So you expect people who feel as though they are not being paid enough to do their jobs already…to be extra good at their jobs? If they work as hard as possible, they will never be paid a living wage, and you think they should work harder?
One of the main arguments against raising the minimum wage is that the jobs are for kids and aren’t hard and don’t require any skill. So why do you expect anyone to work hard and display any skill?
I’m not diggin’ it.
Yeah, I’ve seen that difference between US customer services and other countries’ customer service. It seems that in the US the employees are trained to be nice, elsewhere they’re trained to be knowledgeable. I for one am particularly sick of being greeted on the phone like I’m a long-lost brother. I would rather be greeted with the answers I’m looking for.
Having said that, I recently experienced the opposite of bad service, and something that did stop me from walking out of a store. I was in a supermarket which had recently changed its layout, but it helpfully had a massive sign telling you what product should be in which aisle. Unfortunately the product I was looking for wasn’t on the sign, and while I was peering up at it looking totally lost an employee walked right in front of my nose without even stopping. I was about to give up and go somewhere else when the store manager called out to me. “Hey! Did that guy help you?” No, I said, I didn’t ask. “Doesn’t matter, he should have helped you. Whaddya lookin’ for?” And he LED me to the item I needed. Now that manager wasn’t super polite. But he certainly gave me help over and above what I needed. I hope that was a teaching moment, as they say, for his employees. Shame I’ll be moving out of town soon, as that experience would certainly encourage me to return.
The day I bought diamond earrings for my daughter’s 21st birthday I was apparently not spiffy enough for many of the jewelry stores. I was totally ignored in some, treated with disdain and condescension in others. My money went, of course, to the store where the employees realized that a middle-aged woman in jeans might have money to spend.
This always reminds me of the scene in “Pretty Woman” where Julia Roberts goes back to the store that wouldn’t wait on her, carrying bags ‘n’ bags o’ stuff. “You work on commission, right? I was in here yesterday and you wouldn’t wait on me.” < hefts bags > “Big mistake.”
Yes, yes I do. And have done, personally, as well. Good heavens, if everyone who felt they were underpaid chose not to do their job the economy would come to a screeching stop.
Hyperbole or BS, one of the two. The overwhelming majority of people who work hard and do a good job are promoted and/or given raises. Precious few jobs/careers start people in the middle or at the top. One starts at the bottom and proves themselves first.
Not an argument, pretty much a fact. According to the independent Pew Researchorganization (and others): "Perhaps surprisingly, not very many people earn minimum wage, and they make up a smaller share of the workforce than they used to…:snip of absolute numbers that make up stats below:
That group represents 4.7% of the nation’s 75.3 million hourly-paid workers and 2.8% of all workers. In 1979, when the BLS began regularly studying minimum-wage workers, they represented 13.4% of hourly workers and 7.9% of all wage and salary workers."
As indicated above, to move up to the next level - at one’s current employer or some other. That is the way it works.
Then you ain’t making foreman on the cemetary crew.
I won’t hijack any more, but could not let that pass.
To the OP, I have left a store on several occasions if I am not being helped. I don’t usually tell a manager about it or write a letter to corporate, I just leave.
Are you British by any chance? 
Oh, I did that at a couple higher-end department stores in their fancy dress sections, when I was looking for my wedding dress. I was wearing no makeup, didn’t do much with my hair, jeans, polo shirt. I’d figured that was a good plan if I was intending to get in and out of expensive dresses all day. Got totally ignored. Their loss; I’d been willing to spend some serious cash on a really nice dress instead of some cheaply-made thing that gets the price cranked up because you slapped the word “wedding” on it.
It’s fairly rare. Most of the times it is lines in grocery stores, I’m not waiting 10 or 20 minutes to pay them money. The most recent time I walked out was a Wal-Mart supercenter. I walked in and the checkout lines were all the way back into the aisles. I instead took a nice ~10 mile drive through rolling hills to Food Lion and waited in no line at all.
When I was buying my motorcycle the closest old and small Honda dealership didn’t seem very interested in me, so I left and instead bought a motorcycle 50 miles away at a big shiny dealer.
I rarely walk out, but it’s mainly because I have extremely low expectations for service. In fact, my usual shopping routine is: 1) research the item online 2) determine if it makes more sense to order online and have delivered 3) if I buy from a store, determine the one with the best price 4) go to store and find that item.
I only interact with the store’s employees if I have trouble finding the item and can’t use a self-serve checkout. I’ve even had cases where I had to show employees the SKU from their company’s website to help them help me find the item.
