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?

I do agree any role working with the public is hard I work in childcare now and while the kids are generally ready lovely some of the parents are entitled beyond belief. They talk down to you, because you're only a minimum wage qualified professional who's been caring for their child for 10 hours, complain about things like waiting 2 minutes for us to answer the door and I have had parents shouting in my face ( I won't say why incase it's outing).
On the plus side we also have some lovely parents who really do appreciate us.
But I'm only dealing with the parents for a maximum of probably 2 hours a day, (in total), quite different to 8-10 hours of customers who bitch at you (or attack you) or ignore you.

You’ve misread her, she is saying that attitude is ridiculous. She isn’t agreeing with it.

Because why should employees have to put up with abuse?? It’s generally the lowest paid in society who work with the public - why should we have to tolerate it when most people who go to work don’t? My dh works in IT, dealing with abuse is literally something he never has to do. Don’t make it acceptable FFS 🙄.

Rubbish. I have worked with people who were studying at university or indeed had degrees but for various reasons were working in retail.
I left retail because I had a qualification but at the time retail fitted in with my caring responsibilities.
Bet you'd soon be moaning if all the staff who could do other jobs left as there would be very few staff around.
Just out of interest is it okay to give a retail worker a black eye because there's no frozen fish?

I have noticed a real change in levels of irritation and anger in people generally. People seem to get very angry, very quickly over very trivial things.
I don’t think it’s just a result of lockdown. People seem to have less clear boundaries and have a lot of what I call walking around anger; on a hair trigger all the time.

I am not sure why, I suspect it’s a combination of things. So many aspects of public service are broken - schools, hospital, Courts. There is so much life admin now - everything is an e mail or an endless phone call. I wonder if it’s an accumulation of things making people feel frustrated and overwhelmed but it’s not an excuse.

The level of abuse people think is acceptable now is astonishing. We have a dog and the behaviour of people is dreadful. Owners getting furious if someone quite reasonably objects to being bitten/jumped up etc.

I completely get why people wouldn’t want to work in any sort of public service.

@lope

I hope when those arsehole members of public threw water and that other Arsehole kicked you in the stomach whilst pregnant,

I hope that they were both reported to the police for incidents of physical assault even grevious bodily harm with pregnancy as potentially could have resulted in losing unborn baby too?

Plenty of cctv images could been used for proof in those particular cases.

Or

Was it just percieved or and trivilised as part of negatives downsides of working with great British public then?

No as @Saschka put, I'm saying it's ridiculous people are being told it's part of their job!

Definitely not just older people, the age range of angry people spans from young to old and all classes!! It definitely wasn’t as bad as pre Covid but saying that it’s not everyone!!

"You just don’t know, so treat people kindly and assume the best of them."
Doesn't this apply both ways? Why should the customer be treated kindly, and not be required to treat staff the same way?

But the 'treat people kindly seems to be a one way thing'?

Not quite the same but, I watched a woman get in her car and just leave her trolley right in front of other cars a few days ago, the trolley bay was meters away from her. So fucking lazy and entitled, 'someone else will do it' attitude.

Sorry you have to deal with this sort of thing.

Still want to know what yogurt it was...

@Meridean

Why should public facing staff workers be tolerant of other mental health issues emotionally abusive ways then?

Whenever staff workers are spoken to like shit that accidently stepped on their shoes?

The public these fuckwits regardless of whatever reasons could be behind them inflicting projecting in verbally or physically abusive ways,

That public facing staff workers will not be tolerant pandering to their ways,
as they are not proffessional trained counsellors or have any other training in the field of mental health

Also notices should be put up zero torelance to this kind of attitude and behaviour could even result in. Security escorting them out of the building or and being temporarily banned etc.

Exactly. I doubt the man was thinking about what was going on in the OP's life when he was trying to physically intimidate her by shaking his fist in her face. All the armchair diagnosers on here saying he must have mental health issues/ have dementia etc could be completely wrong and he could just be a misogynistic arsehole who enjoys talking down to and threatening women. We all know these men exist, there are threads about men's awful behaviour towards women often enough, who knows if this particular man actually has issues caused by old age or has just been a nasty twat his whole life.

