Retail workers, is it me or are customers becoming more aggressive and abusive lately?

[Kickinthenostalgia]

Anyone in retail had an influx of customers being absolute bellends recently. I don’t know if customers are getting worse or my tolerance for bullshit is at an all time low but I know many of my retail worker friends feel the same way. Mostly men, coming in making female cashiers cry and feeling proud of themselves. I’m not usually on the till anymore, but I’m fairly high in the store and have walked past about 8 men being unnecessarily aggressive. I’ve had to step in because I basically have no emotion so they can talk to me how they want and they won’t get what they want. One guy even threw something at one of my staff. I’ve worked in retail for 19 years and it’s 100% got worse. I’ve always said to the girls , try not to cry in front of them because then they know they’ve won, if you wanna scream out the back go for it.

I haven't seen any increase in that sort of behaviour but I tend to stick to Tesco at 7am, and Saturday high street shopping trips at 9.30am, before the angry weirdos have slept off last night's hangover/joint.

I deal with the public on the phone and the number of people who get annoyed with me because they have dialled completely the wrong company, is ridiculous. Or people who say "well, can't you put me through". Err, no because you're looking for a completely different company and I'm not Directory Enquiries. 🙄

Many jobs today with contact to people on a daily basis are characterized by unhiged people.
NHS and education are the same sh*tshow.

I think you can see a general shift on here when people say that they would ‘go ballistic’ at school staff or in A and E and often over relatively trivial things. Seems to be the default, initial reaction for many people. Depressing!