Alt text: a text post that reads: Work in retail long enough, and you'll eventually realize the rules for dealing with Customers are exactly the same as dealing with the Fae:
- Avoid eye contact.
- Never reveal your full name.
- Accept nothing They offer you.
- Never verbally agree or disagree with anything They might happen to say.
- To apologize is to acknowledge a debt owed.
- Under no circumstances are you ever to thank Them.
- Remember that They are incapable of reading signs in human languages.
My first job was in a grocery store deli, and let me tell you that is the worst job to have if your mental health sucks. My last few months there were spent hoping to get hit by a bus so I didn't have to go to work. My last two weeks were the worst two weeks of my life. The customers I dealt with were some of the meanest people I've ever interacted with, all over a $7 bag of gross fried chicken and pasta salad.
This was a several years ago, I have since gotten a job in IT that doesn't make me want to die, but this reminded me of one of few funny stories from my time in the deli:
We had a Lemon Capellini salad available. Capellini. Big sign in front of it, can't miss it. Pronounced exactly how it looks. Capellini.
More than half of the people who ordered it could not say that word. A lot of people would stumble through the first two syllables and give up. Some people would throw in some extra letters and create a new word on the spot. Most people avoided saying the word entirely ("lemon salad"). At least one person asked for "lemon speghetti," and I think I had two or three people ask me how it's pronounced.
Capellini.
Oh, I know this fun.
Creme cakes are generally part of my duties once every day or two. I have been asked what they are in so many ways.
"What's a 'cram' cake?"
"Crem-me"
"Crime"
"Cree-me"
Sometimes it feels like they go out of their way to get their weird pronunciation out. We make our banana bread loaves using the same mix. The price label, the signage, the advertisements in the local paper all call it "banana bread". It looks like a loaf of fucking banana bread.
I have been asked about "Dem 'nana crem cake things" so many times. What's worse is, there's an actual listing in our books for a banana creme cake. It's not currently something we make, but it was at some point. Sometimes I don't know if they're just confused, or asking for a product we haven't made in almost 20 years, because they'll sometimes do that, too!
I would have to struggle not to pronounce the creme like they do in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. "Crrrem." Which is ridiculous.
If someone came in and actually did a Harvey Birdman, I'd probably give them a free cookie. My managers still don't understand why my go-to recommendation for a new product is cookies on dowels. HAHA!
Are you me? Same story here, grocery store deli turned IT. Rotisserie chicken grease is a smell I will never forget. That and the people who ask for chipped meat, they can all fuck off and just buy a block of meat and a cheese grater.
Wasted 3 awful years of my life doing that shit.
Retail is terrible even if your mental health doesn't suck. I worked in fast food for 20 years and several times a week I'd tell my wife "I hate that fucking restaurant". I was often stressed and burned out, was driven to therapy twice... I work in an office now and it is so much more relaxing.