When Government Makes Your Customer Service Job Worse

Photo by Mds08011, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Recently a bill was proposed in the California state legislature seeking to severely limit self-checkout options in grocery and other retail stores. If passed the law would require at least one staffed employee per every two self-checkout machines, limit all self-checkout transactions to 10 or fewer items, and require at least one regular cashier lane to be open at all times. Despite the claims of the bill’s sponsor and supporters, this seems more like a payoff to labor than an earnest attempt by the government to limit shoplifting. But as someone who manages a grocery store, my first thought was that, if passed and actually implemented, this would make the jobs of the self-checkout attendants more miserable.

Imagine you’re working at the self-checkout. One of the two machines you’re in charge of is blinking. The machine would not let the customer scan more items because they had already scanned 10 items. The customer angrily insists that the machine should let them scan more items because they’re just buying a bunch of the same things, what’s the difference anyway? You calmly explain that it’s state law and you can’t override the machine, so they’d have to process the transaction and start another one. The customer gets even angrier because their time is being wasted, and also two of the items are buy one get one free and they’d only scanned one of them so they wouldn’t get the free item if they’re on separate transactions. Meanwhile, one of your coworkers is politely trying to tell another customer who had blatantly ignored the large “10 items or fewer under state law” sign that they’d have to move to a regular cashier lane, but that customer says they’re already in the line and refuses to move. Much yelling is involved.

There are many downsides to working in customer service. The pay is often low. The hours are odd and seldom follow a 9-5 or any kind of regular schedule. You might be on your feet all day. During the height of the pandemic, you’re much more likely to be exposed to someone with the virus. But by far the worst part of the job, according to many people who have worked in customer service some time in their life, is getting yelled at by angry customers. You can’t yell back at them or walk away. Often, they’re actually right (not just “the customer is always right” right). It’s almost never your fault, but the customer wants to yell, and you’re the person in front of them, so they’re going to yell at you.

What makes a customer angry? Sometimes, it’s just a misunderstanding. Sometimes, they have irrational or unreasonable demands. Sometimes, it’s actually our fault. Technology doesn’t always work. We run out of product that was on sale. An associate was having a bad day and rolled their eyes and the customer noticed. And so on. And then sometimes, it’s because the government sets certain rules and policies that we have to follow. If a customer doesn’t like a certain store policy, I as a manager can and will sometimes ignore the policy to please the customer. But if the government tells us we must or can’t do certain things, we’re going to do what they say, even if customers get mad. I can bend store policy, but I can’t bend the law.

Earlier I mentioned the pandemic. During the pandemic, many states passed mask mandates requiring masks to be worn in public spaces. The reality, whether you were in favor of or opposed the mask mandate, was that enforcement often fell to customer service employees. I was very lucky to have been working in a store in a rich liberal town the entire time of the mask mandate in my state, where pretty much every customer shopping in my store was masked up, and we had very few issues.

But when a customer did walk in without a mask, it put us in a very awkward position. We are not cops, we do not have any enforcement powers. We can ask the customer to put on a mask, but we can’t make them. Some of them genuinely forgot it in their car and were very apologetic. Some just didn’t care. And then some were ideologically against it and they’d swear at you and try to debate you as if the mandate would end right then and there if I conceded that they were right. If they refused there’s really nothing we could do. We couldn’t put a hand on them or make them leave. In theory we could call the cops, but cops have better things to do than to show up at a store to tell someone to wear a mask.

And while the customer who didn’t want to wear a mask was yelling in your right ear, another customer angry about the first customer was yelling in your left ear. That customer really expected you to act like a cop and got angry if you didn’t. They want you to make the other customer put on a mask, or physically stop them from shopping and remove them from the store.

This probably happened less than once a month in my store. For some of my colleagues working in stores in other areas, this was a daily occurrence. Someone yelling at you for taking their freedom. Someone else yelling at you for trying to kill them. Every day for a year.

Another issue where a government rule leads to customers angry at us: people bringing their dogs in the store. You’re not supposed to bring your pets to the food store. They’re unsanitary, especially when people who think their dogs are their children put them in the child seat in the carriage. Store policy is you can’t have pets in the store, with one exception: service animals. We comply with the American Disabilities Act. And I personally think that’s fine; some people need a service animal and they’re never an issue since they’re all properly trained.

The problem is all the specific government rules we have to follow, and the people who take advantage of the law. Under the ADA we are required to allow service animals, but not emotional support animals. To determine whether an animal is a service animal we are allowed to ask whether the animal is a service animal and what tasks they perform. We are not allowed to ask about the person’s disability, evidence that the animal is a service animal or that it can perform the tasks, or that the animal wear an identifying vest or tag. The upshot of all these rules is that people know they can say their animal (usually a purse-sized dog) is a service animal and there’s nothing we can do about it, even if it’s obvious it’s just their pet and the person has no disabilities. You’ve probably seen stories of people bringing their exotic pets on airplanes–the same thing happens every day in my store.

Like with masks during the pandemic, we have people yelling at us at both ears. Customers with animals get indignant if you dare question them. Other customers will demand you do something about the first customer with the dog. They don’t like it when you tell them there’s nothing we can do once they say it’s a service animal. On rare occasions someone will call the local board of health.

I sometimes joke that my job would be great if there were no customers. It’s actually not that bad, and the customers do pay our salaries. But customer service jobs can be tough, and sometimes government rules and regulations, even if they’re good overall, make our jobs tougher.