[QUOTE=FlyingDragonFan]
[snarky mode] And if you had listened to the guy, you might have found out that you actually wanted whatever the fuck it was. [/snarky]
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I’m sorry- do retail cashiers no longer understand the word “no?” I hear your offer, I decline. Quite simple really.
Don’t take your sucky job pressures out on me, and I won’t take my shitty day out on you. Deal?
[QUOTE=FlyingDragonFan]
Just like at Target, don’t blame the clerk. We’re under a lot of pressure to sell those memberships, and don’t really have much of a choice.
[snarky mode] And if you had listened to the guy, you might have found out that you actually wanted whatever the fuck it was. [/snarky]
[/QUOTE]
When I worked that one miserable month at Victoria’s Secret, my hours were based on how many credit cards I signed up customers for in the week before. In the area that I was in, there were people who already had the card, and people who had no business having the card. Honestly, I can’t work in retail because I don’t think it’s ethical to encourage this kind of crap and to entice people who can’t afford it to go into further debt.
When in stores that do credit cards, I say a quick “no thanks” after they’re done with their schpiel, as I really hate it when I get interrupted and try not to commit the same faux pas.
[QUOTE=EJsGirl]
Oh, I’m sorry- do retail cashiers no longer understand the word “no?” I hear your offer, I decline. Quite simple really.
Don’t take your sucky job pressures out on me, and I won’t take my shitty day out on you. Deal?
[/QUOTE]
Lighten up. It is worthwhile to some folks to have, for example, a Books-a-Million membership that discounts a lot of stuff. I do. I buy books frequently and when the cashier guy took five seconds to tell me about it, I took five seconds to actually listen. It made sense.
It ain’t for everybody, but some people don’t even listen.
[QUOTE=DMark]
Yes, it is annoying to be asked every time you go through the line.
But no less annoying then every time I call some business and get the perky little voicemail woman saying, **"Did you know you can go to our website, suckybusiness dot com and not find the answer to your question there either? ** Our helpful customer service agent will be with you in about an hour, and be sure to ask them about signing up for our scam du jour. It’s fun and it’s easy to do!’
It seems every business now feels they have to grab you whenever and wherever they can, and then beat you over the head with offers you don’t want.
[/QUOTE]
bolding mine
QFT. I hate calling to try to pay a bill over the phone or to talk to a CSR and first having to listen to the “have you checked our website?” spiel.
Yes, I have checked your website in an effort to not have to talk to some poor schlub getting paid $7 an hour to answer phones for 300 companies. Unfortunately, your website either didn’t have the info I wanted or the fucking thing was down again. Or better yet, I attempted to pay online, but didn’t get confirmation and now I have to call you to figure out what’s going on. Yeah, I know I can go to your website…
I retract my earlier snarkiness, because I don’t know you, sturmhauke, and you don’t know me, and there’s no need for me to stir anything up. My apologies.
EJsGirl, it’s not a sucky job pressure, it’s a sucky job requirement, (even to the point, of yes, having to ask more than once). Yes, it sucks for you, too, to have to listen to it once every visit, but I guarantee it sucks way more to have to say it a few dozen times every day. If people could empathize with everyone else’s suckiness, life would suck a lot less.
[QUOTE=Hung Mung]
It ain’t for everybody, but some people don’t even listen.
[/QUOTE]
This is definitely true. I don’t often work the registers, but when I do, I phrase it, “Do you have a Barnes & Noble membership?” And the answer is usually, “No thanks.”
I don’t have a problem with the offers, around here they are an offer, they don’t push it. But lately two chains, Radio Shack and Farm and Fleet have gotten to ask about address, for cash purchases. What happened to cash and carry? I don’t think rechargable batteries, AA size, or Farm and Fleet’s Bondo Fiberglass kit with some sandpaper and Rustoleum so I can keep my youngest son’s car door from falling off as a big national security issue. I have found it interesting that when I offer to trade my address (for a cash purchase) for the cashier’s, it is refused. Sometimes I use a check, for crying out loud it has my address and DL # on it, but not good enough, they have to badger you for it before they can ring it up. Oh well, Wisconsin is the Badger State.
My fiance stopped shopping at Best Buy for a while because he encountered two rude and pushy cashiers in a row who got all up in arms when he didn’t want to get warranties.
Now my fiance works in technology, he knows about what he’s buying and knows whether or not he feels it needs to have extra protection attached to it. So when a clerk says “do you want to sign up for a warranty?” and my fiance declines, that should be it. A simple question-answer.
