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.

"You can't always get what you want..." Mick Jagger and the 'Stones famously taught us, before then going on to elaborate that “If you try sometimes, you'll find you get what you need.” While that's all well and good, and while this serves as a great message of inspiration about how one should never give up when the going gets tough… There are actually plenty of times in life when you might want something from someone else, and upon being told “No,” you should just take the “No” at face value a…

Working retail is the experience of permanently being wedged between a rock and a very angry place. The rock is the obstinate management structure above you that is setting and enforcing policies that make no sense—but that they refuse to change. On the other side are the perpetually angry customers who are often upset about those exact same policies. Unfortunately, you, the lowest-level employee, take the brunt of the customer's dissatisfaction, which then becomes management dissatisfaction as…

Working in a call center is a pretty thankless gig. Constantly dealing with less-than-kind customers who are frustrated at your company's refusal to help them with their problem with your product—which to be fair, is a known issue that the company has deemed to be too expensive to resolve. So, now you're bearing the brunt of that frustration on a daily basis because your wage for 20 years still costs far less than paying R&D to fix the issue.

Supermarkets are already a relatively overwhelming experience for most of us, akin to navigating a labyrinth that's been starkly lit by harsh-white fluorescent lighting while a string of the most infuriatingly mundane acoustic covers of songs that were popular ten years ago play omnipresently throughout.

Karens have the uncanny ability to identify, single out, and berate people who work customer service jobs, accosting them with wanton fury regardless of whether or not they even happen to be working at that time—or are even employed by that place at all.

Typically, purchasing something means that you intend to keep that thing for the duration of its life or until you pass it on. This directly contrasts with renting something, where you lease it for a set period of time for a fee with the expectation that you will be returning that thing by the end of the period you have paid for it. Both arrangements have their advantages, by owning something it's yours and you can do whatever you want with it, but this usually requires a much higher buy-in cos…

Working retail, you get all sorts… There you are, just trying to do your job, and some jerkwad comes up thinking that they're going to get one over on you because you had the gall to work a job where you have to stand for nine hours a day making minimum wage, following the processes you've been forced to follow. And that's the problem with sharing stories online… People see it as a chance to get clout for being a victim, and think of themselves as heroes despite actually being the villains... T…

The thing about making a mistake is that you kind of have to just own it. At this point, you're already suffering whatever negative effects and embarrassment have resulted from that mistake, and then you have to be able to rub salt in that wound and accept that you have no one to blame but yourself. It's no surprise that a lot of times, people seem to be completely unable to consciously or subconsciously accept that their mistake is their own fault. Instead, they come up with some way to explai…