Board 8 > Those of you here that have ever worked in retail or fast food what..

(+) Yeah! (+)

.....percent of your customers would you say were like extremely difficult , or made your life extremely hard, a small percentage?

My first job was a retail (Dollar Tree) and it made me explicitly decide to never work retail ever again. So far that's been successful.

Probably < 3%, but those shitty ones were just so, so shitty.

God, I'm so glad I don't work in retail anymore.

i have to imagine bad customers are way more common in retail than fast food, and way more common in drive-throughs than stores without them

one of my jobs as a teen was at a fast food place (mostly coffee/ice cream, some food) without a drive through. i cannot remember a single truly bad customer. people were generally just happy to get their coffee or whatever. if they had some slightly odd request it wasn't a big deal. closest thing was probably the person who came in demanding free food for their "brother- who has dyslexia!" Spoilers, our manager gave them the free food, who cares.

now that i think about it, we had one type of truly awful customer- the ones who would shit, miss the toilet somehow, and leave the situation to be discovered. that didn't happen super often, but it sticks out in the memory

it was also in a pretty "good" neighborhood, so YMMV. but i worked there 8-25 hours a week for probably 3 years and i can't remember any truly terrible customers. there were absolutely tons of characters, but slightly odd or annoying situations mostly just broke up the monotony

FFDragon posted...

My first job was a retail (Dollar Tree) and it made me explicitly decide to never work retail ever again. So far that's been successful.

So you like many said . Soon as I get a college degree, no more retail?

mcflubbin posted...

Probably < 3%, but those shitty ones were just so, so shitty.

God, I'm so glad I don't work in retail anymore.

This

In both fast food and retail I got far more difficult customers than actively awful ones. I would say like 80% of people are between alright and very lovely, 19% of people don't so much as consider there's an actual thinking human serving them (and that doesn't usually make the interaction bad per se), and then a bit under 1% actively hate you and want you dead. Probably about 5-6% make the transaction difficult, but some of that has overlap with the people who are genuinely lovely, so I wouldn't mind as much.

I was usually front of house in fast food, and it's mostly those blaming you for things you don't control (i.e. certain foods not being available or made wrong, and then them getting angry at you about it) that would piss me off. People doing the "I asked for no mayo" thing is easy enough to fix, but maybe 1 in every 1000 would try to say they ordered something that they very clearly didn't, or get pissed that they don't serve steak in a McDonalds (I had at least threedifferent people ask me for a medium rare and one of them got very angry and asked for my manager when I tried to explain that's not how anything works). There was (at least when I was working there, probably different now that everything is via screen) also a requirement for people to make orders in fast food, which made customer interaction awkward. In retail they can just put their shit up on the counter, pay, and go. Maybe less so now that every other place forces its employees to plug their loyalty cards.

Language barrier was a bit of a thing in both, though I think it might've been exacerbated due to where I was (UK in the late 2000s). I'd often get put on tills and nights because I spoke Polish and could talk to the delivery drivers who'd come through (or maybe just because I wouldn't complain about their accents within earshot of them, and actually liked night shifts).

I think retail (I worked in a grocery store and then a drug store) was about the same. Less difficult customers overall, but the ones that were bad were bad, probably a bit under 1%. The grocery store had the most awkward customers, because literally everyone needs groceries, whereas I think a drug store at least has a minimum intelligence threshold to realise you need like, deodrant or shampoo. Most complaints were about false advertising, something not being in stock, or generally misogynistic comments about the girls that worked there. Also obviously far more shoplifters (who are without fail arseholes and not subtle enough that you could tell management you didn't notice) and bratty kids in retail than fast food, though the lack of kids might also have been due to the McDonalds being in a service station.

<1% but this was decades ago

Most people were cool and way more understanding than i would be

edit: in fast food, teenagers had like a 10% chance of being shitheads, especially in groups

Truly awful probably around 1%. A much greater proportion would be a bit rude or clueless, but I only considered people who were extremely rude, aggressive, offensive or lewd as really bad. Worst person was probably someone who would creepily hit on young female staff then complain to the management if they refused to engage (making up stories that they'd insulted him).

Edit: But of course since I'd be serving or overseeing interactions with many hundreds of customers a day you could expect at least one remarkably bad interaction per shift. On a busy and unlucky day it did test my self-control and patience, certainly in the early days.

mcflubbin posted...

Probably < 3%, but those shitty ones were just so, so shitty.

From jobs I've had in the past:

Yep, you have the guy that got me reprimanded and had me re-count a till because "I didn't give him his change back" (I did, I was right, he threw a Karen fit.)

You have the guy who bought nothing but condoms in the quick-check isle and was being really skeevy about it.

You have someone who got pissed he got caught shoplifting and pushed someone into a display with some very pointy crates behind it, and then skipped town when it came to his court date (allegedly, it wasn't me pushed through it, but still.)

You have the person who demanded a full refund for a $30 cake I wrote on because my piping work, while nearly immaculate at the time, wasn't acceptable enough for her and "there wasn't enough white left on the (foot-and-a-half long rectangular) cake."

You have the one woman who had one foot in the grave that had a constant miasma of piss and rot that would come to the teller window, not leave for a half hour, and require actually *closing the branch* after she left to disinfect the bank counters.

This one wasn't officially retail, but you had this one guy call the police on our legal office when he received an invoice that was higher than he wanted, after he'd already reviewed and signed a retainer agreement. You know, to hit the clerical staff with an inconvenience instead of the lawyer itself.

Lastly, library wasn't officially retail either, but I worked front desk, but I had a petty thief that would VERY frequently try to get new cards made from newer employees by bringing in "family members", would check out like $150-$200 worth of children's books and DVDs on their card, and then vanish for a few months.