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

Obviously no one should ever shout or be rude. That’s completely unacceptable. But also no one in any company should have the attitude that they are not responsible for the customer’s experience. Even someone stacking shelves is a representative of the company. It actually causes more frustration if the only humans you can talk to throw their hands up and say it’s nothing to do with them. At the very least you can say ‘I’m sorry about the situation and I’ll pass your feedback on to my boss’.

You've never worked in retail quite clearly.

This. I work in heath care and we get the same. I understand people are frustrated and sometimes I’m the first living person they get to speak to. However, unless it’s bad planning on the shopper in terms of the other issues you are the face of the company and representing the company. You should be feeding this back to your manager as that’s what I do rather than take it personal.

Um, loads of people? Maybe our personal experiences and those of our friends working in retail differ but a lot of people just want to keep their head down. I would say only about 1/3rd of the people i know would have even met their area manager - i never did, and i worked for a massive chain. And again, if its a big chain, you need to make sure the feedback goes direct to who needs to receive it. A local issue - the store manager. A wider issue - complaints. Otherwise you tell a colleague, who has to make note and tell their team manager, who then tells the store manager, who then tells the area manager, who then has to filter it through to the right department. Often they will end up emailing the same complaints team you would email. Why not just go to the right person to start with? Maybe you are very pleasant in giving feedback but the majority of people get very irate and put all of that shit on the person stood in front of them.
Am I missing a lot of 'got feedback? talk to a staff member' signs up or something, because I only ever see the occasional 'how are we doing? Go online to tell us'?

Most of the staff would never speak to these people in a large store. Listen to the people on the thread who actually know what they are talking about.

Absolutely. I work for one of the big 4 supermarkets. The higher ups (above my direct managers) don’t give a shit what I have to say, even if it was message passed along from a customer making some good points. I get their frustrations but my colleagues and I can’t do anything but work with what is available to us.

No she wasn’t saying the staff would speak to those people. She was saying the team leader would be aware of frequent complaints their team were getting, and the department leader would hear about the significant ones, and the store manager would hear about the more significant ones of those, and the area manager would hear about the significant ones out of the ones the store manager was aware of. Certainly in the supermarkets I worked in, the store manager was aware of anything that was being frequently raised by customers as an issue. Some of that was for them to fix because it was shop-specific (eg “the toilets are never clean”), and some would be for them to feed further up the chain.

She wasn’t saying the checkout staff were chatting to the area manager about it.

Lol, people like you make me laugh! If I said to my manager 'a lady complained today about the price of cigarettes' (real conversation, actually shouted in my face about it), he would roll his eyes and carry on with his day. You seriously think team leaders / managers / owners give a fuck about customer feedback received through shop minions? Best way to complain is via social media, they may actually pay attention to that IF it reaches enough people.

See post below your reply to mine. Nails it.

So , say I start work at 2 and finish at 6. I'm on tills for the entirety of my 4 hour shift. What do you want me to do? Get up off the checkout to go and report each complaint? Take notes of every complaint and leave them on my till when I go (at ten past 6 because customers won't stop queuing at my till despite the lane closed sign)?. More complaints because now everyone has to wait longer while I write everything down for every person complaining about something. Are you happy to wait longer so I can now be a customer complaints service as well as checkout operator? How often do you think I see my manager (who is filling shelves and operating checkouts as well as trying to run the store)? Do you expect me to go to him with every complaint every day? Do you have any idea how long that would take? It's absolutely not practical. As a pp said, if you have a complaint that isn't something I can fix then make it to head office via the number on your receipt or the website.

I do politely complain to shop assistants but with caveat that I know it's not their fault and I know that they can't do anything.

We don't take cash and have a lot of older customers who come on coaches at this time of year. Some of them get very, very insistent that we should (it's the law ... it's not) and very rude when we say sorry, we can't. It won't change management's mind and it's totally understandable. It's also one of the main things on the website, and group booking leaders are told about it.

Feedback? Do you think we don’t know we haven’t got enough staff, there’s not enough checkouts open, there’s no trollies outside at the front of store? We know this because we see it every day, giving us feedback is like preaching to the choir, email head office if you want to give feedback. Before anyone says they can’t contact anyone 9 times out of 10 there’s an email address on the back of the receipt of whatever store you shop at.

Merry Christmas to my fellow retail workers and may the odds be ever in your favour over the next few weeks ✌🏼

I used to work in retail for many years, I worked for M&S, Laura Ashley and Tesco

It never ceased to amaze me how rude people can be and if I was the prime minister I’d give all 16 year olds a part time job in some sort of retail/hospitality/ customer service environment to learn about how to deal with people

One thing that stands out was when I worked for M&S people coming in Christmas Eve for food (despite offering an ordering service!) and moaning that the cheesecake/ turkey or beef joint they wanted was out of stock. Why leave it that late?????

