to think behaviour of retail workers has got worse?

[todayday]

I do mystery shopping audits of retail stores. I have been doing it for quite a few years and have noticed the standards for shop workers has really slipped.

A lot of basic politeness is missing. If I ask where something is, often they say over there which is not very specific rather than taking me to the item. Other staff will not move so I can access an item if they are doing an online shopping order. People restocking often refused to move or sigh when asked politely.

Knowledge of accessibility is poor. Staff often look miserable and look like they don't really care. Others will be chatting away and ignoring customers.

There are great retail staff too who go out of their way to help and always have a kind word to say. In one store, the shop worker would not just assist people struggling with self scan but she would scan their entire shop for them.

It's because the behaviour of customers has declined massively since covid. And they are under far more pressure than ever before to hit higher targets (eg the speed of getting customers through a checkout, and putting stock out is now monitored pretty closely in supermarkets ~ so they are impacted negatively by helping customers/going above and beyond).

There are great retail staff too who go out of their way to help and always have a kind word to say. In one store, the shop worker would not just assist people struggling with self scan but she would scan their entire shop for them.

But is this a good thing or a bad thing? Presumably while she is scanning somebody's whole shop for them there will be another, more competent, shopper, who just needs their alcohol purchase approving and they are kept waiting for ages until she can get to them.

I used to see this a lot in a supermarket near where I worked. The queue for self scan was always significantly shorter than the other queues so you would get people going in there who then had no intention of and no idea how to use it. They would insist on the assistant doing it for them and she was usually too nice and accommodating to point them to one of the other checkouts so everybody else gets delayed as a result.

Retail/hospitality worker here.

Customers have been one increasingly unbearable, but that's not to say all workers are perfect.

Take a couple of examples. My colleague has to give evidence next month because a customer thought it would be funny to point a very realistic gun at her head, it looked 100% real and she thought she was going to die.

Another customer came to our drive-thru complaining that the drink he had purchased at another branch was wrong. We told him we couldn't replace it so he threw it in my colleagues face.

We didn't have any porridge for a customer, so he kicked off on me. I told him to leave and go elsewhere, so he tried to forcefully open my drive-thru window hatch to get to me. I was 8 months pregnant at the time.

We have been spat on, told to watch our backs when we finish work, had things thrown at us. The list goes on.

Poor training and expectations from the employer.

I worked in retail during school and university and there was no excuses for poor behaviour. We were told how to help customers in no uncertain terms!

I would say they are sick of the never ending complaining customers demanding their 'rights'

There's less money around. Our hours are always being cut to try to make the store look more profitable, and for some of the younger ones (we take on a lot of young school leavers because they are cheaper) who haven't had much customer care experience, this can make it a high pressure environment. It's not all gently stacking shelves at your own pace, or making conversation on the till. It's stacking shelves AND working the till AND sorting out the stock AND rotating so current dates are in the front. And then if a customer comes to ask you for something and you're not sure and you've been told never to leave the stock trolley on the floor, plus you've got the chilled out and you HAVE to put that back into the chiller before you do anything else...

None of it is any excuse for rudeness, obviously. But it's not the 'nice little job until retirement' that many people seem to think.

You're in a better position than most people to gauge such things. I can't say I've noticed much difference, but then I go in shops far less often than I used to so my current experience is limited. But I think the points made above are valid: people are generally less resilient to minor problems and will kick off with very little prompting; employers don't invest enough to make sure they get the right people doing the right things for customers.

The only time I've felt someone was actually rude to me rather than too busy to help was a cashier in TKMaxx last year - she didn't speak a word to me even though I was at the counter for longer than average (I asked her for some paper to wrap glasses in). I got the impression she was nursing a terrible hangover.

Yes exactly. I work in a convenience store and we have a skeleton staff at all times. If one of us is routinely scanning a customer’s shopping for them on self scan for them, then our colleagues are having to work twice as hard to keep up with all our tasks. Other customers are kept waiting. Our online orders (uber etc) are backing up and we as a store get bollocked for this and our hours (overtime, sick and holiday cover) get cut to make up for lost revenue.

We’re not rude and unhelpful to customers but we are under an immense amount of pressure to get shit done and still be sunshine and smiles.

There's a few things going on I think and it creates a negative circle.

