AIBU to walk out of the shop

[loveareadingthanks]

Popped into Savers, cheap chemist/toiletries chain shop, in my lunchhour to buy a tube of toothpaste. queue at till (one queue, 2 servers). One server took ages with the person they were serving - picked up perfume pack and tried to sell it to her for mothers day 'this is on special offer, wouldn't it be a lovely present for mothers day' when the customer said no she kept on about it being a good mothers day present. Then she gave up, picked up another gift pack and tried to sell her that. Eventually just processed the items the customer had brought to the till. The other server wasn't doing any of this stuff, just ringing up the customers purchases.

So...I end up getting her as well. She started. She picked up item one, started talking and I interrupted her politely with 'no thank you'. She picked up item 2, started talking, I interrupted her politely with 'no thank you'. and thought ok, now she'll serve me. Well, she then picked up a third item and got as far as 'would you be interested in...' and I just walked off. As I got to the door she sort of shouted in a cross way at me 'Excuse Me! and waved my toothpaste at me 'Your toothpaste'. So I said I hadn't come in to be told to buy this that and the other, I'd just wanted toothpaste, and now I was going somewhere else. She looked like this . The other customers in the queue looked like this .

YABU or YANBU?

YWBU she would have been told to do this.
1 year in the shop I worked in over christmas when it was super busy, I had to tell every person I served about a hot tub they were giving away.
When I had enough and just put the flyer in the shopping bags my manager actually shouted at me and I was close to walking out there and then. I worked there for 12 yars without a problem before he started.

Well, we are unreasonable too!

Laptop, camera and some accessories being bought, about £800. The salesman started and I said, no thanks we don't want any warranties, guarantees or anything else. He continued. No, I said, absolutely nothing else. Again he started... if you continue we will leave all the good here, I said. But you must, he started, as we put the goods down and walked out.

Manager chased us and asked why we were being unreasonable... I explained and he looked incredulous... but you must have.... he said, as we got into the car and drove away!

How many times do people just put up with the hard sell? Me? not at all. Last week we walked out of Currys, we don't like being invisible either. And yes, we made sure we stomped, muttering loudly!

I have a relative who works for this company and know that you taking your custom elsewhere isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to whether this selling technique continues as it kept several thousand employees in their jobs a few years ago when the company wasn't doing very well. It would take a massive loss of customers to make any impact because of the revenue generated by these additional sales. I also know that these sales are something that staff performance is measured on and the cashier was only doing what she has been trained to do.
Maybe she was being a bit over - enthusiastic and I agree that it is annoying sometimes when you just want to buy one thing but retail staff take a lot of shit as it is so maybe just saying no thankyou to each offer would have been better.

Nomama kudos to you!

Someone asked where to shop to avoid the hard sell/up sell. Small independent businesses. Because they're after your repeated custom, so are actually interested in customer service.

YANBU.

Aside from anything else, this could potentially be really upsetting - it's 17 years since my Mum died but I don't really like being reminded of this!

I hate shops that make their staff upsell but I feel for the assistants as well as they must hate it just as much.

I agree wit turquoise, some of us don't have mothers and the adverts everywhere are enough to look at. someone repeatedly banging on about wonderful presents I could buy for my mother when I only wanted toothpaste would have upset me.

YABU and YANBU. I know that kind of thing is annoying, but on the other hand you could have said after the first or second time 'I just want this, please' and handed her the toothpaste. I know you shouldn't have to spell these things out but sometimes you just do.

I feel for her a bit; she's probably on commission and/or under pressure to sell extra stuff. The staff in my Savers occasionally try to interest me in something random while I'm paying, but a polite 'No thanks, just these' always does the trick.

Personally when this happens I contact head office directly if I am bothered by it.
Person on the shop floor is just doing what they are told to do, they don't have the ability to change it.

But YaTalkinToMe just the odd random complaint to head office won't do anything, like Pivot says "no wonder I left". You can only get the behaviour changed by increasing the cost to the business of the policy to greater than the extra sales. Wasting staff time, restocking shelves, losing and having to recruit new staff etc. all add to those costs, a letter to head office, barely at all.

Don't be rude to the staff obviously, but you don't need to go along with them being annoying simply because they can't change the policy directly.

