Customers’ behaviour has made colleagues leave

[Hmlp]

This year had:
. Colleague A left because he was grabbed by the wrist and told to FO
. Colleague B said to me that she will work another Christmas and retire after that. She mentioned this in Jan. Three months later she left
. Colleague C has worked for company for 45 years - first 5 years at a different store. She handed in her retirement notice as she is getting fed up with customers’ behaviour. She came home on Thursday in tears - the first time in 45 years. She is not retiring until next month.
. Colleague D had two weeks off sick and handed in her notice as customers have upsetted her.

These colleagues will not be replaced as according to head office we are 320 hours over a month!

We are stressed. We can’t cope as it is. No idea how HQ say we are 320 hours over when it feels 320 hours under!

Customers need to understand that shouting at retail and hospitality workers is bullying and totally unacceptable. What happened to treat others as you wanted to be treated yourself? Ie don’t talk down to retail workers like they are piece of dog shit on your shoe.

We can’t say to customers that we are 320 hours over. They will go ballistic.

Any ideas on how to stop customers being rude and bullying

I work for a national company and definitely he who shouts loudest gets exactly what they want ..

it infuriates me - my boss who agrees will say if it goes higher they will get what they want anyway and it’s a black mark against us .

My reason for being on antidepressants is work related. Outside work, I’m cheerful and do various things. Customers gave me panic attacks. We wear headsets (which work in a similar fashion to walkie talkies) and there was a colleague asking would anyone want to get on a till as queues. Had a glance up and saw two different customers who gave me panic attacks and said I am not going to serve those who have given me panic attacks. Manager who is on the headsets backed me. As she knows the history of my mh and why I moved departments

On visiting a GP, she asked about my alcohol intake and it’s above the ideal limits. When I mentioned that I worked in retail. She responded with “I understand”.

No, it absolutely didn't! I'm a teacher, and there are not enough staff to deal with students with SEND at the moment. This makes life in the classroom challenging for everyone. This is in absolutely no way a criticism of students with SEND but of the staffing levels in the school. OP is saying that the staffing levels need adjusting to meet the needs of the demographic of their store. You have completely misinterpreted their meaning.

I don't know why you're talking about schools.

I'm using an analogy - it's a very common rhetorical device.

OP, it does sound like your management are not being proactive about this.
Particularly the assault, the police should have been called. Someone has asked if you're in a union, that may be a good route for pressure for change.

You are right. Some elderly customers are lovely and sadly a dying breed. But get a few very ignorant sexist elderly men who do my head in. It’s the shopping habits of them having to shop on Saturdays that annoys colleagues and working aged customers alike.

My parents are 74 and 73 and they don’t shop on Saturdays, in supermarkets. Plus have many relatives who are retired. They don’t get it why other people of a similar age have the crazy idea of shopping on the busiest time of the week.

It's not a good analogy though.
Schools are very different to retail spaces.

Well it may seem crazy to you, but that's their choice.
Your workplace should be able to manage this.
If it's one of the big 4 there's probably a standard response to the issue of customer abuse?.

Like supermarkets, schools are currently suffering from staffing issues because of difficulties in recruitment and retention, and also because of poor behaviour and management within schools. All of this has been exacerbated since 2020. Obviously there will be different solutions to the issues, but I was not saying schools and supermarkets are the same, just that you can find something problematic without blaming the cohort for those problems.

I worked in retail for 8 years. I was never once shouted at or grabbed or anything of that manner.

Do you work in a rougher location?

If there’s a huge queue and staff are refusing to get on the tills then you can see why customers are getting annoyed.
If you are unable to do your job because certain customers give you panic attacks then maybe retail isn’t for you.

She's not really blaming the cohort, it's just that I'm failing to see why the elderly are such a problem. However, she may well elucidate.
I have asked her about the issue of abuse etc.
There are clearly management problems or quite possibly a lack of strategy to deal with issues impacting on staff. It's a terrible thing that staff are so affected by the erosion of general standards.

I'm sorry to read this OP.

We need to take responsibility for this shit as a society. 10 years ago I used to recruit overnight carers. It was a difficult job, and we lost a lot of staff to supermarkets who paid the same salary but without the [literal] shit and with less abuse.

Now supermarket workers are experiencing the same levels of abuse.

The thing with these roles is that they offer part time hours so can be fitted around caring responsibilities and so attract mostly female candidates. They can also be done by people with limited formal qualifications.

We need to treat low paid people better. We all need each other.

So, actually you are blaming them for wanting to shop at the weekend. How very dare they!

Supermarket management is pretty much bottom of the barrel. It's hard to get any applicants, never mind decent quality applicants. As a result, most of them are out of their depth and managing their stores and staff very poorly.

Of the two large supermarkets near me, one regularly has terrible stock levels, even though its the city centre flagship store. The other one has inadequate staffing and can't keep on top of its technology. They want everyone to use the Scan & Shop thingies (which i quite enjoy, tbf), but then can't have enough S&S registers in working order to actually cope with the number of people trying to pay for their shopping.

My sister asked me why I didn't just do Click and Collect. The quality of the produce, meat etc, is generally so poor that if you don't pick it yourself, you'll basically get slop.

I think there's also a certain expectation of "service" and "serving" without the due consideration of the person doing the role.
I deal with a lot of complaints about teachers that I line manage. Before giving them additional stress, I will try to unpack the issue. Sometimes I don't tell the teacher about it at all, rather than add to their stress.
It goes without saying that a school is a very different environment, however, my point is that this is most definitely a management issue.

I work in one of the smaller supermarkets. I know exactly what you mean about hours. The constant bleating on about how we aren't understaffed. We are if you want all the micromanaged shite doing.
I feel embarrassed quite often when I'm filling the freezers and someone else is working bread and then there's a customer shouting "is anybody serving" it shouldn't be like that customer service should come first but it doesn't.
We had a poster in the staff room saying that someone should always be available to manage the self scans and tills I wrote across it WHO?, it's since been taken down.
We don't have many aggressive customers but plenty of rude ones and I was going to carry on working another two years (I'm 66) but I'm retiring in Sept/Oct I can't stand the customers or the increased workload.

I didn't say YOUR reason wasn't your job. Just that so many people are on antidepressants these days.

Oh you've lost my sympathy now. People can shop whenever they want. Have you posted about elderly and out of work people shopping at weekends before as this sounds familiar..

I understood the analogy. It's supply of staff vs demand on staff

Any ideas on how to stop customers being rude and bullying
I think Glasgow kiss would do the trick. Fight fire with fire!

I think my point is that as a school manager, I have to note that parents and students aren't customers, and the relationship is multi layered and complex in a different way to the retail sector. We have to manage systems in a particular way, especially with demands from ofsted etc.
However, as I said upthread, I do think that there is a management problem here and they should be far more proactive

Totally agreed. The erosion of general standards is causing huge issues for anyone who works with the public, and it affects everyone.

It's so much worse since covid
I'm in a call centre and people complain every Monday morning that there are queues
We have maximum staff on. They could ring another day (not urgent)
Open until 7pm, open Saturdays but everyone wants to ring at 8am Monday and then complain there's a queue