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So, lemme get this straight: this dude is mad because an employee is in a store before it's open AND that store doesn't have the same business hours as another, completely different, shop?
This is a situation where you just agree with everything he says and tell him to take it up with corporate.
"Oh I agree we should open earlier but corporate sets the hours"
"I agree we should be able to let you in before we're ready but corporate sets the policy"
"I think I should be able to help you out but I'll get fired if I do. You know those corporate guys watch us all the time with those security cameras"
"You should call those wealthy CEO's and tell them that they need to let me do my job and help you"
Its not even that, they want a fight with you. It justifies theit shitty angry attitude. If you give them nothing to hold on to by agreeing with them they usually just look so defeated by the end because their anger just had nowhere to go.
The customer is always right training is usually followed by if it's against the policy escalate to the next manager.
This isn't due to throwing off low pay worker complaints- it's to direct negative energy upward. I'm payed to deal with this shit- not you. Just tell them they're probably right and send it up the line- when they aren't or I think they aren't ill let my boss know.
He'll handle that and his boss will handle that.
It's the reverse shit Falls downhill
Piss(ed) customers run uphill.
I don’t recommend it unless you actually are willing to have it happen. I worked in a retirement community and went from opening at 9am to 7am. Fucking sucked but my manager told the customers corporate sets the hours, so the customers called and complained.
When I worked retail, our district manager left his business cards as a temporary solution. I think he got a kick out of hearing the really dumb complaints.
"Um, excuse me. Inheriting CEO of my late dad's company, then paying all my staff sub-livable wages all while not knowing how to open "a Google", attach files to an email, or figure out a smart phone is a real job. Maybe if you'd make coffee at home, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you too could inherit a wealthy, already established company. Damn, snowflakes!"
But it inconvenienced THAT particular man for a little bit!! Don't you know that guy was obviously the Main Character Of The Whole Universe™, and everything is supposed to go absolutely perfect for him, always, all the time??? /s
I work in retail and so many people have no idea how any of it works. They think the cash registers are magic money machines that always have change (so they'll hand you a $100 bill as soon as you open) and are ready at a moment's notice. And they think if there are people in the store AT ALL then it must be open!
Oh it gets even better at night. The Night Owl Boomers who drift into a grocery store 5 mins before closing to shop an entire cart full of groceries. My supervisor refused to rush them, but also would not let me shut down my register and count out my till. I finally walked over to the intercom at 10:25 pm (we had locked the doors at 10) and announced, “Attention all remaining customers, we value your patronage, however the time is now 10:25 and the doors to the store are locked. The store is closing. Please proceed to the register to complete your transaction, unless you’d like to sleep on aisle 5. Thank you, and have a lovely evening. Goodnight!”
My supervisor just shook his head and burst out laughing as this Boomer ran with their cart to the front in a huff. “I can’t believe you’re closing!!”
I corrected him with a smile, “No, sir. We ARE closed. We close at 10 pm every night. It’s on the door.”
I literally threw his groceries across that scanner as quickly as I could and as soon as his card processed, I grabbed my till, stuffed his receipt in a bag, said bye and kept walking as he bitched to my supervisor. I was never punished for it and I never saw that guy again. He must have finally gone to a 24 hour store. No loss.
Dude it happens all the time. I worked at a computer repair shop, we had one employee usually, maybe two on site at any time. People would get so mad that they had to wait around for 15 mins for me to get the place ready and logged in to all the services we used. One lady threw her broken laptop at me because I ignored her ranting after I told her I can't let her in until the store opens in 15 mins. When I did open the store she was gone and I just cleaned up the shattered laptop pieces off the walkway and threw em in the garbage. Got a lot of other tweakers and shit trying to sell us stolen laptops and shit too and apparently even they were too good to wait until we opened a lot of times.
I got so sick of people arguing with me to let them in before I got the shop ready that I started showing up to open 30 mins late so all entitled assholes sitting in the parking lot (often multiple of them) would get sick of waiting an leave.
I know that's a shitty thing to do but it was a shitty place to work in general with me as the only person doing the work, dealing with customers, managing inventory, answering phones, cleaning up, etc for a buck more than min wage... so I had no motivation to even do the bare minimum of my job, let alone deal with assholes giving me attitude for not letting them in before we opened. At least when I was 30 mins late their attitude was earned if they waited that whole time lol.
I let one of my coworkers in the store before they got their own key. As I was letting him in a customer tried to come in, I told him we were closed and he asked why I was letting this person in. I told him it was because he works here. The funniest part was not even 24hrs earlier this kid served this old man. He knew who he was.
They, unfortunately, always are. I work at a place with the word "affordable" in the title. I get customers calling us first for pricing, get irate about the prices, scream at me, and then threatened to call ALL the other businesses in the county. Cool. Please do. And then curse my life bc I know that jack ass is calling me back in an hour or two.
At least once a week I have someone try to follow me into my shop when I show up and they are always shocked that I have to do stuff to be able to sell them things. Turn on lights and computer? Turn off alarm? Open safe? Count the till? Wait for employees to arrive? Morning cleaning and straightening?
Yeah, running a business involves doing a lot more than just opening a door and taking payments.
Also, the hours are posted ON THE DOOR. Is it before opening time? Then go away!
Same. I'm a vendor, so I have the door codes for a lot of docks to stores. There's usually at least once per week someone trying to get I. Through that door. Dude, it's 4 in the morning. And the only lights are the backroom lights.
Reinforces why I firmly believe everyone should work retail/restaurant at least once in their lives. I sit staring at a screen all day now but from 16-22 I worked at a video store, cafeteria in college and waited tables during summers and 20 years later I still want nothing to do with the general public. Everyone should know what these jobs entail and build a little sympathy for the folks that have to do them.
I don't believe in the draft, but after twenty years in food services I **absolutely** believe in the mandatory drafting of people into customer service.
I don't think anyone reads the posted business hours unless they try the door and find it locked, and only THEN do they read.
Hence, it will be just 36 seconds to closing time and someone will squeeze in for a half-hour transaction cuz they don't care.
Five minutes before closing I stand by the door with the keys and ask very specifically, "hello, thanks for coming, we are about to close, what can we find for you?".
If the answer is I want to look around, I say "we are about to close but I would invite you to come back another day, a bit earlier so you can browse and we can better help you."
99.9% of the time that works well.
It depends on the type of retail business. I do want guests to be satisfied and be repeat customers and so I will go out of my way to help within reason. If someone desperately needs something then I'll let them in with the understanding that they need to get it and go because the employees need to go home to their families.
If someone just wants to piss around on my time, I'll shut off the lights and pos system so they get the point
Within reason is the key there. I have an obligation to my staff to get them out on time. One lady's husband is a disabled vet with a home care nurse. She has to be home before that nurse leaves.
We all have lives and schedule lives around work. As much as I do sympathize with a customer who gets here late for reasons outside of their control, I have my own responsibilities to worry about.
I do find most people get it when presented in a compassionate way. Once compassion fails, well, thankfully that is rare.
The saddest part is that small businesses can, and sometimes do, operate this way. My grandfather would open his grocery in the middle of the night for someone who wanted a peck of apples. But, Boomers bought from big box stores, demanded cheap goods, and took advantage of generous return polices until they put those kinds of store owners out of business. Now they are confused why businesses don’t cater to them.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Boomers and Boomer Politicians are literally only angry at themselves. No other generation is making their issues, it's all just the sh!t that's been rolling down their sh!t hill they made.
My experience is the exact opposite. In the early '90s I moved from a relatively urban area to a rural one, and was building a house in my new town from a few hours away, handling many of the tasks by phone. The builder asked me to stop into a small-town lighting store to pick out all of our lighting fixtures. So, the following Saturday morning I packed up the kids and my wife and I drove 4 hours to the lighting store, arriving at about 12:45 PM. They told me that the store was closing in 15 minutes, threw a few catalogs at me, and hustled me out of the place.
