Does the service field entitle customers too much?

[Goatfish]

I work in one of the higher end grocers right now, and I have seen some shit. Customers taking up 3+ hours of management time with worthless complaints, running their carts into the stockers instead of asking them to move, demanding extreme things that take up so much time the store loses money on labor spent alone.

This isn't even touching on multiple counts of "extreme sampling" or straight up shoplifting that gets ignored because we are too afraid of losing a customer or worse, a customer going to the news and raising hell because they didn't get their way.

I don't want to sound to conservative, but if I was the overall owner/ceo, I would say that roughly 30-40% of all customers I help in an average week, I would need to have a talk about respect with, and 5% I would straight up kick from the store, never to return. Which is funny to me since I have gotten only one complaint in 3 years (because we ran out of an on sale item and have a no rain-check policy on sales), and dozens of compliments to upper management about how good my service is... when really I wouldn't care if most of my customers got hit by a bus.

What do you guys think? Especially those of you who have to do direct customer service.

[Dug]

Probably but I think the one thing to keep it mind is that the entitled assholes aren't that common. Maybe you deal with one or two every day but think of all the other customers that are just fine people that don't cause a huge stink over nothing. But even if they're a minority I don't think they should ever be catered too, if you're being an asshole you should be shown the door by security not given free shit or discounts because you screamed and frothed enough

[Azadina]

Personally I think if someone can't behave, and wants to be difficult on purpose, then they should just be escorted out by security. Until they learn to behave.

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

I think the thought of losing customers has definitely created problems in the service industry. I always felt that corporate made a policy that they never had to deal with, so they didn't care about the crap we had to deal with. They told us to take stuff back no questions asked and replace it or refund it within the return period.

Finally after however many years (and seeing what it cost them), they started clamping down more on customers who abused return policies or were attempting to return clearly stolen merchandise, and even recommending to the more difficult customers that perhaps they should seek out a new store since we clearly weren't meeting their needs. My one boss had a saying, he said 80% of people are decent and will never give you a problem, 10% will rob you blind or abuse you, and the last 10% will rob/abuse if they think they can get away with it.

[grandpab]

There's some people that are just so damn insufferable. I'll always remember this one guy at the pizza place I worked at. I listened to this guy bitch to the manager for about 5 minutes because the cheese on the pizza was orange. He kept arguing that the pizza had cheddar on it and that's the only way it could turn orange. I'm pretty sure we didn't even keep cheddar cheese in stock and if they did it was only used on one type of pizza and that wasn't what he ordered. It's just the color the cheese turns into when you add sausage onto the pizza. The grease from the sausage always made the cheese a bit orange. He ended up getting a free pizza over this too and it was probably like a $25 pizza. He had no valid argument at all, the manager knew he was a freakin idiot, and he still won it.

[Goatfish]

I wanted to add a couple more examples of fun stuff we deal with.

-One lady repeatedly slammed her cart into a cookie display since we ran out of her favorite product. She got a $20 gift card from upper management.
-On multiple occasions we have people return mostly eaten food for full refund, my favorite being a bottle of water that was 3/4 empty.
-One of our cake decorators spent hours on a specialty cake for a man, when he picked it up from us he literally threw it in his cart and went on his way. It was returned for full refund since the cake was smashed up.
-A customer once demanded we wrap and price close to 200 chicken necks (10 pounds) individually so that it was ready for her dog. The total cost was roughly $5 for her.
-My favorite, a customer ordered the wrong product, and complained until we not only gave her a gift card and the product for free, but also payed for her cab ride to come back and get the right thing.

While the truly terrible are fairly rare, it is still a relatively common thing for people to treat the service without any respect. I can't count the number of times people have whistled or clapped at me for help after waiting <5 seconds, including when I am already helping someone else. People who literally thrust or throw bread at me to slice for them, people who straight up ignore me when I greet them, and even people who talk to me as if they were 5 years old, vaguely pointing at items in a case and saying "grab me that one" even after asking them to clarify "which one?" multiple times.

[Damajin]

Grocery stores have this the worst, as people are pretty blatant nowadays about opening things up and eating as they shop and I've witnessed plenty of instances both as a shopper and as a salesman to these stores people finishing off a container of something and just sticking the empty in an open slot on the shelves and walk away.

The amount of product that gets damaged on a daily basis would really shock people if they knew about it. Stores sometimes have literal hundreds of cans, containers and boxes of damage food, beverage and bath goods to sort through for either being sent back to the distributor or just outright destroyed as a loss. The stores factor all of that into the cost of every item in the store so when you wonder about the cost of things know that part of it is covering for year to year loss ratio when people go around creating damaged goods.

