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

Yes, they’re allowed to complain to whoever is serving them, or to whichever member of staff they’ve managed to waylay, but that is achieving precisely zero other than making both parties lose the will to live.

It’s not their job to deal with your complaints anymore. It was ten years ago, when they had the staff numbers to fix it, or the managers who were allowed to make their own decisions about what went on in their store. But their roles are rigid now. They can’t change anything or do anything. Their managers won’t listen to them and couldn’t do anything about your issues even if they wanted to. They also aren’t allowed to ask you why you think they’d be able to change the number of tills open, or deal with the increase in prices, or anything else, and to contact Head Office if you have a problem. But Head Office is the only place that will be able to action a complaint.

At what point in my shift should I be wandering off to email head office? Should we all do that every time we get a complaint?
To be clear, I am more than happy for someone to bring up an in store issue. I will offer to call the manager then and there. But most people don't want to wait to speak with them. They just want to use me to vent at. No problem, as long as they aren't rude or aggressive, but don't expect me to do it for you. I do not have time.

ETA head office also aren't interested in any feedback from employees. Customers may get slightly more response.

Ok, but this is why people feel frustrated sometimes, because staff seem to forget who the customer is.

And, I say that as someone who has trained 100s of customer facing staff, not as a difficult customer. Let them feel heard and you'll solve a lot of your problems.

Why do you think that? Why do you believe that store managers, or even section leaders, are either willing or able to listen to a litany of complaints left with shop floor staff? Because I can guarantee you that few of them are.

If you have a complaint, then you go to Head Office. It is literally the only way your complaint will get actioned.

If there is a mechanism to do so, and they can take time during their shift to do so. Plenty of jobs where they wouldnt give you time to pass it back, plenty of jobs where the only way of passing feedback through is an online customer portal.

Staff can’t forget who the customer is because the customer is constantly yelling at them that they pay their wages.

I’ve been customer facing and have had that training. I’ve also worked in general retail, pubs and a supermarket. It works great when you’re in a customer service role behind a desk or on the other end of a phone. It is as much use as a chocolate tea pot when you’re scanning shopping at a rate to keep up with targets, there’s a queue of ten people behind your customer, you know your manager won’t give a shit about said issue because your customer isn’t the first person to complain, and you can’t even call a runner to come and help because staff hours have been cut so much that there’s nobody to cover their break. You can’t even tell the customer to complain to Head Office in case a mystery shopper hears you, because it creates a bad impression.

I was standing in a queue at M&S last week, was fairly early and there was only one youngish woman on the till, two of the customers in front of me wanted to order items of clothing which obviously took some time. The queue had me and 3 others behind me all senior citizens. Every single one of them started moaning about how long it was taking. Zero tolerance from any of them. When I got to the counter I asked her if she was ok and she said that people had been generally vile and that after her Christmas stint she wasn’t coming back.

I cannot abide rude people when they can see that the person on the till is doing the best she can and being polite. God forbid if anyone was ever rude to them I’m sure they’d be up in arms.

Are you able to elaborate on that?
What part of my post is why customers get frustrated?

Both staff and customers suffer from the general enshittification of modern life. As a customer I’m constantly frustrated by the lack of stock in actual clothes shops for example, and the waste of everyone’s time that ordering stuff online only to find out it doesn’t fit and needs to be returned to the shop and processed by a sales person involves. Or self-check out machines. But I also recognise that one of these issues are the fault of staff on the shop floor and moaning at them is only going to spread misery and not change anything.

I think some people just love “punching down” on people they perceive to be beneath them. I worked as a receptionist once when I was a postgrad student, and had to deal with a client who called at 6 pm and was furious that the colleague she needed to speak to had left at 5. After listening to her rant I told her I understood her frustration, but there was nothing I could do but pass on her complaint. She swore at me and hung up. The next morning I related the call to the colleague in question, who laughed and told me that the client has already contacted her to complain that I was “a rude bitch”.

We don’t have enough time to get stock on the shelves and bodies on the checkouts and you want us to spend time emailing head office so effectively losing more manpower from the shop floor? As long as you are happy with less on the shelves and longer queues I’m more than willing to hide in the office sending emails to head office.

We give the head office email address out every time you purchase something and I point it out to customers when they complain, it’s on the back of the receipt in most large companies and you’ll find the store manager’s name usually on the front of the receipt near the bottom. People don’t want to email head office, they expect us to be able to solve everything at shop floor level and can’t be bothered to email. Therefore nothing changes because they sit in HQ thinking everything is going well and no changes are needed. The more people that complain the more they’ll have to listen.

Sure il just pull a computer out my pocket. How an when do you expect sale assistance to be able to email head office. We don't have access to a computer at work.

Were the people complaining to the woman on the till, or as you say "moaning about how long it was taking".
It was taking a long time. You shouldn't need to wait 20 minutes to make a straight forward purchase. Maybe the senior citizens remember when big companies used to employ more staff.

