The One That Made Me Cry

[PepperElf]

"I'm very impotent, you're keeping me from viagra appointment!!!"

fixed for accuracy and to make you laugh

seriously what kinda cockwallet gets off on terrorising people... o wait, SCs do.


edit: yeah back when i was 17 I was much shyer too. Even when I was 22... now that I'm 36 and can swear like a sailor, it's harder to intimidate me.

[mcnally817]

Yep,i've dealt with that guy too. Not that bad,but still a major prick.It really ruins one's shift.

[elysia]

You could deal with these kinds of folks by telling them:

"I'd LOVE to process this coupon for you but as you can see on the fine print (show the back of the coupon) it does exclude this particular product. If you don't mind hanging around a few minutes we can try to get the general manager to overide this exclusion. That's a nice pair of shoes... is it a gift for someone??"

So the strategy is to explain the problem. Then become partners with him in seeking the solution ("we can try")... then distract with small conversation


Even so...

You need to separate your personal feelings from how customers interact with you. When you come to work it is like you put on your cashier super-hero costume....the old you is not there anymore, and the superhero is immune to customer bullshit.

I'm just curious if you work customer service, or if you did when you were 17? I'm 28 and unfortunatly have been in customer service since I started working. For some, especially young innocent kids, its not that easy to let it bounce off of you when some asshole is in your face telling you you're an idiot and you have a LINE of impatient people behind said asshole. So, great advice, but pretty hard to follow sometimes. If enveryone could follow this advice so simply this site wouldnt exist. Sometimes its best to let people vent and bitch and get it out, laugh and/or cry with them and not tell 'em how they could have handled it better. I know you meant well, I'm just saying.

[calulu]

Ugh! I know nigerian scammers scam him out of everything he owes. What an assclown!

[XCashier]

I'm just curious if you work customer service, or if you did when you were 17? I'm 28 and unfortunatly have been in customer service since I started working. For some, especially young innocent kids, its not that easy to let it bounce off of you when some asshole is in your face telling you you're an idiot and you have a LINE of impatient people behind said asshole. So, great advice, but pretty hard to follow sometimes.

They don't exactly train customer service people in how to handle difficult customers... or if they do, it's the old "give'em the pickle, the Almighty Customer is always right" BS. (And of course, if you do follow that training, you're the one who gets yelled at for giving away freebies and costing the company money...!)

Teenagers in their first job don't realize how truly nasty people can be. Yes, they have to deal with a few awful kids at school, but you'd expect adults to behave better. It's rather a shock to learn that they often don't. And without those expectations or the training, it's hard for a teenager to know what to do in these situations.

[derangedperson]

Yeah, I've had those people before too.

When I was 16, some old hag flipped out on me because it was my time to leave (my mother was waiting outside), and I had been searching for ice cream for her, and I was politely telling her I was about to send someone else back, as it was the end of my shift-and she flipped out.

Then as she saw I was crying and talking to a manager (getting a $20 gift card), she told them "She's crying? Good, I'm glad.", and the manager ripped up her card and told her to leave her store.

Wow. What a fucking cunt.

Great to see the management stood up for you.

[Enjis]

*patpat* There, there. This will get your soul crushed early on, and you may blossom into a beautiful butterfly of angry cynicism that will entertain the masses with your numerous stories of shutting down SCs and putting EWs in their places.

*Little Miss Optimism*

I love this. It took me 30 years, but it finally DID happen, as you say....

[jiarby]

I'm just curious if you work customer service, or if you did when you were 17? I'm 28 and unfortunatly have been in customer service since I started working. For some, especially young innocent kids, its not that easy to let it bounce off of you when some asshole is in your face telling you you're an idiot and you have a LINE of impatient people behind said asshole. So, great advice, but pretty hard to follow sometimes. If enveryone could follow this advice so simply this site wouldnt exist. Sometimes its best to let people vent and bitch and get it out, laugh and/or cry with them and not tell 'em how they could have handled it better. I know you meant well, I'm just saying.

I know what you mean. That is why experience is so valuable...because it is so hard to get. Certainly it is easy to give advice in hindsight and keeping a cool head in the face of fire is extremely difficult.

I spent my teens & some of my 20's in the food service business, then 15 yrs in IT. I now own a retail store. I tell people I am on my 3rd life now. Even so, customer service has always been a big thing for me.

IMHO the customer service has to be WIN-WIN, not WIN-LOSE! Always try to find the WIN-WIN solution, but if it isn't there then you have to decise which side of the WIN-LOSE equation you want to be on and then get it done.

[Mike Taylor]

*snip really crappy experience with asshole*

The moment that a customer starts being abusive, they stop being a customer and you CAN refuse to serve them.

[Tito]

What a vile, scum of the earth prick.

I second that. I think that we definitely need to get this fired up for him:



If he has a history of bullying the employees and is a scammer to boot, can't the manager just ban him from coming in the store?