I honestly do wonder where the average person thinks the customer service workers have some kind of stake in the company or something. Getting fired from a job like that is only a minor inconvenience, and the odds of their complaint being anywhere near a firable offense is usually laughable (and half the time the opposite as usually it’s wanting the employee to break store policy).

See, what you gotta do is threaten them with absurdity.

Don’t say “I’m never coming back”. Instead, walk across the street to the bus stop. Wait for them to come out to their car. Memorize it.

Now come back to the parking lot every day for a week. Wait for them to leave their car, and go inside. Once they’re inside, you walk over to their car, and write down their liscense plate number.

Now go home, and use public records to do a search to find their name and address.

Now go back to the store, and take a picture of them with your cell phone.

Now, sit across the street from a police department, and watch for a cop arriving to work. Take note of his liscense plate, and search his name/address.

Now write a letter to the clerk, threatening to wait outside his work with a giraffe. Tell him “Giraffes have 15 inch tongues, thick as a beer can. I’ve trained this one to stick their tongues into your butthole, and grab your waist with their teeth. You’ll be 19 feet in the air, getting tongue fucked by a giraffe. If you try to escape, you fall. See ya at Costco, Gary!”

And you use the cops name/address as the return address. Now if he tries to go to the cops, they’ll protect their own, and find something to arrest him with.

Checkmate, Gary!

Companies I boycott:

Bank of America
5/3 Bank
Wells Fargo
McDonald’s
Walmart
That corner gas station that never paid their invoice Planet Fitness
John Deere
Verizon
AT&T

Number of store employees I’ve told that I’m never coming back:

0

An interaction I had when I was in my final days of my fast food “career”:

Karen: “The service here is terrible I’m NEVER eating here again if you don’t fix this RIGHT NOW”

Me (actually said to them): “Oh no, please don’t, the giant multinational corporation with billions in revenue that is [Big burger fast food joint] will notice and cry”

Karen: “I…yea…well!” Storms off

The thing is, either workers are powerless to change things, or just don’t care enough to be bothered by that threat.

Which is why I usually just smile and lodge formal complaints with the company as well as any regulatory body if the situation calls for it. Much more effective when it’s an actual punishment rather than an empty threat. I’ve gotten companies actual fines that way.

I’ll admit it; I want to say things like those customers in the comic. Sometimes I do. But I also understand and appreciate that the person I’m talking to both doesn’t care, and can’t do anything about it. So when possible, I try to take some marriage advice I saw somewhere online:

Never say the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t even say the second thing. Say the third thing.

This works really well in emails or online forums, where you can revise many times until you hit send or post.

And for anybody who has read any of my past replies and feel inclined to point out that I still say stupid shit: just know that those stupid shit were the third things that came to mind. 😊

Sales are in the shitter, I’m afraid we’re gonna have to let you go.

I don’t care.

I’ve definitely boycotted companies, but try to make sure my reasoning is sent as high as it can, and even then try to direct it to the company itself rather than whoever I have on the phone.

I don’t want to seem like a prick, but all the Internet comics I see are so lazy and devoid of any humour… there’s no joke in them at all, and just seems like someone who wants to post a bland message to get their “comic strip” seen. Is this Calvin and hobbes quality? No. Is there anything groundbreaking and funny? Nope. I just want lemmy to actually have some good stuff on it

Honestly they are just doing us a favor. I really don’t want to see them again either.

This is the natural consequence of a business that is not worker owned.

During my penance in food service in my earlier years, I worked for a while for what was literally the only pizza joint in town that had delivery. (This was well before all the food delivery apps and in fact in the pre-smartphone era.) When we would not accede to whatever ridiculous demand a customer was having a tantrum about and they threatened to never order here again, my boss would just say, “Okay, fine, see you next week.”

He was usually right, too.

Me, a driving instructor: “If you don’t want to learn, there’s the door. No. No need to slow down or stop, I have my own brake pedal here, thank you”

In my opinion, those sort of businesses are also the ones that end up crying out when they lose to bigger players in the space who are willing with those sort of customers. At the end of the day, are you there to feel good, or are you there to get money? Here’s a little secret: nobody cares about those sort of people, it’s just that some care more about the money they can get from them than others.

For me, it’s right up there with tech support that complain about the trivial bullshit they are called for when it is that trivial bullshit that gives them a job.