When I started student teaching, I had this site supervisor from the district who would frequently come in to observe and give feedback to student teachers from the school. She had a philosophy that if she told someone that they were doing a good job when they were not, it was not helpful. I completely agree that giving constructive feedback is crucial, but the supervisor took it to the extreme. Here are a few examples.

My students were doing a round-robin share among their tables.

Supervisor: “[My Name], you need to walk around with a purpose and ask these students questions during their share time. Engage with them; you are not doing it enough.”

During the next share time, I asked a table some questions to guide the conversation.

Supervisor: “Now you’re engaging with them too much.”

Another time, I was pulling a small group and needed the students to listen quietly to me for a minute so I could give directions. I told the students, “Shhh,” but I did not do so in a harsh tone at all, and that was a way my mentor teacher frequently got the students quiet.

After the group, my supervisor approached.

Supervisor: “You can’t say, ‘Shhh,’ to students. That’s very rude.”

And my absolute favorite incident happened during an individual meeting with the supervisor over lunch.

Supervisor: “You have to get over your anxiety and be more confident. Why aren’t you being more confident?”

Me: “I feel like I’m not doing a good job.”

Supervisor: “I’ll be honest; you’re not.”

She gave no explanation as to why she said what she did. No “You’re learning, so there is room to improve” or anything like that. I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, as I was furious at this point. However, she was yelling at me for my anxiety disorder and for struggling in the classroom.

In the end, among other reasons, I decided to withdraw from student teaching for that year. I completed it at a different district the following year, where the people giving me feedback were more constructive and weren’t constantly yelling at me. I ended up doing extremely well and received excellent recommendations from my university supervisor and mentor teacher.

Our store is particularly known for bending over backward for customers when it comes to our coupon policies. I have just scanned a customer’s items.

Me: “Do you have any [Store Brand] cash?”

Customer: “Yeah, there’s a 30% coupon on the website.”

I know that we have no in-store percent coupons.

Me: “That might be an online-only coupon. We don’t have anything like that in store today.”

Customer: *Angrily* “No, the coupon said it was good in store!”

Me: “Do you have a copy of it I could scan?”

Customer: “No, you’re supposed to be able to do it yourself!”

Me: “Normally, I could, but we don’t have that coupon toda—”

Customer: *Snapping* “Then why does the website say you do?!”

Me: “I don’t know. I don’t control the Internet.”

After that, the customer got really quiet, looked at her kids a few times, and started apologizing.

Over the weekend, a customer purchased over a hundred items, paying in part with a gift card and the other part with her credit card. She comes back later to return a pair of jeans for $13 and purchase a $10 sweater.

When returning items, the refund goes back to the form it was paid in; this makes it very difficult to deal with customers who want cash back when they paid with their debit card, but those are stories for another time. When two forms of payment are used, the POS automatically decides between the two forms used to process the refund. For this transaction, it decides to refund her $3 to her card, and she goes on her merry way.

On Monday, she comes in to return the sweater. This time, the system decides to refund her $10 back on a store gift card. The customer then begins to argue with my cashier that she is being shorted $3 from the first return she made. 

The store manager is called up to take care of the situation, and then she asks the customer to step to the side to allow the cashier to take care of other customers. The customer then proceeds to give the store manager a list of demands at the top of her lungs.

Her first demand: reprimand both cashiers involved in both of her returns, as they were rude as h*** when working with her and shouldn’t be working in public. The first cashier that handled her exchange of the jeans and sweater should have just returned the jeans, then rung up the sweater, instead of doing it all in one, she said. The second cashier was shorting her money for the sweater because she wasn’t wearing a mask. The store manager refused to reprimand them in front of the customer, as they had done nothing wrong, and if such a reprimand were needed, it would be done in the office. The cashiers had done their job.

