Empathy Training

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All this would do is embolden those shitty people. "Dad, don't be rude to retail workers!" "I had to deal with it, they can too!"

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Anyone who's truly worked retail knows it ain't the customers that are the worst, but the middle managers and certain coworkers.

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I'm over the Atlantic from the US, it would be truly unusual if someone actually blew up at service staff like that, let alone that being a common enough occurrence to trigger PTSD-adjacent responses from them.

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I worked in the retail mines for a few years as both a peon and a peon first class (manager).

Everyone had stories about the absolutely worst assholes they had to deal with. I always told my staff to try to remember that the reason those assholes stood out so much amongst everyone else is because they were not the norm.

Most of our customers were fine or even great. But since that was the norm, they don't stand out in our memories.

Also, I was always willing to kick out asshole customers. My staff's job was to take care of the customers. My boss's job was to take care of corporate.

My job was to take care of my staff.

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I remember the lady who started talking to me (while i was working) and wouldn't shut up. It was my first day at work.

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I did grocery retail for about 4 years. We had some less-than-great customers but honestly the worst part was dealing with corporate. Upper management and corporate decisions is what truly made daily work much more difficult. The store manager that was there when I was hired was really good and good to her staff, but corporate didn't like that she ran some expenses for customer and employee benefit so they "relocated" her. The replacement manager was one of those "fixer" types and he so godawful that I walked off the job. Left my badge on my department desk in the office and went home.

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Almost as if some people just lack empathy.

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So... the comparison to the military still holds.

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North America is just the Continental United States, now.

Canada and Mexico have gone into witness protection to avoid getting wrapped up in our bullshit.

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Yeah... I don't think this would work. I worked customer service for 5 years and, if anything, now I have less patience with the reps because I know exactly how they're fucking up and how to fix it.