So I’ve been working in retail for a while and seen my share of odd and rude customers, but today I had my very first “Karen”, and he was american also. (I’m not, and I’m in Australia).
The store I work for doesn’t give their bags for free, we charge for them. This guy picked an online order and then threw up a tantrum and demanded to speak to a manager when I refused to give him a bag for free. Another team member (more experienced) just gave him the bag and he just left.
That does it I guess, but it’s giving in to rude demands what sustains this kind of behavior imo. I’m not trying to protect the interests of the corporate I work for- it’s just a stupid bag ffs, perhaps ask nicely? I’ve been called off both for giving away bags for free before as well as calling for the manager to deal with “minor issues”.
So I’m asking, in general, how do you deal with these types of customers?
It’s been decades, but I enjoy not giving them what they want. Unfortunately, management usually caves. If they are nice, I DGAF and will do whatever I can.
People suck and retail isn’t worth getting too worked up about, unless you desperately need the job.
Man I really need to get my eyes checked. I thought the title said “How do you deal with nude customers?”
I mean, my answer is the same regardless: Fuck 'em.
But yeah. I need glasses.
Username checks out I guess :)
One CO worker looked a rude old lady right in the eye and said “ma’am this is a place of business. When people do business they have to operate with mutual respect and trust. If we don’t trust each other to do our end of a transaction, we can’t exchange anything between us. If we don’t respect each other, we can’t exchange anything between us. I’ve been acting in trust and respect towards you, are you going to do the same for me? Because if you can’t, we can’t do business.”
She immediately stopped being bitchy and was never a problem again. It was the wildest shit I’ve ever seen.
Staying calm and speaking both rationality and politely does work wonders. It disarms most irate people. I just had to use the technique on some grumpy neighbors.
Meh, shoulda called him a “Cunt”. That’s not an ok word with Americans.
j/k: not worth the trouble.
😆
I think the bag fee is stupid. Give them the bag to be done with it, tell your boss you were avoiding a confrontation, be glad your interaction with them was only a few seconds.
I think it serves a purpose. In the Netherlands you don’t get plastic bags for free anywhere anymore, so everyone I know tends to have some with them to reuse, instead of amassing huge amounts at home in a bag-bag
In some USA jurisdictions the bag fee is a legal requirement
We had that for awhile then they stopped. Sprouts still charges.
So then they’ll come in and shout at the next employee for a free bag?
Unfortunately in America, all and any retail bows to the wills of stupid fucking entitled customers. If it was my way, I’d allow at least a two limit outburst per week if I was managing a store chain. Don’t hit them, don’t do any harm, just express yourself and tell them how it is.
But, if you really do anything and I mean anything to a customer, it’s your job. It’s really bullshit how it works. However, if you plan to leave your job anyways, who the fuck cares? Let them have it.
I’ve long said that every retail worker should be legally allowed to physically fight ten customers per year. And not a calendar year, where all the employees would be out of fights by the time holiday shopping season rolled around (or would be forced to save all of their fights for the holiday season). Give them ten points, and each point takes a year to fall off of their record once it is used. And the retail employee would have zero obligation to tell the customer if they have any points. Leave the customer guessing until the employee swings on them.
As gun nuts are so fond of saying: An armed society is a polite society. I think it would solve a lot of the problems with Karens. Karens only go full Karen because they hold all of the power in the relationship. But the threat of potential violence would go a long way towards quelling the most unreasonable ones, and people would only bother going full Karen if they truly felt they were justified and were willing to back it up with a fight.
The best retail job I ever worked was at a high volume liquor store. Sure, it was soul crushing to see teachers buying pints of vodka on their lunch breaks or to load the old widower’s truck with his weekly case of Carlo Rossi, but there were some upsides.
We were legally obligated to refuse a sale to anyone acting suspicious since our jobs were literally on the line - selling to a minor or selling to someone you knew was buying for a minor meant that you could get fined, jailed, fired, or some combo of all three. That gave us a lot of power to control the point of sale interaction. Liquor stores and check cashing business are heavily regulated so there are frequent sting operations to ensure stores follow the various laws and regulations; this made for a wonderful way to disarm cranky customers.
