Rude customers? Retail review gives us one star, at best
Women are most often the targets. In 2024, ANROWS (Australia's National Research Organisation for Women), in its 'Just Another Day in Retail' report, found that 38 per cent of sexual harassment in shops is from customers (the rest is from co-workers). As the Herald's investigation into the Merivale hospitality empire this week shows, the idea that 'the customer is always right' can take a dark turn in certain industries.
Rudeness from customers, which used to risk nothing more than being 'fired' by the retailer, has been unlawful in NSW for exactly two years. Since the Minns government's Crimes Legislation Amendment was enacted in mid-2023, 136 individuals have been charged, 64 convicted and 25 jailed for aggression against retail staff.
The world – by which I mean not Washington, Gaza or Ukraine but your neighbourhood mall – is demonstrably on a more aggressive trajectory. The big and small pictures seem related. Feeling impotent about climate change or the Middle East, you shout at the poor person in the call centre (who is probably living in a country prone to climate-related unrest and geopolitical violence).
Where is it headed? I'm not sure if the old-fashioned lessons of civil society work. I was brought up under middle-class Protestant rules: if a hot temper is your daily nemesis, first you exercise self-discipline and fume silently. Need to escalate? Swear under your breath. Still doesn't work? Take it out on (1) inanimate objects, (2) yourself, or (3) some vigorous activity like sport or gardening. What you absolutely mustn't do is boil over at a complete stranger or a service worker, because their opinion of you matters more than anyone else's.
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This social order is, from the evidence, a thing of the past.
I don't think nostalgia is the answer. My friend J says we ought to blame the warning signs themselves. J, a customer who remains right after all these years, thinks the zero-tolerance signs just lower expectations about customer service. 'They're saying, 'We know we're going to be incompetent, so please go easy on us.'' According to J, the 'team' should be focusing on lifting its game, not on reporting you for showing your frustration.
There's probably a grain of truth in this, but shoving the blame back across the table only works in general if you have the world's strongest military behind you, and even then it only works for a day or two. If the other is seen simply as the opposite party in a deal, then you're always going to lose. Both of you.
What zero-tolerance signs, Lickert scales and most of tech-mediated transactions seem to miss is that the other side of your activity shares 99.9 per cent of their DNA with you.
When going into that shop is, for many, the only face-to-face human contact they have all day, when work and trade and even leisure have dehumanised them into economic units, they just forget that the person on the other side of the counter is a person.
Many of us are prone to that amnesia, and realise we're getting worse. But sometimes you get a wake-up call – from a human, not a talking clock. The other night I had to phone a service provider. I'd been dreading it and putting it off. But he – his name was Joselito – answered the phone quickly. His English, or mine, was heavily accented. As I explained my problem, I could hear his children screaming in the background. Our call dropped out. I was frustrated at having to start again with a different operator, but I got an immediate callback. It was Joselito! Then he fixed my problem, all while his kids were still making a racket. I tried to imagine where he lived, how old his kids were, what his home workspace looked like.
At the end, he asked if I would complete an online survey.
'Are you kidding?' I said. 'I want to get you a promotion.'
He paused. 'Just the survey is fine.'
The Lickert scale wasn't enough, but the survey left me room to write a short love letter. It probably meant nothing and only got read by an AI, and all I was doing was writing a message in a bottle. But customer relations are so rarely like that, it's worth making a record of them when they are.
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