Unlike my other ‘Tales of Retail’ this one did not happen to me. Rather, I had the displeasure of witnessing it today while on lunch. It reminded me of the bad customers I sometimes got, who felt they were perfect and infallable, and that the lowly minimum wage worker was below their concern, and unworthy of any amount of respect.
I’m not sure what causes this behavior, even as a child, I showed fast-food workers respect, I said please and thank you to my servers, and I always said ‘excuse me for a moment’ when I wanted their attention. It was the way I was brought up… but I guess not everyone feels they should have manners.
On to the story…
I’m sitting there at Subway, eating a sandwich that has bologna on it, even though I could swear the BMT did not come with bologna. No big deal, its edible. They have a TV which is showing the most bizarre soap opera I’ve ever seen. One minute its random soap opera stuff, and the next, a little girl in a dress waves around what looks to be a dead rat and encases two guards in cotton candy.
“…wheat bread. I SAID WHEAT BREAD!” my train of thought is derailed by a woman practically screaming in my ear. My seat is right next to the line, where a squat woman in a sheer floral dress and sweatpants is standing, tapping her foot impatiently.
The people behind the counter as of Eastern descent, I would guess Indian, and not the most fluent in English. They understand well enough, but you need to speak clearly. I would think this woman, who was hispanic and spoke with an accent, would have a bit more patience with people not understanding.
She continued to berate the poor kid behind the counter, telling him to slice the bread a certain way, to toast the bread for a certain amount of time, and to pick out the most thin slices of tomato and cucumber, all the while shouting if the boy (who was getting visibly shaky) didn’t do exactly as she instructed.
I ended up leaving before she finished ordering her sandwich, which says something because she walked in about ten minutes before I finished eating. As I was filling my drink for the final time, she started shouting about mayonaisse. She said mayo, and apparently he reached for something that wasn’t mayo, maybe the ranch (looks similar) or the oil (sounds similar), and she had a field day with him. I don’t blame him, the more frazzled you get by people screaming at you, the more likely you are to slip up.
“No, mayo! I said mayo! Does that look like mayo to you?!” She demanded.
I didn’t hear his full response, “I’m sorry, I thought you said….”
“No I did NOT! Thank you very much! You reach for the mayo and get me my mayo! God, what is wrong with you?!”
Keep in mind that the whole place is pretty small, and there were only a nine people or so including myself there, she was making quite a scene for the whole shop.
So, I say this as a message to everyone out there:
Calm the hell down.
Just because they wear paper hats and make minimum wage, does not give you some sort of divine right to treat them like dirt.
Zel-kun out.
Sabrejack | 01-Aug-07 at 2:33 pm | Permalink
If I see this happen, and the person doing it doesn’t look like they could beat me up, I usually intervene with a statement like, “That’s another human being on the other side of the counter, why don’t you treat them with a little respect?”
As soon as one person steps up, you’ll hear murmurs of agreement from anybody else in the area, and occasionally other people will chime in too.. and as soon as they realize the crowd is against them, they stop. Not always, but usually.