Workplace Stories/Rants v. "But the customer is always right!!!" - General

[QUOTE=The golden;52562894]Inventory at local grocery store. And those are cherry-picked bad examples. Every day that I work I try to make customers smile and I've met some really friendly and nice people. It's really not as bad as those make it sound. I actually really enjoy working with the customers.[/QUOTE] You must be the one person in all of retail that actually enjoys their job, then. I spent 13 months in Retail Hell and, honestly, would have rather spent those 13 months in the local drunk tank. Thank your lucky stars you had to cherrypick those examples, because they sum up the daily routine of customer service industrywide. They're a large part of why I refer to my time as an Associate as my 'stint'. People like you described in your examples were the norm, they were why I spent as much time in the backroom as I could get away with, a large part of why I hated working at Walmart so much.

[QUOTE=bdd458;52565042]A few months later this manager was fired for going to the bar on his break :(, he was fun.[/QUOTE] Inverse of this, back when I worked retail at another store they hired on a new assistant manager at some point. The store manager was teaching him stuff and they ended up at Applebees one day. Manager gets piss drunk, tells the assistant that 3/4 of the time she leaves the store to "recruit" she just goes and gets wasted. Of course the assistant calls the "Anonymous" hotline for reporting stuff about this. Turns out though it wasn't anonymous, the HR guys on the hotline told the district manager, district manager told the manager to fire the assistant instead and nothing ever happened to the manager. Speaking of the same district manager, corporate pushed some new procedure for inventory like less than a week before inventory. Turns out we were missing some of the key office supplies so I spend 40 hours in 4 days coming up with a solution and distribute it to a few other stores that were having the same problem. DM from the last story comes to "help out" with inventory because we only have 4 people on staff at our store and no full manager because he refuses to approve anything. Gives the Assistant Manager shit because I wasn't there to "help" and kept trying to give the Assistant credit for what I did. The Assistant kept refusing saying I was the one who did it and it got to the point where he threatened to fire her if she didn't take credit. Same DM also send a 1000 word essay once chewing out the whole district because stores were having people in "Overtime" and that wasn't acceptable. One of the store managers pointed out the way our pay system handled things working on Thanksgiving Day automatically showed up as overtime since it was 1.5x pay. I hated that job after the first manager and the assistant left. The replacement manager was a joke, would drink on the job, couldn't do her job, and was a minor to top it all off.

Man comes up to me at my work station while I'm in the middle of making food and tells me that the toliet won't flush and that it needs to be addressed. Ok dude what do you want me to do while I'm making food, do you want me to take time away from the busy drive thru and other people waiting for food to fix your problem or do you want to tell someone who isn't clearly busy to fix the problem

When I worked at Tim Hortons we once had a guy come up to us to tell us that someone had taken a shit in a Timbit box and left it on the floor in the washroom.

[QUOTE=Bathacker;52558429]I worked at a coffee shop during college. I'll pop in here once in a while and tell some stories because people get fucking entitled about their coffee let me tell you. During my first week, I was serving a huge line of customers when this guy just blasts in through the front door, comes directly to the front of the line, and drops money on the counter. I had no idea who he was but the second I try to ask him what he wants he starts yelling at me, yelling at the man I was serving, and yelling for the manager by name. What had happened was, this man was a regular customer who expected the staff to recognize him by his car and make his special-order coffee in advance so he can walk to the front counter and pay exact change with no tip and walk back out without having to wait or talk to anyone. Apparently this man had run up and down the management chain bitching to anyone and everyone who would listen, generally just being a massively self-entitled cunt, and he had gotten what he wanted by order of high management. We called this man "Honey Boy" because he took his super special snowflake coffee with a spoonful of "fuck you stock this ingredient just for me". But it's my first week, right? I didn't even know this guy existed. Nope, unforgivable. This grown-ass man is having a fit of honeysteria because management didn't mention him while they were training me. He wanted me gone. Apparently the 30 seconds it had taken another employee to make his coffee and the subsequent ten minutes he'd spent arguing with my manager had cost him time and money equivalent to my entire employment so fuck me. Honestly speaking these visits to our shop and the resultant arguments were definitely the only activity Honey Boy saw on a regular basis. He had that aura about him, ungroomed as he was, looking like someone had dropped a ball of pizza dough on the floor of a barber shop before scooping it into a faded and unwashed tank top in a failed attempt to emulate modesty. This is how this man chose to appear in public on every visit, I'm talking weekdays at 11AM, and he's going to bitch at us for a thirty second wait. Well shit good luck on your open-heart rocket science, Mr. President, don't let us slow you down. So you can bet that I remembered him from then on. I'll never forget him as long as I live. Godspeed, Honey Boy, you have left a legacy.[/QUOTE] Why wasn't he banned from the store? I doubt a couple bucks of profit each day is worth it for all the hassle he caused.

