My first job wasn’t very fancy. I was fourteen years old, I had just moved in with my father, and I scooped ice cream for $2.35/hr.
The pay was below minimum wage, but the owner of the ice cream store didn’t question my age and I didn’t question the cash payment every Friday afternoon. It was a simple arrangement and I needed the money. I hustled like hell to earn it.
*
I worked about 20 hours/week at the ice cream store. It was a sweet job, both literally and figuratively, but I dealt with all kinds of customers in very weird situations. For example, we didn’t have a public restroom.
One customer said, “I have really bad diarrhea.”
I said, “The toilet is in the back. Here’s the key.”
*
Looking back, I don’t know how anyone trusts a young girl with his franchise and his money. For so many reasons, it wasn’t a very safe situation. I was 5’0″ and I didn’t weigh more than 100 lbs when I started that job. I could barely see over the counter.
The best advice I was given by the owner was this:
If someone gets belligerent, offer more ice cream.
Believe me, that advice came in handy on several occasions.
*
So I was struck by a passage in the book Linchpin where Seth Godin touches upon the intellect of the American worker AND basic customer service principles. Godin tells you go to McDonalds and eat half a Big Mac and half a chocolate shake. He then instructs you to put the remaining burger in the shake, go to the counter, and demand a refund because you have a burger in your shake. You’ll probably get one.
That’s supposed to enrage you.
Anyone who hasn’t worked in fast food — especially a privileged person who hasn’t had to deal with drunk customers, bullies, and freaks of human nature — would see the refund as an act of surrender. I see the refund as an act of self-preservation. Who puts a burger in a shake? Only a drunk or a crazy person. Give that person a refund and get him the hell out of your store.
Consumerist regularly publishes a list of crimes committed at fast food restaurants across America. People are jerks, and it has nothing to do with the abdication of common sense by the American worker and everything to do with a customer who winds up at fast food establishments and makes a ridiculous and unfair request of someone who earns $7.00/hr.
(Or $2.35/hr in 1989.)
Next time we jump all over the workforce for being brain dead or disempowered, let’s think about why people are really working and why they make certain choices. If there’s a choice between my safety and a free scoop of ice cream, you can have as much ice cream as you want.
If Godin wants to have a discussion about the devolution of the American customer — and why certain people behave a certain way to those who aren’t in power — I’d love to have that discussion. I would also like to talk about why people are willing to work for $7.00/hr.
I think those are more thoughtful discussions.
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As a McDonalds veteran — I couldn’t agree more.
The most memorable incident was a woman, in the drive-thru who screamed at me because it took a whole 90 seconds for her to get her food. I told her I wouldn’t serve someone who cussed at me and offered a refund. I’d just handed her a huge Coke, she threw it back in the window at me.
I called the police because she didn’t have her infant in a car seat.
I really think that everyone should work a retail job of some sort — and in a position without power. At a minimum, everyone should read “Nickle and Dimed” — by Ehernrich. A real customer service job would teach folks to be better to the folks who are running their backsides off to serve them.
I agree when speaking with leadership there often is the “if they do not like it they can leave”. This is not a choice. Especially when you have kids to feed a mortgage payment and now have to deal with the masses of people at McDonalds. Then someone comes to you and says there a burger in my shake. Give them the refund and get them moving.
Working in an ice cream shop is great, especially at Woodhaven Lakes, Sublette, IL, in 1993, and earning $4.25/hour. Long, hot afternoons and evenings. Demanding “Wood Ticks” (campers from Chicago). Crazy soft serve machines that take 45 minutes to clean each night, plus the hard scoop ice cream that seems flash frozen. Wasps and more wasps. It all pays off, though, on break time when you get to enjoy that bowl of butter pecan and strawberry with hot fudge. Anyway…
Why work for $7/hr and work in a environment that attracts the crazies? Its all about making that $crilla, yo! Fast food is dominated by a young and often times uneducated workforce. Those two driving forces are why they are working in fast food for $7/hr – (1) being young and not possessing the skill set for any other work or job but a McJob & (2) being uneducated…often times having the combination of (1) & (2). I think often times it comes down to not having many other options to earn a buck.
Fast food is a weird world. I worked it in HS and college. I used it as a transition and a motivator for continuing education and a means to earn some disposable income so I could do things like hit up Molly’s and buy drinks/play darts as well as go to Otto’s and catch Chicago bands like Local H and The Blue Meanines when they came to town. It definitely is a good experience in customer service and helping you think on your feet with the impromptu requests and demands of customers.
I think we have all been there.
Who hasn’t been a student who just wanted a little extra money?
Customer service is where it is at. and by ‘it’ – I mean jobs that are available, have steady work, close to home, and don’t need much formal education/training.
I recently blogged about this as I was looking back at how hard I worked in a restaurant for 5 years – at the end not making more than $9/hr.
You know what’s REALLY bad for your safety? Reading Seth Godin books. There’s a good chance your head will explode.
I have worked my share of customer service jobs too. And I really feel for the CSR’s that work in our company, or any company for that matter.