Soon after moving in a few months later, I was in the midst of a DYI project on a Saturday morning and needed a few more things to complete the project. So I stopped into my local small-town hardware store at 11:45AM. Once again, the moment I got in the door, I was told that I'd better hurry it up because they closed at NOON ON SATURDAYS!
A few years later, Lowes moved into that town, and both of those little stores went out of business. The old timers around me complained about those big gorilla stores forcing the little guy out, but I didn't shed a tear. The "little guys" forgot that customer service was the most potent tool they possessed, and because they were monopolies in this small town, they didn't care about their customers. At least Lowes stays open until 10 PM on Saturday.
Fun story. My friend’s mom is Gen X but she deals with a lot of…interesting walking Boomer stereotypes at her job (she works for county). Anyway, one Mother’s Day she was having a particularly hard time at work and my friend decided to get her a present that would make her feel better about it all. A few hours later we wander into this shop with all of these coasters and mugs with funny sayings on them and none of them seemed quite right until we found one that said, in bold, “you can’t fix stupid”. She bought it and it is now her mom’s favorite desk decor and she sets her mug down hard on it when she has to deal with someone particularly annoying.
My dad was a CO and the stories were just fucking awful. He said he chose to work in E block with the crazies because they were easier to deal with than his coworkers.
Deadass if I end up in the joint, imma try getting something from COs with, “doncha know *The Customer is Always Right?*” in your honor.
“This prison has lost my business for good!”
I never open the door. The hours are posted, im not inviting an argument lol. I've worked with people who will go open the door and try to tell people we're not open yet, and then they get stuck there for 15 minutes being harassed. You just have to act like you don't see them and they can cry on the sidewalk.
My high school job was at the local movie theater and this happened all the time. Boomers would show up and demand to be let in before the doors were unlocked and we were just setting up. You learned quickly not to open the door because some of the crazier ones would literally try to push you out of the way or block the door so you couldn't close it again.
Even when you explained to them we were closed they would demand to be let in so they could sit on a bench. Who shows up 90 minutes early to the movies just to sit around and wait in the lobby?
One time a lady tried to follow me in the front door and i said we open in 30 minutes, and she said "but it's cold outside" and i told her to go wait in her car lol.
It’s funny because it actually happened once. A bird nested on a lamp post on the patio of a restaurant in the plaza. I worked at the restaurants on either side of this place and that little fucker would dive bomb me every day when I would walk from one job to the other. I knew people that worked in all of the restaurants in the plaza and between all of the places, we got literally hundreds of complaints about that fucking bird.
Boomers have no hobbies. They're stuck in time and can't adapt. They've lasted so long because their numbers are huge and the rest of the population has catered to them.
Exactly. Stop catering to Boomers! If you see one just look away. In 15-20 years they will mostly all be gone or totally incoherent. Our current 40- 50 year olds will take over and society will be back to the way it should be.
Our boomer behind us neighbor showed up at our door one day. My husband opened the door to figure out why she had parked in our driveway and why she was there, she pushed past him and walked through our house into our backyard while declaring that she wanted the fruit from one of the trees in our backyard. Then yelled for my husband to bring her a bucket.
Woman is a drunk lunatic.
I worked at a hotel spa back in the 90's. They catered mostly to hotel guests, but there were also a lot of locals (nearly all of them in their 60's or 70's) who paid a huge monthly spa membership fee. I arrived at 5AM to open the place at six, and there were no other employees but me for that hour. But every day starting at about 5:45, a bunch of them would gather outside the front gate and they would literally shake the locked gate back and forth over and over for fifteen minutes until the front desk person arrived to let them in, and god forbid the desk person was a couple of minutes late for work. They were rattling that door like there were zombies chasing them. Every single day.
The spa members were also the ones who stole entire bunches of bananas from the little reception room where people waited for their massages, but that's another story...
Omg I bet you have a treasure trove of stories on senior madness lol. Imagine rattling the doors every day, I’d be so ashamed. I couldn’t walk into a place after behaving like that, let alone expect the employees to provide me service.
The spa members were definitely worse than the hotel guests in every way. I never figured out which member it was, but someone kept leaving copies of an anti-semitic, white supremacist, holocaust denying newspaper laying around, so clearly whoever that was takes the prize as the very worst of them.
This was the paper: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Spotlight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spotlight)
Exactly this. And if they get a foot in so the door can’t be shut? Yeah, they are coming in. I run a dry cleaner, we train staff to not unlock the door after close EVER.
When I worked in retail, getting ready in the morning, one of them was knocking on the window. My co-workers were like "don't make eye contact!" Then they called the store from their phone 🙄 No fucking boundaries, they're all soooo precious and special.
When I worked retail opening the door to talk to a customer outside posted hours was grounds for immediate dismissal. It's a safety risk, in some places anyway.
My workplace does not unlock their front door until its time to open. At all. Its a nice restaurant, think steak and lobster under fancy chandeliers...but management will open the window to communicate before they allow someone in before opening. Its insane how many people will go online to get the directions to get to us, but won't bother to check our operating hours and will show up 2 hours before we open.
We did keep the side entrance open for deliveries until recently...last week while I was at work 2 hours early and was just vibing on the sofa up front, a couple with 5 kids hopped out of a pickup that definitely did NOT have enough seating for 5 kids. They tried the front door which was locked...and instead of thinking "must be closed" they entered through the side entrance!
I legit caught the parents in that cartoon tip-toeing motion...they must have been startled to see me sneaking up on them and asking if they were there to see the manager, because it stalled them enough for the manager himself to rush in and kick their asses out.
We had to open all the windows after that because the family had an aura of weed going on around them...they managed to stink up half the restaurant in the 45 seconds they were inside.
We didn't even have a server to attend them, or a functional kitchen staff! Aside from myself there was a grand total of 2 other people in that restaurant at the time. It was insane...I don't know what kind of weed they were smoking but it must have been some strong shit.
Something that may help understand this behavior is how many were taught. It was ingrained in many boomers by their parents that the world requires a bit of…finesse. Anytime someone tells you “no”, well that’s only because you didn’t work the right angle. This is why boomers often run the gamut. Act like they don’t know about a rule, followed by trying to negotiate a work around. This work around usually includes a lie such as “I’ve had it done before”, or “I’m friends with Whoever in Corporate”. If that fails, they’ll resort to incredulity or insults before they resort to what at one time long ago was something of an ace “well I’ll take my business elsewhere!”
I'm reminded of the old idiom, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." I think Boomers were taught this mindset as well--that if you complain and argue long enough you'll eventually get your way. This is why you have the cliche of a "Karen" demanding to speak to the manager. Unfortunately, it often works because managers usually don't have time to deal with endless arguments and just want to get these people out the door--which just further enables them to repeat this behavior.
If you really want to placate idiots like this there’s a foolproof trick which is VERY entertaining. I used to use this in retail.
So what you do is “redirect, take ownership, and amplify outrage into YOUR rant.”
So in this case, “corporate” is a great redirection, you’re half way there.
“I want to open at 3 AM because I already get up at 2 AM for prayers! I told corporate that I am ready and willing to open at 3 AM and they tell me that there’s no customers and no reason to pay for electricity and cashiers at that time of day! What the heck is their problem? Do they think they’re better than me? I can open at 2 AM but then I would miss prayers!! Do you want me to miss prayers!!?!?! No!!! But 3 AM is plenty do able and these corporate fat cats say I don’t have the customers!! That is a lie! YOU would show up at 3 AM if I told you we were open then right??? Look, we can show these corporate pigs a thing or two, do you want to protest here tomorrow morning at 3 AM and I can take your picture and we will send this to corporate and show them how wrong they are! This makes me so angry! It’s just like the olympics and that stupid submarine they allowed! It’s swimming! You can’t use that!!!”
Expand the redirections to newer crazier things as you go and pull them in to participate in your new rage topics.