And when I worked for Laura Ashley one chap turned up on Christmas Eve around dinner time after he finished work with a load of wattsapp pics his wife had sent him back in October - things like jumpers/pyjamas/ and they used to sell lovely candles and diffusers and accessories etc and clearly most were out of stock by then and he was sooooo rude to me blaming me “personally” for everything selling out as if I had control over it!!!

so I feel your pain OP - I hope it’s not too bad for you x

I always think of Steve Martin's character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles 'I want an **ing car,

right *ing now'
'Do you have the receipt?' 'No' 'oh' 'what?' 'you're *ed'

(Sorry the asterisks aren't coming out properly)

Your title talks about moaning and the post about shouting.
They are quite different.
Went to Tesco earlier. I accept the car part was busy, no small trolleys left, that the store was busy.
Scanned my QR code to get a self scanner. Tried to take the scanner, but locked back in and showed an error. It happens. Got another one.
Only one set of scales working in the fruit/veg section.
And of course, a basket check at the till and only 2 members of staff utterly run off their feet.
Am I, the customer supposed to just suck it all up w/o showing any frustration, slap my smile on while my basket is checked? I'm as busy as everyone else. All these cost cutting measures impact the customers.
I didn't say anything, but yes I rolled my eyes and muttered to myself and admit that I have vented my frustration at the basket check staff in the past. You don't trust me to do your job then don't ask me to do it and claim it's a 'better shopping experience'.

Hats off to anyone working in retail! I could never do it and deal with the stupidity of the public

I hear ya! It’s been many years since but I used to work in retail…it’s like idiots are kept home specially until December then they’re let loose. I had 2 woman physically fight over a French stick in Christmas Eve. I took great pleasure in throwing them out, minus their food, and barring them.

It's not fair to direct your irritation at the person at the bottom of the chain, who is usually working a crap job for peanuts. We live in the age of the internet. Get yourself a cup of coffee in the nearest cafe and type out a strongly-worded email.

All this "you are the representative of the company" bollocks just allows the people at the top, who are actually making the decisions, to use the people at the bottom as human shields. They don't get paid any extra to have your negative emotion dumped on them all day. You might be the fifth or sixth person in a row to have "vented" on them like this, over something that is completely beyond their control.

As for sending feedback up the chain . . . nine times out of ten middle management won't bother, because their bosses don't want to hear it and will bite their heads off if they try. You'd have more chance of getting heard if you went direct to the top. But most people would rather punch down at the person in front of them than do that. Which is exactly what these smarmy fuckers are counting on, of course.

It's depressing.

Do you think the two staff members who are run off their feet are enjoying it? They have zero control over any of the issues that you have complained about on your post. We work in retail and we are telling you that the only way things will change is if people complain to head office, we are not saying it because we don’t care we are saying it because we know it’s the truth.

What bugs me as a customer is the number of times I've complained politely about something and gotten a ridiculous response from the person serving or on the till. If I see something on the shelf with a price of £4 and it's rung up on the till as £9 I'll politely complain about the discrepancy. If the person on the till laughs, agrees there must be a mistake that's fine and we can get the issue resolved. But too many times the response is "nothing to do with me!, I didn't set the prices!!!" Well, yes, it does have something to do with you - you need to find out what went wrong. I'm sorry if this is 5 minutes before the end of your shift and it will take 10 minutes to resolve.

My DP was in dealing with a problem with his car and was told it would cost £400 to replace 2 AA batteries. He exclaimed "That's disgusting!! Not your fault but that price is ridiculous!!" And the customer service woman left, saying she refused to deal with him as he should speak to her like that!! OK - he was expressing surprise at what seems to be a ridiculous price but made it clear he didn't think it her fault. So what's her problem.

And yes - I've worked retail, I know precisely what it's like to have someone launch into one for the smallest of reasons.

Ive worked in call centers, retail and with customer and client groups all my life. I still have a couple of online shops where I sell antiques and vintage and I do private tutoring.

At least online all communcation is via email so if I get a rude or abusive message I can think about what I want to reply. I had AI generate some suitable messages to cover a range of situations and I just paste these in. It saves my getting emotionally involved with customer complaints and problems. (Of course it was my fault that the US customs delayed your package and it spoiled your daughter's christmas)

For these kinds of reasons I do not tutor undergraduates and tend to avoid native UK students. I prefer international postgrads as they are much more committed and respectful.

Customer service is bloody awful since covid. I do wonder if the people in charge of shops actually ever go shopping and see for themselves how bad it is.

I work in retail, though online. Most customers I either don't speak to at all, or when I speak to them they are lovely/polite/fine. I run a super efficient ship, so issues are rare, but if anyone does dare to send abusive messages to my staff, I ring the customer and ask them who the fuck they think they're speaking to. It's surprising how quickly people back down when you point out to them explicitly that they are acting like a cunt. Really knocks the wind out of their sails.

I appreciate those of you on the shop floor for a big retailer would lose your jobs for doing that, but know that I am fighting the good fight for you in online retail. It's my business and I literally couldn't give a flying fuck about reveiws when it comes to calling out retail cuntery.

I would also challenge someone in a shop that's not my own if I saw them being an arsehole to a worker.

There is no excuse for abuse and or obnoxiousness. Got a complaint? Raise it politely or not at all. Even if the complaint is not being resolved to your satisfaction, the second you raise your voice or get angry, you're in the wrong. You can be persistent and remain polite.

What the what, now?