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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that shop assistants shouldn't do this???

73 replies

AwkwardMary · 26/03/2012 20:28

Barge past you when you are looking around a store? Today it seemed to happen to me multiple times and I was Angry by the end of the trip! I had no DC with me for once, I am not unreasonably wide or clumsy or anything...nor am I slow or dozy....I was looking around in various shops and in almost every one, assistants, rushing about seemed to think that I should get out of THEIR way instead of the other way round.

I will say that sometimes yes, the customer should move...like when the assistant is carrying a lot of things...but when I am walking to an item of stock and they barge past me...well I think NO! You wait! You are here all day, the job you are doing isn't going away....I however am the customer and I come frigging first!

SO. AIBU? I have been a shop assistant lots of times in the past by the way...I never did this!

OP posts:
usualsuspect · 26/03/2012 20:30

I've never had a shop assistant barge past me tbh.

Original poster
AwkwardMary · 26/03/2012 20:31

What?? Never?

OP posts:
Anniegetyourgun · 26/03/2012 20:32

Have you checked the mirror lately? Maybe you're invisible.

gabid · 26/03/2012 20:32

Which shops did you go to?

The customer comes first? What a novel idea! I would love that too!

Smile
RoxyRobin · 26/03/2012 20:35

I've noticed this. There's one particular young man in our local Sainsbury's who will not be satisfied until he's tipped me into a freezer compartment.

usualsuspect · 26/03/2012 20:36

I've never noticed any barging

BabyDubsEverywhere · 26/03/2012 20:38

Never experienced this...
...I am wondering if this is a sixth sense type thing...are you really here OP??

Grin
Original poster
AwkwardMary · 26/03/2012 20:40

You are all being U by making me question my existence!

OP posts:
Original poster
AwkwardMary · 26/03/2012 20:41

gabid I went to Debenhams, Tesco, WH Smith and Next.

OP posts:
Original poster
AwkwardMary · 26/03/2012 20:42

People have also started shivering when I come into a room...and lot's of folk won't answer when I speak.

OP posts:
BabyDubsEverywhere · 26/03/2012 20:43

who started this thread?

Hmm some strange going on around here....

BreeVanDerTramp · 26/03/2012 20:46

This happened to me for the first time ever last week, I was quite taken aback! It happened in Boots.

Original poster
AwkwardMary · 26/03/2012 20:46

[Rattles chains and sighs audibly]

OP posts:
TheFarSide · 26/03/2012 20:47

YANBU - I've had a shop assistant in River Island use aggressive body language to edge me along a rack of clothes so he could carry on hanging things up. I did actually ask him if he could wait until I'd finished looking and he sidled off sheepishly. I've never actually been barged into, but there are plenty of shop assistants who seem to like sliding clothes backwards and forwards along the rails even if they are blocking customers (like me) who want to look at the clothes. Maybe I'm invisible too.

BertieBotts · 26/03/2012 20:47

I don't barge past people, but I do say "Excuse me" and then tidy up the bit of shelf people are looking at.

If I didn't do it, I'd have to remember to come back to that exact shelf later and tidy it and it would look out of place in the other tidy shelves and the manager would probably complain. It's inefficient to work around customers, it only takes me a second to tidy them, they can cope.

frownieface · 26/03/2012 20:47

Maybe the shop assistant has to do the work of two people, maybe just maybe hours are being cut, people who leave are not being replaced. I know that where I work I have gone from having 32 members of staff to 21 because there is no money to replace the people that have left. The same amount of work still needs to be done, customers still have the same expectations. Did the assistant apologise for 'barging' into you?

MooncupandPizza · 26/03/2012 20:51

I know what you mean, Mary.

It annoys me too,like the customers are impositions instead of the whole reason the shop is there!

I've worked in various shops but, of course, I was a paragon of a shop assistant and always made sure the customer felt valued.

Heswall · 26/03/2012 20:52

I had given my toddler a book we were going to buy at a local shop and the assistant came over, took it off her and put it back on the shelf. Sometimes think the worlds gone mad, how rude of us to want to buy something.

laptopdancer · 26/03/2012 20:54

I get this all the time.

DoingTheBestICan · 26/03/2012 20:55

Oh good,it's been a while since we had a sales assistants are shite thread.

gabid · 26/03/2012 20:56

OP - you should go to Asda! When I couldn't find the lentils I asked a shop assistant who then searched for me but she couldn't find them either. She then asked a colleague who couldn't locate the lentils, who in turn asked a supervisor who checked the lentil isle and then informed me that they had run out of lentils - that's what I call customer service!

I am not sure about the barging but in general I don't think much of the customer service in this country.

Nanny0gg · 26/03/2012 20:58

If I didn't do it, I'd have to remember to come back to that exact shelf later and tidy it and it would look out of place in the other tidy shelves and the manager would probably complain. It's inefficient to work around customers, it only takes me a second to tidy them, they can cope.

Really Bertie?

I'm surprised you don't find them needing another tidy shortly after the first one...
Grin

willbeskinny · 26/03/2012 21:00

I wasn't barged into, but I had a shop assistant yesterday comment on how nice the weather was outside and before I could answer spent the whole time she was serving me telling her colleague nxt to her about her day off today and what she wud be doing. She ignored me the whole time apart from to tell me "£12". bloody rude cow

gabid · 26/03/2012 21:02

Bertie - you tidy up the bit of shelf the customer is looking at? While they are still there?

That would put me off! I wouldn't come back in a rush.

usualsuspect · 26/03/2012 21:03

I hate these 'lets slag off shop assistants' threads.