Working Well: When holidays present rude customers, taking breaks and the high road preserve peace
The December holidays are supposed to be a time of joyful celebration
NEW YORK — The December holidays are supposed to be a time of joyful celebration, but the season can be especially grueling for the millions of people who work in retail stores, staff airline counters and field complaints coming into call centers.
Instead of compassion or good cheer, service sector workers often encounter rude behavior from frazzled shoppers, irate customers demanding instant satisfaction and travelers fuming about flight delays and cancellations. And they must do their jobs to the mind-numbing soundtrack of nonstop Christmas music.
“Something happens around November and people just forget their manners,” Kathryn Harper, senior bookseller at New York bookstore McNally Jackson, said. “Please and thank you go a huge way. Being rude to us or snippy to us is not going to make us go any faster. It’s not going to make the thing that’s out of stock magically appear.”
Harper joined other members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union last month for a virtual news conference where they made a plea for the public's patience and self-control during the hectic weeks ahead.
“There’s a lot of disgruntled attitudes flying around this time of the year,” Cynthia Russo, who has worked at Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan for nearly two decades, said. “I try to kill them with kindness, but yet I take a firm stand with not being abused verbally, because that can happen and it’s sad. My favorite line is, ‘Let’s start over.'"
Dealing with a difficult person is never easy. These are other strategies that veteran workers use to defuse tense situations and to preserve their own peace of mind.
Taking a break for five or 10 minutes can help a worker who
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