In retail, the number of customers who are convinced they know better than you is endless… Better than you when it comes to the products, better than you in terms of your store's policies, and better than you when it comes to the legalities under which you're trading. Having access to all the information with little understanding has emboldened people into thinking that they're experts after a few Google searches, even on impressively technical subjects. Of course, the rehearsed script often ru…

Dodgy off-book leave policies are something that you just come to expect after a while of working in the restaurant or retail world. From the first time you go to book leave and are met with the strong insinuation that maybe you shouldn't be taking any leave at all, giving you reasons of being too busy or too understaffed to possibly afford to be a “man down," you're going to be feeling that old resigned feeling of knowing that this is going to be that kind of place. The reality is that you're…

Social media sites and communication apps are readily accessible. Oftentimes it feels impossible to keep up with them all. You may feel at times that you are unable to keep up with them all. Therefore, you might occasionally need to compartmentalize and determine what is more important and what can wait till later in order to be informed and not miss any important information. But in addition to the countless texts and emails you receive daily, what would happen if you started receiving dozens…

We should have the expectation as a society that it's ok to deny someone service for being impolite to staff. This might actually teach people to be respectful and treat other people with common decency rather than with abject entitlement. Of course, as with anything else, there are grey areas and blurred lines and you might just end up talking to some egotistical service manager who is having a bad day. Still, professional courtesy should prevail even if they're not giving you the same. This c…

Is it ever acceptable for a customer to exhibit entitled behavior, also known as "Karen" behavior? You can argue different ways on this one, but in this story, the customer's behavior was unwarranted. When you pay for a service, such as electricity, Wi-Fi, dry cleaning, or any other service for that matter, you are obligated to pay in return. If you stop paying the company, you cannot expect them to continue catering to your needs, which is what the entitled customer in this story believes.

At certain times in your life—particularly when things have gone sideways—it's important to take ownership of the fact that your own actions and decisions are the things that got you there. Unfortunately, most of us struggle with this and, as a matter of self-preservation, will seek to displace blame towards anyone or anything that we can point a finger at. Sometimes, this displacement is plausible, reasonable even, but at other times, it can get unreasonably ridiculous… Tell me again, Carl, ab…

An entitled customer, who the OP claims was a total Kevin, got instant karma when he tried to make the innocent retail employees' lives miserable over a return. In the following story, 'Kevin' would not accept the store's policy of in-store credit refund for his item. So, he decided to cause a scene for the poor employees on shift who don't even have a say in the store's policy. So, whether Kevin blew up or not, there wasn't anything they could do about it.

While all customer service is tough due to the challenging task of dealing with the unpredictable members of the public, delivery drivers have it particularly rough, owing to the fact that they have to consistently interact with these same people whose absurd entitlement is amplified by the proximity of their homes. If you thought that Karen was a doozy to deal with at the customer service desk at Home Depot, just wait until you see how she treats the poor bloke who has to deliver something rig…

If there's one person you don't want to mess with, it's an EMT who has just finished their shift… EMTs are some of the hardest working individuals with a job that necessitates sleep deprivation, self-sacrifice, and trauma that reaches far, far above their pay grade. Even a shift for them that is “not bad” would be enough to send the rest of us looking for another line of work. While they're some of the nicest people, every EMT I've ever known personally gets through their job by being partially…

Some people weren't ever taught that they can't always have things their way—and it shows… These days, being a preferred platinum, premium, premier, or bumbercrum-level customer really doesn't mean much of anything. Companies don't even really go through much to disguise this, either. Back in the day, if you did enough business with a company to achieve bundersnoot-level status, they'd give you actual upgrades and treatment that meant something. These days, you'll be lucky to get a pen, but it'…

There are a few general rules to be aware of as a self-sufficient adult prepared to take on the world. First is that you should never, ever irritate the person working at the front desk. This covers lodging facilities, dining establishments, nightclubs, the grocery store, and—above all—the representative handling your airline seat. The story that follows is an account of a resourceful small airline representative. At that point, having worked in the field for years, OP was acquainted with a few…

Depending on how long you have been impatiently awaiting support, customer service can truly seem like a never-ending nightmare. The person we are chatting with half the time has no idea who we are, why we are calling, or even if they have the authority to tackle the issue we are experiencing. The story that follows is an account of a clever customer who is tired of being inconvenienced by customer service representatives. To put things in perspective, OP is a business owner who decided to relo…

It's kinda sorta hard to dress too casually for a job you don't have. For one thing, it's not your job, and, for another—well, it's not your job. As long as you're wearing a shirt and shoes, you can pretty much go anywhere you'd like… Although those signs usually fail to mention any requirement for pants, so that one's up to you.

Being a retail veteran means that you're nearly immune to the tactics of wily entitled customers, hardened to the core with the scar tissue of encounters with other customers—that or just completely dead inside—but it's all the same thing, really. Even if you leave the retail industry far behind, you remember the way people can act toward retail staff long afterward and how it's almost like people become another person when they begin talking to someone they deem to be a “servant" and beneath t…

We're silently judging each other all the time. Like it or not, it's a part of being human. Most of the time, these are calculated judgments, and they're made for good reason in order to avoid conflict and preemptively determine whether or not it is a good idea to broach particular topics of conversation with the person you're talking to—like deciding whether or not a political conversation is appropriate at your family's Christmas gathering. Even the most tolerant saint-like individuals among…

Dealing with entitled customers is one of the most challenging parts of customer service jobs, especially when those entitled customers continue to come back despite insisting they're not going to. Handling their behavior just isn't worth it, no matter how much money they spend. That's why we love to see when a business owner stands up for themselves and sets the record straight—responding matter-of-factly to an unjust 1-star review from an entitled customer.