The Karen Index

Samantha DeVos is a regular Target customer from Orange, CT. Today, however, Samantha’s experience has been anything but regular.

As Samantha scans her items at self-checkout, a red light begins to flash and an electronic voice announces that a store associate is on the way. Samantha looks to the ceiling and sighs.

“Sorry about this,” says the store employee as she checks the terminal to see what the problem is and punches in her code so that Samantha could continue. “These things are really fickle sometimes.”

“You know, what?” says Samantha, “this is absolutely ridiculous. If I wanted to–”

Just then Samantha looks at the items listed on the self-checkout screen which stops her speech dead in its tracks.

“I’m sorry,” says Samantha, smiling at the associate. “Thank you for your assistance.”

So what went wrong?

Inflation has been out of control over the past year. Even while it “cools” customers are finding it a regular annoyance while shopping, an annoyance that seems to have manifested in some unforeseen ways.

“I was at the McDonald’s last week,” says Jerry Kromp, “and I walked back up to the counter to let them know my fries were too salty to see if maybe I could get a voucher for a future visit, you know, just a typical lunch. But I don’t know, I just figured I only got a cheese burger, small fries, and a coffee and it just didn’t seem worth bothering the manager over. It was weird.”

“I was shopping at the Stop & Shop,” tells Meridith Peters, “and I only had like six items in my cart. I saw they stopped carrying the kind of tomato paste I like, and I was about to get into it with the stock clerk but thought better of it, like I didn’t see the point.”

“My dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to at the Kohl’s,” says Kendra Polataivao, “but I don’t see why that means I should go easy on the returns manager, but I can’t help but think maybe it’s not worth telling her to find a real job when all I’m returning is a tub of three-flavor popcorn after I ate all the caramel and then decided I didn’t like it. Yes, that does entitle me to a refund, and if what you’re saying… You know what, I’m sorry, I’m just not feeling it.”

What do these stories all have in common? At first glance you may think that people are just deciding to treat customer service workers like normal people and respecting their workplaces, but you’d be dead wrong with not only your assumption but also for your overly optimistic view of humanity. No, the quotes above all point to one thing: The amount of goods customers need to buy in order to feel morally justified in berating customer service workers has risen.

“I used to be able to come in here for a small basket of toiletries and verbally bulldoze any employee who even slightly looked at me cockeyed,” says Target customer Samantha DeVos, “but now if I want to talk down to someone just trying to do their job I feel obligated to add a Toblerone and a case of La Croix to my buggy just to feel right about it!”

“It’s a vicious cycle,” says Bernie Lagadec during a recent visit to Kroger. “Like I want to yell at the boy there about how high the prices have gotten, but then I remember that even though the prices have gone up his pay probably hasn’t. But if I spend enough money to assuage the guilt from yelling at their low-paid employees, doesn’t that just encourage the Kroger to keep raising prices? It’s a real 1984 is what it is!”

I think he meant “Catch 22” but I honestly can’t tell if that’s more or less accurate.

“Thanks a lot, Biden!” says Craig Perrett, whom we didn’t ask for comment but was just walking by and heard us mention store prices.

“I find it’s worth the extra cost,” says Lilith Farmer who recently bought a box of movie theater Raisinets so she’d feel alright yelling at the ushers later because the movie was too loud. “It’s part of the experience of going out on a weekday afternoon and I don’t intend to stop.”

For insight into this strange economic phenomenon, we spoke to Professor Jackson Donnell of the Tallulah Falls Community College economics department.

“Everybody has a spending threshold they need to hit before they can feel morally justified in belittling or berating customer service employees,” says Donnell. “In retail economics, we refer to that threshold as The Karen Index. It varies from person to person depending on things like financial status, age, race, etcetera, but everybody’s got a level where they’d feel like they spent enough to be entitled to treat service workers like human garbage.”

So is there an actual dollar amount?

“Yes,” says Donnell, “indeed there is. The pre-pandemic Karen Index usually averaged out to about sixteen dollars per transaction, but nowadays it’s suggested that the index has risen to about twenty-one to twenty-three dollars. Data also shows there is a positive correlation between inflation and The Karen Index as one would imagine: As prices rise so does the index. Our best theories suggest that customers, subconsciously at least, have a set price for the privilege of belittling service workers and as they see the price of goods rise they assume, again subconsciously, that the cost of being a jerk to the employees must have risen as well.”

The rise in The Karen Index hasn't gone without government attention. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell describes it as "An unfortunate consequence of [The Fed's] plan to fix inflation by forcing as many Americans as possible into destitution" and key business figures like Andy Putzder, CEO of such fast food chains as Eat the Drumstick Slowly and Hät Bräts, hopes that customers at his restaurants feel comfortable being dicks to employees for any transaction. Property developer and gigantic forehead haver Tim Gurner has even proposed a pay-it-forward system where wealthier shoppers can opt to cover part of the Karen Index costs for future customers which he believes will help “ensure these workers don’t get any bright ideas that they deserve to be treated any better than what their lowly, loathsome station dictates”.

And what of the retail corporations in all this? Well, of course they’re not going to balk at a few extra bucks per transaction. In fact, in a recent blog post on The National Retail Federation website, which we in the business news media regard as an actual source of reliable data for some reason, NRF CEO Matthew Shay had this to say on the topic:

“Look, if our valued customers feel they need to spend a little bit more to get what they believe is the full retail experience, who are we to tell them they’re wrong? Yes, we always strive to ensure our customers feel comfortable talking to our associates in any kind of way as they see fit, and we’d never stand in the way of that. Rest assured we do not take changes in the economic landscape surrounding retail lightly and are looking into how we can use this new information to give our guests the very best shopping experience, even if that means raising prices a little to ensure they always feel content in our stores, no matter who they’re talking down to or rebuking.”

Ultimately though, as is typical for the retail industry, the cost of rises in The Karen Index fall back onto the customer. Which is ironic because complaining about it would just make them have to spend more.

“You hate to see it,” says Target manager Bethany Sharan. “Just yesterday some lady wanted to yell at me because the store was closed and she couldn’t keep shopping. Then she saw her total and demanded I add a ten-dollar Buffalo Wild Wings gift card from the impulse standee. But wouldn’t you know, I had already closed down the register and was unable to ring up additional items and she had to forgo her little tantrum. Like I said, you really, uh, really hate to see it.”

While inflation and thus The Karen Index are finally cooling off, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell still plans on raising interest rates later this year to keep the hurt on American workers which somehow will fix the economy.

“We may be stretching the limit,” says Powell, “of how much Americans will endure before they stop being jerks to customer service workers, but we’re still quite far from the limit at which they’ll take any real, meaningful action against the entities who actually cause them economic harm, and we intend to come as close to that limit as possible without crossing it.”

For the time being, customer service workers should take comfort in the knowledge that their mental state and right to work without fear of personal attack are worth losing for the sake of that upsell. Well, at least to their employers and the economy at large it is.