Work in a store? Bitch about customers here!

The BBQ Pit
61

Much as I pity for people in retail, it does go both ways. My version of chaoticdonkey’s experience is as follows.

“I’d like half a pound of the smoked turkey breast right there point sliced.”
“How thick?”
“Don’t care.”
“How about this thick?” holds up slice of meat from eight feet away
“Sure, that looks good.”
“Are you sure?” questioning look

Arrrrgh.

Then again, it’s better than the pissed off mumbling drones you get some places. Still, though, I’m not trying to bust you by telling you that I don’t care…I really don’t!

-Joe

62

I once worked at HOME DEPOT, and how that place stayed in business was beyond me…they took EVERTHING back! Once, a man came in with a lawnmower, which he had destroyed (the moron didn’t realize that you were supposed to put OIL in the crankcase BEFORE starting the engine!). He wanted his money back…so I called the manager…he took it back!
Then there was the guy who bought a set of lawn chairs (assembly required). He brought them back to return them…every nut and bolt was twisted and bent…it looked like an insane gorilla had tried to assemble the chairs (with the aid of a 3 foot wrench!).The guy got his money back! Every day, there was a long line of morons trying to return broken tools, old dead plants, half-used bags of fertilizer, etc. One old lady wanted to return an opened $2.00 bag of mulch! She had actually driven 32 miles to get back $2.00!!
But the absolute BEST one…there was a guy in line with a rusted-out water heater 9the thing looked like it was installed around the First World war). He insisted that he bought it there (no receipt). He got FULL CREDIT on an new one!

63

Not at ten cents above minimum wage it doesn’t.

64

I have spent well over half my adult life working in sales - big box retail, banking retail, big ticket wholesale, clerk level and management. To put it bluntly, most of these rants reflect much more poorly on the ranter than the customer. If you are one who is enamored of rules, don’t get into sales. If you love black and white situations and are uneasy with constant gray areas, don’t get into sales. If you want a detailed job description that never varies, don’t get into sales. If you can’t meet rudeness and condescention with a smile, don’t get into sales. The customer is not always right, but they always pay your salary and should be treated accordingly.

That said, on more than one occasion I have tossed a customer out. One example occurred while I was the branch manager at a bank. A customer was raising hell at one of the tellers. Whatever it was he was requesting was totally out of line. By the time I got there she was in tears. I tried to reason with the guy but only succeeded in having him spew his venom at me. I whispered to the teller to prepare a cashier’s check for the balance in the gentleman’s accounts. She handed me the check and I wordlessly handed it to him. That action finally made him pause from his diatribe. He asked “What is this?” I replied “Apparently you do not like the way we manage our business. I certainly do not like the way you do yours. That check represents all of the money you had on deposit with us. Please consider our business arrangements terminated.” There are some customers that a business is better off without.

65

Waverly, while there are enough interstore romances going on to rival a junior high school, I’ve never seen any employees doing the hibbity-dibbity on store property. That’s not to say there isn’t any hanky-panky going on, I just haven’t seen it.

D_Odds, yes I do have to ask those questions, because the managers have a nasty habit of silently standing behind me without me knowing to make sure I ask those questions. Believe me, I don’t like asking any more than you like answering. In fact, I hate it. I hate the jerk who made it policy to ask, and I hate the managers for zealously enforcing it. I realize there are quotas both the cashiers and the managers have to meet for credit applications per month, and I hate that, too.

66

Actually I’m pretty convinced that low pay=potentially shitty job much of the time. Think of it this way: Many retail jobs are so stressful that few people are going to go out of their way to work there, they are going to do it because they NEED to, either poor college students that don’t have any experience, or formerly unemployed educated people who can’t find a job relevent to their education. The people that work there generally are doing it because they don’t have much choice…if the pay was good, I don’t think you’d see HALF the complaints about customers, because many employees could justify the obnoxious customers with the fact that they earn a pretty good amount of money putting up with it.

67

Can I bitch about some people who were not actual customers, but who were loitering around outside the store? Some of them (white males, approx. 19-25 years old) got into a fistfight and all their friends started shouting encouragement. I called the police, who arrived just when one of the assailants was slamming the head of another up against the windows of my store. I (and my customers) were standing around watching in appalled silence.

The police handcuffed the assailants. The head slammer, who must surely have been on something, was screaming and struggling and cursing as they subdued him; he kicked out the back window of the police cruiser as they were trying to get him into the car. While this was happening, a really scary girl (who I assume was the head-slammer’s girlfriend) stormed into the store, glared around at me and my customers, and demanded, “Who called the cops?”

“I did,” I said. She glared at me again and stomped out. Meanwhile the head slammer was roaring “I’ll be out in 24 hours, motherfuckers!” as they took him away.

:frowning:

I was sweating with fear every time I went to work for a week. Fortunately neither he nor Scary Girlfriend ever came back.

68

Doctor Jackson, I understand that a retail job comes with certain requirements. Cleaning up customers’ bodily waste is not one of them. No black and white rules? Then why bother having a policy that is posted on signs all over the store? Bending the rules every once in a while is fine, but when the people on the front lines, such as cashiers, floor associates, etc. don’t feel like they can depend on the manager to back them up in enforcing that policy, when managers bend over backwards to accomodate a customer who is treating the sales associate in a reprehensible manner just to get rid of them, something is seriously wrong.

