Is there any actual benefit of being rude, abusive towards any staff?

[Mokel]

Retail, other customer facing jobs (including call centre), medical etc

There is no benefit to being rude to these staff imo.

All it achieves is negative stuff
. Takes longer to resolve problems as waste time calming customer down
. You may not get the best customer service
. Others have to wait longer to be served
. You may be asked to leave or in call centre, get call terminated
. In extreme situations, you may be banned or struck off the list etc
. Staff leave. This is the case with retail. Staff are fed up with rude behaviour from customers. Then because retailers are cutting back on hours they won’t get replaced. The general public need to understand that if they behaved in a neutral manner, there would not be as many staff leave and they would not have to queue up as long to be served etc.

When a building company caused me two months worth of stress by refusing to resolve an issue caused by their own shoddy work, damn right I was rude. I'd tried to do things the right way, I was civil to start with but when the manager stopped answering my calls or messages, I did go to his office and miraculously, the issue was resolved the very next day.

I think the "benefit" is that the emotionally immature person "feels better" by releasing pent-up emotions.

Yes this is my experience as well. Very few managers actually want to deal with ‘customers/the public if they can help it.
I’ve always found that being polite to staff when I have a complaint generally means that I get fobbed off without resolution. Unfortunately to my shame I have found out that being rude and making a fuss is more likely to work.

I worked in the water industry for many years, in particular the emergency department. I stopped giving my name at the start of the call and just used "Watery Water Co, how may I help you?" because irate callers would latch onto my name and personally berate me.
If asked for my name during the call I would use my first name if it was a nice caller and Mrs surname if it was an awful caller. Then if they called again and asked for me I was kind of prepared for what it might be.
My favourite thing was when they said "That's it, I'm going to another water company!". ...because you can't!

@Thepeopleversuswork And yet despite having a functioning team and easy human based route to complain, people still come at us screaming and shouting from the off 🤷🏻‍♀️

I put them in the same bracket as the people who make needless nasty comments on our social media feeds, but I find that those ones often back down (and sometimes even apologise!) when they receive a polite reply from a human. It's like it shakes them into realising there are actually humans behind the internet!

I worked in an industry with an ombudsman, £500 fee for us if any complaint went to them - whether it was found to have any merit or not. Also went into our published stats. Irate customers got offered the world on a plate not to go to ombudsman.

It is no wonder that people get so infuriated and made to feel helpless when they are the customer and you have a job because of them; without them your job would not exist.

Except they would have a job without you because most customer-facing roles are essential services.

Sure, you can order your shopping online and avoid the pesky, ungrateful checkout staff but someone still has to receive the order, pack the order, and deliver the order.

If everyone started doing their weekly shop online there would be less checkout staff and more packers and delivery drivers. There would not be less staff overall.

@CheeseWisely

Yep. As PPs have mentioned the vast majority of unreasonable behaviour like this is people taking out frustrations from other parts of their lives out on these people.

When you think you’re talking to a bot you can easily feel that being abusive is a “victimless crime”. Having a response from a living and breathing person who is being somewhat reasonable brings people up short.

I don't know how it's at all rude for customers to bring up a problem they're having with a service they're paying for with the people who are the point of contact. A valid concern doesn't need to be taken as personal criticism as if they worker is so hard done by for having to deal with the customer at all.

I took my kids to McDonald's last weekend, queued in the drive through and for about 10 minutes nobody moved up. Then again. And again. When I finally got to the front hot food was thrust into my window before I had chance to put the hand brake on and then I sat for ages letting it go cold waiting for the rest of the order.

In the meantime, my window was down and my kids and I could hear staff joking and swearing loudly. When I got a perfunctory 'sorry for the wait' I explained what I'd experienced and it was flat out denied - 'I've not been swearing and we're just really busy. Noone's been swearing.' When I said I was reporting what I'd experienced and not blaming her personally, she said she couldn't help the slow service. And when I said she hadn't listened to my actual concern, but denied it, she said 'whatever, I don't have to put up with this' and walked away. I bet she went home and complained about mean nasty customers, when the rudeness was all on her part.

I dealt with a complaint some time ago when a customer was abusive to a person in my team and he wanted a manager in the end.
I rang him and dealt with the complaint and I could hear the customer near shitting himself when I said 'and now I would like to discuss your behaviour on the call with x yesterday'.
Be assertive. Be annoyed when things go wrong. But do not be abusive to the person on the end of the phone or the person standing opposite you. It is not OK.

On an everyday level I find I get an awful lot further by being pleasant and friendly than I would be being narky. A while ago we had an experience at a posh place that we could have gone a bit nuclear over at the staff, even though it wasn’t at all their fault. They certainly expected us to. But we didn’t at all, and made it really clear that we didn’t think of it that way. As a result we’ve just been offered privileged access to something by them. When small things go wrong, I’ve usually ended up with good things happening by being nice.

Having said that, knowing your rights and being prepared to be assertive over them when the bigger things happen makes a big difference, and big companies will treat you poorly if they think they can get away with it. Being too nice is a curse. Even then, getting aggressive is rarely helpful. Things like knowing that they won’t want to go to the ombudsman (knowing that there IS an ombudsman!) and using that appropriately are really good. Trying never to get cross with the person in a call centre as it’s very rarely their fault - I have failed at this obviously as sometimes it is so frustrating and some people can be pretty aggravating! But I always try not to at least.

