I’ve had supervisors do this before. It’s always great to have a supervisor who understands the bs that goes on and will “have a talk” with you, but they know the person complaining is full of it.
I wish this happened at every job. When I worked at Sears, I had an incident where a customer complained about me about something ridiculous. But because the customer complained directly to the manager, they had to count it as a strike regardless. I swear that manager was just out to get me. I barely made it 3 months there.
When a manager is nice to the staff like this. Make them a coffee. Talk about something that they enjoy. Make sure that when you walk back out to where the public can see you are both smiling. This the way.
I got promoted to a supervisory role and I love doing things like this. We operate in the e-commerce space so luckily all of our interactions are on the phone. Last week I got to blacklist somebody. The notes proved that they had repeatedly been very rude and the likelihood of them completing the sale was slim. We sell very high priced items so we do really try to keep every last customer but when they are wasting time, harassing employees using foul language, and demanding to escalate the situation to waste my time, I’m not going to go the extra mile for them.
As someone who worked in retail, when a customer is irate, unnecessarily bitchy, or flat out a rude asshole, and they “sPeAk To ThE mAnAgeR” we both laugh at that customer and call them a dumbass, then go on with the rest of our shift.
If I sensed tension brewing, I used to just take over the employee’s station for a while. Let the employee get away from the situation, and let the customer deal with someone different. Changed the whole tone without having to say a word.
I had a manager reprimand me at my register. I started arguing but then he told me to stop arguing, gave me a wink and a smirk, and told me not to do it again. I got the message, looked down and said ok. The customer went away and we both just continued on like nothing happened.
(I was a grocery store cashier, on the express lane, and the customer was upset that I moved her stuff to the far end of the register and started the next order instead of waiting for her to take her sweet ass time doing whatever the hell she was doing)
Had a supervisor once who warned his employees that if he ever “fired” them in front of a customer that meant you were to stay on the clock but to sit in the break room until he found you. I was fired once or twice during my tenure. This was at a Toys R Us.
I had an old boss that would come up to crazy customers and say “Why are you yelling at my employees??? That’s my job!!! That’s what I get paid to do! Here you have to yell at *me* so I can yell at them. Sheesh, trying to take my job away.” And honestly 10/10 boss man would have him again
Worked in front office too and had idiots asking for my name to complain to the “manager”. I would just give them the company email and everyone including the GM would laugh at the email when it came.
If they directly asked for the manager I would just say they were not there even if the GM himself was working in the room 10 meters behind.
I mean, yeah, this is nice for bosses to do in the moment, but this does reinforce the customer’s behavior so they get a power trip and continue to pull this when they come back or in other places. I think the culture of “customer is always right” is what really emboldened and accelerated this behavior in the first place. We have to come up with better solutions than this, but I imagine what those are will vary by region and type of service. Ugh.
Used to work security at a mall and one day while working, some guy left his iPad in a seating area at a certain time. He came pissed off to the security office to ask if he could look through the cameras, which is against policy, so he can see where his ipad was lost. I plainly said no I can’t let anyone other than police and contractors inside the office. He got so pissed off and started going off on me and said he demands to check the cameras. Again it was a no. He left pissed off cursing and screaming racist things at me. A few days later I get called up to the mall managers office for a meeting and there was my supervisor, the director of security for the mall and the mall manager as well. First thing they asked me was about the incident which I said everything that happened. Mall manager then told me that the guy I spoke to is part owner of the company owns runs the mall. I didn’t get in trouble or fired like the guy wanted since I was doing my job and all he wanted was to take out his frustrations on someone. They let me get back to work. My supervisor then asked me what would’ve happened if he introduced himself and I just replied that I would’ve called him to verify the information but since he didn’t do anything and expected to just waltz right in I didn’t allow him to do so.
I used to work in the back office of an advising center at the college I was attending. For a year or so there was another student worker that I got along with really well. Whenever there was an uppity student/parent (parents you shouldn’t be calling for your kid by the time they’re in college in most cases) we would just transfer the call to one another and 99% of the time the person transfer gave the illusion that they were talking to someone higher up that giving the same answer again dealt with the issue. People are dumb.
A long time ago I had a part time security gig at a private University. They heavily pandered to donors, VIP’s, socialites more than I would like, but nothing I could do about that of course.
One time I refused a completely unreasonable request from a donor and they complained to my boss about it. He called me into the office, apologized to the lady, then told me I wasn’t going to come to work the next day. The lady left satisfied I was punished even though she didn’t get her way.
