I guess some people get the customers they deserve.
amarone, what exactly did THAT comment mean?
Someone who works in retail is saying that they enjoy telling customers that they cannot have what they want. If he has that attitude when serving customers, I hope s/he gets plenty of stupid/rude customers (which is what the OP was about).
I work at a pack-and-ship store. Basically it’s like a Mail Boxes Etc. without the outrageous costs, since we’re locally owned.
There is a huge sign over our mail drop, with arrows pointing down to the mail slot, that states in eight-inch bold black letters:
MAIL DROP
MAIL IS PICKED UP AT
5:30 P.M.
Now, can anyone guess what people ask me as they stare at the mail drop? Anyone?
Also (and I’ve really noticed an increase in this one) people come in to mail things and don’t have the address it’s going to.
Yesterday, I had a lady start screaming at me because she wanted to borrow my stapler and it was jammed. She didn’t buy anything, she wasn’t even technically a customer, yet she felt the need to call me “incompetent” because my stapler was broken when she needed it. When I offered her a paper clip, they “weren’t an option” with her. Whatever, lady.
People come in (well, actually, more like three people in particular) spread their stuff (envelopes and statements etc.) all over the counter like it’s their personal office and take up practically every inch of room. They pay their bills, balance their checkbooks (and occasionally ask to use my calculator) and use my mail slot to send them. Have these people bought so much as a stamp from me, ever? Nope.
This past Christmas I’ve had more people ream my ass about not being able to send liquor. I swear, these people could care less if I lose my job and my store loses its shipping license, so long as Great Uncle Fuckbob gets his yearly drunk on.
I’d absolutely love to post more, but I’m at work right now, and to be honest just thinking about the past couple of weeks is making my blood boil. I’d better quit now, before I lose my “please walk all over me, I’m here to serve” attitude. Sigh.
Oh dear god…
We just had a fistfight in the middle of the museum. A young pregnant woman punched an older woman in the eye! In a museum!
If this is how the “public” behaves in a museum, I truly feel for all of you who work in a mall.
Perhaps you’ve never worked retail? It’s the stupid/rude customer that cause that attitude. And yes, I’ve been known to enjoy telling customers on December 23 that, yes, when the flyer (mailed to them in August, even) says (on the cover, the order form and every 2nd page) that they need to place their order for custom-printed holiday cards by X (December 13 this year) in order to get them by Christmas, that’s really what it means and there’s no way that they will get their cards ordered, printed and delivered in the next 12 hours.
::giggle:: That’s great. I gotta remember that from now on. I, too, work in retail, and I can totally feel your pain. ::hugs & cocoa to all:: Thankfully, I’ve put from my mind all those times that have truly pi$$ed me off. However, nothing can keep me from griping about the regular customers that regularly ask for the cigarrettes we don’t sell. One in particular must have thought he was Eminem, as he had the Slim Shady getup, right down to the bleached hair and flipped up visor. When told we didn’t have cigarrettes, his words were “mf” before leaving in true Eminem style.
~Ferry
I work in a hardware store. A small, locally owned hardware store. My boss prides himself on giving service that goes above and beyond anything you would get at the big box stores.
Still, what do I hear every single day? “This is cheaper at Home Depot!”. Shocker! How could it be that our prices vary! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! Often people complain of differences of less than a dollar. More than once people angrily exclaimed that they were going to head over to Home Depot and give them thier business. Now, note that Home Depot is almost half an hours drive away. You are going to spend 5 times as much on gas as you will save on your one sad little lightbulb!
Also, the other day a man called, asked to talk to my boss about doing an installation (my boss often goes out on quiet days and delivers large appliances to customers and installs everything from kitchen faucets to lock sets FREE OF CHARGE). He then proceeded to tell my boss that he wanted a thermostat that he had bought at Home Depot installed under this system. When my boss said he wouldn’t install something free if it was bought somewhere else, the guy got mad and said that he wouldn’t have had to buy it there if our prices weren’t too high. My bosses response? Call Home Depot and try to get them to install for free!
Having said all that, my biggest pet peeve is people who march up and demand to know where X item is, when I’m in the middle of talking to another customer. Often right in mid sentence. And if I don’t answer immediately they repeat the question louder. Can you not see that I’m talking! Wait your turn! Just because I work here and you are the customer (AKA God) doesn’t mean that all rules of basic potiteness are out the window!
