Tales from Retail: How to Deal with Terrible Customers 

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I hate customers, I have lost all my respect for people because of them

I used to go above and beyond for customers, but people were so rude and ungrateful that I stopped...

Retail has made me dead inside

“The customer is always right.” Until we decide they’re no longer a customer

This is why I’m getting out of retail and because of my mental health issues, It just feels like I’m doing jail time dealing with difficult rude customers and rude colleagues with minimum wage on top of that. It’s just not worth it 😔

Talking shit about terrible customers with your coworkers after the fact is always super cathartic.

The saying the customer is always rights is so toxic. Especially since it’s a quote brought out of context to give some a sense a superiority.

3:14 ah, but sometimes they MAKE it personal. Honestly you should be legally allowed to fight one customer a year.

I had a co-work try and kill a costumer with kindness. The costumer wrote a complaint to complain that he was being too nice. Had another co-work who was just a very hospitable person. She had a costumer complain about her being too nice too and both times we all got a kick out of it.

I WISH more people would work in retail to get the experience of getting shit on by customers for no reason.

I wish there were more serious consequences for customers who abuse retail (or hospitality/call centre/security etc) staff

The most important thing I've learned, is that if you can do something for a customer, never tell them HOW it's going to get done and don't ask them any unnessesary questions. They don't need to know the details, and they get nervous when you ask too many questions. All they want to hear is "OK". For example: a customer called me asking to have their email address removed from our mailing list. Since I have my database set up properly all I need is their name. When they called me they already identified themselves so I didn't even need to ask that. So my response was "OK, thank you for calling." I didn't tell them about my database and I didn't need to ask them any questions. They felt like I listened and I was able to get off the phone quickly so I could get back to work.

The customer doesn't have the right to verbally abuse the employee

Lol I LOVE when customers argue with me about whether or not we have an item. I work at a candy store and I'm the stock manager so most times I know off the top of my head if we have something or not, so sometimes customers think I'm just making stuff up because I don't have to check. When they insist on me checking, I just go into the back and eat a couple pieces of candy and talk shit to the other employees lol

Just talk in first multiple person. " 'We' are sorry" instead of " 'I' am sorry". " 'We' will fix the issue right away" and not " 'I' will do it". Most customers don't care for the difference, but it does a lot for your psyche. After all, most of the times it's not your own personal fault that they are upset.

I worked retail in a liquor store for 6 years. I loved just not selling to people who were rude since I didn’t have to. I would just say “I think they were already drunk”

Customers aren't people

Walmart killed my will to live. I worked with assholes and worked a 4am-1pm shift. I told management I wanted to move to a new shift and they straight up said no. When I asked why they said they had no available shifts, but the giant white banner that said "Now hiring" said otherwise. I was either sleeping because I had to wake up before 3am or working. I had no social life and my health began rapidly declining. I was constantly depressed and had no motivation to do anything. I was too tired to look for another job and constantly felt like shit. I finally just quit going in and they fired me. To be honest I was so happy. My health improved dramatically and my depression went away. I've been working on my health and looking for a new job. If you can stay out of retail do it. Customers definitely don't help when you are already pissed off and they just bitch at you for something you can't help. Don't ever give up even if you feel trapped. I worked there for 6 and a half years and got out. It didn't suck until about the final year. Great video Fanta keep up the great work bud.

These "how to videos" are a great idea you should continue

My managers(at the store mind you) are the coolest people you’ve ever met. The store manager will go out of his way to help you anyway he can. Even so, I was told that if a customer starts to yell at me or curse over the phone I can hang up and place him on the ignored caller list. And if a customer curses at us in store we simply point him to the door. We don’t need the business of 1 shitty person when we get plenty pleasant people

Putting on a vest for work is like putting on a clown costume. At least that’s how I feel when I’m forced to wear one and be around customers who give you dirty looks all the time.

