You are right about the isolated stand out incidents. I've served countless customers and the three that seem to really stand out are as follows.
One day I was walking around the store, placing items back where they belong and as I was doing that I got a sharp nudge in the side, I turn around half expecting it to either be a friend or someone about to get a nudge back in their face. To my surprise it was a middle aged lady. Basically, it turned out she was deaf, she couldn't speak and it was very difficult for me to understand what she wanted. I was there for about 5 minutes trying to guess what she said, making me feel like a right royal asshat. I was right about it being something to do with potatoes though
Anyway, I remembered I had a pen on me, and she wrote it down on a bit of paper she had. She was annoyed at me for not understanding her, I don't blame her - it must be very frustrating. The reason that stands out is because it made me feel bad
Another one that stands out is when I was just leaving the store with a friend at the end of our shift and a women literally grabbed my friend and started demanding he find some crisps which were not on the shelf. My mate pretty much told her where to stick it for being so rude to him and she got really tetchy. I butted in to try and save hassle and said we'd look for it out back, we went out back, grabbed our coats and began walking back to the front door. She saw us all leaving (she knew we'd finished because we'd told her nicely to find someone else still clocked in) and her face was a picture, we just burst out laughing.
This actually also reminds me of one customer who decided they were entitled to go out the back of the store because I didn't find what they wanted within 30 seconds. I literally had to push them back out and tell them if they came back out back I'd have to get them removed from the store.
Anyway, the third and final customer I remember was this old lady, probably 50-60s. I was working alone on a department which I was not familiar with as part of my management training, I was taking stock checks etc and re-filling the shelves amongst fitting security tags etc. This woman came out of no where, politely enough asked if we had a certain value kettle in. I knew that we had them in earlier and the evening before as I remember seeing loads of them. I said I'd go look for her, I grabbed my key and went into the warehouse, I spent a good 5-10 minutes climbing ladders and moving heavy boxes trying to find it for this nice lady. I went back out, as we were obviously out of stock and explained it to her. She decided to kick-off at me, shouting that it's my fault it wasn't there and that it's "Not good enough" that they're not in stock if the price tag is still there. I just explained to her that I was the only one working the department at that time and we did have (past tense) many kettles in stock, we just simply hadn't got around to changing over the label yet. I also told her I was not happy with her talking to me the way she did and told her to get out of her own bum. She went an angry colour of red and demanded to speak to my manager, I said "She's over there, knock yourself out." and she went over and spoke to one of my default department supervisors instead. My supervisor was very apologetic about the item not being in stock and when the women told her about what I'd said to her, she said "That's not like him, that doesn't sound right..."
The women gave up and paid for her shopping. I went straight over to the supervisor and told her everything, she just laughed and said she deserved it while also giving me a friendly reminder that I shouldn't do that when I'm a manager
What annoys me the most about the last woman is that I really did try quite hard to find what she wanted, only for her to turn around and shout at me that it's my fault and not good enough. What did she expect off me? A kiss and a cuddle?
