After many years working as a nurse and retiring, I find myself back at work in retail. I could never understand why my daughter thought that customers were such a pain, but I do now.

It amazes me that people will walk down an aisle, pick something up, change their mind about getting it then walk down the aisle and throw it where it doesn’t belong. I was actually told by a customer that I should not complain about picking up after the customers since I was getting paid to clean up after them. Biting my tongue, I just gave her a look and walked away. Since when is cleaning up after sloppy people who don’t care about what does not belong to them considered customer service?

I am a full time assistant manager who usually works the evening shift. I cannot tell you how many customers are rude, nasty, and outright threatening to myself and fellow employees. It seems more and more I have to ask customers to leave the store because of the outrageous behavior they exhibit.

The other night I had a teenaged girl shopping with her mother bouncing a basketball in the store by the glass display shelves. I nicely asked her to not bounce the ball in the store. She and her mother just gave me a look and kept walking and bouncing. I repeated the question, again nicely, and the mother said to the daughter you just go ahead and bounce the ball and to me she said she’s not hurting anyone. At that point I again asked nicely and she turned to me and threatened me. It was at that point that I removed my phone from my pocket and called the police to have them removed from the store. The mother laughed at me until she realized I was really on the phone with the police, then as she was walking out of the building she told me I better watch myself when I left the building that night as I was not going to make it home safely. You can be sure that I had the police at the store at closing to assure my safety.

Disrespect for the products we carry is only one part of it. The restrooms are destroyed on a regular basis. It is amazing to me how grown adults think it’s acceptable to write on the restroom walls with feces, leave used personal items on the floor, and steal the toilet paper!

The theft is unbelievable! As the customers shop they help themselves to snacks and cold drinks and deposit the trash from them on the shelves all over the store. The amount of inventory that is lost is amazing. Then we have people who just take frozen food out of the freezers and leave it on a random shelf. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I feel better now. I can go into work tomorrow with my sanity restored because I have been able to vent a little. Thank you my fellow bloggers for listening!