[Nathan Zachary]

people ARE terribly rude. My younger son was working for a customer service phone center a few years back. I heard all kinds of stories of rude customers doing everything from threatening to have him fired to coming over and smashing his brains in, even though these "customers" haven't a clue where customer service reps are located. Those 1-800 numbers can be anywhere in the USA or even another country. I can't tell you what company he worked for, but I can tell you that people do the darnedest things, then phone and try to get warranty on the products. he's brought some dandy recordings home, even lonely housewives getting a little frisky on the phone.

[expatguy]

I say the companies need to share in the blame.

A 1800 number or call center is NOT customer service.

[Stoat]

I'm very sorry to hear of your son's unhappy encounters with rude people. I must confess, however, that I am not surprised to hear that sort of thing in the context of a telephone interaction....the telephone provides a form of anonymity, which some spineless and wicked people interpret as license to act worse than rabid animals.

The same thing is true for the internet....we all see it; people saying unbelievably awful things that they most likely would never say to the person they are speaking to if they were face to face.

That's what's different about this story...it is about shopworkers who are dealing with people face to face, and getting treated with breathtaking brutality.