Please Don’t Shit On Me Because I Work At WalMart

What makes some people think it’s okay to treat customer service workers with little or no respect? I work at the customer service desk at my local WalMart. I have to say, however, that for the most part people are pleasant and polite. But every so often you get an abusive and rude customer who thinks it’s okay to treat you like shit. I had just such an experience this past weekend.

It’s WalMart’s policy to issue a store credit to customers returning merchandise without a receipt. It is also their policy to refund the most current price of an item when a customer doesn’t have a receipt. This, to me, makes perfect sense. Without a receipt, there’s no way to verify the amount the customer actually paid for the item. We have no way of knowing if the item was purchased at a sale price or not.  We have no way of knowing when the item was even purchased.

So, having said all this, a woman came to the customer service desk this past Sunday to return two pairs of jeans. She claimed they were Christmas presents and she didn’t have the receipt. Fine. No problem. That is until they rang up lower than the original price. She became indignant and insisted she receive the price that was on the tag. I attempted to explain that, without a receipt, we could not be sure if the jeans had been on sale at the time of purchase and it was WalMart’s policy to refund the current price. Well, she told me that if she wasn’t refunded the price on the tag she’d get , “all pyscho bitch” on me. Uh-oh. I had a fruitcake on my hands. And a violent fruitcake. I had no idea what her definition of “psycho bitch” was but I knew for damn sure I wasn’t getting  paid enough to find out. I immediately suggested she speak to a manager and promptly called one over. He explained the same WalMart policy and she grabbed the offending jeans and said she intended to write to the local newspaper to report the unfair policy WalMart had inflicted upon her. Yeah right nutcase. The paper’s really gonna report that. I highly doubted she knew how to read and/or write but whatever. As long as she got out of my face.

She leaned over the counter and said to me, “gimme a bag, bitch”. The manager said “excuse me?!” and she just stared at the both of us. Real classy chick. She didn’t look too bright. In fact, she looked like a low-class, ignorant, dirtbag so I wasn’t too offended by the remark when considering where it came from. My Mom has a saying, “take it from where it comes”. In this case I wasn’t about to get upset by a comment made by an ignorant moron so I put her stupid jeans (that were probably too small for her and that was the reason for the return) and handed them to her. The other customers looked amused, shocked and disgusted by the display.

So, what makes someone think it’s okay to call people they don’t even know a foul name? Did she know me personally? Was I a bitch simply because I was following WalMart’s policy? All I know is she’s damn lucky I wasn’t a waitress and she was an abusive customer or she’d be getting my special sauce. How would I have reacted if this scenerio had played out in the streets? Probably quite differently. Would I have gotten my ass kicked? Maybe, maybe not, but I know for damn sure I wouldn’t have let her get away with calling me a bitch.