Why do people feel the need to be so rude?

[username678889]

Mainly to retail / customer facing .
My dd is at uni but has a weekend job at Macdonalds . She quite often comes home to say rude staff she usually works on the drive through.
It's usually no big deal comments and she laughs them off such as sarky comments about it's supposed to be fast food if they have had to wait 30 seconds for food .
Last week some woman scowled at her my dd said was perfectly pleasant and gave her change the woman said a bit of personality wouldn't go amiss and drove off .
This morning she came home from night shift in tears to say she wants to quit wouldn't say what happened just had enough of customers shouting for various reasons waiting / ran out of McFlurrys/ stop serving breakfast crap reasons like that .
What is wrong with people that they think they buy a bloody Big Mac meal and can shout at a young girl ffs .

YABU for describing her as a "young girl". Last time I checked McDonald's wouldn't employ anyone younger than 16. 6 is a "young girl" not 16.

Another one of those times where MN is completely at odds with what actually happens out there in the real world.

I couldn't work in retail. Having to try to be nice to total cunts for 8 hours or so a day. The very thought is enough to bring me out in hives.

I have worked in retail but never had any rude customers, so I think it must be certain types of shops. I think your daughter should try Next, Waitrose M&S perhaps?

What makes it worse is the 'customer is always right' policy of many companies. It's awful being verbally abused by a customer over a minor thing only to be undermined by management who don't want to upset the customer.

You have to be a pretty pathetic specimen of a human being to take out your anger/issues on an innocent member of staff.

When I worked in customer service I would just be icily polite and let my eyes show them the contempt those scum deserve.

Boyskeepswinging Maybe so but
a) I think everyone understood that it isn’t a 6 year old working at McDonalds
b) The way you phrased it- saying YABU (about something the OP hadn’t actually asked about) and saying “Last time I checked...” was a bit smarmy.
c) Remenber the old adage- if you can’t say anything kind, don’t say anything at all. Did you really need to point it out?

Anyway, I’m in danger of doing it myself now so I’ll stop, it was just ironic on this thread topic!

'Young girl' in my area would definitely be used to mean someone around 16-18. A 6 year old would be referred to as a little girl.

I think some of the pedants on here need to learn about colloquialism.

Plenty of people are just arsewipes. Their behaviour says far more about them than it does about your DD.

My DD works in Costa, which is part of our local Tesco. They get some know-it-all dickheads too, though maybe fewer than at a late night drive through MacDonalds because Costa just isn't open when the real drunks are about. She has still been called stupid whilst learning to use the coffee machine and other equipment etc. The other day another member of staff got criticised by a customer whilst waiting for the milk frother to cool slightly to the right temperature for serving. This is to minimise the possibility of customers burning their mouths but this particular arsewipe didn't care about that. When the staff member apologised for the (very short) wait the reply was "the customer is always right!!". So basically he would rather have burned his mouth than just let the barista do her job.

My DD finds that the friendly and supportive staff team members really make all the difference. They support each other a lot when that sort of shit happens. I would hope that MacDonalds staff would too, but on the drive through windows they often seem to be on their own.

I can see why she might want to look for something better and quit.

OK sorry if I sounded smarmy. Wasn't meant. I put the "last time I checked in" because there's a huge variation in the minimum age for employers and McDonald's are really strict about being 16.

People are self satisfying creatures where being rude makes them feel slightly more superior. Humans have wanted to be superior to another since the beginning of time.

Mammajay
Not necessarily. I work in a one 2one customer facing retail job selling expensive items, have to have a lot of product knowledge, I have a diploma in this, and I still get customers who come in being rude and trying to tell me my job, whilst I have so many great, funny, lovely customers, there's still some who think just because you work in a shop it's acceptable to talk down to you

Morgan12

You realise you’re one of those arseholes as you’re complaining about op’s spelling!

Op, I was a waitress for a short time while at uni. The amount of abuse I received was ridiculous. God help me if something had run out! Actually had a drink thrown at me once!

Perhaps I should of said young woman rather than young girl , I didn't realise it would rattle anyone .
Thanks for all your replies but one or 2 of you did miss the point of the thread but I suppose it's to be expected on Aibu .

