When trying to act in the interests of others, good intentions may still have unintended consequences.
In recorded exchanges between customers and employees where the customer’s belief that they are in the right is brought into question, viewers are frequently quick to defend the worker in the equation.
Sometimes, customers take their defense of employees beyond TikTok, intervening in the real world. One Hobby Lobby customer says she reached out to the store’s corporate office in defense of one of its employees.
In a TikTok that has drawn over 155,000 views as of Saturday, user @isleof_anathema shared that she disliked the way a manager of the craft store spoke to a cashier and made a complaint to the retailer’s corporate office.
“I was at the register and my cashier got really quiet, and I was like, is there a problem with me?” she says in the video. “A manager had come up and he was on the phone with somebody in the next register over. She wasn’t quiet until he came up, and then she got really somber. She was ringing up my stuff, and she thought that she’d finished, so she told me my total, and then realized she left something off and rung it up real quick. Then the manager dude comes by right behind her and looks at her and says, ‘Where is your brain?’”
The harsh treatment from her manager had the cashier on the verge of tears, she says.
“I was just so taken aback,” she says. “I work in retail and deal with people and customers being verbally abusive all the time. I was like, ‘you should not be speaking to your employees this way.’ This poor girl looked like she was about to cry.”
While she did not say anything to the manager in the store, she says that she later contacted Hobby Lobby’s customer service team to tell them about her experience. The customer service team told her that the company does not condone such behavior, and asked her for her receipt information, confirmed that the person she suspected might be the manager was dressed in business casual attire, and informed her that they would be meeting with the company’s district manager.
@isleof_anathema A little draft from the other week lol
♬ original sound – V
The Daily Dot has reached out to Hobby Lobby via contact form, as well as @isleof_anathema via TikTok direct message regarding the video.
Many viewers sided with the TikToker and praised her for acting on behalf of the employee.
“As a hobby lobby employee i thank you for this,” one commenter wrote. “Too often us employees are disrespected and I hope that that manager is gone now.”
“At first I was worried you accidentally got the cashier fired,” another said. “But honestly that manager deserves a write up as a minimum, good job looking out.”
“You did the right thing!” one viewer commented. “Management should NEVER speak to an employee like that, ESPECIALLY in front of a customer! I’m a retail vet.”
