Would you fire an employee for calling a customer a Karen?

[Edge-]

I mean, isn't it nice when a simple first contact employee is able to solve your issues? It means the company cares about both their customers and employees to ensure they are trained well to handle most situations. You definitely want proactive employees over reactive ones.

Not when you have an unreasonable and irrational customer more interested in hurling insults and causing a scene. Minimum wage worker ain't paid enough for that bullshit, that's what managers are paid for.

[Jotaux]

It looks bad when your employees are used to leaving all the responsibilities to you as a manager. They should be able to think for themselves.

It is a sign of bad management because as a manager you probably can't take care of your own responsibilities properly as your employees are waiting to be micromanaged. Your employees should be competent enough to solve usual problems and managers should intervene only when problem needs special kind of treatment.

I mean, isn't it nice when a simple first contact employee is able to solve your issues? It means the company cares about both their customers and employees to ensure they are trained well to handle most situations. You definitely want proactive employees over reactive ones.

If its a situation where they will call the customer a Karen, I would prefer they come to a manager to handle it.

[RH92]

Not when you have an unreasonable and irrational customer more interested in hurling insults and causing a scene. Minimum wage worker ain't paid enough for that bullshit, that's what managers are paid for.

Unless the customer is drunk or high, there is something else WRONG in the first place.

And yes, I had people shouting at me for no apparent reason and I was still able to defuse the situation before the manager came in. That's why I got promoted even though I could say "Fuck that, ain't my responsibility.".

If its a situation where they will call the customer a Karen, I would prefer they come to a manager to handle it.

You kind of quoted me out of context.

Openly insulting your customer is simply wrong. However customers are not always right and sometimes it is better to gently call them out.

As I said earlier. We had a lady with allergy for spicy foods to order Pasta with Chilli and then complain. We told her that she doesn't need to pay for the meal and top of that gave her a bottle of wine as compensation. However then we also asked if she didn't knew about it or what happened, that she could always ask us to leave out the Chilli in the first place. She later told us she simply misread and apologized to cause us troubles. By the way, she is a regular customer now.

[Edge-]

Unless the customer is drunk or high, there is something else WRONG in the first place.

And yes, I had people shouting at me for no apparent reason and I was still able to defuse the situation before the manager came in. That's why I got promoted even though I could say "Fuck that, ain't my responsibility.".

Drunk or high...but they also do it when they're not drunk or high as you immediately state lol.

And like, naw dog. Minimum wage ain't enough to be expected to defuse situations with irrational customers. When I worked bagging groceries I was union (thank the lord), so literally we were supposed to get the manager to handle the situation. That was part of the union contact, union employees wouldn't have to put up with abusive customers, that was managements role.

[RH92]

Drunk or high...but they also do it when they're not drunk or high as you immediately state lol.

Nah mate. I wrote 'apparent' for a reason. Sometimes people have shit days and a tiny thing can set them off, it happens all the time.

I work at a hotel and everytime somebody was angry, there was a problem. Even missed detail is a mistake and most of the time people just let it go.

And like, naw dog. Minimum wage ain't enough to be expected to defuse situations with irrational customers. When I worked bagging groceries I was union (thank the lord), so literally we were supposed to get the manager to handle the situation. That was part of the union contact, union employees wouldn't have to put up with abusive customers, that was managements role.

I guess it depends on the country and company. If it is in your contract, then fine.

However I still believe you should be doing your job as best as you can, no matter what you do. Even if it sucks.

[Edge-]

However I still believe you should be doing your job as best as you can, no matter what you do. Even if it sucks.

Sure, but nobody should have to put up with abusive customers. Period. Ever. Especially now a minimum wage retail worker. If a customer is abusive, I support every employees right at every level to tell them to go fuck themselves with a rusty pitchfork.

[BlackDruid96]

Would you fire an employee for calling a customer a Karen?

My answer is Yes especially if I owned the business, context certainly always matters but over all I think this Karen shit has like most things gone way too far. It's one thing when customer service and people in service push back against abuse, it's another when the vehicle for that push back becomes abuse it self even to the point that people start forgetting who the most important person is an a professional relationship.

Keep in mind I understand and agree with the definition and push back, and the customer is NOT always right, but yeah if I ran across the kind of blatant disrespect for a customer simply because one might have an issue that needs to be addressed unacceptable.