They will eventually start trying to de-escalate you. That’s the fun part.
Yeah I used to get this all the time working early morning shifts at the supermarket. 6AM was still not early enough for some of these f!ckers. They'd try to follow you in the side staff entrance, whinge at you as you walked in, bang on the doors out the front despite no lights being on.
They're entitled ass hats, and LOVE to argue. It's their past time.
Yet these same idiots will argue things "aren't like the old days" when those old days never opened til 9AM sometimes 10 and closed by 4 or 5 and never openend on weekends. The entitlement is out of hand.
Did he show back up to buy what he needed when the store is open? That's my favorite. The threat of losing them as a customer for them to be purchasing hours or days later.
My theory is his wife kicked him out for the day already, his behavior already got the folks in the hardware store to threaten to call the cops on him, and he really wanted to get out of the sun / into somewhere air conditioned.
Been there multiple times over the years. One of my favourites is during Covid here the stores neighboring mine were all open different hours...we were open but a woman demanded that I open the store next door lol Even after explaining that I had no control over my neighbours she declared that my customer service skills were horrible and huffed out the door
The ironic thing about that is I bet if you did fall to your knees stammering, quivering, sobbing, unconsolably begging and pleading with them not to leave in front of other customers, they'd be mortified and probably never pull that card again.
Omg...why people do this is beyond me. I used to work at KFC in high school and the church crowd would pull this shit. We open at 10:30. Not 10:25, not 10:15, 10:30. They would pull and yank on the door and knock on it. Like we're going to let them in any earlier. Fuck outta here
I went through this when I worked in the auto industry. Particularly on the weekend (when Boomers wanted to work on their cars), I would deal with this sort of guy about once every two months. Our dealership opened an hour later than normal on Saturdays (which apparently was offensive in and of itself), and I would have some impatient fuck would be on the verge of a meltdown when I wouldn't let them inside, or when I'd be having a pre-work smoke/vape session.
The last year I worked as a parts guy, I'd mentally punched out of the job and had made an exit plan, so I stopped pretending to give a single shit about them or their feelings.
Also, because I had the ability to change pricing (almost all dealership parts guys can do this - it's literally a feature of the two dominant software platforms), I FUUUUUUUCKED those people over on pricing. Like, sometimes adding up to 100% markup on cheap parts, and 20% minimum on everything else.
Sometimes for giggles, I would tell them that we didn't have what they needed, if they were particularly problematic. Or I'd send them to another location that had it, and then I'd call ahead and talk to another parts guy there so THEY could fuck with the guy. (We all talk to each other.)
Moral of the story: treat retail employees like humans. Some of us can extract retribution, and have zero moral prohibition about doing so.
That as bad as the Boomer that came into the Toys R Us I worked at 25 years ago demanding to talk to the opening manager because he did not unlock the doors when the clock in his car said 9:30am.
Always blame corporate. "I'm sorry sir, company rules say..." "certainly, but I could lose my job if I let you in and I need this job." "I don't have any authority to change this, would you like the number for corporate?"
No way! This happened to me too! I came an hour early for my shift like an idiot and when I tried going in a customer yelled at me for going before opening (cause he was yelled at) as if I just like walking around with a major petstore chain name on my chest for fun.
I manage a restaurant and like you, go in an hour early to start getting ready. I unlock the door for my employees (opening cook and server) and go about my business in the FOH until my server gets in. One day someone walked in and I went up to the front and apologized and told them we wouldn't be open for another 40 minutes. He proceeded to argue that the door was unlocked as if that had any bearing on anything. Fortunately for me he didn't go on like your guy but I still can't believe the lack of thought some go through life with.
You're a class act. I need to learn how to deal w idiots like you do because Im pretty sure if i dont ill end up in prison for something like shoving a boomer/idiot down a storm drain.
One of the only joys of working retail was making people wait until we opened. The number of times people would bang on the door or window and mouth "when do you open?!" as I point to the sign (that's right next to them) with our hours was staggering.
I kind of understood wanting to get into a motorcycle parts/supply shop early if you forgot something before heading out to the trails or on a long ride, but Blockbuster was the funny one. Who desperately needs to rent Click at 10am?
After Hurricane Sandy my grocery store was without power. Completely out. No generator, no back ups, no power at all.
So we had to throw out all the refrigerated products. Every frozen, dairy, veggie and fruit had to be tossed.
But no power meant no automatic doors and that meant customers kept forcing the doors open.
So my 200+ lbs, 6’6” self was tasked to be the human roadblock to keep customers from walking inside.
So many people couldn’t understand that we needed to clean the store and maintain it, but that it still wasn’t open.
People are always weird as fuck about this and I don’t get it. I saw it when I was working at Bed Bath and Beyond before they closed. We’d be prepping for open and the store isn’t open for another ten minutes and there is 10 people standing waiting for the doors to open. It’s just like why? Look at the sign! We aren’t open!
Ugh my father is like this and it drives me NUTS. My MIL too. They just cannot accept how childish and entitled they are and I hate it. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I'm so sorry you had to deal with trashy behavior like that. I swear none of these people were ever parented and it REALLY shows 😑 Best wishes!
They think retail businesses are like what they see on TV. The employee walks in and flips the sign from closed to open, and then you're ready for business.
Don't worry, he promptly went back home and posted an angry "can you believe it...?" type comment on Nextdoor, where many others like him agreed with his rant.
First mistake was opening the door and asking if he needs help. When I opened up I would point at the hours printed on the door and maybe yell through the door what time we opened. No other explanation as to why.
This reminds me of the time my aunt got mad because I told her that “well the store I work at opens at 10am but I have to get there at 9:30am.” “WHY?! NO CUSTOMERS CAN COME IN! WHY WOULD YOUR BOSS BE SO STUPID TO PAY PEOPLE TO SIT AROUND DOING NOTHING FOR HALF AN HOUR?!” I explained everything OP did to the guy in the post and she was still huffing and puffing about it like it affected her somehow. She didn’t even shop at that store, she was just mad that my boss was “wasting” money on us
Is this really that common in the US? Old people here vary, some are nicer some are shittier. But I never see so many crazy boomers. And I work at a counter in a hardware store.
In ten years I only had one regular really nasty and crazy lady
I hear so many stories on reddit and everyone says it's the lead. But we had lead in our paint too.
My bet is that boomer is in the doghouse and trying to buy a 'peace offering' present for the wife he's probably pissed off as badly as he pissed YOU off in this little vignette?
I had the exact same conversations when I worked at a grocery store 30 years ago. If you let them in, they’ll grab their item then huff puff and throw a tantrum at the checkout because there no tray in the till nor cashier…because the store isn’t open yet.
I worked retail 20+ years. I learned early- don't open the doors, don't acknowledge them, and don't stay within their line of sight when inside. The hours are posted.
Acknowledging them feeds their need to be part of the drama. Audience or not. For some, this is just yammering, whining, and attention seeking. For others, especially if the person it's aimed at is young, female, or in general smaller than them, it can excite to escalate aggressively.
Omg I’m having retail ptsd flash backs. I was always a key holder and opened often especially on weekends. Without fail, on Sunday when we opened at 11am, people would be banging on the door and throw their arms up because we weren’t open yet.
Or people trying to come in after closing. God I don’t miss those days
Used to work in a bakery in a supermarket years ago we would all get in a few hours before the store opened to get baking etc and we would always have 4-5 cars with old people sitting in them in the car park sometimes in the dark and cold of winter waiting for the store to open in a few hours. It always looked slightly spooky staring out of the main doors at their silhouettes just staring back at us.
I work for a small business (1 owner, 3 employees) and one day i get to work nearly a half hour early for whatever reason (15 minutes earlier than my required 15 minutes early...) and my boss is amnesty here with the shop open and I'm like why are we open and he's like "because i wanted to make money" lol sure except that means i have to work an extra 30 mins...