I work at a craft store. One day an obviously already in a bad mood kid opens the door pokes her head in and asks about a line of products I've never heard of. (Apparently some lifestyle youtubers line of papercrafting products). I told her I was pretty sure we didn't have that brand. She makes an "ugh" face and closes the door. Maybe a few moments later she comes back in with the dad who is also obviously in a bad mood. He takes her up to the register where I was and after some roundabout I learn that its papercrafting stuff shes looking for. I say again I've never heard it but I tell them the paper stuff is 3 aisles away if they want to check. They both leave, come back with my manager a little bit later empty-handed. The dad thanks the manager and tells me not to send them "on a wild goose chase." I tell him "I'm very sorry, sir" but in my head I was like "bitch I said exactly where it would have been if we had it, said we probably didnt, and the store can be crossed 3 times in 5 minutes. You're the ass who probably dragged my manger all over." Luckily my manager was the cool one and also knew there was no way we would make that duo happy.

If you are going to work in retail (like a grocery store) I always suggest getting a job on the sales floor stocking or in a specific department. Avoid being a cashier on the front line dealing with customers at all costs. One of the biggest pet peeves I have are people who argue over the cost of items all the time and you would be surprised how many people do it. Never in a million years would I ever try to get discounts on merchandise that I know are not warranted but people do it anyway. It's irritating and some people go as far as to try and push cashiers into taking whatever they can get off their total. These people are extremely selfish because they don't know or simply don't care about the fact that what they are doing can get someone fired. I have one lady who comes through my line with the intention of ripping us off as much as she possibly can and I am at the point where the next time I see her come through my line I'm going to call a manager over to come deal with her because she is extremely problematic and I refuse to give someone who's that bad to deal with customer service

I had one customer who wanted something that was out of stock. For reference the thing she wanted was on sale, a really good sale. She wanted a vacuum that was normally 100 dollars and it was on sale for 40 dollars and she was telling me she wouldn’t leave the store until she had one😂. She wanted my manager, who really isn’t super nice and she told her the same thing i said. It was a lit moment😂

Retail/Food is great for a while to give you real quick dose of how people are in the real world and how to harden yourself a bit. My friend could never understand why I was so gd annoyed and fed up with ppl bc she had only been in college the whole time and never had a job. She just got one recently and yeah she realized real quick why.

it's the year 2022. I'm so done with people and provoke rude customers until they rage quit and just leave. If they don't see me as a human why should I treat them like one?

I've had people get RIGHT in my face.

Have worked in retail for 5 years. Humanity is cruel & evil. Some people should be prosecuted for the abuse they give.

As far as Call Center to working Retail I've found it's the opposite people were 1000 times more rude and ignorant at the Call Center.

If "the customer is always right" then it's the wild west. Might as well not even have policies. It's hurts productivity to have to wait 15 minutes for the manager just for them to go back on their associate's decision to uphold that policy. It wastes time and creates easily avoidable confrontation with customers. A lot of the problem is simply that when you work retail your job is to deal with the community. And that includes the mentally damaged. That includes straight up criminals. Wal-Mart's door are open to any slack-jaw shit-kicker off the street. Your job is looked down upon so even unemployed drug addicts think they have one over on you. This includes whatever narcissists, sociopaths, bigots, or whoever else may need something from your establishment that you may have the misfortune of crossing paths with.

I always said if a customer is gonna swear at you tell them to leave the store or call security. But then you get into trouble for that cause the manager wants to think they are the king and would do anything for the customer.

These retail stores need to stick to their policies and grow a damn BACKBONE. Quit enabling bad behavior from grown adults.

For people who work in customer service, I hope they see your video. I can tell your advice is really good. I use kindness a lot to deal with problematic customers, but when I'm the one in charge and there is people harassing my subordinates I come to defend them

I work at a Value Village. The customers are slowly driving me crazy.

