The Customer Is Always Wrong

Customer Service, as we know it, is dead.

I have had countless experiences over the past few years in which employees at a business have argued with me and made me feel very, very stupid.

Here are a few examples: 

-Once, I was at Forever 21 buying a few items. As the clerk put the receipt and my items into a bag, the receipt fell to the floor.

Customer (me): Excuse me, the receipt fell.
Employee: No, I put it in the bag.
Customer: No, it's on the floor.
Employee: NO, I placed it in the bag.
Customer: I just saw the receipt fall to the floor.
Employee: No you didn't, I just put it in the bag. 
Customer: Can you please check?
(Employee searches the bag, finds no receipt....looks down, sees the receipt on the floor)
Employee: Oh, yea. It was on the floor.

No apology. No acknowledgement that he argued with me about seeing something that actually happened. I walked out quite disgruntled.



-I am an unashamed coffee addict, and now that I live in New York, the frequency of Starbucks is too much temptation to resist. Last weekend, I picked up a large - I mean, venti - iced coffee with skim milk, no sweetener...aka my usual. Upon drinking it, it tasted off, but I figured that they might have used whole milk instead of skim, or added some sweetener. Ten minutes after I finished my drink, I was feeling queasy. An hour later, I was bowing to the porcelain gods. Since I hadn't eaten anything else that day, I knew the coffee was the only thing in my system that could have done it. I went back to Starbucks the next day to tell them, not as a complaint but just so they were aware that the skim milk they were serving was very much spoiled.

Customer: Hi, I was here yesterday, and I think I got food poisoning from spoiled milk you served.
Employee #1: (eyes grow wide) Woah. Um. Ok.
Customer: I just wanted to let you know, in case anyone else came in and said something.
Employee #1: Uh, no, no one did.
Customer: Ok. Well, I'm pretty sure it was the milk that had gone bad. That's all.
Employee #2: (overhearing the conversation, she decides to jump in) Food poisoning takes at least 24 hours to set in! It MUST have been something you ate the night before. Not the coffee.

Oh really, Miss Food Scientist?! I'm pretty sure spoiled milk can decide to upset your system as quickly as it likes. And, I had reiterated multiple times that I was not trying to pick a fight, just simply inform them. I had already purchased another drink (let's face it - no coffee consuming experience could ever be enough to scare me off from coffee permanently) so I was clearly not about to become disloyal to them. Why make me feel stupid and like I'm lying about something that actually happened?! Would they like a sample of my you-know-what to clear their name?!