Bracing myself, I told the customer I couldn’t refund him because the slow cooker wasn’t faulty, it was working exactly as designed. Slowly. And because it was used, I couldn’t return it.
Cue the loud tantrum.
“I pay your wages! The customer is always right! I want to speak to your manager!”
The manager agreed with my take, though, and the man stormed out with his slow cooker.
Then there was the time I was working as a waitress in a nice restaurant. A work party came in, about 20 men of varying ages.
“Look after us and I’ll make sure you get a good tip,” the guy flashing the credit card smirked at me. I tried to laugh along as they made bawdy jokes at my expense and gave me leering looks as they grew drunker and drunker.
By the end of the evening, I was almost in tears from it all and begged a colleague to sort out the bill for me. I pretended to unload the dishwasher as my colleague rang them up, while the now highly intoxicated men continued to yell at me: “Come on, don’t be shy! You still haven’t earned that tip! Come and finish the job!” I smiled, waved, and continued drying glasses until the group eventually left, sans tip of course.
Then there was a woman at a store I worked at who brought a huge pile of clothes to the counter, dumped them down miles away from the register, then eyeballed me with this look of, I don’t know, disdain? disgust? challenge? on her face.
“Are you wanting to buy those? I’ll need to ring up them up here if you do,” I asked politely, gesturing to the scanner.
That must have been what she was waiting for.
“Earn your wages and get it yourself you lazy *****,” she spat out, still eyeballing me.
I vividly remember this feeling of shame, anger and stubbornness that welled up in me. My cheeks felt bright red as I took the clothes to the scanner, bagged them up, then stood there at my end of the register, patiently waiting for her to come to me to pay.
She did not like that. Not one bit.
“Think you’re smart, do you? Come here and get my money. Don’t you know how to serve customers? Ignorant *****. No wonder you can’t get a real job, you can’t even do this one right.”
I felt like dirt. Low. Worthless.
That was the turning point for me. I enrolled in tertiary study soon after and never looked back.
Those are just three examples of just how awful those “easy” minimum-wage customer-facing jobs like retail, hospitality and customer service can be.
Most customers are perfectly pleasant, but the ones who aren’t will go out of their way to ruin your day and make sure you feel inferior. And they’re the ones you remember.
We’re facing a skills shortage here in the Bay of Plenty and Restaurant Association chief executive Marisa Bidois says low unemployment and immigration settings are contributing to the difficult hiring environment.
These kinds of jobs are perceived as low skilled, the jobs that anyone off the street should be able to do with minimal training, and as such should be grateful for the small pay cheque.
But they are hard work. The hours are almost always irregular and inconvenient for any kind of home life, they’re low paid, and they can be thankless.
And for those reasons, they’ve been shunted into this kind of “last resort” category – the jobs you apply for only if you can’t get anything else. A stepping stone rather than a career.
That’s certainly how I felt about them anyway as a jaded 21-year-old.
If we want more people to fill more of these “easy” jobs, we need to make the jobs more attractive. And I reckon we all have a part to play in that.
As you can tell from the stories I shared above, the big reason I hated my time as a young person in customer-facing jobs is almost entirely down to the behaviour of the customers I was serving, and I’m sure I’m far from alone in that experience.
Do your part to keep your favourite businesses afloat. Don’t just spend your money — treat customer service people with kindness and respect.
They’re in short supply right now, and an angry word might be all it takes for them to quit.
Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.