On thanksgiving day in 2015 at Walmart a woman came in and grabbed the last 28 cans of Cream of Mushroom... then she asked me if we had anymore in the back, i scanned the bar code and it said that we were all out... then she started screaming that she needed another 40 cans because her mom was coming over to her house... i don't remember how the rest of the story happened... but why does your mom need 68 cans of Cream of Mushroom? and she realizes that there are several other stores she can go to, right? and why did she wait until the day of thanksgiving to buy the stuff she needed? also, did she think that nobody else would need some, she took the last 28 cans of it.

So true . The video i needed to see. I always deal with rude customer at subway. Since i work in the hood customer would always get pissed about the price and they think i would charged them high for sub. I dont make the prices. Customer always try to be a prick.

Was searching this sht cause I had a customer treating me like a personal shopper with a store full of other customers…. How do you not feel like a piece of sht with a store full of other customers glaring daggers at you?

Knowing me I’d get angry and lose my shit on the customers

Retail is a cake walk, when you used to work security in a methadone clinic.

I've gotten to a point where I love pissing off customers 😂 I love it when a customer says "can you check the back?" Because I go out back and smoke me a cig 😂 I come back saying I checked everywhere and we don't have it.

I worked at a call center like 8 yrs ago. The worst was that they let customers survey us. They already had QA to make sure we were doing our jobs. I got a 100 on a call by QA and yet customer that didn't like the company policy gave me lowest survey score. It took 15 perfect surveys to make up for the one bad one. It cost me my monthly bonus. Customers were good at telling me they can have me fired if I don't do what they want. It was crazy

how to handle rude customers---- dont work retail or customer service, if you can avoid it

Some guy said he didn’t like my f ing attitude when an item rang up a different price. He then went on to tell my manager that I was rude. I’ve never had an experience so frustrating. Coworkers have tried to ban this guy from coming into the store. I still have some nightmares about this, and was scared he was gonna attack me.

Stay cool and calm. It was hard for me my first few years of working at Wal-Mart, (I'm too scared to find a new job,) but really just gotta fake it until it comes naturally.

oooh trust me call center work can be just as bad , especially when you deal with rude and angry multiple times a day every day, some of them are that bad

One lady at Walmart asked me "wheres the vagina cream?" and I had no idea what she was talking about. I walked around w her and she said "there it is" and started opening them and shoving em in my face asking "does that smell good? Do u like this one?" I want to die.

I'm a cashier at a supermarket. Another method I do is even if I don't agree with what they're complaining about I pretend to sympathize with them then they don't bitch at me anymore. It doesn't always work but most of the time it does. For example if they say something should be cheaper I say yeah I can't believe its that expensive. I don't blame you. I can't change the price but I can try to see their point of view and when I do most of the time they back off cuz they see that I care instead of saying what I want to see which is whatever it is what it is. But that's just a minimal thing. There are much bigger issues that are not that easily solved. So then I just let it roll off my back.

Sometimes with loud, rude customers that always come in and treat me like shit, it's good to yell back at them with anger and they'll never fuck with you again. Same goes for associates that always give attitude, it's better to show your true side and then they fuck off

this is actually really helpful. i hate when people are dicks to workers especially in retail because the workers have no choice in how the companies policies work.

Just had to deal with a crazy lady on Etsy. She refused to read the description, then blames us and calls us "liars with less than 1 star service". We reported her twice to Etsy for harassment, marked her message thread as spam, cancelled and fully refunded her order, and put a private note on her profile about her behavior. I wish we could block her from ever shopping in our store again, but we can't. I even sent her screenshots and circled in red the info she was arguing about. She is still absolutely convinced we are liars and refuses to see any proof that she made the mistake. I finally semi blew up at her and told her to stop blaming us for her mistake, that we were honest with her every step of the way but we can't force her to read. I wanted to say SOOO much more, but in today's world customers love to shout online that the shop is wrong and horrible, but they never show what they said and where they were wrong. So it's a good idea to CYA and assume everything you say and do in any interactions with the crazies can end up online and completely out of context.

