Employees deal with hysteric customers

From working through the pandemic to picking up the staffing shortage slack, it's safe to say that retail employees have seen it all. As the pandemic rolls into its third year, we now have to deal with customers "devolving into children".

Anna Luna who works at a local retail store recently had an encounter with a customer that she describes as being a part of the American Consumer rage of 2021. It all started when the customer walked into the already frayed store, thanks to the Omicron threat, looking for a certain type of blue cheese, Cambozola. When he couldn't find it in the store by himself, he asked an employee (Luna) for help. When the employee failed to locate the cheese as well, he demanded that's he go into the back and hunt it down, even look it up in the store computer. Nothing availed any luck, at this point the customer completely lost it and started throwing a temper tantrum because of cheese. Ann Luna says that she doesn't think his outburst was about cheese at all, cheese just happened to be the tipping point of a lot of pent-up anger. This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. Luna describes the general atmosphere of the store as "angry, confused and fearful." We have all been in the shoes of that customer recently, the pandemic exhaustion is wearing our patience thin. Unfortunately, off late, store employees and other such staff have been at the receiving end of this frustration. Every time you walk into a pharmacy scared that you might be exhibiting omicron symptoms only to be informed that they are out of thermometers or antigen tests, the pharmacy staff tends to become an embodiment of all the frustration and bad news. The same is the situation with restaurant staff who have to deal with customers annoyed by the rules surrounding vaccine cards and ID. We shouldn't even be talking about the plight of the credit card company operators who have to tell you that you have answered your security questions wrong. 

Most employees are of the opinion that customers behave like they haven't had to live through the same pandemic as well. 

Source: New York Times