Blowing off Steam: All Customers are the Enemy

[Jimmie Higgins]

Working with the public fucking sucks. There's nothing really political or deep about the following observations (hence being in chit-chat) but I thought maybe we can brainstorm a list of all the ways and possible reasons that customers are somehow the worst people on earth.

When I was younger I worked in food places and liquor stores and customers in working class communities can sometimes be better than other places because they may have done the same work and therefore have some empathy. Others seemingly go out of the way to make your life more difficult and many are overly sensitive about being ripped off or not being slavishly served. My pseudo-psych thinking on this is that many people have internalized work-relations and social roles under capitalism; like the abusive parent who takes out their stress and feelings of inferiority on their children, some people who do shit jobs like to go places where people have to serve their every whim and take out their frustrations on people who work there.

It's a little easier to understand why petty bourgeois customers (the majority of people I interact with now are professionals connected to UC Berkeley - particularly the business and law schools... barf) treat service workers poorly. They fall into two categories most of the time: people who are totally oblivious to class, the reality of being working-poor for most service jobs, and probably to the existence of sentient humans other than themselves. So just out of ignorance, they act like other humans were only here to pick-up after them, serve them coffee, reserve flights and rental cars for them, and so on. These people often say things that expose their elitism or just how ridiculously out of touch they are with regular life. Here are some things I've overheard people from this group say: "I'm so stressed, I'm definitely taking a year off"... "[to an immigrant barista - who I happen to know does not have health coverage] You shouldn't be here if you have a cold, it's unsanitary, you need to call your doctor"... "People don't need to protest anymore, Obama's President and it's all fine now".

The second group of annoying professionals are the ones who are aware of class and yet are profoundly socially awkward and patronizing about it. Sometimes when I'm interacting with them I get the feeling that while looking across the desk at them, they are looking across the desk at a commercial for disadvantaged 3rd world children. I remember speaking with one client and I mentioned something about a night class I was taking - I only mentioned it because it had something to do with what we were talking about (I graduated - with honors - from University about 10 years ago) but the clinet perked up and said: "oh going to school - how good for you".

What I heard was: "good for you, nothing like an clean cut and ambitious young negro" ... and then I fantasized about putting a pie in their face like Denzel Washington does to the white soldier on the train in the Spike Lee movie of "Malcolm X". Then I remembered that I'm not even black.

Anyway, if you got this far, thanks for indulging me while I let off a little steam. I guess from a political perspective one thing I hate most about customer/worker relations is that the low level of solidarity which allows customers to ignore the conditions of the people serving them also creates hostility that blurs the lines of the class struggle. Employers cut staff and increase pressure on workers; who then are less able to satisfy the customers; the customers take out their frustration at poor service on the workers which then just causes more resentment. All the while neither group blames the ones who are really behind poor service as well as unreachable expectations on the staff: the bosses.

[RedStarOverChina]

Nothing like an clean cut and ambitious young negro

:laugh:Was it Joe Biden you were speaking with?

The worst I ever had to deal with was when a woman went on and on about how her father was a vicious racist and went around beating up Black people, and how she thought that was wrong.

[jake williams]

I've never worked any sort of service jobs where you so directly have to deal with a "general public" which expects you to serve them. But I have friends that have, and you see it just in the process of going about your day, and it's true, a lot of people are fucking awful.

[GPDP]

My dad can often be a good case study in being a terrible customer. For instance, just the other night, we went to a gas station to get beer after a hard day of work, and when we got to the beer, he noticed most of them were still rather warm, and the few that weren't were not as cold as they should be. He proceeded to call the place a "rancho" (basically a dump in this context), and when he went to the cash register with the coldest beers we could get, he unloaded on the cashier about it, asking them why the beers were so warm, and demanding they should be much colder.

