Sick of customers moaning to shop staff about things beyond our control

Are you able to elaborate on that?
What part of my post is why customers get frustrated?

I was standing in a queue at M&S last week, was fairly early and there was only one youngish woman on the till, two of the customers in front of me wanted to order items of clothing which obviously took some time. The queue had me and 3 others behind me all senior citizens. Every single one of them started moaning about how long it was taking. Zero tolerance from any of them. When I got to the counter I asked her if she was ok and she said that people had been generally vile and that after her Christmas stint she wasn’t coming back.

I cannot abide rude people when they can see that the person on the till is doing the best she can and being polite. God forbid if anyone was ever rude to them I’m sure they’d be up in arms.

Staff can’t forget who the customer is because the customer is constantly yelling at them that they pay their wages.

I’ve been customer facing and have had that training. I’ve also worked in general retail, pubs and a supermarket. It works great when you’re in a customer service role behind a desk or on the other end of a phone. It is as much use as a chocolate tea pot when you’re scanning shopping at a rate to keep up with targets, there’s a queue of ten people behind your customer, you know your manager won’t give a shit about said issue because your customer isn’t the first person to complain, and you can’t even call a runner to come and help because staff hours have been cut so much that there’s nobody to cover their break. You can’t even tell the customer to complain to Head Office in case a mystery shopper hears you, because it creates a bad impression.

If there is a mechanism to do so, and they can take time during their shift to do so. Plenty of jobs where they wouldnt give you time to pass it back, plenty of jobs where the only way of passing feedback through is an online customer portal.

Why do you think that? Why do you believe that store managers, or even section leaders, are either willing or able to listen to a litany of complaints left with shop floor staff? Because I can guarantee you that few of them are.

If you have a complaint, then you go to Head Office. It is literally the only way your complaint will get actioned.

Ok, but this is why people feel frustrated sometimes, because staff seem to forget who the customer is.

And, I say that as someone who has trained 100s of customer facing staff, not as a difficult customer. Let them feel heard and you'll solve a lot of your problems.

At what point in my shift should I be wandering off to email head office? Should we all do that every time we get a complaint?
To be clear, I am more than happy for someone to bring up an in store issue. I will offer to call the manager then and there. But most people don't want to wait to speak with them. They just want to use me to vent at. No problem, as long as they aren't rude or aggressive, but don't expect me to do it for you. I do not have time.

ETA head office also aren't interested in any feedback from employees. Customers may get slightly more response.

Yes, they’re allowed to complain to whoever is serving them, or to whichever member of staff they’ve managed to waylay, but that is achieving precisely zero other than making both parties lose the will to live.

It’s not their job to deal with your complaints anymore. It was ten years ago, when they had the staff numbers to fix it, or the managers who were allowed to make their own decisions about what went on in their store. But their roles are rigid now. They can’t change anything or do anything. Their managers won’t listen to them and couldn’t do anything about your issues even if they wanted to. They also aren’t allowed to ask you why you think they’d be able to change the number of tills open, or deal with the increase in prices, or anything else, and to contact Head Office if you have a problem. But Head Office is the only place that will be able to action a complaint.

Or maybe you should email headoffice and feedback?

I'd have thought that's all part of a customer facing role.

I worked in customer service for two decades and it's true the public can be awful, but also as a customer I am often shocked at how untrained retail staff are at dealing with these situations.

Agree entirely. Customers should always be polite. And most of them are well aware that the exact person they are speaking to is not responsible for supply issues, delivery delays and staffing issues - but there is no other way to feed this back to the management without speaking to a staff member. Staff members on the floor are the face of the company, and should expect to represent the company. However, customers should always be pleasant and polite to the staff that are trying to help them. Communication is key, and it needs to work both ways.

Of course staff can feedback

Whilst I do understand what you are saying, no front line staff deserve to be treated badly, I do think retail especially but others too need to be up front with any specific issues affecting for instance stock eg put a sign up apologising for lack of lemons (Lidl a few weeks ago for 2 weeks) rather than customers having to ask. Staffing issues are down to management and they should have thought it out, customers have every right to complain if you can’t access as planned, companies should have a mechanism rather than the person on the till. Similarly it takes seconds to print then put a sign up on the entrance door saying sorry our delivery was delayed today (don’t even need a reason but if it’s due to a major accident just say so) we’ll be more understanding you don’t have wholemeal bread or smoked back bacon than if it looks like you haven’t bother stocking the store (also means i can choose to go to another shop). Being honest with us puts us into a better understanding of the situation, defusing anger

Or you could tell them how to complain, or who to complain to? Or is that too much effort as well?

Nobody should shout at, threaten or insult retail staff but they are absolutely allowed to complain to them. Part of the job of said staff is to manage customer complaints, or pass them to the correct place to complain.

Obviously no one should be rude to you, but to the customer, you are the company. Who else are they supposed to tell?

Can I also put in a plea - PLEASE don't save up all your winning scratchcards and then cash them in en masse in the week before Christmas when the queues are round the shop and out of the door! We don't keep a great deal of cash in the till, so if your winnings total more than about fifty quid we're going to have to call for Management to go in the safe and get more money out, it takes a long time to scan each card and print each receipt, so if you really must do this in a busy big supermarket, please try to come in outside the really busy times!

This.

I agree it’s not ok to shout, swear or be aggressive but if you are customer facing you are the person people should tell if they are not happy with the service.

No. As customers, we’re expected to use our brain cells and realise that Jane on the till has fuck all input over anything. Head Office don’t call her and say ‘Jane, we’re thinking of getting rid of another 5 manned tills and whacking another 20p on the price of cauliflowers, what do you think?’ And if Jane is already doing the job of three people and has been told to work in one particular area by her manager, it’s Jane who will get yelled at and threatened with formal proceedings if she goes wandering off to help a customer who wants something doing in a different area.

Instead, we need to be thinking about who is making the decisions (Head Office, in case you weren’t aware) and emailing those fuckers instead. I’m pretty sure Jane will be only too happy to give you their address because I doubt she’s happy with the way things are going, either.

I don’t want to speak for her, but when you’re doing a job and you have a large number of supportive colleagues behind you, and a manager who will ban abusive customers from the store, and instruct security to enforce that ban when they ignore it and come back, it’s a lot easier to deal with the general day to day shit you get from the general public.

However, when you’re doing the job of three people, for the same wage and in the same time, your manager is ineffective and either won’t ban people or won’t stick to it when they do get banned, you’re frazzled, unsupported and often working in an area by yourself, which puts women in particular at greater risk when dealing with aggressive men, it’s much, much harder to deal with the public’s shit.

It's part of the ob to have customers shout and scream at you? It's part of the ob to be verbally and physically abused? I must have missed that bit of the job description.
I'm afraid when I was working in retail I didn't get paid enough to put up with that, but then again I got out of that environment as quickly as it could.

So we should lie and say we’ll do something about it knowing fully well we can’t?

I don't understand why you keep saying it's your friend when it's very obviously you that works in a supermarket? How else would you know all the little details you've shared here?

Exactly this.

Rude (to put it mildly) customers are putting people off working in retail etc.
Management don't give a shit.