To be irrationally irritated by Morrisons trolley collector today

[pippa737]

I know he meant well, but he really pissed me off!

I had a bunch of stuff in my trolley - about 60 items... shower gels, shampoos, chocolate bars, crisps, talc, washing powder, fruit, cream crackers, tinned food, veg, frozen food, fridge food (like milk and yogurts,) bread, etc. I pushed the trolley back to my car and I started pulling everything out of the boot, and opened my cool bag for the fridge and freezer stuff. I had bathroom and kitchen stuff, smelly stuff, frozen items, fridge items, tins, packets that would easily crush, so was taking my time.

I had packed about a third of my stuff away, and this guy comes up to me and says 'can I take your trolley Madam?' I said 'er no thanks, I am still unpacking...' He said 'I'll wait,' and stood there while I carried on pulling the stuff out (and making me feel under pressure to hurry!)

So then I said 'the joints in my hands are a bit inflamed today, so I will take a while putting it all away, so it's OK I don't need you to take the trolley, I can take it back in a few minutes......' So then he said 'I will help you then,' and proceeded to start picking my foodstuffs and goods out of my trolley, and shoving it all over my car boot. Tins of beans on top of my bloody crisps and cream crackers and all sorts! Which are now somewhat crushed!

So I gathered up everything as quick as poss, and lumped it all in the boot just to get rid of him!

'Here's the trolley then' I said. 'There you go, saved you a job taking it back haven't I?' he said smugly!

The more I thought about it, the more bloody annoyed I got. I TOLD him I didn't need - or want his help, and he kept pushing and pushing, making me feel flustered and rushed and irritated.

So if any MORRISONS manager is reading this, please tell your staff to not do stuff like this! If you offer someone help, and they say 'no thank you,' respect their decision. Don't push it on them. It's patronising and rude, and puts people under pressure.

To add insult to injury, because I was irritated and flustered, I didn't zip up my cool bag, and my frozen food had started to thaw out by the time I got home!

Sorry, I needed to rant somewhere about this! And hopefully someone from Morrisons sees it!

(nc for this by the way. Didn't want to use my regular username sorry!)

Slightly off-topic but I'm sure our Morrisons has identical twin trolly collectors, it's very confusing.
Either that or I'm going mad!

Greggers

You need to calm down.

You have no idea whether the op herself has additional needs (eg ASD) or a mental health condition (eg anxiety) that resulted in her reaction.

Ahhh that tip won’t work at Morrison’s, though you might inadvertently shoplift if you try it.

You sound like an absolute joy OP. Even if you were flustered, you could have rearranged your bags, zipped your coolbag and whatever else you felt like doing once he toddled off. You can't blame him for your own forgetfulness. A minor inconvenience to you in the grand scheme of things...is it so hard just to thank someone even if it's a misguided assistance.

Avoiding the OP topic entirely, a tip I have for the self-checkout when it starts going mental about placing the item in the bagging area when you already have is to chuck one of those packs of chewing gum they usually have by the tills in with the shop. It usually sorts it out. Then just put the gum back after the transaction.

chuck one of those packs of chewing gum they usually have by the tills in with the shop. It usually sorts it out. Then just put the gum back after the transaction.

So the overseeing assistant can watch and wonder why you’re nicking gum? What a very bizarre ‘solution’! There are no racks full of sweets by the self serve tills, at least not in Asda.

I can easily imagine a similar thread:

"I was in Morrisons yesterday, the shopping trolley attendant kindly asked to help take my trolley back to the store but I declined as I wasn't finished packing.

Then he just stood there and watched me packing my car, no offer to help me pack at all. Lazy fecking bastard. I even told him I was struggling with swollen hands and it would take me a while to get it all in but he still just stood there and did nothing at all. I was so flustered by this time that I forgot to zip up my cool bag and some of the food had started to defrost by the time i got home.

Should I have a word with the store manager and complain about how rude and lazy their attendants are?"

I kind of see both sides, he probably thought the comment about your hands was a hint you wanted help.
However I pack at the car as I pack Into crates and have asd so someone up in my space waiting, watching is my idea of hell! For a one off thing I wouldn’t say anything as he probably thought he was helping with the hand come t but if it was regular I’d be tempted to say something in a “this isn’t to get anyone in trouble but can it be mentioned” sort of thing.

Life is really too short to think any more about this.

I get it. They overstep sometimes. The trolley guy at my local shop went way over the line with me and I had no issue reporting him. I was at the cash machine, and my kid was asking if he could go inside so he could claim the trolley with the ride on car at the front as they only have one and they keep it in the store. He could see it through the window. I said no since he's have to walk round to the entrance then down along the checkout row to reach the trolley and i wouldn't be able to see him for most of that (he was 4 at the time). Trolley guy heard him, took his hand and said "I will take you round) and started walking off with him. I was a bit shocked and grabbed my son back. Don't care that the guy had special needs; that was not ok.

Saying "they might have additional needs" doesn't mean we need to just accept behaviour which makes us uncomfortable. Be kind, be understanding, but we are allowed to say no.

Maelstrop

There is in my Asda and literally every other supermarket I've been to.

If there was an attendant nearby you would be able to ask them for help resetting the machine however there usually isn't one near to repeatedly come to your aid.

The issue is usually because the item you've scanned isn't registered on the system with the correct weight. It never usually kicks a fuss if the weight is over but will if its under, hence the need for a relatively light item to rebalance it.

YANBU, OP.