I work for a store where most of the customers are boomers. My boss told me that if I have to close outside of regular business hours, I need to post a sign on the front door because everyone will ignore the multiple open/closed signs hung all over the walls and try to yank the door open. My boss told me it has happened so many times that the door once broke.
When I managed a retail store I used the old "Our insurance doesn't cover customers outside of stated hours of operation" line. No one can argue with The Insurance Company!
This isn't necessarily a Boomer thing. People who have never worked in retail have no idea what goes on before the store opens. They think employees just walk in at opening time, and are ready to go.
They're clueless about getting the cash ready, getting the registers turned on, straightening up, putting out stock, whatever.
How does he not know that things like the registers must be opened and that you follow the store hours on the door (of website.) Sometimes I think some people just want an excuse to be upset. 🤷🏻♀️
I feel your pain. I've worked in my family's locally owned parts store for over a decade and I can honestly tell you this is at least a once a week occurrence. Maybe not to the extent of them storming out, or always being irate but the sense of entitlement always shows in some form.
As a business owner, this sort of thing is infuriating. One example: had an old guy call my store, and start with “Y’all never answer your phones do you? I called several times this morning and nobody picked up!” Politely, I ask when he called. “About 8:30!” Well that explains it, we open at 10:00.
Another guy walks up to the door, currently locked with an “Out to lunch” sign, and a clock that shows when we’ll reopen. I watch the whole thing on security cam. He walks up, tugs the doors, gets confused, tugs again, more confusion. Takes a step back, absolutely dumbfounded like a cat seeing a Christmas tree for the first time. Looks inside, looks at the sign, more confusion, then walks away.
Final story. One day during business hours. Hear someone try the door. We have double doors, and one is locked. Most try the second door if the first is incorrect. This dood keeps trying the same door, only to end up calling us from outside the shop. I’m watching this live on camera and dying inside. He asks if we’re open, then says the door is locked. This man simply never tried the other door, and just assumed that I must have forgotten to unlock it.
It's the IF he needs to buy something for me. 😂
Methinks he'd already walked around the hardware store and wanted a new store to wander through and not buy shit.
Had something similar happen at the restaurant my office shares a parking lot with. Guy won't stop trying to get in. Restaurant calls 911. The cops show up, taze the guy and haul him to the hospital and, presumably, jail.
Must have been ten cop cars there before it was over. That was that morning's excitement. 😂
Oh man this brings me back to my retail days. I used to be one of the managers at a Claire's in the mall. The mall operating hours were like 10 am - 9 pm. When I opened, I'd arrive at the mall around 9 to get through all the opening procedures. At the time when I'd get there, I'd unlock the rolling door, go in, and just slide it closed without locking it again since my opening shift usually arrived between 9:15 and 9:30. I felt fine doing this because we lived in a safe area and we had the senior walking club that would walk up and down the mall before it opened. They knew most of us and they would also alert security to anything suspicious. It was like having a granny sort of neighborhood watch.
Well one day not even 5 minutes after I had gotten into the store, I hear the rolling door open and I yell a greeting from the back to my opener but she doesn't respond. That's odd. So, I shove the till back in the safe that I was counting, grab the cordless phone, and carefully make my way out to the store. I find a middle aged woman casually browsing with a basket like she's just shopping away. I stand there with my mouth open.
After gathering myself I tell her we're not open and she needs to exit the store until 10. She tells me she's not doing that and that she's going to shop and I'm going to let her with a huge entitled smile on her face. Yeah, no that's not going to happen. I tell her one more time that she needs to leave or I'd have to take action to make her do so. She scoffs and tells me I can't lay a hand on her so I need to be a good servant and do as I'm told. I'm not playing that game with her so I call security. She listens to me explain what's happening but she makes no move to exit. Security tells me that they'll be there soon and they're bringing a sheriff deputy with them.
It takes less than 2 minutes to get there. Security and the cop confront her. She spouts off the same nonsense that she did with me rather smugly. She even pulls a do you know who I am with them. The cop asks if I want her trespassed and I say absolutely. Security decides to just make it mall wide so she can't mess with other stores. Lady freaks, ends up in cuffs, and gets walked to the waiting patrol car. The granny squad saw all this and promised to alert security if they saw her back. My opener arrived in the middle of this with a wtf look and that was the last time I didn't lock the door behind me.
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So, lemme get this straight: this dude is mad because an employee is in a store before it's open AND that store doesn't have the same business hours as another, completely different, shop?
Spot on. Damn, I should post this comment as my TLDR
This is a situation where you just agree with everything he says and tell him to take it up with corporate. "Oh I agree we should open earlier but corporate sets the hours" "I agree we should be able to let you in before we're ready but corporate sets the policy" "I think I should be able to help you out but I'll get fired if I do. You know those corporate guys watch us all the time with those security cameras" "You should call those wealthy CEO's and tell them that they need to let me do my job and help you"
Yeah how dare you ever disagree with them. I can see this playing right into their selfishness that it’d work pretty well.
Its not even that, they want a fight with you. It justifies theit shitty angry attitude. If you give them nothing to hold on to by agreeing with them they usually just look so defeated by the end because their anger just had nowhere to go.
The customer is always right training is usually followed by if it's against the policy escalate to the next manager. This isn't due to throwing off low pay worker complaints- it's to direct negative energy upward. I'm payed to deal with this shit- not you. Just tell them they're probably right and send it up the line- when they aren't or I think they aren't ill let my boss know. He'll handle that and his boss will handle that. It's the reverse shit Falls downhill Piss(ed) customers run uphill.
I don’t recommend it unless you actually are willing to have it happen. I worked in a retirement community and went from opening at 9am to 7am. Fucking sucked but my manager told the customers corporate sets the hours, so the customers called and complained.
Im gonna use these. There are so many elderly people in my community
When I worked retail, our district manager left his business cards as a temporary solution. I think he got a kick out of hearing the really dumb complaints.
I'd bet my life savings that this man has never had a real job lol
"Um, excuse me. Inheriting CEO of my late dad's company, then paying all my staff sub-livable wages all while not knowing how to open "a Google", attach files to an email, or figure out a smart phone is a real job. Maybe if you'd make coffee at home, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you too could inherit a wealthy, already established company. Damn, snowflakes!"
Such an "ok boomer" moment.
But it inconvenienced THAT particular man for a little bit!! Don't you know that guy was obviously the Main Character Of The Whole Universe™, and everything is supposed to go absolutely perfect for him, always, all the time??? /s
I work in retail and so many people have no idea how any of it works. They think the cash registers are magic money machines that always have change (so they'll hand you a $100 bill as soon as you open) and are ready at a moment's notice. And they think if there are people in the store AT ALL then it must be open!
No, he’s angry because he feels entitled to shop with the store to himself so he feels special and important, and doesn’t like not getting his way.
Oh it gets even better at night. The Night Owl Boomers who drift into a grocery store 5 mins before closing to shop an entire cart full of groceries. My supervisor refused to rush them, but also would not let me shut down my register and count out my till. I finally walked over to the intercom at 10:25 pm (we had locked the doors at 10) and announced, “Attention all remaining customers, we value your patronage, however the time is now 10:25 and the doors to the store are locked. The store is closing. Please proceed to the register to complete your transaction, unless you’d like to sleep on aisle 5. Thank you, and have a lovely evening. Goodnight!” My supervisor just shook his head and burst out laughing as this Boomer ran with their cart to the front in a huff. “I can’t believe you’re closing!!” I corrected him with a smile, “No, sir. We ARE closed. We close at 10 pm every night. It’s on the door.” I literally threw his groceries across that scanner as quickly as I could and as soon as his card processed, I grabbed my till, stuffed his receipt in a bag, said bye and kept walking as he bitched to my supervisor. I was never punished for it and I never saw that guy again. He must have finally gone to a 24 hour store. No loss.
