How to Handle rude customers?

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Hello Everyone,
I have started working at a grocery store about two months ago. The toughest part is handling rude customers. I got yelled at for bagging someones groceries wrong one time to where it made me cry. It's hard because I don't know how i could handle it because I am a very sensitive person as well.
Can someone who has a job that has them interact with customer tell me how you handle rude customers?
Thank you!

Just tell a co-worker or your shift supervisor what happened and let that person handle it.

One of my first jobs was working in a grocery store and bagging groceries so I'm familiar with your line of work. I've also had other jobs in which I dealt face to face with many customers in a shift (e.g. restaurants).

One thing that has helped me when someone is rude to me is thinking about how they might be having a bad day, week, month, year, life and that they're not mad at ME as a person and they may not even be mad at the issue at hand.

I've had a number of people in my working career who were downright nasty tell me later by calling me or stopping in again that they were sorry for acting that way and each person had a reason why they acted as they did (e.g. illness, family problems, loss of a loved one, etc).

Try as hard as you can to think about the above and then hope they have a better life then they probably are.

Some people are just naturally MEAN. They get their kicks by insulting other people. So how do you handle rude customers?

Well, don't show anger. Clamp your emotions down. Otherwise you may get yourself in trouble and lose your job.

But when you take that approach realize that your body created a fair amount of stress. And this stress energy within your body needs to be vented otherwise it can build and turn into distress. Over time this accumulated stress can turn into a variety of mental health issues. So how do you vent this stored chemical stress energy? The best way is to find a place where you can be very alone and scream at the top of your lungs. Scream out what you felt like saying to the customer. And when you are done, put a smile back on your face, and then go on living.

stop for a moment , pretend you have listened to them, realise anger is generally considered to be on a lower plane of existence ,especially directed to someone you do not know , let it roll off of your back and imediately go on to your next most immediate task , put all your focus into that then go back to when you looked like you were paying attention to them , and imagine , if you will squeezing their neck so hard their eyes bug out and their head pops right off their body . just thinking outside the box.

Welcome to the world of retail.

When you deal with the public you just have to think of the public as one big wild animal that you just have to do the best to tame.

I have spent more of my life standing behind cash registers than doing anything else besides sleeping. Or so it seems.

I have found that the better you get at the job ...somehow...magically...the public gets nicer.

And then you gain confidence and things will go smooth. Might take a few weeks, but hang in there.

When you get the point where you're good and smooth at it then 99 percent of the public will be fine. You will only have to worry about that one percent of folks who are bad apples. In a bad mood, or whatever. If you let them … that one percent can ruin a whole good day at work. But don't let them. Just don't take things personally. Its just whatever (a misunderstanding between you and the customer, or the customer has an attitude, or had a bad day themselves, or whatever). Its not about you.

I worked retail for two years. Never doing that again, you can't pay me enough for it.

You're my sister in the trenches, and I salute you. Thank you for the work that you do.

To weigh in on your story and your question, honestly all I can say is do your best to keep it together. Realize you've only got a couple of minutes until the situation will be all over, and that the more maturely you handle it, the fewer those minutes will be.

Then once it's all over you can publicly shame that person to anyone who will listen. Your boss, your coworkers, your family, your friends, your S/O, and the other users here at WrongPlanet or elsewhere on the internet. If you're a good storyteller, you may even be able to make it a funny story and not a stressful one. I always quoted customers and voiced them in a low, slow drawl like Patrick Star, so maybe you can figure out some way to make them seem really unflattering for extra effect.

Hopefully hearing about this kind of thing will motivate those around you to treat service industry personnel with more respect. I know that working in it sure made me change my habits.

I'll close this with the thing that I say whenever I complete a transaction and leave: Don't work too hard.

I find this skit humorous. It's titled The Customer.

I worked retail for 28 months. I did custodial stuff but both stores were open while I was working. I tried to do the best I could & I tried to always be polite(use manners). I also got assistance when when there was something I couldn't handle. Thankfully I never been yelled at by a customer. I think customers cut me some slack sometimes since I did custodial stuff. I'm sure cashiers & baggers have things a lot worse.
Also I was bullied a lot when I was little & me & my mom fought aLOT until I moved out & we would say lots of mean things to each other in the heat of the moment. I guess I kinda learned to have thick skin so to speak. What's important is that I do the best I can & that I accept myself.

I used to be a bagger too when I was 16-17. There were a few customers who were really rough on me, criticizing me and all, and led me to tear up. When I was working in the Casey's kitchen a year and a half ago, a customer asked me to make him a wrap. I had little to no experience so when I started folding it improperly the customer was like "if you want to work here you need to have more pride in what you're doing".

I feel your pain. Just know that you're doing the best you can do. If someone says something to you that makes you cry, it's ok to go to the break room and take a break. Just pick yourself back up, go back at it and know that everything's going to be ok.

In general people being rude & yelling/saying mean things to you only affects you as much as you allow it to. If they go to management/personal/human resources that's a problem you have to deal with but otherwise it doesn't really matter what they say. If I feel like I made a mistake I try to learn from the experience & do better next time but if I know I did the best I could I figure that's their problem.

okay the idea is your working for business ,, The basic tenent of retail sales used to be the customer is always right. ... So if the customer is blatantly wrong ,, Always forward problems of alll nature to the management. Gets rid of the Problem immediately .. Depending on the complaint .. just love to shove it up the chain of command looolz .

As a cashier/bagger, I think that the best thing to do is ignore them as much as you can. They're just like children throwing tantrums or bullying someone to get attention and get a reaction out of the person. So I don't give them what they want. Of course, you can't be outright rude to them, but I just keep the interaction simple. I bag their stuff the way they want it, but I don't bother to try making any small talk with them and I avoid all eye contact (well, partly because I have difficulty making eye contact with anyone, even people who I like and who aren't rude). All I say at the end is "have a good day" just because I have to.