Aibu? I’m genuinely not sure

[calacatta]

I was in a position to do the “Delivering Joy” initiative in Dunelm. For anyone who doesn’t know it, you pick a tag off the tree and it’ll have the gender, age and what they’d like for Christmas.

I spent a lot of time on mine as I wanted someone who might not get anything actually feel special at Christmas.

I took it into store (it was really quiet) and gave it to the woman working the tills and the interaction went -

“Is this where you drop off the delivery joy gift bags”
“yes”

Handed it over. That was it. I just thought there would be a “thank you”. Literally nothing more was expected. I’m not this generous person they need to bow down to and so many people will have participated.

Aibu unreasonable to have expected a thanks?

It would have been nice if the cashier said thank you, but they were likely busy. Op just asked “where do I put these” and was given an answer. That was the interaction. It wasn’t rude of her to not say thank you, even if it would have been nice of her to do it. OP having such a fit over this interaction that she wouldn’t want to help the children involved is quite weird. It is indicative of wanting some kind of resounding gratitude, yes.

I’d just provide the feedback to the store via email. You don’t have to go into detail about description of staff member etc, but maybe it could be feedback to the entire team just to remember to say thanks. It’s not a big ask.

Wouldn't have bothered me, but I agree it's not the best customer service. Seems a bit harsh to stop participating because of it though - it's not the fault of the recipient and now they could miss out because you're miffed with a cashier.

YANBU. Poor management. Poor training.

If you are going to manage a positive initiative such as this then the least you can do is say “thank you” or prepare a card or sticker saying “thank you for participating in the Dunelm Christmas challenge” or similar. Make people feel good about their participation.

What you don’t want to do is create a damp squib feeling when they leave the store! Not only is it rather impolite; it’s quite poor marketing.

Nothing is “wrong” with people who, having spent time and money participating in a Christmas initiative, expect to receive a very basic level of good manners in return, ie a “thank you” from the organiser. That’s not an unreasonable expectation surely?

Yes, it is unreasonable, when you're expecting it from someone who is NOT the organiser.

Also very unreasonable is saying "I'm sorry this happened to you" to someone who didn't get a thank you from a person who didn't have anything to thank them for.

I have in the past organised a very much more low profile fund-raising initiative for my employers company and there are actually lots of lessons to be learnt about how to do it correctly.

First and foremost, if you penny pinch and treat your own staff badly, have cancelled the Christmas drinks or banned the mince pie round or Secret Santa exchange, or your wages and conditions are generally shite, and the Christmas initiative involves more work, at an already busy time of year, for the same wages, and moreover it was imposed from above, and the staff making it happen don’t get to have a say in choosing the cause or the method of fund-raising, then you can’t really expect them to be full of sweetness and light or Christmas cheer at the till!

Btw, I have no idea how Dunelm treat their staff; they might be great employees for all I know, I am just saying how projects like this can go Pete Tong with the result that the staff are less enthusiastic when interacting with customers about it.

Or there has been insufficient communication and it’s been imposed from above and information hasn’t been properly disseminated. It’s always a management issue in other words.

I think it is standard to say thank you when anything is passed to you, by default, for more polite people.

That’s all fine but the person at the till is not a private individual when they are behind the counter doing a job. Like it or not, they are a representative of the company. So how they interact with the customer (bc non-customers presumably don’t participate in the Christmas fund-raising because they don’t know about it in the first place) matters!

If the company wants to continue this initiative next year, then presumably it wants to attract customers back to participate again? And that entails being pleasant to them and thanking them for their efforts.

It’s well known that only a fraction of people experiencing poor service in a shop or restaurant, bother to complain or post on-line, so by definition, op won’t be the only one!

I have repeated in my other posts that it’s not the fault of the person at the till. Poor service like this is always the result of poor management, and lack of training and assessment.

Good lord. I can't imagine being as precious as you and OP.

