I will never forget the time I had a man cry while I was serving him in the library where I’ll work.
He was a regular, but didn’t often do much other than sit around and enjoy being here. One day after coming back after my lunch break, he came to the helpdesk and since my other colleague was busy, I stopped shelving and went to help.
I’ll be honest, he has learning difficulties and unfortuantely he isn’t very clear when speaking, but we eventually worked out that he wanted a book (through me guessing and him pointing at multiple people reading). After narrowing down what he wanted to read about, dogs, I stood up to go get some examples before he stopped me to say “I can’t read very well.”
In that instance, I felt so sorry for him. It was clear from his expression that he was ashamed, and I have no doubt half of that shame comes from other people’s usual reactions, but I just nodded, told him to wait there and went to go find some books.
Bringing back a handful of different books, from picture books to children’s non-fiction, to dyslexia friendly and giant print books, we had a look through them together while I asked him what books were good and what were bad, so I knew what I was looking for, and it became clear that what he really needed were essentially picture books with at most a sentence per page.
That was simple enough, so I took him to the children’s area and we looked through some books together, ignoring the Karen-mom clearly glaring from the sofa she was sat on. A little later he’d chosen a handful of picture books and was grinning from ear to ear. We went back to the desk and I issued them for him and he was ready to go, before he started crying, explaining he’d never been able to choose his own books before.
He learnt pretty soon that I was, unfortunately, the only one of my colleagues who had the patience/human decency to serve him, so he’d usually come at that same time once a week to change his books, always immediately looking for me so I could help him.
This is just one example of one customer dealing with what is practically bullying from adults, who should know better. He just wanted to read and was belittled so much that he was embarrased to say so. Please, please bare in mind that if you serve customers in a shop or library or any customer service role- it shouldn’t even have to be a second thought to just.. not be a dick. This is just one example. but c’mon, please just be decent to other people.