Categories
Antiwork

Years of customer service jobs have ruined my ability to stand up for myself outside of work.

Sorry if this post doesn't belong here. The other day, I had an incident with a stranger where she nearly ran me over (repeatedly getting a foot from my rear) for not walking fast enough in a parking lot and screamed at me from her window. When I told her I was 37 weeks pregnant, that I was already walking as fast as I could waddle, she exclaimed “So what? That ain't a handicap!” And I just froze up, then went into the store. No one around me said anything despite the volume of the scene the lady was making, and I so desperately wanted to stand up for myself, or at least call the cops. I used to always say, “If I wasn't at work right now…” when people disrespected me, but this was one more drop in the tip jar of being an absolute doormat. I've never held…


Sorry if this post doesn't belong here.

The other day, I had an incident with a stranger where she nearly ran me over (repeatedly getting a foot from my rear) for not walking fast enough in a parking lot and screamed at me from her window. When I told her I was 37 weeks pregnant, that I was already walking as fast as I could waddle, she exclaimed “So what? That ain't a handicap!”

And I just froze up, then went into the store. No one around me said anything despite the volume of the scene the lady was making, and I so desperately wanted to stand up for myself, or at least call the cops. I used to always say, “If I wasn't at work right now…” when people disrespected me, but this was one more drop in the tip jar of being an absolute doormat.

I've never held a job where I was able to defend myself against people screaming in my face or ear. Even in jobs where we were told we could call the police, we were still urged to not say anything that might push the other person to escalate the situation. We were never told we could hang up the phone over disrespect until it escalated to cursing or threats, and even then we had to give the caller a warning first. In face-to-face jobs, it was a similar story.

I used to be fiery and assertive, but I think years of being told to “Be the better person!” with the subtext that a customer might decide to come back with a gun have permanently impaired my ability to handle confrontations.

I don't even live in a city, or in a place with high crime rates… but in a local mom n pop, a few years ago, a man came in and shot a young girl to death for not smiling when she spoke to him. I've had customers in different jobs threaten to hurt or outright kill me for not giving them what they want, regardless of how pleasant I am.

Does anyone else feel this way? Or does it generally have the opposite effect where you take no shit outside of work because you have that freedom? I wish I could let this sort of thing roll off my shoulder, like so many seem to do, but when it bleeds into my daily life…

I just hate to think of my daughters seeing something like that out of me and thinking it's the correct way to react to such a thing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *