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It goes without saying that customer service isn’t for everyone. Because honestly, working with people day in, day out can be grueling – even if they are the nicest people on earth. It doesn’t work for folk whose social battery is easily drained, nor for people who don’t enjoy building a rapport with other humans.

And if you’re not someone who is particularly good at regulating your emotions or staying calm under pressure, then dealing with emotional customers could just be your downfall.

Because as much as we might like to think that people are generally nice, working in customer service, you get to witness both ends of the kindness spectrum, usually on a daily basis. You meet lovely people, but also plenty of folk who are having a terrible day and decide to take it out on the person serving them.

And for the colleague of the guy in this story, one of those very people pushed him too far.

Read on to find out what happened.

Workplace freakout

Close to twenty years ago, I worked at a small hardware store in Massachusetts.

Most customers were just typical New Englanders (fast paced and uppity from a diet consisting mainly of Dunkin Donuts). Some customers, usually 10-20% of ’em, were nightmares.

Some of my coworkers were already cold, hardened misanthropes from dealing with the general public. Don’t get me wrong, I was cynical but I still tried to be pleasant and helpful to people.

One coworker, let’s call him Greg, was one bad interaction away from going postal.

Let’s see what working with Greg was like.

We usually worked weekends together and overall he was a hard worker, but he would vent non-stop about how much he hated the town, the people, the store, the boss, and anything else.

He would get finished dealing with a customer, they’d no more than leave the store, and he’d loudly yell something like “yeah, leave, don’t come back! Slip fall and break your spine on the ice you putrid *****!” He was always coming up with colourful curses for everyone.

One particularly crummy day we were getting inundated with customers looking for snow shovels.

We’d show them that they walked right by them, as they were on display outside and along the entire 30′ wall they walked by to ask us the question. The vein on the side of Greg’s forehead was about to explode.

Read on to find out what eventually caused Greg to flip out.

One customer started throwing a fit at him, might have been over price, and Greg had enough. He screamed out “you’re all ******* animals! All of you! Rahhh!!!”

He lifted up a bag of dog food over his head, bit it and split it in half, launching dog kibbles all over. He threw both halves at the nearby end display, knocked over a few shelves, and ran screaming down the center aisle, burst through the doors, and across the parking lot. Our boss walked over all nonchalant, holding his clipboard, and said “yeah he’s not coming back…”

Except, he did come back that night and rearranged the letters on the big display out front near the road to say “Greg Rules, **** [town].”

We didn’t know until the next day.

Well, if you’re going to quit your job, might as well do it in the most intense way possible, right?

Greg was clearly done with his job and this town, and he knew exactly how to make a dramatic exit.

Not the best for the business reputation, but for Greg’s reputation? That was a moment that would go down in history.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person admired Greg’s gall.

While others thought he quit in style.

Meanwhile, this Redditor had heard similar threats.

One can only wonder what was going through Greg’s head in this moment, but it’s pretty clear that there was a long amount of time leading up to this explosion in which Greg was deeply unhappy in his job. Or if not in the job itself, with the folk he was having to deal with day in, day out. It’s probably something that his manager should have picked up on beforehand – but then if he had, we wouldn’t have this story to hear about.

Let’s hope that Greg found a new career, and one that suited him much better. Because with a bit of luck and plenty of hard work, Greg could have built a much better life for himself – one in which he wasn’t constantly antagonized by customers or snapped at by rude folk in the store. It would be much better for his mental health, as well as his physical health, since this level of emotional turmoil really isn’t good for the body. But kudos to Greg. At least he left with a bang.