It is MA’AM

My favourite is always: "Do you have more in the back?" "That's one of our top 5 best selling items in the store. There is no advantage - or even the opportunity - to have more 'in the back' somewhere. When we get them, they're out on the shelf immediately because they sell fast. When they're out, they're out." Shuts them up every time.

I always try and be the best customer I can be, hopefully I can be the exact opposite of these people and remind the employees that there are good customers too. I always hate these type of people who are assholes just to be assholes.

Simple answer is work in the backroom at Retail stores I do you pretty much don't have to deal with crappy customers at all much better.

I work at an ice cream shop. Today I had a lady call and scream at me because the bottom of her treat had become curdled after it was left in her car for an hour while she was shopping in Sam's club. She thought for sure she was going to become violently ill.... I kind of hope she did. To be fair I'm not stupid enough to eat hours old dairy products left a room temperature. 0

Great video. I like a version of killing with kindness that is pretending to side with the customer's complaint against the company. Best case is that it's a real issue and the customer then realizes no one in the store is high enough in the company to control it. "Worst" case the customer is irrational and upset but then has no outlet for it because you're agreeing with them. Either way it does de-escalate things.

Retail and fast food customers are such a pain when they get impatient, rude, ask for a manager if tho the manager tells the same thing as you said to the customer is ridiculous 🙄.

I wish people were more polite like me. A customer comes up to me and the first thing out of their mouth is "sorry". Not "hello, how are you?" "SORRY". Hardly anyone says excuse me to me. It's very rare to have a nice customer come up me and use the name on my name tag. Retail is hell on earth.

I absolutely love this video. Last Friday I got yelled at by some bitch who asked if we had a certain TV that I knew we 100% didn't have it. She got the manager and told him I didn't wanna help them. I didn't get in trouble though because my manager knew we also didn't have it. Also you should make a video of all the old people who made working retail a headache.

I work at a grocery store, and I’m hostile no doubt. If I’m on cart duty I make a point to dump all trash in the carts directly into our parking lot, in front of customers. I’ve been called out for littering by customers and I always act like I don’t hear them(it’s way worse with cart wipes left on carts after pandemic) I’ll never throw their trash away for them. Retail customers are scum. I’m pro earth and I hate littering, I recycle, but when I dump their trash it’s THEM doing it not me. I’m not here to throw away those scumbags garbage. I even created and shared a point system for people on cart duty, 1 point for every piece of trash dumped in the lot, 2 points if you do it in front of the customer responsible, 1/2 point if you fake putting it in trash in front of management but accidentally miss the can, and minus 2 points if you remove trash from cart and properly throw it away. Everyone in my store plays and we even compete. Makes cart duty more fun

I sleep just fine the night after a customer is rude or stupid. I just go text all my friends and we riff on your stupidity. The funniest thing is when you have to tell a customer bad news, but you are going to tell them how you can make it up to them, but they interrupt you with a string of profanity and blasphemy and shuffle away angrily shoving people and things.

I work at a thrift store and I had one lady yelled at I went to my lunch and broke down in the bathroom I’m so tired of working there

I love that he said that the customer is always right is bullshit...I hate that statement. Yes a customer could be going through some shit but what about the sales person, aren't we human too? People need to just learn to respect each other. Just as a sales person or a manager needs to learn how to deal with a customer, the customer needs to learn how to be less rude and calm down. In restaurants if you're mean to your server they put nasty things in your food. So I've learned how to speak to people with manners.

About not knowing your number: Back in the old days where everyone had a house phone and had the same number for years, you pretty much HAD to memorize numbers and you would have the same one for a long time. Vs now with cell phones, you don't have to memorize anyone's number. Just call each other once and save it in your phone. That can go for your number as well. You just don't HAVE to memorize it anymore and sometimes people go through several different phones over the years and have to get new numbers if their phone is cancelled or they have too many scammers and collection agencies calling etc.

