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In my opinion, those sort of businesses are also the ones that end up crying out when they lose to bigger players in the space who are willing with those sort of customers. At the end of the day, are you there to feel good, or are you there to get money? Here’s a little secret: nobody cares about those sort of people, it’s just that some care more about the money they can get from them than others.
For me, it’s right up there with tech support that complain about the trivial bullshit they are called for when it is that trivial bullshit that gives them a job.
I don’t think it’s really like that.
If this comic was about a small business with the owner stood behind the counter like “I don’t care” then I’d totally get your point, but I don’t think that’s what it is.
This is a comic about a minimum wage slave working at a branch of some faceless retail supergiant, who gets constantly shit on by customers as if they themselves are personally responsible for whatever policymaking at this enormous company has upset the customer, as if they could change anything about it even if they tried.
It’s about angry customers putting their vitriolic remarks in completely the wrong place because they just need a human victim and they don’t care who it is. And it’s about learning how to deal with that as an employee so you don’t lose your sanity.
Sales are in the shitter, I’m afraid we’re gonna have to let you go.
I don’t care.
I honestly do wonder where the average person thinks the customer service workers have some kind of stake in the company or something. Getting fired from a job like that is only a minor inconvenience, and the odds of their complaint being anywhere near a firable offense is usually laughable (and half the time the opposite as usually it’s wanting the employee to break store policy).
I can tell you what it was for my mother. To her it was a “cheat code” to talk to a manager and get free shit or a discount.
Which is actually valid, pushing up the chain can get you stuff. So many people just hang on to the minimum wage grunt and expect that to accomplish anything besides making both their days worse.
It might be valid, but not very moral.
Thing is, if you have a valid problem, you can do that politely, not even waste any time with the peon, just say, “Hi, I have a problem that’s going to require a manager, will you please call them for me?”
If you’re just bitching in search of freebies, you should just not.
Yeah. And not only does the person behind the register not give a shit about losing your patronage, if you come out of the gate acting like an asshole, many of them will 100% make your life more difficult just to fuck with you because they’re bored.
It’s amazing how far common courtesy can go in situations like this.
I feel like everyone should be required to work like a year in retail or something, so they know how to behave
I had a stake in the company because my parents owned the shop I worked in. But I still didn’t care when some dickhead threatened me with a “you just lost a cistomer.” My dad told me not to take shit from asshole customers if I knew for sure I was not in the wrong. They usually came crawling back a week after pretending nothing ever happened.
Oh and he also told me to provide the best service we could to the normal customers so that they become our favourite customers.
I mean it’s by design. Megacorporations put retail workers and customer service on the front lines to bear the brunt of the anger at their shitty policies. People who have no power to change anything.
The customer service rep is the face of the company, customers are SUPPOSED to complain to them since thats their job.
Looks like we have one of the shoppers from the comic in our midst.
Kinda. There’s usually a complaint department.
But bitching / threatening the worker - who is ringing up your purchase - about something that they specifically cannot control, and making their day worse? That’s an asshole problem that needs plugging.
Uhhhh how 'bout no.
I used to deliver pizza, occasionally someone would open their door and start complaining to me about our (pretty damn low, actually) prices. Like I fucking set them. Like I’m going to say “yes $15 is a lot for a 16in two topping, here, take it for free, I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket.” Nah. You saw the price on the menu, we repeated your total before we even stretched your dough, now you wanna complain to the driver when I show up? You can go fuck yourself, call little goddamn ceasers.
Best part is, our owner’s wife was the manager and ran phones, and you want to complain to the driver? It’s because you know this complaint is bullshit, isn’t it?
And they’ll all be back next week, simply because it’s the most convenient for them to drive to.
This, 100%. Their lack of shame is almost envious to those of us with anxiety. Some anxious people would avoid a place for months after an ok-conversation with an employee, because they overthink the interaction and become convinced that they fucked up royally. Meanwhile, the employee never thought anything was offensive at all, and in fact forgot the entire interaction by the time they rang up the next customer.
Then there’s people like in the OP who throw a dramatic fit about how much they hate a place, sometimes even screaming at managers, then they show up the very next day pretending nothing ever happened. The audacity is mind-blowing.
During my penance in food service in my earlier years, I worked for a while for what was literally the only pizza joint in town that had delivery. (This was well before all the food delivery apps and in fact in the pre-smartphone era.) When we would not accede to whatever ridiculous demand a customer was having a tantrum about and they threatened to never order here again, my boss would just say, “Okay, fine, see you next week.”
He was usually right, too.
I worked for a while for what was literally the only pizza joint in town that had delivery.
In New Jersey, they call these, “Pizza Deserts”
As someone who worked retail for a long time, I relished these moments… Their righteous indignation would snap me out of my ennui, and I’d love watching their face when I’d respond, “OK, bye”, or give them no reaction whatsoever.
You have to appreciate those moments in retail because the rest of the time is pretty awful.
25 years ago I worked the registers at Target. One day at the back end of a pre-christmas lunchtime rush, this woman snidely remarks that I should be scanning faster. I bluntly told her that if she wasn’t happy she could simply shop elsewhere. Shocked she threatened to complain to my manager, I simply pointed to thr front dedk and said “go ahead”.
I still have my written warning in a box somewhere. Completely worth it lol
How ever would you find another minimum wage job?
Companies I boycott:
Bank of America
5/3 Bank
Wells Fargo
McDonald’s
Walmart
That corner gas station that never paid their invoice Planet Fitness
John Deere
Verizon
AT&TNumber of store employees I’ve told that I’m never coming back:
0
Trader Joe’s for being fascist union busters. Amazon for being fascist union busters. Target for being fascist hypocrites. Chick-fil-A for being homophobic fascists. Google for being fascists. Microsoft for being fascists.
