Yeah… I don’t think this would work. I worked customer service for 5 years and, if anything, now I have less patience with the reps because I know exactly how they’re fucking up and how to fix it.
I did grocery retail for about 4 years. We had some less-than-great customers but honestly the worst part was dealing with corporate. Upper management and corporate decisions is what truly made daily work much more difficult. The store manager that was there when I was hired was really good and good to her staff, but corporate didn’t like that she ran some expenses for customer and employee benefit so they “relocated” her. The replacement manager was one of those “fixer” types and he so godawful that I walked off the job. Left my badge on my department desk in the office and went home. Because they had been cutting back hours and hires, my entire department folded after I left. My supervisor got reassigned and some of the other part-timers left.
I remember the lady who started talking to me (while i was working) and wouldn’t shut up. It was my first day at work.
I worked in the retail mines for a few years as both a peon and a peon first class (manager).
Everyone had stories about the absolutely worst assholes they had to deal with. I always told my staff to try to remember that the reason those assholes stood out so much amongst everyone else is because they were not the norm.
Most of our customers were fine or even great. But since that was the norm, they don’t stand out in our memories.
Also, I was always willing to kick out asshole customers. My staff’s job was to take care of the customers. My boss’s job was to take care of corporate.
My job was to take care of my staff.
Wait, cool ass retail managers exist?
I left the business
Anyone who’s truly worked retail knows it ain’t the customers that are the worst, but the middle managers and certain coworkers.
So… the comparison to the military still holds.
All this would do is embolden those shitty people. “Dad, don’t be rude to retail workers!” “I had to deal with it, they can too!”
Almost as if some people just lack empathy.
I worked at JC Penney as a teenager 20ish years ago. One day we had a sale on Xmas socks- three pair for the price of two. Each pair of socks were $3, so with this deal you’d get them for $2 instead.
This woman waited in the long-ass line and showed up with four pairs. I rang them up, $6 for the three pairs in the deal, and $3 for the fourth. She wanted the fourth pair for $2 as well. I explained that the deal was automatically stored in the register, and that it would only apply if she bought three more pairs.
She lost her absolute shit at me, called me awful names, demanded to see a manager, and ultimately threw the socks at my face before storming out.
That was over a $1 price difference, and she was one of the more tame customers. I imagine in the last couple decades it has become much worse
There was that one lady who was sentences to serve at a fast food restaurant where she through a fit and assaulted someone or something like that. Why not make Walmart floor worker a judicial punishment?
Man, war stories from Christmas in retail.
My first time around wasn’t too bad. I was part of a team managing the back room inventory and, essentially, trying to force out merchandise that otherwise wouldn’t fit on the shelves to keep the back room as clear as possible. That black Friday, I was assigned to guard a pallet of shit. It was blacked out so people wouldn’t crowd highly desired items - TVs and such.
The next year, I was in the electronics department, as in, that was my post as I had transferred to the sales floor.
That year, oh that year, the Wii dropped. We’d get a pallet in, and we’d just wheel it out to the register to sell. Of course, it didn’t start out that way. They were all locked in “the cage” and we had to get a manager to get them, one by one. That didn’t last too long as the management team was pretty much just running Wiis back and forth.
To top it off, my former inventory control role and limited register training, I had to train an incoming store manager (who would make FAR more per day than I would, after taxes I made about 70 a day for an 8 hour shift) to use the register. And he was… well, slow to learn. Which meant lines and issues - which would require a lower level of management to come handle - their response time, for a variety of reasons (busy season and sheer
idiocylaziness"level of business" slowed down.Having only one register back in electronics, well… this sucked.
Why would you train someone at the BUSIEST TIME OF THE YEAR? I get it now though, after 10 years of retail and 11 in IT, the one thing I’ve been able to determine is that approximately 1% of management, anywhere, is competent.
That doesn’t beat out the day I was asked to “help coverage.”
Yeah, I worked my full shift, then was asked to stay on for four more hours, then four more. And I didn’t take a second lunch. Now, the state I lived in didn’t give a fuck. Its the kind of state that says “Oh its 100+ degrees out? Better pass legislation to make water breaks legal to ignore.” Yeah, a lot of people died of dehydration and heat stroke in the construction industry after that. As far as I know, employers eased up on water breaks, but the legislation is still in effect. I digress, I got written up for not taking a second meal break. I was not released to do so, AFTER asking about it, and still written up.
After all of that, I moved to the automotive technician department.
It sucked, but for most of the time I had a decent boss. My first week I was struggling. Working outside in the summer, heavy uniform, covered in oil, and otherwise being out of shape.
That boss sent me inside, to sit in his office, and drink some cold water my first week. Knowing the company I worked for, I said I wasn’t ready to take a break yet (I was a smoker at the time, and wanted to time out smoke breaks fairly steady) and he said it isn’t a break. You’re bright red and you stopped sweating 10 minutes ago. If you know, you know. So I did, and I remember that to this day. I remember good managers.
Thankfully, my black Friday/Christmas duties were mostly rescinded (I technically was still register trained, so I got called up to the front to kill lines) which was nice.
The point of this?
Retail is hell. Period.
Mandatory retail service might be more important to our continued culture (USA) than anything else, as hyper capitalist as we are.
Shit, my mom was a college graduate, taught for a little while (not her thing) before working for the government, which I’m not going to go into. She took an early retirement package, cause she could. Good for her. She got bored, went to work at a chain craft store. She realized, and had a long discussion with me, about how much of a CUNT she was to retail/service folks. Her words. It was nice to hear, because I was still neck deep in retail hell at the time.
