If you work with the public - are you finding things are getting scarier?

[CurdinHenry]

More aggression, more delusions to a fairly extreme degree?

yes, customers are immediately aggressive at any inconvenience (even if it hasn’t happened yet), more angry citing of ‘rights’ they think they have (and don’t) and more likely to demand speaking to management. It’s scary

Oh absolutely. Ombudsman, press, compensation. Often for imagined wrong doing or plain misunderstandings. Then when all fails... You have ruined my mental health 🙄

Yes this is the worst bit for me. A lot of people with profound mental health difficulties or intellectual deficits or just bad bad personality problems being empowered by the system to abuse public servants. It is costing taxpayers a fortune too. I don't understand why there's no political pressure for change.

I find people are more likely to be full of their own importance too. I don't think there was the same attitude twenty years ago.

I work for a vehicle finance company and the number of customers who call, scream and abuse the staff because they think they deserve better or faster treatment than anyone else is astounding! The call centre staff are facing abuse day in and day out. I do see patterns in age groups that do it too.

Its often plain greed. People have worked out a daily mail sad face will fund next year's holiday.

People are just idiots and need to be told it. We get some at work who are repeatedly abusive over the phone that we have to report them to their insurer and their insurance gets cancelled. Some have even turned up to the premises in person and threatened staff and the police have been called.

If you work in a supportive environment that's brilliant. I wish it were the law that every employer had to be.

The guy threatening to kill you for insanely mundane reasons thing is precisely what inspired this thread. Why arent guys like that just scooped up and locked away for a bit instead of handed a complaints form.

Yes we’ve had this.
They’re more entitled, and seem to think they’re directly employing you and paying your wages… when most are unemployed.
They can’t take ‘no’ for an answer and insist on endless appeals, meetings etc…
And yes they fire off email after email, it makes me want to cry!

This I'd say for sure. The level of entitlement is off the charts. I've been an event and venue manager for about 20 years and these days people seem totally incapable of reading joining instructions/following directions then when they get lost/haven't got the right paperwork on arrival they're super quick to push the blame onto the organisers, usually in a rude and abrasive fashion. It's no longer fun to work with the public much of the time.

Part of the reason I want to retrain tbh. Though what into I have no clue!

I know what you mean. The "I'm a baby you are my mother and must fix this for me or go to jail and be shamed on tiktok" thing seems widespread now. It sickens me tbh, the burden of the hopeless and unpleasant on people trying to do their best.

I volunteer in a charity shop and there is an increasing number of customers who are just plain rude. No please, no thank you, I want, where’s this - really not necessary and I imagine even worse in an environment where they feel they feel they have cause to complain.

Yes - every now and then I'll read something about "British politeness" and think actually I think things are not polite now at all. I don't even mind directness but it's rudeness.

Indeed mental health is rife

A lot of adults seem to see themselves as children, with everyone else owing them ‘a duty of care’ and tantrumming when they don’t get special treatment

Interesting thread. I can well believe it. Why do you think it's got so bad?

I don't know if it's worse. I worked in a call centre 30 years ago...I remember being screamed at and threatened. Someone said they'd cut my head off.

Honestly because we keep telling people that everything is someone else’s fault, they deserve more, fight for your rights etc

They see the government as an omnipotent God type thing that should take care of them always and provide them with whatever they want regardless of the practicality or cost

With my example I think it's due to a mix of shorter attention spans (largely down to social media and reels) and being used to having information at our finger tips. So there's a perfect storm of people not fully reading the information they're given (due to short attention span) and assuming they can work it out on the day (because they're not used to planning in advance).

A thought I'm having now is decades of anonymous keyboard warrior syndrome is now potentially spilling into real life. There aren't consequences for poor manners and loosing your temper now, the consequences fall on the focus of the wrath rather than person unable to manage their emotions!

Christ yes the "duty of care" shite is unbearable. Ditto the manipulative references to mental health.

Why do we recognise threats of self harm to get an outcome as domestic abuse but also tolerate it when it's aimed at workers?

I think the difference then was that you could tell them to fuck right off and not be sacked for it.

I’ve frequently had people tell me I will be responsible for their death when they die of a stress induced illness (caused by not getting what they want). At some point threats like that have to be addressed by law.

No but I work in a very happy field (with the public)

Yeah what I think when people say that is "good, amazing, one less shitty bully in the world and it's not like we're short on people" but I have to say "oh no definitely don't here is a resource to help have hours more of my time in fact".