Yep. I ended up being a supervisor in retail print/copy, and I basically said yes to whatever unreasonable pricing demands I had control over. I definitely took the difficult customers when other staff was about to have their job made harder than it should be, and it almost always ended up as "sure, we can help you out."
The line I drew was anything in-house production that would fuck over my colleagues. I know you own a restaurant and have a New Year's Eve event coming up, but no, we cannot bump the people who placed their orders in advance to accommodate your need of 4,000 fliers for your shitty event. That would put too much strain on my staff.
The thing I did the most often, though, was fax shit for free. $1 per page for faxing? Fuck that, here, let me type in the service code real quick. Have fun.
That's a good strategy-- I'll give you what you want to get rid of you to make my day easier, unless giving you what you want will actually make the day much harder for my team.
Yep. Also try not to directly contradict something my team says without a little back and forth. Makes it easier for me than just saying no, but doesn't throw my team under the bus. But if there's no compromise between those, I would stand by my team 100% of the time.
Whatever I did worked well for the store, too. We made our sales goals and got the bonus every quarter.
Yep. I ended up being a supervisor in retail print/copy, and I basically said yes to whatever unreasonable pricing demands I had control over. I definitely took the difficult customers when other staff was about to have their job made harder than it should be, and it almost always ended up as "sure, we can help you out."
The line I drew was anything in-house production that would fuck over my colleagues. I know you own a restaurant and have a New Year's Eve event coming up, but no, we cannot bump the people who placed their orders in advance to accommodate your need of 4,000 fliers for your shitty event. That would put too much strain on my staff.
The thing I did the most often, though, was fax shit for free. $1 per page for faxing? Fuck that, here, let me type in the service code real quick. Have fun.
That's a good strategy-- I'll give you what you want to get rid of you to make my day easier, unless giving you what you want will actually make the day much harder for my team.
Yep. Also try not to directly contradict something my team says without a little back and forth. Makes it easier for me than just saying no, but doesn't throw my team under the bus. But if there's no compromise between those, I would stand by my team 100% of the time.
Whatever I did worked well for the store, too. We made our sales goals and got the bonus every quarter.