Any person in a service type industry has to deal with a lot of odd human nature happenings. As a hairdresser I have had the pleasure of dealing with numerous personality defects. We tend to forget that there are many people in jobs that have to deal with the public on a regular basis – like hairdressers, mailmen, delivery people, teachers, receptionists, bus drivers, nurses etc. While many of those occupations don’t run into bad behavior as often as sales people, fast food workers or waitstaff, they do encounter the frailties of human nature often enough.
I have a relative in a hospital at the moment and I feel such sympathy for all the hospital staff, doctors and nurses too, because of the way his immediate family is treating them all. Nothing is ever right or good enough, or clean enough. As much as I care about this relative this makes me want to stay away from the hospital until I know these other “relatives” are gone. The hospital staff takes it all in stride. They are amazing in dealing with this kind of thing. I’m sure they have to deal with this behavior often. Which leads me to the point mentioned above about the burger and the milkshake. Why on earth would someone do that type of thing just to see what would happen? Maybe it’s about entitlement and too much time on one’s hands.
My first job was at a Chinese restaurant fir $2.10/hour plus tips. At one point the owner pulled me aside and told me that if someone came in attempting to rob the restaurant, that I should not give him or her the money, but should turn my back, get a gun out of the drawer, and shoot them. I always laugh that the restaurant owner thought that his employees would risk their life for $2.10 plus tips, without any gun training and against all common sense advice from law enforcement. My plus tips for the restaurant owner is not to give an 80 pound white girl who wasn’t allowed to even play with water guns instructions to just shoot.
i think that job taught me a lot about work and the value I placed on my time working, and I agree that everyone should work front-line in some kind of service industry at least once in their life. I know I endured a lot for that $2.10 plus tips — often times signficantly more (and definitely grosser) than what I’ve endured since.
In 1988 I almost took a job at McDonalds for $7 per hour. That was a lot for a fast food job back then but it was orlando and that McDs had to compete for “talent” with McDisney. I ended up getting my first job waiting tables instead. As to why people would take a job for $7 these days. It beats the alternative. For some people they might lack education, skills, desire, drive or have other valid reasons.
I read (can’t remember where) a story about a woman who chose a burger job instead of a job in a retail store because she got a free meal every shift. She said that was 5 or 6 meals per week in addition to having a job. These days, times are tough and people do what they gotta.
My milkshake/burger moment came about halfway through my former career managing movie theatres. A customer told me that she needed me to replace her popcorn because her son had dropped their bag on the floor. She refused to let me refill her bag because it had touched the floor. I accomodated her. Then she said “What about the Sno-Caps?” To which I replied, “What About the Sno-Caps?”. Her son had poured his box of Sno-Caps into the popcorn bag to eat them together (and had therefore lost them both when he dropped them). That box of Sno-Caps was an act of surrender and I wasn’t ok with it. But that experience taught me two lessons. 1. Give the crazy customer what she wants and get her the hell away from you and 2. Sno-Caps and popcorn go pretty good together. On my inventory report, I listed the merchandise write off as “Crazy Customer”. Later that week my auditor called me and said her whole office was laughing out loud when they read that. Success!!
I have to say that one of my high school jobs was honestly the MOST valuable position I ever held. While it wasn’t a typical high school job (in fact, I was the first high schooler they had hired) it taught me SO much about customer service. I was a CSR at a county-wide newspaper where many of the customers were senior citizens who LIVED for their newspaper (as my grandpa and several others put it “I need to check the obituaries to make sure I’m not in them!”).
Not only was I responsible for taking their complaints (which ranged from not getting their paper- very ligitimate to simpler things like “little Johnny knows that MY paper goes on the door mat and he put it on the first step… get his butt out here to put my paper on my door mat!”- much less legitimate) I was also responsible for coordinating the carriers (who made CRAP, especially the kids who only had one walking route and worked CRAP hours) to take those missed (or misplaced) papers back out. I learned how to keep calm and positive when those angry (and I mean ANGRY, at least sometimes) senior citizens called in and I learned how to work the system (but you know, keep my job and not get in trouble) to get the carrier’s to agree to take that paper back out. While it was a crappy job for SO many reasons (an Uber-religious preachy manager, barely above minimum wage paycheck, working with one girl who came back one summer from college only to get trashed every weekend and spend her time at work puking in the garbage can at the next desk over, who by the way, also called in drunk to quit over the night messaging system leaving me all by myself on a busy Sunday, etc.) I still value every single thing I learned there.
To this day I still have my cheesy, but sincere “polite phone voice” but I also know how much it means to provide the best customer service possible and how beneficial it is to keep the worker bees (aka the carriers) happy. In the long run, it works out for EVERYBODY, the company (retaining customers who were on the fence), myself (you know, sanity, plus a positive record of satisfied customers didn’t hurt the few reviews I had for a handful of raises in two years), the carriers (you know, the one’s who actually deliver the product that MAKES MONEY).
I just had a job interview the other day and I (briefly) brought up this job and everything that it taught me. Because of that job (and really seeing what a positive customer experience can bring) I incorporate customer service into everything that I do now, whether I’m serving internal or external customers. I think that everyone should have to work with customers at some point in their life (preferably early only) and hopefully earn some valuable take aways (because we all know that very few jobs actually dealing with customers don’t pay well in monetary values). In the end, I guess I’m just a big sucker for the golden rule. I do my best to treat everyone how I’d like to be treated and that common sensical “rule” has got me far in life (ok, so it hasn’t gotten me a new job since I was laid off in January, but I like to think it’ll get me somewhere once I actually land a job!).
