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 .

Just catching up with all the posts .
Gosh some have had to deal with not just rudeness but abuse or worse .
Met some friends yesterday and got onto this subject , all had at some point had jobs dealing with customer facing and had some sort of rudeness.
I agree though it's definitely will be a life skill and makes you tougher .
I always say treat people how you expect to be treated back . It's a shame a lot of people don't think that way, it's odd why would you think it's ok to be spoken to like shit .

I've recently got back into this area whilst the dc are very young to bring a bit of money in whilst DH is home in the evenings and it's miserable sometimes. I get talked to like I'm shit on their shoe.

Just recently I said "excuse me please" with a smile on my face when I went to walk past someone. The gap was easily big enough for me to fit through but I still asked. He told me to wait until he'd finished what he was looking for and to go and learn some fucking manners". It's extremely hard to say "ok, sorry about that" when what you really want to say is "I said please, you rude cunt".

It's utterly humiliating sometimes.

I worked in retail while I was a Uni and lost count of the number of times customers behaved like utter cocks to me. I'm friendly, polite and hardworking, and always went out of my way to be good at my job; some people are determined to be pricks and take it out in situations like this because they know there's very little the staff can do to stand up to them without risking their job. It's bullying, nothing more, and now that I'm older I challenge it if ever I see it. Bullies like that tend to back down and scuttle away when they realise the people in the queues behind them are ridiculing them.

I used to let people like that really upset me. It's hard when you're young and and get spoken to like that. Nowadays I just feel pity for idiots who get off on being unpleasant to others. Their life must be pretty sad if that's how they get their kicks.

I worked in retail for 5 years, it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t Maccy D’s either.

I think that a lot of retail companies don’t help their staff however - so if it’s not possible to do a refund in the usual till then there should be very clear signage to say so. Of course a customer is going to be fucked off if they’ve queued for an age to get a refund, which they could have on the normal till in another branch, only to finally be served and be told it’s not possible in this branch.

I used to grind my teeth at shops insisting that they had to get all your full details before doing a refund - I knew from my own experience that that was absolute bollocks. Of course since GDPR they’ve stopped asking for it. Guess they didn’t need it after all...

And equally I would say that they attitude of the vast majority of rill staff is bloody awful. You’re lucky if you get any eye contact at all, often they’re gabbing with their colleague rather than addressing the customer, and as for telling you what the total is - forget about it. Even in John Lewis they’ve gone very downhill. I would have thought if there’s every chance you’re going to be replaced by a machine you’d pull out all the stops to show that actually there is a benefit in having a human being serve you.

Of course none of that is any excuse for rudeness, but in a lot of shops I think it’s 6 of one and half a dozen of the other between rude customers and couldn’t-give-a-shit staff.

I think some people expect too much from retail staff. They are being paid minimum wage. I just expect politeness, being able to do the job and being able to help where needed. Otherwise, scan my goods, I pay, we both say thank you, transaction completed.

In any customer service I have been on, it’s always been “empathise with the customer, go out of your way to help them etc.” I don’t need someone to empathise with me or lay out a red carpet in Waitrose or John Lewis or Lidl.

When I went to the interview for my cabin crew job, one of the competency questions was to tell them about a time I went out of my way to help a customer. I made up a story about driving home a sick customer. As if I would ever drive home a random person after my shift! The interviewers lapped it up. 😂

I wonder what would happen if I asked a random supermarket worker to drive me home?!!

I think some people expect too much from retail staff. They are being paid minimum wage. I just expect politeness, being able to do the job and being able to help where needed. Otherwise, scan my goods, I pay, we both say thank you, transaction completed.

I agree @Basketofkittens, most people don't see you, treat you or would ever regard you as being professional in any service job, because it's low paid and low status. But expect you to behave professionally and expect professional standards. Can't have it both ways.

I wonder what would happen if I asked a random supermarket worker to drive me home?!!

Not exactly a 'random' supermarket worker, but one of the managers, and I didn't ask him.

In the late 80s I was involved in a car accident in my local Tesco's car park as I was about to load up my car after doing a very large shop.

The front of the car was caved in and one of the wheel rims was pushed against the tyre so the car was unable to be driven.

I was pretty shaken up so after he'd let me sit in his office for a while the manager on duty loaded all my shopping into his own car and drove me home.

Definitely going above and beyond the call of duty and, something I suspect, that wouldn't be allowed now.