be at home? I just wanna jack these parents up by their collars, slam them against a wall, and yell “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to your kid??” I told ya not to get me started! ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/86 "2004-11-17T17:32:22Z")
> [@norinew](#): > > Oh, don’t even get me started on parents who treat their kids like shit in public! I mean, if they’re like that in public, how much worse must they be at home? I just wanna jack these parents up by their collars, slam them against a wall, and yell “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to your kid??” > > I told ya not to get me started! Yet, despite the righteousness of such actions, you would be the one to get into trouble. Where’s the justice? ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/87 "2004-11-17T20:39:51Z")
God, so many of the things I’ve seen on this thread bring back bad memories. I worked Front End, Deli/Bakery and produce so I’ve seen so much of what you all have posted. Shoplifters, selective readers, filthy pigs, overly picky types, the just plain dumb, Ad Nauseum… For seven, long years I worked for Harris-Teeter, a grocery store chain in the southeast US. The store I worked at was not the biggest or did the most business. But it was the most profitable because it was right in the middle of all the best neighborhoods in the city. Also, it employed a large number of college kids rather than high-schoolers. This does make a difference. Having to pay rent and tuition can make an employee take their job more seriously. Many of the (justified) rants I see here seem to spring from a single well: the customers sense of entitlement. So many of them feel that they are personally above the rules or that they **deserve** an exception. From a strictly subjective point of view, there was a definate economic corollation to this phenomenon. The middle and upper middle class were the worst. Poor folks seemed much more easy-going and the wealthy generally seemed to be above petty complaints. But the upper-middle class really gave you a hard time if they didn’t get the respect they felt they deserved. It was like they wanted the same treatment that \*they thought \* the rich folk got. Also, they were the ones always in a hurry. They were the business-suited, rush hour people who couldn’t grasp that all the other rush hour people also wanted to get something to eat from HT on the way to work. But as a bagger I had two major annoyances: people who complained about the weight of the bag and those who leave their carts in the lot. I always tried to keep the weight of the bag light enough so that the customer could carry it. But some of the old ladies would complain that it was too heavy even though I had put just two small cans of Campbells soup into it. A large paper bag, mind you. Some of them would just outright lie about it. They would pretend to pick it up and you could tell they were exerting no force because the paper wasn’t even crinkling. This did cause one of my favorite moments once. A particularly bitchy old lady did the usual, “You made it too heavy!” comments and I replied with absolute certainty that the bag she was pointing at was not too heavy. She did the fake pickup attempt and made a real show of it like she was bringing the temple down on her head. So she stopped and gave me a withering, “See? I can’t lift it!” look. I then got to watch her face as I turned the completely empty bag upside down in front of her and all the onlookers her strong-man show had attracted. As for carts in the lot, to me a person who leaves their cart in the lot is making a mess. Yes, it’s my job to clean it up. But that doesn’t make it OK to make the mess. If a person drops a jar of mayo in the aisle, it’s my job to clean it up. Does that mean you should intentionally drop the jars? It’s been years since I worked for HT, but to this day I will NEVER leave a cart in the lot. I must remember to tell about some of our memorable customers. The ones who got nicknames… ---
**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/88 "2004-11-17T21:03:59Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > I then got to watch her face as I turned the completely empty bag upside down in front of her and all the onlookers her strong-man show had attracted. :eek: You’re kidding, right? This is just too darn good to be true. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/89 "2004-11-17T21:09:42Z")
I’m crapping you negative. It is possibly the sweetest memory I have from those seven oppressive years at HT. ---
**Author:** ![FilmGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@FilmGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FilmGeek)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/90 "2004-11-17T21:40:54Z")
My issues with my last retail job (before this one) were all with the management (which have all since been fired, SCORE!). I love this job, as all I do is a whole heap of nothing, but I get to read books, surf the net, knit and interact with all sorts of people. We have ten days a year when we’re SUPER busy, and then it’s back to crossword puzzles and solitaire. However, when we do get certain MBA students who come in, pick up their books, sigh or curse loudly at the prices, throw the books on the counter, scoff at the price and then _throw their money at you_ it gets a little annoying. I’ve picked up credit cards and cash from behind the counter because people are pissed that their book costs so much and take it out on me. ---
**Author:** ![BurnMeUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@BurnMeUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BurnMeUp)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/91 "2004-11-17T22:01:54Z")
You guys might like this Live Journal community: [Customers\_suck](http://www.livejournal.com/community/customers_suck/) ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/92 "2004-11-17T22:07:56Z")
