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

[CurdinHenry]

More aggression, more delusions to a fairly extreme degree?

Twenty years ago was 2006. Before the financial crash, when households had much more money.
Before austerity, when public services were funded.
And before the launch of the iPhone.

These are not excuses for individual behaviour, but there are underlying reasons for social changes in that timeframe.

I work in local Government in a call centre. I’ve worked in retail or hospitality all my life before this job so am no newbie when it comes to dealing with the public but Dear God.

We have a few ‘frequent flyers’ whose whole reason for being seems to be to harass us, calling up multiple times on the same day thinking that getting through to a different member of staff will mean that we will entertain their nonsense.

Threats to go to the papers, the Ombudsman, repeated requests for SARs ( which can tie up a senior member of staff for days), verbal abuse about how useless we are, how we obviously want them to die/starve/freeze to death because we won’t (or can’t) immediately house/feed them are rife.

Then being told to go and kill yourself because you’re a pointless waste of space as a human, coupled with threats of coming to our offices and killing is all…

A few of these people are deliberately trying to make life as unpleasant for us as they can, for some unknown reason they get off on it. Others clearly have severe Mental Health issues, which I am very sorry about but are not my job to fix.

Attempts to signpost them to a useful service are also met with abuse because they don’t want to have to do anything about it themselves, or actually engage with an MH service, they expect me ( in a call centre) to somehow ‘make it go away’ ( this normally equates to wanting more money in some form or another).

Its exhausting. It burns you out very quickly. The turnover in our job is quite high because there’s only so much shit you feel able to take before it’s natural to just say ‘ I’m done.’

Rudeness and selfishness have definitely become the default in the UK. Life has become incredibly difficult to do very simple things, that builds up frustrations. Nobody should take out their frustrations on people trying to do their jobs. But people in jobs dealing with the public can also be arses, unnecessarily rude and obstructive. Some hate their jobs, and they also take out their own frustrations on people rather than changing their job. I am a polite person but have experienced unpleasant interactions with retail staff for no reason. I also think there are people who have no agency in their lives looking around for someone to kick out of frustration, and take the opportunity of an audience that can’t go anywhere, to abuse them to release their frustrations.

If you go abroad, with some exceptions, service is politer and there is grace in social interactions. It is marked now how bad manners are in the IK now. Having said that I have had a few really positive interactions with some teenage boys recently - not all at the same time. But polite and engaging, and just with great manners. That has been heartening.

I’m patient, polite, and understand that mistakes happen, so I tend to engage positively with customer services.

But I can feel my attitude changing! 🙃

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to speak to an actual person (or even find how to contact customer service). So by the time I finally get through to a human agent, I’m at times seeing red 😾

Huge profits by some large companies doesn’t equate to adequately staffed customer services. This leads to so much frustration and must be hell for the front line staff who have to deal with people who have been driven to near madness by faceless bots and referrals to faq pages which don’t answer the question. Then eventually get through to someone who can’t help either.

Too many companies want their huge profits without giving good service and products. No excuse to be unpleasant to their poor employees when you finally get to speak to someone but my god I HATE having to go through to process of trying to sort out an issue with a service or billing or whatever. Round and round and round in circles. Being put on hold for hours and hours then being cut off. ‘Speaking’ to people from the bank in chat boxes for hours and hours, politely giving the same info requested over and over to any number of faceless agents with gaps of up to 30 mins before they responded then being totally abandoned. Then being told the complaint is being closed due to ‘inactivity’. What?? That was a whole day lost.

I dread it now, my BP goes up before I even start dialling let alone when I am listening to greensleeves on repeat with the occasional interruption ‘sorry for the delay. If you visit our website at blah blah dot com you may find the information… (I did and I didn’t find it)

for two hours.

I fully blame the greedy institutions not the frontline staff. I’m not talking about public sector here but I do think too much is asked of front line staff there too. Systems to keep the public away are too lacking in nuance.

NHS might be pestered by malingerers but when a proud elderly relative agrees to finally see someone about a big health issue, after trying to keep out the way for ages, it shouldn’t be so hard to get him an appointment.

Everything is so hard to access now. And on the very, very rare occasion when you’ve braced yourself for a huge session trying to report something/find out something/ get some support and it IS forthcoming and easy - it’s such a massive and beautiful surprise.

