I feel the same way about them, and they’re a big store! Somebody around there’s doing something right.
They were number one on Fortune’s list of top places to work this year. Quite an accomplishment, I would think. And I do love Wegman’s - especially since one is right next to where I work.
Susan
I once had a cashier that gave a Snarky “Your welcome” to me as I left. I assume because she had expected to be thanked. I’m geting old so maybe my memory is foggy, but didn’t the clerks used to thank the customers for their patronage?
Gawd yes, I love Publix. I sent a message via the corporate website a couple months ago praising my local store for such excellent service, and was quite tickled to get a letter from the VP of Public Affairs indicating that they were giving a “Signature Service” coin to the store as a result. That tells me it’s a top-down effort to provide good service, and they really succed at it.
Back in the day (early 70s) they were quite the below average store. Small, dirty, no fresh produce, etc. My mother hated shopping there. Then one day one store expanded and actually sold clothes as well as food. It was quite the talk of the town, as nobody had heard of such a thing before. When I went off to college, then came back a few years later, Wegman’s was the place to shop. They had really expanded, and they were some of the first super stores.
Yesterday I bought clothes at Macy’s. The cashier was chatting with a coworker, and although she rang up my purchase, she did not once acknowledge my existence.
Then I went to the Walmart groceries-only store. I shop there because usually the lines are not too bad. This day, however, there were only two registers open, and one was flashing the trouble-in-progress light. The lines were about ten deep. An announcement came over the loud speaker that all available personnel should go to the parking lot to round up carts. When I was about the sixth in line, the cashier asked me to tell the people in back of me that the line was closed. I refused to do so, which I admit was petty of me.
Another register opened up, and I managed to be third in line there. I finally made it to the register, after about a 40-minute wait in line. Among the items I was buying were 48 pouches of cat food – 12 pouches each of four different kinds, with each group of 12 together in an open cardboard box. When the first box of 12 reached the cashier, she began taking the pouches from the box and scanning them one at a time, then scattering them. I told her I liked to have them kept together in the box. I could tell that pissed her off. She continued to remove each pouch, scan it, and then rather snottily replace it in the box. I asked, fairly nicely, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just scan one of them twelve times?” I didn’t point out that there was a way to scan one pouch once and hit the “times 12” button, because I figured if she knew how to do that, she’d be doing it. It turned out that she did indeed know how to use the “times 12” function, and she promptly did so, with a scathing sneer. She then let me know how pissed off she was by refusing to speak to me, glaring at me, and smashing my groceries around.
Normally I would not have said anything to her about the scanning, but for Og’s sake, there was an enormously long line of increasingly irate customers, and this cashier was purposely making the process as slow as possible. Plus, my back hurt from standing in line so long.
I understand it’s a shit job. This does not, however, justify an employee sabotaging the employer by pissing off the customers.
Binarydrone, I live within walking distance of the place I shop. I’ve shopped there for over five years. I am almost unfailingly polite and cheerful. The turnover there is so high, however, that I don’t think I’ve ever had the same casher twice.
Management could insist that employees behave professionally, but obviously they don’t care to do so, and as been pointed out, they probably will not care to do so until customers start taking their business elsewhere in significant numbers.
Yes, I’m guilty. But I estimate it would cost me an extra $1,000 a year to buy groceries at the only nearby alternative, where the customer service ain’t that great either.
Odd, because it isn’t as though I am just oozing natural charisma. I mean, people don’t puke or hide their children when they see me coming or anything, but I don’t exactly have nubile lasses throwing their panties at me either.
And yet, wherever I have been I just don’t have issues with customer service. I do notice a pretty fundamental difference between the way that I treat the people waiting on me and what I see around me (for example, it would never occur to me to not thank someone for waiting on me (see example upthread)), and so have always figured that this was the key.
I agree 100% about Wegmans. They hire top quality people, they give excellent pay and benefits, and the customer is the winner in the end. I worked there in two different departments for a number of years, and even the employees not regularly in the aisles or at the registers were taught ALWAYS to acknowledge customers immediately with: “I’ll be with you in just a moment. Thank you for your patience, how may I help you?” or something damned close to it. If a customer asked where the Maalox was, you never said “aisle 4, 3rd shelf, second item from the left.” You walked them to the item, put it in their hand and said “Is there anything else I might help you find today?”
The butcher will tell you how to prepare any cut of beef with exact instructions, the seafood department will prepare your fish for you or instruct you on exactly how, the bakery will make you any damned kind of cake you want and decorate it however you like. You never get employees that sigh, loaf, or bitch on the job. (This was my experience in the Johnson City, NY store) In return, the employees (as I mentioned) are treated very well, get paid above average, get benefits even for part time work, get child care, and on and on and on.