To you folks in retail…what is it with those rather strange people who come in just before closing? Some of them are obvious thieves-they hope to get out without anyone noticing them. But there were others I noticed, who seemed to walk around like zombies. I used to work closing, and you had to walk around the store to clear them out! Even though 15 minutes before closing, the PA system would announce it! One thing about working in a store-I couldn’t STAND going in to other stores…it just turned me off! ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/93 "2004-11-17T22:13:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Doctor Jackson, I understand that a retail job comes with certain requirements. Cleaning up customers’ bodily waste is not one of them. Somebody has to clean it up. It’s not fun, but it has to be done. I know of no retailers that hire “Bodily Waste Removal Technicians”. I know of very few retailers that have janitorial staff on duty during store hours. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that - barring a written contract stating otherwise - if it needs to be done, it’s your job. > [@](#): > > No black and white rules? Then why bother having a policy that is posted on signs all over the store? Those policies cover 90% of the situations one is likely to see. Remember that the overriding policy of the business is to maximize profit. If other policies need to be bent, broken or destroyed in order to do that, so be it. That’s what managers are there for. Clerks must abide by the policies while management, who is supposed to have the big picture in mind, have authority to make judgement calls. That unjustified $30 refund may generate much more than that in future sales. Sure, the store wil get hosed from time to time but that is a cost of doing business. > [@](#): > > Bending the rules every once in a while is fine, but when the people on the front lines, such as cashiers, floor associates, etc. don’t feel like they can depend on the manager to back them up in enforcing that policy, when managers bend over backwards to accomodate a customer who is treating the sales associate in a reprehensible manner just to get rid of them, something is seriously wrong. Maybe. The manager is not there to “back you up”, s/he’s there to maximize profit. That may sound callous, but it’s true. In my case, whenever I told a customer “yes” to something for which a clerk had told them “no” I always explained my reasoning to the clerk. How else will they learn from the experience? In most cases, once explained, the clerk understood. Anything less, IMHO, is poor management. > [@](#): > > We have every right to be treated in a courteous manner. Just because we work in retail doesn’t give Joe. Q. Customer the right to treat us as if we were less than human. No, unfortunately, you do not have a right to be treated courteously. No one does. It sure does make it nicer, though, that’s for sure. > [@](#): > > We should treat them well? Fair enough. But they should treat us with something more than rudeness and disrespect. Yes, you should treat them well. They are doing you a favor by shopping in your store. You are NOT doing them a favor by being there. Should they treat you with respect? Sure, they should and in the majority of the cases they do. You will, however, be asked to take the high road when they don’t. > [@](#): > > In all the years I’ve worked retail I’ve never, ever had a manager who would toss a customer out, no matter how abusive they got or what kind of mayhem they caused. Ever, ever, EVER. I’ve done it, more than once. The example I gave was from my banking life, but I also spent 8 years in a big box retailer. Some I asked to leave, some I had escorted out by the police. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Harborwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Harborwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harborwolf)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/95 "2004-11-17T22:21:52Z")
> [@skeeheete](#): > > I caught in the fitting room at JC Penny sucking his own man-tool and swallowing his own man-chowder. > > Also I saw two guys doing the butt-fuck reach-around tango. Turns out later, the cops found out they were father and son. > > Can you woman suck your own pussies? Can you do exercises that will make it easier? If you could, would you swallow your own climax juice? > > What about you men? > > Just curious. > > Thanks, bye. :dubious: and our newest poster will last 5…4…3… ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/96 "2004-11-17T22:34:56Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > To you folks in retail…what is it with those rather strange people who come in just before closing? Some of them are obvious thieves-they hope to get out without anyone noticing them. But there were others I noticed, who seemed to walk around like zombies. > I used to work closing, and you had to walk around the store to clear them out! Even though 15 minutes before closing, the PA system would announce it! > One thing about working in a store-I couldn’t STAND going in to other stores…it just turned me off! The worst are the people who would sit in their cars and send their five year old kids to knock on the door after 10 pm to see if we were open. What the FUCK? Not only are you an asshole who doesn’t bother to come at a proper time, but you send your small children out alone in dark parking lots? ---
**Author:** ![Harborwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Harborwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harborwolf)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/98 "2004-11-17T22:51:46Z")
Hypno-toads post reminded me of one of my happier moments of customer service. I was working at a state park. Passes to get in for the day were a mere $4. A car pulls up and a pleasant young man asks for a day pass with big smile on his face and a $100 bill in his hand. He stopped smiling when I gave him back $96 in one dollar bills. I’d been counting my money for the daily turn in when they pulled up. Perfect timing. ---
