You must log in or register to comment.
If my retail experience is any indication, acknowledging customers in this situation is a bad idea. Before you know it, the conversation turns to “I just need one thing!” Or “I promise I’ll be really quick!” and you have to become the asshole to tell them no… Even though the store hours are clearly listed on the front door.
Or if you agree even once, the conversation could easily become “but you did it for me/my friend last time!”
I’ve literally had people sneak into the store using an exit, then act all indignant because I tell them to leave. You give some of these fuckers an inch, they’ll take a mile.
When I worked at McDonald’s I used to keep the DriveThru headset on after closing while I was doing paper work to tell people “sorry, we’re closed” if they drove up to the speaker board. (Mind you, the building lights and menu board lights are off at this point. Something we call a “clue”.)
That stopped after one too many people screamed “FUCK YOU!” into the speaker board (for us following our posted hours and me politely informing them instead of ignoring them.)You quickly adopt a policy of “just ignore them and they’ll figure it out.”
They did it for me last time is the bane of all service jobs. I managed a pizza place for years that would sometimes get up to over 200 food products per hour. You could see about the first 20 of them at a time on the screens. There was no way to indicate modifications that weren’t available in the POS. I personally trained every new employee on phones and till.
I would tell them you’re going to talk to a lot of assholes. There will be the person that wants extra cheese on their cheesesticks. You have to tell that person no. You cannot sell anything that can’t be entered into the computer.
Every day during the insane dinner rush I’d either get employees coming over to say hey extra cheese on the cheesesticks on order 215. We’re on order 175. There is no way those cheesesticks are going to get extra cheese.
No time to correct the employee, no time to call the customer back. Or the other which was worse. The customer would escalate the call to me. “They did it for me last time!”
I’m stuck on the phone with this piece of shit and I can’t be firefighting. The fires grow. Sometimes they get so bad we have to stop production to get back on track. This means we get so far behind that I’ll have to stay an extra hour or two to right the ship. For no extra pay. The customers get pissed as the wait and delivery times increase. Escalations to management increase. The whole place is engulfed in flame. Next thing I know I’ve been there for 12 hours for no extra pay.
Wasted my fucking mid 20s to early 30s there. It permanently ruined my mental health. It turned me into an alcoholic.
I could rant endlessly and I have so many stories.
The customers get pissed as the wait and delivery times increase. Escalations to management increase.
One rule I try to remember is that overserving Customer A means underserving Customer B.
This is also true for traffic, where being overpolite to the person in front of you means screwing over the people behind you.
My favorite way out of that situation was to tell them that the registers were automatically shut down at closing. Literally no way to ring up a purchase. It worked most of the time
“Can’t you just do it on paper?”
“Can’t you fuck off?”
Sure, just let me buy this one thing first.
Ok, I’ll ring you up tomorrow, just wait right here.
locks doors
My go-to was the ovens have already entered shutdown mode and cannot be restarted. There was no such thing of course.
That’s why there’s the JADE acronym. You never justify, argue, defend, or explain. That makes them think there’s a chance if they just counter every single thing you say.
Yup! You learn REAL fast, that if you just don’t make eye contact they’ll eventually go away.
There’s also a lot of stores with a policy that tills can’t be counted or processed unless everyone is accounted for and all doors locked, if you have to reset that process it can be an extra hour of work.
They mad because they wouldn’t acknowledge them or service them after the placed closed? What fucking Karen.
I’m sorry, but… no. Like, if you don’t know it’s closed and people do see you and just say nothing, that’s just… not nice. It takes three seconds to shake their head or say we’re closed something.
LONG EDIT: Trying to explain myself a bit as this got many negative comments. (I also said most of this in responses to people answering this).
I originally thought that they didn’t know the store is closed, and just tried to put myself in their shoes. In that case, it just doesn’t hurt to clarify by the staff and I can get the frustration of being ignored. I personally also had situations where I was confused because a store closed an hour earlier than it said on the door and online, and I was really grateful for the staff to clarify. Of course, if they know that the store is closed and just demanded some kind of personal acknowledgement, this is pretty ridiculous behaviour. And I personally definitely wouldn’t behave like that (or even write such a review).
