Nerves at the grocery store were already strained when the customer arrived, as the Pandemic slowly creeps toward its third year. He wanted a blue cheese called Cambozola. He had been out of the house for a while. He didn't find anything in the dairy area. The employee that he flagged down did not see the cheese. He wanted her to look it up on the computer. No luck.
He lost it, just another member of the great chorus of American consumer outrage.
Anna Luna, an employee at the store in Minnesota, said that a man in his 60s had a full temper tantrum because they didn't have the expensive imported cheese he wanted.
You look at someone and think, "I don't think this is about the cheese."
Omicron is tearing through the country and it is a strange moment. Things feel broken. The Mbius strip of bad news is what the Pandemic seems to be. Back-to-the-office dates are being delayed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is changing its rules. Political hatred has arisen because of political unrest. When people have to meet each other in transactional settings, such as in stores, on airplanes, over the phone on customer-service calls, they areevolving into children.
Maybe you have felt it yourself, your emotions at war with your nature. A surge of anger when you go to the pharmacy with Covid-y symptoms, only to find that it is out of thermometers. You have to wait outside in the cold for a meal, and you forget your wallet in the car, so you get annoyed by the rules around vaccine cards and IDs.
You were locked out of your own account because you failed to answer security questions correctly, and you were angry at the credit card company representative who told you. Adopting a tone of haughty sarcasm is not a good way to solve this problem.
Sue Miller, who works in a nonprofit trade association in Madison, Wis., said that when people are mean, they are a lot meaner. Instead of saying, "This really messed me up," they say, "What the hell is wrong with you?" It is a different scale of mean.
The customer is always right, used to be an article of faith for many public-facing industries. If employees are now having to take on many unexpected roles, such as therapist, cop, conflict-resolution negotiator, then workplace managers are acting as security guards and bouncers to protect their employees.
A manager at a specialty grocery store in Michigan was accused of being unable to read by a customer angry that a fish advertised as being discounted had sold out. Mr. O'Brien said that in another instance, a man who did not want to wear a mask assailed another employee, interspersing personal insults with an impromptu soliloquy about liberty and tyranny until the employee began to cry.
Mr. O'Brien said that the man kept shouting, "The governor said we no longer have to wear masks." He was enraged by the woman's response that they were still required in places with a certain number of workers.
The owner told the customer to never come back.
It is not just your imagination that behavior is worse. In a study of 1,000 American adults, 48 percent of them and 55 percent of them said they expected civility to improve after the election.
Expectations of improvement fell to 30 percent overall and 37 percent among workers by August. Only 39 percent of the respondents thought America's tone was civil. The study found that people who didn't have to work with customers were happier.
Micho Spring is chair of the global corporate practice for the strategic communications company Weber Shandwick, which helped conduct the study.
Many consumers are angry at companies that conduct a lot of their business online, like retailers, cable operators, rental car companies and the like, and that seem almost gleefully interested in preventing customers from talking to actual people.
Jon Picoult is the founder of Watermark consulting, a customer service advisory firm.
The problem is that expectations and reality don't match. She said that before the Pandemic, consumers had been led to believe that they could get whatever they wanted at any time.
The image is.
On Sunday, I was at Kennedy Airport in New York. The Federal Aviation Administration says there were 5,779 reports of unruly passengers on planes in 2011.
There is a lack of outlets for people to vent their anger. The waiter, the flight attendant, they become a stand-in for everything that happens between what we experience and what we think we are entitled to.
How do you measure rage? Scott M. Broetzmann has been conducting studies of consumer anger for many years. The next iteration will be released this spring. He can't believe what he has seen.
He said that he never thought the environment would be like it is today. I would never have thought that we would be seeing people fighting on planes. He said that his flight from Washington to Phoenix was delayed for 45 minutes last spring because of a drama over a man and a mask. The man was escorted off in disgrace.
It seems like child's play compared to what is happening in the skies. In the Covid era, airplanes have become fertile landscapes for fights about rules that are metaphors for other things. This is where tired, combative consumers meet exhausted, fed-up employees and where mask mandates meet never-maskers.
The FAA reported that there were 5,779 reports of unruly passengers on planes in the year 2021. The stories keep coming, of passengers knocking out flight attendants teeth, of flight attendants subduing passengers with duct tape, of people brawling about masks, seatbelts, no-alcohol policies, and the lack of normal meal service.
A woman hit and spat at another passenger on a Delta flight after she refused to sit down in the aisle when the beverage cart was in the aisle. The criminal complaint states that when the woman was invited to find an open seat, she asked "What am I,Rosa Parks?"
Flight attendants say that the most tiring part of their job is being able to enforce rules over masks and seatbelts.
In response to a request by The New York Times to describe conditions in the service industry at this odd juncture, Adam Mosley, a 51-year-old flight attendant, wrote that it was mentally exhausting to have to police adults over this matter.
Card 1 of 4.
Some people don't think that any of the rules apply to them. An angry woman confronted him and another flight attendant in the galley, backing them into a corner while she argued that she had a right to talk to her children without wearing a mask.
He said it was not all grim. Some passengers go out of their way to say thank you, just as some customers leave huge tips in restaurants. He and his colleagues have received gifts like chocolate.
There was enough media attention to make some people feel bad.
Airplanes and restaurants are the scenes of consumer rage, where customers frequently express their annoyance at staffing shortages, higher prices, vaccination mandates and other issues. Most of the bad consumer behavior is low-grade, with a constant hum of incivility.
Customers have been aggressive and impatient recently, according to an employee at a national chain of home-improvement stores. She got into a screaming match with a customer who called her lazy and incompetent after she told him that he needed to measure his windows before she could provide the right size shades.
Shira Inbar has credit.
She used to weep because of these interactions. She said that she had been calloused by it. Instead of crying, I'm just really pessimistic and judgmental against the people around me.
Customers flying off the handle when the products they wanted were unavailable, customers blaming the store, rather than supply-chain disruptions, for delays, and customers demanding refunds on non-refundable items, were just some of the stories workers responded to from across the country.
A customer service agent for Patagonia in Chicago said that a young woman became inconsolable when she was told that her package would be late. He was accused of lying and participating in a scam to defraud customers after learning that the out-of-stock fleece vest he had back-ordered would be further delayed by supply-chain issues.
In Colorado, Maribeth Ashburn, who works for a jewelry store, said that she was tired of being the mask police.
She said that customers will throw things and walk out of the store.
She said the political commentary was the worst. A customer went into a rant against Dr. Fauci, saying that he was about to be jailed for his crimes. Ms. Ashburn has been called a sheep and aidy-cat for wearing a mask.
Her go-to response, looking noncommittal and murmuring "hmm", seems to make matters worse. She said she was discouraged at the way people treat each other.
Ms. Miller said that the pressures of the Pandemic and the deteriorated behavior of elected officials had given normal people permission to act out. She tries to remain calm with her customers and take solace in the civility they offer.
She said she was not expecting people to be nice. They don't have to wish me good luck. They can say hello and then say goodbye. I would be very happy with that.
