Rotorua Daily Post
  • Rotorua Daily Post home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Sport
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Residential property listings
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
  • Rural
  • Sport

Locations

  • Tauranga
  • Te Puke
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Tokoroa
  • Taupō & Tūrangi

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales

Weather

  • Rotorua
  • Tauranga
  • Whakatāne
  • Tokoroa
  • Taupō

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Rotorua Daily Post

Sonya Bateson: Customer behaviour plays a huge role in a job’s attractiveness

Sonya Bateson
By Sonya Bateson
Regional content leader, Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post·Bay of Plenty Times·
30 Mar, 2023 08:00 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
9Comments
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

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, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / 123rf

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, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

Customer-facing jobs are awful.

At least, all mine were.

Ask almost any person who has worked in hospitality, retail or customer service and I reckon they’ll have a horror story or two about their worst customers.

Like the time I was working in a homeware store and had an angry man demanding a refund for his “faulty” slow cooker. The reason? He had bought it for his restaurant because it was cheaper than an urn. His complaint? The slow cooker was faulty because it didn’t boil water fast enough. Yup, you read that right. The mind boggles.

Open up the latest news from Rotorua

Get daily headlines from the Rotorua region straight to your inbox.
Please email me competitions, offers and other updates. You can stop these at any time.
By signing up for this newsletter, you agree to NZME’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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!”

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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.

Read More

  • Job growth stalls as labour market tightens, but party ...
  • Experts weigh in on the 2023 job market and offer advice ...
  • Has the hot job market finally peaked? Fresh signs ...
  • Rotorua job market crunch: Staff shortages mean hospo ...

“Earn your wages and get it yourself you lazy *****,” she spat out, still eyeballing me.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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.

Read More

  • Sonya Bateson: Don't hold your breath if you're trying ...
  • Sonya Bateson: Raising one culture up won’t bring another ...
  • Sonya Bateson: Are you a good person? What about your ...
  • Sonya Bateson: Drag performance for children just cute, ...

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.

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

9

Comments

Latest from Rotorua Daily Post

Rotorua Daily Post

'Lit a flame inside me': Programme receives boost to support local men

21 Jun 05:00 PM
Rotorua Daily Post

'Never came home': Runner plans marathon for women murdered on runs

21 Jun 05:00 PM
Premium
Rotorua Daily Post

'It was my calling': Inside the Taupō farm taming wild horses

20 Jun 10:00 PM

Jono and Ben brew up a tea-fuelled adventure in Sri Lanka

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Rotorua Daily Post

'Lit a flame inside me': Programme receives boost to support local men

'Lit a flame inside me': Programme receives boost to support local men

21 Jun 05:00 PM

Referrals come from NZ Police, community groups, and self-referrals.

'Never came home': Runner plans marathon for women murdered on runs

'Never came home': Runner plans marathon for women murdered on runs

21 Jun 05:00 PM
Premium
'It was my calling': Inside the Taupō farm taming wild horses

'It was my calling': Inside the Taupō farm taming wild horses

20 Jun 10:00 PM
'Max capacity': Good news for growing school squeezing classes into library

'Max capacity': Good news for growing school squeezing classes into library

20 Jun 09:00 PM
Help for those helping hardest-hit
sponsored

Help for those helping hardest-hit

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Rotorua Daily Post e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Rotorua Daily Post
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search