Been working in retail for some ten years now, and I basically love it.
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This being said, some facts: 1. You'll meet assholes in every job. 2. Being an asshole yourself doesn't help coping with an asshole customer 3. Nobody cares if you're right, you'll eventually have to apologize to an asshole. So it's maybe better to just shut it in the first place.
I completely understand that, the first panel is perfectly fine and both were polite about it. He asked for the new phone, explained his mistake and THAT should have been it. The customer should have then said something along the lines of "Alright, thank you for your help" and gone about his way, but instead he asked the employ to "check the back" for something that isn't for sale yet. Even if the new phones are back there, the employ cannot sell them to the customer because they are not out yet.
Having worked in retail for 7 years I can say that there will always be people like this. What people don't understand tho is that you count down the days until a new product is released. You have training on the new product the day before release and for bigger more popular items you usually know the exact stock minute by minute (for the new iPad my store even had one specific person that was allowed to sell them so that one iPad wouldn't be booked for two customers at once). I would take the "check in the back" comment as an insult.
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This being said, some facts: 1. You'll meet assholes in every job. 2. Being an asshole yourself doesn't help coping with an asshole customer 3. Nobody cares if you're right, you'll eventually have to apologize to an asshole. So it's maybe better to just shut it in the first place.