Every day, customer service employees hope with caution on their way into their shifts, that it will be a good day. It will be a day without issues, screaming or honest mistakes.
What’s the worst part of the job? All the tedious, tiresome and lack of patience from customers that think they are entitled to whatever they want.
“When you’re trying to fix a situation and they don’t want a single solution to it,” said Daniella Ortiz, a Delta College barista at Java jitters on campus for three years.
Employees have been trained to remain calm and help in any way they can however they aren’t trained to re-train customers on manners and common decency. So who and what gives you the authority to screech and holler at an employee for a slight mistake?
“I believe it’s important to be patient with people, because you never know what they’re going through… until people are disrespectful… I try to calm the situation down and tell them ‘Hey I’m here to help you’… but after a couple attempts I’m then getting a manager,” said Brandy Bowers, a cashier at Delta College.
Consumers believe because it’s a minimum wage and requires basic skills you can’t make mistakes or have all the items at all times of the day. The expectation for a 16-year-old fast food worker to not make any mistakes, or that a 32-year-old, two weeks into a barista job, absolutely needs to know the difference between a cafe macchiato and a cappuccino because it’s life or death for that one “soccer mom” is hysterical.
Adjunct Professor Amanda Cardwell has been working in food and retail service for four years and remembers the endless agony of trying to fix a mistake with a grueling customer.
“She said she came in the morning before, I was there the morning before, we had never seen her… She then said we had messed up her drink…We remade it again and it was incorrect again… the customer then pulled me aside and said ‘she’s going to spit in my drink now isn’t she’ and I went ‘she would never do that, we would never do that.’ I personally made her the drink then handed her the drink and told her, ‘Have a nice day. Please do not come back to this location.’”
I have worked five years and continue to work in the industry, despite the horrors. The act of kindness never gets noticed.
I get yelled at at least five times a day, whether it be on the phone or in person.
And the saying goes, “The customer is always right,” but they aren’t, because what is not known is we get in trouble trying to make that small modification to your liking that the customer thinks isn’t that big of a deal.
If you are coming in with five minutes left until the store closes, and you have special accommodations or a certain diet, more than likely we are out of many products because WE AREN’T A GROCERY STORE AND WE RUN OUT OF FOOD TOO!
And customers forget we’re halfway through our workday when yours ends, and still have six hours to go with the possible overtime because of that bizarre late-night rush and the public thinking “Oh they won’t mind one more customer before we close.”
Yes. We do mind.
I don’t speak for all food service or any customer service workers, but try to remember what you learned in kindergarten and “treat others how you would want to be treated” and that we are not your punching bag after a long day.