An old lady at the DMV made me rethink how I treat rude customers

She waited 45 minutes in line at the Columbus DMV just to tell the clerk 'your generation is why everything is broken'. I was about to snap at her, but then she pulled out a photo of herself working a register in 1987 and said 'I used to be you, honey'. It hit different because she wasn't mad at the clerk, she was mad at herself for missing those days. Anyone else have a customer who was really just angry about getting older?

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1 Comment

dylan2656h ago

Treat it like a script flip. I had one guy yelling about wait times and I just asked him to show me how he'd do my job faster. He went quiet, then started giving me actual tips from his old retail days. Now I open with that whenever someone starts ranting, just say "sounds like you've done this before" and watch them soften up. More often than not they just want to feel useful, not actually vent at you. Works like 80% of the time, rest are just jerks and you gotta let it roll off.