S’pore Florist Asks For Empathy After Customer Calls Special Needs Employee “Rude”

Most retail workers have met their fair share of unreasonable customers.

Sometimes, customers let their anger get the best of them and project their frustrations onto these poor workers, no matter who.

Mustard Tree, a florist in Jurong, recently took to Facebook to shed light on the mistreatment of its special needs workers.

It urged customers to be more compassionate to them.

Incidents Involving Workers

In Mustard Tree’s Facebook post on 31 March, two incidents were recounted in which the florist’s special needs workers were met with frustration by customers.

In the first incident, a customer wanted to purchase daisies and asked for “simple wrapping.”

The workers had been taught simple wrapping, where flowers are placed in plastic sleeves and/or a standard floral wrap.

However, the customer’s perception of simple wrapping differed from what the workers knew, so they told her that they “cannot” do it.

The frustrated customer sent a text to the florist saying that the workers had a “bad attitude.”

However, the issue was ultimately resolved when the florist clarified with the customer that the workers meant to say they did not know how to do the wrapping she wanted.

Unfortunately, the post mentioned that the workers were “rattled and confused” following the incident.

In the second incident, a worker was sweeping the floor when a customer came in with several enquiries.

The worker was “very focused on his sweeping” and must not have paid complete attention to what the customer said.

The customer later said they felt “ignored” and gave feedback that the florist’s staff was “rude.”

Florist Calls for People to Be More Understanding

Asking for society to be more understanding and less hasty to judge, the florist urged people to be more patient with special needs workers.

If society does not demonstrate this towards these workers, it may hinder their pursuit of living independently.

Citing the need for special needs individuals to learn and grow, the florist fears that incidents like the above could happen again to their workers, and that a mockery will be made of them on social media.

Although it is difficult for the florist to teach their workers how to act in various scenarios, it is even harder for the workers themselves to navigate through these situations.

“They simply cannot process and fathom the complexities of our social norms, quirks and cues.”

Despite the recent challenges these workers face, the florist mentioned that they will persevere and are “very humbled by the encounters.”

You can read their post in full below:

Mistreatment of Workers

In an incident last year in September, a senior worker at Burger King was captured scolding a junior worker who allegedly has special needs.

A video of the incident was uploaded on TikTok by user @izwandelex, who mentioned that the junior worker had some “difficulty understanding” what the senior worker was saying.

The senior worker allegedly berated the junior worker about the black trash bags used for the restaurant’s rubbish bin.

According to the user, the junior worker was “trembling” during the incident as the senior worker raised his voice.