After a few seconds he said, “Glad she doesn’t know you don’t work tomorrow anyways,” and we all went back to what we were doing.
Story time. I was working as a cashier at cvs. A woman had returned a set of velcro tennis ball paddle things that you would use at a beach. She had bought them in another CVS and another state and return them at mine. Apparently the sales tax was higher in the other state where she purchased them, so when she returned them at my store, it came to $0.05 less than what he was expecting.
So she asked me for the five cents. I said the system refunds based off the current sales tax and I would have to ask my manager for the difference. So I called my manager up and he brings me upstairs to the office so he can “discuss this with corporate.”
He takes 5 cents out of his pocket and puts it on the table. He tells me “I bet you a coke I can get this woman to waste 15 minutes of her life waiting for this nickel. I said there’s no way on Earth anyone would spend 15 minutes waiting for such a small amount of money. 15 minutes went by and sure enough she stayed there for the entire time getting angrier and angrier by the minute waiting for her shiny, shiny nickel.
It taught me a lot about prioritizing the thimgs I value in my life.
I once had a customer who belittled one of my employees. As the manager I told her to go wait by my office and will talk to her in a minute. I handled the customer and asked her to leave. When I got to my office the girl was in tears. I told her she did nothing wrong and the woman was a total bitch. Go picked a snack or drink from the shelf and I’ll code it out for you. You’re in no trouble. Fuck that bitch
Literally my entire department; my manager and I once sat together in the break room and played Pokemon Go while the crazy waited outside for like 30 minutes. She was still out there when I came back for my shift just so she can tell me “you’re lucky I’m a nice person. Next time, do better!”
And all I did was tell her she couldn’t use her Amazon store card as a credit card at our theater.
I had a lady eat a whole two pizzas. Come up. Tell my coworker that they were cold and bad and wanted a refund. I went up. They reiterate the same thing to me. I say “okay, can I see the pizzas?” “Oh, we ate them.” “Well if they were good enough to eat then they were good enough to be paid for. Have a great night.” She wanted me to go outside and “talk” to her husband after that. I let her and her demon spawns know that I won’t be stepping outside at all, but he can come inside and voice his opinions
Did retail management for over 30 years. Only twice did I have to have the ‘talk’ with the employee. The rest would sit and watch TV or chat with me in the breakroom for an appropriate amount of time.
I used to work in a kitchen. We had this lady who would come in every weekend and order the soup of the day. No matter what, she would send it back with some juvenile issue. The head chef would apologise profusely, pretend to chew out a random cook, bustle back into the kitchen then put it in the fridge. Once it was lukewarm, he would nuke it in the microwave, scoop the skin off then send it straight back. ‘THAT’S better,’ she would say with this smug little snear.
All this shows me is a customer who just learned that being abusive to retail workers gets her (even just in her brain) exactly what she wants, so she’s just gonna abuse the next one.
If she was in the wrong, say so to her, not hidden in the back room.
My supervisor did this once… Except he actually chastised me… For fucking nothing. And he knew I didn’t do shit.. But he was just like “look, I told her I would talk to you about it.. So I’m doing that.”
Dude was a few wires short of a simple circuit board.
We had a history master (teacher), ex-military, who had a formidable reputation for the severity of his punishments. I’d done something alleged awful in one of his classes, and he ordered me into his office at the back of the classroom. Oops!
“Right, Centzon,” he bellowed… then sotto voce… “When I bang this desk, you let out a cry of pain, OK?”
Bang. Owww. *Bang*. *squeal*. BANG!. SQUEAL!
And before I left… “this is between you and me, understood!”
I hobbled back into class in pin-drop silence, 30 faces looking back at me contorted in horror.
I never let on, and let the charade stand. I’d learnt something very important that day: that the presentation of authority is *almost* as good as the application of it.
I’ve had supervisors do this before. It’s always great to have a supervisor who understands the bs that goes on and will “have a talk” with you, but they know the person complaining is full of it.
Can confirm
This is a savvy boss. Both get a break to sit down and rest a minute. Bonus points if the boss has a tape recording of him yelling at an employee…
I wish this happened at every job. When I worked at Sears, I had an incident where a customer complained about me about something ridiculous. But because the customer complained directly to the manager, they had to count it as a strike regardless. I swear that manager was just out to get me. I barely made it 3 months there.
When a manager is nice to the staff like this. Make them a coffee. Talk about something that they enjoy. Make sure that when you walk back out to where the public can see you are both smiling. This the way.
