All right, I'm not sure my job really counts as a 'service' job. I'm a receptionist, but I still deal with shit from various people on a day to day basis because I am there to 'serve' them... or at least a lot of them act like I am.

People can be ostensibly terrible. I know I've had my fair share of people harass me because I couldn't give them directions to their satisfaction; my co-workers take advantage of me, trying to pawn off work on me that is not anything I have been trained to do; and had employees and visitors alike be downright abusive to me.

At the facility I work at, we recently employed and outside company to monitor parking for us. We're a hospital, so we have paid parking. Big deal. Unfortunately, people turn into monsters whenever paid parking is involved.

We were told we, as the hospital, have nothing to do with the parking tickets. If someone gets a ticket, they have to call the number on the back of the ticket and speak with the company itself. This has been made perfectly clear. Of course, I still get lots of people coming in whining at me because they got a ticket.

"Did you pay for parking?"

"No..." or "Yes, but ---"

You have to display your parking ticket. If you didn't display it, there is nothing we can do for you.

Today I received a call from a very angry employee who began their speech with "I know you can't help me with the parking --"

And I knew then and there this was not going to be good.

This person got very, very angry at me because I could not help them. They said multiple times they knew that I couldn't, but by golly, they weren't happy about it. Why couldn't I help them!? I'm a paid employee! I pay for this parking permit! This is ridiculous! I want your name! Let me speak to my manager! You're bad at your job!

Ok lady. You know I can't help you... so what... exactly is the problem here.

I'm not a punching bag. I just wish people would see that. Sigh.

tl;dr share your job misery with me CC

I have a feeling all jobs are miserable like this. Unless you don't interact with another human being at all.

I've only worked retail, and man, the things people say to you just because they can. I eventually got to the point where when people got verbally abusive towards me, I gave it right back. Sorry, but I'm no punching bag.

One time this old man, seriously in his 80's came in to replace his shoes. This is when I first started there so I was 18. We didn't have his size in stock, and there were recent changes in the company where they stopped making every size in every style. I let him know and went to go grab a catalog so I could check if this was one that wasn't being made anymore. Well they weren't making it anymore. He called me a fucking bitch for not making his size anymore (cuz you know, I make the things) and then said he was going to call corporate about what a horrible person I was. This was like my second job and I had only been there a few months so I was all emotional and crying to my boss on the phone lmao. Needless to say, nothing happened.

And another time this couple came in, bought two pairs of shoes at buy one, second half off. The next day, they decided thy didn't want both, and returned one. Ok, fine. Well the one they were returning was the one that was the more expensive pair, and therefore the one that they paid full price for. (Like one was 100, and the other was 30.) Well I ran it through the computer, and told them how much I was refunding them. Which was not 100, because they now had to pay 60 for the one they were keeping. omg, these people FLIPPED THIER SHIT. Yelling at the top of their lungs that I was trying to scam them. That I never told them yesterday that if they returned one pair, that they would have to pay full price for the other one. (why would I tell them that. isn't that common knowledge.) I'm a bitch and they're going to call the cops because I'm stealing from them. GIVE ME YOUR CORPORATE NUMBER BECAUSE YOU ARE A THIEF AND I'M GOING TO GET YOU FIRED. I was SO CALM at the beginning. I was alone and there were other people in the store just watching. Like total popcorn gif lol. Finally after a good 15 minutes of them having a cow, I lost it. I cancelled the return, gave them back their shoes and told them to gtfo. Called security. A really nice man came up to me and asked me if I wanted him to physically remove them lol. I told him no, but thanks. By that time my boss got back from the bank, I told her everything. The man told her everything. The crazies had already called corporate, so we all had to rehash it to corporate. At one point they were yelling at me calling me a bitch while standing outside my store. I yelled back SO ARE YOU or some shit I can't even remember. Then she's all YOU CANT TALK TO ME LIKE THAT. IM NOT EVEN IN YOUR STORE. IM GOING TO HAVE YOU ARRESTED FOR HARASSMENT. lolol the logic there I don't even know. Eventually security came and made them leave the mall. I don't even remember what corporate did but I didn't get in trouble for that either. I'm sure they were one of those types that just causes chaos in stores to get discounts and things for free.

