I have recently started working a job in the customer service sphere, something that I expected to have to do eventually but never really thought much of. I'd heard all the horror stories of awful customers, but I naively thought that those were just anomalies and that I would only deal with the occasional angry customer.

I was, as many of you might have guessed, incorrect.

It's been a month, and my coworker just labeled me the "a**hole magnet," meaning that I seem to attract the worst of the customers. One time I was shouted at for giving a customer the "wrong" piece of fried chicken. Another time I was shouted at for giving the customer the size of salad they asked for (it was apparently too big). Just yesterday I was shouted at over pepperoni (the customer did not want to wait five minutes to have it sliced). And honestly, it is difficult for me for a lot of reasons.

Now, before I delve too deeply into this, I'd like to clarify--I do not mean this as anything against my workplace. My workplace is actually great about supporting me and there are many other places that are much, much worse. Honestly, for me it's likely just bad luck that I manage to get the difficult customer, and I've had people that were incredibly sweet and made my day. Most of my regulars are awesome and I appreciate them a lot. But regardless, there's something the mentality inherent in customer service, regardless of where one works, reminded me of: being emotionally abused.

This is not the article where I'll go into just what happened to me, but I'll say that a close friend was incredibly toxic in my life and quite frankly put me through hell, leaving me with low-grade PTSD and a lot of issues that I'm currently working through. Some of those issues are triggered when I deal with angry customers and have to listen and treat them politely, for a lot of reasons.

For one, a lot of the time, we do just have to grin and bear it when customers get irate and rude, and remain polite. Unless a customer is aggressive or a large disruption, we need to serve them. And on top of that, the customers often get what they want just so we can deescalate the situation. For example, in all of the above examples, I caved. I gave the customer the "right" piece of chicken. I redid the salad. I personally took care of the customer who just wanted a chunk of pepperoni (he yelled at me to "just cut it with a knife," which I did. If people make enough of a scene, they'll often get what they want just because it's easier to lose a few cents than deal with someone so angry and irate.

This reminded me of the time I spent emotionally abused--fearing my abuser so much that I would do whatever they wanted so that they wouldn't make a scene or shout at me anymore. Shutting up, being compliant, a good little girl so that they wouldn't be angry anymore or just so that they'd leave me alone. Just so that I could deescalate the situation. Standing up for myself would only cause more trouble. Sticking to what I wanted would only make them angrier. My abuser was always right.

The customer is always right.

Yes, plenty of people can handle this better than I can. I'm definitely taking this differently than most because of the experience I have had with abuse, and with my sensitivity. But some people can't, and for anyone, if they hear angry negativity often enough, it can be hard to not believe it. For people with self-esteem issues or with mental illness, persistently being yelled at or treated rudely allows us to believe that we deserve that. It becomes the status quo, and we're desensitized to it. If we're being yelled at all day by customers, it doesn't seem so strange to come home and be yelled at by a partner. We're useless, after all. We deserve it, after all. They're right, after all.

The customer is always right.

Now, again, I'm not saying that every customer service employee deals with this--however, when we allow people to treat customer service employees like less than human, we do nothing to combat the message that these people deserve that treatment.

And for people like me who are coming into customer service out of abuse, we have to fight hard to actually utilize the resources that we have. For example, I took more crap from customers than I likely had to since I was still in a mentality where I thought that it was just what I deserved. It took too long for coworkers to remind me that I didn't have to take some of what I was taking.

We need to start valuing humans over profit if we want the population's mental health to get better. Because right now, getting paid minimum wage to deal with people who treat us like scum, sometimes multiple times a shift, is not a construct that promotes self-worth or even basic worker retention.

Everyone deserves to be treated with respect. And in that respect, the customer can't always be right.