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AIBU?

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Original poster

Is this complaint unreasonable?

120 replies

mickeyfartpants · 13/01/2015 08:33

I went in to a large (old & prestigious) Oxford Street store and bought a gift for my son.

It was £12.99 and I gave the cashier £20. She asked me for £30 more. I was confused as I thought she might be asking for the penny or something so I said sorry, what? She answered that she had entered £50 on the till instead of £20, so all I needed to do was to give her £30 more, and she would give it straight back. All I had on me was the £20 I had given her.

I asked why she couldn't just take £30 off the change amount and she frantically started doing some sums on a pad next to the till. There was a queue mounting so I asked DP, please just give her the money and end this awkwardness

He only had two twenties. So he said again, its ok, just take £30 off what the till shows is the change. More frantic sum writing and she was starting to look very confused. I said to her, look, the change is £7.01 if you need to know. She gave us £7.01 and that was that.

Later on, we looked at our receipt and the gift should have had a 10% reduction. So we were effectively short changed. The receipt shows £38.31 as our change so she had to give us £8.31 back.

Anyway, should I email them about this? It was excruciating to watch her struggle to do basic maths while customers waited. I understand the human error of pressing the £50 by mistake, but I wouldn't have even had to know about that if she'd been able to work out the change and not ask me for £30 more!

I know its only by just over a quid but the whole thing was just like it was a monty python sketch.

OP posts:
CantBeBotheredThinking · 13/01/2015 09:26

I would complain focusing on the customer service aspect. I Know anyone can get flustered but it was a very basic sum and asking for the extra £30 in the first place was appalling. The complaint can be made without quoting actual figures so there would be no way of tracing the staff member concerned but it should ensure that staff are made aware and hopefully told how to deal with that situation.

babewiththepower · 13/01/2015 09:27

Its ok to make an error, but OP was in one of the busiest shops on one of the busiest streets in London. You don't put someone new on that till. You put them somewhere less busy or you train them military style to work a bloody till.

NoLongerJustAShopGirl · 13/01/2015 09:31

but if you have a transaction like that, you as the customer who may have been diddled, would check you receipt... wouldn't you? There and then... before you left the shop.. or was the op flustered by it all too....

babewiththepower · 13/01/2015 09:33

Why would she check, she thought the gift was £12.99 and got the change for a £12.99 transaction. Everything's fine.

pictish · 13/01/2015 09:33

Yabu - it's minor. Let it go.

Original poster
mickeyfartpants · 13/01/2015 09:35

We did check as we were about half a mile away as we had walked to the John Lewis Paddington bear statue as it was the first place to realistically stop. At that point I just thought, no, I am not wrestling back through the crowds, queueing again with a toddler, etc just to tell someone they are rubbish when we were supposed to be on a day out.

That's why I thought a short email about training might be appropriate.

OP posts:
BitOutOfPractice · 13/01/2015 09:35

Well op if it's going to make you feel better, complain and cause the girl even more problems. But really, I'd get yourself to selfridges grip department instead

BitOutOfPractice · 13/01/2015 09:36

And anyone who thinks that temporary Christmas or part time staff staff get week's and weeks of training before being put on a till are in cloud cuckoo land

babewiththepower · 13/01/2015 09:37

She needs training for her own sake as well as customers tbh. She could find herself in trouble with tourists, she cant ask them for £30 more unless she can speak 30+ languages!

OnlyLovers · 13/01/2015 09:40

Practice, most people here are not suggesting that the OP complains about or to the cashier personally. It's about making the store aware that customers don't appreciate being asked to deal with staff who aren't well trained.

Maybe if more customers spoke up calmly and reasonably about badly trained staff, it would not be 'cloud cuckoo land' to hope that they were reasonably trained before being put on a till.

pictish · 13/01/2015 09:41

They'll read your email, roll their eyes, ask her about it, she'll say yeah I got mixed up sorry, they'll say ok, send you a standard apology email back, and then the whole thing will rightly be forgotten. Ffs.

I'm one of those people that has worked bloody tills. They're a nightmare...they all work in different complicated ways, and sometimes it can take a while to get the hang of how a particular till operates. Sometimes you make a mistake.

