to not want to be treated like an idiot just because I work in a shop!

[zisforzebra]

I'm currently working in a shop. Before I started working there I had no idea just how rude people can be. Lots don't say please or thank you and some don't acknowledge me at all and practically throw the money at me. But the worst are the ones that treat me like I have no brain at all.

A woman came in today and said she wanted to learn to crochet and that she wasn't very good at knitting. She asked me if I could crochet and I said yes. Her response was a sneery "Well if you can do it, I'm sure I can". I wanted to say that I'm a bloody good knitter and not bad at crochet either and she should just bugger off with her judgements but I just smiled and sent her in the direction of a library for a book on crochet.

AIBU to be very pissed off?

I think you miss the point, secondcoming, people weren't wheeling out their degrees because they think those without who work in shops are stupid, but to show that all kinds of people work in customer service so customers shouldn't assume they are stupid.

I might have been to university but I know there are people out there who haven't who can do my job much better than me!!

secondcoming - well, yes, I get where you are coming from.

I merely mentioned mine because I am sick of being told how to spell simple stuff at work.

But I wasn't intending to say people without degrees can't spell simple stuff, honest!

ah, i thought as much tsc

oh i don't know, i think i actually need to take my degree certificates out with me because most of the time i can be a bit of a dolt! lol

(anyway I should say my EDUCATION, as I don't actually HAVE a degree! )

Also doesn't mean those of us who don't actually HAVE a degree couldn't do one standing on their heads. In the right circs, of course...

[wank] has to be the BEST misspelling either!

I hope you don't assume that people can't spell though tsc - I do get people every day ssaying "Street" "S.T R.E.E.T"

i think we need [wank] as a smiley!

and i meant best misspelling ever

maybe i spell "sstreet" with 2 Ss after all, like "ssaying" in my earlier post..

ha, beat you to it!

No, I have hurt my shoulder and can't type too well at the moment as my arm is numb!

or maybe I should have stuck the degree out!!

ROTFL - i have so many times nearly done that tsc. I actually do have a PhD in biochemistry and i can't spell for toffee - i dont even have dyslexia to fall back on. I blame mumsnet!

CHICKBEAN, I'm not a librarian but more than once people have mistaken me for a librarian when I'm browsing the racks (I wear glasses and often have my hair up, a cliche i know)and a man once verbally abused me in Dulwich library when I replied "I'm sorry, I don't know" when he asked me where the books about Dinosaurs were, I'm still years later.

i think tabards should be banned put a woman in a tabard and people stop thinking of her as a person and treat her like crap i worked in Oxfam and the customers on the whole were lovely but some of them omg you would think we were keeping the money we charged for stuff for ourselves moan moan moan

i haven't mentioned my educational qualifications (it might put me to shame), but, with regard to the qualification to work in a shop that someone earlier mentioned: I am.
when i worked for Ottakar's, they did a Bookseller's Diploma. It was a recognised qualification (whatever that means) on a par with a BTEC National Diploma.
Passing it meant a pay rise and a status of "Bookseller 2" and when we were taken over by Waerstone's, anyone who had a Bookseller's Diploma automatically became a Senior Bookseller (not as grand as it sounds but more money!)
It did mean that we could proudly be qualified booksellers and know what we were on about!

anyway.
in the olden days, Waterstone's would only employ people with degrees.
but i think Bookselling is a different kind of retail: customers expect us to know stuff and be clever, becoz books is clever innit.

OTOH: burger king staff expected to be illiterate idiots (at my BK my colleagues weren't stupid they just weren't academics - most were very good at catering, and i think that's the difference: they worked hard at what they were good at, and were treated like scum because they served fast food)

You know what. This has just confirmed my philosophy that I just want my children to be happy. My dad, bless him used to say that and without the usual even if you want to be a .... God willing, then they won't end up thinking anyone, even if they're (and I have some very subversive jobs to fill in the blanks and nothing in retail), is beneath them or undeserving of respect. Unless they don't treat others with respect of course and even then i hope they'd consider (as my 90 year old friend said to me years ago when I was spitting feathers about how rude a bus driver had been) that they might have horrible stuff going on that day/in their lives. Not an excuse for my own behaviour but a reason for some others. Charmingly, my friends dad used to threaten my friend that if she didn't work hard at school that she'd end up working in tesco. I look at him now and think then perhaps if what he said is true then if you do you end up being an unpleasant prejudiced bigot!

work hard at school i mean not work in tesco before I completely destroy my point!

exactly: the job you do should be judged by how well you do it, not what job it is.

nickel, i live near a university city and places like burger king and mc donalds around here are staffed mostly by students.

Didn't know that about Waterstone's. Was that in the days when they were merging with Sherratt & Hughes?

I think that shops should fit an extra button beneath the till, next to the one that calls the police in case of robbery/violence. They need a button to give rude and bolshy customers with an instant electric shock. Abd then bill them for the electricity used.

BTW I also want one for the girl in Smiths on Saturday who had a face like a smacked arse and chewed gum at me. Please.