Online shopping is my friend. Working in retail makes me avoid shops in my own time.
Quite frankly I don't give a shiny shit if you need a particular item today because grandma is visiting tomorrow. Your poor planning is not my problem. We can order and you can come back if its that important.

I honestly don't know how a large proportion of the population hold down jobs, have families etc when they cant plan more than a day in advance.

Ah, I read from your language you work in the same brand supermarket as me. Code checking Christmas Eve, two possibly three days of work to get through. I’m dreading it already. 🤪🤪🤪

This is brilliant.

Store managers absolutely can decide how many tills to open (within the confines of how many staff they have available, obviously) and they can also turn the music down. And my example - it's their choice who they put on the age restricted counter - and probably their choice who they recruit as well. They are not as powerless as you claim.

They also have access to computers and can email HQ.

I also don't believe that companies don't have feedback mechanisms. All companies do in some way or other.

And those of you who say you don't see your supervisor to pass on feedback, don't you have your breaks in a staffroom when you can say "I had this moany customer saying the music was too loud"?

My son's experience working in a large red and blue supermarket as a shift manager is that no matter how much you moan, email, speak to store manager formally, take every opportunity to speak up when someone senior visits and more, it's all ignored.
There's a reason that prices are so low and yet they still turn a profit each year.
And yes that does mean his bakery has not had hot running water to wash hands for 3 years, that the staff canteen heating does not work, and that the cleaners never deep clean any more...

On balance, I still find it amazing that every day thousands of products make it to thousands of shops, so that we can have a choice of 5 olive oils, 27 different bags of coffee, and some seasonal crap from China....and it rarely goes wrong.

But this is the problem there isn't the staff, if they turn the music down customers complain they can't hear it and like music when shopping. I can't comment on underage staff as that is not something that happens where I work. They do have feedback mechanisms its the customer using the contact details on the reciept. We don't go for breaks all at the same time retail doesn't work like that its not like a school where there is a specific lunch break for everyone.

Is anyone naive enough to think the Sue from Hastings complaining that coffee has gone up again and there weren't enough tills open will change anything? Philip the regional manager only cares about costs to sales and the bottom line. Profit margin is king.

Store managers absolutely can decide how many tills to open (within the confines of how many staff they have available, obviously) and they can also turn the music down. And my example - it's their choice who they put on the age restricted counter - and probably their choice who they recruit as well. They are not as powerless as you claim And therein lies the problem. They get a certain budget to pay staff. So if they have gone over their staff budget because people want food on shelves and there’s a sale in George and there’s a sudden wave of click and collect orders that need picking, or a massive Euromillions jackpot which means the world and his wife want a lottery ticket, then they need to save hours to bring that staff bill back down under budget. And that means that they have limited staff to work with. And not all of those staff will be till trained. So no, it’s not as simple as saying they can open as many tills as they like because, as you say, they are restricted by how many staff they have, which is regularly the bare minimum they need to open the doors. They cannot exceed their wages budget. And even if they had a full complement of till trained staff, Head Office want self service tills. Do you think a store manager is going to be the single voice of dissent, telling them that their wonderful ideas haven’t gone down too well with the customers? Or are they going to say ‘All ok here bosses, I’m running a happy store’?

And for every customer that wants the music turned down, there’s a customer who wants it turned up. So they try and find a middle ground and none of you moaning fuckers are happy. Who seriously notices the music when you’re rushing round trying to get dinner?

Staff members have to be 18 to work on tills or in the kiosk in the supermarket I’m aware of. I can’t speak for others.

They also have access to computers and can email HQ They do, and they can. But they won’t.

I also don't believe that companies don't have feedback mechanisms. All companies do in some way or other Of course they do. They also have a culture of not wanting to hear anything negative. So if you want to give feedback, then you need to look at your receipt, find the Head Office details and email them yourself, because the store aren’t going to do it for you.

And those of you who say you don't see your supervisor to pass on feedback, don't you have your breaks in a staffroom when you can say "I had this moany customer saying the music was too loud"? You want staff to use their breaks to track down a manager (who is probably still on the shop floor trying to find someone to cover your break) to pass on customer feedback? About the volume of music not being to the customers liking? 😂 That’s ridiculous. Are you seriously that self absorbed? They get 30 minutes and all they want to do is rest their aching feet, wolf down a sandwich, do a wee and spend five minutes decompressing and forgetting about the hell that is working in a supermarket at this time of year.

Or buy gift cards on Xmas Eve. As last year I was collecting my Xmas food order from Sainsbury’s and customers were shouting at the cashier at kiosk as the system that activates them (unsure if each retailer has own system or it’s used by multiple retailers) was overloaded - then crashed.

We keep the music loud on purpose to drown out the moans of customers.

I’m afraid I simply don’t believe that a single customer has ever asked for music in shops to be louder.

I have, however, pointed out that turning the lights (and music ) off on a Tuesday afternoon to accommodate the neuro diverse is a bit counter productive if it's so dark I can't actually read the labels and see what I am trying to buy