Dear Customers, Maybe Retail Sucks Because of You
I said what I said
There has been a lot of blame in the past 5 years. I’ve read a lot of comments online akin to, “What’s wrong with customer service these days? These young people don’t want to work!” Every generation thinks the younger ones aren’t doing it right.
Work, life, whatever.
But there are a couple of things at play here.
One, retail companies have mostly killed customer service because they pile on tasks and prioritize speed. The customer experience suffers because the company wants people to act like robots and get tasks done quickly. And oh yeah, help customers who come in.
This is a terrible way to run a business and treat employees, but sadly, this has become the norm.
The other piece here is our society.
People don’t want to admit that the retail store environment sucks because customers are just jerks now. But it’s kinda true.
It’s a drag to always point to 2020 and the pandemic, but that’s where the major shift happened. I mean, before 2020, we would see a rude person every now and then—maybe once a week. But after 2020, we dealt with several mean people every day.
I thought the shift to entitlement and this uncaring disposition would fade after a few years, but it hasn’t. People are more isolated now. They spend more time online than ever before. Regular-ass people have developed this main character energy.
They think the world should stop for them because they’re an influencer and they have a lot of followers.
Cool. But that doesn’t mean a whole lot.
You can curate an image online. That’s nice. But how do you treat people in public that you don’t know? That’s where we’ve gone off the rails.
I had a retail leader reach out to me earlier this week. She was struggling to stay motivated. She is tenured. She knows her shit. She gets recruited on the regular because companies realize her talents.
She mentioned the shift after 2020. “How do I keep my head up?” she asked me.
When I asked her what specifically she meant (because it could be so many reasons), this is what she sent me.
You are not ready for her answer.
Here it is.
It’s the entitlement. Lack of awareness. Lack of empathy, apathy, just the lack of humanity. I can be tending the fitting room on a busy Saturday, getting my ass handed to me, having five rolling racks of go-backs full and my return processing table piled high, sweating my balls off, and the customers will still come out with a wad of clothing and ask, “Do I give this to you?”
I want to say, “No, put it back where you found it, were you raised in a fucking barn? I am drowning." But instead I say, “Of course, I’ll take them from you; is there anything else that I can assist you with?”
People are just letting their children run wild, and they’re not even watching them.
Then they panic and scream at us when they can’t find the child. It happens so damn much; it’s wild. And when this happens, it pulls us off customer service, fitting rooms, and cashiering so we can go through the whole stupid-ass protocol for missing kids. Then the kid shows up in a rack laughing his ass off.
Then the parent is just like, “Well, kids will be kids." Meanwhile, my line percentage that I work so hard to schedule to and have people in place is high because we have to have all hands on deck to search. The fitting room is piled up because no one has been able to manage it because, again, looking for said child. Blah blah blah.
So then when we tweak the rules to help mitigate these issues, the customers lose their minds. Like instead of a 10-garment limit for the fitting room, we say 5. And I kid you not, most of the time they pull out the bare minimum and hand me the others and say, “I don’t really want these. I was just going to try them on for a TikTok.”
So my fitting rooms are backed up and blown up for no reason other than people being unaware of life other than their own. Does any of this make sense? I feel like I just vomited my brains, lol.
Yeah, it does make sense. I know because I saw how customers' attitudes changed toward the pandemic. They were right. You were wrong. How dare you ask them to do something?
It sucks.
So, if we could all get back to some kind of common decency, that would be greeeaaaaaat.
If someone in a retail store talks to you, reply. A greeting or “I’m just roaming around" will suffice.
Yes, shop. Try things on. But don’t create extra work for people for no reason just because you’re trying to keep up your main character energy. It’s not cool. Don’t destroy fitting rooms because you’re making TikTok videos.
I used to have these ten-year-olds shop in my store on the weekends. They thought it would be hilarious if the boys tried on girls' clothes and vice versa. They got away with it a few times, but we caught on.
During one very busy Saturday, I saw them standing in line at the fitting rooms. I took one look at what they were holding, and I said, “Not today. Go put it away.” And they did. They knew they were being silly.
Also, please watch your children. I’ve also yelled at kids who threw our merchandise at each other for fun. I yelled at them in front of their parents.
It takes a village, and I am not about to let kids throw merchandise at each other. Like—for so many reasons.
The customer service environment is really tough right now. Part of that is because humans have forgotten how to treat each other in real life. It’s not all the company’s fault or the employees' fault.
It could be your fault.
Because it’s not about you. It’s about us.
If we don’t remember that, we will never survive.
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Kit Campoy is an accomplished retail expert and author. She leverages her two decades of leadership experience to inform and inspire. Kit is now booking panel speaking sessions for Q3 of 2025. Book a call on her website today!
A lot of the customers behavior is due to the fact that they know all they have to do is threaten to call Corporate and we as employees/managers are powerless to enforce anything!
Those are some crazy stories that point out clearly the pettiness and rudeness retail workers face. If only those people could be backed up by corporate, we could start a kindness movement needed everywhere.
And I think you are right about when this general public behavior began.