I have been working in retail for over a decade now, and today is the first time I have stood up to a customer in any real sense and denied them service. It’s sad to me that it’s such an intense feeling, because I can remember a lot of times I should have. And I sort of want to vent a little bit about how it all feels and stuff.
I wouldn’t call myself “averse” to conflict, but I certainly wasn’t exposed to much of it as a child and so my instinct is to appease, particularly at work where that’s my job.
I worked retail, and then customer service, and then sales, and then sales management, and in all that time, through promotions, upgrades, everything, I have never told a customer I will not serve them until today. I’ve been insulted, screamed at, had things thrown at me, had people call corporate about me, have people try to steal from me, had the cops called to my building, but I’ve never told a customer I wouldn’t serve them.
Backstory:
A few weeks ago I was working the morning shift. I work at a small franchise location under a large shipping corporation. We provide office services and shipping services, so imagine a small shop with printers, fax machines, scanning machines, paper cutters, boxes, tape, a laminator, a computer, bubble wrap, mailboxes, anything you need to run an office space or small business.
I work 8am to 4pm which I absolutely love. I love my job, the pay is good, my managers are nice people who are generous, and customers often give out tips or offer to run and get us coffee. We print promotional materials and menus for local businesses and the mailbox customers are starting to warm up to me.
Normally customers who are looking to get a big print job done – like something that needs special paper, something that needs to be converted to a PDF, something that needs to be sized up or down, something that needs cutting service, or something that needs to go through the laminator which takes forever – will come in and give us a heads up, email us the documents, and wait a few hours for us to complete the job and send a done! e-mail.
But some customers expect us to take on big projects immediately and they’re a little disgruntled when we let them know that we’d prefer to have at least a couple of hours of notice and that I unfortunately can’t drop everything I’m doing – essentially close the store and ignore the other customers to complete this work right now. We’re not only a print shop, customers also need to come in and drop things off and get notaries and stuff like that.
But once you put it that way, wouldn’t you know it, they suddenly understand how silly that sounds. So they mostly say okay, I’ll come pick it up after my errands, here’s my contact info. Perfect.
And that allows us to work the job into our regular work day and fit into bits of time we have. I have the authority and capacity to decide, in the moment, if a print job is something I can complete right now or something I need to put on the back burner and complete over the next few hours. Especially in the mornings before we’re fully staffed, I am allowed and expected to let customers know that their large jobs will be complete around noontime and I unfortunately have other tasks I need to fit in alongside it.
We do not have a person here who is solely here to print, cut, and laminate things for you.
I have only pushed back at unhappy customers a couple of times and mostly over the last few years. My struggle to become confident in my voice and stance has been steep, but I’m making progress. A few times while I was working retail customers would start to bother me and I did actually raise an eyebrow and even on occasion respond back to them and say something direct. Not like, you’re a bad customer but something like, we’re going to talk about this without the raised voice, ok?
But my conflict resolution skills have never ever failed. I have excellent de-escalation skills, and I’m pretty sure it’s from childhood and marital trauma. I am one of the best customer service people I know, especially in terms of conflict. I have never had to simply walk away from a customer or tell them I won’t be able to help them based on their behavior.
Never ever.
A few weeks ago I was working a Thursday morning shift. It was maybe eight-thirty and pretty busy in the store when she came through the door and although I recognized her as a semi-regular customer, I hadn’t had much exposure to her yet. She was short and wore a long jacket and mask. She had gray hair and sort of beady eyes and a blank-ish expression. I have to be honest, I immediately noticed that she was somehow mentally challenged. Say what you want to say, but her movement and tone of voice screamed mentally disabled.
We greeted each other and she waited in line with no issues, but when she got to her turn I realized almost immediately she was not prepared. She had several boxes that needed to go out but they weren’t packaged, and she didn’t know how to print the labels or email them to me, just someone who was really needy and couldn’t follow instructions, which I need customers to do.
But I did my best, charged her for packing, and juggled other customers while I was walking her through emailing me the documents I needed to print. I was trying to help her in spite of her being so inconvenient – and honestly, despite the fact that she made me cringe. The way she spoke, completely flat and with an artificial earnestness, was like nails on a chalkboard. She asked me my name, and just imagine that everything she said afterwards had my name at the front.
Then, she said she’d like to send a bunch of emails that needed to be printed in color and laminated. Okay – well, unfortunately, we’ll have to get this done at another point today because I don’t have the availability right now. I was as direct and kind as I could be, and she just looked at me.
“Could you just print it now?”
“If they’re in color then unfortunately we’ll have to work on them later; I don’t have time at the moment.”
She just looked at me. “Could you print and laminate them now?”
I’m still helping other customers and juggling a phone line and I say, “Unfortunately I’m not able to devote that time right now, it’s only me here. I can’t stop the entire line to do this now. When my boss gets in later this morning we will have the coverage to do this project. In the meantime I can try to do bits and pieces if I’m able to get down the line.”
She just looked at me.
“I’d like you to do it now. I’m next in line.” I sort of stopped, because I had said everything already, and didn’t answer her. I sort of just worked on the line as best as I could. She moved up to the counter and, over the next half an hour, she interrupted and interjected in between every customer:
“Could you do mine now please?”
I kept repeating myself. I honestly don’t know what I was saying that was so confusing to her. But there were her beady, empty eyes looking at me.
“No ma’am,” I said at that point, more firmly. “I am allowed to let customers know at what time their print order will be ready, and that’s something I’m doing right now.”
At this point she rolled her eyes: “All you have to do is hit ‘print.’”
This pissed me off. The documents she had sent in were not .pdfs and they were not sized correctly for what she wanted me to do, and to laminate them was going to take another thirty minutes just to get everything into the sleeves, let alone start them through the machine.
