Customers who browse like you do are no problem. There are many browsers and gear heads who love to ask endless questions such as “What’s the difference between?” and “Can you explain how that works?” even when they have no intention of buying and can see how busy it is.
In less busy times we will gladly answer questions to those type of browsers. I’ve seen that those folks often become paying customers in time if they are shown a little patience and consideration and feel welcome.
It’s been over two decades since I was working in a retail store, but I remember the seasonal hires. Our only criteria seemed to be ‘breathing’, and we still couldn’t fill every open slot. As the individual stores did not have the authority to compete on hourly wage (we could only pay what corporate told us to pay), anyone offering even a nickel more per hour would get the hire.
As for losing sales…I got paid regardless of whether or not a customer made a purchase. I did my best to help every customer, but if someone wanted to be a pain, it wasn’t worth $3.50/hour to deal with them. Heck, even when I was managing the store, it wasn’t worth it, because I still got paid by the hour. Where I was, I wasn’t there to ‘sell’* you an item; unless someone was a hobbyist, we knew next to nothing about most of the stock; and I’d much rather keep the happy and neutral customers moving through than deal with someone with a chip on their shoulder or rotten attitude. Next, please!
By ‘sell’, I mean those who wanted me to haggle with them like a used car salesman. Either you wanted to buy a Commodore64, or you didn’t. I was not going to make any attempt to convince you one way or the other, and I certainly wasn’t going to do a compare and contrast between an Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision for you.
I worked retail one Christmas (as a cashier at a large sporting goods store), and I was thrilled that the store had a policy of not accepting returns on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or the next day. We were way too insanely busy to have time to process refunds on those days. Even a simple refund took at least five times as long as a normal transaction, and exchanges took even longer.
A few customers didn’t like it, but they had prominent signs in the stores announcing the policy. Also, for all sales made in November and December the receipt stated in LARGE LETTERS that there would be no returns allowed on December 25 to 27. This was also printed on all the gift receipts.
I’m sure management would have liked to have even more staff on, but there weren’t enough people applying for jobs to hire a significant amount of seasonal labor. As it was, we had all our staff working that day (a number of which were part-time employees who normally only worked one or two shifts per week), so we probably had at least 3 to 4 times the staffing level of your average regular day. All the cash registers were open and had two cashiers per register (one to ring up the sale and one to remove security tags and bag the items).
The hobbyists are the worst ones, because they actually expect us to know the location, function, designation, and application of every bloody resistor, diode, capacitor, and LED in the store. We’re fortunate to have a staff member who is right into the electronics hobby, and can answer their questions. But there are literally thousands of products in the store- ranging from laptop computers to LCD TVs to Hi-Fi Systems to computer mice, stereo speakers… you get the idea- and we just can’t know everything. Especially since a lot of our jobs often involve simply getting products for people who have already decided what they want. “I’d like the SoundThumper 9000 advertised in your latest catalogue, please. Do you take AmEx?”
It doesn’t bother me either way whether you get the SoundThumper 9000 or the BassBlaster X780, as long as you’re happy with it. To that end, I will answer your questions to the best of my knowledge, but don’t expect me to know the RMS output off the top of my head, or how it compares to the MusicRig R80 (which, I might add, we don’t even stock). I can look up the techie specs for you, of course, and I can also turn the speakers on for you so you can hear music playing through them, but I can’t tell you how they will sound in your Gazebo or on your patio.
Staffing is handled by the Regional Office. We can request more staff, but there has to be money in the budget to pay them.
The bigger problem, rather than getting money in the budget, is that even if we hire Christmas Casual staff and just leave them on the register, we get large numbers of customers who will self-select a couple of items from the shelf, stand in line, get to the counter, and then say “Yeah, listen, I saw these on the shelf, and I was wondering why this one was $X more expensive that this one, and if you could tell me what “Digital Resonance Enhancement Adjustment” meant, and if it would be compatible with my NoiseMachine 7000.”
