do you think you deserve an apology you haven't yet received?

Heck, yes.

I work in retail.  I'm sure what it is about retail, but it makes people angry.  The quantities aren't right, the prices are too high, the service is too slow... it doesn't matter who or what it is, but people seem to find a reason to be unhappy about something.  I think that the only two places that would be worse to work would be fast food or the DMV.  That said, I get a helluva lot of people who seem to think that they are better/smarter/somethinger than me, and who deem it necessary to blame me for something.  Seriously.  It could be anything.  Dried up glue sticks, gas prices, the weather....

I found this blurb on a blog the other day that details the situation pretty clearly:

When people ask you for help finding something, it's important to remember that they are all idiots and even Plato himself wouldn't be able to explain to them that the aisles are numbered left to right with Aisle 1 being on the far left-hand side of the store. If you (for some reason) want to show the customer where something is, you'd better be prepared to walk them to the item, take the item off the shelf, hand it to them and repeat to them what it is they asked you to find. Anything short of this will confuse the customer and cause them to become angry at you or possibly someone else around you for reasons that are impossible to understand.

Also, you will find that customers have no idea what the hell we even sell at Staples Office Supply Store. They will ask for aluminum molding, condoms, copper wire, vehicle-mounted global positioning systems, automatic weapons... you name it. I have found that it's important that you NEVER EVER tell the customer that you don't carry something, because they will become mad at you personally for the shortcomings of the company you work for. They'll get all pissed off and blame you, the fifteen-hour-a-week minimum wage slacker employee, for Staples management's decision to not carry hatchets or giant bottles of Hydrochloric Acid in their stores. Then they'll bitch about it like you have some way of changing the company policy. No, fuckstick, I don't think they're going to listen to me. But as you may have guessed, it's pointless to try and reason with with these belligerent asshats. I've instead found that the best way to deal with the irrational jackasses is to just tell them that whatever they're looking for is on the mysterious "Aisle Thirteen" and then quickly head back to the stock room and/or climb a ladder. Wait there for about ten minutes until the customer discovers there's no such thing as aisle thirteen and leaves the store. Whatever you have to do to avoid them, because being confronted by a customer you've just jerked around is even worse than telling them that your store is completely out of paperclips.

I hope that somewhere along the line, these people are getting a taste of the way they are treating their "inferiors," because I am surely not getting any apologies.

For anyone who does work in retail, though - specifically Staples - the article that quote comes from is hilarious.