Man complained about me re yoghurt brand stopped doing a flavour

[Auburngal]

I was at work. Man (early 80s) asked me why we stopped doing a certain flavour yoghurt and the other two supermarkets stopped selling too.

Had my work’s handset on me and went onto the brand’s website and there wasn’t the flavour listed. Brand have dropped the flavour. On hearing the news - he flipped

He then went to the CSD asking for a manager. Manager said the same thing as me.

Do people realise that behaving like this is making staff leave retail?

Define flipped.

I don’t know how any of you put up with the abuse - it’s unbelievable. I work with the public (different role) and man the batshittery is next level. But then look at the entitlement on here! The world has gone mad 🙁

Working with the public is awful. I've done call centre work and it's crazy what people will blame you personally for. I get it's frustrating. Try to shrug/laugh it off and let the manager deal with it.

In his defence it sounds like he must have really liked that flavour.

Are you sure he wasn’t suffering from dementia? I’ve worked retail in the past and part of the job is to remain polite even when people are problematic. Customers can be suffering from a variety of mental and physical health problems that affect their behaviour, you should understand and accept that before you take a public-facing job.

Why are you taking this to heart? He's obviously a twat ranting at someone who had absolutely no control over hus favourite flavour being discontinued !

I'd just shrug it off.

1. People are stupid.
2. People are entitled.
3. People lash out at people who have no fault or impact for their issue (see point one)

What does it achieve? Nothing.

I wish retail didn't require you to pander to these fuckwits, to enable you to match their energy... but alas, profits...

Some people are just twats OP - don't take it to heart.

What brand and flavour was it?

I work in retail and I honestly don't believe this is fair. Why should we have to put up with people talking like they've scraped us from the bottom of their shoe.
And they do ....

We are only human too !!! And maybe retail staff have mental health issues aswell , why do these peoples MH trump a retail workers MH ?

If someone speaks to me like shit , then I speak to them with the same respect.
I'm sick of pandering to the public who still have the opinion that the customer is always right , coz trust me ... they really aren't!! Some of the batshit crazy we have to deal with is not worth minimum wage !!!

I need to know the flavour first.

Sorry you had to deal with that kind of behaviour 💐

I have been working in a supermarket for over twenty years, you’ll reach a point where something like that won’t upset you one bit.

At least you work there! Was in a not very local large store and a bloke had a 5 minute rant at me with swearing, and demanded to know why (something had happened).

Took great delight in saying 'I have no idea either, perhaps you are better off speaking nicely and politely to an actual staff member to find out, rather than randomly swearing and ranting at another customer' and walked off.😂

There could be any number of reasons why he "flipped".

We weren't there and don't know him of what "flipped" means in this instance. I know a parent of a child with ARFID who could be very distressed in this situation. My Dad with dementia might react surprisingly. Might just have been a cantankerous curmudgeon.

What a twat. I'm sorry that happened to you xx

We always used to have really lovely customers here but over the last couple of years it’s like everyone has forgotten how to behave.

I had a customer on the phone this morning, rudely demanding that I do them a favour. I told them no, it’s not something we can help with and gave him contact details of a company who could. He demanded to speak to my manager, who told him exactly the same thing.

I don’t get why they think they’re going to get a different answer. If we can’t do it, we can’t do it.

This. Its like on teaching/health care threads.
'Why are you complaining about being abused/assaulted you knew this when you took the job it's part of it'
Ridiculous!

The general public can be grade a- dickheads.
A woman behind me in the supermarket was FURIOUS yesterday at having to queue for the checkout whilst her precious dog was outside and kicked off at the cashier when she got to the front. There were 6 free self checkouts available and she only had a few items 😂

If it was Toffee flavour then he was completely out of order, as it needs banning.

People are weird, it's not personal. Repeat in times of trial, when anywhere near the general public.

I trust you didnt work in retail for very long, or else it was a long time ago before everyone turned into entitled twats. I work in a public-facing role (not retail) and have been -amongst other things - shouted at, sworn at, called useless, threatened with being followed home, had a glass of water thrown in my face, and been kicked in the stomach when 7 months pregnant. These were all in response to things I had literally no control over, and some of them on the same sort of scale as not having the yogurt flavour the person wanted (i.e. trivial). All I've ever done is empathise with the person's frustration and apologise (again, for things that are totally not my fault). The only exception was being kicked in the stomach, when I said "I'm sorry, I'm not going to let you do that. You will have to find another member of staff to help you." Poor mental health is not an excuse to treat people like shit. And taking a public-facing role does not mean you forfeit your rights to basic decency and respect.

Well, that's the issue, isn't it? You're the customer facing side of the business and it's your job to deal with complaints - but the companies are doing it on the cheap and willing only to pay minimum wage, and willing to employ only the minimum number of staff. If you had more time, better conditions, higher pay, and training that covered handling twats as well as the technical "how do I operate this till/restock these shelves/ manage sell by dates" handling difficult customers would be a lot less stressful.

(And food prices would be higher)

Some job adverts are ridiculous - the list of requirements totally out of synch with the advertised salary.

I had someone complain to me because I DARED let her back into a locked theatre (an hour) after a show so her three little kids could “very quickly” use the toilet. Fifteen minutes I was waiting outside the bathroom door while she was singing at them etc. I had to knock on the door and ask her to leave twice, explaining that I was getting in trouble, and needed to escort her from the premises or she would be locked IN. She dragged her poor kids to the other side of the theatre (quite a hike) to complain about me.

I think I'd have asked him 'Why are you yelling at me? I don't work for Danone'.