What did the card machine ever do to you?

Working retail is a hectic and endless stream of customer interactions that balance on a knife's edge, with any one of them threatening to teeter off into a full-blown customer meltdown with possibly little to no cause. It's a way of living that leaves you emotionally drained and completely exasperated, while weekends end up giving you just enough time to self-isolate and prepare for your next shift. Meanwhile, despite claiming to have the customer's best interest at heart, upper management mak…

Is it really so difficult to be kind to the customer service person trying to troubleshoot your problem over the phone? I get it, everything's falling to pieces on your end, but it doesn't make any logical sense to be unsavory to the one person who can actually help you.

Well, at least they didn't make a big deal out of nothing

Everyone's been embarrassed by their parents at some point growing up. More often than not, we accept these embarrassing moments as a part of the adolescent experience. Rarely do we see children grow up harboring a desire to recreate said embarrassing moments but with the roles reversed. Here, we have a playful and wholesome moment when a now 38-year-old Redditor decided to get even with her mother by telling her how much she loves her in a public setting, something her mother used to do when t…

Even though he was offered a full refund

If you do your job too well, you're simply going to make everyone else look bad by comparison. Instead of earning yourself the praise you deserve, you actually just wind up putting a target on your back while everyone quietly wishes you'd just disappear and stop making all of their jobs harder by setting the bar so high. Usually, your boss won't just come right out and tell you to stop working so hard or being so competent, saying the quiet part out loud would only make them and the team look w…

As the old saying goes, if you don't pay, you can't play. This Karen was a member of a community group that hosted various activities in the local neighborhood, one of which was run by the Redditor. This activity in particular was only £5 per customer, and yet, this Karen refused to pay the amount. Perhaps it was on principle, but instead, she pretended it was because she was waiting for her next paycheck. Now, of course, we are sympathetic to folks in situations like this, but the facts did no…

It really is something to marvel at how managers can repeatedly forget the importance of a human touch when it comes to dealing with clients. Hokey business theory and overconfidence are no match for good relationships and experience at your side. Yet, time and time again, new managers come marching on the scene, insecure about their place in their new role—maybe due to their lack of experience in the industry—overcompensating for that by making broad, sweeping changes, ignoring the pleas very…

Many a misguided middle manager has had the idea of hosting meetings at a time that is convenient for everyone: say during lunch hour when everyone is on break, so won't have any meetings scheduled… except that break is unpaid and, well, when are people supposed to eat their actual lunch when there's suddenly a meeting jammed in there. No matter how fun they try to make it sound, “zazzing” it up and naming it something they think is cool, like “Power Hour Lunch Sync,” the reality remains the sa…

Almost certainly, at some point, those working shift work, or in other jobs where timesheets need to be kept, have been told by some manager not to “bother” reporting time that they worked over their shift because it's “inconvenient” for them to report it. Sometimes, this comes in the form of being told that it needs to be at least 15 minutes to be reported and counted for anything, but that's not really true—at all. If anything, if their system can't handle menial minutes overtime, then they s…

Just in time for Halloween!

We thought the titular contests of the “Hunger Games” series were just some SciFi hoopla, yet here is this eerily similar real-world equivalent: competing for the privilege of working so that you can continue to support your own survival. In fact, “Hunger Games” is a fitting name given the fact that the arena for this real-world analog was in a restaurant. Everyone who has ever worked in the service industry or retail knows that customer reviews are a total grab bag, you can do nothing exceptio…

What is the etiquette these days when it comes to public transport? Not to sound like an "old man shouting at clouds," but it really does seem like etiquette—along with mutual unspoken respect and other social decorum—has gone completely out the window. Still, along with that, and theoretically causal of the previous issue is that people just seem generally more entitled and individualistic, it's all about “me me me” and “what can be done that benefits me” rather than partaking in the upholding…

Looks like they'll be receiving 600+ texts a day about the beautiful King County, Washington.

This manager was clearly not in his right mind because the flight attendant he thought was his employee was wearing a completely different color than the store uniform. Of course, entitled people do not like to be proven wrong, so when the flight attendant tried to explain that she didn't work there and was a customer, the manager dug his heels into the ground and doubled down. Finally, when he realized that she was not, in fact, lying, the manager reprimanded the customer for trying to play tr…