Winning Friends and Influencing People

So I'm at work, having another lovely day when I get a customer looking for a certain CD. Apparently on several occasions he was told to come back because we'd have it in "next wednesday".

Well of course I checked to see if we had the CD and we didn't. I explained to him that I couldn't say whether we'd be getting any more. CD's are vendor managed, not store managed. So I can't place orders and I have no way of knowing what inventory is coming. At which point my customer became rather angry. Which is understandable because he should have been told this the first time he came in, not repeatedly told to come back next week.

However, my sympathy for him rapidly diminished when he started demanding to know why he had been told that and saying that it was unacceptable that I couldn't tell him whether we would get any more of the CD or not. Well tough. I'm not a manager. I'm not even a department manager. I don't set store policy and I have no input in store policy.

Bitching and whining at me doesn't improve his chances of getting his CD. It just irritates the person who was attempting to help him. Unfortunately this is a pattern I see again and again at work.

Here's a tip. Don't rant and rave at the person who's helping you. It isn't their fault and all your doing is making it less likely they'll help in future. If you have a problem, address it with someone who can actually do something. Thats a manager, not a cashier or stocker.