Women with lots of customer service experience, do you personally find one gender over the other to be problem customers more often, and what do you find to be gendered differences in problem customers?

11 comments

1. Honestly depends on the age group, Mothers were usually nice to us

2. I’ve personally found as a cis passing trans man, that for a man, problem customers tend to be women more often. And that women problem customers tend to raise their voices higher, and do more personal attacks than male customers. Sexual harassment from customers is near non existent towards male employees in my experience as well.

3. Not down to gender but age. Middle aged Boomers are the worst. Elderly and young adults are super nice. Kids and teens were always over the top polite with their smiling parents behind them which was the cutest thing. Other than that, men were more likely to tip, especially when with their spouses or dates. Happy couples are the best costumers when it comes to ice cream. They are out on an oxytocin rush and they want to have a great time so they’ll give you a great time.

4. As a female bartender, I have more problems with male customers talking over me or not wanting to listen to me. My male partner who bartends at the same place has more problems with female customers being overly flirty and touchy with him.

   We have completely different issues with different gendered customers and it’s *because* of our genders that we experience these differences and have these issues to begin with.

5. In my experience, problem customers can be of any gender. However I’ve only feared for my physical safety with men.

6. More men than women feel entitled to tell me what I should be doing. When I’m the trained professional who follows the updated rules and procedures.

7. Not really gender, it’s almost always age.

8. I found age & race to be the biggest indicators of problem customers, not gender.

9. Worked in fast fashion retail for 5 years. I found the middle aged females to be the most problematic and entitled. I remember my top 5 mental breakdowns at work was caused by middle aged females. I haven’t had any bad experiences with men working in retail. Most of them know that’s not a place to try and pick a sales person up and most of them are just trying to pay for the stuff and gtfo. That being said, can’t say much about working in smaller boutique stores or men’s clothing store.

10. I worked as a office manager of a towing and repossession company. A main part of my job being customer dispute resolution. I would say that is was gender neutral—EVERYONE hated me.

    I will admit though, that when it came to neutralizing the situation and rationalizing why their vehicle/property had been repossessed, men calmed down much quicker. However, each physical altercation I encountered was with a man. If women became aggressive, it was usually only verbally.

11. Race and age are always the factors, not gender. When an American finds out that I’m from the offshore part of the company, I’m always looked down even though I’m pretty much trained the same as my “American” counterparts. I have experienced more racism than sexism during my time.