True Story, this is the kind of Manager I was, when i actually worked for a living, now i just shitpost on Reddit and make the same 3 ppl laugh a day
Life is Good
I got promoted to a supervisory role and I love doing things like this. We operate in the e-commerce space so luckily all of our interactions are on the phone. Last week I got to blacklist somebody. The notes proved that they had repeatedly been very rude and the likelihood of them completing the sale was slim. We sell very high priced items so we do really try to keep every last customer but when they are wasting time, harassing employees using foul language, and demanding to escalate the situation to waste my time, I’m not going to go the extra mile for them.
As someone who worked in retail, when a customer is irate, unnecessarily bitchy, or flat out a rude asshole, and they “sPeAk To ThE mAnAgeR” we both laugh at that customer and call them a dumbass, then go on with the rest of our shift.
If I sensed tension brewing, I used to just take over the employee’s station for a while. Let the employee get away from the situation, and let the customer deal with someone different. Changed the whole tone without having to say a word.
I had a manager reprimand me at my register. I started arguing but then he told me to stop arguing, gave me a wink and a smirk, and told me not to do it again. I got the message, looked down and said ok. The customer went away and we both just continued on like nothing happened.
(I was a grocery store cashier, on the express lane, and the customer was upset that I moved her stuff to the far end of the register and started the next order instead of waiting for her to take her sweet ass time doing whatever the hell she was doing)
Had a supervisor once who warned his employees that if he ever “fired” them in front of a customer that meant you were to stay on the clock but to sit in the break room until he found you. I was fired once or twice during my tenure. This was at a Toys R Us.
I had an old boss that would come up to crazy customers and say “Why are you yelling at my employees??? That’s my job!!! That’s what I get paid to do! Here you have to yell at *me* so I can yell at them. Sheesh, trying to take my job away.” And honestly 10/10 boss man would have him again
I got to do this once and seeing the look on my associates eyes when he realized he wasn’t getting in trouble was funny as fuck.
“I hope you have your cell phone with you, that lady was pissed. We’re not going out there until she leaves.”
Worked in front office too and had idiots asking for my name to complain to the “manager”. I would just give them the company email and everyone including the GM would laugh at the email when it came.
If they directly asked for the manager I would just say they were not there even if the GM himself was working in the room 10 meters behind.
this makes the complainer feel validated. why is this better than the boss backing you up IN PUBLIC
I mean, yeah, this is nice for bosses to do in the moment, but this does reinforce the customer’s behavior so they get a power trip and continue to pull this when they come back or in other places. I think the culture of “customer is always right” is what really emboldened and accelerated this behavior in the first place. We have to come up with better solutions than this, but I imagine what those are will vary by region and type of service. Ugh.
Used to work security at a mall and one day while working, some guy left his iPad in a seating area at a certain time. He came pissed off to the security office to ask if he could look through the cameras, which is against policy, so he can see where his ipad was lost. I plainly said no I can’t let anyone other than police and contractors inside the office. He got so pissed off and started going off on me and said he demands to check the cameras. Again it was a no. He left pissed off cursing and screaming racist things at me. A few days later I get called up to the mall managers office for a meeting and there was my supervisor, the director of security for the mall and the mall manager as well. First thing they asked me was about the incident which I said everything that happened. Mall manager then told me that the guy I spoke to is part owner of the company owns runs the mall. I didn’t get in trouble or fired like the guy wanted since I was doing my job and all he wanted was to take out his frustrations on someone. They let me get back to work. My supervisor then asked me what would’ve happened if he introduced himself and I just replied that I would’ve called him to verify the information but since he didn’t do anything and expected to just waltz right in I didn’t allow him to do so.
As “nice” as this sounds, I’d rather have my manager have my back, publicly
Better still is for the manager to stand up to the customer, in front of the employee.
This way, the customer will feel rightfully humiliated and will be disinclined to act that way in future.
That manager is friggin huge
Now the complaining lady feels validated and will continue her behavior on other employees here and elsewhere.
Annoying Customer: *Have you got any of these?*
Me: *No I’m afraid not, we’rd awaiting a delivery so maybe later or tomorrow.*
AC: *Well, can you just check in the back for me…?*
Me who’s already worked all the backstock: *Okay, give me a few minutes…*
Also me: Sits down and makes a brew.
I used to work in the back office of an advising center at the college I was attending. For a year or so there was another student worker that I got along with really well. Whenever there was an uppity student/parent (parents you shouldn’t be calling for your kid by the time they’re in college in most cases) we would just transfer the call to one another and 99% of the time the person transfer gave the illusion that they were talking to someone higher up that giving the same answer again dealt with the issue. People are dumb.
