I was in line at McDonald’s the other day (yes, vegetarians can eat there – I “eat” the milkshakes) when a surly man walked right in front of me as I pulled up to the take-out window. He tossed his sandwich back through the window at the waitress and said, “There’s no f-ing tomatoes on this f-ing sandwich, and that b-tch (pointing to the first window teller) is a f-ing liar.” The waitress pointed to the sign saying that thanks to the tomato recall that everyone on the planet except this silver-tongued devil knew about, she couldn’t give him a tomato on his sandwich because she didn’t have any to give him. His response (by now predictable): “That’s bu!!sh!t. I saw on the f-ing news that McDonald’s is serving the f-ing things again.” (Note: I really wish I was exaggerating the language here.)
By now the manager was involved and he asked the man to calm down, and through that barrage of cursing about the waitress who’d handed him over to the manager (“you need to hire nicer b-tches”), explained again that the store had no tomatoes as of yet and couldn’t accommodate him. To which the man said, “Give me my f-ing money back. Now.” Then as he parted, he left them with this reassuring thought, “I ain’t coming back to this f-ing store again, and neither are any of my friends.” To which everyone within earshot sighed relief.
The store handled it professionally. The manager stepped in when the waitress had had enough abuse. The waitress didn’t call names or respond to his verbal diarrhea, though losing a customer like that could only be a bonus for the store. What she did do was consider the young children sitting inside and playing outside on the jungle gym and removed any additional confrontation from the situation. The manager did the same, practically racing to give the man his money, and anything else, in order to get him to go away.
Was the customer right? In his words, f- no. But telling him so would have surely escalated an already irate person. Not knowing if he had any internal brakes (my guess? Not at all), they didn’t want to push him into whatever new level of irrational behavior he hadn’t quite reached.
While I’ve never had a client use such illustrious language on me, I have had a few who have questioned my abilities, my integrity, and my intelligence. You’ll have them too, if you haven’t already (I’m reminded of how Kristen once faced a person who questioned the frequency of her sexual encounters). How you handle them will make or break you. Mind you, people like our Rhodes-scholar-of-the-McDonald’s-drive-through won’t get or even hear your snappy comeback or you equally intriguing barrage of truck-stop verbiage, mostly because you don’t matter to a narcissist with a potty mouth. And they so enjoy the verbal warfare. It’s wrestling with a pig, and pigs LOVE the mud. So don’t go there. Instead, find a professional, quick way to sever such relationships. And please. NEVER return nasty phone calls or respond to foul emails. Disengage, detach, move on. Put that energy into paying clients who can behave respectfully toward you.
What’s your worst client encounter?
I once took revenge on a particularly nasty client by using high-tech. It was a dozen or so years ago, and I’d just gotten a Mac that could do text-to-speech synthesis. One afternoon, after a harrowing phone call with this client jerk, I typed a long diatribe about what a waste of skin he was, foul language and all. My wife and I then sat around, doubled over with laughter, as the computer proceeded to trash-talk the guy into next week in its reedy, robotic voice. The most comical part was how the computer tripped up over unintended dipthongs. Apparently, the guy was quite a “sheeth-edd”. Classic.
Oh my gawd. That’s just hysterical!
What was the fallout from that, William?
F-ing tomato entitlement. Buy some potting soil, dude.
I hope my luck with compatible clients ne’er run dry. Satisfied customers so far.
Sounds like a disturbing encounter, Lori. Reminds me of some days when I delivered pizza. Yes, let’s move on.
I could be wrong, but I think he’s saying that he shared the nasty diatribe privately with his wife… got it out of his system by having the weird computer voice “say it” for him.
The voices that come out of those Mac Simpletext programs are hilarious.
That’s all good advice, until it turns physical.
If and when it does that . . .they’re scraping the other guy off the pavement for at least six weeks.
That’s a case where I take no prisoners.
Besides, isn’t Mickey D’s suspending tomatoes right now due to the salmonella outbreak?
Honestly, if I was the manager, I’d have called the cops and had him arrested.
As my mother says, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye…
I would’ve done the same, Devon. They handled it promptly and got the jerk out of their hair. Cops being involved would’ve prolonged the pain, but honey, if someone tossed a sandwich at me, he’d be wearing that sandwich along with a few other things – mostly my indignation.
One thing I’ve learned since moving to a more populated area, though – you never know how close someone is to snapping. Best to give them space. I cannot tell you how tempted I was to hit the gas, though.
As a public librarian, my clients can be most interesting in their choice of expression. Fortunately, we do have a Standard of Behavior for users that states that swearing is not permisable (sp) and guards who can get there within a few minutes to remove said potty-mouth.
I did have a young man yelling F one day who tried to tell me it was not foul language.
And that memorable day when I spotted this T-shirt on a user:
F-You you F-ing F-ck. I don’t know where that’s appropriate and I couldn’t figure out if having it written on a tshirt would be the same as yeling it. Passive vs. Active swearing?