To wonder who decided that customers want small talk at the till in a shop?

[YouWonJayne]

Seriously I want to know their names. Which suits sat in a boardroom and said “Do you know what customers really want? When they’re stressed and frazzled trying the find a plain black shirt and black skirt for a 9 year old’s school play, which BTW are nigh-on impossible to find, when they get to the till they want the assistant to ask what they’re up to this morning and if they’re busy? That will keep customers happy!”

The poor girl on the checkout was trying her best not to look bored as she asked the woman in front of me “Have you got much planned this morning? Do you have a busy day” especially when the woman have details of all the wedding outfits she needed to buy for her grandchildren.

I hope the assistant was relieved when I just gave a “No” when she asked me the same. I really couldn’t be arsed.

I noticed this everywhere now. Is it just me who doesn’t actually want small talk, who just wants to buy my stuff and get on with me day without being a conversationalist extraordinaire? Don’t get me started on upselling! Or the people in Lush who pounce when you’re through the door. It’s completely insufferable.

The worst part is these poor people (probably on minimum wage) get bollocked if they don’t behave this way. I can’t imagine any of them want to behave this way.

I feel like it needs a serious platform, a campaign called Leave Shoppers Alone (half joking) 😂

Believe me when I say the shop assistants don’t want to be doing it either! It’s all in case you are a mystery shopper. The whole process is ridiculous, it’s an insincere rehearsed routine that the manager forces sales assistants to adhere to , so said manager can collect a tasty little bonus.

What an appalling way to treat customers and their staff.

It's a great solution, right up until a customer complains that the assistant didn't 'engage' enough, didn't appear to care about the customer because short of the essentials they just stayed quiet, didn't make it enough of an experience, didn't make them feel special and valued as a customer........
Those complaints, and people who make them are where all this probably started, and although I had a short time in retail, I've had a loooong time in hospitality and those types of customers are very vocal about their complaints, and will complain to the assistant, then the supervisor, then the manager, then head office. Each time they feel they haven't been given the red carpet treatment.
Unless head office is getting a balanced view from customers - as in people are complaining about the places that overdo it, it's unlikely to change because they think it's what people want. And ime, they are not going to be listening to the assistants when they feedback because if you are listened to, you're dismissed because unlike the person making these policies, you don't have an office and a degree in marketing , so what do you know about it?
So complaining to them won't really achieve much - except being able to vent of course.

Oh god, we’ve managed millennia of human discourse without badges - can’t you just say you are a bit preoccupied and close it down?

To some extent (and quite a few non-chatters have said that’s one of the reasons they choose to use them). They tend not to be as efficient for a larger shop, though, and efficiency is one of the things I really appreciate in a supermarket.

Yes! What happened to “Hello, this is Fluffy Mattress customer service department. Jane speaking. How can I help you?”

Jane doesn’t care if I’m having a good day. And I don’t care if Jane cares about how my day’s going. So why does Fluffy Mattress’s CEO make her ask me?

Ive worked in retail and fortunately was virtually my own boss as long as the money was coming in. I feel sorry for staff that have to ask do you want chocolate that's on offer, 10%off today if you open a store card etc. I like a chat with the checkout staff if it's genuine. I find older staff are more comfortable with it, speaking about all manner of things where as younger staff seem to struggle but then what would a 20something have in common with a 50+something.

It's a great solution, right up until a customer complains that the assistant didn't 'engage' enough, didn't appear to care about the customer because short of the essentials they just stayed quiet, didn't make it enough of an experience, didn't make them feel special and valued as a customer

The number of people who would actually prefer, notice and care enough to change their shopping behaviour or indeed complain about the lack of unnatural scripted forced engagement and pushy upselling exhibited by shops is likely to be virtually zero.

No-one cares about 'the experience' of buying groceries, school shoes or household electronics and they know the people who serve them are acting under the misguided instruction of their employer.

So why annoy the vast majority, who just want to get on with their day and fit a task into the many other things they have to do, so are happy with basic pleasantries and don't want to discuss potentially sensitive private issues with everyone they meet?

Retail staff serve hundreds of people a day. The pretence that they care about them all is utterly ludicrous.

Retail staff can’t win. It’s already a challenging job made harder by increasingly rude customers with ridiculous demands.

If staff choose to pass the time of day with you while you’re standing in front of them putting your shopping away, why would you not have the courtesy to engage with them? Being on a till can be boring and I’ve had wonderful conversations with all sorts of people, and some customers are obviously lonely and desperate to chat.

