Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

retail sucks

81 replies

silentrunner · 05/12/2020 22:39

Just reopened (but not for long) and think that people think retail workers are literally the shit on their shoe. Had nothing but Cuntomers since we opened,
AIBU to think some people would be compassionate towards our situation.

OP posts:
SchrodingersImmigrant · 05/12/2020 22:48

Cuntomers
I love this😂

It's horrible everywhere with customers. I hope that firms will once start standing up for their staff

Sparklingbrook · 05/12/2020 22:51

I don't know what makes people like it. If you are horrible to the staff they aren't exactly going to go the extra mile to help are they?

UsernameSpoosername · 05/12/2020 22:52

I’ve never worked in retail & am always polite to everyone. Cannot fathom these people? Can you give some examples of cuntomers? 😂

ssd · 05/12/2020 22:54

I work in retail, I had a customer shout at me yesterday because she couldn't read her customer order number on her phone due to not wearing her glasses and she shouted at me as I wouldn't take her phone off her to read it for her.

I'm not kidding.

2pinkginsplease · 05/12/2020 22:56

Some staff don’t help the situation. Today a cashier in Boots barked at customers in the queue to make sure they were 2 metres apart, ( we were 1metre apart) she was pretty rude, it’s not the customers fault that the queue was squeezed into a small space and then she took my advantage card in a dish to scan it but took money straight from my hand! Germaphobic enough to not touch my points card but happily touched my hand to take money off me!

We were out doing essential shopping, not just out for the sake of it.

rka2017 · 05/12/2020 23:10

Definitely today I witnessed, staff was shouting at customer, when they need assistance to find something.

Sparklingbrook · 05/12/2020 23:22

It must be so difficult for staff. It's the Christmas chaos combined with COVID, so customers are stressed and anxious, getting too close and being very demanding.

QueenPaws · 05/12/2020 23:27

@UsernameSpoosername few that I can think of
I'm in Asda, wearing a jacket which has NHS and AMBULANCE on. Giant lettering. Woman asked me where the sugar was, I said "I don't work here but I think it's down here"
Woman shouts at me, says if I want to impersonate an employee then I should do the job ConfusedConfused

Garage. No loan cars for 2 weeks. Customer demands to borrow one from a staff member and then complains when I say no, and that we must have a loan car we can find. Funnily they're not infinite

Call handler. Customer calls me a cunt for asking the address Hmm

101nothere · 05/12/2020 23:58

I work in a well known retailers and I can honestly say since we reopened on Wednesday I have had nothing but rude customers. They will be outright rude to you from the get go, not be understanding at all when it comes to things out of our control. Totally ignore signs we have up in our store but then proceed to shout at us when they have not read a sign which states returns can't be done at a particular till point. It is extremely draining being spoken to horribly and being shouted at by some. Most people are being brought to tears by the end of their shifts. Please be easy on us this Christmas, we are trying our best.

Sparklesocks · 06/12/2020 00:22

People can be unbelievably rude. And there’s no way they talk to everyone that way. I don’t know the reason, apart from I suppose just being quite an angry person and wanting to inflict your misery on others.

Porgy · 06/12/2020 00:25

I once witnessed a member of staff in asda being assaulted by someone hurling tins of beans at them.

I used to work in a call centre and it was a good day when you didn't get called a cunt.

MaitlandGirl · 06/12/2020 00:34

My daughter works in retail and it’s a strange day when someone doesn’t scream at her.

The manager is fantastic though and will happily ban everyone who abuses the staff and call the police when customers get violent.

If you’ve got a good manager it really helps.

MrsShelton · 06/12/2020 00:44

I’m a retail manager, worked all the way through this shitshow

I’m firm with the rude ones now. I won’t take it from them. Mental health is too important so if they are rude to me or other staff, they get out back in their box

Quite a few have apologised or family with them have on their behalf

MrsShelton · 06/12/2020 00:44

*put

msrobot · 06/12/2020 00:57

Yadnbu!

I worked a few months in retail as a very shy student. Hated it, and would often hide in the loos or pretend to be looking for something in the stock room to waste time. 😅 Most customers would look down on me

That being said I still remember the few customers who were polite though, I was taken aback from their kindness after having others treat me like shit.

Jente · 06/12/2020 01:50

I hear ya. There's some horrible bastsrds out there.

MrsShelton · 06/12/2020 09:13

Retail staff are supposed immune to covid.... customers seem to think it’s ok to approach them pull down mask to speak to you.... or come up close to show you something they want screenshot on their phones

Thick and selfish!

