Garrett Ford

ENG-2010
Profile: Landon Baker
The customer is always right, right? Landon Baker is a customer service associate at a
Lowes Home Improvement store in Central Utah. There, his duties range from sweeping, to
picking and packing orders for delivery, to loading and unloading semi-trucks. Though one of his
main duties is to help customers have a great experience while finding everything they may need
to finish whatever project they are working on. “I just want to go in and help people,” he said. “I
know it might seem insignificant, but if I can help someone’s day go a little better it makes me
feel good.”
That is his main goal going into each shift. “...but some people just can’t be helped” he
said. “No matter how hard I try, some customers just seem dead set on having a terrible
experience, and they take every opportunity to make sure I know it was because of some terrible
mistake I’ve made”
Many times that grave mistake he has made is just not knowing exactly where a
particular item is located in the store. Something seemingly insignificant can cause some people
to react violently. “I think a lot of people really have a lower opinion of people that work in
retail, or really anyone in the service industry.” he said. “We are just objects here for them to use
and abuse and it doesn’t matter how we are treated because that is what we’re there for.”
Many people who have worked in retail would sympathize with Landon’s words. There
is a study that shows that people who are looking for deals, or are bargain hunting, are more
likely to treat retail workers poorly. “When shoppers focus only on paying the lowest price, they
become less attuned to understanding the human needs of others, or even recognizing them,” said
Johannes Boegershausen, a UBC Sauder PhD student who co-authored the study.” This
dehumanization from customers might be more bearable if retail workers were allowed to push
back at all. But the common saying that “the customer is always right” is still used by many
retailers.
This means that in many cases employees are forced to take this abuse with little or no
support from their managers. Baker said, “My manager right now is probably the best I’ve ever
had. He makes sure we all know that just because we work in retail that doesn’t mean we have to
be customers’ “punching bags”. And when things do start to escalate with a customer, if we are
in the right, he has our back and tells the customer the same thing we were telling them, instead
of just trying to calm them down and make them happy. All the managers I’ve had in the past
would immediately side with the customer. That made me look like an idiot and I always felt
bad, like I had done something wrong.”
This type of behavior from management only increases the emotional distress felt by
many retail workers. A recent study of retail workers found that “While psychological distress
seems to be relatively stable among the rest of the workforce, it’s worsening for those in retail.”
It also stated, when speaking of the common smiling faces that greet you as you enter most retail
facilities, “It’s a surprise you’re even presented with a smile because in this study, published in
the Journal of Business Research, 20,000 retail workers were compared with 1.1 million non-
retail workers, and the results were abysmal. The data spanned a period of 18 years so the
scholars could determine whether the problem has been getting worse. They discovered retail
workers reported significantly higher rates of psychological distress than any other profession.”
The scope and duration of the study and the results of it are astounding.
The mental health and wellbeing of retail workers is provenly getting worse. This is a
problem that seems to be growing and it needs to be addressed. If the world had more managers
like the one Landon described, one who was understanding and seems to want to help the people
he manages, there would undoubtedly be less of a problem with the mental health side of being a
retail worker. There may not be very much that can be done to stop customers from being rude
and feeling entitled. But there is a lot that can be done about the way individual stores and the
management of those stores handles escalated situations with customers and their employees.
 Works Cited
Dec 20, 2017 | For more information. “Discounting Humanity: Bargain Hunters See Customer
Service Workers as Less Human.” UBC News, 24 Jan. 2018,
https://news.ubc.ca/2017/12/20/discounting-humanity-bargain-hunters-see-customer-
service-workers-as-less-human/.

Dec 20, 2017 | For more information. “Discounting Humanity: Bargain Hunters See Customer
Service Workers as Less Human.” UBC News, 24 Jan. 2018,
https://news.ubc.ca/2017/12/20/discounting-humanity-bargain-hunters-see-customer-
service-workers-as-less-human/.
McCarthy, Niall, and Felix Richter. “Infographic: How Often Do U.S. Workers Experience
Abuse & Harassment?” Statista Infographics, 15 Aug. 2017,
https://www.statista.com/chart/10693/how-often-do-us-workers-experience-abuse-
harassment/.