For young people, retail is one of the most common first jobs, pay-for-school jobs and day jobs. For many of these workers, the worst part of the job may not be jerk managers, grueling tasks or annoying schedules – it’s the customers.
Unfortunately, there are as many bad customers as there are good. The level of self-entitlement and disrespect of some people is just baffling. Personally, I’ve had customers whistle and speak to me like an animal, been cursed at for my register not operating in a way the customer wanted, been sexually harassed and had managers called on me for following company policy; I’ve had coworkers who were even spit on. The amount of times I’ve had to physically restrain myself from snapping at or punching customers in the face is far too abundant.
Retail employees all over the world have their horror stories. On social media, and particularly on worldwide blogging site Tumblr, support groups for retail and other service associates have gathered to share their experiences, confessions, frustrations and even the moments when customers rocked their socks.
Here are some highlights from the most popular retail-horror blogs:
never-work-retail.tumblr.com: “This is something that happened to one of my co-workers, I wasn’t there but they told me about it. A woman was buying some tins of fish and the till scanned them through at £3, but the woman said they were supposed to be £2. So my co-worker checks the system and it says they’re £3, marked down from £4. But this woman isn’t happy with that, she’s adamant that they’re £2. My co-worker walks to the display, checks the tickets. There is one that says £2 but it’s for the product right next to it. My co-worker explains this to the woman and this is what she said… “So, what? I’m supposed to read the tickets?” I shit you not. Mystery solved people, we’ve always suspected that customers never read anything, now we know for a fact that they don’t. They actually consider it an inconvenience.”
workplacesupportgroup.tumblr.com:
Across the span of all of these blogs, there are posts, conversations and dialogue with the customer population about how to interact with retail associates respectfully. Common advice includes: greet and ask for assistance politely, keep in mind that cashiers and associates do not control merchandise shipments, remember that associates and especially cashiers are just as annoyed with all the questions we have to ask, and please realize that it is our job to keep merchandise in its correct place and price and that most errors throughout the day are because other customers are too lazy to put items back or give them to associates to do.
From all retail employees, for our sanity, please be respectful customers.