Her second demand: the customer wanted the $3 owed to her from the $13 pair of jeans. She could not find her original receipt and threw whatever receipt she had at the store manager. Out of the wad of paper, she found the original exchange receipt and the most recent return receipt. The store manager showed the customer where the $3 had been returned to her card, and the rest of the refund was used to purchase the sweater. By returning her sweater, she was refunded all $13. The customer wouldn’t listen to a word, insisting we were crooks and shorting her money. The store manager explained it every way she could other than shoving it straight up the customer’s nose. It went in one ear and out the other.

Her third demand: to prove that we weren’t taking her money, the customer wanted us to return the one hundred items she had originally purchased back to her card and then ring up all one hundred items again. Then, she wanted to return the $13 jeans, purchase the $10 sweater, and then return the $10 sweater. In that order. Right in front of her. We can’t refund any items that were not currently in the store, obviously. The store manager says we will not be able to accommodate her request, as she has none of the items with her, and she’s had all of her money refunded to her, so there is no need to redo every transaction.

Eventually, the customer gives in to fits of screaming at the store manager and the cashier, calling everyone idiots and thieves before threatening to call corporate. She leaves the store, only to stay in her car and call us three times to continue to scream at us. On the third call, she demands to speak to the manager and is given to the store manager. She screams, “I DON’T WANT YOU! YOU’RE AN IDIOT! YOU’RE THE BIGGEST IDIOT IN THE WORLD! I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB!” and hangs up.

She did call corporate, but I never heard anything back from it.

Related:
Refunder Blunder, Part 55
Refunder Blunder, Part 54
Refunder Blunder, Part 53
Refunder Blunder, Part 52
Refunder Blunder, Part 51

I am a manager of a discount retail chain. During a busy Christmas season, we fill all six of our registers from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm. From 9:00 pm to 1:00 am, I am left with just two cashiers. This is fine, as business is getting slower in the late evenings.

This is also during the health crisis, when we have to keep a count of customers coming through the door. Just after 10:00 pm, both of my cashiers are working on a small line. I am currently covering my metering person for their lunch, but I’m close enough that I can hear every conversation at the registers.

Customer: “Wow, they left you up here all by yourself? With this line?”

Cashier #1: “Oh, I’m not by myself. My coworker is also checking people out; she just has a larger purchase.”

Customer: “That’s horrible of them to do that to you, especially when it’s so busy.”

Cashier #1: “We’re fine, really. We had a lot of cashiers on during the day, but it’s not as busy now, so we have less people on register.”

Customer: “And where’s the manager at a time like this?”

I wave my tally counter at the customer.

Me: “Hello, over here.”

Customer: “I bet they’re sitting in the office right now, huh? While you work so hard out here. They should jump on a register every once in a while and help out.”

Lucky for me and my cashier, we got to listen to him bad-mouthing me, my work ethic, and the lack of cashiers, all while I was six feet away with a shiny manager badge on my shirt. It was almost like the customer wasn’t completely there mentally, as he ignored every attempt I made to greet or help him, and he refused to see the other cashier on register, as well. The cashier that checked him out said it was the most uncomfortable conversation she’d had with a customer.

My first job is as a busboy when I’m in high school. It’s a small mom-and-pop bar/restaurant that’s sort of the dedicated hangout spot for all the suburbanites of the area.

One notable regular we have is a banker who routinely comes in during the later hours to get completely wasted. He’s sort of the condescending, know-it-all type that assumes he’s smarter than everyone else when he’s drunk, but he never gets too belligerent and he’s a great tipper, so most of the staff leaves him be.

On this particular evening, he’s going into a long-winded speech about how people in the service industry, teenagers especially, are uneducated; when I’m making a run through the dining area with a few empty plates, he beckons me over.

Banker: “Hey, what’s the last book you ever read?”

I respond without so much as missing a beat.

Me: “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

Apparently, that completely takes him off guard as he sputters for a few moments while trying to come up with a proper retort, the bartender near him wearing a smirk.

Banker: “Well, what about before that?”

Me: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.”

The banker frowned and returned to his drink, apparently admitting defeat as the bartender tried to suppress a laugh. Out of all the people he had to come at with that question, he managed to pick the only bookworm in the entire place.