Today was the first time a customer has ever gotten angry at me . He was an older fellow, very slow and mellow, so I try to keep things chill and move along with his pace.
He was asking for a cheaper laptop, possibly used (I work at a tech store) with any possible scratches or dents to bring the price down. I tell him we don’t sell cosmetically damaged items as they wouldn’t sell enough to compensate vs pawning them off to some other shop. So I show him some open box stuff (where a customer literally just brings back a product they didn’t like), and my co-worker came in and kind of helped search up the prices since I am still new to this place. The dude still thought ~$150 was too expensive, even though the laptop he was thinking of getting online was $250 and had very similar specs.
I remember that there’s a sale on a pretty basic chromebook that brings it down to $100, so I offer to let him check it out and see if it’s in stock at the store. He gets very pressed when I tell him, WITH FREE SHIPPING, that we can only deliver it by tomorrow. Whatever though, I apologize and bring him back to more open box stuff.
Now, despite the fact that he’s looking for a super duper cheap laptop, he asks about a f*cking $400 desktop (mistaking it for a laptop) and says “What about this one? How does this one run”.
I remind him that it’s $400 and that it’s a desktop, not a laptop.
Well I guess that’s the straw that obliterated the camel’s back because he gets this super annoying condescending “I-know-all” tone and asks for my name. I give it to him, and he starts rambling about how I’m “not motivated” and “monotone” even though as I said, I’m just trying to keep it chill. I tell him I apologize he feels that way, but what he’s asking for price to performance wise is simply not what we have in the store. He blames that fact on me somehow being unmotivated(???) enough to find it. He’s so petty in fact, that he wants to tell the manager how much I suck at my job apparently, and how much help my co-worker was compared to me. Nearly a backhanded compliment because he worded it as “Even insert co-worker’s name here was more help than you.”
So I tell him where he can find the manager and wish him a nice day. Least to say though, I nearly wanted to strangle that man. I forgot to mention that he actually grabbed my attention because the store was closing in 10 minutes, we spent 20 trying to help him, and the man spends another 5 on top of that just to complain about me. Let’s not go into how he wasted 10 minutes of my manager’s time to complain about me even more. So yeah, I guess it was one of the only times where I felt like a customer was bullying me because I couldn’t actually start anything back + we didn’t have what he wanted.
If there’s any silver lining I didn’t get into any trouble because my co-worker had my back and my manager also thought the dude was crazy. So while I may not have lost any actual value as an employee, my price was definitely hurt and I wanted to throw down with the dude in the parking lot (we have a rules leave at the door situation as long as we’re not in uniform as well). Still, I’m also proud of myself for not losing it since I am a little emotionally volatile at times as well. Just thought I’d give an experience that changed my vote on this, hope anyone seeing this can add onto this comment with some of their own experiences like this.