But these people keep pushing it. One guy actually got condescending, saying things like “Well you know mine broke after 2 months so you really need the insurance, man, don’t say no.” and “Are you sure, I mean, it’s a really good deal!” etc etc. He was a poor salesman and we weren’t buying it. After a single “no thanks” I prefer you leave it be. Don’t come back and tell me you know what I need. No, you don’t.
[QUOTE=Elysium]
My fiance stopped shopping at Best Buy for a while because he encountered two rude and pushy cashiers in a row who got all up in arms when he didn’t want to get warranties.
Now my fiance works in technology, he knows about what he’s buying and knows whether or not he feels it needs to have extra protection attached to it. So when a clerk says “do you want to sign up for a warranty?” and my fiance declines, that should be it. A simple question-answer.
But these people keep pushing it. One guy actually got condescending, saying things like “Well you know mine broke after 2 months so you really need the insurance, man, don’t say no.” and “Are you sure, I mean, it’s a really good deal!” etc etc. He was a poor salesman and we weren’t buying it. After a single “no thanks” I prefer you leave it be. Don’t come back and tell me you know what I need. No, you don’t.
[/QUOTE]
You’d be surprised how many people do actually say yes to a warranty if you ask them a second time.
That doesn’t excuse being pushy, though…
[QUOTE=Elysium]
But these people keep pushing it. One guy actually got condescending, saying things like “Well you know mine broke after 2 months so you really need the insurance, man, don’t say no.” and “Are you sure, I mean, it’s a really good deal!” etc etc. He was a poor salesman and we weren’t buying it. After a single “no thanks” I prefer you leave it be. Don’t come back and tell me you know what I need. No, you don’t.
[/QUOTE]
This makes me nuts. They ask me once, and I say “No, thanks.” If they ask me a second time, I cast a pensive gaze and say, “Nope. Still ‘no’.” That usually works.
I’d hate a job where I had to sell a product. I just don’t have the drive to keep at it.
[QUOTE=seenidog]
I don’t have a problem with the offers, around here they are an offer, they don’t push it. But lately two chains, Radio Shack and Farm and Fleet have gotten to ask about address, for cash purchases. What happened to cash and carry? I don’t think rechargable batteries, AA size, or Farm and Fleet’s Bondo Fiberglass kit with some sandpaper and Rustoleum so I can keep my youngest son’s car door from falling off as a big national security issue. I have found it interesting that when I offer to trade my address (for a cash purchase) for the cashier’s, it is refused. Sometimes I use a check, for crying out loud it has my address and DL # on it, but not good enough, they have to badger you for it before they can ring it up. Oh well, Wisconsin is the Badger State.
[/QUOTE]
They demand your address on a cash sale? That’s outrageous. Do they refuse to ring up your purchase if you won’t give it?
Around where I live, the cashiers at the Linens 'n Things chain ask for the customer’s phone number. I always refuse to give it. The last time it happened, the woman in line behind me said with surprise, “You mean you can say no? I thought I had to give it.”
[QUOTE=sturmhauke]
More and more places have these “extra special offers” at the registers, and it’s getting on my damn nerves. I bought some computer books and Barnes and Noble, and the guy kept pestering me to sign up for the member card or whatever the fuck it was. “But you can save $11 right now!” “I said I’m not interested. I’ll just take these, thanks.” If he had asked me one more time, I might very well have just walked out and found my books somewhere else.
[/QUOTE]
Seriously, if it causes you (or anyone else) that much hardship and angst to hear some cashier’s card spiel, go someplace else.
I work in retail. Every once in a while I have to work the cash registers and yep, I’m required to ask if customers want a card. Blame corporate not the bricks and mortar stores.
If I don’t like a particular chain’s business model, I don’t shop there. It’s very simple and saves me from getting worked up into a self-righteous lather.
In terms of simplicity, I like Amazon and often shop there.
I’ve said the above to other people. Invariably, their replies run along these lines:
“But I want it now!”
“But it’s cheaper there!”
So if you want it now and you want it cheap, you often have to hear a cashier do his or her job and ask if you want a card.
Life’s full of compromises and the 11:00 news is full of horrors. Watch it and maybe it will put your everday hardships into perspective.
–Valley
[QUOTE=Elysium]
But these people keep pushing it. One guy actually got condescending, saying things like “Well you know mine broke after 2 months so you really need the insurance, man, don’t say no.” and “Are you sure, I mean, it’s a really good deal!” etc etc. He was a poor salesman and we weren’t buying it. After a single “no thanks” I prefer you leave it be. Don’t come back and tell me you know what I need. No, you don’t.