We are people, not slaves. We have every right to be treated in a courteous manner. Just because we work in retail doesn’t give Joe. Q. Customer the right to treat us as if we were less than human. We should treat them well? Fair enough. But they should treat us with something more than rudeness and disrespect.

69

Actually, I was just making a poor play on the word “comes”

70

Um, why? What would be the point? To hide evidence? Because he/she didn’t approve of Snoop?
Another one-do NOT follow me into the fucking breakroom and get pissed when I tell you I’m off the clock. Hello, the sign on the door says, “STORE EMPLOYEES ONLY”.

71

:smack:

Boy, I’m oblivious this week. First the Chicago thing, now this.

72

[slight hijack]

About a year ago my brother asked me to help him pick out a birthday gift for our mom. We ended up finding a shirt in Sears, but we weren’t sure which size to buy. I offered to go into the fitting room and try it on. At which point my brother said:

“OK, but you have to come out a minute later and tell the salesgirl that the toilet won’t flush.”

I thought it was pretty funny, but I’m guessing the salesperson wouldn’t have found it so amusing if I’d said it to her. People actually use the fitting rooms as toilets?! I’ll be looking around a lot more carefully the next time I try on clothes.

KCSuze, I’ll pass this info along to my brother so he doesn’t give the salespeople a heart attack the next time he’s shopping. :slight_smile:

73

I used to work at a deli.

“I’d like half a pound of this.”
“How thick?”
“Don’t care.”
“Ok, here you go.”
“This is sliced too thick.”

74

It works that way at the public library, too.

Oh, and if you’re a high school kid who has an assignment to find an article in a magazine or newspaper about a particular subject, guess what, you have to tell the staff WHICH magazine you want… we’ve all passed the 10th grade already and we’re not going to slog through the Readers’ Guide for you. You get to do that all by your liddle old self.

75

At the store I work at, the policy is at least 24 hours notice with exceptions made depending on circumstances, staffing, etc. The problem with the one I mentioned was that they were asking well under the 24 hour time frame, were completely unwilling to be flexible about tray size or pick up time, and that we simply didn’t have the staff or the time to be able to do the tray when they wanted it to be done. It was late in the shift (we were getting cleaned up and ready to close the deli) and we only had one person on the morning shift to get the deli ready and run it until ten a.m. They wanted their tray at 9 a.m. There was simply no way to get it done.

Of course, their attitude didn’t exactly help their case either.

76

Toss a customer out… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! snif <wiping eyes> Ooooh, that’s a GOOD one. In all the years I’ve worked retail I’ve never, ever had a manager who would toss a customer out, no matter how abusive they got or what kind of mayhem they caused. Ever, ever, EVER.

I wish I could work in a business that had a big NO JERKS ALLOWED, YES, THIS MEANS YOU! sign on the door where the managers would step right up and throw the bastards out (no matter which side of the counter they were on) but that’s just a pipe dream. Ain’t gonna happen. Maybe a bank manager can get away with showing someone the door, but it ain’t even remotely likely in the average retail space.

77

I must be very lucky, then. My manager will toss customers out. So will the business owner. And I’m allowed to, too, if they’re being really rude. So far I haven’t had to do it, but it’s nice to know that I may.

78

Well, I understand about customers asking for the impossible, and then getting all pissy when you just can’t do it; but all I’m saying is that sometimes the inflexibility runs both ways.

79

We are blessed enough to have one mananger that will endure no nonsense from customers. If a customer’s request is unreasonable, against store policy, or just plain nuts, she will not give them what they want. I am so happy when I call for manager assistance and she shows up. If a customer is abusive towards me, she will calmly and politely ask them to leave.

However, most other managers won’t even bother to come over when I call them, and will just tell me over the phone to give them whatever they want.

80

Here’s my take, one from in store retail, one from call centre retail.

I used to work at a grocery store (the largest Canadian chain - not naming names to prevent people from getting ideas, but you can figure it out), at the Customer Service Counter. One night a guy comes in with the wraper from a $23.00 pork loin. Nothing else. No recipt, no meat, that’s it. He tells me that his wife bought it last week so he could cut it into chops and freeze them. He opened the package and the meat smelled bad, so he threw it out. Now he wants his money back. My first reaction? Sorry, but no - no product, no refund, never mind no recipt. “Call the manager”, he says.

You can guess where this is going, right?

Yep. Full refund, and [Apu] Thank You, Come Again! [/Apu]

Number two

I now work in a travel agency call centre that has an emergency line. That’s what I do. You need to change your ticket at 0300? That’s me. You need to book a flight to Cairo at midnight? Hey, me too. I troubleshoot for a living, but I am not the ultimate authority, just the middle man between you and the airline.

A year or so ago, this guy calls, and tells me he needs to change his return flight. No problem - space on the flight he wants, enough time to process the transaction. I then tell him that the additional collection will be xxx.xx

Total freakout ensues. I say that I’m sorry, but those are the airline rules, not mine. I then get: “Well call them and negotiate”. Trying not to laugh, I explain that, again, I do not make the rules, I just apply them, and the airline will not negotiate.

“Fine”, he says, “give me the number and I’ll negotiate with them”. I give him the number and he hangs up. The next day, the inevitable complaint comes in. I refer my manager to my notes on the file, and she calls the airline. They laugh at her, and read from their notes on their version of the file. In essence, their notes were :wally

Travellers take note: If an airline makes notes on your file, nobody else can see them. If the travel agent does, the airline can see them. In this day and age, be careful what you say to an airline employee!