I also think that it’s still good if the staff responds to someone knocking at the store. This doesn’t mean that they are an “asshole that demands to be served”. I personally also did this at one point because I lost my wallet inside the store. Luckily, the people there were really nice and opened it so I could search for it. I was really thankful, and the day would have been really horrible if they ignored me.
In the end, I think this also might be a cultural thing. Many people answered with stories of awful entitled customers that demanded ridiculous things. If this is your base experience, maybe you have other prejudices against someone knocking at the door.
As a customer, I always see a store worker as a human and engage respectfully, and most people I know do the same. I hope this is true for most people. Therefore, if someone knocks, it seems reasonable that they have a valid concern and / or are confused. But of course, if someone would do that just to push a store worked and asking them to do something they can’t do, that would be absolutely awful behaviour.Fuck that bullshit, she knew they were fucking closed. They shouldn’t have to explain it. I am sure there was a sign on the door. No this woman wanted them to waste time acknowledging her so she could spend 10 minutes explaining why they should service her after hours.
They were busy doing clean up after close so they could go home. Just by reading her review I can promise you she bitch if they had shaken their heads. I stare at dumb bitch too who was probably banging on the door trying get them to let her in.
I don’t see anyone mentioning the “tossing their hair”. Bitch they werent staring at you and doing a fucking model shoot they were telling your entitled ass “no”.
TMDH
People like you and the reviewer need to work a service job, at least once in your lives. “Closed”, I wonder what that means?? The registers are all shut down, there’s no cash. If it’s a food place, the grill is off. They are not serving customers. So no, just because there happens to be glass or bars you can see workers through, they are not required to acknowledge people on the street or “be nice”. They are trying to get home at a somewhat reasonable time!
PTSD from having to literally stop people from entering grocery stores after 11:00p in a previous job…
“Just kept tossing their hair and looking at me.”
Are we sure the employees weren’t shaking their heads at the customer and they are just an idiot? I’m also assuming the doors were already locked, or they would have just walked in, and the hours are typically posted on the door. I feel that should be enough of an indication the store is closed. People don’t need to have their hands held through everything I life. Expecting a little independence from them isn’t being not nice.
Here’s a tip I’ve found useful: if I show up somewhere after closing time and find that the door is locked, it’s because the store is closed.
What if it’s after closing time, it’s locked, but the people inside are nodding at me?
Then they have some illegal after-hours business going on and are waiting for you to say the password.
Is it password1?
It’s hunter2.
Everyone should work food service and retail at least once in their lives. It would give perspective to, and teach respect for, what those workers have to endure.
The worst part of retail/food service is the inescapable feeling of dread when you stare down the endless abyss of being stuck in that job day in and day out, forever, until you die. Only by resigning yourself to that fate does one gain the perspective needed to truly sympathize with the working class.
And that’s why I went to trade school at age 30. “I gotta get out of these fuckin places.”
It was a good move
Fucking SAME. I bartended and served through college (my degree doesn’t pay well due to YouTube tutorials that have flourished in my industry, lol ouch) and after, and then finally at 30 I started temping in manufacturing, which led to me permanently hired at a huge company with ridiculous benefits, and am now a supervisor in engine assembly that will make 6 figures in 3 years.
I desperately wish I had gone into trade school when I was 18.
Hell yeah! I became an electrician and now I work for myself. Which, so far, absolutely rocks. It turns out I didn’t hate working, I hated having bosses lol
It’s a great path if you’re up for it, to anyone reading
I don’t know. Some people who experience abuse and escape it become far worse abusers when they’re in position to do so.
This is very true. I was at my retail job and a customer walked up to me while I happened to be leaning on my workstation because my back hurt. The first thing he says to me is, “when I had a fast food job, if there was time to lean, there was time to clean!“ I looked at him, and then I turned around and walked away. He had this stunned look on his face. I walked into the back room To cool off a bit before I walked back onto the floor. It was probably five or eight minutes. When I walked back out, he was still standing there, at my workstation, waiting for me.
I went to lunch.