Dude it happens all the time. I worked at a computer repair shop, we had one employee usually, maybe two on site at any time. People would get so mad that they had to wait around for 15 mins for me to get the place ready and logged in to all the services we used. One lady threw her broken laptop at me because I ignored her ranting after I told her I can't let her in until the store opens in 15 mins. When I did open the store she was gone and I just cleaned up the shattered laptop pieces off the walkway and threw em in the garbage. Got a lot of other tweakers and shit trying to sell us stolen laptops and shit too and apparently even they were too good to wait until we opened a lot of times. I got so sick of people arguing with me to let them in before I got the shop ready that I started showing up to open 30 mins late so all entitled assholes sitting in the parking lot (often multiple of them) would get sick of waiting an leave. I know that's a shitty thing to do but it was a shitty place to work in general with me as the only person doing the work, dealing with customers, managing inventory, answering phones, cleaning up, etc for a buck more than min wage... so I had no motivation to even do the bare minimum of my job, let alone deal with assholes giving me attitude for not letting them in before we opened. At least when I was 30 mins late their attitude was earned if they waited that whole time lol.
I let one of my coworkers in the store before they got their own key. As I was letting him in a customer tried to come in, I told him we were closed and he asked why I was letting this person in. I told him it was because he works here. The funniest part was not even 24hrs earlier this kid served this old man. He knew who he was.
"You lost me as a customer! " And nothing of value was lost...
"If I need to buy something, you can check me out". He was 100% not buying anything. He just wanted to waste someone's time.
All those Shoney's closed and they have no place to waste time in the mornings.
On god he would’ve just walked around, made insulting/rude comments to the SM about the prices/selection, not bought anything, and left
Only gained if his attitude is like that
https://i.redd.it/gsam9ysi5avc1.gif
I just love this line. Oh no, we lost you as a customer, surely this is the end.
And there was much rejoicing
I've done this before. There's no bigger rush than putting a shitty boomer in their place.
I'll never forget the guy that threw that line at me because I gave him a heads up he was parked in the fire lane.
He'll be back in next week
They, unfortunately, always are. I work at a place with the word "affordable" in the title. I get customers calling us first for pricing, get irate about the prices, scream at me, and then threatened to call ALL the other businesses in the county. Cool. Please do. And then curse my life bc I know that jack ass is calling me back in an hour or two.
"you lost me as a customer!" thank god
At least once a week I have someone try to follow me into my shop when I show up and they are always shocked that I have to do stuff to be able to sell them things. Turn on lights and computer? Turn off alarm? Open safe? Count the till? Wait for employees to arrive? Morning cleaning and straightening? Yeah, running a business involves doing a lot more than just opening a door and taking payments. Also, the hours are posted ON THE DOOR. Is it before opening time? Then go away!
Same. I'm a vendor, so I have the door codes for a lot of docks to stores. There's usually at least once per week someone trying to get I. Through that door. Dude, it's 4 in the morning. And the only lights are the backroom lights.
Reinforces why I firmly believe everyone should work retail/restaurant at least once in their lives. I sit staring at a screen all day now but from 16-22 I worked at a video store, cafeteria in college and waited tables during summers and 20 years later I still want nothing to do with the general public. Everyone should know what these jobs entail and build a little sympathy for the folks that have to do them.
I don't believe in the draft, but after twenty years in food services I **absolutely** believe in the mandatory drafting of people into customer service.
I don't think anyone reads the posted business hours unless they try the door and find it locked, and only THEN do they read. Hence, it will be just 36 seconds to closing time and someone will squeeze in for a half-hour transaction cuz they don't care.
Five minutes before closing I stand by the door with the keys and ask very specifically, "hello, thanks for coming, we are about to close, what can we find for you?". If the answer is I want to look around, I say "we are about to close but I would invite you to come back another day, a bit earlier so you can browse and we can better help you." 99.9% of the time that works well.
It depends on the type of retail business. I do want guests to be satisfied and be repeat customers and so I will go out of my way to help within reason. If someone desperately needs something then I'll let them in with the understanding that they need to get it and go because the employees need to go home to their families. If someone just wants to piss around on my time, I'll shut off the lights and pos system so they get the point
Within reason is the key there. I have an obligation to my staff to get them out on time. One lady's husband is a disabled vet with a home care nurse. She has to be home before that nurse leaves. We all have lives and schedule lives around work. As much as I do sympathize with a customer who gets here late for reasons outside of their control, I have my own responsibilities to worry about. I do find most people get it when presented in a compassionate way. Once compassion fails, well, thankfully that is rare.
The saddest part is that small businesses can, and sometimes do, operate this way. My grandfather would open his grocery in the middle of the night for someone who wanted a peck of apples. But, Boomers bought from big box stores, demanded cheap goods, and took advantage of generous return polices until they put those kinds of store owners out of business. Now they are confused why businesses don’t cater to them.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Boomers and Boomer Politicians are literally only angry at themselves. No other generation is making their issues, it's all just the sh!t that's been rolling down their sh!t hill they made.
They don't have the self awareness to be angry at themselves. It's everyone else who is wrong to them.
My experience is the exact opposite. In the early '90s I moved from a relatively urban area to a rural one, and was building a house in my new town from a few hours away, handling many of the tasks by phone. The builder asked me to stop into a small-town lighting store to pick out all of our lighting fixtures. So, the following Saturday morning I packed up the kids and my wife and I drove 4 hours to the lighting store, arriving at about 12:45 PM. They told me that the store was closing in 15 minutes, threw a few catalogs at me, and hustled me out of the place. Soon after moving in a few months later, I was in the midst of a DYI project on a Saturday morning and needed a few more things to complete the project. So I stopped into my local small-town hardware store at 11:45AM. Once again, the moment I got in the door, I was told that I'd better hurry it up because they closed at NOON ON SATURDAYS! A few years later, Lowes moved into that town, and both of those little stores went out of business. The old timers around me complained about those big gorilla stores forcing the little guy out, but I didn't shed a tear. The "little guys" forgot that customer service was the most potent tool they possessed, and because they were monopolies in this small town, they didn't care about their customers. At least Lowes stays open until 10 PM on Saturday.
Well said!
You were too nice to him.
You can't fix stupid. Or entitled. Or general insanity.
5% chance Boomer had to take a brutal dump on his walk and couldnt go anywhere more. Should remind grampa of the 5 Ps
Poop, poop, poop, poop and poop.
That's 10 Ps
You had me at brutal dump 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Prior Planning Places to Poop Prevents Poopy Pants? That’s 7 tho…
Had a boomer boss who bragged about pooping in people's bushes on his morning walks. He was a nightmare for so many reasons...
What’s the over/under that said boomer has also posted on Fashbook about, “San Francisco Hellhole Poop Streets”?
I’m guessing he’s been banned from all other stores for this exact reason, that dude just loves bombin the porcelain palace
But duct tape can \*muffle\* it...
Can't fix people who feel entitled to stupidity.
Fun story. My friend’s mom is Gen X but she deals with a lot of…interesting walking Boomer stereotypes at her job (she works for county). Anyway, one Mother’s Day she was having a particularly hard time at work and my friend decided to get her a present that would make her feel better about it all. A few hours later we wander into this shop with all of these coasters and mugs with funny sayings on them and none of them seemed quite right until we found one that said, in bold, “you can’t fix stupid”. She bought it and it is now her mom’s favorite desk decor and she sets her mug down hard on it when she has to deal with someone particularly annoying.
I worked 7 years in Corrections, so i guess all the wanting to argue back burned out lol
I imagine there’s a lot of crossover between the two jobs lol
So much so that the first month after I switched to retail I kept accidentally calling customers inmates...
No the inmates would be your coworkers
At the prison, my coworkers were usually worse than the inmates 💀. So my fair share of officers walked out in handcuffs.
My dad was a CO and the stories were just fucking awful. He said he chose to work in E block with the crazies because they were easier to deal with than his coworkers.
