Empathy Training

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Man, war stories from Christmas in retail.

My first time around wasn't too bad. I was part of a team managing the back room inventory and, essentially, trying to force out merchandise that otherwise wouldn't fit on the shelves to keep the back room as clear as possible. That black Friday, I was assigned to guard a pallet of shit. It was blacked out so people wouldn't crowd highly desired items - TVs and such.

The next year, I was in the electronics department, as in, that was my post as I had transferred to the sales floor.

That year, oh that year, the Wii dropped. We'd get a pallet in, and we'd just wheel it out to the register to sell. Of course, it didn't start out that way. They were all locked in "the cage" and we had to get a manager to get them, one by one. That didn't last too long as the management team was pretty much just running Wiis back and forth.

To top it off, my former inventory control role and limited register training, I had to train an incoming store manager (who would make FAR more per day than I would, after taxes I made about 70 a day for an 8 hour shift) to use the register. And he was.... well, slow to learn. Which meant lines and issues - which would require a lower level of management to come handle - their response time, for a variety of reasons (busy season and sheer ~~idiocy~~ ~~laziness~~"level of business" slowed down.

Having only one register back in electronics, well... this sucked.

Why would you train someone at the BUSIEST TIME OF THE YEAR? I get it now though, after 10 years of retail and 11 in IT, the one thing I've been able to determine is that approximately 1% of management, anywhere, is competent.

That doesn't beat out the day I was asked to "help coverage."

Yeah, I worked my full shift, then was asked to stay on for four more hours, then four more. And I didn't take a second lunch. Now, the state I lived in didn't give a fuck. Its the kind of state that says "Oh its 100+ degrees out? Better pass legislation to make water breaks legal to ignore." Yeah, a lot of people died of dehydration and heat stroke in the construction industry after that. As far as I know, employers eased up on water breaks, but the legislation is still in effect.

After all of that, I moved to the automotive technician department.

It sucked, but for most of the time I had a decent boss. My first week I was struggling. Working outside in the summer, heavy uniform, covered in oil, and otherwise being out of shape.

That boss sent me inside, to sit in his office, and drink some cold water. Knowing the company I worked for, I said I wasn't ready to take a break yet (I was a smoker at the time, and wanted to time out smoke breaks fairly steady) and he said it isn't a break. You're bright red and you stopped sweating 10 minutes ago. If you know, you know. So I did, and I remember that to this day. I remember good managers.

Thankfully, my black Friday/Christmas duties were mostly rescinded (I technically was still register trained, so I got called up to the front to kill lines) which was nice.

The point of this?

Retail is hell. Period.

Mandatory retail service might be more important to our continued culture than anything else.

Shit, my mom was a college graduate, taught for a little while (not her thing) before working for the government, which I'm not going to go into. She took an early retirement package, cause she could. Good for her. She got bored, went to work at a chain craft store. She realized, and had a long discussion with me, and how much of a CUNT she was to retail/service folks. Her words. It was nice to hear, because I was still neck deep in retail hell at the time.

DominusOfMegadeus

I will actively confront any asshole I see behaving this way in a retail or food service line. I did my time, and I know. All it takes for evil to succeed are for good people to stand by and do nothing.

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There was that one lady who was sentences to serve at a fast food restaurant where she through a fit and assaulted someone or something like that. Why not make Walmart floor worker a judicial punishment?

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I worked at JC Penney as a teenager 20ish years ago. One day we had a sale on Xmas socks- three pair for the price of two. Each pair of socks were $3, so with this deal you'd get them for $2 instead.

This woman waited in the long-ass line and showed up with four pairs. I rang them up, $6 for the three pairs in the deal, and $3 for the fourth. She wanted the fourth pair for $2 as well. I explained that the deal was automatically stored in the register, and that it would only apply if she bought three more pairs.

She lost her absolute shit at me, called me awful names, demanded to see a manager, and ultimately threw the socks at my face before storming out.

That was over a $1 price difference, and she was one of the more tame customers. I imagine in the last couple decades it has become much worse

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Are you new here? (By here I mean as in earth?)

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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.