Remember as well, we are told to do it. We’re not mindless idiots who just babble on to annoy you and quite often can’t be bothered. But what has happened to us if we can’t even have a basic interaction with other humans?

If Jeff Bezos gets his way we’ll all be shopping in silence while scanning with our phones which won’t suit everyone.

Upselling is v annoying, but I’m still polite as the employee doesn’t want to do it either.

Why can’t people just be nice.

The people working in Lush are the worst. Just bugger off! I pretend to be on the phone or don’t speak English just so I can shop in peace and not have the 49 million ingredients of some foot scrub I don’t give a shit about listed to me!

The upselling really irritates me so if a checkout or sales assistant just wants to wag their gums at me for a few seconds with no actual agenda, I'm more relieved than anything.

I worked in retail for years and we had no choice.

We had a big checklist of things we had to do with each customer - if a manager caught you missing a step, you got a bollocking.

If you got caught missing a step by a mystery shopper, you got a written disciplinary.

And all your upselling and email statistics went up on a board in the staff room for everyone to see - the same with any refunds you processed without managing to get the customer to buy something else instead.

So, say someone returned a pair of size 8 jeans as they were too big - we didn't sell a size 6 so couldn't swap them for anything, so obviously we had to refund.

But then you'd get pulled up by management asking why we hadn't sold them something else instead 🙄🙈

This has made me think about an elderly gentleman who use to visit the supermarket where I work, he would walk around having a brief chat with all the staff on a daily basis. Early this year a post was put on the Facebook chat page for our town enquiring if anyone had seen an elderly man fitting his description, who the poster had regularly chatted to. In the many comments that followed we learnt that he had died a few weeks earlier and that he was known in most of the shops in town as well as by fellow regular shoppers, it seems he had spent every morning walking around town chatting to all his "friends", I'm glad I was one of those who engaged with him.

They are depending on the time you go. The shops aren’t noisy and sometimes meandering through and picking up items without having to rush out and be on a time crunch is nice.

There are not many places other than outside in my area and I don’t want to be walking around in the dark or when it’s cold.

Spot on with shopping in silence quip, have we become so mean towards others that a few exchanged words is going to kill us. I think wfh has changed how people interact with each other and some should remember that shop staff are people with their own worries and problems so if you're having a bad day it ain't their fault.

I despise shopping in Lush now and avoid it like the plague.

It's incredibly draining to go in there. Even if you tell one that you'd like to shop in peace, others don't see that so they approach you too.

I started only going in with big headphones on to make it clear I couldn't hear anyone only to be tapped on the shoulder and gestured to remove them so they could talk to me.

It's just tiring as hell. Some of the people are clearly lovely but I really would just love to browse the products in peace. I'm much more likely to spend more if I'm able to take my time looking around but I feel so rushed with five pairs of eyes on me and interjecting to talk to me so I just end up not going in at all.

No-one cares about 'the experience' of buying groceries, school shoes or household electronics and they know the people who serve them are acting under the misguided instruction of their employer.

I think this is a huge part of the problem: big bosses of companies massively overestimating how important their firm and products are to customers. Just because it's a big part of your life, doesn't mean that it matters that much at all to the rest of us.

I started a thread recently, moaning about discussing companies that sell very occasional/one-off purchases and then proceed to spam you and send you very regular mailings, apparently under the impression that you will buy a new laptop, washing machine or sofa every single week. I bet they're earnestly wracking their brains as to why their customers are so terribly unhappy that they've just abandoned them so suddenly after 'beginning a relationship' with them; when you might genuinely believe they've just sold you the best tumble dryer in the world ever.... but you still won't be wanting another one from them or from anybody else for the best part of a decade.

Also the companies that get your email address and, instead of sending you one or two emails a month, which you may read and then go on to buy from them, bombard you with one every single day - meaning that everybody quickly unsubscribes and then they've lost that marketing contact for good. Imagine going on a date with one of these marketeers! They'd be texting and calling you 50 times a day, just to remind you that they still exist, and then calling out the police to search for you if you don't respond within 30 minutes!

I haven't been in Lush for decades; haven't ever been able to get near to the door to one, even if I wanted, as I have a nose. But from what I hear, they treat you as a captive rather than a valued potential customer. Does this stalky method actually work? Or does it turn more and more people away and then lead the nutty bosses to conclude that their drop in sales must be because they aren't currently stalking people enough?!

