Black Friday: behind the scenes
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When Black Friday rolls around, the one thing on every dedicated shopper’s mind is the myriad of bargains behind nearly every automatic sliding door. The odd, yet widely accepted post-Thanksgiving tradition is riddled with the essence of modern-day consumerism.
When those doors open, nothing else matters except the 72-inch flat-screen television that some father of three has been lusting after since the Best Buy commercial he saw during Monday Night Football. While this guy — and a variety of other characters — sprint through department stores at 6 a.m. on a Friday, employees who have been up and stocking since four hate their guts.
The customer service industry is a tough one. Whether it be retail, food or tech support, chances are every employee that serves the public has gone home at night grinding their teeth and cursing the patron who ruined their shift.
Black Friday is no different. If anything, it is worse. The last thing anybody wants to be doing after a Thanksgiving with their families — or cat — is heading straight to work to prepare every inch of the store for a hoard of materialistic shoppers, penny-pinchers and Christmas-preppers.
The deals may be great, but that does not give anyone the right to treat an establishment and its employees as if it were their own.
One of the most inconvenient rules of being a public servant is that the customer is always right. This way, no matter the field of work, what the customer says more often than not ultimately goes.
“Don’t like the steak? We’ll take it back. Shirt has a hole in it? Return it.” Customers have a majority of the control simply because their money is what provides employees with their paychecks. This results in the necessary evil we all know as capitalism.
With this, nothing gives anyone the right to treat employees with disrespect simply because they are doing their jobs while trying to retain a personal identity. Uniforms, hours, expectations and authority chains strip a person of how they are used to going about their daily lives and make it difficult to find a balance.
Being a courteous person is a general rule of thumb for humanity, and the cashier trying to complete your complicated transaction deserves it too.
Ensuring the customer’s happiness is a given, but it should not be taken for granted. While we may serve the food and ring up the purchases, that does not give anyone the right to treat employees as if they are inferior.
Customer service is both physically and mentally taxing for those in the industry, and without it, asinine customers would not have brand new Cuisinarts to return months after the 30-day policy.
Here is some food for thought: this year, keep the Thanksgiving tradition going just a little longer. Be grateful for the side of the cash register that customers get to stand on and the gadgets and gizmos they get to go home with while we stick around to do inventory and mop up the shoe marks.
Read on jackcentral.org