customer told me I was miserable as sin.

[loserlily]

Feel very pathetic. Working in retail over Christmas during the Uni break.

On my shift, a woman in her 60s comes to the till. I serve her, and she snaps at me "I said I didnt want a bag!". I say sorry, take the bag off her purchase and carry on. After this, I didn't make an conversation with her, like I normally do, because she seems impatient and not wanting to talk.

She then decides she wants the bag, so I pass her it.

She snaps at me "are you having a bad day?" I said no.

She then shouts loudly "well you look as miserable as bloody sin". Grabs her receipt off me and leaves the shop.

I could feel my cheeks burning up, and my lip start doing that stupid wobbling thing. Had to carry on serving the next customer, who heard.

I feel pathetic for getting upset. AIBU to think she treated me like a piece of shit? Or is this an okay thing to say?

Retail is hard! It's ironic that she was incredibly rude to make a point that she thought you were being rude. I worked in retail years ago and still remember the hurtful comments/ abusive behaviour, it does stick with you.

Unfortunately, you cannot control the behaviour of others, I find it's best to be assertive and at times kill with kindness. I would have just smiled and told her to have a nice day, that would have royally pissed her off 😂

Seriously nothing to do with you. She was a mean bitch.
Try adjusting your attitude to assume all ride people had recently suffered a head injury, which affected their personality.
I just then felt sorry for them when they had a go at me, and could smile kindly and sympathetically at them.

@NewtonPulsifer I hate people like that. Talk about 'misery loves company'.

Mods, why did you delete my post? I haven't worked in a shop since 2004.

Lizzie, I had that as well, one client accused me of lying when I told him his solicitor was in a trial. He could not accept that he had other clients besides him.

She was a rude bitch. Sorry you were subjected to it.

I work in a naice gift shop. A couple of weeks ago man in his 70s (I’d say) and his wife were looking at some bracelets in the jewellery cabinet. She tried one on that was too big so I offered up a similar one that you could pinch smaller, saying that it was ‘malleable’.

He said, very poshly, ‘malleable? That’s a very big word for someone like you!’

I laughed and said yes, I’m surprisingly educated, and gave him a Look. But I really really wish I’d done a head tilt and asked what he meant. A woman? A shop assistant?

Anyway he bought both bracelets for his wife in the end so I won that round.

@YippeeKayakOtherBuckets so he was rude and seemingly judgemental. He could have been like that at any age.

And what on earth is this stuff about a Look ? Why would you have needed a head tilt to stand up politely for yourself?

@Ilovesooty that was weirdly snippy. Everything ok?

Working with the general public is often shit, whatever role you are in. Totally have my sympathy, op!

Just stopping by with a reminder of our Talk Guidelines which say we'll remove posts we consider to contain personal attacks, to break the law and/or to be obscene, racist, sexist, disablist, ageist, homophobic or transphobic, once they are brought to our attention.

We've already deleted ten posts from this thread and we'd really appreciate it if people could steer clear of ageist expressions like 'old hag', 'old bat', 'old bint' etc.

Many thanks.

Thank you, Jomumsnet. Thought I was in a parallel universe for a bit where ageist comments were the norm.