The Customer is Fucking Wrong

If you are the kind of person who gets angry and in an employee's face, I hope that a tree crashes on your car while you're berating an employee who does not deserve your supposed 'wrath'.

I was just at a French Bakery by my house, picking up pastries for my co-workers who have been working so hard through this pandemic. I had my mask on and was waiting very patiently in line, I had called ahead and placed an order and told them I was in no rush. There were a couple people in front of me, and I waited patiently. Soon the line moved up and the woman in front of me approached the counter.

“Good morning ma’am.” The sweet employee said, he was wearing a mask but you could see his cheeks stretch from the smile he was giving her.

“Tell me why you’re charging me so much for those cupcakes I ordered yesterday?” She pulled her mask down and put her hands on the counter. As if she were bracing herself to give a speech, which in hindsight she was.

“Oh, your order is almost ready, ma’am.” He said as he pulled up her order on his computer.

“Listen to me!” She pounded her hands on the counter like the petulant child she is.

“I can’t charge the cost, I’m not the owner, ma’am.”

They went back and forth for 10 minutes, each time this Karen got redder and redder and was getting closer and closer to their faces. I could see the employees trying their absolute best to explain that they couldn’t change the price that she had agreed to the day before. Eventually she turned away and stomped out the door.

I waited until they called me forward and told them that I had placed an order.

“Sorry for the wait, ma’am.” The employee smiled at me and she looked a little shaken.

“I am in no rush.”

We went over my order and just before I paid with my credit card, there was a puff a smoke, a crack of lighting, and the overpowering smell of sulfur appeared. Along with the Karen.

“Another thing!” She stomped up and stood right next to me and pointed at the bakers who were icing her (not even kidding) 250 cupcakes and three cakes. “That is NOT the picture I emailed to you!”

She looked over at me, and I felt every hair on my body stand up and my blood froze in my veins.

“What are YOU looking at?” She glared at me.

I looked her slowly up and down and then made direct eye contact with the Gorgon.

“Six feet.” I said slowly.

She turned red again and shouted that she would be back and the cupcakes better be right when she returns.

I left a $30 tip.

As I was leaving, Karen was walking back in.

Look, I know we all have bad days. Days where you spill your coffee on your shirt right before a meeting with the boss and the printer got jammed and you got cut off by an asshole in a BMW and then you have to work overtime. We’ve all had those days, and they do suck. That does not mean, you get to yell in someone's face about something that they can’t change, okay?

Once, a guy stormed into my office and started SCREAMING at me over the cost of membership to our museum. The best part? He was actually confusing us with another museum, we charge $30 and the other place charges $60. When he figured that out, he continued to yell at me for NOT correcting him. After work that day, I came home and screamed into a pillow and cried.

To the Karens and Dicks in the world, I ask you, when you go home at the end of the day with your 250 cupcakes to your party do you feel relieved that you can laugh over the hard time you gave an employee for doing their job? After screaming at a secretary, do you go home and laugh about the confusion you made between two museums?

What pleasure can these kinds of people possibly derive over the degradation of people who can’t fight back because “the customer is always right”?

Guess what? The customer is usually very fucking wrong.