Have you ever dumped an entire trolley of food at a till and walked out?

[sunnydaytoday0]

I was in a Lidl store today and a very long queue built up.. and it became apparent that another till was not going to be opened despite the queue getting longer and many of whom had a big trolley load of food. There are no self service tills.

I then saw a man walk to the front and dump his entire shopping on the conveyor belt of an adjacent till and stormed out.

I'm sure if there was more staff this would've been avoided so it wasn't the fault of the person on the till. I know there is pressure on supermarkets to cut costs, but is this now getting to a tipping point in terms of impacting on customer service? Or is it the case that if you go to a so called 'discounter' type shop then you just have to accept that the service levels will be bit lower which allows them to offer lower prices?

Have you ever dumped your shopping at a till and walked out? I thought if the guy wanted to walk out he could, he didn't actually need to go the effort of unloading it all on a belt in a dramatic fashion in front over the worker and then storm out.

I left a basket of shopping I’d run through the self service till as the till needed a member of staff to confirm something and there just weren’t any around. Got fed up of waiting.

Lidl doesn’t even have an online shop 🤷‍♀️

@1month it would have taken more than 5 mins but it's the principle also. I used to work in Tesco a few years back myself and would have been happy to assist a customer if this happened to them, seems customer service standards in retail have gone down

Yeah morrisons when the fire alarm went off. We all trooped outside, waited a while, trooped back in, fire alarm again , out we all go, back in and the power went off. No tills working, and by this time I figured my frozen stuff was part defrosted and I no longer wanted to buy it.

I went elsewhere for several weeks until I was sure all the abandoned frozen food was out of the system.

I have. But after waiting 15 mins for a self service queue in Morrisons, we finally made our way to the till and it was a disaster. There was a problem with the scale which repeatedly said an item had been removed, nothing had, so we had to keep flagging the staff to help who was getting annoyed with us and began ignoring us. We were scanning an waiting for about ten minutes. Then got to the last item an in-store priced cheese only for it to be rejected as a non existent item, had to wave the guy down again, who was clearly fed up, tried to explain it he overrode the item for us to type the code in, item came up as 99.99 for a piece of brie so obviously wrong. Begrudgingly called the guy again who ignored us for a good few minutes before I walked up to him and asked him to review the price he admitted it must be wrong and "go find out what to do" when I asked from who exactly he walked off. It had been about 15 minutes at that point, so we just turned and walked out.

Haven't stepped foot in a morrisons since.

I once had to leave a trolley full as the power went out across the entire city and it was clear it was going to be our for awhile. It was weird seeing all those abandon trolleys in the dim emergency lighting.

Otherwise, I've had to have my local shop hold my shopping a few times because I forgot my cards. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Luckily, they can bring back the order on the till by scanning the receipt.

No, cos I'm not a dick to shop workers. They have enough to put up with.

No, but have thought about it. Like pp, went through a phase of being pulled up for a check after every self scan shop in Tesco - I had never missed an item- and just got fed up of waiting , but wait I did. Also Boots - local one has self scanners , and things need authorising - like ibuprofen or whatever. There are rarely any staff interested in helping. I have been tempted to storm off, but am more likely to collar any staff member I see in the distance. Customer service really sucks these days.

@Discwriter It's true, abandoned chilled or frozen items have to go in the bin.

I've never abandoned a trolley or basket. I've worked in superman's and customer service, I know it's only going to be some poor minimum wage sod who has to put it all back/write it off, and it won't change a damn thing that is a managerial decision.

I have had to leave before I could check out - but I only had a basket and put stuff back.

I dumped a basket in Lidl once, I had an appointment down the road and thought I’d pop in for a few bits on the way. One till open, and 20 minutes later the lady who was now at the front was asking all the questions, wanted to go get more stuff etc. I realised it wasn’t happening in the next 3 minutes and legged it.

You put them handle to handle at an angle.

You can't release your pound coin by pushing your trolley into another full trolley

Yes ! I’m Sainsbury’s last week . Self service till line went way back so people waiting for ordinary tills couldn’t queue. Staff member helping people at self service shouting at customers “ it’s not my fault, this is the worst day of my life “. That finished me, dumped the lot.

Why should you have to go all the way back round the shop because they won`t open tills, more often than not it is a deliberate policy to get you through self-scan, nothing to do with lack of staff, there are always loads of staff milling around when they just have one till open IME. The more people leave stuff dumped at their closed tills the more the staff should feed this back to their line managers at handovers/team meetings, after all it is their jobs that are gone when we all enter Robot World?

Yep, also LIDL when a sales op shouted over to me that 'Till 3 (or whatever it was) will be opening.' Unloaded my stuff and waited and waited for about five minutes and no-one came. Loads of people had moved ahead of me to the other tills so I wasn't going to pick everything up, reload the trolley and go to the back of the queue, I just left it all there and went to the Asda across the street.

Must have led a sheltered life?

Oh god only once. I had two small babies, aged 1 and 2, both howling. I had a trolley of food and the queue was massive. I waited patiently. A woman came up behind me with her shopping and a worker said to her, oh don’t join that queue, we can open another for you.

Opens the till next to me and the lady behind me swans through. I am still waiting with several children screaming and clinging off me. I cried. Said to the woman; I really wish you had said that to me instead of the woman behind me, I’ve been waiting ages. Then I left.

You put them handle to handle at an angle.

If you are being serious @Createausername1970 you are really some piece of work 😟

I haven't worked in a supermarket, but wouldn't do it for similar reasons - the person who's got to replace it all probably has nothing to do with whatever caused the shopper to abandon their trolley, so why make their life difficult? I assume anything frozen would probably have to be binned, too, which is a waste.

I’ve never stormed out. I have abandoned my shopping because I wasn’t going to make school pickup otherwise. If that happens it means the store was really, really backed up because I always leave ridiculous amounts of padding when I run consecutive errands.

I have also left my non-grocery shopping behind in stores when I see the length of the payment line and it makes me rethink my purchase. Sometimes I decide I will just find what I need elsewhere or that I don’t like a particular item enough to wait that long.

Btw I don’t consider my mum an asshole for doing it. My brother had and still has substantial delays and I think it was worse for everyone, him, us, the general public, shop workers etc had we stay.
I have an autistic child of my own now and we just avoid crowded places

I feel for people who need to shop on a weekend and at the supermarket. Online shopping for us and just a trip to the butcher and may be the street market for nicer veggies. I would never have left a trolley but it has been years that I have been shopping in a supermarket let alone on a Saturday. Lidl is the go to place now so they should have more people at the tills for sure. Specially at weekends.

Two tier pricing annoys me too. Last time I forgot my clubcard I'd picked up quite a few high value items that were really good value at clubcard price (and quite a few pounds cheaper than at competitors). I told the cashier how frustrated I was (at the situation, not him!) and he told me I could ask Customer Services to apply the clubcard discount and refund my card next time I was in store, as long as I had the receipt (which I did successfully with no issue). So just FYI, no need to abandon your shopping next time!

I don't exactly think it's finger clicky to expect not to have significant amounts of time stolen from you.

I imagine the guy was trying to make a point that the service was slow and unacceptable. Thing is, the workers that saw him do it aren't responsible for the problem. Poor management and cost cutting are the culprits.

I can’t get over up thread someone says to staff I will go see if comp will open a till then, I really hope they made that up, what a dick thing to do.