Shoppers generally have shitty attitudes, it's not a pleasant thing to shop for the most part and they tend to project that outward onto others. Around the holidays or any festivities it gets worse of course, pressure is higher and everyone is stressed to the max. Burnout is everywhere then and it bleeds into everyone shopping.

[Jazzhands]

Everyone should serve a mandatory year or two working in retail or some kind of grocery store, bonus points if you work at any form of Organic or Vegan store, the entitlement of people at those places is ridiculous.

[Deleted]

Here's the thing though: pain in the arse customers are not profitable when you average it out. A business is better to refuse service and palm them off to a rival with lower standards. They are overly demanding and kick up shit if there is any hint they might be able to possibly wing a freebie somehow or wring a droplet of attention out of some non situation. They take pride in it. Meanwhile it annoys the fuck out of "decent folk" trying to go about their business and causes them to go elsewhere. A) because they are taking up the time unfairly of service personnel B)they are often in earshot having tantrums. I don't want to hear this shit. I'll even pay a bit more to avoid it, both for my sake and the people that have to put up with that shit all day.

It was easier to tell people to STFU before we had kids. Now my 5yo will point at them and say "He/She's naughty..." I just agree with him, loudly.

[Crissi]

The customer isnt always right, and more employers need to grow a spine and tell them NO.

[Ghâzh]

Start a business that's so scarce that you can pick your customers. When you have more work to do than you have time it's easy to tell the insufferable cunts to fuck off.

[Independent voter]

I think there's a big difference between customer service in the US and customer service in Europe.

[phitness]

I fucking hated working retail and will never do it again. I rather sit at an interstate exit begging for change then to work in retail again. I worked at publix in highschool in an upscale area and everyone thought they were entitled to whatever they wanted damn everyone else. I got fired from there for calling a customer a bitch that was being a bitch at one of the registers. I do however love being a shopper at Publix lol.

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I think there's a big difference between customer service in the US and customer service in Europe.

What are these differences? Does the customer have more power there or less?

[Crissi]

I luckily never worked retail. I did however work as a volunteer at the zoo in the petting zoo section. Boy..Id say 90% were nice, and 10% were just completely inaappropriate. What adult thinks its ok to try and pet a teenager? Also, too many cock jokes when I was holding roosters.

[zenkai]

When I was in college, one of the girls I want to school with worked at a gas station. A customer got pissed off because she asked for his ID when buying beer, he then threw the case of beer at her and shes one of those 5'2ish petite girls. The manager came out and apologized to the customer....

[Jazzhands]

The customer isnt always right, and more employers need to grow a spine and tell them NO.

Sadly, you'd lose your job fairly quickly, unless you work things like a customer service desk where you have to strictly enforce rules.

[phitness]

When I was in college, one of the girls I want to school with worked at a gas station. A customer got pissed off because she asked for his ID when buying beer, he then threw the case of beer at her and shes one of those 5'2ish petite girls. The manager came out and apologized to the customer....

Totally unrelated but Dollar General will card EVERYONE for cigs and beer even if they are and look 90 years old. I was behind a guy they couldn't have been younger than 60 trying to buy cigs and he walked there and didn't have his ID. Cashier wouldn't sell to him without ID. I know it's not the cashiers fault but the shitty policy that Dollar General has. She probably would have been fired if she sold to him w/o ID even tho he was clearly old as fuck.

[Crissi]

Sadly, you'd lose your job fairly quickly, unless you work things like a customer service desk where you have to strictly enforce rules.

Thats why I said employers, not employees. Get management to tell customers to STFU.

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So you're saying the breast way to run afowl of you is to compliment you on your ability to choke the chickens and offer to let you see a cock that will really make you crow?

yep. a cock in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. I think...

[phitness]

Thats why I said employers, not employees. Get management to tell customers to STFU.

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yep. a cock in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. I think...

So a handyj= a double penetration?

[Svifnymr]

I think there's a big difference between customer service in the US and customer service in Europe.

USA and South America vary in some ways too. Labor is dirt cheap there, and the products are all vastly overpriced. They'll have a bunch of attendants in the aisles of the stores trying to upsell you and stuff. So, most of the customers don't know how to look at labels/ tags for pricing, they expect the person to tell them. They don't care about replacing an item they no longer want, that's the attendants problem. They come to the USA and buy stuff to take home since it's cheaper, but here their behavior is very rude.

For the thread topic, part of the problem is that the complaining/ demanding customers are not the customers you want, but you waste time on them because some marketing guy invented the "every angry customer tells 10 friends" shit. You want to be fair, obviously, but letting someone use an item for a week then return it since they don't need it anymore is not conducive to your business, let alone that such a person is not going to spend a lot of money at your place.