... to complain about a member of staff at our local Aldi?

[InSearchOfMartin]

In Aldi two weeks ago I took five bottles of perfume to the checkout along with my shopping. I wasn't buying the perfume but I noticed they'd ben opened and squirted and one bottle was damaged. They were unsellable, total cost not a great amount about £35-£40. The woman on the checkout said they couldn't provide testers, so I said that it was a shame as they were losing stock. She said I could talk to the manager, who came out and I asked her about testers. She said Aldi didn't provide testers so I said, as the manager, couldn't you make that decision as you are losing sales. She said no, and I said well, then, it's a shame you are losing stock. I asked what would happen to them and she said they would be sent back. End of conversation, neither party was rude to the other.

I posted on the local Facebook forum about it, with the focus being not on the store, but the standard of customers who were entitled to open and spray themselves with perfume as follows.

What is wrong with people? I've been in Aldi today and found five boxes of perfume opened and squirted, two with damaged lids. Not testers. These are now unsaleable, and at about £7 for goodness sake just buy it and give it away if you don't like it. Really bad behaviour.

A few comments followed all agreeing with me, one person saying they had actually seen testers in a different Aldi in our city. Then today, this rant appeared from one of the Aldi members of staff!

I love how u have failed to mention the attitude & horrible, uncalled for comments to 2 members of staff on this post. U conducted ourself in the most awful & embarrassing way. U should be embarrassed, we all know u just wanted the perfume reduced, staff & customers that overheard, we all know what u were after. ok, just mind ur manners next time. It costs nothing to be nice.

So I want to complain about this. A member of their team is accusing me of wanting freebies, being rude, being embarrassing, awful and so on in embarrassing English, too. I was not rude at all. Nobody was rude. I was cross at the customers being so bloody entitled and thought I was doing the store a favour!

Conversely, this Aldi member of staff should be mortified at her level of English, customer service and ranting on a local Facebook forum. She's made herself look thick, and she's lying. Also, if someone at a doctor's surgery, library, local council etc wrote like this on a forum they'd be in trouble at work for it.

So would you complain, leave it or what?

Oh dear, how embarrassing for you it all seems a bit OTT on your part.

I am not embarrassed at all. If I was the person who'd written the reply I would be very embarrassed.

My profile says I work somewhere I did years ago because I haven't updated it. So her profile saying it isn't proof that she works in that store, or even for Aldi at all. She might have at some point, so she might well have just been a member of the public expressing her opinion.

She's not done anything illegal even if she is a member of staff, and 'professional' seems to only ever apply to shop workers or hospitality workers when it suits, certainly not when it comes to levels of respect, pay or how they're treated. If you expect such professionalism, then why feel the need to take the bottles to the till and question them about it at all, and not just trust that they know what they're doing, as professionals? Or are you one of those where professionalism is only brought into it when it suits the purpose of complaining?

Bit worried about commenting because of OP's name 🤣

But as there was a 2 week gap then its possible someone else has been in, possibly inspired by your post on FB, to use a similar story but then angle for freebies. Your post happened to show up for them now (because it FB and posts from ages ago can come up like new) and they thought you were someone else.

If you've tagged Aldi, or if local managers are I'm the group, then it's likely her comment will be seen and she will be spoken to anyway. But otherwise, no, I wouldn't go tattling to her boss about it.

You sound like a busy body. And a dick.

@MartinCrieffsLemon Ha ha! I found it ✈🍋

You never know.

Nope I didn't tag Aldi at all. There's no complaint about Aldi. It was a post in a local forum about how people help themselves to stuff and have a sense of entitlement, which just happened to have taken place in Aldi. They probably do the same in other shops as well. I didn't complain, as there was nothing to complain about, the staff I spoke to were absolutely fine. It was just a conversation.

I don't think much to a staff member who moans about specific customers on a forum like that, though. It's unprofessional whatever your job is.

Why did you bother wasting everyone's time going to the front to 'helpfully' point out some bottles (that you Apparantly didn't even want to buy) were open?

Pretty obvious you've never worked in retail. They do very regular stock checks - they'll know this is an issue. Massive chains do not rely on people with too much time on their hands to check stock.

If you really think a manager of a branch of an international supermarket has the power to bring in testers then you are quite laughably uninformed about how retail - or in fact, working for any large corporation - works.

Sounds to me like you came across as though you were angling for discount without being direct about it. Which is really annoying to deal with - much better to simply say 'as this is damaged, can it be reduced?'.

If that isn't the case and you simply were 'just letting someone know' then please understand that is annoying and condescending. I constantly deal with people like you who 'just want to let me know' that there's a crack in a sink or that the flowerbeds outside are dead etc etc.

