Sick of customers moaning to shop staff about things beyond our control

[Jdot]

Please do not show your frustrations to the stressed and burnt out staff with:
. prices
. company’s policies
. the law
. supply issues - including local, national and global
. traffic issues that delays with deliveries
. staffing issues- both short staffed and if staff are on the sick
. your lack of planning. Waiting til Dec 1st for advent calendars and 31st Oct for pumpkins

Do you realise that this is unacceptable and unnecessary to shout at staff. Many staff are leaving mainly because of customers’ behaviour.

Think about this before you open your mouth at staff

Working in retail can be a thankless job and must be so much worse at this time of year. You have my absolute sympathies. I try and be extra nice to balance out some of the twattery!

Every. Single. Year

YANBU obviously but nothing ever changes due to these threads.

And I say that as someone who worked in retail for 32 years.

But ditto anyone you're dealing with whether they're working in the emergency services, your local A&E, GP surgery, waiting on tables or driving a bus.

Couldn’t agree with you more. The last couple of years the behaviour of customers has nosedived. The aggression is off the scale and the condescending is even worse. It’s not my fault that your bank requires you to use your pin, no there is nothing wrong with my till you just can’t use your phone/watch. (No I don’t actually say that I just pretend to restart it my side!)

and please for the love of god please transfer money into your spending account before you get to the till! You would scream at me if you had to wait in a queue but you create the queue

It's feedback. Create a process that allows people to feedback what irritates them, encourage the customers to vent online, and send it all to management.

It's basic customer care. They get to vent and the management should try to make changes which mean they stop irritating their customers, and driving them away.

As for any legalities, just share the information so the customers know.

People can share their irritation but there's never any need to shout or be abusive.

You have my sympathies. I’ve never worked in retail but I have worked on a public counter where I frequently had to tell people ‘no’. Everything had to be nailed of fixed down or it might come flying your way.

To make it ten times worse there's no damm mobile signal in our store so you can't transfer money at the tills because you can't access your mobile banking so I have to store the transaction while you leave to go do it then you have to come back and queue up all over again

My personal annoyances:
Please do not hand over a huge pile of coupons at the till that you haven't sorted through to see if they are actually valid.
Please do not ask where something is and then when told insist that it was in a different place before when it hasn't actually moved at all.
Please do not collect reductions from the reduced area just before the final reductions, walk around the shop, and then bring them all back and try to get them reduced again.

I do think other than customer lack of planning, the problem is your employer creating a situation where you, the front line shop staff, are the only way customers can contact anyone at your company to complain.

It is really hard to speak to a human at so many big companies, other than the staff in store. It’s unfair on the store staff.

So many companies are running to such tight schedules for staffing and supply to drive profits, but this means there’s no capacity in the system for the slightest issue.

I think anyone who works in retail at this time of year deserves a medal. If they work in a supermarket, they deserve two medals.

I don’t know if they still do it, but it used to be everyone who worked for Waitrose head office had to do some many in store shifts over the Christmas period. Gave extra hands on deck for the busy period and meant they go to hear /see what was going on. I do think all major retail companies should do this. Every board level person for a retail company should work a shift on the tills or man the customer service desk Christmas week.

I was in a fast food place last night waiting for an order and a lady was having a tantrum (and it was a proper foot stamper) at the man behind the till because she couldn't find a few items on the menu of the touchscreen. They had been discontinued. Obviously, the staff member had absolutely no input on the discontinuation decision of said items but she gave him shit for a good ten minutes about it. To be fair, it looked like he tuned out after 30 seconds.
DD works in a clothes retailer and very quickly learned to stop caring about what people said.

This. YOU are the company’s representative on the shop floor. You need to be feeding these concerns up the chain. Of course the customer knows that you personally didn’t screw up the bread order, or discontinue their favourite products, or cause the freezer in aisle six to break. But what do you want them to do - drive to the head office and demand to speak to the head buyer?

One of my jobs is in retail.

The truth is, if you are rude to shop, restaurant, doctors staff etc. you are the one who loses out ultimately.

Do you think restaurant staff won’t not wash their hands, or stick their finger in your food if you are a rude dickhead?

If you are friendly and polite to me when I am at work, I’ll go out of my way to find you what you want, tell you about offers etc. If you are rude, condescending, patronising or other to me, and you want something, I will go out the back, check my phone, do something else for 5 mins then come back and tell you we don’t have it, side head tilt and a I’m sooooo sorry.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Always be super polite to people who you need to do something for you.

Coupons - Then tell your head office to print the coupon expiry date in a font people can actually read instead of in pale grey and 4 point on the reverse.

Feedback !!

Forget national service. Everyone should work in either retail or hospitality for a few months around the Christmas period to see how awful some customers treat the staff. Maybe then people will be more polite.

Or...

If its a big company:
Look for a complaints or contact number online, if its a local issue ask to speak to the store manager.

If its a small company: ask how you can contact the manager for feedback.

What's the point in verbally giving feedback to someone, who is incredibly unlikely to have any way of submitting customer feedback up the chain in any way - or am I missing something massive here!

I agree with you a trillion times over. I’m so sick of having people’s shitty moods taken out on me. Yes, we’re understaffed right now and queues are often very long. We can only do what we can do with what and who we have. If company higher ups won’t give us the budget for more staff or more hours the only thing we could do is work for free and I don’t think that’s fair <understatement>

It’s not just retail or even hospitality btw. My baby was admitted to hospital last week and when I said “I’m guessing it’s a long wait for the doctor come see her” (because it was packed with sick children) the nurses were lovely but felt they needed to say how busy they were, which I totally understood. But I’m guessing other patients and their parents and carers gave them shit for things out of their control.

“Incredibly unlikely”? They never speak to their team leader? Who never speaks to the store manager? Who never speaks to the area manager?

I agree with this.

I’ve worked in several supermarkets, plus a high street shop and of course there is never a justification for shouting or abusive language etc. But I never thought it was unacceptable for someone to raise a complaint with me even if they knew I wasn’t personally responsible.

The vast majority of chains have details on the till receipt about how to submit your feedback with loyalty or voucher incentives

Most have social media accounts, some individual stores have their own separate accounts

And virtually every chain has a website with a "Contact Us" button, with telephone numbers, contact forms and a mailing address as options

Shouting at people who are barely above minimum wage and who doing their best for you will get you nowhere

I'm assuming OP's issues aren't with the people coming in looking to politely give feedback or address concerns, but the people who think it's ok to hurl abuse at shop floor staff because they're too thick to deal with their problems like an adult.

As if someone on the shop floor has the opportunity to do this. Get real.

Yes, people would do well to remember that some people can be very vindictive!

Who the fuck thinks she is unreasonable?

Do people really do that with the reduced stuff? The cheek of it!!