Leave it fgs.

randycheeseburger · 13/01/2015 09:41

she was probably just flustered, I used to work in a shop and had moments like that myself. It doesn't help if you are on your own, its getting busy and the person you are serving makes you feel more of an idiot, I'm not saying that's what you did.
she probably felt very silly after

pictish · 13/01/2015 09:43

And what BOOP said as well.

carrabosse · 13/01/2015 09:46

But like someone said upthread, working in a shop Oxford street demands knowledge of tills and of maths, and if you fluster easily, its not the job for you. Plus, if its her first day, she shouldn't have been on her own.

elizadoeverything · 13/01/2015 09:49

pictish she made a mistake that basic math skills would have solved though. She didn't have those so her only back up was to ask the customer for more money. Not good. I do worry about people these days who cant do anything without a calculator.

elizadoeverything · 13/01/2015 09:49

pictish she made a mistake that basic math skills would have solved though. She didn't have those so her only back up was to ask the customer for more money. Not good. I do worry about people these days who cant do anything without a calculator.

pictish · 13/01/2015 09:52

I wouldn't even be thinking about this the next day.

NoLongerJustAShopGirl · 13/01/2015 09:54

a shop is a shop is a shop....

you get paid minimum wage to stand on your feet all day long, serving people who already think you are thick because you are working for minimum wage in a shop. (or so it seemed - ref. MN name)

mental arithmetic is no longer a prized asset..

pictish · 13/01/2015 09:54

I'm pretty sure she got flustered and her mind went blank btw - her maths skills will be adequate.
I forget my kids names every now and then...and I chose them!

BitOutOfPractice · 13/01/2015 09:55

Nor me Pictish. I guess nobody is allowed to get flustered under pressure and get a bit mixed up nowadays eh? I've also worked on tills and it can be stressful.

Look op you got held up for 2 minutes. You got your right change. Seriously? A complaint email and a thread on MN?

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 13/01/2015 09:58

i used to work as a mathematical computer programmer. i got an A in Higher Maths. I still get a bit flustered occasionally and go blank, if busy and have something out of ordinary to work out under pressure.

Crinkle77 · 13/01/2015 09:58

It sounds to me like she thought that the till would know how many/what notes should be in the till at the end of the day and she thought that she might get accused of stealing if it didn't tally. Does that make sense? I had this discussion with someone the other day. I just work the change out in my head but someone else types in what money they have been given and they said something about the till knowing what money should be in there. I explained that it didn't matter. As long as the till added up correctly once the float had been taken off then it doesn't matter.

grocklebox · 13/01/2015 11:21

ah come on with the excuses people! How blank do you have to be, the till says 37.01 change, she tried to do sums on paper to remove the 30? Seriously? This is someone without the most basic of maths skills, clearly. My 6 year old could do that sum. I failed maths gcse the first time and still don't need a pen and paper for that.

The depressing thing about this is that its not at all unusual. It seems the majority of people who work tills can't do a simple sum without them. And the fact that people are saying that its fine and not her fault and maybe she didn't have enough training are only making it worse by presenting this lack of very basic skills as normal.

BuzzardBird · 13/01/2015 11:35

I used to work as a training officer and part of that job was till instruction. You would be surprised the amount of cashiers believed that if they didn't put in exactly the amount that they inputed for cash that the till wouldn't balance and they would panic. It was always an difficult task to try and make them understand that they could enter a million pouns cash and the till wouldn't be expected to contain a million pounds as they would be giving nine hundred thousand pounds change.

Complaining about this issue will not make a jot of difference. The cashier was the opposite of a 'scammer' Hmm, she was anxious about her till balancing.

roundrobinhell · 13/01/2015 11:37

Selfridges has shit customer service. I once interrupted two members of staff having a gossip at a customer information point to ask where in the store I could buy a particular item. One of them dismissively said that she had no idea, and turned to resume her gossip session. I suggested that as a customer information contact it was her job to find out, so she reluctantly did. I always get the distinct impression that the staff there are employed for their looks and trendiness rather than any capacity for the job, all a bit "style over substance" IMO.