autism and challenges w/ working customer service/cashier

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Who else here works or has worked retail as a cashier or someone else who deals with people a lot?

For me the biggest issue is 100% overstimulation. Normally I'm quite bubbly with customers... I mean, it's a mask, but it's fairly easy to do when I'm not weighed down. But when I'm overstimulated, the mask slips and sometimes falls off entirely.
This leads to customers either expressing concern ("you're not usually quiet, are you ok?") or becoming irritated because I'm not being a good customer service employee ("you must be dealing with some really cranky people today, because you looked pissed off"). (No ma'am, people have been fine, I can just hear and feel everything at once and I feel nauseated and like I'm about to jump out of my skin. You try doing this job while feeling this way )

Occasionally I experience partial shutdown where I'm truly just running on fumes and basically running on auto pilot. Colliegrace has left the building, may I scan your order. Beep boop.

I used to do volunteering at a charity shop where I was often made to do the till. At first I didn't mind because I wanted to gain experience, but after a while I began realising that it wasn't for me. I was left on my own and when the shop became busy I had silent panic attacks and wanted to escape but couldn't. Also it was when the paying for shopping bags was first brought in in the UK, and some customers got aggressive about it and I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I was young and timid and not the sort to argue, so I let some customers have free bags because I didn't want the trouble. Then I got into trouble by the boss, but that still didn't stop them putting me on the till.

I left in the end. And I had learnt that dealing with customers isn't what I want to do. I just get social anxiety with the general public and when there are screaming toddlers I get overwhelmed. So working in public isn't for me.

I used to think my sensory issues were part of my anxiety disorder. "Why do I keep getting vague free floating anxiety with no apparent rhyme or reason?" Makes much more sense to realize it's sensory processing disorder.....

I feel you though. Last year I did have a very severe, lengthy panic attack at work. It lasted 4 hours. I spent as much time as possible in the cash office trying to calm down but not succeeding. Only came out when I had no choice, and would have to deal with customers while shaking like a leaf. It also left me with flu-like symptoms for like a solid week afterwards.

I kind of wonder if that day is where the complaints of "she goes into the office to slack off a lot" came from.

I used to tell the boss how I felt about going on the till but she made me anyway because we were short-staffed and she had to be in the office catching up on paperwork, so I felt obliged. But on the other hand I wasn't getting paid, I had nothing to lose if I quit, and they couldn't put me on the till if I wasn't volunteering there any more, so I quit. I wasn't treated very nice there anyway but that's a different topic.

I don't really get sensory overload, except when kids start screaming. It's a sound I cannot ignore or tolerate and it's a sound that is inevitable in any shops or supermarkets. It just makes me anxious and jittery and I don't care that the kid "can't help it", it still doesn't make it any easier for me to switch off the sensory overload it causes, as most autistics should understand all too well.

When there were a lot of customers in the shop at a time I would go into shy mode and want to hide away. Some customers were awkward and aggressive and blamed me for things I couldn't control. I couldn't stay there. Quitting was the best thing I ever did.

I think now as I've gotten older I might be able to deal with customers better but I still can't deal with screaming babies and toddlers so it's best I avoid working in retail.

Most of the customers where I work have been pleasant, but we definitely get some characters. And the more, eh, pushy customers, I have a hard time dealing with. Basically I'm not good at telling people "no" unless I know it'll get me into major trouble if I don't. Nooooot a great attribute when you work the service desk and are required to enforce store policies.

I found the combination of being around lots of people without much break and the sensory experience to be too much to handle.

Well yes, working voluntarily and for free ought to give people more confidence to behave like they were equals. I wouldn't mind deferring to an authority if I could see the sense in the command at the time or if I'd noticed good reasons to trust their commands in general, but otherwise I'd feel I was letting myself and society down if I encouraged them by tolerating their insensitivity.

Yesterday at work I got a customer who threatened to call the police because (he said) we overcharge him every time he comes here and he has to come back and get a refund every time.



This was after I offered to give him a refund at the service desk.

I didn't know what to do so I called the manager on duty up to the front.

Oh, and did I mention corporate was there because we're being remodeled? So corporate witnessed that mess and maybe thinks I'm incompetent

Ugh. Currently in some level of overload at work. I asked to take my break early because of it.

One of my least favorite things is when I'm overloaded or in partial shutdown and customers ask me how I'm doing.... It kills me that I'm supposed to say I'm doing well when I'm clearly not at the moment.

Smalltalk didn't panic me with customers. In fact it made me feel less afraid when customers were chatty and friendly. It made me feel more at ease. I made friends with a few customers because they were so cheerful and friendly.

