People love to complain that customer service is terrible, but they rarely stop to question their own behavior.

Imagine hearing the same complaint every day, and then realizing that it’s actually the other way around? Would you just chuckle to yourself? Or would you set out with an experiment to prove your point?

In the following story, one retail cashier finds himself facing this decision and decides to prove his point. Here’s what he found out.

“Customer service sucks now!” Actually, no, and I can prove it with science.

I’ve pretty much had it with hearing that customer service is so bad.

So, last night I ran an experiment to see just how many customers I rang up who couldn’t even find it in themselves to return my greeting.

My register counted 199 sales over a standard 8-hour shift.

The results were just as he expected.

Here are the results: 38 customers said “Hello” back/greeted in some fashion. 2 were regulars who are always chill and say what’s up to us. 2 transactions were me ringing up a coworker, per company policy.

So, that leaves a whopping 157 customers who couldn’t be bothered to say hello back to a stranger behind a counter trying to be friendly.

See, us service employees (generally) aren’t the ones being jerks. The customers are.

Wow! That really says something.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about this.

Here’s someone who gets it.

This person proves the opposite point.

Here’s an interesting point.

This reader has other ideas.

If his count is accurate, he definitely proved his point.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.