OMG one of my favorites though lololol. I worked on the Las Vegas Strip. So we had a lot of tourists that didn't understand english very well. So this woman, she was looking at shoes and wanted to know the price. I told her and she asked me if it was 50% off of that price. I was a bit confused where she got the idea that it was half off because we weren't having any sales. She pointed to these awful signs we had to have up around the store that said UP TO 50% OFF. We BEGGED to have them removed, but since we were the only store that had problems with it, they said no. Pain in my ass those signs. Anyways, I explained to her that they meant up to 50% off the retail price. (This was an outlet). The shoes were originally $100, now there were $80, so that's 20%. No joke this is the conversation.

(I explain the signs meaning.) it says UP TO 50% which means it can be any precent from 0-50 off of the retail price. This was $100, now it's $80. That's 20%. So they're $40 then. No mam. they are $80. but it says 50% off. No. This is the price. There is no more discount. But it's not 50% off. Mam, it say UP TO. so it can be 15, 40, 22. Any of those numbers. This one is 20%. But it's not UP TO 50% off. No, it's 20%. but your sign says 50%. right. UP TO 50%. but it's not UP TO 50% off.

THIS WENT ON FOR A GOOD 5 MINUTES HAHAHA Finally I just walked away from her and she left. But man, we could not stop laughing about that one. It's partly not her fault, but after so much explaining, I just couldn't take it.

lol ok now that I've written a novel, I'll let someone else have a go. :P

urgh i do no envy you :c The only jobs i've had have been in retail and when people aren't happy, they really like to show it -_-"

I used to work all different positions at a call center for a cell phone company. The first job I had there was running credit checks and activating phones if people passed the credit checks, and telling the dealers who called up what deposits they had if they didn't pass the check. I took their information, put it in a computer system, hit enter, and it told me the rest. I didn't manually look at their information and make personal decisions about their credit. It normally wasn't bad because we talked to agents at the stores, dealers...not the actual customer.

One day though, this guy calls in for a credit check and the result came back that the lady would need a $400 deposit to start a line of service. He asks me to hold on and I hear him say, very nicely, "Ma'am? Your credit check came back requiring a $400 deposit today. If you are able to do that we'd love to get you that phone you like and get you some service going today." For a few seconds there's silence and then I hear a little scuffle sound and this woman going "HELLO?!" She had grabbed the phone out of his hand. She proceeds to tell me I obviously looked at her information wrong and to do it again. When I told her it was an automated process, she starts yelling about how I typed something in wrong, and started calling me a bitch and all kinds of other things, saying that she needed this phone to keep in touch with her child. The whole time I can hear the dealer in the background trying to calm her down and get his phone back. All I could do was put myself on mute so she couldn't hear me laugh.

Been working at Barnes and Noble for close to 5 weeks now. Seldom do I work at customer service, but they've slowly been putting me over at the cs desk since the holidays are approaching. Have had quite a few customers from hell this past week.

Here's the one I had to deal with today: She began by telling me that she was disgusted by the state of our store because we never have the books that she wants. Two things: one-- we have the best sales in our district, we are one of the highest rated book stores within a 100 mile vicinity of our area; two-- she showed me her list of books that she was looking for, they were all extremely obscure and specific titles. I looked them up and was able to find one or two of them in the system, just not in the store.

I explained to her that we could order books for her and have them shipped home or to the store for pick-up. "Well, no, I can't do that. I'm always at my parents in Chicago, that just won't work." I tried telling her she could ship it to her parents address and keep the billing address at her actual residence. "No. Just send it to my sister's in Indiana." At this point I'm fucking confused, but just do whatever makes her happy. The whole time she continued to cop an attitude with me as if I was directly responsible for our distributer not sending us all the books under the fucking sky.