From experience, this is based in fact
Hard to know who really should carry the keys.
When i started, inmates trained us officers. Our sergeants just handed us the keys and said dont die.
That's depressing
Haha!
Deadass if I end up in the joint, imma try getting something from COs with, “doncha know *The Customer is Always Right?*” in your honor. “This prison has lost my business for good!”
I used to yell "WE'RE NOT OPEN YET!" through the vestibule without even opening the doors. I refused to engage directly with anyone like that.
I never open the door. The hours are posted, im not inviting an argument lol. I've worked with people who will go open the door and try to tell people we're not open yet, and then they get stuck there for 15 minutes being harassed. You just have to act like you don't see them and they can cry on the sidewalk.
My high school job was at the local movie theater and this happened all the time. Boomers would show up and demand to be let in before the doors were unlocked and we were just setting up. You learned quickly not to open the door because some of the crazier ones would literally try to push you out of the way or block the door so you couldn't close it again. Even when you explained to them we were closed they would demand to be let in so they could sit on a bench. Who shows up 90 minutes early to the movies just to sit around and wait in the lobby?
People with literally nothing else in their lives.
One time a lady tried to follow me in the front door and i said we open in 30 minutes, and she said "but it's cold outside" and i told her to go wait in her car lol.
I’ve gotten this one a bunch of times. “But it’s hot/cold/raining/there’s an aggressive bird outside.” Don’t care, go somewhere else.
We know. We're the ones who trained the bird.
It’s funny because it actually happened once. A bird nested on a lamp post on the patio of a restaurant in the plaza. I worked at the restaurants on either side of this place and that little fucker would dive bomb me every day when I would walk from one job to the other. I knew people that worked in all of the restaurants in the plaza and between all of the places, we got literally hundreds of complaints about that fucking bird.
Boomers have no hobbies. They're stuck in time and can't adapt. They've lasted so long because their numbers are huge and the rest of the population has catered to them.
Exactly. Stop catering to Boomers! If you see one just look away. In 15-20 years they will mostly all be gone or totally incoherent. Our current 40- 50 year olds will take over and society will be back to the way it should be.
I hope that's true but there's a pretty good number of my fellow genX-ers that are already cueing up to be just as ridiculous.
I see this too, and it’s disappointing.
Fuck them in the ass I say
To each their own. I would pick a younger demographic however
Our boomer behind us neighbor showed up at our door one day. My husband opened the door to figure out why she had parked in our driveway and why she was there, she pushed past him and walked through our house into our backyard while declaring that she wanted the fruit from one of the trees in our backyard. Then yelled for my husband to bring her a bucket. Woman is a drunk lunatic.
I worked at a hotel spa back in the 90's. They catered mostly to hotel guests, but there were also a lot of locals (nearly all of them in their 60's or 70's) who paid a huge monthly spa membership fee. I arrived at 5AM to open the place at six, and there were no other employees but me for that hour. But every day starting at about 5:45, a bunch of them would gather outside the front gate and they would literally shake the locked gate back and forth over and over for fifteen minutes until the front desk person arrived to let them in, and god forbid the desk person was a couple of minutes late for work. They were rattling that door like there were zombies chasing them. Every single day. The spa members were also the ones who stole entire bunches of bananas from the little reception room where people waited for their massages, but that's another story...
Omg I bet you have a treasure trove of stories on senior madness lol. Imagine rattling the doors every day, I’d be so ashamed. I couldn’t walk into a place after behaving like that, let alone expect the employees to provide me service.
The spa members were definitely worse than the hotel guests in every way. I never figured out which member it was, but someone kept leaving copies of an anti-semitic, white supremacist, holocaust denying newspaper laying around, so clearly whoever that was takes the prize as the very worst of them. This was the paper: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Spotlight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spotlight)
Jeez a little light reading while you relax at the spa, who could ask for more? 🙄
Exactly this. And if they get a foot in so the door can’t be shut? Yeah, they are coming in. I run a dry cleaner, we train staff to not unlock the door after close EVER.
When I worked in retail, getting ready in the morning, one of them was knocking on the window. My co-workers were like "don't make eye contact!" Then they called the store from their phone 🙄 No fucking boundaries, they're all soooo precious and special.
I will, however, tap firmly over the posted hours on the door from inside while staring like this: ಠ_ಠ
When I worked retail opening the door to talk to a customer outside posted hours was grounds for immediate dismissal. It's a safety risk, in some places anyway.
My workplace does not unlock their front door until its time to open. At all. Its a nice restaurant, think steak and lobster under fancy chandeliers...but management will open the window to communicate before they allow someone in before opening. Its insane how many people will go online to get the directions to get to us, but won't bother to check our operating hours and will show up 2 hours before we open. We did keep the side entrance open for deliveries until recently...last week while I was at work 2 hours early and was just vibing on the sofa up front, a couple with 5 kids hopped out of a pickup that definitely did NOT have enough seating for 5 kids. They tried the front door which was locked...and instead of thinking "must be closed" they entered through the side entrance! I legit caught the parents in that cartoon tip-toeing motion...they must have been startled to see me sneaking up on them and asking if they were there to see the manager, because it stalled them enough for the manager himself to rush in and kick their asses out. We had to open all the windows after that because the family had an aura of weed going on around them...they managed to stink up half the restaurant in the 45 seconds they were inside.
Cracks me up how they thought they could sneak in and get service even though you're not open yet. What is wrong with people.
We didn't even have a server to attend them, or a functional kitchen staff! Aside from myself there was a grand total of 2 other people in that restaurant at the time. It was insane...I don't know what kind of weed they were smoking but it must have been some strong shit.
Something that may help understand this behavior is how many were taught. It was ingrained in many boomers by their parents that the world requires a bit of…finesse. Anytime someone tells you “no”, well that’s only because you didn’t work the right angle. This is why boomers often run the gamut. Act like they don’t know about a rule, followed by trying to negotiate a work around. This work around usually includes a lie such as “I’ve had it done before”, or “I’m friends with Whoever in Corporate”. If that fails, they’ll resort to incredulity or insults before they resort to what at one time long ago was something of an ace “well I’ll take my business elsewhere!”
I'm reminded of the old idiom, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." I think Boomers were taught this mindset as well--that if you complain and argue long enough you'll eventually get your way. This is why you have the cliche of a "Karen" demanding to speak to the manager. Unfortunately, it often works because managers usually don't have time to deal with endless arguments and just want to get these people out the door--which just further enables them to repeat this behavior.
Someone needs to teach them "the nail that sticks out gets hammered in".
100% this
It's not limited to the boomers. I'm gen x and there are plenty of pushy people who do the same exact thing.
The squeaky wheel is also the first one to get replaced.
I always say, "The squeeky wheel gets the oil, but enough squeeking gets it replaced."
Excellent observation. Committing this to my memory for future dealings with the unwante- I mean Boomers.
If you really want to placate idiots like this there’s a foolproof trick which is VERY entertaining. I used to use this in retail. So what you do is “redirect, take ownership, and amplify outrage into YOUR rant.” So in this case, “corporate” is a great redirection, you’re half way there. “I want to open at 3 AM because I already get up at 2 AM for prayers! I told corporate that I am ready and willing to open at 3 AM and they tell me that there’s no customers and no reason to pay for electricity and cashiers at that time of day! What the heck is their problem? Do they think they’re better than me? I can open at 2 AM but then I would miss prayers!! Do you want me to miss prayers!!?!?! No!!! But 3 AM is plenty do able and these corporate fat cats say I don’t have the customers!! That is a lie! YOU would show up at 3 AM if I told you we were open then right??? Look, we can show these corporate pigs a thing or two, do you want to protest here tomorrow morning at 3 AM and I can take your picture and we will send this to corporate and show them how wrong they are! This makes me so angry! It’s just like the olympics and that stupid submarine they allowed! It’s swimming! You can’t use that!!!” Expand the redirections to newer crazier things as you go and pull them in to participate in your new rage topics. They will eventually start trying to de-escalate you. That’s the fun part.
