To ask if you're in a job where you get a lot of 'shit'...

[bordellosboheme]

And how you deal with it. A colleague today (after sending me a shitty email herself) actually said to me she sometimes feels sorry for me because my role (or something intrinsic about me I dunno) means I am in a place where I get a lot of shit from colleagues. I'm not their direct line manager, but my role often involves leading a series of enhancements and changes.

My question is is it normal these days to be in a job were people publically give you shit from time to time or is it something about my role or performance I need to change?

I’ve worked in retail all my life, the amount of people who get extremely rude and abusive is absurd. It seems like some people go shopping just to pick fights with the staff.

Then I went to work in a pharmacy and Lord! You’ve never heard rudeness until you’ve had a customer yell at you because the doctor either didn’t do something or didn’t do it right.

There is a massive cultural issue in this country, where people appear to have forgotten how to use basic skills: manners, realism of expectations, patience etc. It results in quite a lot of people getting quite a lot of shit.

Absolutely agree, lots of people have totally unrealistic expectations, and are actively encouraged to complain and not to back down until they get what they want. They also think that they are the only person in the world and they therefore becomes before anyone else.

Try adding alcohol to the mix of shit you get from the general public in a job, to coin a phrase "such fun". Not. 😂
I've been puked on, called every name you can ever think of, sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, threatened, dragged across the bar by my collar.....
I love my job 😉

I get shit in my role too. I’m not a doctor but work with them everyday. Most of them are entitled rude arseholes who think they have a right to be as rude as they like. Honestly I don’t get it! Just because they’re doctors! It’s like they haven’t thought about the fact that lots of us could have chosen to do medicine and more than match their intellect, but chose a different path. Idiots.

I'm a Prison Officer.

I get both literal and metaphorical shit...lucky me!

to all. Why is this so widespread? I work in professional services and increasingly get the impression that clients feel they can talk to you how they want because they're paying for your time. It goes beyond just being demanding (which I expect, to a certain extent) to plain rudeness.

Probation Officer here 👍. Lots of shit and abuse. Apparently it's all my fault they're doing community service/on a tag/been to prison. Not the whole committing crimes and generally being an idiot aspect 😄 I have 50ish offenders on my caseload and I love 'em all. I have a great job. But yeah, lots of shit 😄

People generally dislike change OP

I am a social worker, I now manage a team in adult services. I get shit from clients, their families, other professions, the workers I line manage and managers above me.

I have been a SW for 16 years in total, the past 4 as a manager and I think The shit I get from staff I manage is the hardest to deal with- there is loads of it. And I am told I am a very good manager, so the reason they give me shot is because they feel comfortable to do so. Makes no sense to me
I can also be literally covered in shit- although not quite so often i will support with toileting people if I have to when I’m visiting a client. I had a drug user vomit on my shoe last week- that was fun 🤣

Local Government here, so many “I pay your wage......”

I think a lot of the reason people give shit is because they take it. Because they spend all day at work counting to ten and staying professional in the face of all the crap everyone has described. and then they get home and have to call the bank or whatever, and if the bank staff person is even slightly shitty they think, no, not this time- I don’t have to smile and take crap from you, I’m going to tell you exactly why you’ve failed.

I work with the general public in retail. You see a whole other side to human nature, especially if they think they can save a few pennies by being difficult. Sometimes I just look at them and think "really?"

Normal in my place of work/job. I get shit because I can't do a 3-day job in one day. I get shit because I can't do a job because I have already had shit about another job so have to prioritise that one. Get "I don't want to have to go to XXX" so many times..... yeah go ahead, they were the ones who told me to drop all other work to do this job. Then I get shit when the work is done and they don't like what it tells them

But yes, all the shit and no glory.
I am quite senior and end up having to sort out a lot of problems (which to me are petty but to others are not) or are just general gripes that I cannot actually do much about but listen and empathise

I work in HR, these two PP pretty much sum it up. I spend quite a lot of time trying to get grown adults to talk to other grown adults and sort out their petty squabbles between them, rather than running to mummy to tell tales. The amount of times you see on mn 'tell HR' about something trivial (that if you were anywhere but work you would have to speak to the person directly and sort out yourself) is astounding.

Absolutely come to speak to us about genuine issues, bullying, harassment, concerns about changes to your role or problems with your line manager etc but frankly Sandra I don't give a shit if Jane wants you to give her a lift to work in the morning and you don't want to give her a lift, just say no.....

I would agree with other posters that there is a real issue with rudeness in this country. I do not know if this is a recent trend, but I have certainly noticed it more over the past few years.