We also were told to not sell to unruly or obviously inebriated people. We had a “banned customers” binder with people’s pictures from the security cameras sitting on the desk at one of the registers.
We had strict hours because it was illegal to sell outside of the hours of 8am to 11:59pm on week days, or 8am to 8pm on Sundays. If you’ve never worked retail, you don’t know the absolute joy of being able to say, “make a purchase or leave; no customers in the store after midnight,” especially if you’ve worked at restaurant. I remember dealing with someone who was banging on the door at 7:50-something in the morning demanding to be let in and calmly telling them through the locked door, “it’s not 8am on our clock and that’s the only clock that matters.”
While I’m not a fan of the police or calling them unnecessarily, the passive threat of the police occasionally being in the parking lot for DUI enforcement regulated a lot of people’s behavior without us having to say anything or make a phone call.
I’d never work at a liquor store again, though.
We had bouncers dealing with them when I worked as a cook in Amsterdam at a grand cafe also selling hash and weed. If anyone was rude or entitled, mostly American or British tourist, they got dealt with pretty quick. I remember Americans going ballistic over orders, like “who put fucking tomato on my fucking BLT?!”, I could hear this woman screaming from th kitchen. Got launched by a knee from a bouncer, don’t be rude.
Ah lucky you. Unfortunately we don’t have bouncers here and security sucks. We’re in a mall and it takes them about half an hour to get to us if we call them. Useless
I haven’t seen an entitled British making a fuss though and we get lots of people from UK.
“who put fucking tomato on my fucking BLT?!”
Doesn’t the T in BLT stand for tomato?
It sure does.
Bacon Lettuce Thing
Bacon, Lettuce, Take yourself the fuck outta here
Some people cause a scene to bully you into breaking the rules and get free stuff. In most cases I just become super nice (like syrupy, sickly sweet) and pretend I’m on their side (bag fees are dumb), and let them know you don’t want to lose your job for giving away free merchandise (so sorry, did you still want to buy a bag?). If they are super toxic, you call a manager and make them deal with it, that’s what they get paid for.
I would refuse my services to them and leave. Losing an individual customer here and there doesn’t affect my business in any way.
I’m working in customer service and we sometimes have people who don’t want to pay for a service we offer (fixing their stuff in IT). There are two options:
You tell me what you did when and ask nicely if we can fix it for free? You just did half of my work, of course I will make an exception for you.You blame everything on us and want the service for free as a compensation? Bet I will invest more time to prove why it’s your fault and therefore you’ll have to pay for it.
For a plastic bag? Give it to them, it costs nothing and it’s not worth your time and effort.
No. Working in retail is a direct exchange of goods for money. You follow the policies of that establishment, or you take your business elsewhere. You don’t have an actual tantrum over something so trivial and get catered to.
I’m now in a position where I have autonomy over what I offer to customers, and I agree with your principle. It doesn’t apply in this situation, though.
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Used to work a chain coffee shop. Had a closing shift by myself, but would randomly get slammed with large groups of people. On occasion when customers were rude to me while I was trying to do everything on my own, I just snapped and swore at them and gave them the finger. I thought I was going to get fired when word got back to my manager, but all I ever got were raises and eventually promoted to assistant manager.
Nice, good on you. Sounds like your management was down to earth
I think they were mostly just desperate for people who could do the job and wouldn’t quit within a month. I always got my work done, but I learned I’m not cut out for customer service.
Never lose your cool. Smile and talk to them like they are a three year old.
Stick to policy and let the manager be the one who breaks the rules.
If you do it, then you can be punished.
Its been a few years since i worked in fast food/drive thru. But the highlight of my time there was when a car refused to take thier receipt. Literally threw it back at me when i gave them thier drink + reciept. (reciepts are given to all cars incase of an order mix up)
Walked over to the other window, and put the reciept in the bag with thier food.