I used to work in a call centre (car insurance). I was bloody good at it but didn’t hesitate to put the phone down on the rude ones.

I did once have a call passed to me by a colleague who wasn’t able to sort a problem, and the person was asking for a supervisor. All the supervisors refused to take the call. So I told her to pass it to me.

It turned out it was someone from one for the companies we offered car insurance for, trying to resolve a customer complaint. She asked if I was a supervisor and I told her ‘no, they won’t take the call, but I’m the person you actually want if you want to problem to be solved’. Then I fixed everything. No one ever pulled me up on it because I truly had no fucks to give.

The corporates don’t design their services to actually work. You have to find the person willing to go around process and actually sort things out.

Sometimes I am "difficult" like when advocating for my kids in school or healthcare. I'm probably not confident enough to do it for myself. But I pull it out of the bag for my kids. Sometimes you need to be a pain in the neck to get results. I would never swear or shout though, no excuse for that. I'm always polite to regular service staff. I did a long enough stint in customer service myself to be empathetic.

I think if you’ve worked in customer service yourself, not only do you empathise more with the people you’re talking to, but you’re also in a better position to judge when someone is actually doing their job badly and causing the problem or making it worse.

Of course there is zero benefit to it, it makes people less likely to help you and making everything more difficult all around plus you risk refusal to serve you.

Unfortunately it's often the complete opposite @Lavender14.

Generally speaking, if you're rude enough, you'll get passed onto a manager who will then do whatever they can to just get rid of you - and normally that means giving you whatever you're asking for just to shut you up and stop you creating a scene.

I saw it happen so, so many times when I was in retail - some poor retail assistant would take a massive bollocking, get their manager (as per their training), only for the manager to turn around and say "Oh, I'm so sorry madam, of course we can do that for you".

It's bullshit and sets both the customer and the assistant up to fail.

I'm generally with the more flies with honey approach.

Two exceptions:

Our GP receptionists that are breathtakingly rude on the phone. To counter this I now present myself at their counter to make appointments. Without the benefit of a phone they are unable to be so rude and unhelpful.

The man at our local station who is so unpleasant to kids that aren't doing anything at all wrong. I use my journey time to send south Eastern customer service emails if complaint.

A few years back I was going through a divorce and my mental health was in a bad place. I am ashamed to say that I was rude, shouty and overly emotional with customer service people.

Unfortunately I think that approach got me further than I would get now by being politely assertive. Compensation offers were more generous, solutions were reached more quickly, etc

I get told regularly how awful my customer service is
It isn't, it's that we don't have an appointment tomorrow or can't do something ridiculous that they want. I offer other options which they declined
I'm fed up of being sworn at, told how shit I am, the sarcasm, the refusal to answer anything I have to ask. Calls are recorded and if I don't follow the questions I HAVE to ask then I could end up losing my job

People would rather argue for 10 mins than confirm their email address
I'm always polite and professional but I will tell people to stop swearing/stop speaking to me like I'm a child or a piece of crap on their shoe

This isn't a company they are tied to or have a contract with, they could go anywhere else if they're so fed up of us but they won't. It is so much worse since Covid

The only time I’ve seen it work was in a hospital waiting room when had the mum not had a go at reception her child might have died. They brought him in limp and unconscious and the evil bitch at reception still tried to make them wait in the queue

From my experience, working in a different sector is that employers would benefit more so by being respectful and appreciative towards their workforce.
Pissing around with their pay , being hostile and forgetting they are hard working human beings has a direct effect on productivity,loyalty and reliability ! Its a no brainer.

I work in customer service in a call centre and it constantly amazes me quite how unpleasant some people are. Personally, when someone starts being rude/abusive, I shut down. I do the bare minimum I have to do for them but that's it. I become very polite but short. I will never go out of my way or make any special effort for these people. For people who are respectful, I will always do whatever I can to help resolve their issue.
My bosses definitely care more about customer satisfaction than their staff and by doing this I'm doing nothing that they can pull me up on, but I know that 9 times out of 10 I probably could've helped them further if they hadn't been so vile. You reap what you sow.

The number of teens or young people using “minimum wage” as an insult, eg shouting at retails staff, “ok minimum wage”. Disrespect and rudeness seems to be on the increase. None of which butter no parsnips.

I work in supermarket retail and we always say that everyone should be made to do a year working in a shop like National Service, before they are allowed to go out into the world. It would give them one hell of an insight into just what goes on behind the scenes; how understaffed and inadequately resourced most shops are and how things work.
Also, it might stop the general public behaving as though all shop workers are thick and are only working in a shop because it's the only place they are qualified for. I, and many of my co workers, have degrees and are doing shop work because it fits hours-wise with the rest of our lives!

I work in retail. Worked for an essential retailer during covid. Dealing with the public is a mixed bag. If someone is being rude to me I can usually just repeat what they say back to them, for example so your saying.... This usually makes people realise they are behaving irrationally. But sometimes you just get someone who comes in looking for confrontation. It has turned me into a cynical person sadly. I do get some really lovely customers though.

I can remember going to a chain pub for food. Someone sent their order to the wrong pub and then phoned up to scream at the manager. All the nearby customers were listening in to her telling her coworker and offered sympathetic comments when she was going about her tasks, collecting glasses and the likes. Customer then turns up at the pub and starts giving grief again, customers all turned to face him and gave him that look. You could tell we were all thinking you absolute tool. He got his refund though by stamping his feet. I was dying to stick my leg out when he walked past to leave.