When everyone around you is a fascist, the real fascist is you.
“Tell me you don’t know what a fascist is without saying you don’t know what a fascist is” speed run challenge.
No doubt there were muppets in Nazi Germany who said the same thing.
HP, Siemens, Intel, SodaStream and everything else on this list for supporting and profiting off the genocide of Palestinians
- Adobe for being greedy fascists.
- Nestle for committing crimes against humanity.
- Starbucks for being union busters.
- Walmart for being union busters and exploiters.
- Coca-Cola for being the biggest plastic polluter in the world.
- SC Johnson for knowingly selling asbestos tainted products to unsuspecting consumers.
- Oatly for suing a small family business that also made oat milk.
- Airbnb for driving the housing crisis that plagues the entire world.
- Chevron for selling oil stolen from Palestinians.
- Meta for being fucking fascists.
- Nike for using sweat shops to make products.
- Uber for exploiting drivers and interfering with public transit development.
- Whole Foods for being union busters, same as their parent company, Amazon.
- Apple for using exploitative labor practices overseas where they escape accountability.
- Wells Fargo for rearranging the order of transactions in order to cause overdraft fees.
I could go on and on…
Huh. I never really thought about what you wrote about airbnb, but it hit me hard now. My partner actually works for an Airbnb and they have an enormous amount of property and apartments in rural areas which could’ve housed families. And to think there are many more of these businesses doing the same thing.
I rarely use airbnbs, I prefer hotels, so I haven’t done a lot of contribution there but still, this has convinced me to never use one. Unless, the stay is in their house, or in a small house in their garden etc, which I actually have been in some years ago.
I am sad to hear that about oatly. Not disagreeing with you, but do you have a link?
Not sure why you got downvoted, this is a space where reasonable questions should be encouraged.
Here ya go, my dude:
Target was the hardest one for us. Went from spending hundreds per month (they were also our grocery) to zero. Fuck them for dropping DEI and bending the knee.
You and me both. Giving Target the finger a few months ago stung because Amazon and Walmart were already longtime members of the blacklist. Costco is getting my money now. I also didn’t tell anyone except the stupid online form that asked why I was canceling my 20 year Red Card membership.
My absolute favorite response to these types of people is “can I get that in writing?”
For real! The ones that make a big deal and repeat that ‘customer-is-always-right’ bullshit while simultaneously demanding something outside any normal accomodation, those ones always come back.
Lol they’re all old people
I agree with this with one exception - if you’re in admin or clerical customer facing roles where the stuff you do is actually life changing for people.
I almost got deported because some cunt at the uni couldn’t be arsed to send one email of a document she got by clicking one button for a whole year despite the fact I rang every day for like two months and visited the offices for a goddamn week.
Another example is healthcare. If you’re some piece of shit receptionist who can do fuck all and instead of sympathising - and just trying at all - you act all smug about how you can’t even do me the decency of telling me which fucking department I need to talk to when I can’t get the result of a fucking piss test I need for life-changing surgery I have scheduled in a week that I’ve been on a waitlist for for 7 years because it’s with some processing department and they’ll respond to me in 15-30 working days and you can’t possibly know how long it usually even takes, I will make your day hell because I hate you - not just the company - but you as a human being, fuck you and find another fucking job, your failure in life is no excuse to fuck mine up too.
Especially when I know I’ll come back tomorrow and someone with a fucking brain is going to sort it out for me, so it was never some “policy”, it was you and your lack of effort when human lives are on the fucking line. Wouldn’t piss on you if you was on fire, you living piece of evidence that some people are just plain inferior and why some people don’t deserve welfare and security because they can’t do anything unless you threaten them with not being able to eat the next fucking day.
God, sorry, all this shit was years ago but it boils my blood to this day that some fucknuggets could’ve destroyed my entire amazing life for literally no other reason than the fact they have no life worth living and choose to make everyone else’s a living nightmare.
I think the pain will heal once all this shit is replaced by a nice LLM integration. And communism too, fuck capitalism and decay in public services.
Actually in a better world I’d gladly pay taxes so these actual fucking untermenschen stay home and rot or whatever it is they do, so the rest of us can get on with life.
This comment is a journey
Glad you’re still with us
There’s a reason I’m starting to adopt the idea that having voted for DJT 3 times = your rights are forfeit.
“And I’m not paid enough TO care.”
When I was a teenager in the 90s I worked a local, Chicago-area chain fast food job, as ya do. One customer was mad that his ribs were taking a while so he came up to tell at the cashier. The General Manager was a older Chicagoan with a Mike Ditka mustache, and came out of the office right behind the cashiers and yelled right back, mad that somebody was yelling at his employees.
The guy shouted that he’d take his business elsewhere and never come back, at which point the GM pointed at the line that stretched to the door and said something to the effect of “you see all these people? I don’t need your business! Now get out of my store!” It was in the middle of the dinner rush, and it’s still a popular chain.
We all really liked that GM before and especially after that. He was one of those “tough but fair” types, the kind of boss you could respect. Good guy.
The point is that yeah, go ahead and take your business elsewhere Karen. It literally makes no difference and nobody cares.
Also if the difficult customers go and take their business elsewhere that means that mostly nice customers remain, so that’s nice.
Why would i want my dinner ruined by some rude asshole yelling at their staff? I’ll gladly take my business to a place free from dicks.
Even the tiniest semblance of power can go to a person’s head. You had $25 worth of merchandise in your hands, Karen. The store will be okay without you.
![[ItsMegComics] Those Customers](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0f7e3f53-8162-4793-a7f5-f4ec2ad41a46.jpeg){kind=link}