Understaffed But Understood

It’s the peak of Christmas card printing season, and our photo printer which can pump out over 1,600 photos an hour is getting 2,100 photos an hour, all day, every day. Our one-hour photo is over capacity. We stay late to finish each day’s orders. We have signs up explaining that there will be delays.

My boss has had to take a few days off for personal reasons. We all understand; the customers, less so.

It takes almost two hours to get this customer’s photos, and they are not happy.

Customer: “You need more staffing.”

Me: “I apologize. Our boss was scheduled today, but he’s out for his father’s funeral. If you’d like to complain, the store’s hotline is—”

Customer: “OhGODI’msorrynooo—”

And they ran off.

It sticks out in my mind because it was the one and only time I remember from almost nine years of retail where a customer realized that maybe they weren’t the center of the universe.