I’ve worked in retail for over 20 years (with a gap of a few years when my middle child was born). The way customers behave now compared to the early 2000s is demented at times. I do not like confrontation but now, fuck it, if they speak to me like crap I will give them a piece of my mind. I used to get the odd rude twat but it certainly wasn’t a daily occurrence like it is now.

I haven’t even gotten to the shoplifting and the assaults. The former is everyday usually every single day. Most of them don’t even run. Why? Because they know and we know that we are not physically going to stop them- we’re not allowed. Which has then ended up in a confrontation with angry customers- some of them get very upset that we’re not stopping people leaving with stuff they’ve nicked. We do prevent it btw- if we see the usual suspects in the shop we harass them until they leave before they grab stuff. They are banned after all.

I don’t work with customers and I am always nice to any customer serving staff. But in my experience, service is going down a lot. People no longer care. As a customer I find myself making more efforts with greeting, saying thank you, smiling but I don’t see staff greeting or even smiling.

Maybe not the same, but I’m a teacher and I’m at the end of my tether. Two of my colleagues were in tears on Friday because of parents who just think we are their emotional punchbags. We just have to smile and accept their shitty behaviour.

And there are many children (not all!) who are being brought up to behave how they want and are being taught by parents that they should have all of their whims met immediately and should never have any consequences for negative behaviour.

It’s worth saying the majority are still really lovely, but the small handful who treat us like shit are hard - and they are getting much harder and really ruining everything. I’ve been teaching 12 years and have really loved my career. But I’ve decided this term that I am just done. I plan to be gone by Christmas.

I work in MH and the amount of people who need support and feel entitled to support for distress associated with life events is worsening- the former are not MH difficulties. People will insist on needing treatment- it’s the equivalent of bed blocking and they will complain. Or people who may have genuine MH difficulties getting arsey and disengage when the realise they are not getting a letter to support PIP or a diagnosis THEY think they have.

ive posted about this before a while back and gave an example a quote a few MNetters were scathing and in disbelief that people try to play the system by reporting MH. I remember thinking some MN must live quite sheltered lives and not realise how desperate people are.

I stress the above is not in reference to people who present with what is clear genuine distress of which sadly there are still plenty.

I agree that people are definitely more entitled these days. A lot of this is due to the individualistic culture we seem to have imported from the US (thanks to social media) where we are all special and different and on our own journey. We don't need to apologise for being ourselves etc etc. Of course all this means is that people who are complete pricks think that gives them the green card to be complete pricks in public!
Add in AI writing your complaint and you've given the prick the perfect tool.
However I do think technology and our systems have now made life so much more stressful. I have ended up enraged so many times trying to complete some mundane task online (like the pp trying to buy a bus pass) because of shitty systems that don't work properly. I then end up having to wait on hold for hours to speak to an actual human and I have to really remember that this poor person on the end of the phone is not responsible for whatever stupid technology is stressing me out. I suspect a lot of people are unable to control themselves and don't hold back and the poor call handler then feels the full wrath. Company's constant drive to save money by using technology instead of real people is the root of this.

I worked in a customer facing role 15 years ago, it was shit, people were so rude and we had to smile and wave. People were definitely getting sacked for what management saw as 'not polite enough'.

Yip, I've just left my job in the public sector. When I started the role it was fairly straight forward and enjoyable.

Now everything takes forever to do and nothing is straight forward, because everyone is being awkward. The level of complaining and wanting more has increased massively in the last three years, and our workload was ridiculous as a result.

The level of sick leave increased as people were getting physically ill from the high level of stress, I believe. Then that had an impact on the other team members. I was often working alone in what should have been a team of five. People are moaning faced dicks. It's ashame as they have lost one of their best workers, they openly admitted to me numerous times. It just became utter drudgery.

I’m in two minds scout this, I remember rudeness back in the day to myself & can well believe it’s got worse but so has customer service.

Even though the systems are frustrating and annoying, it's totally unfair to show your anger to the person you are finally able to speak to. I'm sure they wish the systems were more efficient even more than you as a customer do, given that they have to bear the brunt of it every day.

Definitely, I work for the retailer with the nice food 😉

Everything is written with AI, customers demand outrageous amounts of goodwill for minor issues. The way they speak to us is appalling, last week I was called stupid, thick and uneducated and at times even worse!

