Rude customers!!

[skimask]

I'm just wondering if any of you have ever been unnecessarily rude to a staff member in a shop or if you've intentionally loudly complained about a price or if you've been the staff member in a situation like that?

I work at a charity shop as an assistant manager and the amount of rude customers we have/customers asking for money off/people saying we're a rip off is crazy!!

Also people coming in 5mins before close and then ignoring us when we say we're closing, is my town just full of rude people or are there people everyone that are so ignorant and rude!!!!!

Rant over lmao

I am always polite to people unless they are rude to me.I have worked in Customer Service so I know how appalling people can be , but even if I am complaining I try to be nice about it, because its 99.9% not the fault of the person I am speaking to.
Things that irritate me as a Customer are being ignored whilst the Assistants chat among themselves. Not being acknowledged when I have put my shopping through and then looking bored whilst I am trying to pack my bags as if "hurry up" ( I have a disability and can't pack quick), and the worst was when I was in an upmarket shop buying something and an assistant followed me round like I was some kind of shoplifter with a very "sarky" Can I HELP you?. Don't assume because I dress like a scruff that I wasn't buying anything.

@Sunshinecake sounds like an attitude to me. I'm sure there was a reason why someone else was asked to serve you. You may not know what it was but it wouldnt have just been an I cant be assed to serve this person.

It wasn't a snarky comment. I was calm. This thread is not about me. I've worked in shops. I just expect the kind of service I gave and making out it was a nuisance to serve me didn't go down well.

I could see what she was doing. She was half a metre from the till. The one who served me was the other Side of the shop.

The customer who wanted a particular brand of champagne that was buried under boxes in the back, despite there being 20 alternatives on the shelf? I used to dig out the one he wanted and give it a violent shake in the stock room before handing it to him with a smile on my face

Agree with pp that’s pretty shitty service, so next time this customer is bound to give agro just because an assistant didn’t want to give good service and get the stock they wanted that was available in the back. If it was there in the back, why wast stick out to be sold? Or why make an issue if someone was wanting it?

15 years in customer service .....I’ve seen so much it has changed me as a person. Not in a good way because you have to become hardened to having things thrown at you, being insulted, sneered at, having punches thrown at you.....especially when at the end of it all, despite following company policy, some chinless wonder of a manager comes up and undermines everything you have just (because of policy& training) told a customer & says the dreaded words “give them a cash refund “ right.... SO....no receipt, item used but full refund because you are too scared to say NO or, EVEN WORSE security are on the phone to you saying that person at customer service menacingly DEMANDING a refund have just walked in empty handed and grabbed the item off the shelf, opened it and then come to customer service demanding a refund but managers were too witless to refuse.
The customer is definately NOT always right. People are twats.
I hate people.

Worked in customer service in my late teens and early twenties. Well over a decade later and some of the encounters with rude people still make me angry. Its genuinely given me a life-long dislike of other people and I strongly believe that everyone should have to work at least six months of their lives behind a till.

I work at McDonald's and the abuse we get on a daily basis is ridiculous.

Things thrown at us if we happen to make the slightest mistake, screamed at and threatened if they wait longer than they think they should, called every name under the sun and bitched at if they're having a bad day just because we 'only work at McDonald's'

It's sad, pathetic and oh so tiring

My job would be lovely if it wasn’t for the customers.

I was shouted at today by a customer who had had a service carried out on an item provided by our shop, she used said item and broke it (common problem with the product and you’d expect it with this particular use) then wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to. She shouted in my face and called me useless.

That’s not a typical day, but we get a lot of complainers because the service we provide is expensive but essential for a lot of people so they try and get it free/discounted. I make a point of being polite in shops and especially when things go wrong. I’d hate to think that I’d made someone feel as bad as I feel some days.

People can be awful.

I try to always be fair but I've had my share of rude shop assistants over the years. Not in charity shops I might add! When spending larger amounts of money to be met by rude sales staff is the difference between a sale and me leaving (the worst was dfs but John Lewis wasn't far behind)

I once had a man call me fat (when I was 7 months pregnant) because he didn't understand how something worked and I was explaining it to him but he was in such a rush he didn't want to hear it. He said "pregnant women shouldn't work". Then walked away saying "fatty".
Made me cry although was probably the hormones! Regret letting that man get to me! I can't imagine being unnecessarily rude to anyone working in CS.

I also had a customer once comment on my lip piercing. While I was serving they insisted on telling me how much I was scarring my face by having it. I said a couple of times that I was okay, thank you, but they kept on about it.

Like working behind a till gave them the right to comment on my appearance. Fine, if I'm not dressed smartly ore nor wearing uniform when I should be, but my piercing didn't contravene any store rules and it wasn't hurting this man nor preventing me from carrying out my responsibilities.

I was a pharmacy manager and a patient collected his medication on alternate months. On this particular day he had come to collect his prescription and it wasnt in the pharmacy so he asked to speak to the manager....i was new to the role and hadn't met this patient before..well he tore a strip off me in front of other customers and staff, feeling embarressed at what I thought was our fault, I could feel myself going red in the face.....im really not that good with confrontation!...., he took great joy in waving his finger in my face and yelling 'I can see your embarrassed and quite frankly you deserve it' I did the whole yes sir no sir 3 bags full sir and promised to sort out his prescription asap....when he left and i'd calmed down I realised he'd come in on the wrong month! ....he was always a complete and utter twat.

My first job was in a shop, then admin in a hospital which was sometimes patient facing... I try my best to be pleasant and polite!

