I’ve covered the circle of respect in retail quite a bit here, but in the grand scheme of things, most of what has been addressed adds up to simple annoyances. Yeah, it can be a bad day when you’re arguing with a customer who is as bright as a 10-watt light bulb that’s thirty years old, but once you disengage you can look back and laugh about it. Most of what takes place between clerk and customer is the kind of interaction that can be shaken off easily by either side if they felt wronged.

But what about when that isn’t the case? I stepped into the old store today to say hi, check up on friends, and just randomly BS with Store Manager. As we were talking about who he had fired while I was on vacation one of the new drivers, a young woman who might be in her early 20’s came to the office looking seriously upset, stammering something about a fuel tank and an unhappy customer on the phone. Since I still have carte blanche at the store, I went out to look at what she was trying to do. The customer wanted a fuel tank for a diesel pickup. We can get fuel tanks into the store, but not for a diesel application. As I confirmed that the tank was unavailable, Store Manager got on the phone with the guy. Within the first line I knew what he dealing with: an unhappy customer who decided to let the clerk have all of it with both barrels at once. What started off as “Thank you for calling (store)” quickly turned into “Well, that is a new employee that came back to ask me for help because you felt it was necessary to cuss her out. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s unacceptable. That employee was trying to help you out to the best of their ability and for you to rip them apart like that was completely unnecessary. So, consider your account closed, we will send you the final bill, and you can take your business elsewhere.”

I couldn’t be prouder of him. Simply put, if you have good employees that are doing their job as best as they can, as a manager, it is your duty to take care of them, especially when some jackass decides to go off the deep end and verbally abuse them. It’s simply not enough to apologize enough to appease the customer…the customer has crossed a line, and your actions will show whether you care or not. In this case, he did the next best thing to driving to the customer’s location with a shovel in-hand and taking care of the customer the old-fashioned way. What was even better was that not five minutes later the guy called back, wondering why Store Manager just shut his account down, asking to make some kind of deal…and he got stonewalled once again.