Retail employee recounts the unholy trinity of clueless, entitled customers via 3 different customer horror stories: ‘There's a saying: "Help me help you," and these people are not doing that’

Working in retail spaces means you have to plaster a smile on your face even when entitled customers try to get on your every last nerve. In customer-facing roles, you don't have enough time to worry about your comfort; upper management is solely focused on your output, how you approach customer satisfaction, and keeping you in your place. If customers and management don't degrade your morale, they have less power to exert over you. We all know that customer service is about give and take, but most customers prefer to take without giving back anything, even baseline moral niceties.

If you've ever worked in a customer service role, specifically in the retail or restaurant sector, you are well aware of the fact that the customer is always right, even when they aren't. Forget about putting your best foot forward and standing up for yourself; you have shelves to stock and customers to apologize to for no reason, silly! Sometimes, it seems like certain customers purposely take "the long way home" so they can make your life more difficult. "The long way home" includes asking questions that don't make sense, complaining to you about something you can't change, and ridiculing you when you're not a robot with access to all of the information in the entire world.

This retail employee recounts what we call the "unholy trinity" of entitled customer hardships in customer service roles. No matter how hard you try, you will be faced with one, two, or all of these scenarios, wherein you'll be expected to keep a straight face the entire time. Last time we checked, we are human beings, not robots. If they want an employee who will be a bystander to customer nonsense, maybe they should work more quickly and find an AI to do it for us…

What does the employee consider the most common scenarios in the customer service realm?

"One part 'customers don't read,' one part 'customers expect us to know everything/be psychic.' [Or] expecting us to memorize prices."

Author image for Lana DeGaetano Lana DeGaetano
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customer service workplace-stories retail entitled people toxic-work-environment
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