Working in retail, it's the little things involving lazy and/or dumb customers that are the worst, such as leaving a half empty Slurpee in the middle of a parking spot or even just other employees not flushing the toilets. It all piles up and you become more cynical. [editline]13th August 2017[/editline] I noticed this thread has about 50% less anime avatars than the average for FT

Working in retail for years, I've had some special incidents happen.. especially as I worked the night shift for a good part of it. One night we had a customer ZOOM into the empty parking lot at about 70 miles an hour, ram into a shopping cart and send it flying across the lot and totaling her car, then stumble into the store and pass out, dead drunk, on the bathroom floor. The manager went in to check and came out to throw up because she had fouled the entire bathroom in less than 2 minutes. Fun times being a 24 hour store next to about a dozen bars. The plus side is we're also next to the local police station, so they got her out of there quick. Just left the mess that thankfully I didn't have to clean.

[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;52567208]I noticed this thread has about 50% less anime avatars than the average for FT[/QUOTE] Because anime fans don't have jobs :smug:

When I worked at a fast food joint, someone thought it would be funny to throw toilet paper in a urinal, and then piss on said toilet paper. I was the one who had to clean it up :disgust:.

I worked a summer job at a small grocery store frequented by old people and bums (and just generally very strange individuals.) I had some pretty interesting encounters. The regular customers included: A wrinkly old woman who smelled intensely of urine. I'm talking hard-to-breathe-around-her intense. She was probably a nice person and all but I really had to hold my breath while she was checking-out. A very very old lady who had these bottle-bottom-thick glasses that made her eyes look huge, and she had her tongue sticking out all the time. And she didn't speak a word. An old lady, well known around town as Crazy Anne. I swear that woman has a mustache. Her compulsive response to virtually anything you say to her is "GO TO HELL." She also had a ritual to come in every day, one hour before closing, to look at the clock, ask me if it's "SEVEN O CLOCK YET?" and stare into space for a full minute before walking out. There was this guy who almost always wore shades in-doors and always got into a casual conversation with me as if we've known eachother for a long time. Nothing that is particularly weird about that. At one point he disappeared for about a week or two. When he came back he told me how he'd hitchhiked from Stockholm back to Estonia. As in he hitchhiked through Sweden, Finland and Russia. A very friendly old woman, with a smoked-away voice, who usually bought tobacco and strong beer. She always asked me to help unscrew the bottle for her, and was very thankful. Also this store was the go-to place for all the bums of the neighborhood to buy strong cigarettes and awful cheap beer and pay in mountains of small cents they'd been saving away in a really dirty pocket or some body cavity, because i fuck with you not, some of them had moss on them or were completely fossilised. Dealing with bums was an every day thing in that store. I would go smoking out back during a break and there would be some beard-man sleeping face-down on the ground, only to wake up and ask me for a smoke. I swear I almost grew used to the smell of binge drinking and not showering. One time a man comes in to buy a good old Friday evening drink of white spirit (BBQ liquid.) When the man is about to hand over the cash, an old woman comes in screaming in Russian. It's his mom. She desperately tries to tell my non-Russian-speaking ass to not sell his son the spirit because he drinks it. I call my manager. We had to explain the woman that we legally can't refuse to sell anything to a grown-ass man of a paying customer. It didn't go down well obviously. I felt kinda bad for her. One time while walking to work in the morning, a bum-looking man asks me for a couple of smokes. I gave him the smokes. I go to work. Sometime around noon the same guy walks into the shop. Walks up to me and starts talking really incomprehensibly. Took him 3 tries to get it across to me, that he wants cigarettes. I'm like, pointing to the cigarette shelf thing above the cash register like, "smokes are up there, choose what you like." He starts speaking gibberish again, "No like, without paying, ykno. hehe" So I tell this guy I'm not giving him any more cigarettes. He gets frustrated and starts slapping his hands against his sides. He reaches into his pocket and offers me a crusty looking caramel candy. He wanted to trade a fucking caramel for cigarettes. I told him to cut the crap and either buy something or leave. He bought a box of matches and left. Also the old ladies were no angels either. One time this old babushka, like 80-something grandma is checking out, when my experienced co-worker comes up like "wait. hold up." "you, open that bag and take out those cookies you stuck in there." The granny is looking down at her feet like a busted kid while nevertheless still trying to look like shes got nothing on her. "we have cameras all over the store, now come on." In about 5 minutes we confiscated at least 20€ worth of shoplifted groceries from this dirt-old woman. Cookies, bread, milk, expensive coffee. She didn't hold back. It was a trip, that job.