My first job was scooping ice cream too… what a coincidence.
I think the suggestion that Godin is making in his book is just plain dumb. I’m actually curious if he’s worked in the QSR or FFHR (Fast food hamburger restaurant) business. If he has, he wouldn’t have made that dumb ass suggestion.
Lord know, we all have to hustle these days and when McD, KFC, and BKC are seeing a decrease in turnover in the hourly ranks, that to me is the bigger message.
I worked fast food in high school, Burger King, and occasionally when I came home from college for the summer. Not my cup of tea. I dealt with some real crazies. We called the police for counterfeit bills in the drive thru once, and the customer actually waited. Working fast food only proved to me how low some people will go to get a free burger. Being 17 and questioning the current status of human nature was odd.
When I moved to Birmingham I worked retail then I worked for a financial institution for seven years. That dude that comes in once a week and wants to know when the bank is giving away samples makes everyone nervous. If you want to see some crazy stuff, deal with peoples bank account and loans. Tellers and loans officers are grossly under paid in my book.
I think there is something circular about how the “American customer” behaves toward people in low-wage (or in many cases high(er)-wage) service positions. Many times that customer is also underpaid and barely making ends meet, and they know perfectly well that the person they are berating is paid crap but they need or want really cheap goods, so they also know there isn’t a whole lot they can do about it. I suppose if you are unhappy and stressed and tend to get treated like crap by customers at your own job (and having worked in consulting, “customers” there are no more pleasant than the general public, it’s just that they are more justified in being assholes because they are paying you more), you take it out on whoever you can get away with taking it out on.
I worked at a McDonald’s in Hendersonville, NC for $4.65 (at the time this was a $0.15 increase on the minimum wage because the franchise owner paid a premium for kids who got good grades) the summer before college and in some ways I liked it quite a bit more than other jobs I have had since. I was fortunate to have mostly good customers, like the nice hippie-looking couple who came in for a lunch “date” from work once a week… on the first day I was working that they came in, the man saw I was new, kindly asked my name and how I was, and suggested I take a deep breath and a second to relax before taking their order.
I also had good management… on one occasion when a lady yelled at me (like full-on everyone in the restaurant during the lunch rush staring at us) because she and her kids were late for a movie and she was going to have to wait for her McChickens to fry, one of my managers (who looked like someone’s grandma) sent me in back to collect myself. As I walked back there I heard her sternly telling the customer to please calm down because “you just made this young lady cry.” How many managers would stand up for their high-school-age employees like that?
(The major take-home from this story is that you should not–assuming they even still exist–expect to get 4 McChicken sandwiches without having to wait. We would have been throwing away like 25 McChickens a day if we kept 4 on hand at all times. People just didn’t order them enough to justify keeping more than 1 or 2 in the bin. Inconvenient, perhaps, but true.)
For a story with no redeeming happy ending, there was an occasion where a woman ordered hotcakes & sausage with 10 pats of butter and 1 syrup. We weren’t supposed to give out more than 2 pats of butter with that particular meal so she asked to speak to my manager when I (perhaps unwisely, but ignorant of the “arrangement”) said so. The customer explained to her that the “big colored man” (gesturing at the store manager, who was doing a rotation at this store from McDonald’s Corporate) had told her she could have as many butter pats as she wanted.
Actually I guess there is a take-home to this too, and that is that some customers, often seniors, have weird arrangements with the restaurant, which they expect everyone in the place to know about, and generally get whatever they want regardless of whether they are giant racist assholes. Yes, I recognize that many seniors are on fixed incomes and need those reduced prices, and 99% of those who came in were incredibly nice, not to mention loyal customers, but…
Asking a young employee (or anyone who is not trained law enforcement or security… or actually, since only money would be at risk, ANYONE AT ALL, I don’t care if you were paying me $100k) to PULL A GUN on a would-be robber–I am speechless. That is beyond ridiculous. I suppose to the boss, losing significant profits and therefore maybe his livelihood really may have seemed like a matter of life and death. But um. YOU CAN’T DO THAT.
I wonder whether the message here is “stop doing this to one another” treat your fellow human as a human regardless of what job they have. There is nothing worse than pulling the “I’m the customer” line it shows a lack of brain, pedigree and charm.
It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t complain when things are bad, but there are ways and means of doing it. The depersonification of customer facing roles (which corporations are almost entirely responsible for) is a crime against the people that nobaly serve in those jobs rather than sit at home. But just because they created it, it doesn’t mean we have to be sucked in to treating others without dignity and respect.
As a teen I was jealous of the kids who got to work at McD’s. A job at a store in a mall would have been even better. My tiny hometown was too small for either. About the only jobs for teens were farm jobs – picking rocks, detasseling corn, and shoveling sh*t. The only crazy customer I had to deal with was an occasional angry cow. After reading these stories I think I dodged a bullet.
I second the adowling’s comment about retail banking. I worked in it for a number of years.
