Hey all, I've kind of got to the tipping point of rude/racist condescending customers at work.
I work for a big supermarket chain (sainsburys) and had an interaction with a very obvious racist customer imo.
The customer came to me asking for a refund which I gave, but she also wanted another refund for an item she hadn't collected yet.
As an employee it's a lot easier canceling the order when she gives the number to you, rather that going to collect the item, then canceling it by refunding it manually and then putting the items back. So I refunded it to her automatically, this way she got no physical paper receipt but would get an email saying a refund was issued. I explained this to her, but she got annoyed and kept repeating to me ” I don't think you get what I'm trying to tell you”, “you're not understanding me”, she was annoyed as she wanted a physical receipt but I assured her that she would get an email.
Yet she kept throwing snide remarks at me, to make things worse she would keep turning to my white colleague to try and validate her points. From the snide remarks of “not understanding her” or looking to my colleague for answers that would be the exact same as mine.
A minute later she gets the email saying the refund was issued, and kept telling me it's been emailed now. In the heat of the moment I said “good for you” In which she responded “what's your problem”. In turn I responded by saying ” you've been condescending to me to the entire interaction'. Obviously she took offence and claimed “how was I being condenseding”
I told her I didn't want to argue with you and said I don't want to serve you anymore, my colleague took over and I served other customers.
The way she treated my colleague was like day and night compared to me, being really friendly, amicable and polite clearly doing this to spite me further, I decided to ignore the tacit remarks and continue serving. Right before she left she wanted my name as she wanted to report me, I gave her my name and then she called me a ” rude man” and walked off.
I'm 19 and an ethnic minority, I know a racist interaction when I'm in one and truth be told I've never been more angry and frustrated than I've ever have been todayat work having this interaction.
I've had my fare share off rude, angry or pissed off customers but it's never affected me, today this women actually made me so on edge that my colleague suggested I should take a 15 minute break, I know she was trying to induce a reaction from me when she was being overly amicable to my colleague and asking for my name badge to report me and calling me a “rude man”
But a part of me was so close to responding to her comment off 'rude man” by calling her an insufferable old hag.
Was I right by staying silent the whole time, I gave her my name to “report me” but all of her comments I gave her no response.
Anyhow, I don't know why this has affected me so much, I've never been annoyed my customers to the point I'm writing Reddit posts about a horrible interaction..in fact comparatively speaking I've definitely had “worse explicit' interactions with customers before but never has it pissed me off. This one however was/is different.
Anyways just the wonders of retail, does anyone else have similar experiences, I Keep telling my self that it's just a few months of retail left than I'm off to uni (hopefully to never work retail again).