Not exactly, but I have worked in a bar.
Courage! Sometimes people do indeed get a visit from the Clue Fairy.
The store I worked at is part of a chain, but it’s an older chain, and it has worked pretty hard at maintaining an image of offering good service at fair prices. They have in stock, or can special order, a bewildering array of things that just aren’t in fashion any more but that some customers still want. If they’re sold out of an item that a customer wants, they can and will get it sent from the warehouse or from another store in the same chain. That sort of thing.
Now, the store where I worked is not far from a store belonging to the chain’s major cut-rate competitor. I helped several people who were shell-shocked to one degree or another - who found out that the cut-rate chain kept their low prices by, among other things, hiring as few people as possible and not offering any special incentives to keep them. People had found that on a weekday in the middle of the Giftmas Shopping Season, the discount store had one person on duty, to run the cash register. Want fabric? Sorry, you’ll have to cut it yourself, there should be a scissors on that table over there somewhere. Need a duvet? Sorry, the lone clerk knows less about duvets than you do.
And these folks I’m thinking about asked themselves: is it worth it? Sure, I can save money, but how much are my nerves worth? How much is a decent amount of service worth? And the Clue Fairy descended upon them, and the scales fell from their eyes and they understood why shower curtains at the competition’s shop were 10% cheaper, and it wasn’t because we were trying to rip them off. An informed consumer is a beautiful thing to behold.
From the rest of the paragraph amarone quoted:
While I understand your point, amarone, I think it becomes clear that she enjoys putting down the demanding jerks, not everyone indiscriminatly. But I can’t speak for her, that’s just my take.
And anyway, after being treated like shit for hours, days, weeks… it’s human nature to want to fight back a little, anyway. Not saying it’s good business sense, it’s just the way it is.
Actually, it is good business sense, in a way. Customers who require more time and manpower than they’re worth lose the company money. Customers who treat employees like shit lower employee morale, which also costs the company money (through employee attrition and replacement/training costs, plus lowered productivity).
And it’s not that the employee is mistreating the customer, she’s just following company policy. She’s not mistreating the unreasonable customers, she’s giving minor perks to the exemplary customers.
To make some extra money I went back to my old Bulk Food store job as a cashier this Christmas. Now, because it’s a Bulk food store, we, the employees and management, generally have a policy of “the customer is usually wrong and I’m probably right, but check anyways”. You can imagine the joys of working at a bulk food store, customers seem to think it is an all you can eat buffet. I can’t even begin to estimate how many times a night I’ve said “sir/ma’am/small child please stop eating the food”. Just because our food isn’t in packages it’s like customers expect to be able to test it out. Nevermind that there’s a little stick-it on every bin lid saying “please don’t snack, snacking costs us money”.
Often people will bag something and then leave it around the store if they decide they don’t want it. So when we found several bags of different types of candy lying around the front of the store we emptied them. The moment my coworker comes back and says she’s done, the customer who wanted them comes back and starts screaming about how she left her stuff there demands to know where it is. I kindly explain that she didn’t tell us she would be coming back, and since she’d already bought stuff and left the store it was only natural for me to assume that. In the end we had to rebag her candy for her, because she used a cane and was in a rush, and had to pick all the black candies out of the mixed colour types.
I’ve had customers come up to me and ask me if I’m an employee (no, i just like wearing dorky uniforms around and pretending to be an employee at stores I don’t really work at) or when I’m vacumming (again, I just like going around to random stores and vacumming for the employees!). And on a few occassions I’ve had customers tell me they didn’t think I worked there because I’m so small and that I need to gain weight.
The best thing is when they think I’ve overcharged them and they complain and pester me and I insist I charged them the right price. Then they go back into the store to look at what the bin price is and silently leave the store as quickley as possible because I was right and they were wrong.
Ahh, retail hell. The thing that bugs me the most is people who read my nametag and then use my name - like, I’m all, “Have a nice day now!” and they’re all, “You too, [teleute].” Or what’s even worse is when they try to, like, strike up a conversaition or whatever. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like talking to people just fine - it’s not that I’m unfriendly or whatever. But when someone I’ve never met before asks me, “So, [teleute], what are your plans for the holidays?”, it bugs.
Oh the joy.
