Welcome to my Friday’s Rants from the Soap Box in my Living Room. A small space in the week where I can have a chunter about things that have made me twitch with annoyance or made me question if the world has gone mad or not….
I also linked up with MummyBarrow for her Ranty Friday. You can find her blog and link up here if you’d like to join in. A good rant can be therapeutic.
I recently ranted about manners and how rude people are, it seems, and how we as a society are forgetting our manners. This rant is on a similar theme, this week!
I am horrified by how rude people are to those who are serving them in shops,restaurants, and anywhere where the public generally expects a service.
I have high standards, I expect good value for the money I pay for things, but I also hold myself to a standard of being polite and pleasant to those who provide services. Just because someone is on the end of a call, in a customer service centre, does not mean I can be rude to them, any more than I would expect them to be rude to me!
I actually challenged someone today, in a supermarket, when they were appallingly rude to the woman behind the cash til, serving them. The “customer” had handed over her card, to pay for her purchases, but it would seem, she put the wrong PIN number into the machine, when completing the transaction. This, of course, meant her card was rejected. The woman serving her told her this, and asked her to put her PIN in again. The woman then started yelling at her, “you did this, you pressed the wrong button, you have messed up my card”. The woman behind the counter pointed out to her, that the machine was saying “incorrect PIN” and that it was nothing she had done, and the woman continued to yell at her and accuse her of tampering with her card. The poor woman behind the counter, trying to be calm, and polite, as is probably demanded of her, in her job description, kept trying to explain that it was simply an incorrect PIN and it needed to be re-entered. The other woman then swore at her, and called her a bitch. I then decided, enough was enough, and I interrupted, pointed out to the rude woman who it was HER error, and not the woman serving her, and that if she wanted, I could call the store manager over and explain to him how rude she had been, and that it was actually her fault. I try not to lose my cool or get involved in other people’s business, but I wasn’t standing there, watching someone be so rude, because of something that was actually her fault. Fortunately, she calmed down, and re-entered her PIN, and then realised she was actually entering the wrong number. She then took her card, picked up her shopping, and walked away, no apology, no response to the woman she had behaved so appallingly towards. Frankly, my 3-year-old has tantrums like this. I expect it from him, he is a toddler, not in control of his emotions, but a grown woman, in a shop? Horrifying.
It seems to be common, to think that it is ok to yell at those providing us a customer service. It’s apparently acceptable to yell at someone, to call them a rude name, and then to walk away without apologising. It appears to be fine to be rude to someone in a mobile phone shop (ok, I know that dealing with mobile phone providers and sales people can be an issue) because you happen to have waited for a few minutes, but are in fact in a queue, and were not first, and need to learn to be more patient. It would seem it is considered normal to berate a member of the waiting staff team, in a café, when your child is running amok, and causing chaos, climbing over tables and laying on the floor, when they trip over said child and nearly pour hot coffee all over them.
I could go on, I see things like this all the time. I am sure I am not alone.
Really, I despair. I feel like I want to avoid humanity some days, when I see people being so rude and treating people, their fellow human beings, like a lesser species, simply because they work in the service industry.
That’s my rant for this week. Link up with some other rants by clicking on the Linky below! Have a good weekend!
That’s so horrible! Good for you for stepping in. It is amazing how many people treat people working in shops and cafes like this. I used to work in McDonalds after I’d graduated while I was looking for a ‘real’ job, because I’m not a scrounger and believe in working for a living. There were people on benefits who came in every single day and looked at me as if I was something they’d brought in on their shoe. They grunted their orders and never said please or thank you. Of course they were superior to me and so much better than me. Because I was the loser working in McDonalds.
Totally agree with everything you said. In addition, I feel being polite and friendly to any person providing a service makes the experience so much better all round.
I am appalled at some people’s behaviour in public I wish they could see themselves sometimes.
I wonder if we took videos and showed people, they would feel ashamed? I would be mortified, if I was caught on camera behaving so appallingly!
Well done for stepping in and helping to diffuse the situation. Maybe we should all do more of this…
I witnessed something very similar earlier this week, when a rather upper-class man was speaking to the hotel receptionist so rudely and condescendingly, I was appalled! There really is no need. What makes these people think they have the right to do this? I often find it is the ‘posh’ people who are the worst!
Me too, sadly, posh doesn’t=nice sometimes!