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 used to work in a big builders merchant and worked hard to overcome the prejudice of the staff and customers of being a woman in a male domain. I studied for all the qualifications I could on electrics, plumbing etc and have several BTECS and other bits of paper. Eventually the regulars would come straight to me with questions they had on products and how to use them and what the regs were. My collegues respected me and it used to give them great pleasure when they saw a person delibratly ignore me or ask me advise then come to them and ask the same question to say " you need to talk to Mrs Gok she really know's her stuff and will make sure you get the right thing/advice." Cue a few red faces.

But I have to admit the one day after yet more crap from some one who was a regular and had known me for years and knew I knew my stuff, I blew and gave him a piece of my mind and told him what I thought of him. I was dismissed for gross misconduct. The piece of shit that caused it laughed in my face at that.

I had the final laugh though as I was working a second job at the time to support my DH as he went back to uni and they had been after me for a few months to come to them as a manager. So I went to my boss and told him what had happened and he quite happily gave me a job and gave me a wage that nearly covered the full time and part time wages I had been getting. A few weeks later this guy came in and was giving the person at the front desk merry hell and demanded to see a manager. You should have seen his face when he saw me. He then laid into me, my boss came from his office and told him in no uncertain terms that his business was not wanted and he could go elsewhere.He was not so polite, I must say, something about multiplying

I just said "Bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out."

YANBU. Any job where you have contact with the general public and are providing a 'service' iyswim, you tend to meet some rude idiots. I worked in a bar and very rarely heard a please or thank you. (i even had an argument about manners with someone one night!)
It was my full time job at the time but some of those who worked with me were giving up their friday and saturday nights to be treated like crap.

MrsGok - sorry I don't get what you mean about about the rude man "something about multiplying"?

I said it upthread but nobody picked up on it[attention seeking] but a very rude man threatened to rape me when I was working in a shop. Imagine to say that to a teenager.

misssurrey: didn't know they were!
it was before the ottakar's takeover anyway (and it was most likely a management decision rather than a company policy )

I refused to serve a guy once because he didn't have any I.D. with him. He kicked off and was very rude to me and then demanded to see the manager. I took great pleasure in wandering into the glasswash room and then wandering back out and saying 'Hi, I'm the duty manager, what can I do for you?' People always seem to think women can't be pub managers. More than once I've had people tell me "they want to speak to the organ grinder, not the monkey." Who gets off on being that bloody rude to people?

Another time, someone snootily asked a member of staff if I was old enough to work behind a bar. The staff member sheepishly told her, 'actually, she's my boss.'

wukter sorry it is an expression we use in these parts 'Go forth and multiply' is the polite way of saying 'go and f*ck yourself'. My boss used the second version

Sorry I missed your post about a person threatening torape you, that is just shocking

MadameDeathStare maybe thay took their fashion advice from Dinner Ladies

I had to give up my BTEC course when I was dxd with epilepsy (was doing site management, now can't go onto a building site), and have worked in retail since then until I was signed off sick. Some of the customers were BEYOND rude. Yet I am still stopped in the street years later with people saying "Aren't you the friendly one-stop girl/girl from BP/asda?" I am still remembered as the staff member who knew what regulars wanted/how to re-start the temperamental car wash halfway through a cycle/ where anything and everything was kept. Yet I have had customers (will have to remember cuntstomers as a phrase, reminds me of the whoreists we used to get in a tourist area...) that have tried to put out ciggarettes on me when asked to take them outside, one who tried to stab me at the petrol station (at the height of the petrol crisis a few years ago), and don't get me started on the customers in a supermarket who recognise you as a staff member, when you are shopping there on your day off, and get pissed off with you when you direct them to a working member of staff...even when you have 2 toddlers with you in the trolley...or the old lady who was a regular at a craft shop I worked in that for the last 3 years has asked me every time she sees me if I know where my boss went when he shut up shop (and therefore put me out of a job with only 4 days notice)...If I knew where the arsehole was, I'd be getting the £300 holiday pay he owes me FFS! And it doesn't matter if I'm busy with my DC's either. Or how many times I've explained to her the full situation...

Aha, MrsGok, makes sense now.

Loudlass - they put cigarettes out on you! That's assault, did your employers do anything about it?

and for wukter and loudlass.

i remember all the nice customers: working in a children's bookshop, i get children coming up to me in the street to say hello - it's lovely.

and i have a few regulars who come in and immediately come to the counter "i know you'll know where this is, have you got..."
i liked it when i worked in waterstone's that anyone could come and ask me anything and i could immediately tell them where it was/take them to it. they all thought i had an amazing memory!

I have just finished work after 2 1/2 years of working for a major high street retailer. The rudeness was unbeliveable

I got told to "fusk off back to jockland"
"Stop talking jockinese at me bitch"
"Why are you down the vitamin aisle then when you clearly don't know anything about them? What, tell me is the point of you being here?"

