I work at Target. I don’t so much mind my job (I’m a specialist, I only work one department), but sometimes guests really bother me. What, exactly, is the problem with waiting your turn? If I’m helping one guest with something, don’t fucking ask me to help you at that instant! Wasn’t this taught way back in elementary school? The person who gets to me first gets my help first. I don’t care if I’m helping him or her with four different digital cameras and all you want is the latest PS2 game, s/he got here first. I certainly can’t leave the first guest with four cameras sitting out, now can I? That would get me in serious trouble with Assets Protection, and I don’t want to deal with that. So be patient, or fucking get there earlier.
Guest? When I walk into Target I feel like … well a target, not a guest. As a guest, I’m not sure I have to wait my turn either. After all, I am a guest and don’t guests get what they want?
That sort of thing usually happens to me during the morning/lunch and early evening rush.
Like, if you are in such a hurry, don’t go shopping when you know there are a million other people out trying to shop at the same time. Or if you absolutely have to, don’t act so surprised if you have to wait a few minutes for help. Geez, it’s like going in a restaurant at 6 or 7 PM and being shocked when they say you have to wait ten minutes for a table.
OK, maybe it’s just the term guest.
What’s wrong with customer?
Oh, and I never, ever but and barge in and I’ll call people who do it to me, so I support the OP, but can’t handle the concept that I am a guest rather than a customer.
Caught, guest is a Target term. It’s just supposed to be friendlier. I like it, customer sounds cold to me. I try to use the ‘guest’ philosophy, as in I try to make people comfortable while shopping. Saying ‘customer’ makes it sound like I’m only trying to take you money.
What really irks me (possibly a separate-but-related rant) is when you’re there as a customer in person and another (potential) customer calls on the phone and the clerk interrupts serving you (me) to take the call and solve that persons’ issue. (This usually seems to happen at the cashier at large department stores like Macy’s, etc., or at small single operator retail businesses. I’m trying to make a purchase and someone calls asking if they have Product X.)
HELLO! Not only was I first, but I’m a real, live person who has already bothered to come to your store and am trying to GIVE YOU MONEY! That other person is just trying to make you run around so they don’t have to. Just because it’s the phone, doesn’t make it more important!
And yes, per the OP, I do wait my turn patiently to ask my question. Unless there’s a whole dissertation going on at the home store about how to install granite tile, and I just want to know the aisle for door knobs. Then I’ll make “friendly” eye contact, say excuse me or wait your the “yes?”, and ask my quick question. No one’s seemed to mind so far.
<amusing story>
Until very recently, I worked the Customer Service desk at the local Wal-Mart. It is amazing how perfectly likable and intelligent adults will turn into bellowing and gesticulating idiots when faced with the prospect of waiting. One recednt customer, carrying a funnel of all things, blatantly cut in front of several other waiting customers, who all had returns or echanges which could only be processed at the sevice desk. He then demanded to be checked out. I politely asked him to wait in line. He went ballistic, screamed several choice phrases at me, and walked out. The really hilarious part was that, using his mollusk-like intelligence, he ran into a set of non automatic entrance doors. I could hardly keep from laughing in his face!
</amusing story>
'Tis the season, methinks… The seasonal retail blitz is once again in full swing. This year, thanksgiving is closer than usual to Xmas, and folks are starting to freak out over their incomplete holiday shopping. Also, the shipyardyard lockout a little while ago made a true mess of things-- Ads have been printed and mailed, while the freight was still in Asia.
wmulax93, hang in there, it’s going to get a lot worse.
wireless, when the store is busy, and someone calls me asking for an item, I don’t put them on hold, I tell them I’ll check as soon as I’m able. And leave the line open and rest the handset directly above my till. Ca-ching! Most folks get the hint, and say they’ll come in when I pick up the handset to inform them I haven’t had a chance to look yet.
“Guest” just sounds goofy. I’ll stick with “sheep”…
The idea that employees at Target will be looking at me and thinking “Guest” is somehow… incredibly annoying, in an Office Space, twelve-pieces-of-flare sort of way. Makes me want to not shop there. Not that I’d shop there anyway, but still. I feel sorry for the employees.