Women for centuries have had their personal boundaries, large and small, stomped all over by men. Their personal preferences treated as subordinate to the centring of male agendas and priorities. And any woman that dares to argue is subject to huge social penalties for not being nice, or because she's seen as having brought the situation on herself.

Whether this behaviour from men (and no, NAMALT 🙄) has been conscious / unconscious / deliberate / just arising from male privilege - for many women, it happens everywhere, all the time.

Someone once described these micro-aggressions as like mosquito bites. Individually they're just annoying, but cumulatively, when you get bitten in one way or another every day, often multiple times a day, they're intolerable.

This situation OP, is not trivial or petty in the grand scheme of things: it was one more example of a man deciding his agenda should take precedence over your preferences. And I am quite  at the number of people telling you a version of 'It's no big deal. You should have just been nice, and let him do what he wanted to do with your trolley'.

I think you're right not to make a complaint, given the Morrison's trolley staff policy other posters have referred to (which may or may not mean the chap in question was less likely to have been neurotypical), but hope that if confronted with a similar situation again anywhere in life, you would feel confident about holding your ground and insisting, courteously and firmly, that your boundaries will not be crossed.

FFS. Talk about blowing the incident out of all proportion.

There should be a  in there after the 'I am quite'

Dammit! Page won't post MN emojis!
This was the one I wanted: 🤔

FFS. Talk about blowing the incident out of all proportion.

Agreed. The OP says she’s ‘irrationally irritated’ and then proceeds to dig her heels in and work herself into a self-righteous froth. Irrational is putting it very mildly.

Blimey what a storm in a teacup.

I am boggling a bit at taking loose groceries to the car to bag them up. Plus I don't think cool bags are meant to keep stuff cold for that long.

Haven’t read the whole thread but you sound a bit shite. And ungrateful. Leave him be he was happy to wait

OP, ok you're the customer. You're trained to think you are the most important thing in that shop or carpark. So was that young man (trained I mean), he does sound like he has SN (in my local store there are only a few trolley slots and they are usually taken by staff who need extra support, or for whatever reason would struggle in a different role). You and him have been trained to think you are more important.

You're really not. Ok it's frustrating getting your stuff squashed. But you do seem irrationally annoyed about it all - so your bags weren't packed perfectly, a bag of crackers got squashed and some of your food defrosted a bit. Annoyed, yes. But to still be harping on about it hours after the fact? Surely most people would have put the shopping in the freezer, chucked the crackers, had a cup of tea and moved on by now? It's life, things go wrong, again 'the customer' isn't someone that needs to be protected that things cant go wrong for. This scenario is the same as someone dropping your jar of pickles for eg. A mistake, an error of judgement.

First of all, you don't seem to care at all about the young man possibly having additional needs. In fact you say regardless of his needs he still needs to have customer service skills. Yes he does, but it's a tricky art, assistants aren't mind readers and it's hard enough gauging the customers needs/wants (as everyone is different and has different cues and ways of communicating). Throw into the mix someone that finds it hard to read people anyway, but has had customer service drilled into him, and you have a situation like the one today where a man tried his best to help. Ok it didn't work out and it annoyed you a bit but geez. Chill out. Why is it as soon as customer service staff are mentioned it's like a red rag to a bull? In general, I mean.

What do you see happening if it happens again and you see the store manager? It wouldn't be a 'gentle word'. It would be a chat over customer service that'd include a breakdown of the incident. The young man might get upset (for eg I loved my customers and would hate if I'd thought I'd upset anyone - now think how someone with SN might feel). Then he'd be second guessing himself. It'd include another, ambiguous and confusing, customer service video. That'd then make the young man more confused and anxious in his work. After all he'd tried before and was wrong, who says this time he's any better? He'd be nervous and second guess himself, and again your crackers would come a cropper.

Look, I don't know what's happening in your life, and I'm sorry for your pain, could that be making you more frustrated in general? Because, and I'm not being nasty, for most people in your situation they'd have had a tut, put their stuff away, perhaps moaned to DH/Kids/Cat, had a cup of tea and then carried on with their evening. They wouldn't be thinking about next time or getting het up. Perhaps have a think about why it's affecting you so much?

ordinary I think you're blowing a situation where a member of staff tried their best and misjudged a situation (and where many posters have suggested it sounds like he has additional needs) into a feminist issue.

It's really not one. He made a mistake. Him wanting the trolly wasn't some kind of power struggle to assert his manliness.

My Tesco trolley guy has special needs and he can annoy people by talking their heads off. Most regulars have a nice chat with him. I’d hate it if he got complained about but I imagine it happens.

It does Sound irritating, I agree, but i don’t see how you couldn’t have nipped this in the bud.
“I like to pack my own goods and I prefer to put my own trolley away, I don’t need you to wait for me, but thank you anyway”, polite, clear, firm.
I agree if he pursued touching your shopping or taking the trolley after you have said this, then fair enough to complain/raise the issue. But you need to to resolve the issue yourself initially directly with him.

I have worked in retail though not on trollies. Maybe there had been previous complaints about loose trollies not being collected? Sometimes with a picky manager you can't do right for doing wrong and the customers aren't always a bundle of joy so they complain about stuff like all the loose trollies in their way in the car park.
Maybe the trolley guys had had a moany manager that morning being pedantic?

And last post - every customer has different ways of packing their bags etc. In some cases customers with arthritis etc want the bags left open (if theyre the bags where youve got to give them a decent pull to open). There's no one size fits all. So no use blaming him for the storage of your shopping or the bag being open. If it was that important as a pp said it would have taken minutes to unsquash the crackers from the beans and close the bag.