Fed up...

My afternoon was bookended by a stranger shouting at me at work and another stranger being incredibly nice. The 2nd person restored a little faith that people CAN be nice.

I've encountered rather a lot of unpleasant behaviour from customers over the years; perhaps this is just part of the job or perhaps I've sadly got used to these things happening but it's still upsetting, unsettling and sometimes frightening. I generally try to let things like this man shouting at me wash over my head (after all these people are quite often angry people anyway - it turned out he'd also shouted at someone over something trivial in another shop). Maybe I'm just fed up and incredibly tired having worked 50 hours already this week (with the weekend still to come) but today I felt quite upset for the rest of the afternoon. I found myself in tears (not in front of him as this is what I guess he was aiming for) and having to explain why I was upset to another customer who came in just after he'd left.

I mulled over what happened and momentarily considered that I'd perhaps caused it through the way I'd reacted to him and what I'd said, but of course this was nonsense; he was an angry person with a bad attitude (he even shouted at his friend when he tried to calm him down). I've dealt with so many different people from all walks of life, and lots of difficult customers, from clients when I worked at Centre 33 to very rude people of all classes in the shop (being difficult has very little to do with background in that way - the only difference is one set swear a lot more, the others are rude in different ways!). I've never had a complaint about my customer service and I get on very well with most of my customers (which I'm sure the 'regulars' would attest to). It just shows how that 1 person can spoil your day, you just have to try not to focus on the negative, especially if 'focusing on the negative' is something you've struggled with in the past. (I'm pro 'looking on the bright side' of things these days...)

It doesn't really matter what made the guy shout and swear, after all it's not the worst thing that's happened to me whilst working there. Having someone who was off his head on smack threaten to kill me and firebomb the shop because I accused him of shoplifting (quite rightly) or being threatened with a broken bottle (to name just 2 of many horrible incidents) might make it into the top 5 but not today's incident. It's not even the first time this week I've been sworn at; the horrible midsummer fair is currently in situ which always causes trouble and I asked to see ID from a bunch of girls (the youngest of whom looked about 14) and was called a bitch because none of them had any and I refused to serve them. It's more what he said that upset me; it was deliberately targeted to upset me (and unfortunately it worked today). My question is why do men (I say men because it usually is men that do this) attack your appearance? This guy actually came back 5 minutes later and shouted it again through the door for good measure. What he said upset me more than being called a bitch by those girls, in fact that didn't bother me a great deal. Perhaps, as I said, today in particular I was prone to getting stressed by things or maybe it's simply because a big bloke is more intimidating than a bunch of 14 year olds...

Later on an incredibly nice chap was chatting to me about how he was celebrating Ghana reaching the 2nd round of the World Cup and bizarrely about Sir Isaac Newton which made me smile. And just before I left this evening one of my favourite customers came in; we call him "the be lucky guy" because he says this without fail as he's leaving the shop. He makes everyone in the shop smile; Jim who I work with says he feels lucky all week after this guy has been in...