And another one: Customers who think they can get away with hiding things. Yes, I am going to look into every suitcase and plastic storage container that comes to my register. And if I find a bunch of items in one of yours, don’t tell me “I don’t know how they got in there.”
And one of the reasons I am so nice to put a full bag by your cart is so I can discretely check the under carriage. That way when I ask “Is that everything?” and you say “Yes” I can say “What about the items under the carriage?” Recently a customer had put a full box of steros, worth about $50, under the carriage and I had to call her on it. And she got so pissed at me that I had to all the manager. “Well, I don’t know how they got there.” Yeah, right.
When I moved to Oregon the first job I got was cashiering in a local chain C-store, which are all 24/7 stores. One day there was a cataclysmic thunderstorm which knocked out power all over town and I called the manager (remember when phones still worked when the power went out?) and he advised me that, since nobody has a key to the front door lock (I mean, this place is literally never closed so the key went missing and nobody replaced it) to take a chain in the back room that has a padlock (with key!) and chain up the front door. Okay, hope there’s no fire because I’m trapped in the place but cool, cool. Then I observed something I’d never run into–the confused customer who simply cannot comprehend that the doors aren’t opening. Rattle rattle rattle…peer into the windows…I holler that the power is out (they know that already) so can’t help ya. “But I just need some cigarettes!” No, dude, register doesn’t work without power. “But I can give you exact change!” No, dude, manager says door stays chained until power comes back on. “But…but…but…but…” NO. Eventually they wander away, their worldview shattered. Now repeat that about fifty times. I was never so happy to see the lights come back on, I swear. They simply could not fathom not being able to come in and get whatever crap they want and acted like it was a PERSONAL SLIGHT that I wouldn’t make an exception for them. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Entitlement is a helluva drug.
When our store replaced our cash registers, they included a power generator that kicks in when the power goes out. The one time it happened, we did some good business cause we were the only store opened and working that hour.
If your name didn’t mark you as an old man, this would.
It’s now very rare for stores to have something in the back when they’re out of stock in the front.
The reason is that retail floor space is very expensive, whether it’s in the area that the customer can reach or not. For the vast majority of items in chain retail stores, there is nothing in the back - it’s all up front.
The exceptions are going to be
[ul]
[li]Something that takes up a lot of space and can be stored warehouse style in a store that isn’t a warehouse store. E.g. furniture in Target.[/li][li]A high-end store that wants to make sure their store doesn’t look like a warehouse.[/li][li]Stuff that isn’t supposed to be on the selling floor yet - seasonal items that are delivered before the display is supposed to be up.[/li][li]Frozen and cold storage where the selling space is more expensive than a back end storage area that can handle a variety of items.[/li][li]They just got the week’s delivery in.[/li][/ul]
I’m sure there are a couple more exceptions I haven’t thought of.
Corporations know exactly how much space every store has for each item they are selling, and a general idea of how much any given item will sell in a given store. They will not be sending more than the store can stock in the front - they may put out more than what they think they will actually sell, but they won’t send more than can be put on the floor to be sold ASAP
This doesn’t make this a completely stupid question… until you insist that there must be some in the back that the clerk can get.
Source - I worked for Michaels and Radio Shack in corporate, and my husband worked for a grocery store.
I am an old woman but it happens to me currently that stores have something in the back that isn’t out yet.
Sometimes the delivery just came in and isn’t out on the shelves yet. Sometimes, probably, there’s not enough room on the shelves for everything they expect to sell inbetween deliveries – many stores have limited shelf space and you can jam a whole lot more stuff into the back room where you don’t have to allow room for shoppers to see it easily and get at it while maneuvering carts.
Sometimes, for that matter, there’s a sale display on an endcap somewhere in the store separated from where the item’s usually displayed; one of them may be out and there may still be some left on the other.
If the clerk says ‘no, sorry, if it’s not on the shelf we don’t have it’ I take that for an answer and don’t keep bugging them; I agree that it’s unreasonably annoying to keep insisting. But ‘there’s none on the shelf, do you have any elsewhere’? is not a stupid question; and this has nothing to do with the age of the asker. Maybe your store never has anything in more than one place; but many of them do.
I only worked behind a cash register once in high school but I have seen my share of stupidity. But as a customer I also have a perspective.
That is a stupid idea that is hostile to good customer service. That does nothing but annoy customers.
That is a very poorly designed process. The MOD should be able to authorize a price adjustment at the register. If I had to stand in line at Customer Service to get the price as marked, I would never go back.
How is it that you work in a store and don’t know the goods you are selling?
Are you talking about a house credit card, or one of the big associations like VISA and MasterCard? If you read your agreement with your credit card associations you will find that you are not permitted to ask for ID when someone presents a credit card. They would rather suck up the risk than lose customers. The store is not responsible for loss if the card is authorized and the customer signature matches the back of the card.
Some stores will accept returns for store credit if you don’t have a receipt and they sell the item. I have seen Home Depot do this, although they nearly had to call the police because the customer threatened to start breaking things if he didn’t get cash back.
I expect a cashier in a grocery store to know the difference between a mango and a banana. Not the price, just what it is, so they can look up the PLU code.
