To think shop workers shouldn’t have to deal with this?

[ItsCalledAConversation]

Overheard in higher-end supermarket this afternoon. A boomer-age woman shopper being helped by a student-age woman shop employee. As you do in supermarkets, we seemed to be taking the same route around the aisles so I overheard their convo a few times.

Employee repeatedly and calmly tried to help shopper: E.g, finding items, comparing prices. Shopper complains loudly, rudely and vociferously about: finding items items in shop. Availability of items on her list. Price of items. Whereabouts of staff. Whereabouts of employee as if she should be by her side throughout and acting as her personal shopping helper.

The poor employee, to her credit, kept her cool throughout this barrage and seemed professional. I was shocked by the level of vitriol and abuse. Her calm demeanour seemed to imply she was used to this kind of treatment. I almost said something (along time lines of “are you ok? You shouldn’t be speaking to her like that” but was with young DS and didn’t want to embroil him in a scene. I felt so so sorry for the employee.

Is there anyone here who acts like this toward people in shops? Is this in any way explainable? Or acceptable? I am shocked.

I work in retail and find that the really unpleasant customers do fall into two very noticeable age categories, of middle aged women and men of retirement age

Deffo concur with the men, but I think it's the yummy mummy bracket (so 35-45) who are the most entitled females.

Although if you do find middle aged women rude, maybe it's because they are fed up of being called a Karen every time they dare to make a complaint. Or just don't have time for bad service. It does work both ways - customer service can be utterly appalling.

By feeling the need to include someone's age in a post unrelated to age you are implying people of that age have a similar trait.

‘Boomer’ is pretty much always used in a derogatory way, let’s be honest. It’s become an ageist shorthand for old, privileged and irrelevant, and is regularly applied to people over the age of 40 as a put down. It expanded beyond being a neutral handle for a specific generation some time ago and not in a good way.

Boomer definitely paints a picture in a way that ‘woman in her late 60s’ (or whatever) doesn’t, and it’s an ageist one.

I worked in a supermarket for years and saw the best and worst of humanity. ( nobody ever shat in the changing rooms though!!)
One particularly nasty woman in a wheelchair always requested help but only from certain staff members. She was extremely rude and abusive. In the end she was spoken to by the manager and told in the future we will not provide an assisted shop and she needs to bring someone with her.
We never saw her again

All - the woman shopper looked to be in her 70s or early 80s

Boomers are currently around age 59 - 77. So she might be part of the Silent Generation wanting to be heard for a change!

My mum (not a boomer) used to be a nightmare when going around the shops in her late 70s and 80s and I (if it matters, also not a boomer 🥱) followed her trying to divert her and apologising to staff who were very nice about it and said it was fine they like talking to the older customers even when they were being awkward.

A notable incident was mum grumpily asking the shop employee why they changed the smoked haddock meal to have peas instead of cabbage and she didn't like peas and could she ask them to change it back and when that would be done by. Then when they only had two on the shelf asking her to check out the back for more. The women was lovely and said its fine, they get it all the time and it is no bother 😂

Seriously? Absolutely did read the full thread. Your response makes little sense - but I dare say you will write that off as my age ? Mirror comment too close to home was it ?

The ‘b’ word is usually used in a derogatory sense on here.
Because all such people are horrible, obviously - smugly sitting in their £1m houses that they bought for £20k and saying that the reason young people can’t afford to buy is because they’re too fond of avocados.
(Besides all being rude to retail staff.)
Oh, and they all vote Tory and voted for Brexit.

There was no reason to mention her age just as you didn’t feel it necessary to mention her race or size.

@Bellasignora “you didn’t need to mention her age at all”

How am I adopting a rude and inappropriate manner, can you explain? What I was doing is addressing the point you incorrectly made, I’m sorry if you felt that was rude. Again, you seem not to have read my responses on this thread. Not sure what point you’re trying to make.