@FionnulaTheCooler

Exactly 💯 agree with your above post totally nailed it on the head 👏🏿 👌

Why is bad behaviour allways or often excused dismissed away as being a manifesting their mental health struggles issues then

I wonder 🤔 if abusive member of public could be manifesting their Arseholes ways of just being etc.

The whole 'maybe they have dementia/autism/ADHD/mental illness/trauma/whatever' thing drives me nuts.

It.does.not.matter in terms of whether a victim should consider that, whether it should be used as an excuse or a learning point or as trying to gain understanding.

And I very much think that attitude has contributed to the dramatic rise we've seen in aggression and violence against all public workers.

Some behaviours are just unacceptable and it is not the role of victims to dismiss their unpleasant or traumatic experiences and be told "maybe they are suffering from something" ,be more understanding, be kind.

Maybe they are suffering from something, maybe they're not. And even if they are, it still doesn't make it acceptable or even, that the abusive behaviour is a direct result of that.

And having worked in the public sector for a very long time, I don't think a lot of the public realise just how frequently we, even knowing a person's background or difficulties, DO report things to the Police and have assaults prosecuted and how often that we impose different sanctions if incidents don't meet criminal threshold.

No, it isn't 'part of our jobs' to be assaulted, threatened or abused.

This, plus I really don't see why he should get a pass just because he is old. If he is strong enough to swing a fist in someone's face, he clearly isn't some poor old darling. Good lord.

To be fair, although not excusing the behaviour, but not sure if you've ever had family or know much about dementia, but it's like part of their brain that controls emotions and how to behave just vanishes. It really is very common for people with dementia to become increasingly aggressive, verbally but, sometimes down the line, also physical.

It may of course be that the man didn't have dementia but for elderly people, sadly Alzheimer's and other dementias are very common.

Not excusing his behaviour, but we all have a back story…maybe he has a wife with dementia or other illness who will only eat that flavour if yoghurt and that’s all she’ll eat. Or maybe they’re the highlight of his day and now it’s gone? I’ve worked with the public for 40 years, and when people are rude it’s almost always because they’re anxious, frustrated or having a difficult time. Maybe he was just having a rough day and this was the final straw. Not excusing his behaviour, but sometimes a little kindness goes a long way.

What if the OP had also been having a bad day? Why should he be allowed to throw a strop and not 'be kind'?

I'm sure it was not how OP was, but sometimes when I go into a food supermarket and ask for an item, they usually say something along - it's over there, pointing and not looking at me, very disengaged. I've had to explain that products that used to be there are no longer there and have not been in for ages. Then a person just shrugged but their colleague was next to them and bothered to check, like OP did, on the handheld. Turned out that there had been a supply issue but stock was on its way.

So, I do think in life some people don't have the right service mentality either and if they don't know, they don't bother to find out. As I say, not describing the OP as they did check, but this is something I've encountered time and time again, and increasingly so over the last 5-10 years.

Because it gets wearing and company policy sometimes makes things worse for staff.

I worked in a department store and had someone kick off because they couldn't find a manned till - we weren't allowed to stay on the tills if there were no customers there, customers were supposed to approach the till, we'd see them and go over to serve them.

Well this woman hadn't approached any till, she'd wandered around looking for one with someone serving - not unreasonable in itself. When it came to shouting and throwing clothes at me for something I had no control over, she was very unreasonable.

Then there was the woman who cornered me and shouted at me for ten minutes because I wouldn't let her use the childrens fitting room. Shouting in my face, then complained about my attitude and how she 'wouldn't be spoken to like that by someone like you' - I hadn't been able to say anything, every time I tried she shouted that she didn't want to hear anything I had to say.

Sick and tired of perpetually having to be told to be mindful of fucking "mental health issues", the cover-all excuse for shit behaviour.

I did a brief stint as a "Saturday girl" as they were called back then while I was still at school, and it put me off working in public facing roles for life. I hate it when people give the poor checkout girl grief for something which, clearly to anyone with half a brain, is out of her control, as was clearly the case in OP's instance.

Also,.maybe he's just a nasty cunt?

We ALL get anxious, frustrated and go through difficult times.

MOST of us manage to not harm other people when doing so.

Having a shit day/life/problems doesn't mean we get to go around harming other people. That's a vicious cycle.

People should be held responsible for causing harm to other people.