When technology fails, don’t yell at the staff

[notedbiscuits]

They have zero control when this happens.

Happening at Sainsburys and I’m a customer.

Sounds bad. I agree it's not the employees fault , but people are not always pragmatic
Is this in one store or everywhere ?

Bet I can guess which store op! South coast???

I agree if the computers are down there isn't much they can do unless people have cash. Even then many of the younger staff have no idea how to switch to paper accounting and taking/cashing up physical money payments at the till when this happens. When this happened recently there was one regional manager who had to go round to all the local Sainsbury's including the local one near me to help them out. Hopefully given it is happening more frequently at the moment they have had some training since.

I work in retail and it happens too frequently some people are absolutely vile, often though someone will pipe up "Don't worry love not your fault" which is always nice.

Ther's never an excuse for yelling at staff, and it's certainly not their fault. But it's also hugely frustrating when your questions are met with blank stares and dismissive shrugs. I appreciate that they may have no updates to give, but use your words, for goodness sake!

We had no WiFi for 3 days across half the town (my home wasn’t affected) and it was hell.

No contactless payments (including mobile)
No cashback
No purchases or redeeming on gift cards
No mobile top ups
Reductions were done manually- writing new prices on stickers (plus that meant checkout staff on all tills had to manually reduce items)
No checking on stock levels
No disposals
No issuing of tickets

ETC

Probably best never to yell at the staff unless it's something along the lines of "call an ambulance someone has been stabbed in aisle 6."

The thing about technology failing though is that the business needs to have a backup plan if they are unable to carry out their business in a normal way. So I can understand people getting shitty with representatives of a business if the business has not planned effectively. System outages are foreseeable problems, they will happen, so the business needs to come up with an acceptable workaround. A supermarket could easily close the doors if they can't take payments, for example, and just let people already in the shop take their goods away and pay next time they're in. Yes they'd lose a bit of money but they'd keep the goodwill.

Think it may be more than one- was in one in a Sussex market town and everything was down...

Probably not best to yell at the staff, full stop.

I thanked the staff of a local pharmacy. They’d been brought in under difficult circumstances, were being shouted at by some. When I was served, I thanked them and mentioned the two in particular that had kept up a particularly positive manner despite everything.
There were rumblings of agreement from everyone else. It was a shit situation that only affected us briefly whereas they were stuck with it all shift and potentially for several days.

We still have flat bed card machines just in case this happens.. The ones with the carbon copy slips. OMG! I used them in working at a bookshop aged 17 in 1998.

During when I was off recovering from surgery, about 10 years ago, there was a massive and unexpected thunderstorm, along with monsoon like rain which knocked the power and the back up gen.

Closed the store for new customers. Card flat beds out. Colleagues took an estimate and took payments for round amounts in £5s and £10s.

Then got back up chiller and freezer trucks for the fresh and frozen stuff on the shop floor AND in the walk in freezers and chillers in the back.

Agree, not the shop floor staff's fault. The Head Office senior IT people are probably to blame. Not investing in back up systems, not upgrading to supported software and hardware, not testing properly, Inadequate cybersecurity. In other words cutting corners for short term savings.

System outages are foreseeable problems, they will happen, so the business needs to come up with an acceptable workaround.
..
Well there is a work around - pay with cash .
The old style card machines are pretty much obsolete now as most cards don't have raised numbers any more

But that wouldn’t work for the cards that don’t have the details on them. And what would you put the floor limit as? Can’t be ringing the bank for every customer to check they have the funds. I think most shops would just shut. For a power outage any way, if the tills work independently from the internet, that’s fine for cash.

I agree there's never justification to yell at staff, but I can certainly understand the frustration when customer facing staff make no attempt to help nor deal with the situation or even worse make the situation worse by just staring blankly, eye rolling at customers, shrugging their shoulders, etc - that kind of thing just winds up the customers.

But I also agree with others that the shop's management should have a procedure and systems in place, such as an immediate shut down and not admitting any more customers and some kind of "triage" system of queues at the checkouts for people already in, separately queues into people able to pay by cash, people who can only pay by card, etc., to at least get the cash customers through checkout and out of the door instead of them being stuck behind customers blocking the tills when they can't use anything but card. Either that, or if it's "too hard" to put cash sales through the till, then just a blanket refusal to serve anyone, telling all customers to leave the store and getting all the staff to take the baskets/trolleys and put the shopping back on the shelves whilst the store is closed.

It's hardly a once in a lifetime event, so there does need to be systems and procedures in place rather than staff not having a clue what to do and (as is too often the case) the management hiding in their offices!

Any customer who hurls abuse at staff when technology goes down should be banned full stop.

Retailers need to protect their employees more.

How about just:

Don't shout at employees.

Wtf do people think they are to think they're justified to yell in anyone's face?

Glad I don't work a customer facing role anymore tbh. I didn't do verywell.

My DH was in there and said it was chaos. Still not the staff's fault though.

Absolutely.

People were just getting on with it where I was (though they had just announced the lack of contactless as I left....). I did notice various people leaving to go elsewhere, but many were putting things back where they came from...

They also had someone at the door telling people about their issues, which probably helped.

People are usually quite mollified by a simple sorry. Sorry isn't always forthcoming these days.
The staff represent the company. An explanation isn't an apology.
Everyone should behave politely obviously.

Far too many people treat retail staff appallingly. I only worked in retail for a few years (secretarial job for 30 years before that) and was shocked how rude some customers were. They seem to think you only work in a shop because you are thick and can't get any other job.

Every single thing that goes wrong is your fault.

Those who think retail staff are like this have one thing in common

NWIR

Never worked in retail

They wouldn’t last 5 minutes if customers shouted at them like that what they do to retail workers

Can we make NWIR a MN acronym?

I've worked in retail and it's an eye opener
I agree everyone should work a week in a shop or a restaurant: might focus a few minds