I have occasionally had to change my tone to firm on the rare occasions I've had cause to complain. I remember a pair of M&S trainers that my 5yo had worn through in one day. I did have to emphisise that they weren't fit for purpose to sustain that level of damage so quickly. The assistant was clearly dubious that the trainers were in that state within 48 hours of their reciept, and I did point out that the level of cleanliness and lack of other wear of the soles and uppers proved that they were new, but they really shouldn't have been worn through completely in less than 6 hours of holiday club. I'm guessing that she was assuming that I was trying to get a refund on an old pair. I did remember my manners though!

The one time my patience was very sorely tried was when an online account was hacked and defrauded and my email address changed. Customer services were utterly useless because I couldn't give them a valid email address to access the account, and they could not deviate from their script or suggest any higher level or alternative department to deal with a defrauded customer I eventally managed to find an email address and get it resolved. It took a lot of deep breathing in order not to start swearing or ranting. It was so frustrating that they appeared to have no system to deal with their customers who had become victims of crime and seemed utterly indifferent to my plight.

Some of the most obnoxious have been though Guiding/ Scouting. We are not paid. We give up our time and family life to enrich your child's opportunities. There have been some very unpleasant parents over the years... yet strangely they remain determined to keep their offspring in our feckless care

I’ve only ever been rude to a GPs receptionist (totally deserved) and a doctor who was also very patronising and horrible to me and lost all my notes

When I was cabin crew, if people were really unpleasant, I would shake their cans of soft drinks / beer in the galley before handing it to them!

That’s rather tough on the people sitting next to them who are at risk of getting spattered.

I'm polite as a customer in shops as I've always worked customer service/retail jobs. I now own a shop with my DP in a male dominated industry and no-one ever assumes I'm the co-owner. I've had a few amusing incidents where someone has threatened to go to my boss over something ridiculous like I've refused to buy their counterfit goods or kicked them out as I've caught them trying to shoplift. Or they've announced they know 'John' who owns the store really well and he would agree to give 'x' ridiculous discount. Ok if you knew him that well, you'd probably know I've been in a relationship with him for the last decade and he absolutely wouldn't!

Reading about the customers who come in at closing time reminded me of working on a railway station in a paper shop and one morning when I was putting the papers out before we opened. I started at 5 and we opened at 6, so I had an hour to collect the papers and put them in the right places and then open the shop, it was quite a walk to collect the papers and we had to do things like fill the coffee machine, so while do able, it was tight. One morning while doing the papers which were right by the door, someone tried to open the door. I said, as I had before, that we opened at 6, and it was half 5.
"But the lights are on! That means you're open!"
"We're not open until 6, I can't serve you before then, sorry"
"Well you've no business having the lights on if you're not open!"
🤔 Just blunder about in the dark then shall I getting the shop ready?!
Sometimes a particular paper would be held for a headline, or something would happen and make the whole delivery late. Some people seemed to be under the impression that I'd personally arranged this to piss them off. I was called a cunt, a bitch, a useless bastard, an idiot..... All because someone couldn't buy their paper on their way to work because of circumstances beyond my control. And these were 'professionals', suited and booted working in offices.
I hated it, some people's aim seemed to be to humiliate someone they viewed as beneath them just for kicks.
I'm a bit tougher these days and have a bit of a rep. I work in a wedding venue and I'm often called to deal with drunk idiots being arseholes. I do not take any shit, zero tolerance. If someone has a point, I can overlook frustration to try and resolve it, but get personal and I shut the conversation down there and then and walk away. I'm lucky, my manager and owner backs us up. A few months ago despite my thick skin, someone humiliated me for no reason whatsoever, they literally took the piss out of my appearance, how I spoke etc, knowing I could hear, and still expected me to serve them. I admit that it had me in tears after the fact, but my managers had my back. More managers need to show they don't accept it, I think it's a bigger problem where it's obvious the staff aren't valued by the company, so the customers follow suit.

14 years in retail and iv had it all. From it being my fault its out of stock I should go get it(the item was being shipped and expected in 2 weeks so was somewhere at sea) to how I have deliberately took the item out and fiddled with it to make it not work. Recently in my current job we have to issue them with parking tickets and when one they saw me print then hand to them did not work they came and told me it says it has been used. I pointed out that they saw me print it so they accused me of lying. Clearly they thought I stopped time ran to the machine used the ticket ran back and gave it to them for kicks.

11 years in contact centres
2 years in retail
8 years in pubs and restaurants

I prefer cats to most humans now

YesQueen I think you've done your "time" but in this instance perhaps society should pay it back to you as it were;)

@Justaboy I forgot 18 months as a carer
😭😭😭😭😭

i’ve recently left retail after 11 years. one of the worst happenings was when a serial dodgy refunded spat in my face when i (under the store manager instructions) refused to refund any more items without a receipt.

Worked in Retail, kids from three schools came in and were incredibly rude and no idea of boundaries. The third school were fine had no problem with them and they didn't have as much time at lunch time to come down to us and get back so we only saw them at the end of the day. Suffice to say I ended up having a Nervous breakdown as we couldn't react to their attitude, their were other reasons for said breakdown but this was the last straw for me. . We also had folk coming in as we were closing but I could cope with that.

Rainbowbearts don't worry I would never be rude to someone in the retail and Hospitality industry as I have done both and it's not easy is it? . There was a member of staff in a show shop I went into and she was at the end of her tether as I was another potential customers on her ready long list
I told her to take her time and I would let her know when I was ready. She was so relieved she nearly hugged me.

SunshineCake is the kind of customer this thread is about...