It is not the case that people are generally more direct than they used to be, it is more the fact that there is a genuine rudeness and nastiness. It is not just in the workplace, I was just exiting a supermarket when I heard someone saying she would 'poke your eyes out if you look at me like that!' It took me several minutes to realise the woman in question was talking about me (I cannot even remember looking at her). Someone shouted 'Piss off!' to my son as they passed his bike in a car. Again, there was no reason.

I cannot explain it, but yes, there are a lot of just plain nastiness about.

Currently work in a department store coffee shop (similar to John Lewis) and I get so much shit. A lady once shouted at me and threw her panini at me... I’m handing in my notice today!

Senior manager / consultant in Social care....yep permanently

We get blamed for everything from someone s socks being too right to a carer closing a door too loudly ( that was this week alone) and when I worked in addicition I was constantly being accuse did making people use drugs.....

We get it from family , ombudsmen ( we had someone measure a specific bolt on a cabinet yesterday ....no it wasn't health and safety and argue with the difference between 2 numbers on a volume dial)

It's driving people out of the industry because we have just become everyone's whipping people. I am lucky as I am at a point in my career that I only get escalated the serious stuff or the ombudsmen stuff.

The poor carers get spoken to disgustingly by some family members and we recently had to raise it with an official body because someone told every carer she could get them fired by making things up to the council and had complete power over them. Three of them cried. It makes me really angry.

I'm a lawyer. People talk to me like utter shit . They scream and cry and stand in reception until I go down and deal with them.

I've been called a cunt a bitch, been accused of causing a miscarriage because I didn't work fast enough.

I trained to do this for years. When i started people were so much easier. Now my clients are told if you scream at your lawyer you'll go faster. It's absolutely demoralizing.

I work in retail, we deal with it by going into the back office and talking/laughing about the insults and berating etc from the customer.

If you cant laugh about getting called a slag and having product thrown at you, what can you do?

I'm the supervisor so I pretty much only get to speak to horrible people who've decided the person they originally spoke so (with the same info!) Isn't worthy enough.

Yes, another NHS worker here

There's a recurring theme on here about the type of job, care, social work, nursing, retail, hospitality. All pretty low paid (and I do think nursing and social work is low paid for what they do). I can remember a time when at least some of these jobs were respected. They're not now, in fact quite the opposite, there seems to be a culture of 'catching you out' and then getting some form of compensation for that, in all those areas. Some people I deal with don't seem to want good service, they want you to screw up and make a mistake, it's like 'us and them' they come in with the attitude that they're going to find something, anything, and use it to get some compensation or freebie, and take pleasure in humiliating you at the same time.
I think online review sites are part of the reason, while a review could be removed, and they can be replied to, they can only be removed if proven to be untruthful and let's face it - who actually reads the replies? Staff names appear (which I really disagree with) and as long as they've actually been to the place they're reviewing, the whole thing can be greatly embellished, or convenient details left out, or a complete work of fiction. Reading a review you're only getting one side of the story, and it gives people power - 'do what I want or TripAdvisor'. But then if you do read the reviews, you can see the massively differing expectations from person to person, what one person thinks is amazing another thinks is appalling. Society seems to have forgotten that the individual is not the final say on everything, that their opinion isn't the only one that counts. I've had to discount things to one customer who's kicking off when 5 minutes before another customer couldn't praise it highly enough. It's a strange world being customer facing!

I very much agree with the Tripadvisor comments. I regularly read the reviews for where I work and I can completely see from them what is really going on v what the customer thinks is happening and is complaining about. They may not know, for example, that 3 people phoned in sick on the day they came in, that we are therefore horrendously under staffed, we had an unexpectedly extremely busy day, and that everyone is genuinely doing the very best they can in very difficult circumstances.

I work in Higher Education. Constant evaluation by students. Constant scrutiny by management. Lots of colleagues with VERY big egos - similar to the doctors some pps have mentioned I think!

Yes! I don’t ever rise to angry customers and ignore any swearing and say “I apologise for that” or “I understand why you’re not happy” even though it’s never my fault. acknowledging it seems to calm most people down.
It is really hard because you do just want to say what you really think! The negativity can be quite draining sometimes.

Yeah it’s not nice
I had a man threaten to sue once me because I asked him for his medical history ( I’m legally obliged to ask as we could give the wrong meds/ anaesthetic / treatment otherwise ). Some people get offended when I’ve asked about how they’re cleaning their teeth!
I’ve had people refuse to leave the treatment chair. Been sworn at more than once
It’s nasty but what can any of us do?

SAHM with 2 under 2. They both give me plenty of hypothetical shit and actual shit to deal with!

Previously I was a letting agent and I got all sorts of shit like you wouldn't imagine. A tradesman I was dealing with on a repair to one of the properties once said I was just a sponge for everyone's complaints. The best was when a tenant called up to say the light bulb had blown and could I send someone round to sort it out