I remember the family that was hell bent on completely screwing up their finances. We talked them out of it. They were so happy with us that they walked out of the bank screaming ” the only difference between us and jesse james was Jesse james used a gun”. Then the called the bank regulators on us so then our management had explain our actions to them.
I had a call transferred to me by the Bank President’s assistant. She told me to hand off call to my dept head asap, however, do not make this person mad because other banks warned us that he might be dangerous. It took me twenty minutes to transfer that call. During that time, I politely listened to a rant about getting money to start a horse urine farm. The urine would be refined into a cure-all for everything but the CIA (who were acting as agents for aliens/illuminati/whatever) work blocking the process. Your standard black copter & tinfoil hat material. I was working as sales loan assistant for $9/hr.
+++++++++
When entering the workforce for the first the most valuable skills that someone can offer are being nice to people and being dependable. Working and surviving in fast food or other minimal wage jobs are all ways of demonstrating these skills to a better employer.
WORD! I worked at Burger King in high school for a whopping $3.35/hour in the mid-80′s. 8 hours every Saturday and 3 to 4 hours/night 3 nights/week.
And like every other fast food place, BK was full of crazy customers. So we gave them whatever they asked for and then rewarded ourselves by eating fries and ice cream when the crowds thinned out. I was yelled at for saying “Excuse me?” when a customer ordered a vegetarian Whopper, for wishing people Merry Christmas. They even yelled when they requested FRESH fries and then got mad that they had to wait for the fryer to do its thing. And by appeasing our customers by giving them what we asked for, we’d then get a bunch of grief from the “manager” for wasting food/money. The same manager who always hid in the back room for the whole shift.
I will blame retail workers when all they do is stand at a register and gossip with a co-worker when there are clearly customers needing assistance. But otherwise, give ‘em a break. We think that people are more rude now than ever before simply due to their inability to stop talking on their phones, but customers have always been selfish pains in the ass.
Frankly, I don’t see teenagers working fast food anymore. Apparently Mommy and Daddy take care of everything for them. I see immigrants and seniors working these jobs now, so the reasons for working for minimum wage are worlds apart from those reasons when I was in high school.
@ Chris, did you work at the Towny McDonalds in Dekalb or the one closer to campus?
I’ve worked at more fast food restaurants than I care to remember. The owners were always horrifyingly un-PC and didn’t understand the art of talent management. They would ask us to re-deep fry 10 hour old food. I quit one job after the owner asked me and two high school seniors to move a counter that was several hundred pounds to retrieve fifty-eight cents underneath. Got the message that money trumped people every time. (If I want to be downright cynical, it still does no matter where you are in the workforce.)
Retail may have been a step up in perception, but it was really just the same.
And I agree w/ @adowling about retail banking.
Godin can try to make his argument on paper, but in the reality of the moment you just can’t stop to fix the system, or address deeper issues. It’s like being in a fire. Stop, drop and roll. Do it, get it done, make the problem go away and GTFO.
What I always tried to remember when dealing with those kinds of customers was that in most cases, they were as economically trapped as those of us behind the counter. They wanted recognition or acknowledgment, and because there were few other options for them, they decided to seek out that acknowledgment over a two-dollar hamburger.
And this ties back to Laurie’s original point: I think the devolution of customers goes hand in hand with our devaluation of work – at least, certain kinds of work.
Godin may be a great idea guy, but it’s hard to be academic about work when so many of us are out of it. I am lucky I landed a job that uses some of the skills I’ve learned, but I would have gladly worked for a fast-food restaurant during my layoff. Academics be damned, the simplest explanation is the best here: People are working for low wages because they must.
PS @Laurie and @John – You’re in fine company – Barack Obama’s first job was scooping ice cream, too!
At age 14— my first job was working at a greasy spoon called the “Chicken Shack” for like 4 bucks an hour— enough fried grease to make your heart skip a few beats. The boss that worked there was this big old guy, with a big belly, with tobacco stains on the side of his lips. I remember one time, a customer got unruly, he just yelled “Get him out!” and where I’m from, the other customers helped out in escorting the “Crazy” person out of the establishment. Helps if you’re crazier than the customer, too.
((Oh— and I found a hundred dollar bill on the floor while sweeping one day– and the County Fair was a complete blur that night!!!))
I got “fired” from my first job courtesy of having had just enough of “good customer service”. I started working my first job at a supermarket when I was 16. I worked there straight through college – a long 8 years (because I put myself through school, it took me a while to finish school). I was a cashier through my entire tenure. I saw and dealt with all kind of absurd sh*t. It was a union gig and paid pretty well, and I had the best benefits of my life. But I really hated working with the public, though I did it with a smile on my face.