But I was very sensitive to the moods and body language of customers, and the energy of small children. I worried I was going to screw up or have to deal with a difficult customer. That was when I went into shy/timid mode and wanted to scarper but knew I couldn't.

I remember one time a customer came in who was rather abrupt and I felt a bit intimidated by her even though she wasn't a threat or anything, I was just sensitive to her abrupt way, and she wanted something from the window display, so I had to climb over into the window and get the dress what she wanted. But after all the trouble it turned out I'd got the wrong dress, and she shouted loudly at me in a tone which meant "you are very slow-witted and stupid!" It startled me (not visibly, just inwardly), and I suddenly felt tears pricking at my eyes. Yes, call me weak but that's what happens with me. I tried hard to fight the urge to cry, and luckily by then the boss came down and I asked her to take over and made out I needed the bathroom. As soon as I was upstairs alone in the store room I let the tears out. After 5 minutes I calmed down but the way the customer yelled at me stuck in my head all day and it made me feel weak and pathetic.

That is why I know better than to work with the public. It's so scary!

I used to but I escaped! Now I work night shift and nobody talks to me!

I was going to write up my experiences with customer service, but man it just hurt to think about. Not all of it was bad, just very draining. . . some of it was bad.

I personally refused to get trained for that even though the front end supervisor wanted it. Fortunately, I was good enough, and busy enough, at the jobs I've been doing that it didn't happen. It's probably the job at the store that scares me the most in terms of handing over something to somebody with the wrong ID or just getting burnt out and saying something that I shouldn't at the end of the shift.

There's a few departments where nobody seems to care if you talk or interact much with customers.

I spend most of my breaks staring at a jar of glittery water. But, today I got one of those children's toys that's a bunch of half spheres connected to each other with a bunch of colors that I think I'll like even more. People have noticed that I"m doing it, but apart from thinking that I've got this absolutely scary looking drink, people seem to be pretty OK with it.

Since I started doing that, I actually come back from breaks feeling somewhat refreshed in a way that I didn't before. I used to take breaks and go to lunch purely because those are rules enforced by both contract and the state. Given the choice, I would have rather gone home nearly an hour early.

Then again, it's a store where I hear being repeating back the pages out loud and compulsion has run amok, so much of what comes of ASD is probably not that strange.

Another challenge for me:
Doing stuff that I know will upset customers.

I have learned to manage my lack of social skills by being overly polite and amiable. This means that I have a hell of a hard time telling people "no".

The latest thing at work regarding that is we can no longer let customers type in their EBT cards - the cashier has to do it, AND they have to have the actual physical card with them.
I knew this, but I've been doing it anyways because I hate the thought of disappointing a customer, or worse: them having no other form of payment.

My boss just texted me that I cost the store money because I did this.



I won't do it again, but it's unpleasant.

This was my number 1 issue when I was at the volunteer job. Like I said with the bags that were no longer free, customers were still getting used to the new system and often expected a free bag, and I felt mean by making them pay (even though it was only 5p or 10p), so I just let them have a free bag and they loved me because of it. Yes, the approval is nice but what I was really doing was breaking the rules.
But when you're timid around the general public like me it seems easier to break rules than to face conflict with disgruntled customers.

Most people seem able to switch off their empathy when it comes to being in authority but I just can't do that. If I'm in a position of authority (which I'm not these days but I used to be) and there's a situation where I know I'd have to tell people off and they'll get mad at me, I tend to timidly back away and hope someone else will deal with it. If it involves helping (friendly) customers find an item or something then I'd gladly help and not have any anxiety.

When I was 16 I done volunteering one day a week at a local nursery for children aged 2-4. But I was absolutely terrible with talking to the kids. I'd just stand in the corner watching the children and biting my nails nervously, and if there was some sort of bad behaviour going on I'd obviously recognise it but back away from dealing with it.
One time one of the children done a burp at snack time and looked up at me nervously as if he knew I was going to scold him for being rude (in other words, teach him manners). But I just scratched the back of my head and looked at him nervously without saying anything.

Yes, I am like a bag of nerves when it comes to being in a position of authority. I think the only time I can comfortably be in authority is if I am dealing with animals.

I think I can relate to that. I hate knowingly being unkind to people who (as far as I can tell) are doing no wrong. One of the reasons I quit my first job was that I was under coercion to push "my" staff around. I just couldn't do it. It felt more like a conscience thing at the time, and I think that was an important part of it, but it may also have had a strong element of low social confidence, which seems to be the thing you feel is behind your particular experience of the problem. Sometimes it's hard to know whether kindness is down to conscience or poor confidence. But the result is much the same - employers sometimes demand things that aren't really in the employee's nature to deliver. It's a nasty situation to be in.