Oh I got a couple from last night. First was a gentleman who didn't read a sale sign correctly (it was a sale on some ham slices) and got the wring kind. Proceeded to get mad at me (I was cashiering at the moment). and my coworker (who was bagging). Ended up going to Customer Service to complain about deceptive practicies or something. --------- One of my coworkers (who mainly works in grocery) was telling me that when he's scheduled for the front end occasionally he just won't go and get carriages like he's supposed to - leaving it to the opening service clerk (7am). There's a lot to do at opening, the bottle return room is busy with regulars and the machines jam, gotta put newspapers out, and a bunch of other stuff. Carriages usually aren't on that list, so thanks for making people's jobs more difficult by not doing yours.

we kept having cnc mill operators bend probes on the machines for a part line and for months it was written off as "opperator error" or "operational discipline" but then one day a guy puts the program in and instead of bending the probe, the head comes down and smashes the assembly which starts an investigation. in the end they found out that an engineer up front had left some code in the program that was using the wrong command to zero the machine, but they kept blaming the floor guys for being incompident instead

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The store I work at straddles the border between the shitty and the fancy parts of the city, so I get a regular mix of hobos/ghetto hood rats and obscenely rich suits, and what they have in common is their complete contempt for anyone on the clock. It's gotten to the point that when I see a customer who might fit in either category, I have to mentally prepare myself before I approach them because the majority of the time, it's going to be 10% helping them find what they need and 90% explaining why this $180 computer isn't going to do half the things they want ("My old macbook pro could run photoshop and it's worth as much now as this is new, so why can't this do it? DON'T TRY TO UPSELL ME"). My store is so close to hollywood that I semi-frequently see celebrities. I just leave them the hell alone unless they need help with something, but customers will treat any appearance like a fucking bigfoot sighting. Harrison Ford showed up once while I was helping someone, who just would not stop staring at Ford while I was trying to talk to him. I looked up when I noticed the guy wasn't even listening to me, saw Ford, and greeted him, asking if he needed someone to help him with something. But he ignored what I was saying and stared right back at the other customer. They just stood there staring at each other until Ford eventually walked off, with a bunch of people pointing him out in his wake. I felt bad for him, not even able to walk into a store without being gawked at by some asshole. He looks old as hell in person.

There once was a girl who took 4 tequila shots around 2pm and then wanted to pay for them with sex. She gave me a very, very specific description of what she liked. She never came back after that day :v:

[QUOTE=Kirbyfactor;52571550]There once was a girl who took 4 tequila shots around 2pm and then wanted to pay for them with sex. She gave me a very, very specific description of what she liked. She never came back after that day :v:[/QUOTE] You didn't say what happened

[QUOTE=da space core;52572302]You didn't say what happened[/QUOTE] Back then I still had a girlfriend, so I didn't take her offer, sadly

Haven't worked retail for years but one thing that always sticks in my head was this woman who was complaining that we didn't have something in stock. It was two days before Christmas and maybe an hour before closing. It's a shame I was too polite to bluntly ask her what the fuck she was expecting to happen.

I hated sweeping after the fuckheads at Five Below who tear open phone case packages because they want to check if their phone would fit in the section explicitly labelled with the phone they are meant for. They'll try to put it back on the hook but usually the box is fucked up to the point where it or the case falls off instantly. They aren't even stealthy about it, they'll do it in front of employees.