Poor Christmas Casual, who knows they only have a job for a fortnight at most, completely freaks out, has to call one of the other sales staff, other customers in line get annoyed at the delay… you see how it goes.
IMHO, there needs to be less money spent on advertising sales at this time of year, and more on encouraging people to observe some basic courtesies towards both sales staff and other shoppers…
People who shop in Meat Space are funny. That’s sooooo 2004…
Good for you! Which one? I got hubby the Rhino re-issue of Rum, Sodomy & the Lash, but the 7 year old took it from him and claimed it (The Pogues are his favorite band- same for the 4 year old). Seriously. Luckily, I haven’t had to explain what “sodomy” means yet! 
You seem to have mispelled “pop music that mistakenly gets played on country stations and is about as listenable as fingernails on a blackboard” as “country music.”
I am a big guy, but you should see how fast I can move across my office to change the radio station when that shite comes on.
Browsing is what entices customer to buy. If you don;t like browing, get another job.
Answering the phone is part of “customer service”. Some dudes don’t own a computer, and very Few dudes have their computers on, and connected to the WWW when driving around- some of those calls are from cell phones, you know.
If “every. single. one. of the people who work at our store are rostered on and working at the store today” and there still isn’t enough staff, then that’s not the customer problems,it’s managments problem for not hiring enough staff. You work there, thus “low stock levels” and “low staff levels” are in your control, I assume you have the ability to speak to Managment. Christmas Casual can at least answer the phone and vet hours and direction to the store calls, and ring up normal sales.
Was only a matter of time before we got the obligatory know-it-all. Maybe things have changed in the 20 or so years since I was on the floor, but no one in our stores had a say in stock levels, staff levels, or staff wages. That included the store manager, whose title meant that you got a set of keys and you were the first one called when the alarm tripped at night. You hired whoever could sign their name with more than an ‘X’ (and could count change - our registers didn’t figure it out for you). During December, when the shining halls of Management opened the hiring, you couldn’t find enough staff, no matter what. As for speaking to Regional Management - are you really that dense, Dr Deth? Maybe in FairyTaleLand they listen to people working in the stores - certainly not in any I’ve worked in, or in any that my friends and family worked in.
As for phones during the holiday season, ours had a recording of our address and store hours. For those who wanted more information…oh well, you can come in and yell at us just like everyone else. People present with money in hand take precedence over potential sales. Yellers to the left, please try to harmonize while we help those who just want to buy and leave.
This is the only part of the rant that rang a bit false to me, but on reflection it may be an issue of terminology. “Browsing”, to my mind, is just looking along the shelves trying to find something to buy. Quiet browsers are inoffensive at worst, and the fact that people who don’t quite know what to buy but come in and browse among the options are the reason that bricks and mortar stores survive in the age of the internet.
I think the term I would use (at least here in the U.S.) is “tire-kicker”, somebody who goes in to an auto showroom who looks at the cars, kicks the tires, chats up the salesman and walks out. If you rephrased the bold-faced phrase above to “NO FUCKING TIRE-KICKERS!”, I would agree with the rant wholeheartedly.
Nice rant, Martini Enfield, but could I exchange it for one in green? I’ll be over here browsing while you ring that up.
That’s like saying the feds should add more lanes on a highway because there’s a lot of congestion on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. If it’s adequate 359 days a year, then motorists who choose to travel on those weekends need to just suck it up.
As far as hiring temps to handle the overflow, that’s a “good in theory” response. However, in reality, you’d have to spend more time training them than they would spend working. And they’d spend more time interrupting the regular workers with questions that they’d end up being more of a hassle than a help.
Oh, and I used to be temp so I know of what I speak.
Ah Yes, Only someone who has no idea what they’re talking about would respond this way.
I worked Retail for yrs, a big box home improvement store… I wont name names, But it rhymes with “Home Depot”.
The customers giving us advice (hire more staff, open more tills, have more stock,etc) were typically ones that had NEVER worked “on the wrong side of the register”.