Thanks to all the posters here who have actually read my answers and engaged with the topic, thanks to those who have calmly provided an education without resorting to insults. Mumsnet can be a funny place to try and have a reasonable discussion sometimes.

My thoughts entirely.
Ageism alive and well.

@kitsuneghost I absolutely disagree, but am interested in how you’ve reached that presumption. Can you give me another example where the same would be true? Like, do you think if I said, “the five year old boy liked hummus” then I am somehow implying that all five year old boys like hummus?

What's her age got to do with it tho?

She was nasty, rude and entitled. She could have been any age, it was wrong.

So again, what's her age got to do with it?

@lieselotte And no, they are not all disabled, they just like the attention.

And who are you to say they are not 'disabled'? Not all disabilities are visible.
And that the 'just want attention'? How are you privy to peoples' unconscious motivations?

Maybe they are anxious, scared of flying, need reassurance, can't see the website.

Just because you are a 'frequent flyer' and can understand the system doesn't mean that everyone else is au fait with it all.

I think you need to find your empathy chip.

It really is, as 'Boomer' has been weaponised as well you should know, and probably intended.

What did the older woman actually say to the assistant that you deemed rude?
Presumably, the assistant was simply doing their job in assisting the shopper to find specific items?

Where I live, it’s usual for kids in their teens and early twenties to be working the weekend shifts in the local supermarkets and many of them haven’t a clue where anything is on the shelves when you ask them. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Clementineorsatsuma, if you read my previous responses you’ll see I’ve addressed this point.

1964 was the last year for Boomers so no, could be 59!

Ageist in the extreme still.

@Clementineorsatsuma I have addressed the point of ageism, explained I’ve learned, and said I won’t use the term again. I guess you didn’t read that post before you jumped on though. I’m actually a bit sad to be persistently called ageist. It’s not where I was coming from at all and I have tried to explain that.

It does matter.
It shows the imbalance of power.

I'm 58. I see men my age and older being rude to (usually younger, female) shop assistants all the time. If not rude, then they huff unpleasantly about the length of the queue or the wobbly trolleys or how full the car park was. Stuff the cashier has nothing to do with, but they dump their frustrations on the handy young female standing there in front of them with her name tag on her shop uniform because that's what relatively powerless people are for, as far as they're concerned. It's disgusting.

The last occasion I saw an older customer behaving badly was last week in a shop in a city where there is a small charge for plastic bags if you need one. The older, male customer tore rushers off the cashier about it. She apologised and explained it was a city ordinance, not shop policy, but he kept on complaining. Nobody ahead of him in the queue who had paid the bag tariff had been anything other than pleasant to the cashier, and everyone behind him expressed the wish that her day would get better. The tariff has been in place for seven years at this point.

The only explanation I can figure out for this phenomenon is that there are people who generally don't get out much - they have a helper or a wife or someone to do their dogsbody work and when they do have to mingle with the hoi polloi and fend for themselves in a shop they can't cope with the fact that everything in their life isn't exactly as they want.

I work in a supermarket and honestly its all ages that can be incredibly rude. We certainly don't paid enough for the crap we have to put up with anyway

@mathanxiety thanks, I do think relative age has a bearing on the power dynamic between these two women, which is why I included it in the description of the situation and that’s not me purposely being ageist, though a lot of people have been quick to jump to that presumption. I totally understand the term “boomer” is received negatively and won’t be using it again.

It's definitely worsened a lot over the last year or two
I get shouted at or complained to almost daily now

I worked on retail for ten years up to 2009 and dealing with rude people was one of the crap parts of the job. Loads of sorts of rude horrible people, different backgrounds and ages.

I've also been a customer in shops all my life and have been on the receiving end of everything from excellent, to lacklustre, to downright deliberately awful interactions with shop staff.

So I think humans can be really horrible in whatever role they're in and the world would be a better place if people took more care and thought in how they dealt with and treated each other.

The insurance you saw op was a sad example of people not doing that, but you can't draw any generalisations from it.

Instance not insurance