Massive game downloads AND game updates are a huge problem nowadays. I remember a year or 2 ago, someone I watched briefly talked about this issue. I remember it saying that developers used to know how to compress files very well. Knowing how to compress files was a valuable skill to have. Now that developers/publishers know they can just shift the burden to the consumers. That’s exactly what they do.

At my job I deal in absolutes when they get ugly. When they act like children I always tell them sorry we can't help you, if we legit can't help them. If you're polite, I'll see if I can bend the rules for you.

Customers don’t care how we are doing they think they are God’s and we need to bow to them, the customer is never right 100% of the time and yet they think they are. You say don’t take it personal yet the words they use is always you, you, you. They always attack us as workers how can you not that it personal. They dont understand we have rules and policy’s and yet they think they can do whatever they want

This is helpful because I'll be going into retail soon most likely.

I work at Joann fabrics and sometimes the customers are extremely rude. As a team member, we are treated unfairly. We have no training in how to deal with these situations. I have cried at work about 10 times.

I work at a store partnered with Kroger where the customer almost always gets their way. I worked inside for about a year or so, first as a cashier then as a home clerk and I absolutely hated it. I ended up applying for and getting a position in the fuel center where the company makes no profit unless someone purchases a snack, drink, or automotive item. One of my favorite things about fuel is having the approval to refuse service to someone if they're being unsafe while filling their vehicle. What's even better is that when they go inside to cry and throw a fit to my manager(s) they always back me up but when I worked inside I didn't get that luxury. Granted, I know the only reason they have my back is because they're making little to no profit in my department but it's nice to finally be able to tell customers no without repercussion.

We live in a society :(

Loved this video. Meant alot to me since I work retail and have been for 9 years. Best buy, babies r us, action figure store, gamestop. Never worked walmart but my moms been there 23 years! I dont know how she does it but hearing you call it a death march just hit me and made me tear up just thinking how she can do it for so long.

Yeah I have only worked two customer service jobs. Both of them I got fired for fighting with a customer....( like in the parking lot fist fighting.) So never again

Here within 1 minute without even knowing and im hyped up for this episode

Yesterday I was told I can't be fully trained as a barista because I don't look or act peppy enough with customers. Whoops.

Currently i work as an ap host in walmart and this job has taught how much i really hate people

Their be customers who buy prepaid cards every month but come to us and as us which card do I need for my phone. We as them do you buy service every month and their like yes. In our heads were like you buy service every month how is it this month you don't not which service provider your with.😑

Thanks a lot for the video man I work in retail and I have customers that come in and that are good but I have this one certain customer that comes in and threatens me all the time and it really kind of gets to me but this really did help thank you a lot

i recently just started working at a walmart and when the two week mark past alot of people started treating me completely differently a customer literally came up while i had my vest on and dead looked me in the eye and i know she was bullshitting me asked if i worked there and i get countless stares from customers and the people who work there like they dont want me there or something and its incredibly creepy

I usually just follow along with what they have to say, just being a bit snarky, and not actually caring, and then tell them I can't help them regardless of if I can, or not.., usually worked out great for me, and I didn't have to see, or hear them much Fortunately I never got many asshole customers.

I get the luxury to tell terrible customers to "get the fuck out" and refuse service. I also get to call the police if they don't leave. I work at a liquor store btw

Customers are always right...except when they're not.

I need this especially when I am NEW to retail. I don’t know everything yet so I run into people who may not know that. If the line builds up, the customers get upset and I understand why. It gives me a sense of perspective and respect whenever I have to wait in line as a customer. Maybe the person is new and doesn’t know how to do a certain thing yet. For ex: a customer said they had a digital coupon and I have never done one, my coworker was on break and I called her to try and figure it out. I was stuck on the screen where it was showing me the coupons. Her total was somewhere around 99$ and with the amount of time I took up trying to figure out how to add the coupon, once I finally did figure it out, it took a whole whopping 2$ off the total. The line was building up and I could overhear some people talking about just putting their items back and leaving.