When I finished college, I decided I’d quit the supermarket job as a graduation gift to myself and focus full time on finding my first “career” job. I gave my 2 weeks notice and went to work on my very last day, which was Christmas eve. It was insanely busy and I was working on and express line. I had 15 minutes left until I was done with the place for good, when a customer had a bag of frozen shrimp that scanned a price higher than he expected. I had to call to get a price check. While we waited, he and I chatted a bit. I shared that I had just finished school and was in the home stretch and looking for a new job – I’d be done forever in just 15 minutes. He was pleasant, but the women behind him was getting restless. When the manager came back with the price, the customer opted not to buy, paid his order, wished me luck and was on his way. The woman behind him then said, “If it’s your last day, you should have just given him the shrimp for free.” I said, “Excuse me?” And she replied, “Instead of making me stand here and wait, listening to you two yammer on, you should have given him the shrimp – it’s not like they’d fire you. I want to get out of here already.” I told her that that would be stealing and I didn’t need to get arrested, let alone fired, and continued to ring her order. She then called me an idiot and said, “I suspect that your next job will be asking people if they want fries with that.” I was a little shocked, but figuring I had nothing to lose with only 10 minutes on the clock, I took my shot. Eight years of frustration dealing with people like this came out very calmly in, “Go to hell, lady.”
She, of course, complained to the front end manager, who quickly called on my register phone. I was asked to shut light and go talk to her. I told her that by the time I wrapped the line, it would be time to go and it wasn’t even worth it. So after eight years and no more than 10 minutes left on the clock she said, “you’re fired.”
Maybe if I’d cared to take the time to explain, I would’ve been defended – but I doubt it. It’s very rare when managers defend their employees actions to the customers – especially in a place like this. Minor as it was, I was wrong for saying what I said. But right after, I called my mom, who worked in the customer service department to tell her what had happened, and I could hear her relay it to the team of associates behind her. They all cheered and applauded…I felt totally vindicated.
@Nick – haha!! Neither. I grew up 40 miles SW of DeKalb but went there for college. While in DeKalb, I worked at the townee Hardee’s on Rt 23 and then the Taco Bell on Rt 23 near Sycamore! In no way did I want to make my fast food job even worse by dealing with college students. I was a college student myself and I knew first hand how annoying I was, so I didn’t want to deal with it from 35,000 other scholars.
Some countries have mandatory military service. In the US, I think we need mandatory minimum wage customer service jobs. To graduate high school, you should have to work six months in low end retail (grocery stores, drug stores, malls) and six months in food service (at least half of which should be fast food or a chain diner like Denny’s). Maybe then I wouldn’t have any of these stories:
* 4am midweek, I’m a customer at a Denny’s type place. Three people are on staff, one waitress, one cook, one dishwasher. Party of 16 (two dads and a group of 16 year old girls, volleyball camp was in town) comes in and asks to have tables pushed together so they can sit together. Waitress explains it will take about 5-10 minutes because of the time/staff situation. She goes to deliver food to two of her tables and Head Dad gets pissy. I tell him off and get a free meal for my troubles. He gets embrassed looks of withering scorn from his daughter who probably knows more about food service than he does.
*Longs Drugs, video rental counter. I’m training a new employee on how the video system works. Guy comes up to sign up for our rentals. When we get to the “we need a credit card or check for deposit” portion of the sign up he freaks out starts cussing us both out and, finally, throws a pen at my trainee’s face. Her glasses are the only reason she still has an eyeball. It just so happens he was the Dean of some department at a major California University. He was wearing a very expensive suit. So no, he wasn’t in a barely making ends meet job. For the record, once the pen flew I said, “Sir you need to leave the store now before I call security.” Store manager wrote me up.
* Eppie’s (it’s like Denny’s), 3am, three people on shift (me, with the haircut you see in my picture, the cook, a blad black man, and the dishwasher a who has extremely curly light brown hair). My only customer is a woman in her late 30s who had straight black hair to her waist. I bring her food, she seems happy, I go back to my side work. She calls me over to tell me there’s a hair in her food. I look down to see a two foot long jet black hair laying carefully across the top of her half eaten chili cheese fries. She demands a refund, I point out the hair styles of our three employees. She gets more belligerent, I call the cops. She leaves without her refund.
* More Eppies, this time the night I quit (one of the only two times I walked off a job in mid-shift). The extremely short version of this story (which does not do justice to the night in question at all) is that the problem table came in bragging about the guy they’d murdered (gang bangers) two weeks before and then proceeded to abuse my trainee (my first introduction to black vs. mexican racism) and my other tables. As per usual with this type, they look at me and assume the little white girl will take their shit. They are profoundly mistaken. After they are done running off all of my regulars (and I’m talking about people who come in every night and drop 20-40 bucks on crap food), I get fed up and get mouthy back at them. They seem… surprised. Go figure. I call my manager in from her solitaire session on the POS computer (no joke, she was in there all night playing cards online, even when we got busy enough to need help) and she comes out and says they are very nice people and threatens to write me up. I take off my apron and hand it to her and never go back.
And those are just the tip of the iceberg; I could tell you horror stories about that Eppie’s all day long. Like how the owner was stealing money from the cash drawer and firing graveyard shift servers for it (fun fact, the restaurant went bankrupt). Or about the guy who came behind the counter to try and sucker punch a coworker on New Year’s eve (why yes my dumb ass did get in his face). Or the woman who claimed I was giving her shitty service because she was black (bonus points for the black lady I was a nanny for being in the restaurant at the time, she handled that one nicely).
So yeah, mandatory min. wage jobs please. I’m sick of seeing this shit, and I’m sick of putting up with it. I have never lost a battle of wills against a rude customer, and I’m sure as hell not about to start now. I would never just cough up a refund because someone is an epic and obvious douche.
