To ask why the fuck some people are so rude to retail staff

[Abbinob]

Been working in a shop for all of 2 months and I'm starting to hate people.
I don't care about people being on their phones or whatever but it's the people that just chuck there stuff down, almost throw their bag at you and then just chuck a bunch of coins in the counter without even saying a word. I am a person not a bag packing scanning machine robot thing. Or people who throw strops because there's a massive queue and half way through scanning there things they realise they have no money so want to go and get some out the cash machine round the corner and have a huge strop because obviously I void their stuff so I can serve everyone else.
And not to mention the man who came in today and demanded "oi girl! 20 richmond"
Don't "Oi girl"me you rude cunt

Get it in bars a lot too. My friend works in one and he's southern in a northern town so a lot of northerners take the piss out of his accent. The other week he got glasses for no reason... It's not a great job because people can be mindless fuckers for no real reason.

IonaNE probably has a diploma in GFery but she's right on one point. There are going to more and more scanning machines and the like in shops and fewer and fewer staff - like it or lump it.

I hate the scanners. It's quicker to get served by a human. Something always goes wrong or you need approval

gandalf456 Not in the Tesco I use near home or the Sainsbos near work. Sainsbos especially has well running machines and not enough staffed tills.

Sorry, but many jobs in retail are headed the way the big photo processing labs went when cameras went digital. Down the tubes.

Where I work, the customers don't like them and we don't have them. Very few ask for them too. It doesn't affect me as I stack shelves. Most people I know hate them or anything else automated

Our local Sainsburys never man theirs and, at the Tesco, they are manned by the one person on the till, which is totally unacceptable

Wow, this thread is shocking. I actually cannot believe there are posters justifying rude behaviour! This is why MN get a bad name!

larry - what? One poster agreed, the rest do not.

Slight overreaction by you there.

I don't have a degree, I don't even have A Levels and I only did my maths and English GCSE a few years ago (C in maths and an A* in English, which I'm very proud of). It doesn't make me unintelligent, it means that within my peer group and social demograph, you left school and went to work, not sixth form and university. I'm not ashamed of that, nor am I ashamed of working in retail. I don't want to be a lawyer or a doctor et al, I'm very good at what I do.

Managers of shops can get paid rather a lot too, especially in the larger stores and neither of the ones I know have anything other than gcse's but theyre certainly not unintelligent.

I hate the scanners. It's quicker to get served by a human. Something always goes wrong or you need approval
^This x1000 I boycott my Local ASDA for this reason alone. No matter what you do, something goes wrong. I suspect some items are programmed to require "assistance" for shoplifting reasons (i.e not age restricted), too, but they don't say so for obvious reasons. I tried talking to the manager about it but they aren't interested.

Managers of shops can get paid rather a lot too

I don't think this is the case. I think the norm is that shop managers get paid quite low wages. The fat cats at exec level who never set foot inside the stores (never have to deal with the grind of running the store, customers etc) are immune from the reality but get the big money, the managers in the stores are paid relatively poorly.

In my first week of a pretty stressful customer facing job I gave one guy £10 too much in change - my mistake and I realised as he looked gobsmacked and left asap.

Fast forward two years, I'd long since left and was having a drink with my mil when this guy she knew approached her, they chatted and she introduced me, he wouldn't look me in the eye. Same bloke. She was busy telling me what a lovely man he was. Nope he isn't.

We don't forget

I worked in a newsagents, tescos and behind a bar for about 3 years as a teenager.

I don't know whether I was just lucky in where I worked or completely oblivious but I never experienced anything rude enough to be memorable.

I've just raised my voice to a member of retail staff and feel quite tearful. It was just over five minutes before closing time and there was a buy one, get one half price offer. I looked through the two rails above the lowest for my size but couldn't reach the bottom rail (very bad back). There were three staff and I politely asked for help. One came towards me and said "you know we are closing in five minutes" and I replied something like " can't I buy something in five minutes" and was met with the response "not if you want a fitting, no". I said I didn't and added something like "but as it's clearly a issue, I'll forget it" and turned away. At that point the woman reached out and grabbed my arm with both hands asking me to come back. I calmly asked her to take her hands off me and,she tightened her grip and started to try to pull me back". I raised my voice and told her to get her hands off me.

It is all a bit of a blur and,all I needed was help to find two bras in my size which she was reluctant to give, she didn't even find out what I wanted before telling me it was nearly closing time.

