I can’t forget the rude woman in the polka dot dress. But now I know the cure

Lately it seems as though rudeness is being pumped into the air and we’re all absorbing it through our pores. Grown men are assaulting teenage wait staff, school principals are reporting ever-increasing rates of verbal and physical abuse from parents, and every doctor’s waiting room has a sign reminding people not to behave like animals. Sometimes, I find myself thinking wistfully of the before times when the rules governing rudeness were very different. Swearing at strangers was permissible, but only from the safety of your car with the windows safely wound up. You could call someone a tosser if they dared jump the queue at the supermarket, but only if you said it under your breath, with no vocal cord involvement. But those days are over.

Before I began my current career in education, I owned a clothing shop. When you run a business like this, you meet all flavours of human behaviour from the pathologically polite to the ridiculously rude. Fortunately, my interactions with the latter were so infrequent that I can still recall most of them a decade later. There was the customer who proudly informed me that “my five-year-old could have made that” about a pair of handmade earrings. There was the man looking for a present for his wife while eating a mayonnaise-drenched sandwich who fingered every piece of clothing in the store. But the wooden spoon for worst customer goes to the woman who came to the shop to return a polka dot dress after an overnight change of heart.

The dress looked terrible on her, she told me. Just terrible. She demanded a refund, but I informed her in the politest way possible that, in line with store policy, I was unable offer a refund for change of mind. I reassured her that I would be more than happy to give her a credit note for a future purchase. It was at this moment the woman’s eyes turned black and a purple vein started to pop on her forehead.

“Well, seeing as you refuse to give me a refund, why don’t you just keep the dress AND the money. You look like you need it.”

Ouch. And more to the point, huh?

The customer had come with back-up in the form of a woman whose face was now turning a disconcerting shade of puce. She smiled at me meekly as if to say, If you think this is bad, try being friends with her.

“Oh and by the way,” the woman said as she headed towards the exit, “you should have a sign on the door that says NO OLD LADIES ALLOWED!”

No old ladies allowed? I wasn’t exactly selling crop tops and g-strings. In fact, if I had to describe the aesthetic of my store, it would be Melbourne Uni gender studies academic meets Diane Keaton at a farmers’ market.

I have thought about this hideous altercation hundreds of times over the years, not because I’m a miserable sod who enjoys inflicting pain upon herself, but because it occupies a permanent place in my psyche. It changed me – not fundamentally, but enough to put me on edge in customer service situations from that day onwards. I have since devised at least 10 excellent comebacks, none of which I could have used anyway because the polka dot dress lady held all the power that day. And she knew it.

I now realise that my experience with this terrible customer in 2012 is positively quaint compared to what people working in public-facing roles have to endure in 2025. The overwhelming majority of Australian retail workers report receiving verbal abuse, with just over half reporting having been subject to physical abuse. According to research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, rudeness is as contagious as a cold, but its effects can be far more harmful. Just witnessing an act of incivility, can make us less likely to help others. Our body interprets it as a threat, inducing the “fight or flight” response by pumping out extra cortisol and adrenaline. Rudeness has even been labelled a neurotoxin due to the havoc it wreaks on brain chemistry. It is a form of psychological warfare, causing its victims to flail about in the toxic fumes left in its wake. It can reduce cognitive function, creativity and task performance, and jeopardise patient safety in healthcare settings.

As a teacher, I have seen parental WhatsApp groups and nasty emails destroy morale, pushing caring, highly competent educators to the brink. A few weeks ago, I commented on a news article about education and was told by a troll that, “It’s amazing that you can read at all, being a teacher.” Surely there has to be a more effective way of communicating our disappointment and frustration with the world than by spewing our bile onto the nearest unsuspecting target and leaving them to choke on it.

There is a proverb attributed to the Shona language of Zimbabwe: The axe forgets what the tree remembers. It’s almost impossible to forget an act of extreme rudeness once you’ve been on its receiving end. But what of those who wield the axe? Do they regret their behaviour? Much as I’d like to think so, my experience with the polka dot dress lady tells me otherwise. A month or so after the initial incident, she returned the shop to buy a pair of socks. This time, she was perfectly polite and seemed to have entirely forgotten about her epic tantrum. I, on the other hand, had forgotten none of it, and was determined to exact my revenge using the pathologically polite person’s weapon of choice: passive aggression. So when the customer asked me to gift wrap the socks, I complied, using the most heinous tissue paper and ribbon combination I could find: brown and purple.

Oh, and I left the price tag on, too.

Julia Pound is a high school teacher from Melbourne.

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