“Sir, We’re Closing In Five Minutes”: Entitled Customer Demands Store Be Kept Open, So Worker Maliciously Complies

Customer-facing jobs often are that unholy mix of underpaid and simultaneously hard, stressful, and downright depressing. One has to deal with entitled people, often making complaints about things that you have no control over. Retail workers also have to open, close, clean, and stock items all while dealing with people.

TikToker and Youtuber Benjaman Harre shared his retail experience with customers that seemed to think store closing hours were just guidelines and seemed to love exerting every tiny bit of power over workers. We got in touch to find out more.
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Bored Panda got in touch with Benjaman Harre, aka RoninGT to learn more. We wanted to know what he thought actually causes these sorts of customers to exist. “I think that the entitlement some customers have comes down to how they were raised. Some of the rudest customers I’ve encountered have had their young children right next to them reinforcing this bad behavior.”

Naturally, this could be the result of some managers pushing “the customer is always right” onto their workers, so we wanted to get his take on this concept. “The customer is rarely right, I mean I get why the phrase is used but it has given customers this sense that they can do what they want and treat people however they want. The company's corporate teams do not believe that the customer is always right either because if they did customers would be getting $500 TVs for a few bucks.”

“I have worked retail in some form for the last 20+ years and my social media platforms have story after story but one I have never told was one of my first encounters with an entitled customer, I had just started working for Walmart, and I was a cashier and as a cashier I barely had control of when I went to the bathroom and definitely no control over what we sold, but a customer came through my line, and became belligerent with me and called me every name you can think of because the store didn’t have purple socks for her to buy and she needed purple socks…” He added when we asked about further retail horror stories.

Finally, we asked if he had any final thoughts. “If I could say anything to your readers who have never worked retail it would be. Be patient with your retail workers and any employee in the service field. Understand that we deal with a lot of people, some nice, some not. Everyone in retail are human beings too who are just trying to make a living and none of them signed up to be a punching bag.” You can find Benjaman's TikTok and Youtube channel here and here.