[/QUOTE]
“Wow, this item’s that shitty that it’ll break in two months? Maybe I don’t want it after all…”
E.
[QUOTE=DMark]
Yes, it is annoying to be asked every time you go through the line.
But no less annoying then every time I call some business and get the perky little voicemail woman saying, "Did you know you can go to our website, suckybusiness dot com and not find the answer to your question there either? Our helpful customer service agent will be with you in about an hour, and be sure to ask them about signing up for our scam du jour. It’s fun and it’s easy to do!’
[/QUOTE]
If. I. Could. Find. The. Answer. On. Your. Motherfucking. Website. I. Would. NOT. Call. Knowing. That. I. Would. Have. To. Spend. Forty. Fucking. Minutes. On. Hold.
Fucking dipshits. I’m looking a you, Polycom, and your totally shit website.
-Joe
[QUOTE=Elza B]
“Wow, this item’s that shitty that it’ll break in two months? Maybe I don’t want it after all…”
E.
[/QUOTE]
My thoughts exactly. What an incredibly stupid sales technique.
[QUOTE=nashiitashii]
When I worked that one miserable month at Victoria’s Secret, my hours were based on how many credit cards I signed up customers for in the week before. In the area that I was in, there were people who already had the card, and people who had no business having the card. Honestly, I can’t work in retail because I don’t think it’s ethical to encourage this kind of crap and to entice people who can’t afford it to go into further debt.
[/QUOTE]
I worked three miserable DAYS at Victoria’s Secret and I’m sure my hours were cut for the remaining three days of my planned schedule because I hadn’t sold a credit card. I was hired as a temporary cashier for the huge sale, and on the first day of the sale, all those of us who had trained as cashiers were set to work handing out shopping bags, stocking tables and (my job) running the fitting room. First I wasn’t trained on bra fittings, and they barely even showed me where the key to the fitting rooms was! But every half hour the manager would walk by and ask me how many Angels Cards had I sold? WTF? I’m at the back of the store. By the time anyone got to me, they had already been approached about the card at least three times by the girls up front handing out shopping bags and giving directions. They have their arms full of bras, and only want to get in, try things on and get out. They will be approached at least one more time while waiting in line for the register, and then again at the register. The last thing they wanted to here from me, the fitting room girl, is “Do you have an Angels Card?”. I never touched the cash register the entire time I worked there except to clock in and out. And I never got the free bra they promised.
At my store, the pressure to sign people up for our preferred customer card is getting worse. We were informed today that if our store doesn’t hit our target of 15% enrollment for the week, the manager has to work a six-day week next week. Our card really is a good deal for people who shop frequently, but we already offer it to everyone, and we try not to push. But geez, some weeks everyone wants one, some weeks everyone already has one, and some weeks you just can’t sell the darn things! Ours isn’t a credit card, so we’re not harming anyone by selling them a membership, but we do our part in offering to everyone…this constant pressure gets demoralizing at times.
Used to commute past a Target so it was convenient to shop there, with their CC. I moved further away a year ago so never have to go past it so have stopped shopping there. I just paid off their 19.9% APR CC, the only one I have that still had that usurious rate, so will keep the CC and the bennies that an unused CC with a high credit limit gives to my credit score.
I do use my Barnes & Noble card a lot which gives 5% off every item I buy there with it, above the 10% for its frequent flyer feature.
I used to work as a Target cashier. I quit mainly because of the Target card shit - they put extreme amounts of pressure on the employees to ask “every single guest”. I would hear supervisors constantly, daily, hourly, asking how many people I had signed up so far that day (even when I had just started my shift), and threatening that we needed XX numbers of them by the end of the day.
It didn’t take long to get sick of asking people (and rightfully being shut down by 99% of them. I pitied the poor sobs who said yes). Of course, I got called in to the main supervisor’s office to get scolded for not doing my job. I quit about a week later.
By the way, there *is * a way to suspend the transaction while the person is filling out the application and move them somewhere else, while the cashier keeps ringing people up. That is the way I would always do it.
The funny thing is that a few weeks ago I went into a Target to shop, had someone get suckered right in front of me in line, and when I asked the cashier to suspend the transaction so she could ring me up (I had like 2 items) she looked at me confusedly and said, “But you’re after him, you’ll have to wait.”
I say, “No, I know you can just hit a button to suspend the transaction while you ring me up. I used to work for Target”.
She stares at me blankly and repeats herself. I say to myself fuck it and went to a different register. Le sigh.