Hey fanta, i just recently applied to a new job cause my YMCA thing didnt work out and that is a big story for another day about Managers working against you, and this new job is at a Petco and im excited since the people im working with are all reall sweet and cool so having this might help me out later, thanks

Thank you so much this video gave me a lot to think about

I worked customer service behind a phone as well as in store. In my experiences, people are far more volatile when they have that phone barrier. On the phone, I've had customers who would shout at the top of their lungs using every expletive in the book. I feel as if on phone interactions I had far more customers going bananas than when I was dealing with customers in person. Though, working in a store, I've on more that one occasion had a customer throw a product at me for having the audacity of saying I couldn't take it as a return. At least on the phone, there is no chance of physical violence.

Thanks for this pro tips. It's very useful to my job ☺️

I guess I got lucky. I skipped the traditional retail job everyone should go through and went to work at prisons/jails. Since watching some of these "Tails From Retail" I feel like theres alot of similarities within the two types of jobs.

Treat them exactly how they treat you and you will see how offended they get lol

I know this is a few years old but as I listened to you tell the story of how you told the lady to leave the store I thought to myself, "This guy would be a great bartender!" It's the one service job where you can cut people off, eject them from your establishment, or even water down their drink if they want to be a douche. Plus, the money is so much better than retail. Yeah its a pain to babysit adults & drunks BUT you have a lot more control when people are assholes. Just a thought. You just seem to have the mindset & balls to set people straight. It's a good feeling to not have to put up with people 's crap!

The customer is never right ! I should do a video series on my experience as a Grievance and Appeals Analyst for a health plan .

I feel valisated for my niceness to the retailers I feel motivated to be nice a bit more .

At home depot I had a customer that was supposed to clean their tools before returning them and they didn't and they were about to get mad when I was about to charge them a cleaning fee. Same if they get charged a cord fee since they ran over the cord with the machine by accident and yet we didn't give it to them like that. Sadly enough some customers still did that to me even when I rented it out to them and I was checking it in. They have the nerve to lie and say I gave it to them like that. When I know I didn't. They don't read their contracts either even though we go over with them before renting it out to them. There are times where management would side with me and there's times where management would not and I would tell the manager to put in their code and password in and have them check it in and if they tell me to do it I will write down on the notes that as per so so manager to not charge them. I did that's all that way I don't have to explain to other tool rental employees and my supervisor why the tool was returned like this and who returned it since the person who returned it is on the contract. Customers would even want to have the late fees waved. Management would bow down to them and take off the late fees even though they were 4 hours late on a 4 hour rental and they got charged for the day. I feel your pain on pain in the ass customers.

I just go right to the manager I just tell them "hey I'm just a cashier I will get you the manager". I'm not dealing with that shit hands down

like im trying to work this job to catch up on my rent and within the first 3 weeks i had to go home early because of the harassment i used to work for the company back in 2016 for 6 months and its literally the same feeling constantly being watched by coworkers and its just a completely weird vibe to be there. it makes me not even want to work there and just be homeless because honestly it doesnt make any sense why i cant do my job and be left alone. im literally going to the top person to complain and if it doesnt get fixed then im calling his boss and someones gonna take care of it for me

Thanks for the video. It helps.

I’ll never get the “check the back” rationale.... why would a store purposely withhold stock of items that obviously sell and often sell out back there? (And whenever I need to get something for my parents and they don’t have it my dad says “ did you ask if they have it in the back” I’m like “ if it’s not on the shelf where else would it be?” )

I was new at a retail job, and a customer asked me what aisle to find a particular product. I said Im new here so I dont know, cuz I never heard that product that he was lookin for. He proceeded to smirk in a sarcastic way and said, “you’re doing a good job bud” Honestly the job is good, but it sometimes feels like im a slave when I encounter rude customers like that.

I know this video old but I love re watching your older stuff.