Blaming Karen's is slowly turning into an excuse for shitty customer service.

What's been your experience?

Yes I would, it's not professional.

[Rozz]

It looks bad when your employees are used to leaving all the responsibilities to you as a manager. They should be able to think for themselves.

It is a sign of bad management because as a manager you probably can't take care of your own responsibilities properly as your employees are waiting to be micromanaged. Your employees should be competent enough to solve usual problems and managers should intervene only when problem needs special kind of treatment.

I mean, isn't it nice when a simple first contact employee is able to solve your issues? It means the company cares about both their customers and employees to ensure they are trained well to handle most situations. You definitely want proactive employees over reactive ones.

That is all reliant on the employees actually having the power to fix the issue or remove the customer. All the training in the world can't fix a situation or help employees in a scenario when they can't do anything but call for someone above them.

[Gaidax]

Openly insulting your customer is simply wrong. However customers are not always right and sometimes it is better to gently call them out.

And often time, way too often, it's just a method to give customers less, when in reality said customers can get more.

A ton of customers fall for this oldest trick in the book, but quite a few assertive customers see through it and demand to escalate/threaten to move to competition and more often than not they get what they want - because company can actually do that, despite training an army of drones in CSR to say no and save costs.

You can try it - it's too easy, for fun call your ISP/Cellular service provider - ask to pay less for same deal, get your no and tell them you're moving to competitor and would like to request the company to come and gather its trash. You will get a call back with quite a bit more attractive options not available to standard CSR otherwise.

Was a customer "Karen" or "wrong" in this case? Nope - just got what they are meant to get - corporate overlords will have to live with only 30% mark-up instead of 70%.

---

P.S. If you don't have alternative ISP/Cellular provider in this area - congrats, now you know how cartels with lobbyists in government feel like. About 15 years ago or so we too had this issue - telecom cartel of 3 major and the only cellular providers in the country charged arm and leg for the service.

Then finally a guy with balls came as a minister responsible and passed directive that mandated these providers to allow competitors and virtual competitors use their networks for a price and also made a phone number something a customer owned and not a company, so he could take it with him to new service.

Literally over the course of next year, we got several Virtual Cellular Providers that cut the prices to the 1/3 + removed bullshit fees for basic services like voice mail or sms (and eventually even more, as more came up). The very first such provider even had a legit company slogan "Enough being a sucker!".

Now we can have 120GB traffic + free calls/messages/voicemail/whatever for 6-8 bucks a month lifetime (meaning no bullshit like pay 6 bucks for the first year then we jack it up 3 times and hope you forget about it).


The said minister eventually got watered down and taken out of political picture and I can bet quite a lot of it had to do with behind doors play by lobbysts terrified of prospects of him moving on to other cartels, which we have no shortage of.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure, but nobody should have to put up with abusive customers. Period. Ever. Especially now a minimum wage retail worker. If a customer is abusive, I support every employees right at every level to tell them to go fuck themselves with a rusty pitchfork.

You're not required to, all you need to do is call for a manager to deal with it, instead of escalating by tossing insults back.

Very difficult concept.

[Afrospinach]

You're not required to, all you need to do is call for a manager to deal with it, instead of escalating by tossing insults back.

Very difficult concept.

Exactly, tossing back a comment that likely not a lot of people would understand is pure self indulgence which is what a lot of people do not seem to be getting. Hell, even if they do understand you are not even inching toward a solution, just tossing away any high ground and making a scene on somebody else's time.

[Endus]

It looks bad when your employees are used to leaving all the responsibilities to you as a manager. They should be able to think for themselves.

It is a sign of bad management because as a manager you probably can't take care of your own responsibilities properly as your employees are waiting to be micromanaged. Your employees should be competent enough to solve usual problems and managers should intervene only when problem needs special kind of treatment.

I mean, isn't it nice when a simple first contact employee is able to solve your issues? It means the company cares about both their customers and employees to ensure they are trained well to handle most situations. You definitely want proactive employees over reactive ones.

I used to work with Nextel doing phone customer service, back before Sprint bought 'em up (actually worked through the merger, but left shortly after, for unrelated reasons). They had the best approach for customer service in that respect, IMO; front-line staff had some leeway to offer credits or to backdate a feature a month or two, so if someone got hit with $500 worth of texting charges (back when texting was a luxury item), we could stick a texting plan on retroactively and drop that down to $5, though they'd continue paying the $5/mo from there on forward too.