In his defense, it appears they store the beers outside of the fridge, inside the store instead of the back, and merely put those beers in the fridge when they need to restock. But that's more a management problem, and my dad even admits as much. He had no reason to harass the cashier the way he did, and it actually made me feel embarrassed.

There was also an incident in a bank where the teller lady or whatever she was mixed an English word in the middle of a sentence in Spanish, to which my dad promptly corrected her and lectured her about how she shouldn't mix English and Spanish, which dumbfounded her. I wasn't there, but my mom was, and she got pretty upset about it. As you can no doubt tell, my dad doesn't tolerate Spanglish, and views it as a perversion of English and Spanish.

Yeah, he's quite grumpy.

[RHIZOMES]

My dad can often be a good case study in being a terrible customer. For instance, just the other night, we went to a gas station to get beer after a hard day of work, and when we got to the beer, he noticed most of them were still rather warm, and the few that weren't were not as cold as they should be. He proceeded to call the place a "rancho" (basically a dump in this context), and when he went to the cash register with the coldest beers we could get, he unloaded on the cashier about it, asking them why the beers were so warm, and demanding they should be much colder.

In his defense, it appears they store the beers outside of the fridge, inside the store instead of the back, and merely put those beers in the fridge when they need to restock. But that's more a management problem, and my dad even admits as much. He had no reason to harass the cashier the way he did, and it actually made me feel embarrassed.

There was also an incident in a bank where the teller lady or whatever she was mixed an English word in the middle of a sentence in Spanish, to which my dad promptly corrected her and lectured her about how she shouldn't mix English and Spanish, which dumbfounded her. I wasn't there, but my mom was, and she got pretty upset about it. As you can no doubt tell, my dad doesn't tolerate Spanglish, and views it as a perversion of English and Spanish.

Yeah, he's quite grumpy.

My American granddad is a lot like this, it gets awkward taking him out places.

[jake williams]

There was also an incident in a bank where the teller lady or whatever she was mixed an English word in the middle of a sentence in Spanish, to which my dad promptly corrected her and lectured her about how she shouldn't mix English and Spanish, which dumbfounded her. I wasn't there, but my mom was, and she got pretty upset about it. As you can no doubt tell, my dad doesn't tolerate Spanglish, and views it as a perversion of English and Spanish.
Tell him that code switching and language mixing are some of the most fundamental phenomena in linguistics. Like it's just a basic ordinary part of living in a society where people from different linguistic communities interact. Tell him to deal.

[bcbm]

i used to work at an extremely fancy restaurant. above one of the sinks in the kitchen was a (true?) story about how a cook had diarrhea and didn't wash her hands well enough after using the restroom. dozens of people got sick, and one even died. she was upset, apparently, but it made me wish i would get some horrible illness to spread (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon) to the yuppies.

biological class warfare.

[Invincible Summer]

I used to work at Subway. The whole premise of the establishment is to cater to any customization of a sandwich that the customer wants - even if it doesn't make sense.
For instance, one customer demanded to have the ranch and chipotle sauces on opposite sides of the sandwich. I was really busy, so I forgot, then the customer freaked out. I told her it didn't matter because I was closing the sandwich anyway and they would get mixed up. She paused, seemingly contemplating, then told me that she wanted me to make another one.

I've also had a customer freak out because I accidentally put 2 slices of ham instead of 3 or something. He started to act all condescending and even though he had a thick accent, he was like "Don't you understand English? How long have you been in Canada? When the customer asks for something, you don't argue! Now TELL ME HOW MANY PIECES OF HAM YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GIVE ME! APOLOGIZE NOW!"
Of course I told him to fuck off and I didn't need his bullshit.

Even though the Asian population here is pretty high, everyone always assumes I'm from Hong Kong or Beijing, and asks me how long I've been in Canada, and assumes that I don't know N. American customs even though I have no Chinese accent whatsoever.