Do you not know why people say thank you? There's absolutely no reason the worker here needed to thank OP.

Perhaps OP should look at why she so badly needs complete strangers to validate her charity giving.

I mean, yes, she should have said thank you, but your reaction (refusing to donate again because of it), is just silly.

You did want her to bow down and be appreciative. The fact you made it clear just how much effort you put in for generously buying a gift for some poor person just to feel so special on opening the lovingly chosen gift you have provided. And now you have turned your back on the initiative because one person who was just doing their job didn’t give you the big thank you, you feel you deserved.

It is good customer service to be polite, but maybe this persons cat had just died, who knows? You donate to charity to help the charity, not to get warm fuzzies.

The worker isn’t the one receiving the gift. She’s just working.

The Dunelm near me has terrible customer service so this doesn’t surprise me.

Very thoughtful of you OP so dont give the person another thought.

Similar happened to me. They did a food bank collection at an event I went to. When I got to the collection point, the staff members were standing chatting to each other and ignored me. I said "excuse me" and one glanced and took the carrier bag from me without breaking conversation or speaking to me.

Basic courtesy would have been stopping their conversation to acknowledge me and say thank you.

It did leave a bad taste and put me off donating to them again.

I work for Dunelm, and yes, you should have received a thank you from the staff member.
But honestly, it’s a complete pain doing this every year, never mind the hours spent sorting through all the donations and distributing them to local charities. We’re really overworked and well underpaid for what the company expects of us, not enough colleagues constantly throughout the year, especially at Christmas time. They have us in until all hours of the night at sale times, preparing the store just so customers can buy their essential items like cushions and duvet sets (being sarcastic here) at sale prices.
Considering the massive profits the company makes, I think they should just donate to local charities themselves, and not expect the customers to shell out.

YABU because you said you won't donate again because of this
Go donate online and get your meaningless generic pro forma thank you email to make you feel good about yourself and ignore the fact what you did was to make someone very happy and was done anonymously because it's not about you

Yes, the cashier maybe should have said thank you as it was handed over. But she's probably had several handed in and her brain just skipped a line because of tiredness and repetition

And she is in no way a representative of the reciever FFS! We have collections at work sometimes, you stand there mindlessly repeating "thank you" for every penny people deign to drop in, sometimes skipping the robotic (and meaningless) response because you're human, and it might even be for a charity you would never support and have a personal disagreement with but you don't have a choice. You definitely aren't representing that charity though

And Dunelm, the organisation behind this rather than the underpaid worker, will thank you. There will be posts on FB thanking all the generous donations, maybe a poster in the store as well

Plus often the charities who recieve these gifts on behalf of their services user will put out their own thanks online

But don't worry, some poor worker who's facing the busiest season of the year, forgot to say thank you so the recipient doesn't deserve their gift

Exactly this.

Saying thank you is just polite.

However doing something nice for someone should be it’s own reward and the fact you needed a thank you perhaps suggests you were doing it firstly for yourself and then secondly for someone else. Let it go.

Then we’ll have to agree to disagree. A simple ‘thank you’ is not ‘resounding gratitude’ she had time to say ‘put it over there’ it wouldn’t have taken her any more time, regardless of how busy she may have been to say ‘put it over there, thank you!’

Perhaps Dunelm have not considered how many of their own staff will find Christmas a struggle and the scheme is a kick in the teeth for some of them? I don't know anyone who works there but it doesn't look like great pay for some

She didn't have any reason to say thank you though. We're not obligated to polite pleasantries for no particular reason.

That’s crafty - you choose a ticket then buy it in Dunelm to gift - kerching!

Not saying it’s not a v good thing to do but these companies - won’t scrape a bit from shareholders profits or CEOs bonus …..

If the cashier doesn’t have customer service skills she shouldn’t be in a public facing role

Probably. I'm not entirely sure when working in a shop became a big career move though. Maybe the cashier simply does not give one and forgot to plaster on her fake smile.