Snapping Them Out Of It
Back when I still worked as an optician, we got a new trainee. The guy was just under eighteen years old, and while his parents were both German, they had lived in Australia for all of their son’s life and had never spoken German with him before moving back to Germany – and getting their son this customer-facing job.
Stupid decision? Absolutely. In [Trainee]’s defence, he’d gotten pretty good at this new language in record time, even if most figures of speech went right over his head.
Unfortunately, on top of difficulties with the language, I have to assume that he also had some kind of (learning) disability or was perhaps on some kind of spectrum (though certainly not the same spectrum I’m on, or at least at the veeeeery opposite end of it).
I am saying this because that is the only way I can possibly explain why [trainee] would act like this at seventeen years old when his parents were both perfectly civil people.
I am standing in the workshop where we make customers’ glasses according to the order sheets and am talking to my boss, who is the store manager. [Trainee] has been assigned a task (far away from any customer orders for reasons that could fill at least three separate stories), when he suddenly starts snapping his fingers. I look up and go to the door to check if I’ve missed any customers coming into the store, but there’s no one there.
I continue speaking to [Manager], but out of the corner of my eye I see [Trainee] stare at me and snap his fingers again. I frown, and [Manager] turns around in irritation but doesn’t say anything. He then motions for me to continue and let [Trainee] figure it out. I mean, he’s seventeen, pretty much an adult; surely, he will get the idea?
Nope.
[Trainee] continues to snap his fingers at me, wave his hands, stomp his feet, and generally look like he’s having a stroke while he keeps staring at me, obviously getting more and more annoyed that I’m not jumping to help him with whatever issue he has.
Unfortunately for me (and [Trainee], in this moment), I am a young woman, and I have gotten very accustomed to our customers attempting to treat me this way, and I have also gotten very good at ignoring such behavior or shutting it down. So, I continue speaking to [manager], neither of us reacting to [trainee]’s wordless tantrum.
That is, until [Trainee], without breaking eye contact with me, sticks two fingers into his mouth and WHISTLES loudly, the way you’d whistle at a dog. And I’ve HAD it. And so has [Manager]. I don’t even get to speak up before [Manager] is laying down the rules for [trainee].
Manager: “Oh H*** no! Absolutely not! You do not snap and clap and whistle at [my name] or me like we’re animals!”
Trainee: “I have a question.”
Manager: “Then use your words! Speak English for all I care; [My Name] is fluent in that anyway. But you do not EVER snap!”
[Manager] eventually had to call in [Trainee]’s parents and let [Trainee] go before his trial period was over, because he was a liability to the store with his behaviour and inability to follow even the most basic instructions.
[Manager] also advised [Trainee]’s parents (in the most distant, corporate kind of words) to maybe get their son professional help, because he clearly needed support in some way. I don’t know if they listened to that advice, but I never saw [Trainee] again, and that’s a win in my book.
