Some people have never considered that they can go for a shopping trip without bothering the employees. It's never crossed their mind that they could go grocery shopping without telling a teenage employee that the fruit “was better last week." This is the person who whines to a clothing store employee that the fabric seems cheap. Some customers get a thrill out of whining about unimportant, and sometimes unsolvable, first-world problems.

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…

A customer was a bit too eager to shop at a new store in town. At some restaurants that are brand new, a “soft launch” will take place for the first few weeks they're open. During the soft launch, servers are being trained, the kitchen staff is learning how to make the food properly, and therefore the service might be a little slower than normal. That's all well and good for the restaurant industry, but there are no soft launches in retail. That didn't stop this woman from trying to break into…

Serving customers is not always an easy task. However, you don't have to work in customer service to profit from the advantages that come with the position. For example, in the story that follows, the Original Poster (OP) talks about his experience with a demanding client who won't wait his turn to be serviced. OP works as a security guard at a well-known phone company in Dublin City Center. The Original Poster (OP) sets the scene by claiming that most staff members are reluctant to offer their…

Retail is brutal for a number of reasons, but one of the worst is the fact that you get absolutely no respect from the public whom you're servicing. This is clearly evidenced by the audacity and sheer entitlement they feel in being able to bark orders at you and admonish you for “slacking” as if they're your boss. The thing is, when they're at their own job, they probably browse Reddit and spend ample time gossiping with their own coworkers but for some reason, these sorts of customers seem to…

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…

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…

Two basic rules are taught to us when we work in customer service. First of all, we should never presume that consumers will read the small print at the bottom of our signage. The second universal guideline is to never, ever concede that you are correct and the client is mistaken. The story below is an account of a frustrated arts and crafts store manager. OP has been managing the store for a while, and quite frankly, presumably has encountered an endless amount of difficult customers. However,…

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…

Do people just leave their valuable belongings at random places hoping no one will take them, or is it just this one Karen? When I worked in retail, I had a few regular customers who would occasionally ask me to put some shopping bags behind the counter while they went to get their car. Some even asked me to keep an eye on their kids while they ran to a different shop or took a phone call outside. Either way, I am no stranger to weird requests from customers. But I have to say that when I read…

“I immediately wanted to call in sick,” this video game store employee wrote. What made them feel so ill? An advertisement! For those who have spent time in the trenches of retail work around the holidays, you know exactly how this person feels. No matter how much you enjoy your retail job during the year, when the holiday season comes around, customers begin to act feral.

Certain organizations, especially within certain industries, love to save on labor, and one of the ways they do this is by sending workers home from a scheduled shift when things are quiet to try and keep from being overstaffed. Of course, predictably, as soon as the manager has sent someone home, you'll end up with the biggest rush of customers you've ever experienced, ensuring that the rest of the day is going to be a living nightmare—and no one will be getting any breaks.

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.