‘Third-Party’ Harassment: Is the Customer Always Right?
http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/39507/third-party-harassment-is-the-customer-always-right
There is only one boss. The customer. But what if the customer or another outsider is harassing one of your employees? Can your organization be held liable? One court recently warned employers against adopting the “hear no evil, see no evil” strategy.
Freeman sued her employer for third-party harassment. A lower court dismissed the claim, saying the behavior stopped once HR got involved. But Freeman appealed and won because the supervisor failed to take action when she learned of the harassment.
As the court noted, “An employer is liable under Title VII for third parties creating a hostile work environment if the employer knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to take prompt remedial action reasonably calculated to end the harassment.” (Freeman v. Dal-Tile Corp., 2014 BL 119739, 4th Cir., 4/29/14)
Filed under: General Problems
I had a situation in which a patient whom always seeks early refills was trying to get me to let her borrow some hydromorphone and tramadol until the date dated on the prescription. I told her no and she made up a story of how she was going out of state (over 1000 miles away) and I politely explained to her that I could not help her but discussed with her at length of where she could get the medication. A couple of days later a “friend” of hers came to pick up the medications. Shocked, I asked “I thought she was going to Alaska.” He said he didn’t know what I was talking about. Moments later I got a phone call from that very same early refill patient claiming that I violated Hipaa and she was going to get me fired. She did call the “upper management” of the store 19 year old highschool graduate and made it look like I had poor customer service and that my job was in danger. The very same early refill woman presented me with a prescription with a forged date on it a day later and still making threats. In conclusion The non pharmacy management have been given too much power over the pharmacist and are allowing problem patients to bully the pharmacist.
Steve, the best way to handle an abusive customer is to call store management and let them handle the customer. Management for the company, for which I work, can ban a customer from the store and sometimes they do. Also, this reduces my chances of having to go to court if the customer sues the company. If the store manager should try to appease the bad customer and give a gift card, then all I can say is that it is ‘wrong’. I have no idea how that would play out with regard to violating a company policy.
The answer to the question is the customer always right is NO! I think most every pharmacist will agree with me when I say that 90% of the time the customer is WRONG. There have been occasions where customers have bordered on sexual harrasement of my female techs. If I hear this, I go to the aid of my techs. I tell my techs to let me know if a customer says something to them that they should not be said. I don’t tolerate abuse of my techs. And, I think we have an obligation to protect our techs from any kind of abuse. The lawsuit mentioned here is a good example of what happens when a supervisor fails to protect their worker.
The question has to be asked.. if a customer who is definitely NOT RIGHT given a gift card because of their being unhappy… condoning a hostile work environment… which is against the company’s policy… and whoever authorizes the giving of that gift card is violating the company’s policy ?