Why Everyone Who Is Rude To Retail Workers Should Work Retail

In college, I work at a [Fast Food Place] in Bangalore. In India, working in a [Fast Food Place] as a server is not something that anyone appreciates, and I didn’t do it entirely for the money but for the experience.

Two young women walk into the store. It’s a weekday evening, and the store is relatively empty. They take approximately fifteen minutes to place an order for one bucket of wings. I am not a very patient person, so I am irked, but it’s still going well.

Me: “Please enter your PIN to approve the payment.”

They both completely ignore me as they keep chatting. Because the system times out, after two completely ignored polite reminders, I just say:

Me: “Excuse me, miss, but could you please provide the PIN and complete the payment?”

They’re both irritated with that since that apparently was rude, but they do ask for the machine to enter the PIN. The transaction screen goes off just before they can make the payment. I re-swipe the card for the payment.

Customer: *Yelling* “You’re charging us twice!”

Me: “The transaction previously failed, so no cash would have been deducted.”

Customer: “You servers are so stupid and uneducated. No wonder you have to work in a place like this!”

I normally wouldn’t say anything about my education, but they brought it up, and they deserve to have their worldview shattered a little.

Me: “I am an arts graduate student studying to obtain a triple major in Journalism, Psychology, and English, miss. I do this job to make a few extra bucks, but between you and me, you should do this job in order to learn some humility and some manners.”

Yeah, I got fired that very evening because, as my store manager put it, the customer is always right. No regrets, though!