‘You have no clue what you're doing': Customer demands to speak to manager after yelling at employee, only to discover the employee is the manager

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    "You have no clue what you're doing"
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    "I'm sorry, hun, but I AM the manager"
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    A little background; I work for a health food store in the bakery. I started out as a cashier, moved to head cashier, realized I was sick of customers taking their issues out on the only employee they see at checkout and moved to bakery about three months after getting hired. It was a whirlwind. I stuck
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    around for two more years as just a clerk. It's great because I'm in a corner without a counter to handle customers and you only really interact when you have to go fill the floor or answer phones and questions. My entire team is
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    able to pop in an earbud and rock out of listen to books/podcasts. I don't care as long as they get things done and can hear pages. It works well for everyone and I've fought back against management for trying to that away from us. It was really easy
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    for a while then our manager got a new job and the hierarchy imploded. The assistant applied to take over, was denied, quit on the spot when she found out they grabbed some rando that they had hired not a month ago from a completely different department. I ended up
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    assistant manager (I had no plans for being in management) and trained this new guy for two and half months. He walked out when the store manager was telling him about some changes he wanted to implement. (I've got a million stories from my two months of
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    with that man lol) I picked up the job and it's been pretty easy sailing. I knew all the shifts and how everything worked, I just needed to learn paperwork. Anyway, May of last year I became manager.
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    Onto the story! Today, everything was going well. I was getting everything prepped for the baker in the morning when the page goes out that there's a call on line one for bakery. I pick up the
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    phone and start a conversation with a seemingly polite and nice dude. He's asking me if we carry a certain flavor of an extremely popular bread. Side note; we have a couple of snowbirds who call in about every six weeks to
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    place a case of the bread on hold so they can keep it in the freezer. I thought, when I picked up the call, that it might be one of those guys so I asked him if he wanted me to put a case of a flavor on hold for him.
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    He chuckled and replies with "no I'm not looking to buy anything today, I'm just trying to see if you carry the flavor so I can buy in the future." Me: "Oh! Okay, what's the flavor and I'll go check my freezer really quickly." Him: " it's a red bag by
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    Food For Life called 7 sprouted grains." Me: "okay, give me just a minute to put you on hold and I'll check to see what I've got. The warehouse was out of stock for about a week but we did get a truck in today so we might have gotten all the flavors back."
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    I put him on hold, go take a look and see that no, of the 8 flavors I carry, none of them are red or specify a number of grains. While I knew we didn't carry a red bag, the most popular flavor is a weird orange
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    color so I was thinking that maybe he might have gotten a little foggy as to the color. I did, however, note that I had two flavors that sounded like they might be similar to what he was looking for, so I went back to the phone
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    Me: "okay, so I did look. Unfortunately, we don't carry a bread in a red bag named 7 sprouted grains, however, I do have two options that might interest you. I have an orange bag called sprouted grain and I
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    have a blue one called sprouted seeds and grain, but neither specify the number seven. We also just rolled out a new sampling policy so if you're unsure, you can come in and I'd be happy to pop open a bag of
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    each for you try and see if they might work!" This man, who has been courteous and polite for the first half of this conversation, flips his on me.
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    Him; "are you sure you're looking at the brand food for life? I know they makes this. You sell those other flavors so you obviously must sell this. Go look again."
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    I was a bit baffled and taken aback so I took a second to compose an actual sentence. Me: " I'm sorry sir, this is unfortunately all I can offer you. I looked at our website but it doesn't look like any of our sister/close stores carry this."
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    Him: "you're obviously new. You must be. I'm sure there is some in the freezer SOMEWHERE. Just go LOOK!" Me: "sir, I looked and going back to look isn't going to change the fact that I DO NOT carry this product. I'm sorry."
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    Him: "well you're useless and you don't deserve to work. Get me your manager." (Hel sounded pretty snug at the end) Me: mouth hanging open for a second "hon, I'm sorry, but I AM the manager of the bakery. "
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    Click I started to walk away muttering about being sorry for not having that flavor and then realized that he was Prooobabbbly going to call back. So I paged the manager
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    and briefly experienced that an irate guy was going to call and complain because I didn't carry his bread. He was already on the other line waiting. I let it go because I was actually training someone and thought I would hit up the manager later.
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    Turns out, the guy was SO upset about his fancy bread that he couldn't even express himself in an intelligent or even coherent way. My store manager told me, laughing hysterically by the way, that he couldn't hear most
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    of what this man was saying and it sounded like we was holding the receiver up to his mouth and just shouting slurs and swears about "some who thinks she can run a department" and
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    "women shouldn't be in management". In the moment, I was a little nervous I handled this the wrong way and I definitely have never been in that kind of
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    position before, but it was really gratifying to be able to say that I was the manager bit and that he hung up the phone immediately. This experience will live rent free in my head for years, periodically supplying dopamine for my bad days (D)

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