Sure we could hire more staff… but wait, that means we will be raising prices to cover the cost…
Sure we could open more tills, all we have to do is hire the staff (see above)
Sure we could have more stock. Our shelves contain clever space time wormholes that let us pack an infinite amount of materials, in all possible colours, sizes and variation, we just don’t do that as we are lazy and sadistic. Also, the wormhole bills would raise the cost to you… (signifigantly, in this case)
Please, do come in, with NO knowledge of the requirements of the job you want to do, no technical understanding required to do it, no idea of the cost, none of the tools/equipment you need, no idea of code or permits, and then BLOW UP at us when we helpfully mention some of these things.
Please leave your snowblower rusting and untended in your back yard all summer, and then come in after the first snow, and start screaming at us for not replacing (for free) the “Piece of crap” we sold you.
Yes, I can match almost any colour of paint sample you bring in, and yes I can give you good advice in applying it. Please feel free to bring in a Black and white photo copy of the rose petal you want us to match, and again blow up at us when we explain that if we do, it will be grey, not pink (this really happened).
Please hand me (or try to) the part from your toilet/sewer covered with dripping decaying excretement. I know its fun to hold with your bare hands, as you seem to enjoy doing so.
Please bring your kids into the store, and ask me 500 questions about a $2.99 box of wing nuts, while your kid shreds/disorganises and creates a trip hazzard from a display of nails and screws.
Please, share the agony… If you are having a pissy, bad and nasty day, the best way to lighten your load is to share it with some hardworking ordinarily helpful person in an orange apron…
really, if you never have worked retail, the answer to almost any question about our operations that begins with “Why don’t you…?” will be “Money”
I don’t come down to wear you work and give you advice on how to best entice/service a John…
Regards
FML
WOW!!
It felt SOOOO good to get that off my chest…!
FML
I felt better just reading it.
And now a true story to lift your spirits.
I try to be patient when customers are frustrated and upset and give them a little leeway in their venting. One thing that should never be tolerated is profane verbal abuse. I respect managers who show zero tolerance for this and have little or no respect for those who allow some jerk-off to be personal and nasty because he spent a couple of bucks. There are a few customers who get off on that kind of shit behavior and should be shown the fucking door without apology.
So, the story.
My current coworker was telling me about coming to work and overhearing a customer repeatedly dropping the F bomb as he complained to the manager. The manager being a nice calm guy asked him politely to please watch his language and he’d be glad to help correct any problem. Customer continues to use the F word stating he will speak however he pleases.
My Coworker who is still by the front door says “Hey Buddy” getting the customers attention. He then gestures toward the open door.
“What” the customer asks.
“We don’t talk that way in here. You need to get out now”
“Who the hell are you?” the customer asks.
“I’m the guy who’s gonna drag you outa here if you don’t get out in the next 30 seconds”
“Well you don’t know what we were talking about”
" I heard what you were saying and we don’t communicate that way here. You have to go"
They went outside and had a brief conversation in which the customer said “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer”
“Okay pal, MAke sure you tell him about how you were talking in here. Here’s my card. Tell him to ask for me and I’ll tell him about it”
I love it. If you cuss we’ll ask you nicely to please control your language. If you can’t then you get no help and you have to leave until you learn to communicate like an adult. Period. That’s all.
Not even close. You compare something that would be there for the other 359 days as opposed to temps. Actually, the CHP does send out extra staff on Memorial day for traffic problems.
Wrong again. You can ask for temp who can run a register, it’s pretty standard. As for answering a phone, even a temp should be able to do that without much training.
Wrong.
Worked retail all through College.
Owned my own retail business.
Have served as a consultant for retail businesses.
I’ll point out that many retail establishments have realized that hiring more staff means more sales which means lower prices, which means more sales…
It all depends. You want to hire just enough staff- not too many but certainly not too few. Customers walking out in disgust mean less sales.
DrDeth, bear in mind Australia’s labour laws are more complicated than the US, and the legal requirements for hiring someone- reference checks, HR processing, induction, OH&S, tax forms, etc- can be quite onerous, especially just to have someone work for two weeks…