I prefer to think of the folks for whom I do pest service as “clients.” It’s more professional-sounding than “customer” and since, by the nature of the work, I’m going to their homes and businesses, “guest” just doesn’t work.
Either “client” or “homeowner.” But I think the former tends to keep the relationship in perspective.
Yeah? Well, I find it decitful and total bullshit.
I completely understand that employees of such stores are obligated to call me “guest” and I put up with it - but the concept is total bullshit.
I am NOT a guest – I am a CUSTOMER.
Yes, the object is to get my money. I also want to take your merchandise. The idea is to exchange these two items in roughly equal amounts. This is called “commerce” and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Repeat - I am NOT your guest. If I was truly your guest, you would not ask me for money at all - but you do, don’t you?
And you know what? While “friendly” is nice in a business, I’ll happily settle for “polite and efficient”. We are not friends, OK? Let’s not pretend. I don’t want a “relationship” with you, I’m just here to buy something. Let’s be curteous to each other, satisfy my need for stuff and your store’s need for money (which is nothing to be ashamed of) and let me get the hell out of there.
I was inspired by an IMHO thread to write to Safeway and tell them how much I hate the “address your customers by name” policy at their Dominick’s supermarkets; sounds like that would be a good idea for Target too. Personally I don’t care; I think it’s silly but am not bothered by that as much as I am about Safeway forcing their employees to address customers by name.
I was in a department store waiting in line at a cashier - one of those in-department register counters without an obvious lane to stand in - and was a step or so back from the lady in front of me but obviously still waiting. As the first customer stepped away, some older woman swooped in and put her purchases down, and I was very pleased when the clerk said, “Pardon, I believe she was here first,” and reached for my items. At least the other woman didn’t throw a hissy fit; she just said “Oh…” as if she were clueless/didn’t expect to be challenged/both, and stepped back.
I should really make it a habit to write letters more often about good customer service, except I indirectly helped one person get reprimanded at one time by doing this. I used to play an online game called EverQuest, and a friend of mine had lost an item due to a bug. A “guide” (customer service in-game, peon level) replaced the item, and other people and I wrote glowing comments about this guide on a message board. The company removed the item and reprimanded the guide for not following procedure fully somehow, even though it was a documented and reported bug. People protested, things were set right, but the guide eventually moved on if I recall correctly. I have the nagging feeling now that if I write in about some good customer service, someone might pick out some BS reason to reprimand the person I’m praising.
wmulax98, they’re still using the Learning PC’s, right?
“Check us Out! Cashier Training”
“All that Glitters” for the jewelry island…
Those are the only titles I remember from when I was working on help desk for the LPC. There were over a dozen titles of educational software that people had to churn their way through to get trained, rather than just having a dozen trainees follow the Team Relations Leader around the store.
Not to excuse rude customers, er…guests, but sometimes their behavior might be born of frustration. I love Target; I think it’s a great store, but they have a tendency to be under-staffed (and by the way I think whoever made the decision to have a “greeter” standing at the door doing nothing, while customers search desperately for assistance with their shopping, should have his head examined). So like I said, I love Target…until I need to ask someone a question, and there are no clerks to be found, anywhere. When I DO see someone wearing red with a nametag, quite often they are trying to set the land-speed record across the store, with that “avoid eye-contact at all costs” look to them. I really hate having to shout “excuse me” at someone; it just feels more civilized to be able to look at them, and have them say “may I help you?”.
So again, I’m not defending rude guests (some people are just plain assholes), and I’m not suggesting that wmulax93 is anything less than courteous, but perhaps one of the reasons you are encountering more than your share of impatient people is because they are jaded from past experience. They may have been wandering the store for the last 20 minutes hunting for a clerk, getting more and more frustrated, and finally found you. If I were in that situation, I would just say: “I’ll be with you as soon as I’m finished assisting this guest”, and I would be sure I said it sans attitude. If they continued to be a jerk, I’d kick 'em in the nuts.
Oh, and I agree on the “address the customer by name” thing. I didn’t tell you my name, and it’s on my credit card only to identify me as the owner of the card, not for you to play Sherlock Holmes.