The idea of going into a store and finding a knowledgeable and helpful person who could help me determine what I need… well, I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that. In fact, I know I haven’t. The closest I’ve come is with stores that have pushy salespeople on commission who pretend to be helpful in order to talk me into buying the most expensive item in the store. While I can sympathize with the half-wits who can’t help me, I’m quite annoyed by the pushy sales types.
Something tells me they’re okay with that.
The cashier probably should’ve asked you if you minded before she rang up the guy’s only item first, but storming out on a tidal wave of indignation over it seems like a disproportionate response, especially if you loved the place.
<Ahem> More typically, as I understand it, (or at least in some supermarkets), if the entire cash register system goes down, the store management will close the store completely and evacuate the store. All the clerks are trained specifically how to do this: They all have “assigned aisles”, they start at the back end of the aisle and move forward toward the front, herding all customers toward the door and out. All their carts full of stuff are just left abandoned where they are.
At least I know of one store where that happened, twice.
I am in California, but this happened at a store in New York, several years ago. So how do I know about it?
Well, I was (and still am) the software consultant who wrote a certain custom add-on module for a cash register dealer who then installed it at his customer, the store. After running successfully for a while, it crashed the entire system by corrupting a database index. A week or so later, after I spent untold hours ransacking my code to find how it could have happened, and making some tweaks, we tried it again. With the same result again. :eek:
I ended up re-writing the entire module nearly from scratch, doing various things differently, and it’s been running well ever since, to this day. I never figured out what was going on there. There ought to be no way any client-level code could trash a database index maintained by the server. But the server is known to have bugs too, and I guess my original code just happened to hit one of them.
The dealer told me that each such incident cost the store somewhere in the neighborhood of about $10,000.
The Denny’s near me specifically has a “build your own Slam” menu. There are forms at each table, listing all the ingredients that can go into a Slam with a check-box next to each. You just check each item you want. The items are grouped into categories, like the meat, the cheeses, the toppings, or whatever else.
Nope. I didn’t say anything of EXPECTING them to work hard or well. And I re-read it just to be sure. Swing and a strike.
I don’t see, then, what your comment has to do with the topic at hand - the expectation of a level of service you feel you should get before you walk out of a business. I inferred from your comment that you feel people should be working harder to please you as a customer, and since they don’t, they should stop bemoaning the fact that they get paid very little.
What did your comment mean, then, in the context of this thread?
Apparently because their parents were never married. 
I’ve done it many times, but still not enough.
I took my daughter to get a smoothie once and our order seemed to have gotten lost. I made a bit of a scene. The owner starts yelling at the kid who was the server, but never said a word to me or gave me an apology. I walked out. I got madder and madder. So, I walked back into the store told him I wouldn’t be coming back, not because of the kid’s mistake, but because of the way he handled the situation.
It also didn’t help that he had some Tea Party flyer on his glass door.
I guess you hadda be there. The guy’s “one item” was enormous and designed to feed 50 people. It was not a simple ring-up and toddle away deal. While they were attempting to wrap the monstrosity, I uttered my disproportionate response and walked out. I apologize for not making that clear. I did not “storm out”. I made a joke and walked away. Didn’t slam anything. :smack:
And while I loved the place, it’s not unique. There are others like it and they get my business.
Would you continue to patronize a business that allows such rudeness?
I probably wind up walking out of a store or fast-food restaurant a couple of times a year. It’s almost always because the location is clearly having a “bad day” (register isn’t working properly, short-staffed in the kitchen, etc.)
If I’m in line for 5 minutes, and nothing is moving, I have no problem with turning around and walking out.
For me, only Car Toys. They spend a fortune on advertising but ignore you when you get in the doors.
Too late to add: I just remembered my worst of this sort of experience.
This was four or five years ago, on the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend. My wife was out of town with some friends, and I was in the mood for a sit-down meal. I went to a local casual-dining restaurant (a local place, not a chain), asked for a table for one, and was seated. They were busy, but not swamped by any means.
I sat there for 15 minutes, and I saw several servers dealing with all of the other tables around me. However, not once did a server came to my table, or even tried to make eye contact with me – if I’m feeling generous, I’ll theorize that there was a miscommunication in which server was supposed to have my table, but my cynical side says that the servers saw a single guy at a table, and assumed “crappy tip” (a bad assumption, as I’m a very good tipper if the service is even halfway decent).
After being ignored for all that time, I was in a pretty grumpy mood. I got up, went to the hostess desk, and informed her that, as I’d been ignored by their staff for a quarter-hour, I had no interest in staying for a meal. I’ve not been back to the restaurant since.