My problem with customer service (in any industry), is the lack of it. I completely empathise with peoples grievances (low wages, rude customers, not a permanent career anyways) but that these feelings are reflected in how customers are treated is unacceptable; especially in today’s economy – where business are having to compete for each and every sale. I cant even count the number of business I simply refuse to do business with (even for a coke!) because of bad / rude service!Company’s spend thousands of $$$ on advertising and promotions to attract customer only to have a CS staff member ‘kill’ the experience and thus any future potential sales revenue.
But as long as company’s continue to lower staff requirements, continue to pay low wages, not empower their staff – they will continue to flush $$$$ into other means of customer attraction / retention. If in the end – a customer is going to get a refund, apology, exchange – why not empower the CS Staff to do so from the BEGINING! why make a customer wait while the complaint is relayed back and forth to more senior staff. Why have a CS staff say ‘no’ when a manager will turn around and say ‘yes’. Companies should save themselves the hassle and empower their staff to solve the problem the first time it comes to anyones attention.
Pro-tip, any customer who says “the customer is always right” never is. This is in no way tied to Glen’s comment, which hits several nails on the head. I just thought I’d throw it out there.
Wow, lots of DeKalb area natives here – hi! Chris, we were probably at Otto’s at the same time more than once…
My first job (after detassling corn, that is) was at a drive-in fast food place in Oregon, IL, which I won’t name. After 1 summer of getting my pay docked several times because customers weren’t looking where they were going and knocked food out of my hands (we had to pay for it if we dropped it) and the owner fudging our tip reports so that he didn’t have to pay us minimum wage, I quit. I learned some great customer service skills that summer, as well as some good work lessons (9 times out of 10, the boss will put profit over people, and the girl who’s sleeping with the owner will always get the better shifts and the best share of the tips).
Oh Keelie, what you should have learned from that is never to work in a restaurant that shares tips.
My 16 year old has a job in the family run bakery “up-town”. It has an old fashioned cashregister and she must enter .49 + .49 etc and count back the change. Three gals hired after her couldn’t get it and had to be fired. Her tales of her customers have us rolling on the floor. This summer I hope she starts her book.
My first job was at the public library in my town. A patron really laid into me once when I suggested her son select books from another (appropriately aged) section for the summer book club. The head librarian came out and calmly said, over and over, “I’m so sorry you feel that way.” My first introduction to the un-apology.
Two must-read books for recruiters who really want to be called “professional” recruiters:
Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs
http://www.amazon.com/Gig-Americans-Talk-About-Their/dp/0609807072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270673438&sr=8-1
Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America
http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0805088385/ref=pd_sim_b_20
Finally, watch the “Minimum Wage” (Season 1) episode of “30 Days”
http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/30days/
How many recognized that this post had nothing to do with food?
When I worked in a book store as an 18 year old kid for $8.00/hour we had customers like this. But the worst was the man who was just a loud-mouthed jerk who insisted that I give him our $10 discount card (that gave you 10% off for the year) for free. I stood my ground and he demanded to speak to the manager. My manager kissed his ass, apologized to him for MY behavior and gave it to him for free…in front of all of the other people in line. Then my manager walked away and left me to be verbally abused by the jerk while I finished the transaction.
The woman who was next in line apologized to me because she felt so bad for me. I gave her the discount card for fee too…and every other person in line because I figured that if a jerk can get stuff for free by being a jerk, then the people who were nice deserved to get something free for being nice.
PS My Husband is an Executive Chef in a high-end resort and customers don’t change even as their wallet sizes increase. You still have the crazy customers, the cheapskate customers, the drunk customers, the stupid customers…there’s just a lot more money at stake.
@Low, honestly it’s been my experience that the higher end places are worse. People who care that much about what fork goes with what course are just too snooty for my taste. That’s why I stick to 24 diners and banquet serving when i wait tables. I did my time in fine dining and I’m just not suited for the company culture.
@PhiliosopherP I love Nickle and Dimed for its insightful look at class and gender in America. Agreed on that one.
@michael Thank you — and I’ll update your blog link ASAP.
@Chris Thanks for the comment.
@Ian I hate the customer service industry. Someone is making money by telling companies that it’s all about customer service. The little things, right? I’ll take a better product or service and you can skip the customer service. I don’t need to feel extra special about myself if your product or service is great.
@Kerry Word.
@Hooligan You’re so right about entitlement in our society. It’s weird — we feel entitled to cheap goods & service but not entitled to dignity, health care, and a respectful debate about morals and values. Also, PS, I’m with you on the hospital front. My family was so kind to the nurses, CNAs and LPNs when my Mom was hospitalized in 2009. Those people do God’s work.
@sarah I dunno. If I had kids, I would shield them from the $2.10/hr jobs and try to teach them empathy and compassion in different ways. It’s not about the job, necessarily, but about character and integrity. I would totally make sure they knew how to shoot a gun, though, if they had to work at a shady Chinese restaurant.
@Glen Wait, you just blew my mind. Snocaps and popcorn? Seriously, I will try it and report back. I am not kidding — psyched about this.
