A store employee just doing his job met a Karen’s demand, “You need more employees,” with a novel approach—letting her know the store had online applications.
The TikTok video featuring the encounter, from the @porcelainplatinum account and posted on Monday, shows a customer’s-eye view of an employee at what appears to be a JOANN Fabrics and Crafts store going about his day. The introductory captions note that there’s about to be a Karen encounter with someone insisting the store needs more employees (to help her) and that there’s a line (that she doesn’t want to stand in).
After asking if there’s another salesperson on the floor who can help her, and after the employee politely informs her he can help her in a second, she assesses, “So no one can help me?”
She then asks, “Why are you locking everything so we can’t take everything? Someone can’t give me scissors?” and then asserts, “I’m not standing in line for this!”
On the first question, she kind of answers it for herself, but the employee notes that items were locked up because people were stealing them.
To the other complaints, he deftly says, “I mean, we have applications online if you want to apply.”
Predictably, she does not want to apply but continues to grouse about the lack of store employees not suddenly parachuting into the store to help her acquire scissors.
“You need more employees!” she exclaims again.
“Tell the world and tell COVID!” he responds. “I can’t help you with that, I’m sorry.”
At the end of the video, once he was able to pawn her off on his lone co-worker, he lets out an exhausted “Oy!” that expresses his mood better than any fully formed word could.
Commenters certainly felt his exchange with the Karen, with one declaring, “Normalize putting customers in their place.”
Another noted, “The fact that any service employee is giving back their same energy is giving me life.”
And finally, one flipped a familiar adage, saying, “The customer is never right. In fact, they are the least qualified person in every scenario.”
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