Well she wouldn't gave been working there if she was under 16 ffs, it's obvious op didn't mean a little girl as her dd is at uni

But surely a "young girl" is primary school aged or younger?

I would call that a little girl. Ime young girl is a perfectly serviceable phrase for a teenager. I suppose you could say young woman but that sounds headmistress-like for anyone under 20 to my ears.

16 is still very inexperienced in the adult world though legal to work. There are an awful lot of jobs they wouldn’t be able/allowed to do for a fair few years. Besides it doesn’t take away from the fact no-one should have to deal with a load of abuse over burgers and fries. It’s not a high bar for society to aim for.

@Boyskeepswinging I understand 😊 I didn’t meant to specifically get at you.

To share a story on the thread topic; I don’t/haven’t worked in retail but I had to scrape my jaw off the floor a couple of weeks ago in Primark when a customer (probably late teens or early 20s) and her boyfriend walked up to a till and had the following exchange:

Customer: Can I return this? [holding a small item- maybe a packet of socks]
Worker: Yes, you can do returns and exchanges at the customer services desk up on the next floor.
Customer: Can you not just do it here?
Worker: No, sorry.
Customer: Yes you can, just do it.
Worker: Sorry no, we don’t do returns at the tills, you need to go to customer services.
Customer: They do returns at the tills at X location [another Primark].
Worker: Yes, the till staff there have recently been trained to do returns but we haven’t here.
Customer: They’ve been doing it for two years.
Worker: Ok. We don’t do returns at the till here. You’ll have to go to customer services. One floor up.
Customer: [Sighing dramatically] Just do it.
Worker: [Shrugging and half-smiling apologetically].
Customer: [Finally walking away]: You’re shit, you’re absolute bullshit. You’re shit.
Her boyfriend: [Silent throughout the whole thing and just walking off following her].

Everyone else in queue:

People are largely dicks. As a student I worked in a book shop. I’ve worked as a flight attendant and as a library advisor in an academic library. The latter wasn’t so bad but a fair few students and academic staff are still rude.

I read the Reddit forums about rude customers and often customers try to insist that off duty staff in other establishments or former customer service staff serve them. There’s a weird idea amongst some that once a customer facing employee, always a customer facing employee!

Never mind that that worker finishes their shift / leaves the job, goes into a restaurant / bank / airport and becomes a customer themselves!

I work in school admin although I have a degree from a top university. A mother who is a lawyer recently was making outrageous demands and said to me 'Look, I realise when you are a school secretary you might have difficulty following a logical argument but.....'

Had a Saturday job as a teen where the customers were regularly rude, was good training for later in life when working as an A&E Dr... where the customers just as rude but a bit more violent.

I worked as a waitress for a year after uni. Some crazy unreasonable demands. We had once ran out of a particular kind of wine and a customer was insisting we drove to a shop on the other side of the city to buy it so she could have it with her meal 😂😂 another guy came into a cafe I was working in, sat down and literally yelled ‘can I get served now’. I refused to serve him - he was a regular customer and seemed to think this gave him special permission to be super demanding. Just tell her to laugh it off and kill them with kindness, give them a big fake smile. Good colleagues make it easier since you can just bitch about the bad customers you’ve had and laugh about it

When I was cabin crew, I had a customer tell her daughter that if she didn’t do well at school she would end up as a flying waitress clearing in rubbish! I gave her a big smile and said “oh actually it’s a great job, I have a degree and get to travel the world for free, we stay in such lovely hotels and I deal with delightful passengers.”

She actually wrote in to complain!

You can tell by all the arsey responses AIBU gets, that at least 30% of all people are major dicks. This is why the more prestigious a job is, the less customer facing it is. No one wants to deal with dickheads.

Some people are arseholes, like the ones on this threat criticising a spelling mistake. They don't have anything better to do.

I think it's time those in retail are given permission to refuse to serve rude customers or politely call them on their attitudes.

There's been a definite change in behaviour in the UK. Anger seems to be simmering just below the surface everywhere. You see it in shops, bars, restaurants and especially on the road. We live in mainland Europe, it's very noticeable when we come 'home' to England.

MagicErmintrude

I noticed this when I came back from Denmark as well. A lot of angry people around in the UK and a lot of road rage. Maybe it has something to do with austerity or Brexit, but I can't be certain.