All this stuff we see with our own eyes - because as staff we are at the place 40 off hours a week. We don't need someone swinging by for an hour to complain about things that aren't actually affecting them and that we can't fix ourselves anyway.

Anyone who does this I assume they're angling for discount, or that they simply love to complain.

Your comments about standard of English used on Facebook show me you are the latter.

@MocktailMe Then they could have said that!

Okay so someone opened a few perfume bottles to test….Aldi don’t do official testers at that store but surely the open ones were acting as the unofficial testers? If the store manager wasn’t concerned about this then I really don’t think it warrants your concern either to be honest. By taking those opened bottles to the tills you probably just made it so someone else opened another bottle to test instead of using an already opened one. So well done.

I don’t care if a perfume costs £2 or £100 I’m not buying it if I can’t smell it before. I don’t want to end up with stuff I won’t use.

@Inmydreams88 This OP is not about Aldi, the testers, the store manager, whether I'm not quite right in the head to have brought it to their attention or anything. That was all done and dusted over a fortnight ago.

The staff could have (and possibly did) put the opened bottles back where I picked them up from, if what people say on here is right. I've never heard of "unofficial testers".

It's about the Aldi employee, with whom I did not interact at all, ranting on Facebook at an individual customer two weeks later and making herself look silly.

She shouldn’t have done that, not from an employee pov, it was really unprofessional of her. If she wanted to reply to you, she should have done it generically. Could you delete the fb post?

for what it’s worth, I think the names you’ve been called on this thread by some people (weird, Karen, crack pot) are awful and these people should be ashamed of themselves.

Halle-bloody-luia.

Oh they do😂

Seeing as everyone has told me I need a hobby, I'm a Karen and so forth, I'd have thought all those amazingly correct and organised and sorted posters haven't got the time to waste cringing for someone else who they don't know. They're all too busy, I'd imagine.

Right sure, I’d just let it go to be honest. No maybe she shouldn’t have replied but clearly her perspective of the interaction is that you were very rude. None of us can say you were rude or not but to be honest your behaviour seems odd.

Mortified for you OP! Oh, to have that kind of time on my hands.

I think generally you should refrain from replying to customers on Facebook - I always have, it's not worth it. I also think you should generally refrain from posting on Facebook about inconsequential incidents where you have come across as condescending to staff in shops.

You can delete the post and everyone involved will forget about it and move on. Or, you can send in a letter of complaint, and recieve a general letter of apology from someone in head office who (I promise) will not care even slightly about your issue. Those are literally your two options. If the letter of apology will mean a lot to you then by all means go ahead and complain, but nothing else will happen, except that every time you return to Aldi you will be able to do so knowing that as soon as the staff see you they will be doing a very large sigh.

No you're not, you can't be mortified for me. You're just mildly entertained by the thread. The only person who can be mortified for me, is me, and I'm not.

And I know - to have that much time on your hands to reply slagging off a customer when you're not at work. Maybe she needs a hobby, eh?

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The employee (assuming they are) shouldn't have posted (it was unwise) but maybe you did come across as rude (even unintentionally) and they're fed up. But equally you took it too far by talking to two staff and posting in the first place (you come across as very judgemental). It's been two weeks, life is too short, let it go.

Posting in the first place - do you mean on Facebook, or in here? If it was FB, I didn't post about that. I posted about customers raiding stuff on shelves, not about the shop or the staff.

I only spoke to one member of staff, she fetched the second one (the manager). I didn't ask to "speak to the manager" (!!)

Tbh I've done this in b&m (I work there) 😂
There's always bottles of perfume and body spray half used. We have a clear out of them every couple of weeks but for the most part, they are the unofficial testers

Wouldn't it be just simpler to label them "TESTER"?

I can imagine someone testing a tomato, a grape or a banana to see if they like it and want to buy the whole bunch - that's just theft, not testing!

I remember when there used to be magazines for sale in supermarkets with freebies and often they'd been robbed. There are far fewer magazines at all now for sale and hardly any freebies.

Another OP - AIBU? Answer - Yes. OP - no I'm not

This thread is hilarious!

Aldi staff are paid a pittance and have a tough enough job without you deciding to police how they sell a random product that you weren’t even interested in buying. I bet they were all having a good laugh at you behind the scenes.

Yes her behaviour as an employee was unprofessional but as someone who’s worked in retail, it’s very refreshing to see entitled customers actually being called out on their arsehole behaviour for once!

Honestly OP, you aren’t doing yourself any favours here, just delete the post and move on.