To think they should have kept serving me?

OP, you’re not wrong. About either the ridiculousness of some MN posters or about the fuckwittery in the shop.

Chalk it all up to experience and thank the universe that you’re not as hard of understanding as either the people in the shop or the posters here.

Jesus wept.

Yes OP- stop faffing about and put us out of our misery!😀

A two Ronnies sketch!

I assume it’s a very small local shop with one or two staff. Personally I always say to customers who are there just to purchase items to go first if there’s only one person on the till as I know it could take a while to find my parcels in the store cupboard or wherever and it’ll take two seconds to scan their pint of milk.

They need to sort themselves out, though. There is always the option not to be a Click and Collect point, if they can't manage the logistics of it, then they shouldn't offer the service in the first place.

Thank you for that info, I had never heard of it and have just tried to Google it to find out how many people use it but apparently the DWP do not keep stats/make stats available. I am guessing it must be a small amount of vulnerable people who are paid this way, and it is good that they can access their money without having a bank account.

Dedicated parcel staff ? 😂
The idea is getting something dropped off at a shop so you can collect it when it’s convenient for yourself not to be told you have to collect between 12&4pm when the dedicated parcel staff are there 🤦‍♀️

Exactly. If this is a regular problem for them, they need to find a workaround. My local Spar is very good in this respect. My local Tesco is less than useless, to the point that I no longer get parcels delivered there because they never seem to be able to find them.

It's annoying when stuff like this happens.
But some local shops literally have a big pile of parcels in a fairly unruly way and it takes them a while to find stuff if something is awry.
They sometimes get a huge load of parcels and are also serving regular customers and it becomes a bit overwhelming.
Try not to hold it against them.

This is my absolute pet peeve. Similar has happened to me before, and the people make out like YOU'RE the problem. My local newsagent is great, but the Tesco is useless. It annoys me to no end that they purport to provide a service and then fail to do so.

I'm with you OP, it wasn't your fault they couldn't (wouldn't) find your parcel. Why are the people behind you more important than you, who was already in the middle of being served? What if they also had parcels to collect that couldn't be found? That's the point of a queue, everyone waits their turn, it's not rocket science.

Your imagination must be running riot .

Customer service is going from bad to worse across the board, it’s ridiculous.

I rarely carry cash these days so the other day I asked for £25 cash back because I needed to pay a lesson. She handed me £5 all in coins and I said no, I need £25 cashback and she just said “no” and kept staring at me. We were both like “…..” at each other til I left. I was in a rush otherwise I would have pushed back.

One of my local Tesco employees always looks angry if someone commits the crime of going to the till and he has to serve them lol.

She wasn’t holding the queue up messing around. What on earth are you on about?

The shop offers a service - it is PAID to perform this service. OP has quite legitimately gone to the shop to utilise this service that the shop has chosen to provide. She is not less worthy than any other customer of the shop.

There was two staff, one should have served the queue while the other located the parcel they’d been entrusted with.

I know right

1. Pensions are paid directly into bank accounts just like all other payments made by the DWP
2. A Direct Debit is exactly as it states, a "debit" i.e a payment taken from someone's bank account not made to it

Do you actually know what a faffer is?

Nope. For those who do not have, or can’t manage a bank account they are paid in vouchers weekly, redeemable at the post office. It’s called the payments exception service and the cashier has to verify ID and process the voucher before paying out. So another ‘faff’.

But she - or someone - has paid for her items to be delivered. Just because she isn’t handing over money there and then doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to be served. Someone has paid for the service they are providing somewhere along the way and they need to fulfill that service, not treat her poorly, her parcels would be partly paying their wages - paying their wages to serve people like her. There were two servers, the lady should have served her and the gentleman should have focused on the queue.

She went to collect her four parcels. They only gave her one. She asked for the other three.
Why is that faffing?

That’s not the same sort of comparison talking about a Post Office though.

It would be like comparing someone buying one item with a whole basket full - both are paying customers.

OP wasn’t a paying customer, they found the first parcel then asked her to wait while they got the queue down to find the others….I really don’t get the drama?

I’ve been in the same position and didn’t get annoyed in the slightest, I thought fair enough it is a shop first after all. I have also been in shops where they have two separate queues (one for customers buying goods and one for parcels) They always prioritise the paying customer queue first.

Book first.

pensions have been paid directly into people's bank accounts for years. the same as all payments from the DWP .

Oh so now you’ve switched your ‘faffing’ accusation to something else since your ‘ faffing in the shop’ line didn’t get any backers! 🤣🤣🤣

Of course YANBU. Honestly the replies on Mumsnet amaze me sometimes- it’s the whole point of queuing, that it’s first come first served 🤷‍♀️ It’s hardly your fault that they couldn’t find your parcels.

Of course, if she couldn’t find them after a good search then the normal etiquette is to ask you if you mind her serving the next person in the queue - while she gets another colleague to have a look in case she’s somehow missed them (and social pressure would likely make you say yes).

But they just expected you to say “oh okay” and walk away without the parcels? Or wait until the whole queue had been served by both of them and then they would have a search more thoroughly? Bizarre.