One of the best things about going north next week is going to be walking into Wegmans.
It really helps to get to know at least by sight a few of the cashiers in the places you usually go, so you can smile and knod in recognising them. I don’t know, but maybe the casheer saw the OP scowling at the children, and thought “what an unplesant person” then decided to do all she could to snub you. Not that I think the OP is unplesant, goodness knows how annoying other peoples children can be, but it doesn’t sound as if the children were rude directly to you.
AMEN!! I shop at a grocery store with self check out. I do not want a cashier making small talk. I do not want a cashier seeing that I am purchasing condoms or prep H. I love self serve check outs!!
My friend was in charge of a self check-out trial run for CostCos in WA. She said that customer complaints almost tripled. Not complaints related to the check-out, just general complaints.
I’m with you, though: I much prefer to scan my own items and avoid the forced and uncomfortable exchanges with the cashier. My only complaint is that the scanner won’t accept coupons, and it won’t let you bypass the annoying (and loud) “helpful” instruction screens. Waste of time.
Our local Kash and Karry had self check registers when they first opened. They replaced them with cashier-run registers in about six months. The novelty at first was fun, but I stopped using them after Ivygirl pleaded with me to run an entire cartful through the self-check, and then I realized that I would have to bag everything myself. :smack:
I use the self checkout for any purchases I’d rather not have to run by a cashier (yes, in 19 years of life and 7 years of “womanhood,” I STILL get skeeved out by buying tampons). This usually works about…oh…a quarter of the time. Most times, I do something wrong and the blue strobe light starts flashing and the machine starts beeping and the cashier has to walk over and fix the machine.
I will also point out one other thing to add to the “List of things to do if you’d like better customer service”. Don’t be snotty to the help, the managers, etc. Leaving your full cart of groceries is not goin to cause someone who is underpaid and overworked already to sit back for a few seconds and say, “Hum, I wonder what I may have done that irritated that person, and how I may better myself as a person to prevent it from happening in the future.” They will push your cart aside, noting that it will either be their responsibility to take each item back to its original location, or it will be divided among the help which means that they all get out later than they should. If you are just nice to people, courteous, and helpful, they will be nice, curteous and helpful back to you. I have been on both ends of this particular phenomenon. If you are being overworked, and some snarky bitch comes into your line and starts challenging the things that you are required to ask/say, you aren’t going to want to be nice to her. But if someone comes up to you, smiles, says “Hi, how are you doing today?”, that person is going to think “Wow, they’re actually being nice to me instead of acting like I am their personal slave for the 2 minutes that we will be in contact with eachother.”
I’m not defending the actions of numbskulled workers, because there are a lot of them out there, but I am saying that the pendulum swings both ways on this. Corporate regulations and downsizing and those annoying step-by-step signs that detail the proper greeting process do not make a pleasant work environment. That’s why you’ll find people who are more conscious of their own behavior after they have say, worked a summer in retail. Or at a gas station, grocery store, or as a waitress. They tend to do the little things that make certain jobs much easier, more pleasant, and enjoyable for everyone. So while some people might be complete dumbasses when it comes to proper service, there are also a lot of us that do it anyway because it’s what we do. But just because I make less money than you do in a service job doesn’t give you any right to talk down to me, just as much as my overworked status doesn’t give me the right to be curt with you.
Why can’t we all just get along.
-foxy
ladyfoxfyre, I am picking up what you’re putting down. Smelling what you’re cooking, so to speak.
In my previous post, I should have actually replied to the topic at hand, but that would make entirely too much sense :smack: .
Anywho! Much like ladyfoxfyre, I am on the “kill em with kindess” boat. Most of these workers are treated like crap by jerks all day; a big smile and a sincere “how are you” makes a world of difference.
In high school, I was always particularly kind to the lunch ladies. These poor women had a miserable job where they had to deal with snotty, jerk teenagers all the live long day. I would smile and make polite convos, use please and thank you. They loved me. They would always have my stuff ready when I go to the line, I’d get free things (Woo! Free Doritos, baby!).
You can tell when someone has a crappy job or is having a bad day. I go out of my way to brighten their day and, in return, I get great service.
Unfortunately, this is known by old-school management-types as “Communism” (even though it resembles nothing of the sort).
Sorry - sounded more like <i>whining</i>, if you hadn’t noticed.
Whoops, my coding sucks.
Was that the job where the woman threw donuts at you? I get the shudders now every time I see bagged donuts, and it didn’t even happen to me.