I might be “angry and intolerant” that it has become MY problem.
The thing is, people in retail with jobs like the OP largely have very little to do with the functioning of the business, besides physically setting up the store, ringing up the orders and being pleasant for the customers. Anything having to do with stuff link inventory on hand, number of employees at the register and whatnot is decided by corporate. Largely through predictive algorithms designed to maximize their very narrow profit margins.
It does seem like an interesting business in the sense of being an actual “real” business that has products, markets to customers, has to figure out supply chain issues and all that. I mean on the corporate side, not working in a Banana Republic or store.
I’m quite amused at the idea that someone collecting carts should feel guilty about an item being out of stock. Sure, you act vaguely apologetic to people who desperately need their favourite snack brand when it’s not there, but anyone thin-skinned enough to feel personal guilt or shame about something like that despite having literally no control over it is going to be having a nervous breakdown within a week in your average retail environment, they’re not going to be promoted to management.
Thank you for displaying your incredible lack of understanding on how retail operations, and business in general, work. You don’t just snap your fingers and extra employees appear. They have to be hired and trained, and all of that comes with a cost. Those costs are reflected in the prices charged for items for sale at retail. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s pretty fucking cutthroat out there, so they don’t have “extra staff” they can just call up on a whim. They DO plan for a certain amount of no-shows, but yes, it’s damn well your problem as a customer if you need something so badly that a few extra minutes waiting for it is so inconvenient that you decide to take your business elsewhere. Guess what? Elsewhere sucks, too.
And again YOU’VE failed. The predictive models that most stores use are pretty good at keeping them in business during times of razor-thin margins. Unexpected disruptions to the chain – whether it be from people buying up all the toilet paper and flour to the fact that they just didn’t get enough hamburger this weekend – are just that, unexpected. In any given store which stocks tens of thousands of items, odds are that several of them are going to have ended up overstocked and not needed, and several of them are going to end up understocked. That’s how statistics and percentages work, and the fact that something is out at the store is an inconvenience but really doesn’t indicate incompetence at all.
Here’s a different example: There’s a Nintendo Switch (I think it’s the Switch, it’s a nintendo of some sort) shortage right now. It has NOTHING to do with retailers, and everything to do with manufacturing capacity and deliberate shortages from Nintendo themselves. But maybe this isn’t one of the 12 things you thought of.
We get this at my store all the time, as if the poor cashier can do anything about it.
Guess what? NOBODY can, not the floor supervisor, not the department manager, not the store manager. The store is at the mercy of the warehouse. If the supplier/manufacturer is having issues, they’re not going to be able to send out product. If they can’t send out product, the warehouse isn’t going to get it. If you’re at store level sending an order, you have no idea if you’re going to get what you ordered. It’s a domino effect that’s turning the entire supply line upside down.
Most customers will be disappointed that they can’t get X but they’ll shrug it off and try something else. It’s the entitled pandemic-is-inconveniencing-me types which bitch about it.
On the subject of inventory shortages, I have an interesting observation from my little online shop. I’ve noticed that I will get “runs” on certain colors of the same product for no apparent reason. For exxample, my best selling item is a dog muzzle. For a few months everybody will buy black ones, then that stops and everybody will buy blue ones. Since I’m online it can’t be coming from the fact that customers are seeing each other buy them, think it’s a good idea and do likewise. I haven’t been able to predict what will be the popular color, so this has caused me to run out of certain colors several times.
And I’ve had customers email me to inquire about the color they want being out of stock and actually agreeing to WAIT for it to be replenished rather than buying another color!
It is rare I read something so wrong outside of political threads. First, the cashier has no agency. There is no reason for a cashier to be angry, except maybe because he or she has had to listen to the same damn complaint 250 times. Second, the cashier shouldn’t have any more loyalty to the company than the company has to the cashier, which in very, very many instances is none. The position of cashier is transactional to the company. Do the mandated job, get paid - that is all.
The rest of your posts in this thread have been bollocks too, but this…just wow.
Even though you can save some money on your grocery bill by shopping at other grocery stores, it may not be the most convenient option for some. Saving a dollar or two off of an item at another store may not be worth the extra time or travel length.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but I wish people would respect the Quarantine a little more instead of flooding the grocery stores and putting themselves at risk, despite wearing masks and gloves. The best method would include following my post above.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but I wish people would respect the Quarantine a little more instead of flooding the grocery stores and putting themselves at risk, despite wearing masks and gloves. The best method would include following my post above./QUOTE]
We have a state mandate for all supermarkets that a mask must be worn to gain entrance and all employees must also wear one. Some stores actually have security guards to make sure the mandate is enforced. They actually stopped a few people the last time I was there. I don’t know what happened with them.
We have a state mandate for all supermarkets that a mask must be worn to gain entrance and all employees must also wear one. Some stores actually have security guards to make sure the mandate is enforced. They actually stopped a few people the last time I was there. I don’t know what happened with them.
Is it the cashier’s fault that there are not enough checkout lines open?