**Author:** ![Chastain86](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Chastain86](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chastain86)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/99 "2004-11-17T23:14:05Z")
I worked at a Family Video after college for about 4 months. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this chain, we were the Family Video Store with the Not-So-Family Videos in the Back Room. **COMMON SENSE PORN VIDEO RULES FOR MORONS:** 1. No, I won’t help you pick out a video. I myself will spend a good 20 minutes choosing one for me, and I have the benefit of pre-knowing what I like. 2. Movies are not to be returned to our premises in any condition which does not match the condition in which they left. This means rewound, and (I cannot stress this enough) sans any sort of warmth or stickiness. I will ask you to take them home for a quick wipedown, and it WILL be in front of other customers. 3. I rent porn movies. I do not have intimate knowledge of other forms of adult entertainment. I will not be your pimp, your john, or your go-between. 4. Stop asking me if my female employees want to “go home with you and your wife.” They don’t. 5. Stop asking **me** if I want to “go home with you and your wife.” I am married, and even if I weren’t…you, most likely, are ugly and desperate. 6. **Yes** , there **are** male actors in the movies. They only show women on the box because men are the predominant renters of porn. If you’re that concerned about not getting a lesbian film, then try to not rent movies titled “No Boys Allowed” or “Muff Divers 16.” 7. I am not gay. As such, Rule #1 applies doubly to you, and I doubt I’d really have the _je ne sais quois_ to pick one you’d like, anyway. 8. I’m also REALLY, REALLY SURE I’m not gay. I’m not just dabbling in heterosexuality. 9. If you rent 3 porn movies, return them, rent 3 more, return them, and then rent 3 more, and it hasn’t even turned 2:00pm yet, then perhaps you should look into either a) faster internet access, or b) professional rehabilitation. 10. Unexpected nudity of any sort will be greeted with extremely unexpected visits from Johnny Law. So keep your trout in your trousers unless you’d like to explain to your wife how you like to rock out with your cock out at the video store. Capisce? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![infamousmom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d6d6ee/32.png) [@infamousmom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/infamousmom)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/100 "2004-11-17T23:33:29Z")
[QUOTE=mcms\_cricket] It is part of a librarian’s job to find information for patrons. /QUOTE] It certainly is. However, it’s not the librarian’s job to do all the work of looking up information that someone’s teacher has sent them to get. It’s the librarian’s job to explain to the lazy high school kid where he or she can look the information up him/herself, just like the teacher asked. If a kid comes in and says “I need an article about vacuum cleaners” and then expects the librarian to go get the article, what’s the kid learning? Nothing! Whether it’s in the Reader’s Guide or on some electronic database, it’s the kid’s homework. Not the librarian’s. These kids want us to do their work for them, and in “my” library we don’t do that. We’ll help the kid figure out where to look, but the actual looking is the kid’s assignment. ---
**Author:** ![Pixiesnix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/898d66/32.png) [@Pixiesnix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixiesnix)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2004, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/101 "2004-11-17T23:48:55Z")
Oy, where to start… > [@](#): > > Somebody has to clean it up. It’s not fun, but it has to be done. I know of no retailers that hire “Bodily Waste Removal Technicians”. I know of very few retailers that have janitorial staff on duty during store hours. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that - barring a written contract stating otherwise - if it needs to be done, it’s your job. No. No, it’s not. I am a cashier, not a janitor. And the animals who leave these messes should feel ashamed of themselves. It’s not just “not fun,” it’s dirty, disgusting, and downright dangerous. Call me progressive, but I believe in not making people do things that makes them vomit if it’s not in their job description. > [@](#): > > Those policies cover 90% of the situations one is likely to see. Remember that the overriding policy of the business is to maximize profit. If other policies need to be bent, broken or destroyed in order to do that, so be it. That’s what managers are there for. Clerks must abide by the policies while management, who is supposed to have the big picture in mind, have authority to make judgement calls. That unjustified $30 refund may generate much more than that in future sales. Sure, the store wil get hosed from time to time but that is a cost of doing business. It’s the cost of doing business that the clerk gets abused, called names, and brought to tears on occasion? No. I don’t buy it. That’s manager lingo for “it’s too much trouble to stick to the rules, so I’ll just let the clerk take the brunt of the punishment.” And as for these policies covering 90% of the situations…if that were true, it would not happen every day. Yes, every damn day. And the managers fold every time, failing in that policy. > [@](#): > > Maybe. The manager is not there to “back you up”, s/he’s there to maximize profit. That may sound callous, but it’s true. In my case, whenever I told a customer “yes” to something for which a clerk had told them “no” I always explained my reasoning to the clerk. How else will they learn from the experience? In most cases, once explained, the clerk understood. Anything less, IMHO, is poor management. I disagree on what the manager’s job is, but you and I obviously differ on many things concerning retail, so I’ll let it pass. In my experience, however, a manager rarely explains their decision to me. They merely let the customer continue to verbally abuse me (or whoever has the misfortune to be on the receiveing end) and do little to stop it. > [@](#): > > No, unfortunately, you do not have a right to be treated courteously. No one does. It sure does make it nicer, though, that’s for sure. Bullshit. That attitude of management is what makes retail hell for so many people. I am extremely glad I’ve never worked for you, as you have the most piss-poor, unfeeling, robotic attitude towards management I’ve ever had the misfortune to see. I have rarely in my time here felt such contempt and loathing for another human being. You, sir, have garnered that contempt. Good day to you, sir. _I said good day!_ ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970/102 "2004-11-18T00:21:58Z")
> [@KCSuze](#): > > I have rarely in my time here felt such contempt and loathing for another human being. You, sir, have garnered that contempt. > > Good day to you, sir. _I said good day!_ Whenever these customers suck vents come up, there is always a “Doctor Jackson” who comes in and spouts that crap. Don’t let it bother you. Learn after the first post and skip all future posts, on any subject, from such a poster. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/work-in-a-store-bitch-about-customers-here/274970.md?page=6)