I ponder a question with one of my regulars

[scroob]

There may never be a known answer to this question. However here goes. I asked "How come it seems that the people who you serve, when you make BIG mistakes, are much more tolerant and forgiving than those where you make very minor errors? It seems like they overreact about very small issues, and the people who have every right to overreact, rarely do?" I wonder why this is.

[nomorecarts]

because sometimes you don't notice your small errors, or you don't remember them unless you get bitched out explains some of it, but not enough to explain all of it

[Evil Queen]

Sweetie, it's because people are crazy.

[malmalthekiller]

Sweetie, it's because people are crazy.

Yes.

I notice that as well. Maybe because we make minor mistakes more often, so you're more likely to have a crappy customer in that time frame?

[Buglady]

I think it's because of cognitive dissonance on the part of the customer. They notice a mistake, get annoyed, and then because the thing they're annoyed about is so minor it does not fit with their self-image of "a reasonable person," in order to reduce the dissonance they either have to change their thoughts about the error or change their attitude toward you - and they usually choose the second one. The "fundamental attribution error" comes in there too, where people assume the actions of another person are caused by that person's character rather than by the situation; that is, if you make an error it is because you are stupid and/or deliberately doing it to bug them, not because the till has a twitchy scanner or there are too many things on the belt.

When there is a larger error, people are more easily able to take that into account when they are internally managing their feelings, and so they do not go so quickly to the negative attitude toward you.

Just a theory. I'm taking Social Psych this term, could you tell?

[bainsidhe]

If it's a large error, the employee will be apologetic and make a good show of fixing the mistake. For minor errors, a simple "whoops" will generally suffice, unless you run into one of those customers that expects the big fanfare and begging for forgiveness that a big error entails. Seems to me many customers that get upset over minor things want lots and lot of attention.