Anyways, people always gave me and my co-workers shit for working in the service industry. They basically acted like we were uneducated, unwashed, mindless drones. Once a customer and my co-worker got into a verbal exchange, and the customer basically told my friend that he (the customer) "Doesn't need to take any more bad advice from stupid kids who dropped out of school." and told all of us to "Get real jobs"

[The Douche]

I work in retail, people, all the time, will come in, unfold a shirt, look at it, then take it across the store go up to another stack of shirts, flip them upside and cram the first shirt in the middle of them, then put them back in the basket in the wall.

WTF!

I know most people don't know how to fold shirts like store clerks, but shit, at least bring it up to the counter or something and say "I found this on the floor" or "I was gonna get this but changed my mind".

Also, "$20 for a tshirt?!?!", why do people do this? I mean, honestly, go to any store in a mall, thats how much shirts cost (at least, usually 25-30), and so what if you think its to much, you think I or anybody else in the store can lower the price?


Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[Vendetta]

Fuck the customers, and fuck fast food.

Fuck DQ. That shit turned me into a quasi-misanthropist shit.

[Axle]

I used to work at a gas station and once got screamed at and flipped off by a customer because he had come inside the store to take a leak while his car was pumping. I had told him to go back to his car and watch it until it was done, because the pump he was using wasn't working right and wouldn't stop when the tank was filled up (about a week earlier we had about 40 gallons spill all over the parking lot).

I had another customer argue with me over Gatorade. We had a discounted price when you bought two...she brought up three bottles and *****ed about having to pay full price for one of them. At the very least she'll "never be back".

[El Rojo]

Used to work at a petrol station also till i got sacked for not paying for the coffee. the worst customers we almost always the business executive types, M3 driving, hands free phone using bourgoise. I used to genuinely think that they couldn't tell the difference between me, the till, and the PIN machine. All just part of the machine, you know? They were always on thier mobile phones whilst on the forecourt, and if anything didnt go how they liked, it would be taken like some kind of personal insult. Anything problems were always my personal fault. "That pump didnt work" ect ect. do i look personally responsible for that.

i was so pleased when they sacked me lol

[Jimmie Higgins]

I used to ignore any customer who was talking on their cell phone - if there was a line I'd ask the next person if I could help them. The best and most passive-agressive part of the whole thing was if I got called out for doing this, I'd say: "Sorry, I thought you were on the phone and I didn't want to interrupt your conversation". Often this wouldn't work because people on cell phones would just point and grunt at what they wanted* so in these instances I would only talk to them while they were talking.

Apparently, according to several managers I've had over the years... I have problems with authority.

It goes both ways though - I hate to be waited on and served. I actually get really paranoid when people call me "Sir" because I begin to think they are taking the piss or trying to rip me off or something.






*or do this pantomime act which generally involved dramatically moving the cell receiver away from their mouth for a moment while opening their eyes really wide and jutting out their chin - apparently this is yuppie for: "Hi, how are you doing, I'm in the middle of this really important phone call with my dermatologist and I have my pet grooming service on hold too, but despite this I would really like to purchase this bottle of milk, and well, frankly, I don't think much of you so I'm going to just jut my chin out as a signal that I'm ready for you to serve me now.")

[Comrade B]

I worked in an office for a college for a while. It wasn't particularly terrible aside from that you are everyone's *****. I hated it most when professors or students would come in and tell me to do something that wasn't part of my job, they just seemed to assume that because I was in an office I was working for them.
My job was to copy texts using several pieces of technology which are only created for this purpose. After that I was supposed to copy them into word documents and then read through, adding in italics where they were lost, correcting the small mistakes the machine makes through the entire document. I had no problem working for my 3 real bosses, but the security guys who refused to let me into the office when I forgot my keys because they didn't trust townies, the professors who told me to do things, rather than asked (even if I didn't know how, fuck if I know how the copy machine works, I am in a separate office from the rest of the main office for a reason!) and the students who acted like I was invisible really got on my nerves. The fact that I am a local apparently set me below people.