I tried being as polite as I could be with her the entire duration of the exchange, but in all honesty I just wanted to smack her and tell her if it us not having these books was such a big fucking deal, go to amazon.

/endrant

Wow, that really blows :( People are just angry blobs though in situations like that, you shouldn't take it personally. I remember when I used to be a manager at a grocery store I had to always deal with complaints and I'm naturally a pretty reserved person and I get kind of fidgety and empty-headed when people are yelling at me/confronting me.

I think the worst thing that ever happened while I was a manager was this time when there was a tornado warning, which turned out to just be extremely strong winds and rain. The siren went off while there was a lot of people in the store and little old me had to tame all the crazies losing their minds. People were pushing and shoving others out of the way to get to the check-out lanes; as if I would actually make my cashiers sit there and check out your stupid food while there's a TORNADO OUTSIDE.. I basically had to scream(I never yell ever) at people to gtfo or if they were staying they had to come with us to a safe spot, which was the produce cooler.

After I got everyone out except for a few people, I took everyone to the cooler and the customers I took with me were SO FUCKING GRUBBY. They kept asking me why the cooler was wet and dirty and if they could have some of the produce to snack on wHAT. I wanted to make them leave but that would get me fired plus it's a shitty thing to do. Thankfully there was no tornado but the winds did blow open the automatic doors that I forgot to lock, causing a lot of water to spill into the front area which resulted in me getting in trouble :( honestly though I was just like w/e I tried my best godammit

Most jobs involving people can suck. Ugh. I have two stories.

First, when I studied I had to work at a school for 6 weeks. 6 worst weeks of my life. The kids were horrible and had no basic knowledge how to act, and the teachers were stuck teaching them everything. This shocked me greatly, but I figured out it was because their parents stuck them at school at 7:30 AM and didn't pick them up until 4:30 PM, at the aftercare. The 6 year olds I was watching spent the whole fucking day with teachers and other kids their age, and never with their parents. I got used to this after a while, but I still disliked it. Then this troublesome kid kicked her friend, while her mother watched. The mother had the NERVE to tell us who worked there that it was OUR responsibility to teach the girl how to act! Not her responsibility as a mother, no never. She didn't have the time. Well, then why did you get a kid, ffs.

And now, I have work training at a library and I have to deal with many people every day. I have social anxiety and is kinda testing that one out with this job, but I'm not getting any better. Why? Because people are idiots. You'd think everything was fine at a library. But where there are people...yeah.

So far I've been yelled at for not having a book they want. I've been yelled at for not having this particular new book that just hit the stores, and they just get more grumpy when I say the library doesn't buy new books as soon as they come out. "BUT YOU SHOULD!!" is the message I get, an intern who has nothing to do with any of the administration. A lot of people get cranky when I say they have to pay a fine for being late. "But I have delivered the books now O_O". I explain to them that they still have to pay the fine, it's just like with any other fines for being late. They make a fuss over 5 dollars. I kid you not.

Every day people come in, slam a bunch of books at the counter and then just stare at me. No "I'd like to return these" or "I want to borrow these". Just staring. Most of the time they don't even have their card with them ("oh, I put it in another wallet because..) so we have to spend a lot of time asking for their names and searching them up, which we're technically not supposed to do, but we do it because we're a small place. Then they get cranky if I get the name wrong because they can't even spell their fucking last name... and it goes on.

The library would be such a better place if it wasn't for the people XD Nobody respects the "be silent" rule either these days, so if there's more than 5 people in there at once it gets noisy. People spill food and play with books and it's just.. not what I grew up with! sigh

Edit: I just came home from work and:

• one lady in her 20's sat down in the middle of the reading area and started putting on nail polish. Stinking nail polish. And had an attitude when I told her she couldn't really do that here.
• a bunch of 12 year olds started behaving all crappy and was just loitering. Great.