When you work in a retail position, you need to make sure that you are always available to help customers when they need it.

What would you do if you got an emergency call while at work saying that your pet got into an accident and you had to come to the vet immediately?

That is what happened to the young lady in this story, but the customer yelled at her for not giving her the service she needed.

Let’s read the whole story.

Never Take Personal Calls at Work

When I was 19 I bought my first house and my then boyfriend and I moved in together.

Literally the day we settled contracts on the house we put a deposit down for the puppy we had always wanted and had been researching and planning for for months.

We were so excited as we were both huge dog people, and once we had him he very quickly became a part of our family, in fact, he literally became like our first child.

Good managers are a huge benefit.

At the time I worked in a small retail store. The managers were fantastic, they loved me since I was always a hard worker, and they would make sure I was looked after. They would buy be lunch if I forgot to pack my own, bring me coffee every morning, and even sometimes sit with me at the end of the day and have a glass of wine together.

I would never take personal calls at work, and didn’t carry my mobile on me.

One day while I was serving a customer the work phone rang. Since there was often only one person working in the store, we were taught to excuse ourselves from the customer we were serving, answer the phone and ask to put the person calling on hold while we finished the face to face transaction.

I politely checked that this was ok with the customer I was serving and took the phone call. ME is Me, S is my sister and C is the customer.

Nobody wants to get this type of call.

ME “Thanks for calling XYZ Shop, would you mind if I pop you on hold for a moment?”

S “Meganwendy, it’s Sarah (my sister), you need to put down what you are doing and come to the vets right now.”

I remember going ice cold, I couldn’t process what was happening, my dog wasn’t even 1 yet and I couldn’t lose him.

ME “Please just tell me he is going to be ok. Just tell me he isn’t dead!”

S “Just come now please.”

At this point I was crying, shaking and trying to do my best to compose myself. I apologised to the customer I was serving and tried to explain that there was an emergency. I started trying to finish the customer’s transaction but could hardly even press the buttons on the cash register.

Wow, this customer is heartless.

C “Perhaps if you didn’t take personal calls at work there wouldn’t be an issue”.

My manager had been working in the office out the back and must of overheard my phone conversation because he came out to make sure everything was ok. He didn’t even question what the emergency was, he just told me it’s ok, he would help the customer, I should leave now.

As I was urgently grabbing my bags ready to run out of the store I was trying to tell my manager where I was up to in the transaction.

For the 20 seconds it took to explain this the customer was rolling her eyes and tapping her foot impatiently.

As I am heading out the doors I hear the customer angrily say to my manager, C “Young people these days just have no idea about customer service!”

Absolutely heartbreaking.

By the time I got to the vet my dog had died.

I won’t go into details but I will always carry the grief of that loss with me.

For those of you who aren’t dog people, that’s ok, but as a woman who has fertility issues and may never be able to have children, my pup was my baby.

I can never understand the attitude of that lady. To have to wait a few extra minutes for some insignificant transaction, having just overheard a phone call where the person serving you has literally said “please tell me he isn’t dead!“.

Just because we are serving you doesn’t mean that we aren’t human beings too.

Wow, this customer is the worst. Customer service is important, but it is far from the most important part of someone’s life!

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit say about it.

She should have made it her problem.

What is wrong with people?

Wow, why would she say this!?

This would have been awful.

Her husband shouldn’t have done this at her work.

This customer was heartless.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.