As an old man or even a young man, how am I expected to know all the exceptions if you can’t be sure you’ve listed them. I’ll continue to ask, and you know what, just this past Tuesday, the Local BigY brought me out of the back, the extra two 12 packs of Barqs Root Beer I asked about, and that is not the first time this has occurred. About a month ago I was given a raincheck on a sale item they were out of. They never, in my experience, give a raincheck without checking in the back first. Perhaps, you’re right, and they seldom have anything in the back, and they are just hoping I’ll go away without getting the sale. But if that is true, it’s rude behavior and tantamount to illegal advertising to claim to offer rainchecks.
Now I agree with you that continuing to insist they must have more is also rude behavior. But this doesn’t make asking a not “completely stupid question”. It makes it a perfectly normal and reasonable question.
Source – I’ve been shopping for years – quite likely for more years than you and your husband’s work experience combined.
Well, I agree that stores should provide training to their checkers to show literacy about the produce they sell, but there are stores that don’t give the checker the training or the time, and there are more exotic produce than those - if the store decides to start stocking jackfruit or lychee without educating the checker, it will help if the customer knows the name of what they are getting to help the checker when the store doesn’t.
And if you’re the customer buying something that you don’t know what it is, um, why?
Actually, I am also an old woman. My comment about you being an old man was that this was more expected when we were young.
Yeah, maybe you have been shopping for longer than my accumulated experience in retail, because my work experience is far more non-retail than retail. I was just giving you my perspective from someone who has been behind the scenes.
And I don’t expect anyone to not ask if they want something. Absolutely ask if it’s on sale, or you won’t get a rain check otherwise. Just don’t be surprised if it isn’t in the back, because “in the back” is not what it was when we were young. Especially if they’re actually out of stock in front.
I can sympathize with this question. Plenty of us are still around who spent a good deal of our lives before logistics got all modernized and stuff, and stores did in fact have a ton of stuff in the back, because otherwise they’d have to wait for the next delivery, several days away, before re-stocking the shelves.
Not everybody’s gotten the memo that ‘in the back’ no longer exists, because logistics systems are so good that you don’t need it anymore.
Still exists in some cases. When I went in Best Buy last year for a new TV, what I wanted wasn’t on the shelves but an employee checked inventory on a computer and found more in the back that hadn’t been brought out.
I agree. All of us front-line employees hate hate hate hate hate this thing. But we don’t get a choice.
First, as I have noted, if it is a small adjustment I can make that on my own.
Next level up a manager can alter things a little more.
But as I said, neither of us can take $200 off your bill. And that is not hyperbole, I have had people ask me to adjust totals by triple-digit amounts. It is invariably a situation where it is NOT the marked price on the item that is the problem (we have standing permission to use the lowest price tag on an item that isn’t obvious outright fraud, like a 42 inch TV for $1, when in doubt we can call a manager over to confirm things) but the customer claiming that there is a sign for shelf tag with a much lower price. That has to be confirmed by someone going to the spot in the department where this thing was found and/or confirming the price(s) the department manager, and even then a triple-digit adjust requires a store-director level over-ride which can not be done on the regular register. That can ONLY be done at the service desk.
Why? Because there were too many instances of customers lying and basically asking for 50-75% off full price items. In other words, lying and fraud. The Corporate Overlords made a decision when losses to that sort of thing hit four digits at stores (in some cases, five digits). If it had been only $200 they probably wouldn’t have cared. When our stores started bleeding thousands they took notice.
Losing a couple of legit customers was deemed an acceptable trade-off to bleeding to death due to fraud.
The store I work in has, no joke, more than 120,000 discreet items on the shelves. That’s a lot to keep track of and, remarkably enough, no one person is expected to know all of it.
House card.
Go back and re-read my post. This is for situations where someone does not have a physical card on them and are asking to access their line of credit. We do all the double-checking to prevent fraud.
If they show us their physical card we don’t ask for ID.
Well sure - I even know the two different kinds of mango we sell, and the four different types of bananas, two of which come in a regular and organic version.
But things like raw turmeric are not common in this area (and new cashiers often mistake it for ginger root, except where they don’t know what that looks like, either), I was the only one in the store that could identify rambutans, the seven types of greens we sell all look very similar (mustard, two types of kale, collard, turnip, beet, dandelion). We carry two types of bok choy, which some people call pak choi, three kinds of cabbage (with two of them having regular and organic options), and so on… Oh, and three different types of pluots, one variety of which is very often mistaken for plums and one of the other two for nectarines. I still struggle with identifying peppers, which is not helped by half the people purchasing them not knowing the English names so for some things customers expect me to know both likely names for the item (self-checkout shows color pictures of peppers to help you pick them out, but the cashier look up table is strictly in text and with no descriptors) Two different types of papaya. Honestly, I don’t know exactly how many different items we have in the produce section but it’s in the hundreds and the local distribution center periodically sends us something we’ve never seen before (the arrival of jackfruit is a legendary example). We sell at least five different types of cactus items. It goes on and on. Some of it highly seasonal and thus only on the shelf for a brief period each year (like kumquots or Ranier cherries).
So yes, sometimes we aren’t sure, especially when a customer wraps up the item in one or more plastic bags which obscure details, or when a cashier is new to the job. I have had customers - who presumably have SOME idea of what they want - misidentify their items (the cilantro/flat-leaf parsley mix up being most common, but there are others, like snap peas/snow peas which are very similar).
Yes, new cashiers undergo training including how to identify the seventy most common items in produce. The most common seventy - we have a lot more than that.
