I work retail and when customers come up to have a whinge about the store overcharging or what ever valid complaint, I just join in and start birching bitching about the company with them, calms most of them down pretty quick, you get to bitch about your employer with a customer and they feel heard, even tho they weren’t.
I don’t work a customer-facing job now, but back when I did I thought I did a pretty good job. But one day a couple straight-up lied about me to my company! Out of nowhere! Still salty about that. It’s one thing to want to get free shit, it’s another to potentially get someone fired! Hope they step in wet puddles every time they are in socks…
I’m still sour a decade later over some customer interactions. One of the most notable was during my time as a barista. It was a busy weekend and quite loud in the shop with a line out the door. The line was to the left of the register and it’s important to know I only have about 50 percent hearing out of my left ear so most people are on my “bad side.”
Now this isn’t a big deal, since if I’m looking at you I hear just fine or if it’s quiet I can pick up on sounds from that side no problem. In a loud busy cafe, it’s pretty bad. So I go to help the next customer and say “hi how can I help you today” or something. The Karen replies that “I was very rude to her, she said hi earlier and I didn’t reply.”
She was a regular and I recognized her but we didn’t have a rapport or anything but I would have definitely greeted her had I heard. I apologized and explained I’m pretty deaf in my left ear and just didn’t hear her. Story should have ended there but she goes ballistic and starts calling me a liar and that I made it up. Luckily a more friendly regular was also in line and backed me up.
Still pisses me off. Everyone should work a service job just to learn how to treat people.
If it helps any, people that jump to the conclusion that you are just arbitrarily lying to cover yourself usually assume that because it’s how they approach life, never taking responsibility for themselves.
A lady asked me how to get service on her landline phone. At the department store I was working at. It was very confusing, I did actually give her info on a local service that ensures the elderly on fixed incomes always have service, at no ongoing cost at least. She just RAGED at me for being so incompetent I couldn’t turn on her phone service from the department store, or wouldn’t personally go out and install it. I’ve never been called so many names in my life. And yet I still feel sorry for her. Customer service really is a constant exercise in empathy and checked projection, you can’t get mad at customer 6 just because customer 5 was a horrorshow lunatic.
I wish I was a more confrontational person because there were definitely times I saw a retail worker being needlessly berated and I didn’t confront the person doing it.
I’ve never been in a physical fight and I would almost certainly lose, so I just avoid them.
It doesn’t have to be confrontational at that level.
As a former hot head, when I flipped out on a store clerk for a really stupid reason, the old guy behind me said, “You really taking your anger out on someone paid $6 an hour?” (No confrontation, just calling out the situation)
It was enough. But he could have also said something like, “Go write a email to corporate” or “call up the manager line” because I was out of line for flipping out.
I huffed out of there but I’m kind of glad I did. Because I would have done something stupid. And that old man is what I try to be when I see it.
At least here in Indiana, that would not at all be unprecedented as a reason someone decided to attack someone else physically.
I used to do video journalism for one of the local TV stations. People would threaten me for the camera being in their presence. Not pointed at them, just them being around it. “You point that thing at me and you’re dead.” When they were walking by and my back was too them.
I just don’t have the courage to speak up to people in this environment. I wish I did, but I don’t. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have that sort of bravery.
That sucks and yeah, a bunch of America is pretty hot headed. Sorry you had to experience that shit. Camera people are just trying to do their jobs.
I think another direction is also just being support. A kind “That dude was a asshole” empathy is also pretty helpful in the moment, when the victim is still processing and stressing.
Now that I have done. Said that to the person afterward.
I don’t know if this matters to them or not, but I always try to look people at the register in the eye at least once during the transaction (usually at the end). Just to show we’re on the same level. Maybe they don’t notice, but I feel like it’s a minor gesture I can make in case they do.
Even if they don’t consciously notice your intention, i’m sure it comes off as a blissfully low-streas interaction. Good on ya, wish there were more folks like you!
Not related, but I find it wild how $11/ hour can be low for someone in a first world country, while that would be life changing for someone in a developing country (I for once make a less than $5/hour, converting from local currency, and that is already relatively high around here, a lot of people make $2/hour)
I’m not saying that you should be satisfied earning $11/hour, I’m just saying how strange it is that, even earning roughly 5x more, you guys struggle to pay the bills all the same
Yeah, I’m aware. Monthly (very basic tho) food is $40–$80 (converting from local currency) per person. Rent is $200–300 for a 2 bedroom basic apartment.
At the same time, “luxury” things are way more expensive here. Smartphones, computers and cars, for instance, are almost 2x the price. Shoes and clothes that are beyond expensive here are normal in the US.
So our cost of living is way cheaper, but our purchase power is lower still. If you can work remotely, you are paid in dollars, and can travel to the US to buy things, you can live a very comfortable life here with an income that you would struggle in there.
PS: I’m using $1 = R$5, which is not true, because our currency is dying. Using more updated prices only make the discrepancy even greater
Federal minimum is like $7 but states also sometimes have their own that overrides the federal one. California’s is currently $15 or $21 depending on what your job is. I don’t know when it’s supposed to jump to $21 for everyone, but it’s coming.
Just as someone is left or right handed, the proclivity for consensual acts of humiliation is an uncommon relic of avian behaviors that have pesisted to manifest in inate human behaviors.
Not sure what you mean but i am pretty sure that the yellow bird is in heat and wants some loving. If mating is an act of consensual humiliation and even actually still is among humans, sounds like a somehow extreme idea to me
m.ating.press
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