[QUOTE=Destroyox;52567088]Why wasn't he banned from the store? I doubt a couple bucks of profit each day is worth it for all the hassle he caused.[/QUOTE] Upper management wouldn't let us, even in the worst cases. Honey Boy is just the most ostentatious example I have but not the most awful by a longshot. We were just fully expected to let customers walk all over us and treat us like garbage. If an employee cost the company a customer or gave them any reason to complain, they were more than likely getting written up or fired. People would steal from us, make huge and disgusting messes, yell insults at us, throw food and drinks, and even get violent but we were still expected to suck it up 99 times out of 100. It got really fucked up near the end. A girl I worked with got a restraining order against her extremely abusive ex-boyfriend after getting him arrested. The day after, he showed up at the shop during her shift. The girl ran to the back and one of the other employees physically barred the boyfriend from pursuing her. My manager called the police and the boyfriend was arrested again. The girl was fired for allegedly failing to report the restraining order and the abusive relationship to upper management, which is not her responsibility. She alerted our manager and that should have been good enough. The employee who did very little more than stand in the way of the boyfriend and take punches was fired for "physical altercation with a customer". Our manager was written up for shouting at the boyfriend in which it was advised that she should apologize if he comes by again. This all happened on my day off. I started looking for a new job but was fired two weeks later after a customer complained that I had closed the shop early. I could have proved that I didn't but I couldn't care less at that point. It's probably worth mentioning that the shop has long since fallen into complete disarray. It used to be such a bustling little shop and it's kinda sad to see what a deserted landfill it's become.

Tbh that's a terrible business policy. It only serves to make people think they can do whatever they want. You shouldnt have to suck it up for rude idiots just because you cant afford to lose your job. I hate these places that care more about getting customers then the well-being of their employees and their workplace. Also whoever wrote up your co-workers and got them fired is a dumbass.

[QUOTE=SoftHearted;52575750]Tbh that's a terrible business policy. It only serves to make people think they can do whatever they want. You shouldnt have to suck it up for rude idiots just because you cant afford to lose your job. I hate these places that care more about getting customers then the well-being of their employees and their workplace. Also whoever wrote up your co-workers and got them fired is a dumbass.[/QUOTE] 'The customer is always right' is a large part of why working retail is absolute hell.

Had some older woman chew me out at my register because she decided to go to a school shopping mecca during back to school season and the line wasn't moving fast enough. The general population perplexes me.

People don't fucking take a good look at which registers are open, they just see there's a queue and join it. 5-10 registers away there's a free one and people don't notice that. Meanwhile I really need to go out to the bathroom asap. Can't really close my register till I finish off this queue which always fills up for at least 4-6 hours (the length of my shift).

I am so glad I dont deal directly with customers some times. Doing a PM service on a Merc Sprinter and the air filters...both of them....are so overdue for change that a replacement would be overdue. Customer just wants us to knock the dust out of them...I do not have the patience to explain why it is a terrible idea to run a clogged air filter on a very precisely machined german diesel engine governed by a very bitchy german computer.

Not a story, but wise words my friend once told me. "Working retail has made me no longer believe in evolution. Because if humans evolved from neanderthals, why are there still neanderthals today, walking into my store?"

[QUOTE=ShimTaco;52587878]Not a story, but wise words my friend once told me. "Working retail has made me no longer believe in evolution. Because if humans evolved from neanderthals, why are there still neanderthals today, walking into my store?"[/QUOTE] I firmly believe that anyone who says that there's no such thing as a stupid question obviously has never worked retail. Like that time a little old lady walked up to me with a little bottle of wine, green glass, dark liquid inside, and asked me, with a completely straight face, if this was red or white wine.

[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;52587937]I firmly believe that anyone who says that there's no such thing as a stupid question obviously has never worked retail. Like that time a little old lady walked up to me with a little bottle of wine, green glass, dark liquid inside, and asked me, with a completely straight face, if this was red or white wine.[/QUOTE] TBF she could have been color blind for all you know :v:

[QUOTE=Richardroth;52588012]TBF she could have been color blind for all you know :v:[/QUOTE] That's not really an excuse, since white and red wine are sold in very distinctly different bottles. Unless it's different in the states, though I doubt it.

[QUOTE=TestECull;52580125]'The customer is always right' is a large part of why working retail is absolute hell.[/QUOTE] [video=youtube;DkswRyaOxt8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkswRyaOxt8[/video]