This usually ends with people waiting for their turn to be assholes.
If not retail during Christmas than the worst of humanity is on display weekly on Sundays when the after church crowd starts funneling into their favorite brunch spot. Every server has horror stories
When I was a mid-level retail manager, my philosophy was that my floor worker’s job was to take care of the customers, my store manager’s job was to take care of corporate, and my job was to facilitate both. The best way to do that most of the time was to take care of and protect my floor workers.
Most of the time the customer complaints were baseless. Sometimes they were legitimate. But in all cases my priority was taking care of my workers. I may have had to coach them on something after the complaint (usually on how to better handle asshole customers), but ALWAYS in private, and always calmly.
Sometimes I had to do something for the customer if there was a legitimate issue, like give them a $20 gift card or something.
But no matter what the situation was, if a customer was abusive to my staff they were banned from the store on the spot. I’d trespass them, put their picture on a board for our greeters, and if they attempted to return we’d have polkce escort them away.
If they had been trying to buy a firearm (we were a massive destination outdoors store), we’d blacklist them in the corporate system and I had a text message group with all the nearby firearm dealers where we’d share the names of customers we’d blacklisted.
Nobody’s business was worth allowing my people to be abused. I didn’t care that we were losing a $20,000 sale - my staff was worth more than that, both from a basic humanity standpoint, and also because having a good, experienced, loyal employee is more important than having an unreliable asshole customer. And you don’t retain good employees if you don’t protect them.
Yes, we should also have high schoolers visit a water treatment plant, sewers, work with garbagemen, work at a dump, a recycling plant, an electrical plant, several types of factories, etc
We went to all of these in elementary and high school! We didn’t exactly work there, but I still remember it all, including the smells.
That’s rather amazing. I am glad but what that doesn’t seem to be the case for most kids?
I still think every person working a cash register should be allowed one free kill at work every year. People would be a lot more polite if they knew there was a chance they could face actual consequences for their actions. Would especially help around the holidays, as you dont know if this Taco Bell employee has burned his kill yet prior to the new year
it’d make those political campaign donut stops more fun for sure. can you imagine being JD Vance and hearing everyone shout DIBS when you walk into Dunkin
One of my little ideas for ‘fixes’ for political problems has been ‘if you get voted in, you have the job for life, but can be fired at any time,’ as in out of a canon, at a brick wall. Better keep those approval rates over 66%. Donors come and go. The canon is forever.
that sounds kind of like reducing vehicle accidents by affixing a very sharp spike pointing at the driver’s heart to the steering wheel. it might work, but it’s not worth the risk. sometimes politicians have to do unpopular things. it’s like taking a potassium pill when your level is low. it helps, but damn if it isn’t unpleasant.
There was a short story I can’t find right now based around the idea that everyone gets one legal murder in their life.
As a former food service and retail worker through many jobs, the worst people are other coworkers, mostly meddling managers, not really the customers. The shitty management makes the job horrible. These asshat assistant store managers who get power trips and have no actual skills.
I’d rather we just teach empathy from the get go.
American culture is one of individualism and that is such a shitty thing for society.
The only retail workers I’ve seen that appear to be enjoying themselves are people working in Games Workshop. If you express even the slightest interest in Warhammer, they’ll be talking to you for an hour gushing about lore, and it’s a remarkably good sales tactic because I’ve only ever talked with a GW employee once without buying something.
While I’ve subscribed to this philosophy for decades at this point, there is a possible issue that was really hammered home by COVID -
there will be a non-zero number of people who will be even shittier because “I had to
ensureendure it, so they should, too!”Those kinds of people won’t really be any nicer without this training, either. At least we can make them take it for a day. I’m still behind the plan (however, at a lot of places you need more than 1 day of experience to grasp how the whole system works and why some complaints are actually ridiculous).
yeah, i say one week minimum (but i learn fast). maybe one month?
My thought project on the subject is actually a bit more expansive -
Before the age of 25, everyone must complete 1000 hours (~6 mo) in a customer facing position in one of the following roles:
- Retail
- Food Service
- Call Center
Service must be completed with under x number of verified complaints.
Age limit may have to be tweaked. There would have to be some kind of oversight board to prevent people from being assholes the whole time they’re there. Also, some kind of minimum service block to prevent doing it piecemeal a week at a time or something.
ETA - but, because everyone has to go through it so everyone knows the parameters, there would need to be guardrails against customers holding complaints over the employees head.
When I worked in call centers, we would always joke that management should give away “non-recorded call passes” as incentives. At any point in a call, you could place the caller on hold, head into a different room, and continue the call from there. No recordings, no repercussions, nothing - just a black box of account activity. You could tell the customer exactly what you think of their bullshit threat to cancel their service.
I tell that story to say that, with some tweaking, I think that could be worked into a way to prevent customers from gaming the system. If you knew that every employee got 1 free “punch a customer in the face” card per month, you might think twice before mouthing off.
- What would happen if you reach 25 without hitting the quota of compulsory service hours?
- What would happen if you get too many “verified complaints”?
Hm…
-
You can get “drafted” by local retailers and you must complete 2x your remaining time? Or maybe you have to join the Job Corps or something?
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My initial thought is something like where each infraction tacks on another week, maybe?
There’s a lot of red teaming and game theory work that would need to be done to tighten up exactly these kinds of questions. But it’s difficult because the entire point of the exercise is to try and instill some empathy into people, and it’s hard to do that without making it easy to game, and making it onerous defeats the purpose.
