In light of Retail Drone #37's recent comment about a corporate retail doctor's nonsensical bullshit post that reads like a corporate blueprint for Retail Droid Assimilation, Former Retail Slave Barista, sounds off on the subject. We all try to be nice, but some times it can be dangerous:
Lesson Learned: Niceness Kills.
I am a Retail Slave currently in recovery. I've left it behind for school, but still wake up in cold sweats from traumatic nightmares.
One nightmare is about the one man I shouldn't have been nice to. I was a barista at a cafe in a bookstore. The customers were all terrible. They were either snobbish college students who looked down their noses at me or house wives who counted the calories in the bottled water while letting their children stick absolutely anything and everything in their filthy mouths.
But still, I always tried to keep a smile one my face.
A very strange thirty-ish man came up to me to order his coffee. As I rang him up, he looked at me intently and asked, "What is your philosophy on life?"
I told him I believe in karma, like any retail employee. (Honestly, the only way I get through some shifts is by remembering that crazy bitch who returned her coffee five times is going to get hers one day.)
He continued to ask me questions about my outlook on life, to which I smiled and gave short, cheery replies. I handed him his drink and expected he would be on his way. I was wrong.
For the next ten minutes he continued to ask me really inappropriate, personal questions. I tried to evade them or give vague, non-committal replies but there wasn't much I could do. There was no other employee in the cafe (although technically no one is ever supposed to work alone) and with no other customers around, I couldn't see an escape route. Finally, I faked a call on the walkie talkie so I could run away into the back room.
Of course, that was only the beginning.
The next day, a man started calling the store trying to find out when I would be working. Managers and employees refused to give him my schedule (thank god!) but the calls persisted. He would call several times a day, sometimes more than once an hour. He would ask to speak to me and if I wasn't there he would try to find out when my next shift was. He started coming around more often, but luckily not when I was at the store. My wonderful co-workers started to worry and so every night someone would walk me to my car to make sure he wasn't lurking around.
But then he got really crazy.
He came into the cafe on a day I wasn't in the store. The barista there, M, politely informed him I was not working that day and she could not say when I would be there. He lost his shit! He started screaming at her and threw his books to the floor. He SCREAMED that they were all conspiring to hide me from him.
He knew I was there and I wanted to see him. So he JUMPED OVER THE COUNTER and ran into the back room! There he surprised another barista, L, who promptly dropped about five sandwiches on the floor when she saw the crazed man in the stock room and started screaming at the top of her lungs. Around this point, he realized I really wasn't there and took off running.
I was now really scared, but our regional manager said we couldn't ban him because he bought too much merchandise. That's right. If you buy enough of a product, you are free to harass and possibly assault employees. Luckily, my much nicer store manager had a chat with the guy the next time he came in.
A very, very forceful chat that made sure I never had to see the guy again.
But I have learned my lesson.
Be surly! Be rude! Be mean! Be nasty!
Or else be harassed by some pathetic weirdo you shouldn't have smiled at.