Retail And Food Workers Are Sharing Their Worst Experiences With Customers From Hell
Why are people so darn rude?
Retail and food service workers deal with plenty of difficult customers, but some encounters go far beyond bad manners. A viral Twitter thread pulled together stories from people who have been talked down to, ignored, and treated like they were less than human just for doing their jobs.
The posts range from awkward to infuriating, and they show how quickly a simple transaction can turn ugly when entitlement takes over. From delivery apps to restaurants and stores, the same pattern keeps showing up, customers who think being rude is part of the deal.
And once you see how many workers have stories like this, it is hard to unsee the pattern.
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This is not the first time, and unfortunately not the last time, we will read about rude and entitled customers. But is there an explanation for this type of behavior?
American consumer philosophy aims to make customers feel special, and some people come to expect it. One article implies that "They feel like they have a right to act however they want towards others until they're appeased-which winds up isolating the consumer and shaping their view of the world as 'me against them.'"
This type of disrespectful behavior is associated with an entitlement mindset, which essentially screams "Me!" in most daily life situations. It is exhibited as an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a lack of awareness of others, and a reluctance to compromise.
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In the foodservice industry, terrible customer conduct is often linked to attitude problems and blatant disrespect. However, "entitled behavior from customers can have severe implications for service workers, leading to increased stress and burnout" on her website drramani.com. Furthermore, she explains that "service workers frequently report feelings of dehumanization and emotional exhaustion as a direct result of dealing with difficult patrons." So, is the customer always right?
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This feels like the coworker who always chose expensive lunch options, and the split-bill argument that followed.
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A college student named Palmer, who goes by the Twitter handle Decent Pigeon, recently posted a tweet about delivering Grubhub to a demanding customer that went viral, garnering 374.2K likes and 58.7K retweets. Creating content for Twitter wasn’t his only job, he also worked for DoorDash and Grubhub for three years…
“The funniest part of the industry is that when a customer is mad, they have (on a couple of occasions) tried to degrade me based on my job title, the ‘service industry worker,’” Palmer says. “It’s almost like I only do it on the side while I study in college to get another job.”
“I’ve encountered tons of amazing people in the industry, so why chalk it down to just their job title?” Palmer continued. “Cliché, but people just need to learn to respect one another.”
This viral post showed that Palmer is not alone, “and that I am not cursed with all the psychos of the industry.” He added that none of the stories shocked him because “many customers in the service industry are extremely entitled and rude.”
Next, see how one person handled an AITA dinner-bill fight after refusing to pay the “cheapest item” share: splitting the dinner bill unequally.
