One woman recently admitted to pretending to get fired in front of customers while at her job in order to gain sympathy, and the internet had some interesting reactions to say the least!
Working in the service industry certainly has it’s challenges.
While there are a lot of lovely people out there who treat service employees like actual human beings, you may be surprised by the number of people who don’t!
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From obstreperously picky customers to those who are just downright rude, there are a lot of people out there who treat service employees like trash.
However, there are ways to cope with these people.
Sure, most employee handbooks will tell you to be patient, considerate, and apologetic for absolutely anything that is of no fault of your own, but these do not work.
From flipping them off when they’re not looking, too “just nipping into the stock room” to scream into your apron, there are much more efficient ways of dealing with rude customers.
One barista recently shared her own way of handling these customers.
In a Reddit post on the thread AITA (Am I The Asshole), she shared the story of how her, and some of her coworkers, would put on little shows which would entail, “pretending to get fired when customers get a temper with me”.
The employee who posted the story was wondering whether her actions were too mean.
She explained that she is a high-schooler working weekends to save money.
She explained that her coworkers during these shifts are the owner’s son, called James, and a college student, called Danielle. Apparently, the idea was actually James’, as she wrote:
“Sometimes customers will come in and just be angry about such little stuff. Like literally blow up about nothing. I dunno if they’re in a bad mood already and looking for someone to take it out on or what, but it’s a lot… Like how sad so you have to be to be a grown-ass man taking your anger out on high school and college kids.
“So James and I were joking about having a little fun with them and hopefully getting them off our backs.”
The idea was that James would pretend to fire her, and she would start to cry.
“One day I was at work and some guy was having a temper about how we don’t make the coffee hot enough… I couldn’t do a thing about because I gave it to him right out of the machine,” She continued.
“So James came in and was like ‘sir is there a problem here’ and the guy started ranting at him too. So he was just like ‘OP, this is unacceptable, you’re fired’.”
She then went on to say that she began to act as sad as possible and make protestations such as, “no please don’t fire me, my family needs the money, I need this job, pleaseeee”.
Apparently, the tactic really worked for getting angry customers to calm down.
“The angry guy started to backtrack, like ‘It isn’t that big of a problem, you don’t need to fire her over it. I didn’t mean it’, and James was like ‘No, we pride ourselves on the best customer service’.
“Of course after all that drama I still had my job, we were just acting. And we’ve done it a couple of times, whenever a customer will lose their temper at Danielle or me, James will storm in and ‘fire’ us. And almost every time, the person who had come in angry will apologize and say that they didn’t mean it. It’s kind of satisfying, making people realize their actions might actually have consequences,” she explained.
However, the person who wrote this’ school friends thought that the prank was too cruel.
There were some people on the thread who agreed that her actions were out of order.
One delightfully cheerful Reddit user wrote that is was unfair on both the person on the receiving end of the joke, and the rest of the customers in the cafe:
“[You’re the asshole], this situation seems pretty uncomfortable for everyone in the cafe. Most people go to cafes to relax. I know if I saw it happen I would think the place has asshole managers and I wouldn’t come back. I would probably tell all my friends not to go as well.
“Customers blowing up is something you will occasionally have to deal with in the service industry. It’s literally what managers are paid to deal with, and your mate is not dealing with it appropriately. Is the owner aware you and his son are pulling these little pranks at the cost of his business? I imagine when he finds out you might be fired for real.” — Workchoices
However, others thought that everyone was at fault in the situation!
Not wanting to brand any one party as the “asshole”, there was one well-received response to the story which branded everyone in the story the “asshole”:
“The customers are obviously assholes for being assholes for no good reason.
“Yes, you are a little bit of an asshole. Is it justified? Absolutely. Are you still an asshole? Yes. Unfortunately, in a customer service role, you are always going to have to deal with people who are angry over absolutely nothing. It is part of the job. Is it fair? No. In a perfect world, those customers would not exist, but we live in reality and that is part of the reality especially of that job.” — Frejian
Alas, in the end, the thread almost unanimously branded the woman in the story “Not the asshole”.
The large majority of people on the thread agreed that the barista in question was not out of order, and a lot of people commended her and her coworkers for showing these unruly customers that their actions have consequences, with the top responses in the thread being:
“That’s a perfect way of dealing with hostile customers.” — bellePunk
“Agreed! And when the hostile customers try to backtrack what they say makes it worth it. OPs tactic hopefully teaches them to stop complaining to service workers about things out of their control.” — commadusarelius
“I think it’s hilarious and maybe it’ll teach some people a lesson about controlling their assholery.” — lolak1445
Some people even detailed some measures that their shops put in place to prevent this kind of attitude from customers.
While there was one story about Harrod’s actually hiring “fake staff” for the purpose of firing them in front of customers to keep up the appearance of their complaints being heard, this was quickly revealed to be fake.
However, one person actually wrote that there are some places that deliberately install large mirrors in the workplace as if people can see themselves getting agitated, they will normally calm down:
“Some places have mirrors placed behind the counter because it has proven that people behave better when they can see what they look like when they act out. Some people seriously need a wake-up call when they start misbehaving.”
Do you think that this service employee was out of order?
Do you think that the fake firing is an appropriate response to the customer’s outrage, or do you think that they took it too far in getting back at these irate customers?
Let me know what you think in the comments below!