@JB Good comment, of course, because you are brilliant and handsome. Keep me posted on the interview. I’ve got my fingers crossed for you. Also, I love that you’re committed to doing a good job & offering customer service, but honestly, I never feel like I’m entitled to someone being super-awesome-nice to me. Am I different? I don’t want a sweet voice or a smile. I want my bacon egg & cheese biscuit and small OJ and I want it quickly. If you’re being nice to me, you’re too slow.
@John In this economy? You’ll pry that hourly job at BK out of my cold, dead hands.
@adowling I don’t go in banks, anymore. People are weird and desperate. I’ll use the ATM, thankyouverymuch.
@SGC Your comments never cease to amaze me. You are awesome. These should be posts on your blog. Also, who doesn’t want 15 pats of butter on pancakes? Uhm, delicious and nutritious. Yum.
@theHRD stop doing this to one another Yes. That’s it. You got it.
@Suz The first time I saw a cow that wasn’t in the zoo or on my plate as dinner, I was 17 and in college. Weird, huh?
@SalesComp Working and surviving in fast food or other minimal wage jobs are all ways of demonstrating these skills to a better employer. Oh, that’s interesting insight.
@H.Aria I remember when my gramma worked at Dunkin Donuts in 1984 for extra cash and free munchkin donuts for the kids she babysat during the day. It was an anomaly. Not anymore.
@Patrick I think the devolution of customers goes hand in hand with our devaluation of work – at least, certain kinds of work. Exactly. Patrick, thank you. Also, I’ll scoop you some ice cream ANYTIME.
@MattyMat I don’t even want to see you at a county fair. That would be insane.
@DWG I’m chuckling because it’s awesome how your mom took your side on this issue. It’s perfect!
@Mouse Holy crap.
@bobolink I’d read that book!
@SteveLevy Great recommendations.
@Low Wow, I hope I’m not one of those customers. I try not to be cheap when I’m on vacation.
I have worked in fast food. I quit after two weeks because it was demeaning and dangerous (I grew up in Detroit). I didn’t get any training whatsoever, and backed up the breakfast drive-thru for about 3 miles. I still get the night terrors when I dream about the Saturday morning I spent running from fryer to drive-thru window to parking lot. I wonder if they found the money I stuffed under the cash register, because I didn’t know how to make it open?
In college I worked for the Food Service folks in the cafeteria. I was sort of embarrassed to work there (it was a pretty expensive private university. Most of the students were rich kids.) I still remember the “real” workers – not on work-study. One man bicycled from the South Side of Chicago to Evanston every day. Another woman, Cora – I still remember her kind face – had worked there for a bazillion years. They were so proud that I could attend the ritzy private school. They gave me the easy jobs (peeling carrots, loading the salad bar) and asked me about my classes. I probably made more as a work-study employee than they made as regular full time employees.
When I left the food service gig, I worked in accounts payable, customer service, and as a sales associate at Saks Fifth Avenue. I learned something valuable from each of these jobs. At Saks I learned that little old ladies with more money than taste can be downright evil. Again, the women who worked there on a permanent basis were smart, hardworking and they let me read my text books when there was downtime.
Fast food workers and service employees deserve our respect, better opportunities and ever-improving working conditions. I go out of my way to show my appreciation, even when the service is marginal. Because I know firsthand that crazy can show up at any time and throw stuff at you, spit at you, dump all of the beets in the ranch dressing, cuss at you, point a gun at you, or stuff a *%&~!% burger in a shake.
@ Laurie Dude tell me about it. I stopped working in the branches after 3 years, I’d had enough of that mess.
Yup. I was 17 and working in a frozen yogurt shop when I was held at gunpoint by a dude looking for crack cash. No amount of extra sprinkles would’ve satiated that guy.
Working in human services, I’m glad I haven’t received any death threats, or even really bad cases of crazy yet.
Down the block from me when I was working in Oakland, however, the Subway restaurant was held up 4 times in a month. The employees I knew all quit. The restaurant put up cameras and bandit barriers last I heard.
Jeebus megs you poor thing. I was in Denny’s while it was held up once but I would imagine that’s a totally different experience than being the person behind the counter. And for the record; I’m crazy not stupid. Guns = refunds even though they do fall under epic douchery.
One of my jobs through college was starting and stopping television service for hospital patients. On the ideal days the start and stop orders were received through the hospital’s admitting/discharge system and I could do everything from the comfort of my little office. During the lulls of activity I could read, study, watch tv, etc. The hum of all the cooling fans for the VCRs and giantic computer equipment kept me from sleeping.
The less than ideal days were when the tv’s went bad and I had to switch them out. Imagine a little box TV that hung from an adjustible arm that would swing and swivel to nearly any position. Unfortunately the television also served as a drink stand ultimately leading to a fried TV!!!!