“How about you come back here so I can show you everything I need to do,” I said. “These documents are not ready to print yet. I need to open them, move them into publisher, resize them, and hit print.” As I talked, I showed her each step. “Then I need to slide them into these sleeves one by one, and then run them through the machine.”
To my absolute dismay she replied, “Perfect. I’d like you to do that now.”
One last time, I said to myself, “No, ma’am. I am telling you that I am not available to work on this project right now. I can print this one page that I’ve just done for you, but I cannot do this right now. There are other customers.”
“But I’m next.”
“No ma’am. For projects this big, we are allowed and encouraged to ask customers to come back when it’s complete.”
I then attempted to keep working on the line. People were giving me sympathetic looks, and I considered just telling this lady to leave as soon as she interrupted again – which she did.
First she went to the printer where I had printed that first document, and she came up to me to let me know it was wrong. I said okay, as soon as my boss gets in I’ll start working on correcting it.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d do it now. My taxi is not going to wait past eleven o’clock. It has to be done by then.”
“I can’t promise that unfortunately. We ask customers for several hours ahead of time for large printing projects, especially when they include laminating.”
“But why can’t you do it now.”
This entire time I have been helping customers, answering phones, and doing the best I could. I was sweaty, almost in tears, frustrated, and still trying to create and check in products and returns.
It was at this point that I realized I was dealing with a terrible person. It took me a few minutes, but I decided that was my conclusion. She’s harassing me while I’m attempting to draw boundaries, interrupting and making other customers uncomfortable, and acting like our rules don’t even affect her. Like she’s special or more important.
My boss was late that day, so I dealt with this for an extra hour. She didn’t leave, and every time I started to help a new customer she would butt in. Getting more and more upset.
“Dani – you can do mine next.”
“No ma’am, when my boss gets in we can work on it.”
“Dani, I was next a whole hour ago. I took a taxi here. I can’t wait any longer.”
After this, I just did my best. I don’t even remember what it was. Placations and hard work. Placations and hard work.
I was in tears when my boss finally arrived. The line had grown out the door and I was getting through customers as fast as I could while stepping away every few minutes to make some small step of progress on her print. He came in, looked around, and got to work.
I started actually working on this awful person’s job. My boss was immediately hit with an international shipment, which took forever because there’s so much paperwork, so the line couldn’t move at all. But because I told her I would work on it when my boss got here, I decided to do exactly as I said. I put the entire store on hold and didn’t speak to a single person for the forty-five minutes it took to finish everything. Slowly and deliberately putting printed papers in sleeves and feeding them through the laminator.
While I do this, the lady says to my boss, HI HOW ARE YOU? I TOOK A TAXI HERE YOU KNOW. And other pointless things as I cry at the counter. Customers can hardly look at me now.
Now I know that she didn’t need it to be done by that time. That her taxi wasn’t waiting for her. That she had just bullied me for hours for no reason.
As I finished up I decided I wouldn’t speak to her or serve her ever again. I handed her her papers and told her her total, then said to my boss, “Could you please explain to this customer that we are not required to drop everything in the store for an involved print job, especially in the mornings when it’s just me here?” He said, “Oh yes, of course.”
I honestly don’t know what I expected her to say, maybe oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was something you were allowed to do. I should have followed that rule or trusted that it was a real rule.
Instead she said, “I took a taxi here. I couldn’t wait any more.” She checked out and stood right in front of me while I cried and rang her out. Looking right at me, offered me no apology, no sympathy. Other customers piping up asking if I was okay. She ignored everything.
I decided I would no longer offer her service after she left. I told my managers about it and they said, it’s your call.
It was the worst day I had ever had at a job.
This morning she called the store and I didn’t answer, and twenty minutes later she showed up. I had already planned what I would say, but none of it came out the way I intended. Actually I was super calm about it.
I told her hello, how’s it going, I’m sorry but I’d prefer she come back when my managers are here. I’m not comfortable helping her anymore.
She immediately said, “STOP YELLING AT ME,” which was a weird response because I was speaking so slowly and calmly, like I was talking to a dragon or something.
I said I’m … not yelling in any way … just drawing a boundary. She started to say, THIS IS A PLACE OF BUSINESS AND I HAVE A BOUNDARY TOO. I just said, I’m sorry I can’t help. My managers would be happy to help later when they get here, but I’m just not able to help you anymore. You behaved very badly towards me and this is my decision.
She threw a few insults at me and walked out, but came back a moment later to say,
“I want to say I’m sorry you feel that way.”
That’s the kind of thing my ex husband would say. And I told her, “That’s not really an apology. Anway, I made my decision.”
She tried to say, “It is a real apology,” but I just ignored her. She left and didn’t come back. I tried to explain to the customers in the building without sounding salty, and then texted my boss about what had happened and he told me it was all good and to hang in there.
So – this is the first time I’ve ever stood up to a customer for real and told them actually no. And it’s really be en emotional for me. I wonder if I did the right thing. If she is handicapped in some way, did I just bring on the possibility that we could get sued? Could she claim we discriminated against her? I don’t know. It wouldn’t be that far-fetched, in the state I live in, for her to say that her behavioral problems are part of a mental disability and by not helping her I discriminated against her based on her disability.
But hopefully it wouldn’t get anywhere. She treated me poorly at my job, and I didn’t tell her she needed to leave or not come back, just that I personally am making the choice not to help her. I’m not speaking on behalf of our business, just myself.
And I am personally allowed to decide not to talk to someone for any reason. So I know it’s not something I should worry about.
This situation has just left me a little shaken. But after it was over I felt kind of – powerful? I felt like, okay I can stand up to people, even if they’re customers. I can have my boundaries. I can be a real person even in my workplace.
It’s new. I was raised to be so agreeable and obedient – it’s different. I like it.