Supervisors, though? They were instructed to stick exactly to the letter of the terms. So a cranky customer who decided that the customer service rep wasn't doing "enough" and wanted free texting forever (to continue the example), the supervisor would then say that the rep shouldn't have backdated the texting plan, so they could start that now but the original $500 charges would still be owed. There were some things reps just couldn't do, of course, and for that, we'd escalate or transfer, but if the customer demanded an escalation? Almost always worked against them.

Call center work is the devil and I'll never do it again, but that was one of the two best places I worked for (the other being Ally Bank, when it first started up; our roles weren't just "phone tellers" but more like account managers, reworking someone's million-dollar CD rotation for their retirement was a pretty standard call).

Then Sprint took over and that ended and it was terrible. Can't say enough bad things about Sprint.

[Stormdash]

To their face? Yeah probably.

"backstage", it would be very fact specific how I'd react to it. Customers in retail and service sectors have grown gross and unreasonable in a lot of contexts, and if good employees can do their job up front with the trade off of a mild snarky comment out of view to decompress, I wouldn't punish them for it. But still have to create a service culture of letting it roll off.

[smityx]

If someone is calling someone else a "Karen" it usually means that the person is being a real tool to begin with.

[RH92]

That is all reliant on the employees actually having the power to fix the issue or remove the customer. All the training in the world can't fix a situation or help employees in a scenario when they can't do anything but call for someone above them.

Yeah and that's why I said it is a sign of bad management. What is so bad about giving more power to your first contact employees?

I never even said you should never call the manager. I just said to train your employees sufficiently enough so you don't rely on managers to solve everything.

If your employees have more power, they feel actually useful because they have ability to make a difference and rise above their peer if they try hard enough.

*Snip*

People try that all the time and you should be ready for it. I don't blame them though, you certainly won't get nothing if you don't try.

I work at the hotel and we have people asking for major discount because they visited us like twice in total. We always tell them to buy our discount cards or that we have this thing where they can discount for their next stay when they reserve it during their current visit. Or at best we can give minor discount when they make an order for multiple rooms.

On the other hand we have guests like this one dude who spent 162 nights at our hotel in 2019 and he received our highest discount card for free and on top of that he even has special pricing. In the end he has like 40% discount.

*Snip*

That's how it should work but I guess it depends on the business to some extent.

I think in place where I work, it is more or less reversed. I have this weird position where I am a senior member of first contact and I also supply for our manager. As first contact my options are way more limited and as a manager I am allowed to do pretty much everything. It somehow weeds out the sly customers because when I am first contact, there are often other customers observing and if they see it working, they might try it too.

A phone call is something totally different and I support the idea you described.

[Daronokk]

If a customer is being a Karen and my employee calls them on it I'm more likely to give the employee a bonus than a pink slip.

Because insulting and discriminating people is okay as long as it's not against black people, right?

- - - Updated - - -

My answer is Yes especially if I owned the business, context certainly always matters but over all I think this Karen shit has like most things gone way too far. It's one thing when customer service and people in service push back against abuse, it's another when the vehicle for that push back becomes abuse it self even to the point that people start forgetting who the most important person is an a professional relationship.

Fully agree. Calling someone a Karen is an insult and unprofessional. It's even discrimination as you're targeting a specific group and treat them differently.

If a customer is being a pain in the ass and not in the right there are plenty of ways to handle the situation. Calling them a karen is not one of them.

[PosPosPos]

Because insulting and discriminating people is okay as long as it's not against black people, right?

And like I said to you in the other thread, your penchant for psychological projections speaks only about you, rather than the people you are trying to project them on.

Nobody was talking about race, especially in whatever you quoted, so for you to bring it up here means you are a racist trying to paint normal, non-racist people, as racist.

[dwarven]

Yes. Insulting your customers is never acceptable. If they are harassing you or other customers you can ask them to leave the building, or tell them you are not comfortable with their behavior. But directly insult, never. Anyone who says otherwise has not spent much time with professional development or interpersonal communication training. Your job is not the place to satisfy your ego.

[MoanaLisa]

Casual talk among staff: No, I wouldn't fire anyone. I might warn them about not letting their attitude get out of hand.

To a customer directly: Yep.

For what it's worth I took the question literally about calling customers a Karen. There are ways to push back against abusive customers without getting into that.