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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.
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
It might be valid, but not very moral.
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.
See, what you gotta do is threaten them with absurdity.
Don't say "I'm never coming back". Instead, walk across the street to the bus stop. Wait for them to come out to their car. Memorize it.
Now come back to the parking lot every day for a week. Wait for them to leave their car, and go inside. Once they're inside, you walk over to their car, and write down their liscense plate number.
Now go home, and use public records to do a search to find their name and address.
Now go back to the store, and take a picture of them with your cell phone.
Now, sit across the street from a police department, and watch for a cop arriving to work. Take note of his liscense plate, and search his name/address.
Now write a letter to the clerk, threatening to wait outside his work with a giraffe. Tell him "Giraffes have 15 inch tongues, thick as a beer can. I've trained this one to stick their tongues into your butthole, and grab your waist with their teeth. You'll be 19 feet in the air, getting tongue fucked by a giraffe. If you try to escape, you fall. See ya at Costco, Gary!"
And you use the cops name/address as the return address. Now if he tries to go to the cops, they'll protect their own, and find something to arrest him with.
Checkmate, Gary!
Username checks out, I guess?
I don't understand. Why doesn't the Giraffe, the larger of the mammals, merely out-think the other ones?
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&T
Number 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.
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.
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.
An interaction I had when I was in my final days of my fast food "career":
Karen: "The service here is terrible I'm NEVER eating here again if you don't fix this RIGHT NOW"
Me (actually said to them): "Oh no, please don't, the giant multinational corporation with billions in revenue that is [Big burger fast food joint] will notice and cry"
Karen: "I..yea...well!" Storms off
On the other hand, I did just tell a bunch of local places I will no longer be a customer because they advertise on PublicSquare.
So I guess I'm those people now.
What's PublicSquare?
A list of MAGA affiliated business. Created by them. Which the businesses sign up to voluntarily.
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.
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.
"Sir/mam, this is a Walmart. Your loss of business is literally a rounding error in pur profits."
"...Also all the other local stores were run out of business so there's no where else to shop."
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
I’ll admit it; I want to say things like those customers in the comic. Sometimes I do. But I also understand and appreciate that the person I’m talking to both doesn’t care, and can’t do anything about it. So when possible, I try to take some marriage advice I saw somewhere online:
Never say the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t even say the second thing. Say the third thing.
This works really well in emails or online forums, where you can revise many times until you hit send or post.
And for anybody who has read any of my past replies and feel inclined to point out that I still say stupid shit: just know that those stupid shit were the third things that came to mind. 😊
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.
My absolute favorite response to these types of people is "can I get that in writing?"
The thing is, either workers are powerless to change things, or just don’t care enough to be bothered by that threat.
Which is why I usually just smile and lodge formal complaints with the company as well as any regulatory body if the situation calls for it. Much more effective when it’s an actual punishment rather than an empty threat. I’ve gotten companies actual fines that way.
"And I'm not paid enough TO care."
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 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.
Surgery that I have been on a waiting list for for 7 years, surgery hat I have bad scheduled months ago that I have done everything for months ago, that's now in a week and all of that is now under threat of being postponed many more months because you can't fucking ring a phone number? Because you can't be arsed and you'll "let me know if there's anything further" in 15-30 working days? And you, despite working this job, can't possibly know how long it usually even takes? Literally refuse to even give an estimate?
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. They already mooch off my taxes, the least they can do is get out of the fucking way.
Me, a driving instructor: "If you don't want to learn, there's the door. No. No need to slow down or stop, I have my own brake pedal here, thank you"
This is the natural consequence of a business that is not worker owned.
even worker owned, don't cater to those who disrespect you.
all relationships are built on mutual trust. if someone breaks the trust before you have even begun then you simply cannot afford to have them as a customer.
I’ve definitely boycotted companies, but try to make sure my reasoning is sent as high as it can, and even then try to direct it to the company itself rather than whoever I have on the phone.
I've stopped going to businesses for various reasons over the years but I've never annouced the reason(s). I just stop going because I don't care about it enough. I'm not a feedback kind of guy.
Sales are in the shitter, I'm afraid we're gonna have to let you go.
I don't care.