I went to Walmart this evening. Brady took the kids to grab a few things on our list while I waited in line at the courtesy desk to return dreaded parcel #1. If you don’t remember, well over half of my order was either damaged or wrong.
It was a crazy day for the location we picked. For some reason, very few tills were open and the lines were long. As in Christmas long. It was pretty brutal, but what can you do, right? Everyone is short staffed once in a while.
I was third in line at customer service. The woman who was currently being helped had brought back a grocery bag full of clothing. The employee was trying to put the return through, and was having some difficulty. She explained to the customer that the codes on the receipt, while similar, were different than the codes on the items. While I would assume that most stores would turn her away, she rather said that she would absolutely put the return through, but the refund would have to be on a gift card rather than cash. Well, the customer was FURIOUS, and LOUD about it. She began chucking stuff back in her bag and saying she’d find someone else who could help her, and saying the employee just wouldn’t help her because there was a lineup. And she stomped off.
The next person in line (the woman before me) went up to put through her return, and I made eye contact with the person behind me. We both rolled our eyes and, no word of a lie, in unison, we said “I guess you can’t please everyone!” We agreed that she would get over it, and that maybe she should be embarrassed by her behaviour.
When I got up to the desk for my turn, I noticed that the employee was crying. She was trying really hard to blow past it, but as she looked at my receipt, her tears were dripping on it. I quietly reassured her that no one else in the line was upset, and she had been unreasonable in her response. She tried to smile at me, but couldn’t even muster it. She finally said “I could have helped her if she hadn’t stormed off like that!” I fully agreed with her, and told her as much. I figured it was actually generous for her to help our someone whose receipt didn’t match her items! Anyway, I returned my stuff and went to find the fam.
The reality of the lines being quite so long was pretty brutal, so we snuck past them and actually went back to customer service to ring our order through. I know, its kind of cheating, but it was already past the kids bedtime so I figured this one time it would be ok. We were maybe second or third in line again, which was so much better than thirtieth. However, we couldn’t line up right away, as a crazed woman had stepped into the customer service area and was waving her arms around, screaming abut how backed up everything was and how they needed to get some supervisors out there. She stormed off after throwing a sufficient amount of curse words at the two customer services reps. I’m sorry, I don’t want to put anyones job down, but did she really think they had any authority to assign anyone to go anywhere? At all?!?! I’m thinking not so much. Once she left, we lined up and Laela charmed the customer who entered the line behind us, as she always does. Moments later, the crazyface woman was back, screaming for their attention. She pushed her cart of dog food and flowers up to the desk and yelled “When you have time, put this away.” Once again, the people in line all looked around at each other and agreed that people were nuts.
So this was the grumpiest Walmart day I’ve ever witnessed. Yes, it was frustratingly backed up, and understaffed, and its right before the long weekend and people are rushing. But that doesn’t make it ok to just humiliate people by screaming at them in public about things they have no control over! The likelihood that it will get you what you want is almost nonexistent, you’ll look ridiculous, and make someone feel really dumb, and really really small.
Don’t be that person. Appreciate people who are solely there to help you with your grievances. Its a really hard job.
Or just appreciate people in general. Be nice to people.