“north americans”
Does the author really have knowledge of Mexican retail? I’m doubtful about their Canada knowledge, too, but that’s at least somewhat believable.
North America is just the Continental United States, now.
Canada and Mexico have gone into witness protection to avoid getting wrapped up in our bullshit.
Bezos wants Amazon work to be some kind of national service.
Interesting to see that echoed here.
Bezos wants Amazon work to be some kind of national service.
Interesting to see that echoed here.
Nothing about Bezos or Amazon is being “echoed” here. You just chose to make up a false dichotomy.
The topic is: EmpathyWait, what’s the dichotomy here?
Honestly, most people aren’t that bad. But the ones who are are tend to be REALLY bad and they’re the ones who are remembered.
Eh, it depends on the job. It’s not retail, but waiters are always taken aback when my wife and I are understanding about any delays or them being out of something. You can always see them bracing for the abuse when they tell us the issue.
We’ve both worked in retail and food service, so we get it.
When I worked retail, we would get shitty customers all the time, but one of my super powers was being able to diffuse the situation without having to get management involved.
You can always see them bracing for the abuse when they tell us the issue.
What morons don’t even operate on the “you don’t fuck with people handling your food” basic rule, let alone just have basic common decency.
Are you new here? (By here I mean as in earth?)
I’m over the Atlantic from the US, it would be truly unusual if someone actually blew up at service staff like that, let alone that being a common enough occurrence to trigger PTSD-adjacent responses from them.
tell me you haven’t worked in food service without saying it.
Americans really fucking suck.
There are so many of them.
I used to have a line in my dating app profile about not contacting me if you’re rude to service workers. You can guess what jobs I’ve worked in the past.
Escort?
Not me, officer.
Also, anyone applying for a driving licence should have to have spent a given number of hours cycling on public roads.
Love it. Anyone designing public transit in any capacity has to use it to the exclusion of all else for half a year, and they must travel the longest distance within the system at least twice a week.
Totally wouldn’t work. We Americans believe in a brotherhood/sisterhood of suffering. If we suffered, we believe that others NEED to suffer as well. It’s why nurses are terrible to new nurses, why so many people are against forgiving student debt, and why so many parents refuse to acknowledge their children’s issues. It’s all “I lived through it and it sucked, so you need to too,” mentality. We didn’t build compassion though suffering, we just wish it on others, too.
And there would always be outs for the rich so they wouldn’t have to.
Totally wouldn’t work. We Americans believe in a brotherhood/sisterhood of suffering. I
As someone who’s been in the compulsory military service, this is exactly what would happen. The “old cans” in there haze and expect the newbies to suffer like they did.
America is just one endless hazing ritual, from the day you are conceived to the day your grave is exhumed for its real estate value.
👏👏👏👏
“May all prayers go unanswered as the vast majority wish harm upon another human being.”
(The paradox of the most religious societies simultaneously being the most cruel in practice)
We didn’t build compassion though suffering
Speak for yourself.
1 - Try being homeless for awhile, if you crawl your way back out of that
and you treat homeless people like shit afterwards then you’re just an asshole.2 - Try hiking the entire Appalachian Trail - everyone is struggling and yet the majority
of other hikers share food and supplies and help boost morale and the people
in trail towns are generous and not assholes because they know what you are doing is
difficult.3 - Try being in the military and being the lowest rank E-1 - there is comradery there amongst
the low rank enlisted. Everyone is suffering and yet regardless of race, class, religion, beliefs, everyone
has a “we’re all in this together” attitude and it’s easy to make friends if you wish.4 - Finally, ask anyone who has ever worked in retail how they view retail workers now.
Assholes are just assholes. They stick out in society so it makes it seem like they are the majority.
Did the first half of the trail in '22 and I can concur. I had to stop to make money, but it was so much fun and I miss it every day. I’ll be back out there again soon
Sorry, I mean the “collective we.” Of course individuals do build compassion, but look at the state of America and tell me that the collective we is different than I stated.
Try hiking the entire Appalachian Trail
I’m sorry but it will forever be stamped into my brain
I was in the military and my experience was wildly different. If you displayed anything other than hyper masculinity you were a little bitch that anyone could do anything to. Every single woman I served with was sexually assaulted and several of them raped. The rapists were never punished beyond a transfer to another duty station. People constantly stole from each other. Fuck the supposed comradery in the military.
That sounds shitty. I’m sorry your experience in the military was that way, but I wouldn’t paint the whole with a big brush like that. There are good people and bad people both in and out of the military.
It used to be socially unacceptable to be a jackass. Somewhere along the line, it became socially acceptable, then desirable, and finally glorified. We have lost the plot, by and large.
Being the loudest and screaming the most has always been a successful tactic.
It used to be socially unacceptable to be a jackass.
It used to be socially unacceptable to be a jackass while poor. You were always supposed to defer to your betters. The Kennedys got to be assholes. The Vanderbilts got to be assholes. The Pullmans got to be assholes. Their employees and staff were expected to be utterly docile and subservient.
But a century of rising middle class prosperity combined with a Randian self-centerism transformed generations of people into CEO wanna-bes. American libertarian ideology and the myth of the Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire has utterly obliterated class consciousness in the minds of the American working class. Millions upon millions of people have it embedded in their heads that they should be treated like aristocracy.
We have lost the plot, by and large.
We’ve bought into the propaganda of American Exceptionalism. Every American gets indoctrinated into the theory that they’re above average, that they’re Gifted And Talented, that they’re destined to become The President. There is no universal understanding of the human condition, just people who deserve to be under you and people who climbed above you unfairly.