YANBU

I work in a shop that tries to make you do this and I refuse, awful for the customers, if they want to buy something they will.

Do get told I have attitude issues though, but I'm still there 8 years on.....

It's one thing to ask if you would like any of the special offers but she shouldn't go through them one after the other and hold up the entire queue.

Same thing happened to me today. A DKNY perfume, it was horrible. I jus said no no but he seemed put out. He had been through at least 3 brands with the previous customer.
I think it depends what mood you're in. I felt chilled today so wasn't bothered but yes it can be annoying.

YANBU... You were not rude, you didn't shout or swear at her and she was going over the top.

The posters who say 'oh but the staff have to do it - they don't have to. They are instructed to by their employers. Their employers make them do it because most people feel uncomfortable about walking away because they feel sorry for the staff, who are just following instructions. So it continues. This is why I use self checkout wherever I can.

And for the poster who said that it would take thousands of people to change the way shops operate by requiring their staff to do this... Ten people do it today. Twenty do it tomorrow, because they saw the first ten walk away. It could quickly snowball.

I don't think refusing your employer's instructions is an option if you need the job, have been there less than two years or are on a zero hour contract.

You did the right thing, I'd have done the same. If enough of us did the same they might stop doing it.

This is a new one on me. So forgive the potentially stupid question, but if the customers don't like it and find it off putting, and the people working there hate having to do it becuase they can see the irritation first hand...why are management enforcing this stratagy ?

Isn't a bit "shoot self in foot" ?

Or does it work? In the sense that despite the irritation and the staff catching flack, sales do go up becuase of it ?

I think if it happens here I'll go fully shopping online becuase I find shopping irritating enough as it is. Which might actually contribute to a vicious cycle now I think about it. As more people do more shopping online, the more retail outlets panic and put more selling pressure on the customers they do have, who get annoyed and become more motivated to avoid brick retail outfits... and so on and so forth.

it was bad service, pure and simple.

She could have gone through the offers while ringing up the sale. that way the customer feels they are being attended to. What the cashier was doing was actually refusing to serve the customer until she'd gone through her sales pitch. She then refused to listen to what the customer was saying after OP told her twice.

I'd have walked too. Maybe the cashier will have learnt something - namely that she needs to improve how she does her job and stop pissing customers off.

My old job would make us upsell, it was excruciating. For a person wanting to buy one thing we had to ask them five questions, us doing it in a robotic fashion while the customer got more and more pissed off.

The area manager talked about it with a shitty little smile as if she had personally come up with this fabulous idea 'because if they don't want it this time, it puts the idea in their head and next time they might buy the extra thing. Say it in a cheery voice,mot doesn't have to be awkward.' As she pootled off to spend the rest of her day doing nothing. Pay us more and we might give a shit.

You did the right thing.

If she'd wanted to sell the toothpaste she'd have done so. Obviously she didn't.

What you think happened: A cashier was being a nob on purpose. You reasonably and nobly took a stand for what was right; everyone in the queue was inspired by you; the manager will ignore orders from national head office and stop the practice; the cashier will look at her life and choices and stop doing it; sales of 49p toothpaste will fall across the land inspiring the company to change well-studied established sales practices.

What actually happened: Some overworked minimum wage cashier has been told they have to sell more of X product and the other one already sold enough or they're just taking the risk of getting fired because they don't want to be aggressively challenged by dickheads who think it's their choice (my tact); the customers were gasping at how rude you were and made a comment to the cashier after you left (happens all the time); you literally looked like a child flouncing out; it will change nothing; the cashiers will laugh at you in the staff room; the company will lose a couple of pence which is well worth not having dramatist customers who might cause trouble in the long run; the cashier will feel like dirt inside and possibly cry depending on how many dickheads she's served that day.

Hth

In my opinion YANBU I would have done the same. The fact that she tried to upsell more than one thing without even touching the item you actually wanted to buy would have irritated the hell out of me. I understand if they do it at the end but not at the beginning of a transaction.

Having previously worked in retail I know the joys of having to upsell but if a customer says no thank you, you accept that and carry on, you don't keep trying to sell them items they evidently don't want!