I'm upset and a bit shaken. I don't think I was rude. Is that a normal way to behave to customers I retail? I don't think anyone in a shop has ever grabbed me physically before. I do concede I was a bit dismissive in the first place but only because she didn't seem to want to help.

Feeling very confused. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I have used this shop for more than 30 years and feel a bit stunned.

I think I came on to say it's not just customers who can be rude and I'm not in shops nut this seemed to take the biscuit.

I'm doing a course and our casual instructor yesterday kept making disparaging remarks about 'girls who work in shops'. She also told me never,ever to kneel with a client because it is a 'slave position' (I was securing a girl's hair to her nape and she was sitting on a low chair).The last bit might have been helpful advice though because presumably she might know some things about 'upper class clients' that are widely rumoured but which I haven't experienced personally (and no desire to!!)

Beau that is actually quite an unpleasant experience. You definitely need to complain. Being lovely to each other does need to go both ways.

Her hands on you was completely out of order Beau, no excuses. I just want to say something about closing times though. The closing time isn't the time that we will continue to serve you, but is the time that all orders and sales have to be processed by then the doors shut at that time. Staff only get paid until closing time, so people browsing and only taking stuff to the tills at say, 5.30 close, means that staff are there in their own time.

Thank you for responding. But I only wanted to ask "do you have two of these please?". I didn't get the chance. There were three staff chatting in an empty department. If one had come and asked if I needed help in the time I spent looking at the rails I could reach, the transaction could have been completed before I even interrupted to ask for help and I'd have been a floor down and exiting before closing time.

I think I am going to report it because it left me feeling quite shaken and this was a good local department store with a very sound reputation. On the other hand, I don't want somebody to lose their job but I think they probably will. I have a slight invisible disability involving my spine - a sharp grab or yank could actually jar my back and cause me weeks of pain.

The automated checkouts are an absolute godsend if you are on the ASD spectrum! Best thing to happen to shops for me in a long time, I wouldn't be able to get my groceries otherwise. Most issues are with the weight sensors when you need assistance, but I've learned actually vast majority are causing the problems themselves with the position of bags/items.

I find most retail staff very polite and respect them massively but I change totally as a customer if they try to push a sale or stalk me around. I agree that there's no need to be rude at all, it's vile. I get disgusted at people who think staff are responsible for pricing, sizes, stock.

But also some staff really do need to remember not everyone is NT. I can't tell you how my day has been or how I died my hair, etc. Being friendly to customers can go OTT and we aren't being rude if we don't reply. I always appreciate a "Im here if you need my help" rather than being incessant.

Walking blind I totally understand that, I don't ask customers nosey questions because I hate when I get asked stuff in shops too, I just be polite and say hello, have a nice day or whatever. You can tell the people who are being rude from the people who struggle with buying stuff in shops, I know because until I moved out at I used to make my brother pay for things in shops for me because I really struggled with it and still now I used the self checkout wherever possible.
Phone shops are the worst because they practically stalk you and when you say no I'm just looking thanks they stand right behind you and it's really odd putting

YANBU, I'm always surprised at how rude people are to retail workers. I used to work in a pub and the level of disdain some people treated me with was unbelievable.

In reference to managers being paid a decent wage - i work for a professional department of a local authority in a role that requires a degree, according to the advert in my local aldi even the assistant manager gets paid more than me. Hell, I'd go for it if this thread wasn't reminding me of how awful customers can be!

I've got 2 degrees and a postgrad and I did a minimum wage retail job for years in amongst my freelance work bloody loved it and I can tell you that it was by choice, for the latter part of it anyway. You'd get the odd twat (luckily it wasn't the sort of job where you'd get real wankers) but on the whole it was great.

Certainly didn't feel like my qualifications were a waste of time or money. I was the same as my colleagues who were in different circumstances to me but we all did the same job. Iona, I hope one of your children is like me, and really loves selling people things and improving their day, and you can watch in furious bemusement when they're happy because they beat their previous day's sales target while you gnash your teeth that they are 'wasting their potential'

I work as a carer in a very large care center. The care staff are regularly shouted at and to be honest treated as if they are nothing. The attitude is that we must be uneducated to carry out such menial tasks, as we have said to us regularly who are you ? you are only a carer. This is by some of the residents and a lot of the relatives.

I would like to point out that is the dedicated teams of care workers all left their minimum wage 12 hour shifts with no extra pay for working nights or weekends left their jobs what would you do with your relatives?

Your loved ones who have dementia, are incontinent, violent and need 24 hour care that you cannot manage to care for at home.