To add, I think some people on this thread are suggesting that NO small-talk is necessary/wanted/welcomed. I personally have no issue at all if people read the tone of the circumstances and have a natural little chat; it's just when they've clearly been ordered to chat to everybody and make no distinction between somebody ambling along with a smile and giving off friendly and unrushed vibes at a quiet time and a stressed mum with three screaming pre-schoolers at the front of a big long queue.

I agree, it's all about context. When there's a huge queue building, then small-talk needs to be minimised. If the shop is quiet, then there's an opportunity.

Likewise, shop workers need to learn to read the signals, whether busy or quiet. It's pretty obvious when someone wants to chat as opposed to being stressed and in a hurry.

I appreciate for some people, their social interactions are limited and maybe shopping is the only time they can chat to someone, but what really bugs me are the oldies who go out a lunchtime, and start chatting when there's a long queue of workers on their limited lunch-hour wanting to get served and get out. I live in a village and there are a few who do that in our local Spar shop - I've been stood in the queue behind many times as they chat away totally oblivious and then turn to look at the queue and look surprised at the hold up they've caused, then start apologising profusely etc. The next day, they're there again doing the same, same surprised look! The thing is that the shop is really quiet mid morning and mid afternoon and they'd be able to stop and chat for ages before someone else wanted serving, but they still persist in going in at the busiest time of day!

Dreadful Post.

Miserable c*
Springs to mind.

Well there's complaining a-plenty about 'shit customer service' and probably one thread a month at least here about an apathetic, disinterested, didn't make eye contact (basically didn't care enough) shop assistant. And what are they told to do? Complain.

If people were complaining in droves about this issue of shop staff being too in your face, it'd be changed (not upselling, that's different, it makes money) because it doesn't really improve the bottom line does it? Asking you what your plans are for the rest of the day doesn't put more money in the till.

As much as I don't really care for the jobs in suits in offices, who come up with these policies, I doubt their sole aim is to piss off staff and customers alike for the hell of it - either it makes/saves money or it's in response to customers indicating that's what they want either by canvassing opinion or complaints that come in.

You and I don't like it, but either those who do are (and like I said ime they are) are very vocal about how they feel they should be treated as a customer to get noticed, or they're the vast majority and we're not - because it's still happening and apparently according to this thread getting worse, but also according to other threads (with some of the same names) customer service is shit and companies/staff don't care. 🤷🏼‍♀️

@AlmostWhitby

Well there's complaining a-plenty about 'shit customer service' and probably one thread a month at least here about an apathetic, disinterested, didn't make eye contact (basically didn't care enough)shop assistant. And what are they told to do? Complain.

Well there's the middle ground rather than the extremes. Not making eye contact and just "grunting" rather than a polite please and thank you does in fact deserve complaint. But that doesn't mean that customers want the full "small talk" experience does it? I'm happy with polite shop assistants etc who do the job. I don't want endless small talk just as much as I don't want someone who barely acknowledges me and just grunts. The middle ground is what's needed.

Yes, totally, but that's not what's happening unfortunately, and if people aren't complaining about it, then the people making the policies in some of the worst offending places are patting themselves on the back for a job well done - while the shop assistants get moaned at for doing it and disciplined for not.

My point was these policies have to have started life somewhere and I doubt it was just a way to piss people off, it's likely from a very noisy few people who feel they need the red carpet rolled out to them when buying a pint of milk, or there's actually far more people than we know indicating that that is what they want, most things in these types of industry are profit driven - upselling clearly makes more money than not upselling so it stays, this staff in your face doesn't do that, so there must be another motivation (other than the belief that someone in an office somewhere wants to make life hell for their staff and customers).
I would think if enough people complained about their staff having to accost every customer and ask them at the till what they're doing this afternoon, then they'd look at the policies but clearly despite maybe what, 100 people on this thread saying they don't like it, it must be overall, a successful policy because they continue to invest in it.

I'm not defending it happening, I hated doing it as a member of staff and dislike it done to me when my mind is elsewhere, or I've spent all day being pleasant and polite to arseholes other people because that's my job and really don't want another mindless conversation with someone I don't know and the effort of having to think about more than what I know I'm going to forget to buy 😂. I'm not that bothered about being grunted at or not having eye contact as long as I can buy what I need though, they're there to facilitate the sale, not validate my presence.

Different coloured baskets/trolleys for those of us who want to left alone please 🙅

Or you could wear a lanyard, thus taking the responsibility and workload away from the staff.