There was also one old lady who used to stand at the end of the aisle and shout (at the top of her voice) "Paracetamol". of course I would ignore her, so she would shout again and again. Then after 3 or 4 shouts I would say really loudly "oh are you talking to me, I'm sorry I didn't realise I thought you were talking to someone else aobut paracetamols"

I needed a tabard to stop all the botles which customers insisted on opening from spilling all over me. Or the 500ml bottle of diet coke a child threw on the floor in a temper tantrum becasue her mother wouldn't buy her hannah montana body spray. The mother walked off and left it alll over the floor with the words "that what these people-nod in my direction - are paid to do"

nickelbabe ..Yup, They were owned by WHS aeons ago.

I idenfify with knowing where all the stock was from the time I worked in a bookshop. I spent more time there than at home. I saw the deliveries, put the books on the shelves, I knew what was in the stockroom..the amount of times customers would give me that 'How on earth do you know if you have it or not without even looking?' look, but you certainly get to know!

OP, YANBU.

Saltire, I also cant stand the people that just bark the name of the product they want at you. The best I had was a woman stalking right up to me and shouting "Girl, 1, Very advanced" (I work in a toy shop) I must admit I stared at her in shock and she just said "well? what do you recommend?" Customers like that make my job such a joy!

This is petty but one thing that annoys me is customers that "throw" the money onto the counter rather than placing it into my hand (usually middle aged men) if im feeling rather arsey that day I usually retaliate by putting their change on the counter and smiling sweetly when they glare at me.

Im thick skinned I can take most abuse with a smile, however if a customer gets personally abusive then they are out. It's only happened once in 9 years and I still grin at the look on the womans face when little me (I was 20 at the time) told her to leave the premises.
But I always remind myself for all the rude customers out there, there are more nice customers and these are the ones that make the crap wages worthwhile.

well, there go, learn something new everyday (i knew obv that WHS owned W's, but i didn't know the S&H connection)

parents love me sometimes because i eavesdrop the conversations, the kid can't find such-and-such, so i pick it off the shelf and slip it into the parent's hand and they pretend they found it

the other day, a child was asking for a Benjamin Zephaniah book, which i knew was on the shelf to my right, so i picked it off teh shelf without even looking and the whole family went

itmakes the shitty customers bearable!

but! my shop's really really really small, and the amount of people who just come in the door and start asking me stuff without even looking at me or saying hello! it's quite frustrating. what happened to "hello! could you tell me where... is please?", but they go "where's ...?"

oh, sorry, were you talking to me?

I hate rude customrs, I personally love retail work (apart from the boxing day openin glol) and i also get paid an awful lot for my sales role (by usual shop standards) I do the job as I enjoy it, it fits around the kids, i get paid well and I work for a massive company that I am proud to work for.

One woman tried to tell me her son had worked in my store (he hadnt) I said 'he hasnt worked hhere in the last x months has he (she as calaiming she knew our policies better than I did) and she turned up her nose and said 'of course not he's been to university'

Working ina shop/bar etc does not make you stupid if anything only certain types of people will make it in retail as you need the skills to let the idiotic comments and attitudes run off your back.

It takes alot to keep smiling sometime, I personally think that everyone shoudl have to do some bar/shop work as a form of national service so that they know how hard it is lol

I'm really friendly with shop assistants and the like because I have worked in public service type jobs so much that I know what a difference a genuine smile and politeness make. Actually, I'm SO pleasant that DP jokingly accused me of flirting with the much-older-than-me Sainsbury delivery man the other day! Perhaps I was giggling at his jokes a little too much.

A friend is quite curt in shops and I hate it; I think she secretly wants to roll her eyes at my attitude. But I had a little karma recently - a checkout girl in M&S Food swiped her £5 off card on my bill just because we'd had a nice chat and she said she couldn't stand the grumps! I also get two or three stamps on my Cafe Nero loyalty card when I order one coffee, because they like me in there...and I'm a bit of a regular visitor

Oooh yes, a very nice man in Cafe Nero stamped a whole card for me in Poole once after we'd had a nice chat!

It just goes to show - a lot of peoples' "good manners" is only a mask. They don't bother if they think they will get away with it because you are inferior.

Another thing that makes the shitty customers bearable for me...
When children come upto the counter clutching the toy they want to buy, huge grin on their face, then when they go through their little purses and count out the 10p and 20p's that they have saved up so they can buy the toy, sounds silly but it makes my day!

what ever happened to "treat people how you'd like to be treated"?

It is a form of snobbery.

I cannot abide either snobbery or rudeness and I make sure that my children respect others too as one day they will be shopping without me. They always speak politely to the person serving them and always say thank you.

I was once shopping and my mobile rang just as i got to the checkout. I answered it because it was the children's school. It was a very quick question which I promplty answered and put the phone in my bag. I apologised to the young lady serving me and she looked at me as if I had 10 heads. She clearly wasn't used to people being nice to -her poor girl.