I work at a well-known department store in the city; a lot of people, especially the elderly, come through my counter. I love my job as a cashier. Everyone is really friendly, and they make me feel welcomed, but one of the major rules that I was directly told during my interview, that employees are not allowed to argue or yell at customers.
Perhaps I am over exaggerating, but I can’t get it out of my head and I must tell someone.
Today I found it hard to keep me from losing it at one individual. He was waiting in line, and it was very busy so there were a lot of line ups, I called the man over to my counter and without saying a word he pushed his daughter in the back so hard that her necked jolted back and she almost went head first onto the corner of my counter. He then yelled at her, in his native tongue, very loudly as she stood shocked at the experience, I was shocked myself. I felt a sensation of anger and frustration from this a-holes abuse in public. I saw the daughter’s face, she was quiet and stared into a corner of the floor as the man threw his crap onto the top of my counter, I kept thinking, “If he acts like this in public, how does he act behind closed doors?” After a few minutes of staring at the floor the daughter went beside her mom, who came from behind me, while she continued to looked down at the floor. I then turned looked at the guy who tried to intimidate me as he stood tall, his hands were on his waist, his chest puffed out, his chin was up high, his eyes met mine and he tried to make me look down at him, but I refused to. Even when I rung in his items I didn’t look down at him, not even in the slightest, I wanted to yell at him so bad, but I can’t get fired from my job, especially in this economy.
In the past I yelled at an old man at my former job that strangled his eleven-year-old grandson in front of me. I almost made the man cry from the angry speech I gave him, back then I didn’t care if I got fired or not. Now I feel so useless. I tried talking to my friend about it, but she kept saying that it’s not my problem, and I shouldn’t worry about it. Just to worry about me. Well, I can’t. It will slowly eat me inside if I don’t do something, if I don't think of a stratagy for next time it happens. Is there a solution to this problem that will not cause my job to be on the line, but at the same time make it so people like him don’t get away with such treatment?
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I know exactly how you feel--I've often found myself in situations where, for example, one young boy was insisting that he wanted to buy a purse, while his parents were using every homophobic and transphobic argument in the book to convince him otherwise. Were I to speak up about it, though, I'm often worried that I'd call enough attention to myself to stop passing in the situation (I'm a transwoman).
I don't know of any way that you can tell the person off--anything permissible won't have the teeth you want, and unfortunately this is a world where business is more important to an employer than the rights of the oppressed. What you could do, though, is find another job opportunity in advance, then inform your employer that if they allow treatment like this to continue in their establishment, you're leaving.
Did you contact a supervisor or just try to handle it on your own? Calling your department's supervisor wouldn't have been a bad call. If he was doing this at the front, then he was probably doing it through out the store.
It's a really tough situation. There's always the catch-22 that if you don't say anything, the abuse will continue, and if you do say something, the abuse will continue (just perhaps not in public).
When I've seen things like this out in public, I haven't intervened because I know there are times when a stranger speaking up can cause even more damage to the person being victimized. The way I sleep at night is by telling myself that if the parent is engaging in this behavior in public, then at some point, he or she will do it in front of someone (maybe an off-duty cop) who can actually help.