I'm desperately job hunting as I'm not paid enough to deal with these people.

My son worked in the debt recovery part of a large organization. Not by choice it was the role he was given . The abuse he got was unreal. And this was from people who had purchased non essential goods on credit and then defaulted on payment. So entirely their own fault . They were outraged that they were contacted asking how they intended to pay and were offered options too. Accused my son of being a rich bastard preying on the poor . Pathetic.

When I was working Corporate ( middle level) I had a company owner who was obsessed with Government funding that he had definitely NOT qualified to claim. The company I worked for did deal with Government funding , but not on behalf of businesses and we definitely didnt administer funding. After a call and follow up email to explain to thispsycho gentleman he started a campaign of harrasment based around me specifically. Calls 5x per day ( luckily all recorded) plus emails/ faxes/ letters. Company only took this seriously when one of his threats was incorrecy routed to the CFO ( same name, different spelling) . She was wonderful, personally made sure I was supported and police were involved plus an investigation as to why the company had essentially left me to deal with this alone and asked me not to contact the police. At the time - nearly 18 years ago- behaviour like his was rare, now it seems like the default.

I was in the queue at and 02 shop and was positioned in a way which makes it hard to avoid hearing conversations. I felt really sorry for the staff who appeared to be dealing with people who whilst not angry or aggressive appeared to really stupid, struggling to understand fairly basic things about contracts, money, subscription options. The couple who covered in tattoos who stunk of weeks of body odour made half the shop stink - the woman in front of me refused to sit where they had been served. All these people vote and decide our future, it doesn't make me optimistic.

Same here, I work for a very big retailer. Last week we had the rudest woman ever come up to the till and tell us we were all stupid, lazy, how many of us does it take to do something, and TBH it was her fault as she had zero tech (no phone, email or anything) so it was hard to deal with her request.

I was asked by my colleague to deal with her and I refused as I would have ripped her a new one the way she was abusing my colleagues. I called the manager over and when he pulled her up she huffed and left.

Part of the problem is that the staff are too scared to lose their jobs as weak managers don't back them to stick up for themselves. If you tell off a customer you will get into trouble, so you have to suck it up. One of my young colleagues got the sack as an older man condescendingly told him he was stupid and the young man told him to f*ck off. Not professional, but it was brilliant to witness.

I have actually handed my notice in, and am leaving as I don't want to work with the general public any more. I now think the horrible people outnumber the nice ones.

I have certainly seen the signs on desks stating that "aggression towards staff will not be tolerated" which is alarming. I had cause to visit a shop, a very large chain, recently and was very cross at the (online) service I had received (or not received) from it. However I did state to the customer services person dealing with me that my irritation was not directed at them, but at the system, which was not working. They spent half an hour on the phone trying to sort the mess out for which I thanked them. The matter was not resolved and I did a charge-back through my bank to get a refund of a not-service in the end.

This particular chain cannot be contacted directly by phone at all because when I asked in store why, was told that there are not enough staff to deal with all the phone calls they would get, so it is all online and AI, it is all AI online nonsense. Aaargghhh!

I stopped wotking NHS for this exact reason. No more abuse for that money.

Anyone think it has to do with the influence of phones as a main source of input? Lack of social relationships? It’s affected children a lot since the iPhone came out widely in 2014.

We flew back from France last night. The Ryanair plane was late by about 90 minutes, and it was touch and go if it would get away before the French airport closed at 9.00pm. Passenger announcement asking as all not to linger, get on the pane and in years as soon as we could, as if the doors were not closed by 8 45 the control tower would not let the plane leave. When the pilot gave his departure announcement, he complained about some passengers giving the cabin crew grief. FFS, it wasn't their fault, apparantly it was French air traffic control on earlier flights in the day having a knock on effect. I don't understand some people. We could have been stuck overnight,

That’s shocking. They should be marched out by security and banned. Things will only change if employers start protecting their employees.

I’m a teacher. The way some parents speak to staff is nothing short of a disgrace. Yet they’re allowed to ring up over and over again shouting and swearing at everyone. Why should people have to put up with it? It’s not good enough.

Slightly off topic but kind of related. I can’t understand people who watch reels or do video/audio phone calls on speaker in public places. Possibly the same idea of entitlement that they can do what they want?