I honestly do wonder where the average person thinks the customer service workers have some kind of stake in the company or something. Getting fired from a job like that is only a minor inconvenience, and the odds of their complaint being anywhere near a firable offense is usually laughable (and half the time the opposite as usually it’s wanting the employee to break store policy).

I don’t want to seem like a prick, but all the Internet comics I see are so lazy and devoid of any humour… there’s no joke in them at all, and just seems like someone who wants to post a bland message to get their “comic strip” seen. Is this Calvin and hobbes quality? No. Is there anything groundbreaking and funny? Nope. I just want lemmy to actually have some good stuff on it

youtu.be/xcEvNwQ7v-U

See, what you gotta do is threaten them with absurdity.

Don’t say “I’m never coming back”. Instead, walk across the street to the bus stop. Wait for them to come out to their car. Memorize it.

Now come back to the parking lot every day for a week. Wait for them to leave their car, and go inside. Once they’re inside, you walk over to their car, and write down their liscense plate number.

Now go home, and use public records to do a search to find their name and address.

Now go back to the store, and take a picture of them with your cell phone.

Now, sit across the street from a police department, and watch for a cop arriving to work. Take note of his liscense plate, and search his name/address.

Now write a letter to the clerk, threatening to wait outside his work with a giraffe. Tell him “Giraffes have 15 inch tongues, thick as a beer can. I’ve trained this one to stick their tongues into your butthole, and grab your waist with their teeth. You’ll be 19 feet in the air, getting tongue fucked by a giraffe. If you try to escape, you fall. See ya at Costco, Gary!”

And you use the cops name/address as the return address. Now if he tries to go to the cops, they’ll protect their own, and find something to arrest him with.

Checkmate, Gary!

I’ll admit it; I want to say things like those customers in the comic. Sometimes I do. But I also understand and appreciate that the person I’m talking to both doesn’t care, and can’t do anything about it. So when possible, I try to take some marriage advice I saw somewhere online:

Never say the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t even say the second thing. Say the third thing.

This works really well in emails or online forums, where you can revise many times until you hit send or post.

And for anybody who has read any of my past replies and feel inclined to point out that I still say stupid shit: just know that those stupid shit were the third things that came to mind. 😊

An interaction I had when I was in my final days of my fast food “career”:

Karen: “The service here is terrible I’m NEVER eating here again if you don’t fix this RIGHT NOW”

Me (actually said to them): “Oh no, please don’t, the giant multinational corporation with billions in revenue that is [Big burger fast food joint] will notice and cry”

Karen: “I…yea…well!” Storms off

This is the natural consequence of a business that is not worker owned.

Me, a driving instructor: “If you don’t want to learn, there’s the door. No. No need to slow down or stop, I have my own brake pedal here, thank you”

Working retail for the first time at 54-yo, had almost no dumbass customers like this. Did have one call that said they’d go to Home Depot because we don’t have a grass expert on staff. Well shit, I’m sure Home Depot’s garden department is way sharper than my 35-years of growing plants. LOL, none of my coworkers know what a lilly looks like, should have got one of them on the phone.

One old guy threatened a coworker, I think he hit him? This guy was ancient, I’m putting it down to dementia or the like. You’d have to be demented to think your 80-ass is going to take a fit 20-yo man.

I did get some mistreatment working McDonald’s at 16, but much of that was my dumb ass not knowing any better. And my dumb ass ex-Marine manager. Jesus, trying to boss kids around like we’re in the military, for $3.34/hr.

Know what makes me jealous? I work in a nice Lowe’s in a nicer town (for the area). Might get a tip every other day, always grateful and surprised. Over at the more ghetto store, some of those dudes clock $100+ a shift. Goes to show, the more monied conservatives over here are cocksuckers compared to the poorer Democrats next door. And it’s always the people I did very little for. Motherfucker wants 1,500 pounds of rock hand-loaded? Nah.

Y’all love this one! Dude pulls up in a Tesla. “Hey! What are you picking up?” He silently hands “the help” his receipt. ONE bag of mulch. No one before or since has been pussy enough to ask for help with a single bag. (And no one has ever bought a single bag.)

The thing is, either workers are powerless to change things, or just don’t care enough to be bothered by that threat.

Which is why I usually just smile and lodge formal complaints with the company as well as any regulatory body if the situation calls for it. Much more effective when it’s an actual punishment rather than an empty threat. I’ve gotten companies actual six figure fines that way.

Customer service rep - idc.

Customer- stops frequenting the store.

Boss - “Welp, we’re through, you’re fired.”

You’d be surprised. I’ve had people absolutely not listening to me in the past. It’s not overly common, but definitely not unheard of.

People will literally get in my car expecting that I teach them to park then take them for their driving test after just a few lessons.

During my penance in food service in my earlier years, I worked for a while for what was literally the only pizza joint in town that had delivery. (This was well before all the food delivery apps and in fact in the pre-smartphone era.) When we would not accede to whatever ridiculous demand a customer was having a tantrum about and they threatened to never order here again, my boss would just say, “Okay, fine, see you next week.”

He was usually right, too.