A customer at a Massachusetts ice cream shop tore into a teenage employee over a 20-cent pricing error, and the owner went on Facebook to admit the mistake was his, then told customers to stop yelling at his kids.
That post, from Dave Forgit, co-owner of Coldstuff Ice Cream in Blackstone, Mass., has drawn more than 283,000 likes and 23,000 comments, NBC 10 WJAR reported. Boston 25 News said customers lined up the first day the shop reopened after it went viral.
The Mistake Was the Owner’s
Here is the detail that makes this more than a rant. The wrong price wasn’t the teenager’s fault. “Something was in the computer wrong. It was a mistake I made. It was a $0.20 difference,” Forgit told NBC 10. According to Forgit, the customer still told the employee “This place sucks” and “Do your job right.”
The shop had been open about 10 weeks, and Forgit and his brother and co-owner, Kevin Miller, said their mostly teenage staff dealt with this kind of thing every day. “The amount of verbal abuse that these young kids get in a day is shocking to me,” Miller told WFXT.
So Forgit posted: “I swear to God. STOP YELLING AT MY [expletive] EMPLOYEES.” He added, “They are children. This job, for most of them, is their first,” and finished with, “Grow up and act your age.”
Then He Doubled Down
Not everyone loved the tone. “Bad attitude starts with you pal and your unprofessionalism,” one commenter wrote. Forgit didn’t blink. “Grow up. First day on the internet? What is it? You saw a swear. You chose to read it,” he told NBC 10.
He also wrote that “NOBODY gives a [expletive] if you don’t come back.” Most owners would never say that out loud. Forgit said it to a few hundred thousand people, and the line out his door got longer.
Customers told Boston 25 they came specifically to back a business that treats its staff well. One commenter summed up why it hit so hard: “I wish I had a boss that had my back when I was a screw up of a teenager at my first job.” The brothers told WFXT they hope the extra business will stretch their season.
Before Your Next Meeting
- Whose mistake is your team taking the heat for? The 20 cents was a pricing error Forgit put in the system himself. Ask your front-line people what customers complain to them about most, and fix the one that traces back to your prices, policies or setup this week.
- Does your team know you’ll back them? That is the part commenters kept coming back to. Tell your staff in one sentence what they are allowed to do when a customer turns abusive, whether that is walking away, getting you or ending the sale.
- Which customers are you willing to lose? Forgit said plainly he would rather the rude ones not come back, and his line got longer. Name the behavior that gets someone shown the door at your business, and make sure your team hears it from you first.
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