The crazy customer of the job was a new teenage mom. Going to the maternity departments required to put on a gown or scrubs over our street clothes. Being 6′ 6″ I understood I would never find something that would fit and understood that I would look silly most times. I arrive at the room new TV in hand to find over 20 visitors blocking my way. After finally getting everyone to understand I needed to get in to replace the television people began to spill out into the hall. In I walk with terribly fitting gown and the patient just thinks I am the funniest looking thing in the world. Of course when the patient laughs everyone joins along. I ignore the laughter and quietly go about my work. After installing and testing the TV I asked the patient if she wanted me to leave it off so she could talk with her 20 visitors. She said “Hell no, I want to watch cartoons!”
mouse is my hero. I love people that don’t take crap from anybody.
I was just thinking yesterday about the horrible ways bosses treated me at my first jobs. I had graduated from high school and had to move to Wisconsin with my parents because I had no clue what to do after high school and Wisconsin seemed like a place to hide for a while and get away from my peers which I desperately wanted. I gave my boss a weeks notice but he was outraged! I was a server at a local owned fast food restaruant. They were so mean to me and I was such a hard worker! I was getting harassed by the cooks on a daily basis because they thought I was ‘cute’ but they were way too old to be hitting on me, my bosses were jerks, and then when I had to quit, they were so upset! I went to pick up my last check and it was like he couldn’t believe I was there asking for my last check – I earned it! He through a wad of cash at me – literally! I felt so bad that I didn’t even count it in front of him but I should have because of course he shorted me and I’d never recieved cash for my work. It sucked but the food there was so good! The customers were good there too! I don’t know why the owners and managers were such jerks! I had more bad managers working in the hospitality industry after college who promised this and that and then never came through and hated me for some strange reason. I was again a very hard worker! I had a few jerk customers who were mad at me but instead of the managers helping me, they fed me to the sharks after busting my a** for them on weekends, on holidays, on evenings catering to the weddings, and pharmaceutical meetings, and bending over backwards for all of them at as a catering manager for a hotel. I would like to know why people are jerks when they’re customers but I’d also like to know why managers don’t help, don’t give a rats a** and then want to blame you when you are doing everything to make sure a customer is happy!!!! I’m back in the service industry AGAIN but this time, I’m not working too much overtime and finally work for a company who isn’t willing to do everything for a customer and understands their value as a service provider. I’m haunted by my experiences but adult enough to know when to pull the cord on my internal stuggles with it finally but still get customers who want everything for nothing…oh well.
“why certain people behave a certain way to those who aren’t in power” –
That’s actually one of my ways for getting a read on people. You treat the powerless (especially service workers — people SERVING you) like crap, then any nice treatment of me or others in power means you’re just sucking up. Same goes for how you treat small children, the disabled, etc.
I worked register and prep @ a small family-owned takeout Chinese place and oddly enough never had unreasonable customers and was never robbed. Now I feel cheated. Every complaint I got I earned. I suppose that’s a different type of lesson about customer service. 1992. To Laurie’s point about trading a better product for customer service, I think that’s actually true. We had the best Chinese around. I learned the art of lowering expectations. You were better off telling them the food would be ready for pickup in 30 minutes and having it ready 10 min early than telling them 15 minutes and having it ready 5 min late. Since the food was that good, I could have told them all 45 minutes and they were not about to go to the place up the street for crappier food and a smile.
@Mouse, Your manager stealing from the till story reminds me of my friend’s high school job. He worked at a health club/gym. The employees were allowed to steal from the register. The managers were dealing ‘roids and other training enhancers. Ignoring the thefts was a form of hush money
@Buck You were robbed of your nights and weekends. Also, fwiw, I prefer Heng Wing.
@Lynette That’s true.
@amyjodeb Hang in there.
@ronnie Mouse needs her own blog.
@megs I don’t know about you, but extra sprinkles aren’t enough for me. I need more hot fudge.
@HR Mark That is a crazy-random job. You’ve got stories, yo.
@Peopleshark You worked at Saks? That explains the shoes!
@econopete Sad. Burglar barriers!
Mouse has her own blog, she just hasn’t written in a for a long while for real life reasons (was almost homeless, now I live with my mom, it’s a sad sad life). I am still strongly considering that jobs type blog for min. wage and hourly peeps, though. Maybe it will keep me from sporking someone in the eye when I get stuck waiting tables again.
I JUST read that part of Linchpin and thought the exact same thing!
My first job was at a party outlet store and the majority of my time was spent blowing up balloons. Be they mylar or latex, filled with gel to make them last longer, or not, I blew them up. And oftentimes people wouldn’t think to place an order for their kid’s birthday party ahead of time and would get annoyed that we would be backed up for 20 minutes on Saturday afternoon while they have 35 of Susie’s bestest friends ever at their house waiting for her first birthday party to begin.
So, once we blew up little Susie’s balloons, we handed them to Mom (who almost always had little Susie with her) and Susie immediately grabbed one and chomped down on it effectively blowing the thing up right in her face. Susie starts to scream, Mom starts to yell, Susie screams louder and Mom comes back over to us because her balloon bouquet is ruined because she thought it was a great idea to let a baby chew on a latex balloon.
What do we do? Well, obviously we give mom another balloon to get her and the screaming Susie out of our store. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a brain. That doesn’t mean that I had been trained in school to solely follow directions. It means I already had a raging migraine and had to continue to blow up balloons for another four hours so get the hell out of my store!
I’m glad I’m not the only one having problems with some of Godin’s statements.
you make a very good point.