Like, if a woman went to college, then stayed and got her master’s, and was then on track to do her service and finish just before her 25th birthday but got pregnant, there shouldn’t be any punishment for that. Her time should just be tolled until she’s able to work again. Same thing with someone getting sick. But then you run the risk of something like people getting fake doctor notes and being perpetually sick to avoid it. I would want to make sure that everyone has to go through with it, regardless of financial or social status. No “senator’s son” deferments, ya know?
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what would you do if they got verified bullshit complaints, like “i did not like their shoes” and they wear vibrams around the office? that’s verifiable, legitimate, and totally bullshit.
Complaints would have to be about their actual conduct / job performance.
your dress around the office is part of your conduct. like, there are jobs i’d fire someone wearing crocs or sandals or whatever (e.g. they are laboratory jobs, close toed shoes are safety equipment).
Fair, and agreed. But that would be something I’d expect their supervisor to address, not a random customer. Again, the board would exist to process and interpret exactly things like this.
I’ve had VERY similar thoughts on the matter in the past few years (compulsory hospitality service, for about ~half a year), and I dig your terms. Please send link to signatures when you start your campaign.
Thank you for your support.
For me, the worst part of working retail at Christmas was hearing the exact same record played on repeat for eight hours straight.
It was years before I could listen to any Christmas music.
I’ve never worked retail, but I loathe Christmas music anyway. I fucking hate going shopping in the US between October and January.
Unless I know exactly what they’d like, I use this simple formula to buy presents.
Under 5 years old? Get them a really big Christmas card. Little kids never get mail, so they’ll love it. Give the parents the money you’d spend to get the kid whatever they actually need.
5 to 10 years? GI Joe or Barbie. It’s like getting someone in jail a carton of Kools; if they don’t want it themselves they can swap it in the yard.
10 to 20? Cash money. You can make it fancy by getting gold colored dollar coins putting it in a draw string purse.
Over 20? Booze. Unless they are a raging alcoholic.
Over 20? Booze. Unless they are a raging alcoholic.
Fancy olive oil, chocolate, tea, or coffee are good alternatives, depending on their tastes.
Fancy olive oil
ooo, we have a decent press not too far from here. that’s an idea
Reminds me of a story I read a while back.
The writer was in Italy and toured a particular olive oil producer. They told him he could have a case sent to the US for about $5.00 a bottle. He wasn’t a great cook, but it seemed like a good price and he didn’t want to look cheap, so he got a case.
Gets back home and he has a meeting with a contractor. They are walking through the kitchen and the contractor sees one of the bottles. Goes off. Apparently, this is the Ferrari of olive oils. The writer gives him two bottles.
The job, which he assumed would take six months, was done in two.
Never underestimate the power of the right gift.
i was a christmas musician for a few years. 50-60 gigs from the saturday after thanksgiving til the weekend before christmas each year, occasionally a private christmas eve party if my family got to come too.
we were good and polished: we started practice for the season in june. i think it took a decade of that until i can do like, one or two christmas albums the entire season without losing my mind.
wife’s a good sport about it tho. the main trees are up and we’ve got a bunch of tabletops to still spread around, and we have a good-natured annual argument about whether the true queen of christmas is mariah carey or andy williams.
i am pretty much always in the mood for the harry simeone chorale though. their do you hear what i hear is a banger
Zoey Deschanel 's she and him album. On repeat. All month. I was there, man
I’m pretty sure she owes you a least one CENSORED and maybe some CENSORED.
why are we censoring apology and mansions?
Don’t ever change, innocent child
i got it, i just reject your reality and substitute my own. it’s pretty fun.
Retail has toxified any and every holiday experience because every holiday is just “BUY BUY BUY!”
Halloween? “BUY CANDY! JUST BUY IT OH AND BUY CHEAP DECORATIONS AND TAT TOO!” Thanksgiving? “BUY FOOD! BUY LOTS OF FOOD!” X-Mas? “BUY EVERYTHING OR UNLESS YOU’RE A SOULLESS PERSON WHO DOESN’T BUY ANYTHING FOR THOSE YOU LOVE!” Valentine’s Day? “BUY CHOCOLATES! BUY CHEAP TAT!”
And it just cycles through every year. And you get to witness so many idiots that continue falling for the same traps, just by coming into your store every day.
I have said for years something similar but if you’re in IT you should be mandated to spend a part of your year working on helpdesk and providing Operational support requiring on call. Too many CS wonks now in IT who come right from school into development and/or management pipeline.
I do agree. Also in my company (manufacturing) IT seems to be seen as a knowledge resource. People ask questions which isn’t really IT, its more like “how do I do this part of my job which my predecessor didn’t explain or document in any shape or form”.
Anecdotally it’s scary the amount of process knowledge IT workers are supposed to document because the business will just shrug and go “I just copy the file to this folder and it ends up in our general ledger”
Can I get an exemption as already having compassion and empathy? I don’t think I’d survive that.
You get a second term as a ‘reward’ for your special skills.
Also, you’re going to have to add on Saturdays for that second term so you can coordinate with management to handle training for the one-termers.
I’d just end up crying in the back within an hour, I’m certain.
Have ALWAYS felt everyone should do 1 full year or retail or 2 full years of a military service right after high school. Bring back free college for armed services and better availability of education for all.
Jokes aside that can’t really work when companies are private tho.
Like imagine Amazon has a strike going on so government drafts you to the unfilled labor positions.
Nah what they need is more guns, both for the employees and the customers
“I’m telling you the sign said $50. You will sell it to me for $50!” click “What did you just say?” “I said - oh wait I only have 4 bullets left and the Karen neighbor is at it again… Nevermind.”