A long time ago I had a part time security gig at a private University. They heavily pandered to donors, VIP’s, socialites more than I would like, but nothing I could do about that of course.
One time I refused a completely unreasonable request from a donor and they complained to my boss about it. He called me into the office, apologized to the lady, then told me I wasn’t going to come to work the next day. The lady left satisfied I was punished even though she didn’t get her way.
After a few seconds he said, “Glad she doesn’t know you don’t work tomorrow anyways,” and we all went back to what we were doing.
Story time. I was working as a cashier at cvs. A woman had returned a set of velcro tennis ball paddle things that you would use at a beach. She had bought them in another CVS and another state and return them at mine. Apparently the sales tax was higher in the other state where she purchased them, so when she returned them at my store, it came to $0.05 less than what he was expecting.
So she asked me for the five cents. I said the system refunds based off the current sales tax and I would have to ask my manager for the difference. So I called my manager up and he brings me upstairs to the office so he can “discuss this with corporate.”
He takes 5 cents out of his pocket and puts it on the table. He tells me “I bet you a coke I can get this woman to waste 15 minutes of her life waiting for this nickel. I said there’s no way on Earth anyone would spend 15 minutes waiting for such a small amount of money. 15 minutes went by and sure enough she stayed there for the entire time getting angrier and angrier by the minute waiting for her shiny, shiny nickel.
It taught me a lot about prioritizing the thimgs I value in my life.
As a manager, it is better to stick up for your employees if the customer is in the wrong.
I once had a customer who belittled one of my employees. As the manager I told her to go wait by my office and will talk to her in a minute. I handled the customer and asked her to leave. When I got to my office the girl was in tears. I told her she did nothing wrong and the woman was a total bitch. Go picked a snack or drink from the shelf and I’ll code it out for you. You’re in no trouble. Fuck that bitch
Literally my entire department; my manager and I once sat together in the break room and played Pokemon Go while the crazy waited outside for like 30 minutes. She was still out there when I came back for my shift just so she can tell me “you’re lucky I’m a nice person. Next time, do better!”
And all I did was tell her she couldn’t use her Amazon store card as a credit card at our theater.
I mean…I want to like this. But I’d much rather not give them the satisfaction. I’ll back you up and still give you a break if you need it.
I had a lady eat a whole two pizzas. Come up. Tell my coworker that they were cold and bad and wanted a refund. I went up. They reiterate the same thing to me. I say “okay, can I see the pizzas?” “Oh, we ate them.” “Well if they were good enough to eat then they were good enough to be paid for. Have a great night.” She wanted me to go outside and “talk” to her husband after that. I let her and her demon spawns know that I won’t be stepping outside at all, but he can come inside and voice his opinions
It means so much when your manager listens to you and protect you from crazy persons.
Did retail management for over 30 years. Only twice did I have to have the ‘talk’ with the employee. The rest would sit and watch TV or chat with me in the breakroom for an appropriate amount of time.
I used to work in a kitchen. We had this lady who would come in every weekend and order the soup of the day. No matter what, she would send it back with some juvenile issue. The head chef would apologise profusely, pretend to chew out a random cook, bustle back into the kitchen then put it in the fridge. Once it was lukewarm, he would nuke it in the microwave, scoop the skin off then send it straight back. ‘THAT’S better,’ she would say with this smug little snear.
Sidenote: she called minestrone ‘mine-strone’…
Except the asshole is now empowered here and will definitely return, worse than before. Back up your employees against crazy.
All this shows me is a customer who just learned that being abusive to retail workers gets her (even just in her brain) exactly what she wants, so she’s just gonna abuse the next one.
If she was in the wrong, say so to her, not hidden in the back room.
My supervisor did this once… Except he actually chastised me… For fucking nothing. And he knew I didn’t do shit.. But he was just like “look, I told her I would talk to you about it.. So I’m doing that.”
Dude was a few wires short of a simple circuit board.
We had a history master (teacher), ex-military, who had a formidable reputation for the severity of his punishments. I’d done something alleged awful in one of his classes, and he ordered me into his office at the back of the classroom. Oops!
“Right, Centzon,” he bellowed… then sotto voce… “When I bang this desk, you let out a cry of pain, OK?”
Bang. Owww. *Bang*. *squeal*. BANG!. SQUEAL!
And before I left… “this is between you and me, understood!”
I hobbled back into class in pin-drop silence, 30 faces looking back at me contorted in horror.
I never let on, and let the charade stand. I’d learnt something very important that day: that the presentation of authority is *almost* as good as the application of it.