SchrodingersImmigrant · 06/12/2020 09:25

I think shops and restaurants have some unnatural field in their door and people who cross it become unreasonable and aggressive dickheads. It's like a potral to another mental dimension😂 I don't know how else to explain the level if cunt behaviour and loss of any common sense people exhibit

SheeshazAZ09 · 06/12/2020 09:32

Accept some customers are being rude but I must admit I (as a customer) get pretty frazzled when shop staff don’t speak up behind their masks and screens. I have perfect hearing but all I hear is “mmmmph”. I have given up asking them to speak up as they don’t seem to get it, and I just tell them sorry can’t hear you and walk away. I am sure they think I am rude but FFS why can’t people project their voices better?

CigarsofthePharoahs · 06/12/2020 09:36

Cuntomers! Oh I love that.
I'm ex retail, thank goodness and I wont go back to it, the wolf would have to be through the door and admiring the hall carpet before I'd even consider it.
There was the guy shopping on Christmas Eve Eve and we didn't have a particular toy in stock, what with it being almost Christmas and all. Apparently this meant that I had personally ruined his child's Christmas. No mate, you did that by leaving your shopping so late.
The arsehole who threatened to call the police and was verbally abusing anyone who came near because a picture frame he wanted was more expensive than he'd thought. Someone had obviously picked it up to take a look and then put it down in the wrong place. It wasn't a cheap frame either and the price difference he was screeching murder over was 50p. 50p! Yeah, I'm sure the police will arrive with the blues and twos for that.
It's not as if the member of staff had been rude to him. They'd scanned it, stated the price and he just exploded.
I've been coughed on, sneezed on, sworn at and had a large trolley full of stock shoved into me. That was because it was "in the way" and what this chap was looking at was "very important". Er, a simple "Excuse me could you move the trolley?" would have been fine. Instead I ended up with a limp for a few days.
I'm not surprised there's been more incidents of staff shouting at customers. They've had enough, it's a shit job with shit pay and you get treated like shit and these are particularly shit times. Suck it up, it's what they've had to do for far too long.

Anniecott · 06/12/2020 09:36

I'm a hairdresser, I don't make the salon rules, one of them is we are not allowed to take and hang up coats anymore, when I asked my to hang her own coat up after she had sanitised her hands she shouted at me, 'what is it fucking self service know?' , I then had to ask her to keep her mask on over her nose the whole time I was cutting her hair, to repeated mutterings of 'for fucks sake' I really wanted to tell her to fuck off, having your hair cut is not essential, it is a privilege but I kept my cool and was professional the way through and thanked her coming in as she left. Unfortunately she's not been the only one.

NotMaryWhitehouse · 06/12/2020 09:41

I can completely believe all these stories. I am loosely in retail (rarely customer facing, but used to be) and the look of surprise on the face of staff I politely talk to tells me how AWFUL most customers are!

If i can hear/see someone being absolutely outrageous to someone working in a shop, nine times out of ten, I'll say something either to the person or afterwards to the member of staff. The public SUCK!

HunterAngel · 06/12/2020 09:46

Welcome to retail! You either emerge the other side with skin thicker then a rhino or a nervous wreck. There is no in between.

Rhine · 06/12/2020 09:48

I think everyone should be made to work in retail or a customer service role at some stage in their lives as character building, and also just to give you an insight into how fucking rude some people can be. Many people can’t even be arsed to say please or thank you. For example I worked in Argos as a student and will never forget lugging a very heavy box outside to a car for a customer in the pouring rain on Christmas Eve and the cunt didn’t even bother to say thank you.

That’s what you have to put up with working in retail , I always make sure I say please and thank you now. I can’t believe some posters are trying to justify rudeness using examples when staff have apparently been ‘stroppy ‘ with them. You’d be stroppy as well if you had to put up with the shit they do day in day out, and I can only imagine how it’s ten times worse during the current situation.

Hill1991 · 06/12/2020 09:50

I was in a clothes shop the other day we was Queuing up to pay about a 30min line and a shop worker was taking people out off the que to customer service to get the line down quicker the bloke in front off us went ballistic because he wasn't picked to go to customer service, them when we got down nearly to paying he went ballistic as there was a special que for disabled people and the elderly (that's when I lost my temper with him and told him that the way he was speaking to staff for doing a job was unacceptable that it wasn't essential and to suck it up and wait his turn).

The poor girl that he was shouting at was only young ran off crying.

Swipe left for the next trending thread