So, retail workers are, like so many other professions, expected to do more with less. Remember the days when you went into a department store and there were dedicated staff in every single department? Yeah, that doesn't happen any more. which means customers are getting more frustrated because when they want to find someone, there isn't anyone there. So then they're a bit snippy right up front, which makes staff more snippy and defensive. Plus staff are spending a lot more time running around and trying to service multiple people at once, which is never fun.

Similarly, training is not there. DH and I often say that if we're ever screening local CVs for young people, if we have a cv from someone who worked at our local odeon, we'll hire them in an instant as the (very young) staff there are unfailingly helpful and polite and clearly still receive proper training in customer service. Sadly, this is NOT the norm anymore.

Processes are also being modernised, which I think is a GOOD thing, but they're not being modernised end to end, which creates breaks and faults that frustrate everyone. Case in point - we ordered a meal using a QR code as requested by the restaurant recently. Fine. But when the food didn't arrive we complained. The order hadn't gone through or something. I don't know. So we asked for a refund as we had to go. Staff were HAPPY to give us a refund... but because we ordered via the app they couldn't just refund our card. No, they wanted us to leave our bank details and we'd "receive the refund within 3 working days". Bollocks to that. So by the time we left, we were in a mood, staff were upset etc etc. We didn't blame the staff - it wasn't their fault and they tried to help us - but we certainly weren't letting the restaurant sit on our £50 and hope they'd pay it back in 3 days?!

There was an interesting piece in The Times a week or so ago. Someone pointing out the signs saying, "we will not tolerate abuse of our staff" and the writer was pointing out how often those signs are up in the kind of places were service is shit.

I think the behaviour of customers has definitely got worse

Other staff will not move so I can access an item if they are doing an online shopping order.

This actually annoys me but I just wait for them to move because they are trying to do a job, imagine how long it would take to get an order together if they had to stop at every item and move out the way and wait for a customer to decide which item they are going to pick. The online picker knows what they are after and will be far quicker so the best thing to do is just wait.

If staff are lacking knowledge and it’s happening often then surely the question would be are they are getting regular refreshers or updates on things?

Omg, that's so awful! Luckily, I have experienced none of this in my many years working in supermarkets. Maybe it all depends on where you are but I have found customers generally polite and the staff too are helpful and polite.

I work in retail. I'm finding more and more customers are pissed off because they have seen something online and they want to see it instore and its not instore so if course thats our fault...or they are pissed off that prices have gone up and of course thats our fault....or they are pissed off that so many places in town have closed down and the choice isn't there anymore and thats our fault....or they demand to know if a certain shop in town sells XYZ and why don't we know (maybe cos we don't work or shop there)???

Add to that, much much less staff than we had before to do the same job, management that seem to be in meetings all day then appear at 5.30 when you are closing to say what a great day its been ( how would they know, they weren't around) and generally staff being the proverbial football customers want to kick around...

If staff are lacking knowledge and it’s happening often then surely the question would be are they are getting regular refreshers or updates on things?

Laughs hollowly. We're told to walk around the shop (in our own time, before or after a shift) to see what the new offers are. I often don't see new lines until they are going through the till in front of me.

There is NO training. You have your obligatory online training, fire safety, age checking etc, but nobody teaches you how to stack, how to work the till. You are with someone who does know for about twenty minutes and then you are cast adrift to find it out for yourself (this is supermarket work, where we might have THOUSANDS of lines). I've been there a while, I know how it all works so I'm fine but for new or young staff who think there's going to be an induction procedure and shadowing experienced staff until they get the hang of things - nope. It's no wonder that the poor souls are like rabbits in the headlights.

I think the behaviour of EVERYONE has gone down.

People are bloody horrible these days. Selfish navel gazers. The majority of folks wander round in a bubble with their heads in their phones and wouldn't lift a finger to help a person in need 2 meters away if they could pretend they haven't noticed.

Drivers are impatient and behave like twats.

The behaviour of kids in schools is worse year on year and no surprise because so many of their parent's attitude towards teachers and life in general is majorly crap. They all thinks the world owes them something while giving nothing in return.

I'm a supermarket worker and I agree. I would say this is due to the ever decreasing number of staff being expected to complete the same tasks as they use to years ago when there was more of them to do the work. I call it the Aldi and Lidl affect as my employers are constantly trying to compete with them on price which means shedding staff. I am not as helpful to customers as I once was as I'm regularly trying to do the work of two people. Its lovely on the days our department is fully staffed and I can actually give customers good service, that's what I would like to do, but sadly it is rare that I have time for that.

