Customer service goes out the window when you're clearly an idiot!

[RiskyRetail]

This is more of a rant than AIBU, feel free to join me...

So I work in a supermarket convenience store. I was on the early shift yesterday and surprise surprise, people are still ignoring social distancing and essential travel... Just a few examples of people being idiots include...

• Old people coming in to buy a newspaper
• People coming to buy lottery tickets

Neither are food or medicine. What do people not understand about essential travel?

• People coming to the till with a single item... Go to the self checkout FFS 😡
• People not understanding the 2m distance. You don't need to be peeking over my shoulder whilst I'm dealing with the self scan.
• People realising there's a queue to get into the shop and then grunting forget it. If you can 'forget it', it is clearly not essential so why the fuck are you out and about?

I was very snappy with a few customers yesterday but I'm beyond caring. I'm not going to stand with a smile while your idiotic behaviour puts me and people I care about at risk!

[rubyandbumpsmum]

It amazes me the amount of people on here who STILL cant grasp the issue.
No one cares what you buy in your shopping. No worker is bothered to even look.
It is the people coming in who are coming in 2/3 times a day.
Scratch cards. Buy one. Go out. Win a pound. Come back in. Buy another one.... and so it continues. That person going in and out and in and out.

We follow hygiene. Literally all day as best we can. We do not want to get this virus!!!

Some customers are filthy!! They cough on their money, literally hold their change in their hands that they are coughing straight into. Cough all over their shopping. Customers are coming in stood there with their money notes in their MOUTH whilst they are queuing!!! One woman even used her 5 pound note last week to assist in wiping her nose along with the back of her hand.
These notes that have just been in someones mouth are the same notes we pass back to you for change. The coins they have literally just spat all over too. Think about that.....

People are just making excuses and clutching at straws. "Oh I came for bread, milk, beans, a hamster named fred and a pink umbrella but unfortunately all you had was a crate of fosters"

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe]

So that fact that alcohol shops are now on the 'essential' list has escaped some of you then?

I don't get why you moan about people buying products when you don't know their rationale and it's absolutely not your business anyway?

Bizarre.

[rubyandbumpsmum]

Because it puts our health at risk unnecessarily???? How is that so hard to comprehend??

They are on the list because they sell other things. Not just alcohol.... Again though, you are totally missing the point.

[itsallamysterytome]

Very soon shopworkers are very likely to be amongst the few people speaking face to face with the public, healthy and infected. Until the Perspex screens are in place in supermarkets anyhow.

We serve someone with the virus today but we don't feel ill for a few days or maybe never if we are just spreaders. Tomorrow we serve your brother or sister, best friend or your lovely mum and dad who won't stop coming into the store for their daily newspaper.

We are trying to distance everyone, I clean my till area frequently, I clean my pin pad every time someone enters their pin. I wash my hands thoroughly and use hand sanitizer.

All I am asking is that customers

Use the supermarket guidelines or stay 2 metres away from people.

Come in as few times as possible (for your sake as much as mine) I may have served someone an hour ago who infected me and I could be infecting you. I really, really hope not. Plan your meals and buy what you need for a few days or preferably a week, add your treats, wine, chocolate and magazines to this shop.

Use bank cards to pay, or if you only have cash go through the self scan tills. Scan your own loyalty card.

Come on your own, leave your partner in the car outside, or definitely at home with the kids. They are just more people infecting or being infected.

Teach your teenagers not to use the supermarket as a boredom buster.
Either coming in for chocolate, chewing gum or bottles of water or even hanging around outside in a group. Even if using a self scan the supervisor can be involved (and in close contact) with your child if the till is temperamental.

Stores are now recovering, and food is getting back onto the shelves.
The stores look better everyday and a weekly/ twice weekly shop in one supermarket will soon be normal again.

Together we can narrow this area of vulnerability.

[CountArthursgroupie]

@Sonichu please look at your energy provider's website, most of them are letting you top up online at the moment (as they should).

[Eckhart]

Alcohol is essential for those physically dependent on it. Sudden withdrawal can be deadly.

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe]

You're not making a point, rubybump, you're making a judgement and quite frankly, I'm not interested in posters doing that. You think your health is put at risk? Ok then - stay home. Don't go shopping and don't work in a shop. Marinade yourelf in Ethanol and hopefully, the virus won't get you.

There's a thread here about posters drinking more at the moment. I absolutely understand that; I'm teetotal myself. Stop judging what people are buying, the supermarket bosses and government will decide - everyone else can actually just butt out.

[rubyandbumpsmum]

I am judging you yes!!
Shall we all take your advice then and just all not go in and close the shop??
May aswell as half the staff are Ill already (who didn't show symptoms at first!!) but as long as you can get your chocolate bar then that is a sacrifice your willing to make!!
The staff and workers have no worth in your eyes clearly.

[Eckhart]

@rubyandbumpsmum

You sound a bit incoherent. If the shop is open, people are allowed to come in and buy what it sells. Hopefully they are minimising their trips and maintaining social distance. If they're not and you feel it's too much of a risk, speak to the manager to get some new rules put in place, or stop going.

[Alsohuman]

Shall we all take your advice then and just all not go in and close the shop??

Given your resentment of the people who pay your wages, that might be quite a good idea.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

”People are just making excuses and clutching at straws. "Oh I came for bread, milk, beans, a hamster named fred and a pink umbrella but unfortunately all you had was a crate of fosters"

But what about Fred the hamster? I will be worrying about him, now, @rubyandbumpsmum!

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe]

Well, your judgement is IMPOTENT. I don't care what a rambling nutter says on a chatboard. Take care for yourself and others - and keep that big beak out for your own sanity. That is my advice.

Take it or don't. I really don't care...

[Barbies97]

Given your resentment of the people who pay your wages, that might be quite a good idea.

I hat an awful comment, I pay your wages ..... I thought that type of vile comment stopped being said in the 80s!

You may well "pay" someone's wages but it doesn't give you the right to endanger them, not ever!

[Femail]

Supermarket staff are playing there part in what is going on and risking there lives of themselves and there family. Take a step back and respect them like you would a nhs worker. I'm doing my bit by going into work whatever some of you doing ?

[majesticallyawkward]

Please don't be short with every customer.
Last week (before lockdown) I needed toilet paper, like actually needed it we had none, and had to walk to 5 shops before I found any. By the time I got to the last shop, a small convenience store, I was cold, tired, hungry and the baby was screaming. The store is tiny and I struggled getting the pram in then the aisles were so narrow I couldn't get in them.

I asked the lady behind the till if they had any toilet paper, very politely and with a smile (despite her having just watched me struggle to get in the door and could clearly see I was stressed, close to tears and the baby was screaming) and she was so rude and just plain nasty to me I cried. She then watched me struggling to get out of the door, crying, along with about 4 other people and no one offered to help even hold the door. I haven't been out since.

Not everyone is being a dick.

[Zaphodsotherhead]

I have a theory that people are so used to supermarket shopping that they don't 'see' the person serving them.

I had a man yesterday who paid with cash, having first put the ten pound note in his MOUTH to hold it while he tucked his wallet away. He then handed it over to me without a second thought.

I can only assume that we are less than human to some, and so they genuinely don't think that we will ever catch anything from them.

We are out there, on the front line, getting no respect (which is chiefly and rightly saved for the NHS), earning NMW and being treated like shit. When a customer brought us in a cake last week to say thank you for what we are doing, the whole workforce practically collapsed in tears of gratitude.