#lulzy's customer service adventures

[forthelulzy]

Lulzy’s Customer Service Adventures, Volume One

(life update and horror stories under the cut)

I’m very, very close to getting a promotion to manager at the theater (GM just needs word back from corporate the home office), which means I am very, very close to being able to ditch the uniform shirt forever. Yay! No more washing the popcorn/sweat combo out after every shift, 5 days a week.

But it also means I’ll be on the front lines of customer service. It seems like every winter (and I’ve been at this for 5 going on 6 of them) there’s an uptick of entitled, stressed and just plain rude people here. It does make sense, as PFD season means people have extra money, and late-year like Frozen (ouch) and Star Wars (double ouch) means people who maybe only go to to the movies once in a while will be stampeding for the ticket counter.

I’m nervous, of course, but let’s face it: I’ve been here long enough to have dealt personally with most of the common complaints concerns as a regular employee before the manager arrived. I’ll just have the authority soon to say pretty much the exact same things I’ve been saying all along, and hopefully actually get listened to.

(like if I, as an employee, tell you that your full-size duffel and suitcase are too big for the bag policy, and you then ask for a manager who is going to come and tell you the exact same thing I just said, just with a suit and tie, and then any only then do you believe that I was telling the truth, you’d better believe I’m going to be happy that I can now save us all the trouble. And stepford-smile at you the whole time.)

There’s going to be outliers, of course; people who even upper management roll their eyes at. People who knock over the merch rack because the ticket prices went up for the first time in years (by a whole 25 cents)... people who scream and threaten to get you fired because you told their brat child to please not stick their hands in the bulk candy, it’s flu season (one of the reasons prices rise is that we have to waste the entire bin when that happens, over a hundred dollars worth of candy because people think we’re a daycare)... people who bring in a flimsy paper popcorn tub from a YEAR AGO and try to get a free refill because their cheap ass thinks that’s even remotely sanitary (yes, I could tell that it was from over a year ago, it had a design on it that we only used for a 3-month period in spring of last year. the benefits of having been here so long I guess)...

But the crown jewel of WTF customers in my heart will probably never be toppled (I hope):

The lady who called me a pig because the popcorn line was taking too long with a grand total of three people ahead of her - and proceeded to snatch the popcorn I’d made for her off the counter, drop it on the floor (by accident?), then threw the mostly empty bag at me. All. While. Oinking. Because apparently I was the pig.

That happened in my first month of working there. I’m so, so glad I didn’t quit at that point.

Here’s to a new era of Lulzy’s what-were-they-thinking customers!

#long post #lulzy's customer service adventures #update #I still think about oinking lady #wonder who's she terrorizing nowadays #fun fact: ickle baby Lulzy did not have a thick skin at that point #(or ever really) #she cried #she started bawling her eyes out and the other customers rushed to her defense #so it turned out ok #I may complain about the outliers but #the vast majority of my customers? #cause no trouble at all #and a few are really nice!