Trust me, those of us who work retail find these things just as annoying, if not more so, than the customers do…
Thanks for mentioning that. Often the clerk does not have an option, so don’t be a dick to them (which includes leaving your purchases for them to put back), find a way to yell at Corporate about it.
I still remember the clerk who said “…And I’m supposed to push these accessories on you, so …[nudges pile of tech stuff an inch]… consider it pushed.”
( I told him it was the only time I wished Office Depot had a tip jar.)
I remember when I was in computer sales (that was a lifetime ago) and I was instructed to try to push these shitty E-Machines on customers. I flat-out refused to do it, because a lot of our traffic was by our reputation and I wasn’t going to give a customer a lemon when they wanted something good. (If someone literally said “give me the cheapest thing you have” I’d sell it but I’d warn them first.)
I did get away with it, because I was a damn good salesman and made the store lots of money (even though I hated sales and am so glad I don’t do that anymore) but a lot of people can’t get away with that. I feel for those clerks forced to do stuff they know is wrong in order to pay their bills.
Speaking as a “clerk” - we’d rather you leave your now unwanted stuff at the register rather than putting it in random locations throughout the store. That may vary from place to place, but leaving your stuff at the check is NOT always a “dick move”. Just place it on the counter - throwing it would be a dick move.
Are you implying that we noble denizens of this message board are not the upstanding sorts of Eagle Scouts who would set our sights at all shy of Going The Extra Mile… where we take the item back to the aisle we got it from, hang it up on its original hook, AND double-check the SKU number on the shelf, comparing it with that of the item?
(Then we go find the manager and yell in their face, telling them WHY we had to put that back.)
Yes! This. It’s not that they ask – I totally accept that they’ll ask for my phone number, these days. It’s that they’re caught utterly flat-footed when I decline. Deer in the headlights. Literally never happened to them before; they don’t even have a method to handle it.
That tells me much scarier things about my fellow haircut customers than it does about Supercuts.
Ditto for me. Actually the cost of the phone is reasonable since I dropped DirecTV and went with a cable/internet package and the landline is $5 per month.
Like daycares wanting your children’s social security numbers, I gave bogus info, I now give the public, bogus phone numbers with the understanding, the onus is on me to contact the business, instead. Hell, I lie about those required award credits so I can have correct price of health insurance from my employer (they call it, a voluntary discount), make sh*t up - how’re they gonna verify with HIPPA and all. Anyway, if I don’t have store loyalty card, I use 8675309 - never use their points, just add to em, and it appears others do this, cause that number has alot of points, everywhere.
I only knew Tandy as a leather craft store (looks like they still are), so I always thought it was odd that they were trying to sell computers. Our Radio Shack started out with a “Tandy Radio Shack” sign on it.
Ahhh… THAT’S why their flagship computer was a TRS-80… Tandy Radio Shack. Only took me almost half a century…
At Sport Clips, there isn’t even someone to greet you. There’s a tablet by the door and you’re expected to log in yourself. They call you based on the log in sequence. Count me out.
That would be great for those that ARE indeed the sort of steely eye missile men Eagle Scouts you describe, but much more often members of the general public attempting to re-shelve items results in a stunning display of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
I remember hours reshelving crap at Toys R Us (we called it “pieces” for some reason). It was like the least fun scavenger hunt ever, I do not miss those days but I wish I had that 2 1/2 years of my life back. That company was a hellhole to work for and I’m filled with so much schadenfreude to see them closed down. (One of the offices I support today is in the same parking lot of the rotting husk that used to be the TRU that I worked at, so I get to laugh at them, I beat you!)
Oh, and I used to have to ask customers for their number when I ran a register (which wasn’t my regular job but I did it infrequently). Luckily it was okay if they refused to give it, because many people did. This was in the mid-late 90s so before the cell phone days.
It may be horribly unethical, but at the Rural King (a kind of redneck version of WalMart) they always ask for my zip code, and I generally give the wrong one.
By this time they may be wondering why someone would drive 1000 miles to shop there.
There was a guy on the internet, back in the day, who copied the code from his supermarket loyalty card and printed off hundreds of copies onto peel-n-stick paper. If you sent him a self addressed, stamped envelope he’d send you a sticker.
We had an employee that, and I don’t know if was before or after she left, must have given our [business] number out to a few places as her own. We got a bunch of calls for cruises, time shares and other junk like that. Luckily, I’m a super nice guy and informed these callers that she’s no longer employed here and gave them her current cell phone number.
Oddly enough, that actually stopped the calls (on our end, she’s probably still getting them).
I’ve always just said ‘unlisted’ when asked for a phone # somewhere that I didn’t want to share it. Never had a cashier even blink at it. They just key in all 9’s and cash me out.
This may have been covered already - there’s a lot of posts here. But there needs to be a crackdown on dickhead management. You know; those twits that have been promoted well beyond their level of competence. Or perhaps they were hired into management based on the couple years they spent at some university learning absolutely nothing about the job they were hired to perform.
You know damn well that if they’d ever spent an hour at the cash register they wouldn’t be tasking cashiers with asking such rude and intrusive questions. To say nothing of begging each passing customer to donate to whatever their cause of the week is.
If they as a company wish to make a donation, fine. Don’t pester everyone else. Some even harass for a donation via their Interac terminal. That’s gone too far.
Another thing is websites. Is there such a thing as a company website anymore that doesn’t have a popup wanting you to subscribe or enroll? Why? Just why? And what kind of person does enlist their name when asked via such method? There must be plenty that do. Same as who gets sucked into telemarketing schemes.
Sadly, the only conclusion I can come up with is the absolute stupidity and lack of any common sense of some people. Harsh yes. But what other explanation is there that allows these companies to get away with such actions.
Final note. There’s a large grocery chain that started selling alcohol. Sobey’s. Their ‘policy’ (i hate that word) is to ask everyone for ID. Everyone. I’ve seen people who were clearly well into their 70’s being asked for ID. What kind of asshole management would put their cashiers in such a position?!
