Mean Customers

     When it comes to handling mean customers, I find that the whole smile and nod approach is the way to go. They’re always out there though, customers that are so pissed off because of store prices, or a sale they missed out on, or the simple fact that their life sucks, that they have to take out their anger on the poor simpleton with the lanyard.

     I’ve had customers throw products on the floor, yell in my face because we never sold the fruit and nut bar they so desperately wanted, and curse me out, but after years of dealing with mean customers, and seeing how other people deal with them, I’ve learned how to handle situations like those.     Nowadays, if a customer starts to get angry, I honestly start to laugh, because it amazes me how someone would get so worked up in public. I once had a customer who sat on the floor for 10 minutes because they weren’t getting their way with what they wanted. 

     The best way to handle mean customers though is to just be calm.  You getting worked up just as much as them isn’t going to resolve the issue. When customers start to get angry, fall back on the whole “the customer’s always right” thing. Apologize for whatever got the customer pissed off, and then, if you can, put the blame for it on someone else.  “Oh, I’m sorry sir, but my supervisor was the one who put that sale sign there.”

     Or if that doesn’t, work simply get someone else to deal the mean customer. “Maam, I’m just a sales associate, the lowest man on the totem pole, and I don’t know why the assembly fee costs so much, but my manager would be more than happy to explain that to you.”

     Customers yell and get angry just to get what they want. Hell, I’ve done it myself, especially when I’m trying to return something that’s broken and it’s my own fault. The key is to just get them out the door as satisfied as possible, before they start turning off other customers. And then, once they’re gone, you can make fun of them with your co-workers.  At one of my older jobs, we used to keep tallies on a calendar of all of the mean customers we had that day. It gave us something to talk and laugh about later on.