Christopher said,

I think the correct response is something along the lines of you will

empathize with the customer, commiserate with their upset, and then provide solutions to their problem.  Diverting their attention to something else in the store just tells the customer, "I don't care about your issue, but look, here's a bunny!"<

I can't agree with you more, Christopher. Empathizing and commiserating is exactly how I used to get by with taking hundreds of dollars from drunks while working as a Table Games Dealer at the two casinos I where worked [recursively] AND _kept_ them as regular customers, some of which even _followed_ me to the second casino when I 'moved'! I was told on more than one occasion by more than one person that I was one of the few Dealers, if not the only one, they had that actually treated people like people.

Of *course*, in a retail situation, I would use that very same tactic and then once the person calms down, I would then go about finding a solution adding the diversion tactic as one possible solution.

@ The whole group. Please accept my apologies for allowing my "signature" to go to the discussion list. I didn't really intend to spam y'all.