The customer is always right, huh…?

You’ve probably heard that phrase before if you ever worked in a restaurant or a store…and it can be infuriating!

But this person decided to do things their own way and they had quite a story to tell!

Check it out!

“The customer is always right”.

“About 9 years ago I worked at a food service job within a retail store.

This job was absolutely horrible, as I got written up for anything and everything I did.

If I took my breaks, write up. If I didn’t take my breaks, write up.

They had legit excuses for missing work.

I called out once with a doctor’s note saying that I absolutely could not work, as my illness was highly contagious, write up (this was my first time ever calling out, and I gave 48 hours notice.

The second, and last time, was for my grandma’s funeral, which I had requested off and was denied, I was written up then too). Any excuse my supervisor could find to write me up, he did. Being in high school at the time, I took this very personally and assumed that I had done something wrong.

I worked there for 2 years, taking each write up as a “learning opportunity”. However, I finally reached a point where I recognized that it wasn’t my fault, and the malicious compliance began.

Rules are rules!

In this job there were add-ons, and these add-ons came with an upcharge. I had customers complain to me constantly about not wanting to be charged extra, but normally they would just pay it and move on. One customer, however, refused to pay for the add-on, but wanted it anyway.

I pointed to the sign which said that it would cost extra, and tried my best to politely explain to her that I can’t give it to her without charging her. She demanded to speak to my manager. I happily called the manager over, as at that time the leader was also my area supervisor (each day there was an overall leader which would cycle, but each department had their own supervisor as well). I’ll call him Bob.

Bob was employed through the retail store specifically. Regardless, I thought that surely Bob would have my back, as he knows the most about the rules that I had to follow. I was very, very wrong. After listening to the customer, Bob proceeded to yell at me in front of her, stating “the customer is always right, and you are not paid to argue with her. Give her what she wants and DO NOT charge her for any of it!” He also informed her that I would be written up for this, and I was.

Whatever you say!

From that moment on, whenever a customer complained about having to pay for an add-on, I didn’t charge them for it. If they demanded their items for free, stating that they didn’t like them or had a bad experience in the past, I gave it to them for free. After all, the customer says that they shouldn’t have to pay for it, so who was I to argue?

Of course, he meant that I shouldn’t “argue” to the point of the manager being called, but he didn’t specify and I didn’t want to be written up for it again, nor did I care to follow a “do as I mean, not as I say” policy anymore.

It didn’t take long for the people who worked in the actual retail store to learn that they could also get add-ons for free if they complained about it, as at the time that they were ordering, they were technically customers.

This was adding up.

Since each add-on cost between 60 cents and a dollar, and most customers wanted more than one add-on, the company was losing an average of 2-3 dollars per transaction on the add-ons alone, not even considering the customers who got their entire order for free.

Of course, 2-3 dollars doesn’t seem like much, but it was enough to catch the attention of my district supervisor, who I will call Ann. Ann was employed by the food service company, and her job was to oversee the branches that were inside retail stores.

Ann was very nice and respected the employees who worked with her company, regardless of if they weren’t employed directly by her company, as was my case. She first asked Bob about why our location appeared to be less profitable than other locations, and less profitable than it had been a few months previously.

He tried to pin it on me, saying that I was stealing from the company by giving my friends and coworkers free items. Ann, understanding how serious of an accusation that was, insisted on speaking with me alone.

I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on.

I expected to be fired, but she instead asked me why profits had gone down. I explained to her what Bob had told me about the customer always being right, and how I had gotten written up and didn’t want to be written up again, so I followed his instructions word for word.

For the first time since starting this job, someone took my side! She agreed that not charging for those add-ons would explain the loss she was seeing, and that how Bob handled the situation was unprofessional and entirely against policy.

Having Bob accuse me of stealing to protect himself was my last straw, and I put in my two weeks notice that same day. HR had apparently taken notice to how Bob was treating me, as her exact words were, “it’s about time, I’m glad you’re finally standing up for yourself.”

With my consent, she altered some of the dates to make my end date be a week earlier than it should have been since the schedule had not been written yet, to this day I think of her as my guardian angel.

Bob got his…

Shortly after my last shift, I was informed by my friends that Bob no longer worked there as well. Ann was so upset with him that she called his supervisor and launched an investigation into his behavior. As it turns out, I was not the only one he would write up without a legitimate reason.

They were also incredibly upset that he directly caused an unnecessary loss in profits. He could not blame me for it, as it was his words, and many people corroborated that he had said the same to them at one point or another.

I was just the first to maliciously comply with his request, thus bringing his behavior to the attention of someone in a higher position than him.

He was fired, effective immediately.”

Check out what people had to say about this.

This individual talked about how it works at their job.

Another Reddit user talked about this well-known mantra…

One individual thinks they know the original quote…

Another reader made some good points.

And this person talked about a slimy manager they used to have…

Is the customer always right?

Seems like the answer is, “NO!”

Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.