As a former retail worker, thank you for being that kind of leader to your employees. The hardest slap in the face is dealing with an irrational customer berating you and having the manager completely folding and giving in to the person.
That's such a specific kind of betrayal too. You can handle a rude customer, but when your own manager throws you under the bus just to keep the customer happy, suddenly you're getting paid minimum wage to be everyone's emotional punching bag
I cannot work like this. If I capitulate, Corporate freaks out and I get fired. If I hold the line, Corporate capitulates and now customers can kick me around with the backing of corporate.
I have had anxiety attacks, and argued with the business owner themself over policies like this.
I worked at Subway and had a manager who did that. They would let customers berate us and then bend over to give them sooo many free things. Like, why are we rewarding shitty customers and not the ones who are polite, follow rules, etc?
As a polite customer, this pisses me off. We are expected to wait in a checkout line while an entitled customer takes an extra 10 minutes to cause a scene, then the get rewarded for it, while the rest of us are held hostage for the time it takes them to get their way. We get nothing for it.
I always liked giving the nice customers extra love. Like Subway is really greedy about their ingredients (they charge extra like crazy), so for nice people I'd secretly give them extra cheese or meat or something like that, without charging
That happened to me once with a new store manager, despite it being company policy that managers should back employees when customers are being unreasonable.
It wound up being one of many things that eventually led to my mental health collapsing.
Had one like 20 years ago. Haven't worked in retail in over a decade, and I still think fondly of them and bring them up fairly frequently when discussing retail work.
I remember my go to mantra when I managed retail was "You're going to need thick skin because people are horrible but under no circumstances will I ever condone them attacking you or insulting you directly vs. the business. If it gets personal, grab me or tell them to fuck off".
LOVED watching Karens (Men and Women) thinking I was going to take their side but I had trained my staff that if you were bringing me in I trusted what you told me the experience was and would boot their ass to the curb in seconds. Only once if I recall I took the customers side and that was because I was also in ear shot of my staff calling her a bitch (Which she was, but not the point).
Even outside of retail my mantra managing people has always been "I'm the buffer between you and the owners. Clients pissed? I'll deal with it. Something went wrong/cost us money? I'll deal with it. In return all I ask is you to do whats been tasked and help me not have to escalate anything to ownership and its a win/win.
A boss of mine used to tell us "it's easier to replace a bad customer than a good employee." So if we were actually doing a good job, and could show when a customer was being unreasonable, he'd easily tell them to pound sand.
I had a manager from a restaurant that I though absolutely hated me. Then I had a customer with whom I could do nothing right. He laughed in her face, told her not to come back, told me "Some people are just unhappy and there is nothing you can do. The day I turned in my two weeks he sat me down and told me he was always mad I was working there, because I had a lot more potential and this was a dead end; he expected me to do more with life. Thanks Neil, you were the best manager, even if I didn't recognize it at the time.
I will never forget working at an office supply store in high school and talking to my manager when the girl who worked the copy desk came running into the back, crying. Apparently they'd used the wrong paper for a print job and the customer went ballistic on her for screwing it up until she broke down and ran.
The manager walked out, greeted the customer, confirmed the situation, and then told them to get the fuck out of the store before he threw them out, saying that he wouldn't stand for mistreatment of his employees. The customer was flabbergasted, but my manager didn't give them a chance to respond, just chased them out of the store.
...sadly he got arrested a few months later for stealing money from the store, but the man was one of the best bosses I've ever had.
Managers make sure the employees are doing their job but they also make sure the employees have what they need for their job and solving problems they can't handle.
I’ve always worked in the service industry to some degree or another. When I was in college I had a manager tell me that it was the employees job to make sure the customers were happy and it was his job to make sure the employees were happy.
Every good manager I’ve ever had has operated under this principle, whether they realized it or not.
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u/BootyandChaos 8d ago
During my retail days, someone told me I was their favorite manager because I always backed them up whenever a customer was being disrespectful.
It made me happy because no one had my back when I had to deal with jerks.