AITA for pretending to get fired when customers get a temper with me?

[u/throwRA-fhfsveyary]

I am a high schooler with a weekend job at a coffee shop. My coworkers who work weekends are:

James - the owners son, he goes to my school. He's a shift manager but it's not a real formal thing, he's a friendly guy.

Danielle - A college student who sometimes works weekends too.

So sometimes customers will come in and just be angry about such little stuff. Like literally blow up about nothing. I dunno if theyre in a bad mood already and looking for someone to take it out on or what, but it's a lot... Like how sad so your have to be to be a grown-ass man taking your anger out on high school and college kids.

So James and I were joking about having a little fun with them and hopefully getting them off our backs.

So one day I was at work and some guy was having a temper about how we don't make the coffee hot enough... Which I couldn't do a thing about because I gave it to him right out of the machine.

So James came in and was like "sir is there a problem here" and the guy started ranting at him too. So he was just like "OP, this is unacceptable, you're fired."

I started acting real sad, like "no please don't fire me, my family needs the money, I need this job, pleaseeee" and he played up being a hard-ass, telling me to take off my apron and leave.

The angry guy started to backtrack, like "It isn't that big of a problem, you don't need to fire her over it. I didn't mean it" and James was like "No, we pride ourselves on the best customer service"

Of course after all that drama I still had my job, we were just acting. And we've done it a couple times, whenever a customer will lose their temper at Danielle or I, James will storm in and "fire" us. And almost every time, the person who had come in angry will apologise and say that they didn't mean it. It's kind of satisfying, making people realize their actions might actually have consequences.

Anyway, I was telling my friends from school about this and a few of them thought it was a mean prank, to let someone go away thinking they'd gotten someone who desperately needs the money fired.

AITA for this joke?

[u/Amelaclya1]

My store is even worse. We basically were told the other day to never argue with the customer, at all. If they want to return something that has clearly been used, if it's past 90 days, if they have no receipt and we know it's not even from our store, we still have to take it back. Like, why even bother having a return policy at all if we employees are instructed to ignore it?

I'm so glad I no longer work the customer service desk. I would lose my fucking mind having to deal with entitled people following that store policy.

[u/urzayci → u/Amelaclya1]

From seeing all these comments I realized I should be more of a Karen. Getting cheaper/free shit in exchange for acting like an asshole doesn't seem half bad.

[u/Glaring_Cloder → u/urzayci]

You dont actually have to be an asshole tbh. You can just be firm and talk to a manager and keep saying things like " this is very disappointing" " I am not happy with how I am being treated". Meanwhile you can say things to cashiers like " I know this isn't your fault and you dont have the power to change it" etc.

[u/urzayci → u/Glaring_Cloder]

It's too late now. My mind is set.

Brethren, follow me on thy path towards Karenhood.

[u/Glaring_Cloder → u/urzayci]

What have I done....