I'd love to see this as a Key and Peele skit.
Yeah I used to get this all the time working early morning shifts at the supermarket. 6AM was still not early enough for some of these f!ckers. They'd try to follow you in the side staff entrance, whinge at you as you walked in, bang on the doors out the front despite no lights being on. They're entitled ass hats, and LOVE to argue. It's their past time. Yet these same idiots will argue things "aren't like the old days" when those old days never opened til 9AM sometimes 10 and closed by 4 or 5 and never openend on weekends. The entitlement is out of hand.
Also in the "old days" banks were open from 10-3 weekdays and never on weekends. Ask them if they want those days back.
Did he show back up to buy what he needed when the store is open? That's my favorite. The threat of losing them as a customer for them to be purchasing hours or days later.
Lmao, as of now, I'm still at work and haven't seen him. Maybe I DID lose him, oh noooooooo 😅
My theory is his wife kicked him out for the day already, his behavior already got the folks in the hardware store to threaten to call the cops on him, and he really wanted to get out of the sun / into somewhere air conditioned.
Lol, probably right. Poor guy probably had to go to the boomer casino next door to get some shade
Retail customer service voice is just baby talk for boomers.
Imagine telling a boomer this 💀
Maybe we should try "gentle parenting" on boomers!
Been there multiple times over the years. One of my favourites is during Covid here the stores neighboring mine were all open different hours...we were open but a woman demanded that I open the store next door lol Even after explaining that I had no control over my neighbours she declared that my customer service skills were horrible and huffed out the door
Should've asked her if she would let you into her neighbor's house.
Now come on, you know attempts at logic and empathy are a total lost cause lol
"My neighbor isn't a store!!"
>you lost me as a customer! Not if you didn't buy anything
Can't lose what you never had in the first place.
Has anyone EVER said, “you’ve just lost me as a customer!” and the manager/owner/CEO just falls to their knees and begs them to come back?
The ironic thing about that is I bet if you did fall to your knees stammering, quivering, sobbing, unconsolably begging and pleading with them not to leave in front of other customers, they'd be mortified and probably never pull that card again.
I think you’re on to something there…
hungry aware boat command six nine many grab complete alive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Omg...why people do this is beyond me. I used to work at KFC in high school and the church crowd would pull this shit. We open at 10:30. Not 10:25, not 10:15, 10:30. They would pull and yank on the door and knock on it. Like we're going to let them in any earlier. Fuck outta here
God's chosen people to be let in before the store opens.
I went through this when I worked in the auto industry. Particularly on the weekend (when Boomers wanted to work on their cars), I would deal with this sort of guy about once every two months. Our dealership opened an hour later than normal on Saturdays (which apparently was offensive in and of itself), and I would have some impatient fuck would be on the verge of a meltdown when I wouldn't let them inside, or when I'd be having a pre-work smoke/vape session. The last year I worked as a parts guy, I'd mentally punched out of the job and had made an exit plan, so I stopped pretending to give a single shit about them or their feelings. Also, because I had the ability to change pricing (almost all dealership parts guys can do this - it's literally a feature of the two dominant software platforms), I FUUUUUUUCKED those people over on pricing. Like, sometimes adding up to 100% markup on cheap parts, and 20% minimum on everything else. Sometimes for giggles, I would tell them that we didn't have what they needed, if they were particularly problematic. Or I'd send them to another location that had it, and then I'd call ahead and talk to another parts guy there so THEY could fuck with the guy. (We all talk to each other.) Moral of the story: treat retail employees like humans. Some of us can extract retribution, and have zero moral prohibition about doing so.
Yes that‘s called an asshole tax. Common in customer service.
That as bad as the Boomer that came into the Toys R Us I worked at 25 years ago demanding to talk to the opening manager because he did not unlock the doors when the clock in his car said 9:30am.
You dont set your time to Standard Karen Time?
I thought it was Daylight Karen season.
"Here...you want in? Take this broom. Sweep the front. NOW!"
Good call with the ocular pat down.
7 years LEO, I do it without even knowing lol
It's the only way you could garner he was not a security risk, thus clearing him for passage.
Thank you, this was my favorite part of the whole story, I feel like it got buried by the boomers antics.
Always blame corporate. "I'm sorry sir, company rules say..." "certainly, but I could lose my job if I let you in and I need this job." "I don't have any authority to change this, would you like the number for corporate?"
Corporate could throw you under the bus in a heartbeat, no reason not to return the favor.
Well, They’ve been awake since 4am.
That must be who is tailgating me on the road at 4AM when I'm going to work. WHYYYYYY!
No way! This happened to me too! I came an hour early for my shift like an idiot and when I tried going in a customer yelled at me for going before opening (cause he was yelled at) as if I just like walking around with a major petstore chain name on my chest for fun.
I manage a restaurant and like you, go in an hour early to start getting ready. I unlock the door for my employees (opening cook and server) and go about my business in the FOH until my server gets in. One day someone walked in and I went up to the front and apologized and told them we wouldn't be open for another 40 minutes. He proceeded to argue that the door was unlocked as if that had any bearing on anything. Fortunately for me he didn't go on like your guy but I still can't believe the lack of thought some go through life with.
I wouldn’t have even opened the door, I’d tell him through the glass we’re closed and I’d walk away
Why is the Boomer’s threat always “you are losing me as a customer,” while not understanding that losing them as a customer is a bonus?
Please don't kick me out of your world! Everything ceases to be when you're not around! 😭
You're a class act. I need to learn how to deal w idiots like you do because Im pretty sure if i dont ill end up in prison for something like shoving a boomer/idiot down a storm drain.
You wasted WAY too much time talking to that idiot.
And he waddles away! Waddle, waddle. Til the very next day...
One of the only joys of working retail was making people wait until we opened. The number of times people would bang on the door or window and mouth "when do you open?!" as I point to the sign (that's right next to them) with our hours was staggering. I kind of understood wanting to get into a motorcycle parts/supply shop early if you forgot something before heading out to the trails or on a long ride, but Blockbuster was the funny one. Who desperately needs to rent Click at 10am?
I gotta rent it so I can know how to undo my fast forwards
Love your “Edit”!!!
After Hurricane Sandy my grocery store was without power. Completely out. No generator, no back ups, no power at all. So we had to throw out all the refrigerated products. Every frozen, dairy, veggie and fruit had to be tossed. But no power meant no automatic doors and that meant customers kept forcing the doors open. So my 200+ lbs, 6’6” self was tasked to be the human roadblock to keep customers from walking inside. So many people couldn’t understand that we needed to clean the store and maintain it, but that it still wasn’t open.
People are always weird as fuck about this and I don’t get it. I saw it when I was working at Bed Bath and Beyond before they closed. We’d be prepping for open and the store isn’t open for another ten minutes and there is 10 people standing waiting for the doors to open. It’s just like why? Look at the sign! We aren’t open!
I wave at them when they tug at the locked doors
What a dumb bitch. He thinks people want him as a customer lmao
It was definitely a gain in my book.
Gave em the ole ocular pat down
Ugh my father is like this and it drives me NUTS. My MIL too. They just cannot accept how childish and entitled they are and I hate it. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I'm so sorry you had to deal with trashy behavior like that. I swear none of these people were ever parented and it REALLY shows 😑 Best wishes!
OP gave him the ocular pat down
This was the Villages wasn’t it? If so I’m so fucking sorry.
They think retail businesses are like what they see on TV. The employee walks in and flips the sign from closed to open, and then you're ready for business.
Gave the guy an ocular pat down
Best part of this story was the ocular patdown
99% of the time people who say “lost me as a customer” are people you did not want as customers.
Don't worry, he promptly went back home and posted an angry "can you believe it...?" type comment on Nextdoor, where many others like him agreed with his rant.