I worked in a small, locally owned pet store for three years. Despite the fact that I am an “animal person” myself, with an unusally large number and variety of pets, I still maintain a healthy assertation that animal people are the f*n weirdest people on the face of the planet. Not all of them, the ones that love their pets are great… its the ones that love their pets that are nutballs.
Once, a woman came in with a coupon for two free cans of cat food, for which I charged her the requisite seven cents’ sales tax. And only seven cents. She freaked out at me, and when I politely explained that California state law requires that I charge sales tax, even on items which we are giving away (and that the policy was noted on the coupon), she threw the cans of cat food at my head. Then tried to come back a week later when my boss was there and tell him I was harassing her, and that I ought to be fired, damnit, right NOW. He pointed out the security cameras directly overhead, and the fact that he saw the entire incident on tape. She still insisted I harassed her, heh.
Another time, a disturbing looking woman in spandex and a grubby t-shirt wandered in, muttering to herself. She moseyed on over to the feeder rat cage, reached in, selected one unfortunate little critter, and stuck it down her spandex shorts. She wandered around the store for a few minutes, while we tried to figure out exactly how to phrase the incident on the phone with the police, then removed said rodent, put him back in the cage, and wandered out.
Oh how I love retail.
Peace,
~mixie
Ah, I also forgot to mention how disturbingly often a customer would stand idly by, while their pet urinated or defecated on our floor, and stand there and watch, or pretend not to notice, and not say a single word about it. Not even “oh, fluffy had an accident, just to let you know”. Once, I was having a conversation with a customer, while her small (three? four? year old) child proceeded to urinate on the floor. Not a word from the mother.
Peace,
~mixie
Ah yes, Retail Hell. I had a smattering of it, and vowed I would never go back.
I briefly worked at a Target when I was 18. It was my first job, and boy was I in for a brutal shock. I guess I wasn’t really accustomed to the amount of abuse someone in that field of work has to take. Also being scheduled to work 10 hour shifts for my first job (and having ADD to boot) made the days feel like slow torture.
People were blind. I’d be operating a register right in front of customer service. They had a huge neon sign that said CUSTOMER SERVICE. I’d have about 50 people ask me where customer service is. I started getting irate and getting into dialogues like this.
Customer: Where is customer service
Me: It’s right behind me
Customer: I still don’t see it
Me: see the sign? CUSTOMER SERVICE?
Customer: …no.
Me: Its over there (points)
Customer: Where?!
:mad:
Also I had many arguments with people who went into the express line with far more than 15 items, just to get in the faster/shorter line, then when I point it out to them, argue that they didn’t see the sign. Or when my shift would be over, and I tell the last person in line, “you are the last person in this checkstand” and people would get in line even though the designated ‘last person’ would helpfully and politely inform them that the checkstand was closing. And they would totally ignore it. Then my shift would be over and I’d get some person dump about 50 items on the counter.
Someday I want to be rich so I can open my own store. Right behind the counter there will be a large sign;
Be Rude to our Staff
And our Staff will be Rude to You
There is a genuine difference between being demanding and a problem because you don’t know what you need and need a lot of stuff and a lot of help; and being demanding when you have no intention of making a purchase. The former is business, the latter is theft by fraud.
I worked in a comic book store and some old lady came in and tried to return dog food. She insisted that we were a pet shop and argued with my manager for a good while before finally leaving in a huff.
After working to close, coming home, sleeping for 4 hours and then getting up to go in and open, I was glad to finally be off my feet at 2 o’clock this afternoon. I was sitting at a table, reading the newspaper as I waited for my fiance to arrive to pick me up. A lady came over to me and asked if I could check her to go order. I just stared at her before finally saying “I am off the clock”.
I have only limited experience in retail. But I have a friend who runs a successful B&B. One of his guiding principles is that there are some customers you shouldn’t deal with - they upset the staff and the other guests, and are simply not worth the trouble. He’s refused to give a room to rude & obnoxious customers, even when there were vacancies.
One guy saw that his arguing about the price wasn’t working, and said he’d take the room at the stated price. My friend said, “No, I don’t think you’d be happy here.” They guy said “Look, my money is as good as anyone’s and I want that room.” My friend’s response was “Hey, I’ve been in this business for a while and I can tell you that the most money I’m going to make off you is to throw you out of here right now” - which he did. He lost the price of a room, but didn’t have to deal with disgruntled staff or other guests disturbed by one rotten one.
The idea that a business should serve every customer, no matter how obnoxious, needs re-thinking.