Seriously…

Noters Beware!! This is a “mean-note” free diary.

are people so bored nowadays that they have nothing better to do than call and complain about the stupidest things???? I work in retail, and tonight we had the SECOND (!!) complaint- in just over a month- called in against our store over the use of the term “hon”. The store I work in, is a dollar-store type chain- I’m not mentioning the name. We are a country store, where many of our customers are regulars, if not friends. We are very laid back. We joke around with people, and the term “hon” is used by all of us…I, myself say it a bazillion times a day…and it means NOTHING!!! It’s just a word. We tried not using it after the last complaint and it felt cold. I mean when my cashier gets backed up and I go and open up my lane, I usually say to the next person in line “I can get you over here, hon”. That sounds so much better to me than “I’m open here.”

When we had the last complaint, one of my friends came in and I told him what happened. I said that now we may have to use sir, or ma’am. And he was like “Don’t ever use that with me.” He said he hates those terms…not to the point of calling in a complaint. But it makes him feel like we are beneath him, like how you would call royalty “Sir”.

And when a customer asks the location of an item, I can’t always walk them to that item, especially when I am on a register. But the store is small enough where I can direct them to it, and I can usually see where they are. So I might say “Go up one more aisle…now turn to your right, hon”. It sounds horrible and cold any other way. “Go one more aisle. Now turn right. Look to your left.” It sounds like I am barking commands.

Unfortunately, both of these complaints were made against the manager of the store. She is currently sitting at home, in tears, afraid of being fired because of two very stupid people. Even though every one of us at that store use that term, many times a day, she is bearing the brunt of it. And this lady tries to make her store better than all the rest in the area. She wants people to feel welcome there. She is not a flirt. She doesn’t EVER use the term to mean anything other than that.

People need to seriously evaluate things before they call in a complaint to a store. If it is not something you would want called in against yourself, you shouldn’t even pick up the damn phone. If you cause someone grief and pain over something that stupid, you have no life. And if something that stupid bothers you that much…shop elsewhere. But don’t cause someone to lose their job over a stupid word. Jobs are scarce enough nowadays.

*The funny thing is…this latest complaint was made by a lady who said that she asked my manager not to call her husband “hon” before and she refuses to quit using the term with him. We figured out who this lady is…and none of us have ever seen this lady with a husband. We don’t even know who he is, if he even exists. My manager said she has never had this lady ask her to not use that term with her husband. My manager told me tonight, inbetween teary breaths, that she’s never seen her with a husband.

But the people who handle customer complaints always want to keep the customer happy…because money is God. So, it is entirely possible that my manager will have some repercussions over it. We all might. We might have to just not use any terms like that anymore. We might have to act more cold, more impersonal.

Is that really what we want when we shop???