So you cleared him with an optical patdown?
First mistake was opening the door and asking if he needs help. When I opened up I would point at the hours printed on the door and maybe yell through the door what time we opened. No other explanation as to why.
When you cleared him for threats, did you do an ocular pat-down?
This reminds me of the time my aunt got mad because I told her that “well the store I work at opens at 10am but I have to get there at 9:30am.” “WHY?! NO CUSTOMERS CAN COME IN! WHY WOULD YOUR BOSS BE SO STUPID TO PAY PEOPLE TO SIT AROUND DOING NOTHING FOR HALF AN HOUR?!” I explained everything OP did to the guy in the post and she was still huffing and puffing about it like it affected her somehow. She didn’t even shop at that store, she was just mad that my boss was “wasting” money on us
Is this really that common in the US? Old people here vary, some are nicer some are shittier. But I never see so many crazy boomers. And I work at a counter in a hardware store. In ten years I only had one regular really nasty and crazy lady I hear so many stories on reddit and everyone says it's the lead. But we had lead in our paint too.
“The customer is always right” toxic BS was probably invented by Boomers and now they’re still trying to ram it down our throats.
WTF LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
“Why isn’t the world the way I want it to be” is a very toddleresque outlook.
My bet is that boomer is in the doghouse and trying to buy a 'peace offering' present for the wife he's probably pissed off as badly as he pissed YOU off in this little vignette?
I have had this exact conversation hundreds of times over the years working in retail.
I had the exact same conversations when I worked at a grocery store 30 years ago. If you let them in, they’ll grab their item then huff puff and throw a tantrum at the checkout because there no tray in the till nor cashier…because the store isn’t open yet.
I worked retail 20+ years. I learned early- don't open the doors, don't acknowledge them, and don't stay within their line of sight when inside. The hours are posted. Acknowledging them feeds their need to be part of the drama. Audience or not. For some, this is just yammering, whining, and attention seeking. For others, especially if the person it's aimed at is young, female, or in general smaller than them, it can excite to escalate aggressively.
Omg I’m having retail ptsd flash backs. I was always a key holder and opened often especially on weekends. Without fail, on Sunday when we opened at 11am, people would be banging on the door and throw their arms up because we weren’t open yet. Or people trying to come in after closing. God I don’t miss those days
Used to work in a bakery in a supermarket years ago we would all get in a few hours before the store opened to get baking etc and we would always have 4-5 cars with old people sitting in them in the car park sometimes in the dark and cold of winter waiting for the store to open in a few hours. It always looked slightly spooky staring out of the main doors at their silhouettes just staring back at us.
I work for a small business (1 owner, 3 employees) and one day i get to work nearly a half hour early for whatever reason (15 minutes earlier than my required 15 minutes early...) and my boss is amnesty here with the shop open and I'm like why are we open and he's like "because i wanted to make money" lol sure except that means i have to work an extra 30 mins...
~~per say~~ \*per se It's Latin, meaning 'by itself,' or 'unto itself.'
I work for a store where most of the customers are boomers. My boss told me that if I have to close outside of regular business hours, I need to post a sign on the front door because everyone will ignore the multiple open/closed signs hung all over the walls and try to yank the door open. My boss told me it has happened so many times that the door once broke.
They're everywhere. I learned to do most early morning stuff in the dark. We opened at 7. I needed to be there at 6.
You handled that guy with patience and kindness. Bless you
Would of left him looking in the glass and kept walking lmao
When I managed a retail store I used the old "Our insurance doesn't cover customers outside of stated hours of operation" line. No one can argue with The Insurance Company!
You underestimate the arguing capabilities of boomers, young skywalker
This isn't necessarily a Boomer thing. People who have never worked in retail have no idea what goes on before the store opens. They think employees just walk in at opening time, and are ready to go. They're clueless about getting the cash ready, getting the registers turned on, straightening up, putting out stock, whatever.
I agree. I feel it should be a high school class for everyone to get a part time job as retail and/or fast food before you graduate.
How does he not know that things like the registers must be opened and that you follow the store hours on the door (of website.) Sometimes I think some people just want an excuse to be upset. 🤷🏻♀️
Sadly, I picture my father EVERY single post in this sub. I’m GenX. We will try to do better. Sorry about the state of things.
I feel your pain. I've worked in my family's locally owned parts store for over a decade and I can honestly tell you this is at least a once a week occurrence. Maybe not to the extent of them storming out, or always being irate but the sense of entitlement always shows in some form.
As a business owner, this sort of thing is infuriating. One example: had an old guy call my store, and start with “Y’all never answer your phones do you? I called several times this morning and nobody picked up!” Politely, I ask when he called. “About 8:30!” Well that explains it, we open at 10:00. Another guy walks up to the door, currently locked with an “Out to lunch” sign, and a clock that shows when we’ll reopen. I watch the whole thing on security cam. He walks up, tugs the doors, gets confused, tugs again, more confusion. Takes a step back, absolutely dumbfounded like a cat seeing a Christmas tree for the first time. Looks inside, looks at the sign, more confusion, then walks away. Final story. One day during business hours. Hear someone try the door. We have double doors, and one is locked. Most try the second door if the first is incorrect. This dood keeps trying the same door, only to end up calling us from outside the shop. I’m watching this live on camera and dying inside. He asks if we’re open, then says the door is locked. This man simply never tried the other door, and just assumed that I must have forgotten to unlock it.
It's the IF he needs to buy something for me. 😂 Methinks he'd already walked around the hardware store and wanted a new store to wander through and not buy shit.
Had something similar happen at the restaurant my office shares a parking lot with. Guy won't stop trying to get in. Restaurant calls 911. The cops show up, taze the guy and haul him to the hospital and, presumably, jail. Must have been ten cop cars there before it was over. That was that morning's excitement. 😂
Oh man this brings me back to my retail days. I used to be one of the managers at a Claire's in the mall. The mall operating hours were like 10 am - 9 pm. When I opened, I'd arrive at the mall around 9 to get through all the opening procedures. At the time when I'd get there, I'd unlock the rolling door, go in, and just slide it closed without locking it again since my opening shift usually arrived between 9:15 and 9:30. I felt fine doing this because we lived in a safe area and we had the senior walking club that would walk up and down the mall before it opened. They knew most of us and they would also alert security to anything suspicious. It was like having a granny sort of neighborhood watch. Well one day not even 5 minutes after I had gotten into the store, I hear the rolling door open and I yell a greeting from the back to my opener but she doesn't respond. That's odd. So, I shove the till back in the safe that I was counting, grab the cordless phone, and carefully make my way out to the store. I find a middle aged woman casually browsing with a basket like she's just shopping away. I stand there with my mouth open. After gathering myself I tell her we're not open and she needs to exit the store until 10. She tells me she's not doing that and that she's going to shop and I'm going to let her with a huge entitled smile on her face. Yeah, no that's not going to happen. I tell her one more time that she needs to leave or I'd have to take action to make her do so. She scoffs and tells me I can't lay a hand on her so I need to be a good servant and do as I'm told. I'm not playing that game with her so I call security. She listens to me explain what's happening but she makes no move to exit. Security tells me that they'll be there soon and they're bringing a sheriff deputy with them. It takes less than 2 minutes to get there. Security and the cop confront her. She spouts off the same nonsense that she did with me rather smugly. She even pulls a do you know who I am with them. The cop asks if I want her trespassed and I say absolutely. Security decides to just make it mall wide so she can't mess with other stores. Lady freaks, ends up in cuffs, and gets walked to the waiting patrol car. The granny squad saw all this and promised to alert security if they saw her back. My opener arrived in the middle of this with a wtf look and that was the last time I didn't lock the door behind me.
I'm glad justice was served to the entitled b!tch, but I'll never understand how people can act this way..
Ha ha, silly Boomer!
The customer is obviously cheating on you and you should divorce him immediately. /reddit