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.

"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.