I have worked retail and there’s a few issues going on here.

The workers have high targets and are told off for not picking a certain item number per hour or not unloading all of their cages by the end of their shift. The amount of work that each person does has increased over the last few years.

The training covers customer service but it’s assumed that people know what good customer service looks like. It is common sense to a certain extent but if you’ve not experienced good customer service then you may be unable give it either. (I’ve lived in Japan where CS is excellent so I know what kind of thing to do and say)

Customer behaviour has become worse over the last few years too. Some act as though it’s the workers at that store who came up with policies like 2 items per customer or that they helped decide prices when they are carrying out HQ’s instructions and designs.

I think that a lot of retail staff have horror stories. My son worked at a store with an in store pharmacy which was an obvious target for drug addicts and he had to stop a customer from physically assaulting a new teen hire. I never saw anything like that but there were plenty of unreasonable people who would sigh, eye roll and can’t even muster a thank you when I helped. I suspect that these people were the same at school with their teachers and act like that with family and any friends too.

While you get the odd rude staff member who has no business working in retail, I think it’s more often the company and management who take customers for granted and don’t rate customer service too highly on their priority list.

I shop in two local supermarkets, one budget and one not. In the budget one I’ve noticed that employees stack shelves at all times and don’t give priority to customers. They often obstruct the aisles and it’s up to the customer to find a way to get past. They never give priority to customers when moving around the shop floor. I suspect it’s because the managers set very tight schedules and targets, and customer service suffers. Incidentally, I nicely pointed out a slip hazard to one of the managers once, and he was argumentative bordering on rude.

In the other supermarket they are helpful and much more concerned with customer satisfaction. It’s the same local people working in both, just different companies and management.

To add to my point about a negative spiral, there are also a lot of other issues that are bigger going on. For a start, population growth is a huge issue and it means stores are just busier and we're all having to wait more and fight through crowds more and are all generally a bit more stressed. Similarly, money is tight for a lot of people so everyone is running around working, trying to save money etc etc.

Our lifestyles are just a lot more rushed and a lot more stressed than they were in the past. It's like occassionally at a market or something there might be an old fashioned grocer who wants to have a nice chat. I love the idea. But I don't have the time. If I'm out doing the shopping, I probably have a 60 minute window before I have to be somewhere else and I'm conscious i Have to still fight my way out of the car park, and through the traffic to collect a child by a set time.

Customer's behaviour has definitely got worse. Everyone seems to feel entitled to act like an arsehole towards retail staff, and it's got worse since covid.

However, I am getting increasing fed up of supermarkets doing away with normal checkouts. I went to Aldi last week and they wanted me to put a full trolley load through the self checkouts! It was an absolute pain, so I won't be going back in a hurry. Morrisons isn't much better either, they just throw your stuff at you and yet that never used to happen. When I worked at Waitrose we were told to match the customer's packing speed.

When I worked in retail I used to get told off for looking miserable, that’s just my face lmao! Some of us have resting bitch face.

Luckily I got out of retail and into non customer facing roles where this was not an issue.

I find the majority of the younger staff to be quite pleasant. However, some of the older birds are right miserable fux. I was in Sainsbury some months back trying on & had just walked out of the changers when an old bat asked me what I thought I was doing. She then started shouting that she’d locked that door 3 times, as the facility’s were now permanently closed. If she hadn’t have been talking non stop to customers, who were obviously people that she knew she might have noticed us all going in & out of the door. As I walked away off she went back to her friends to complain about me.

I've not noticed any real change Yabu

Mainly it's because customers are rude and aggressive and shop workers on crap wages have had enough. Add to that management moan and complain if you don't hit your targets. I'm sure staff would be happy to show you where x, y and z is if only they then didn't get a warning on their timing being down
I thankfully got out of that job three years ago but the customers (not all of them) were awful. My colleague ended up with a black eye because a certain product was out of stock. I've been threatened and spat on. Sorry if I'm not smiling after that.
I also did retail back in 2002 and I loved it. You had the odd rude customer but nothing like it is now and I don't even think we had targets, if we did they were at least realistic.

it varies in supermarkets - imo Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose have very polite and helpful staff.