The Customer is Never Right

I am sorry but customers are idiots, actually the thing I hate most about my job is the customers. I work as a checkout operator in a local Supermarket. I love it. All I do is stand by my till all day scanning items, doing lottery tickets, selling gas and electricity and handing out cigarettes and alcohol to anyone who shows me a valid ID. The people I work with are amazing, we laugh, we gossip and genuinely have a good time. The only thing that makes me dread going to work every day are the customers.

Sure some of them are lovely. I have a nice time chatting to elderly women, hearing about their day, laughing at cute babies and asking their mothers how old they are, chatting to friends and neighbours who come by to buy a litre of milk but the most enjoyable past time in work, checking out all the hot guys who pass through that door. Sadly none of them, gay or otherwise, give me a second look, but still it is nice to look. It is these rare few times that I like customers. But I must stress the word rare.

The customer is always right. Well pardon my French but by hell they are. In my short while working numerous jobs I can tell you 9 times out of 10 the customer is not right but you being the great employee you are have to tell them they are because it is all about customer satisfaction. Maybe if a customer actually read the tag correctly they would see it is marked as '£1 off' and not as they so hoped marked '£9 off'. Or if the customer took the time to read the coupon they would realise that you cannot use it unless you spend over £40 or that the offer doesn't even start until next week. But, because the customer is always right, we have to abide by their demands, for fear of losing customers.

This really annoys me, customers basically rob the shop because owners fear they are going to lose one measly customer who only comes in to buy the Sunday newspaper ever other week but who happened to make up some offer in his head this time. So while this customer gets the item for £1 instead of £1 off, I then get shouted at because the next day my till is £2.45 short. If owners spent more time worrying about giving customers free stuff and less time putting employees on final warnings for the stupidest of stuff they would have a better work environment. Happy workers are the key to a healthy business not rip-off customers.

Yes I may be jealous because my customers get treated better than I do but I am sorry if I wish I had more respect from my boss. The job which I currently have I started in September 2009 and that Christmas decided to go to the work Christmas dinner with my sister as she had worked in the same place for a number of years. However on this particular occasion by boss, who I had worked for four months for, thought I was a waiter and demanded to see my manager because the table next to us was throwing food. How I so wanted to tell him that he was sitting beside my manager but I was far too embarrassed and ashamed that my own boss never knew who I was. But I soon realised I had nothing to be ashamed of, he did, how can a Business Owner claim he runs a successful business when he doesn't even recognise the face of his own staff?

Fair enough the man owns three stores, but that is no excuse. He had obviously seen me in the shop after I had served him and his wife on numerous occasions. One of his assistant managers is my sister so I would be assuming he would know her brother worked for him. He had shook my hand earlier that evening as we waited for the bus to arrive to pick us up. Was he really so blind that he never remembered my face? Does he see every employee as hamsters to his money making machine? I don't know but what I do know is that a company should learn to understand that to stop it from falling apart is to look after its employees a little bit better.

The customer is not always right. The employee is not always right. And the owner definitely isn't always right. Me however? I try to be right all of the time and when I am not I will scream until you admit that I am ^.^