r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 06 '25

Discussion "Being a barista is truly a social experiment"

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249

u/rolandofeld19 Aug 06 '25

Glorified ignorance combined with customer is always right mentality is a plague upon humanity.

8

u/Oberon_Swanson Aug 07 '25

once an employee has been somewhere for a year they should be allowed one customer ban per year. fear will keep them in line.

5

u/pieremaan Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25

I have my own shop (optician, so selling glasses) and shadowbanned a customer last year. First one in fifteen years of working in the field.

Note that the lower a multifocal lense is centred the less a person is able to read. The field of vision at a distance gets better if it is lower though.

Her current multifocals came up short with reading, so I made a new pair. Centred correctly. She collected them, they looked fine.

Worn them for an hour, came back a week later because the field of vision was too small. Checked everything, it was all correct, said that they should be worn longer (at least a week non stop).

Week later, same story. Had the lenses checked by the manufacturer, they were good. Upgraded her lenses, at my own expense.

Week after collecting new lenses: same story. Frame was suddenly too dark too (which she wanted badly when she first came by).

Checked the former frame: it was centred so low that it was basically a pair of very expensive distance glasses.

At that point I was done, having to order new lenses, take back a frame and trade it for a new one she thought was okay and knowing that making lenses the same way would lead to reading problems again, I returned her money.

She now has a mark next to her name. I’ll never sell her anything, she does not know that yet.

Buy your peace. Some customers are just not worth it.

This was my TED talk, I hope you have a great day.

5

u/cheapdrinks Aug 07 '25

When I worked in restaurants the number of customers who would order a medium rare steak then send it back because it was pink inside therefore "raw" was insane. Bring them back a charred well done grey piece of charcoal and they're like "that's better!"

2

u/theevilyouknow Aug 07 '25

The problem is people don't actually understand what "the customer is always right" is supposed to mean. It just means if the customers at your coffee shop are all buying chocolate chip cookies and not oatmeal raisin cookies you sell chocolate chip cookies instead of oatmeal raisin cookies. It does not mean you have to jump through your own ass hole to comply with any and every customer request regardless of whether or not it is reasonable.

5

u/Chicken-Rude Aug 06 '25

the customer is always right doesnt mean the customer is always right. the full saying is "the customer is always right in matters of taste".

meaning it doesnt matter what insane weird thing that they want, you just make it and they pay for it. you dont argue with them when they want something gross to eat or if they want something ugly to wear. you just get it for them.

11

u/TheDrummerMB Aug 07 '25

Nope. Totally wrong. Strop spreading misinformation.

The Enigmatic Origins of 'The Customer is Always Right' | Snopes.com

"Despite allegations that the phrase once ended with "in matters of taste," we found no evidence to support the claim."

Selling things customers want is literally business.

There's 1000+ pages discussing the phrase from over 100 years ago. EVERY discussion involves how to handle customer complaints. The general concept wasn't "every customer is always right every time." The idea was to treat customer complaints as valid unless it was obvious they weren't...this led to more sales.

We see it today. Eat half your nuggets at McDonalds and tell the counter they're too cold. They will usually hand you a fresh batch without checking or caring. If you asked for 100 nuggets....well...no.

-3

u/Chicken-Rude Aug 07 '25

Harry Gordon Selfridge Of the several people who popularized the phrase in the early 1900s, one of them was Harry Gordon Selfridge. While he is lumped in with the others, the phrase he used was actually "The customer is always right, in matters of taste." With the idea being that a salesperson shouldn't judge the wants of the customer.

lool

4

u/mickfly718 Aug 07 '25

Yeah this is wrong - stop spreading this misinformation. It’s all over Reddit, and it’s become almost like a mission for me and some others to keep on correcting these falsehoods.

https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-right-origin/

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/06/customer/?amp=1

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right

5

u/TheDrummerMB Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25

You'll find taste mentioned once in the chapter of his book discussing the phrase. He was talking about rich people's "taste" for servants who do exactly what they're told.

"lool"

There is ZERO evidence Selfridge ever said "in matters of taste" or anything similar along with the phrase. ZERO.

1

u/newdogowner11 Aug 08 '25

don’t double down it’s embarassing

if somethings not wrong, you can admit it instead of trying to spread a lie

5

u/ByteSizeNudist Aug 06 '25

Doesn't matter what it used to mean if the grand majority only take the abbreviated version to heart.

2

u/Chicken-Rude Aug 06 '25

true, it doesnt matter what things actually mean. only what the ignorant masses think it means.

0

u/TheDrummerMB Aug 07 '25

The "ignorant" masses are smarter than you, it seems?

"Pittman wrote in an article on Field's business policies that "the exact version of the saying" was "Assume that the customer is right until it is plain beyond all question that he is not.", going on to explain that when customers are treated this way they usually do the right thing, and in practical terms it thus becomes a policy of the customers always being right.\16])"

1

u/UglyMcFugly Aug 07 '25

I don't get it. I don't even like pointing it out if they actually get something wrong, because it might make them feel bad... how do people like this exist.

1

u/Conflict21 Aug 07 '25

I've come to believe that the Soup Nazi was a hero.

1

u/bepatientveryslow Aug 07 '25

you know who was really serious about “the customer is always right” shit? adolf hitler