Maybe yes. Is there anything in a cashier’s training that says, “If you see long lines, don’t ever call for more checkers? And be sure to wear blinders so you can’t see the lines, because customer service is NOT our priority!”
I can’t count the hundreds of times, in numerous stores, where, as a customer, I see empty checkout stands, long lines, yet “extra” employees are working in aisles. You can bet your bottom barcode that I will ask the cashier to get on the PA and request more checkers, which they do, and usually, some of the “extra” employees come running and open up a checkout counter. Why is it that I have to prompt them to do something so obvious and simple?
At a number of stores the cashier will routinely ask “did you find everything satisfactory”? If so the cashier should be forwarding these complaints to the appropriate person for action.
But of course this seldom happens–instead this is just a phony gimmick to suggest the store actually cares about the customer experience.
Followed, an hour or so later, by the cashiers being berated by customers that couldn’t find items they wanted on the shelves. (Because the shelf-stockers were interrupted & called up front to open more checkout stations.)
Sigh. Retail is a tough, low-margin business, where it’s really hard to keep your customers happy.
The “appropriate person for action” may not exist, if your lack of satisfaction is due to, say, the price of eggs these days.
Otherwise, there’s a general manager. They pretty much handle, well, anything not specifically delegated (running register, stocking produce, slicing at the deli counter) and if you have a complaint you want acted upon, then make the effort to locate that individual.
Otherwise you’re making an auditory comment (no paper trail) to someone who may not even get a water or potty break for a few more hours. Remembering the details of your one-off comment after dozens or even hundreds of subsequent transactions, and taking the initiative to bother their boss on a random stranger’s behalf … that’s a lot to hope for out of a minimum wage employee.
Cashiers have limited small talk to draw upon. Talking about the weather with someone who is halfway through an eight hour shift and may not see sunlight today is kind of a non starter.
Sure, but there are different levels of outrage. Back in graduate school, I worked a summer at a Sports Authority, and our inventory was pretty much tracked in the main system. The problem was that they didn’t do frequent enough physical inventory or cycle counts to really have a clue what was actually in stock at a given store. Plus the way things were stored in the storeroom was not indexed or anything- it’s not like the system says “You have 3 Igloo coolers of model XYZ on shelf 1B”- it just said that we had 3 of that model… somewhere in the store, or in the back, without telling us what color, where they were, or what that particular model even looked like. Probably the most egregious thing they would do is to basically shift anything that left the warehouse to being “in stock” at the store it was being sent to, without any kind of receiving process or admission of transit time.
And they’d also do shady stuff like advertise a specific air mattress at a bargain price in the weekly newspaper flyer, and then ensure there was only a token number on hand- either by shipping them last-second (ensuring they weren’t actually in the store, because they were on the truck), or by assuming that what was on the system was accurate.
So we frequently ran into situations where we supposedly had stuff available to sell, but it just flat out wasn’t there- we’d sold it, a customer had thrashed it somehow and we had to throw it out, and inventory never got updated, someone shoplifted it, etc… and we routinely had to issue rain checks to annoyed customers.
After a while, you get numb to that, especially if you’re being paid 7 dollars an hour for 20 hours a week because they won’t hire anyone full-time because they’d have to pay for insurance, time-off, etc…
So you get hammered by the customers for that stuff, and then you get the generic asshole customers who want to argue about discounts that regular store associates have no authority to give, who get angry at the floor staff about inventory stuff they have no control over, who show up at 8:50 when the store closes at 9, and proceed to wander around another 30 minutes dawdling, idiots who get mad at you when you tell them that no, you can’t fire 380 out of a 9mm, and they get mad because that ammo is on sale, and not the 9mm, idiots who don’t understand how boresighting works vs. actual sighting-in, and so on.
That’s not even including oppressive or stupid management practices like ignoring requests for scheduling leeway (like “Hey boss- I have an event planned like a month and a half from now on X weekend- can you schedule me so that I don’t have to work that weekend?” And you remind him later. And when the schedule comes out for that week, you’re scheduled for two full shifts on Saturday and Sunday? Or stuff like calling you in on your day off because some other asshole didn’t show? Or making you stay late one day, and then making you leave early so you don’t make overtime. Or any number of other sketchy, shady practices intended to nickel and dime workers out of hours and control of their own schedules.
Eventually the staff quits caring- you can only give so many shits before you’re exhausted and just plugging away just enough not to get fired for your $7.25/hr. Stuff like getting embarrassed because the company did something just doesn’t even register after a while.
There are a number of tips/tricks/ploys/whatever stores use to instill the impression that they care about their customers. Before I say anything else, though, I’ve had the pleasure of working for two separate employers who had communication departments where issues were actually listened to, replied to, and in some cases, became chain wide protocol. Sadly both companies have since merged with different conglomerates and now exist in name only.
But yes, for the most part, you’re correct, it’s a gimmick. It’s also “good customer service” in that it’s better to have smiling chatty front end people than dour, sour faced ones. Customers are more likely to return if they find the staff pleasant and helpful.
As someone who has worked as an inventory analyst in both the retail and manufacturing industries for the past 30 years I find this statement ridiculous.