Customer « 33 Grams of Blog

When it comes to professions, First Responders and the military are usually the first to get praised. It makes sense. They put their lives on the line every day to keep us all safe and, in doing so, they’re forced to see the worst of humanity. I, for one, try to thank them when I can for the sacrifices that they make on our behalf.

The people that I’m thinking of don’t quite go through that, but they do have to look upon a very ugly side of humanity every day…. customer service workers.

I worked at Walmart for 11 years. In that time, I was verbally abused hundreds of times (almost always for something that I had absolutely no control over) and was forced to see things that have scarred me for life. I’m trying to think of the stupidest thing that I got yelled at for, but there’s too many to choose from. So, I’ll pick the first one that comes to mind.

I was once cussed out by a woman because I declined a tip from her. I politely explained that accepting tips was against company policy, and, since my manager was standing within sight, I couldn’t take it. She flew off the handle, cussing up a storm and telling everyone within earshot that I was horrible at my job (despite the fact that only moments ago I had done so well that she wanted to give me a gratuity). As much as I wanted to say it, I stopped myself from snapping, “I’m sorry for not taking your tip, lady, but your $3 isn’t worth me losing my fucking job!” The manager heard the commotion, came to investigate and told the lady that I was right to refuse her. She then started cussing him out and he had security escort her out of the building.

And that’s just one example… From me…. I’m sure everyone who works in customer service has at least one story just like it.

I am thankful that I don’t have to go through that on a daily basis anymore. I’m not sure I could put up with the general public for 40 hours a week now.

I still see it, though.

Any time I go into a store, there’s a chance that I’ll see some poor customer service workers get abused by asshole shoppers for things that are not their fault. Like the experience I had yesterday, for example.

A woman in front of me at the grocery store was trying to pay for her items, but the card reader wasn’t liking the chip in her credit card. So, what does she do? She starts getting really shitty with the cashier. After the third time it couldn’t read the chip, the reader went to its backup, the magnetic strip on the back of the card. This only further angered and confused the woman. “This stupid machine says to swipe my card. What does that mean?”

….

“It means to swipe your card, you dumb bitch.”

Ok, nobody actually said that. But, I wanted to. If I wasn’t so sure that the crazy woman was going to attack me if I did say it, I probably would have. Instead, I just laughed at her stupidity. She either didn’t hear me laughing or didn’t think I was laughing at her because she paid me no attention. Then again, she was still awfully busy being rude to the cashier, who has no control over the card readers or the chip in that lady’s credit card.

When it was finally my turn to pay, and the woman had walked away, I congratulated the cashier for being polite throughout the whole episode. The cashier was a young woman, either still in high school or a recent graduate (I’d say somewhere between 17-19). I don’t know how she has the patience to put up with that at her age. If someone did that to me when I was that age, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut.

Now that I’m older, I’ve found that a lot of the people who throw these tantrums actually want to make the cashiers/store employees snap back at them. It gives their arguments more credence when they try to get free stuff out of the store’s management team. So, towards the end of my tenure at Walmart, whenever I got an extremely rude or obnoxious customer, I made sure to always be as polite as I could possibly be. Not because I needed to keep my job (although that factored in a little), but because being nice to them always seemed to make them even more angry.

So, please, the next time you’re at the store, make sure you are kind to the people working there… unless of course they’re rude to you first. In that case, to hell with them.

I don’t know if this technically qualifies as a customer service failure, since it was the customer who failed, not the employee. I’m going to tell it to you anyways. It was funny as hell.

During my senior year of high school, I worked a a Burger King down the street from school. I would go in right after school let out and work as long as I could under Kentucky law. Sunday through Thursday, as a minor, I was only allowed to work until a certain time because I had school the next morning. On Friday and Saturday, I was allowed to work later. Because of how late this took place, I’m going to have to say it happened on a Friday or Saturday night.

The location that I worked at had two headsets for the drive-thru. Those two headsets remained up front until around 8 every night, which is when the dinner rush ended. After that, one of the headsets is kept by the person running the drive-thru, while the other is given to the person making the burgers. That way, the person could start making the sandwiches as the order was being taken, thereby, getting the order out faster. On this particular night, I was the one making the sandwiches.

A beep went off in the headset, letting us know that someone was at the menu. My manager, who was running the drive-thru, welcomed them and asked them if they were ready to order. The man in the car, who sounded drunk, said that they needed a minute. After telling him to let her know when they were ready, my manager, and I, listened as the drunk sounding man told his friends how hot he thought my manager’s voice was.

I looked up at my manager, and she was just beaming, a smile from ear-to-ear. The drunk guy got back on a couple of seconds later and said he was ready to order. She told him to go ahead and he started calling out his order. “I’ll take 3 double cheeseburgers, 2 large fries, and 3 large drinks… and a back rub.”

I started laughing. She ignored it, and repeated back his food order. “Is that correct?”

“….and a back rub.”

Once again, she ignored it, told him his total, and instructed him to pull up to the window. I made the sandwiches quickly and ran up to the front. We didn’t have any other customers, so I was able to leave the sandwich station, and I started bagging the food. When we were slow, I used to do that so whoever was running the drive-thru could deal with the customer while I bagged the food. That way, we could get them out quicker. This time, however, it had the added bonus of letting me be there when the guy pulled up to the window.

She opened up the window, and before she could remind him of his total, he got a freaked out look on his face. “Oh God,” he exclaimed. “Nevermind. I don’t want no back rub from you!”

I lost it. I held in the laughter as best as I could and I took off towards the back. I got into the walk-in cooler, shut the door, and I laughed my ass off. Taking a minute to compose myself, I exited the cooler, reminding myself not to say anything, because the manager could fire me if she wanted to. It turns out, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have said anything to her anyways, as she was still arguing with the drunk man.

For some reason, she was not a fan of being told that she was too ugly to rub his back, so she told him to leave. He was drunk and we weren’t going to serve him. This didn’t sit well with him. He knew his food was ready and he wasn’t leaving without it. It probably would’ve gone on longer, but another manager, who had been counting tills in the office, came out and told the guy that if he didn’t leave, we were calling the cops. Apparently, his double cheeseburgers weren’t worth getting arrested for DUI, because he took off quickly after that.

I was a smartass back then (I know. Hard to believe, right?), and it took all my willpower to not say something to my manager about being so ugly that even beer goggles don’t make her look better. I don’t know how I did it, but I kept my mouth shut.