So I have to ask, OP: Have you worked retail? Because, you know, you won't understand otherwise.
I'd have to say the core problem is dealing with the public. More specifically, dealing with that particular brand of entitled stupidity we've taken such pains to instill.
In jobs that don't involve customer service, you will interact almost exclusively with the same small crew of people. Generally those people are trained to work with/around you. They know what needs to be done and how to do it. Of course some tasks are less pleasant than others but, as long as everyone does a reasonable facsimile of their jobs, things move along pretty well. If anyone turns out to be incompetent or difficult you can hopefully get the situation addressed by going to the boss.
You get none of those things with the public. They're not the same people. You do get regular customers who know the score, but you also get a huge throughput of random strangers. Random strangers aren't just untrained, they're untrainable. They don't have a clue and there is no way to give them one. A random stranger could be the dumbest person you've ever encountered and there is no way to get that situation addressed. Quite the reverse, it is literally your job to see that this guy leaves with what he wants despite being so deficient you can't believe he ties his own shoes.
As an example, I worked at a sandwich shop. People would constantly ask for an "italian" sandwich. That would not have been a problem....except there is no such sandwich. I know what you're thinking, "Of course there is," well trust me, you're mistaken. One guy would tell you it was ham and cheese (which is another thing, people would order "cheese" as if in all the world there were only one type of cheese), another guy thought it was capicola and swiss, someone else thought it had Greek olives on it, yet another would say pickles, and so on. They all knew An Italian was made exactly the same way at all times and in all places, an item so universally understood as to transcend all barriers of language, culture, etc.
The difficulty wasn't that they knew what it was. The difficulty was every single one of them "knew" it was something different from what the last guy thought. They only thing they could agree on was what a fool you were for not knowing what they wanted, and how much bother it was to explain. I once had a guy angrily tell me I was "making this way too hard" when I asked if he meant ham and American with all the veggies. Another guy stormed out because I didn't know "the sandwich he grew up with," as if my training were supposed to have instilled not only intimate familiarity with every mom-and-pop sandwich shop in the world but also the psychic chops to divine which among the hundreds of thousands of such places he was referring to. I wish I was being sarcastic here. He honestly seemed to think I should know.
This is equivalent to walking into a dealership, telling the salesman "give me a car," and getting upset when he doesn't immediately intuit that you want a 2014 Camry, automatic, slate blue, with in-dash navigation, side air bags, and optional two-year bumper-to-bumper warranty.
Let me borrow someone's construction analogy. Sure, carrying bricks is a pain. Imagine, though, how much more frustrating it would be if bricks could haul themselves, but, for no adequate reason, stubbornly refused to. For extra fun, imagine some bricks also complain about the way you're carrying them: not fast enough, jostling too much, oh put me on top of the stack because I deserve more than all the other bricks. To make the picture complete, imagine every so often there's a brick that can magically make itself fifty times heavier than normal.
That's what it's like dealing with retail customers. They could read the menu and make an informed choice. They could ask you to explain the options. They could listen or think for just one second..... But they won't. The difficulty isn't that people order wrong. It's that they will order wrong every day for the rest of forever and there isn't a goddamned thing you can do about it. Dealing with the public instills a feeling of bottomless, grinding futility that other folks truly don't understand.
I'd have to say the core problem is dealing with the public. More specifically, dealing with that particular brand of entitled stupidity we've taken such pains to instill.
In jobs that don't involve customer service, you will interact almost exclusively with the same small crew of people. Generally those people are trained to work with/around you. They know what needs to be done and how to do it. Of course some tasks are less pleasant than others but, as long as everyone does a reasonable facsimile of their jobs, things move along pretty well. If anyone turns out to be incompetent or difficult you can hopefully get the situation addressed by going to the boss.
You get none of those things with the public. They're not the same people. You do get regular customers who know the score, but you also get a huge throughput of random strangers. Random strangers aren't just untrained, they're untrainable. They don't have a clue and there is no way to give them one. A random stranger could be the dumbest person you've ever encountered and there is no way to get that situation addressed. Quite the reverse, it is literally your job to see that this guy leaves with what he wants despite being so deficient you can't believe he ties his own shoes.
As an example, I worked at a sandwich shop. People would constantly ask for an "italian" sandwich. That would not have been a problem....except there is no such sandwich. I know what you're thinking, "Of course there is," well trust me, you're mistaken. One guy would tell you it was ham and cheese (which is another thing, people would order "cheese" as if in all the world there were only one type of cheese), another guy thought it was capicola and swiss, someone else thought it had Greek olives on it, yet another would say pickles, and so on. They all knew An Italian was made exactly the same way at all times and in all places, an item so universally understood as to transcend all barriers of language, culture, etc.
The difficulty wasn't that they knew what it was. The difficulty was every single one of them "knew" it was something different from what the last guy thought. They only thing they could agree on was what a fool you were for not knowing what they wanted, and how much bother it was to explain. I once had a guy angrily tell me I was "making this way too hard" when I asked if he meant ham and American with all the veggies. Another guy stormed out because I didn't know "the sandwich he grew up with," as if my training were supposed to have instilled not only intimate familiarity with every mom-and-pop sandwich shop in the world but also the psychic chops to divine which among the hundreds of thousands of such places he was referring to. I wish I was being sarcastic here. He honestly seemed to think I should know.
This is equivalent to walking into a dealership, telling the salesman "give me a car," and getting upset when he doesn't immediately intuit that you want a 2014 Camry, automatic, slate blue, with in-dash navigation, side air bags, and optional two-year bumper-to-bumper warranty.
Let me borrow someone's construction analogy. Sure, carrying bricks is a pain. Imagine, though, how much more frustrating it would be if bricks could haul themselves, but, for no adequate reason, stubbornly refused to. For extra fun, imagine some bricks also complain about the way you're carrying them: not fast enough, jostling too much, oh put me on top of the stack because I deserve more than all the other bricks. To make the picture complete, imagine every so often there's a brick that can magically make itself fifty times heavier than normal.
That's what it's like dealing with retail customers. They could read the menu and make an informed choice. They could ask you to explain the options. They could listen or think for just one second..... But they won't. The difficulty isn't that people order wrong. It's that they will order wrong every day for the rest of forever and there isn't a goddamned thing you can do about it. Dealing with the public instills a feeling of bottomless, grinding futility that other folks truly don't understand.
