For anybody who worked really nice jobs all through high school and college, you will not understand the struggle I explain in this article. If you've worked in retail or a restaurant/fast food, then you understand exactly where I'm coming from. Most people who go shopping see a worker and they automatically assume that somehow we are a monotonous robot with no life outside of work. Our job is to do our job which coincidentally also irritates many people when we don't live up to their expectations. In a world, where participation trophies are given and there are no real winners or losers, many people assume that we are supposed to automatically give them their way.
Furthermore, many people don't understand the workload of most of the associates who work at the different stores. Some nights I may be covering two departments and running up to the front to check, so I barely have enough time to get my workload done. So when you come into my department and make this huge mess I have to clean up, it bites into my time that I could be using to get other things done. Furthermore, if I don't get all my tasks done for that night I get into trouble, so you're basically making my job more difficult for me and my fellow associates.
One thing a lot of people don't understand about working for a corporation either is that we don't get to pick the policies we just have to enforce them. So whenever we tell you not to do something, we aren't picking on you because we don't like you, but it's just a rule we have to follow. I have no problem with you asking why the rule is in place, but I expect you to follow the rules like everyone else. Plus most of the policies are in place to make the store comfortable for everyone, not just a few. So technically, if we didn't correct you, we'd be allowing special treatment for you in the sacrifice of the well-being of others.
So even if we don't 100 percent agree with the policies in place, we are doing our very best to help you. Now I know we all have that one person in customer service that seemed lazy or incompetent, but at the same time, you have no idea what happened to that person that day. You decide not to give your waiter a tip because he's been making mistakes all night, but what you don't realize is that he just got kicked out of his house and is worried about what he will do now. So, I plead with you that the next time you decide that an employee is just another robot to yell at, I ask you to take a deep breath and see how you would want to be treated in this situation and then act in that way. I guarantee you that you and all of us in customer service will be happy.
