Stupid things customers ask on Xmas Eve Eve

[Mokel]

I have done enough years in supermarkets at Christmas.

I remember one question raised by a few customers when putting out bread.
”do you have any bread dated after 28th”
I said if you go to a supermarket on any other 23rd, the latest date on loaves is 28th. As the bakeries always put the date as X days ahead, regardless of the time of year. I remember seeing one of these customers on Jan 23rd and asked them could they find a date longer than 28th. They couldn’t. Retail worker 1 customer 0.

”Is it possible to collect my turkey on Xmas Day?” Erm no.

It's the having them on sale since September that's the stupid thing. Refusing to kowtow to the supermarkets and their insistence that you have to do everything weeks ahead of time isn't stupid at all.

6pm close Xmas eve. 550pm where are the turkeys? " we've sold out" what am I going to do then?
"Sorry not my problem"
Xmas eve 555pm. Man comes in, selects a large trolley. " Sorry sir we close in 5 minutes"
What am I supposed to then?
"Not my problem sir"
Oh how glad I am to be out of this war zone 😅

DH would, in his ideal world, put the tree up on Christmas Eve and take it down on Epiphany. This genuinely isn't really possible anymore - if you try and buy a tree on Christmas Eve you are looking at a long search for a half-dead tree! I also think that waking up on the 23 December and saying 'ooh, did we get any Christmas crackers in' is mildly disorganised, not 'the height of stupidity'. I, like I imagine many people, can't buy everything I need for Christmas at the start of October - even if I didn't find the idea soul-destroying, I have nowhere I can store it all for months on end.

My DH is a chimney sweep. He's book through to Christmas in October. Every year he will get several people phoning around 20th wanting their chimney swept before Christmas. Most are fine but every year there will be one who has a strop and complains it's poor service. His response is always "which of my regular customers who booked at least 2 months ago do you think I should cancel to fit in your last minute request"

But it IS stupid to leave it till the last minute when you have had 3 months to make the purchase. Not the fault of the retailer
You snooze you lose, unfortunately 🤣🤣

No you don't. Why would you assume everyone does Christmas the same way every year? People take turns hosting. Plans change suddenly. People are only human. It is incredibly easy to suddenly find yourself thinking 'shit, I forgot the cranberry sauce!' on Christmas eve even if you're well organised. I don't get how it would then be outlandishly unreasonable to go to a shop and ask for cranberry sauce?!

You're never going to get it answered in WH Smith, but I've met independent booksellers who would absolutely pride themselves that they would be able to find the right book from that description!

Going out to buy crackers on the 23rd isn't the same as leaving your Christmas planning to the 23rd 😂
Not every customer thinks that christmas is ruined because the shops don't have a particular item...

We closed early on Christmas Eve (well advertised, times on shop door, boards outside the shop, local newspaper etc) and yet every year, as we were standing in the car park waiting for the manager to lock the doors, a car would pull up into the (now empty) car park and someone would get out with their arms full of carrier bags.

We were always sympathetic but...

Oh you’re so morally superior 🙄

Do tell…

DH would, in his ideal world, put the tree up on Christmas Eve and take it down on Epiphany
Same. Could easily buy a tree a week before and store it outside if I was worried about places running out.

Expecting to have things in stock for Christmas 2 days before Christmas isn't disorganised.

Not everybody will host Christmas every year, if you’re hosting for the first time or take turns so haven’t done it for a few years then it’s not unreasonable to make an oversight. If you don’t host every year you don’t need to buy the same things every year. There’s a lot to remember if hosting and I can understand forgetting something like crackers and then having someone mention them and thinking ‘Shit! I totally forgot about them I’d best go and get some.’

It’s also possible plans change and you suddenly end up agreeing for extra people to join you but realise you only bought enough crackers for 6 but now need enough for 9 so have to buy another packet. Plans could change so you can no longer go to your relatives as originally planned and you now need to do Christmas dinner at home and so now you need to buy everything at short notice. Not everybody has a picture perfect day that they can start planning in September, real life continues to happen and it’s not always stupidity that means someone hasn’t bought crackers until 23rd.

I would agree with this.

I know my way around a supermarket layout - by brand, not store as we don't always shop at the same branch (to the point DH annoyingly asks me, on which aisle will I find x in every supermarket because I will know).

Eggs are the one that individual stores tend to move around.

Aldi - last aisle usually but it's the baking section.
Lidl - baking section but it's usually the second aisle. (I always want to look on the last aisle).
Asda - usually on the back wall by the bakery (this is the one that foils me.)
Sainsbury's / Tesco - near the dairy section. Often where the long life milk is but sometimes in the chilled section.

Eggs need a universal home.

That said, I got very angry at the kidney beans in Tesco the other week. They have a whole aisle named 'tinned beans'. They were not in the tinned bean aisle or the tinned food aisle. Nope. World foods aisle? Nope. They were in the sauces aisle close to the ketchup. This is wrong. This angers me. This should not be allowed. There should be laws for misrepresentation of aisles.

I had no idea about the bread date thing. And yes eggs.....why can shops not standardise where the eggs are? At very least they should agree on what they will be near, even if they can't all be in the same part of the store.

Not at all. Just regularly pissed off with shops trying to force me into getting really ahead of myself.

I know. But they are often associated with each other and would seem a logical place to put them in a supermarket.

Well, maybe they should have longer dated bread, god knows there are cakes dated longer! And with on line business taking over, and being told to go online by supermarket and banking staff, it reminds me of the expression, '
Turkeys voting for Christmas '.

But I , and by the sounds of it most of the posters here, didn’t know that! So not a stupid question at all.

Yes, but if the customer isn't that fussed that you've sold out then so what? It still doesn't make the basic question about whether something is in stock (and that, whilst a festive item, is usually in stock until at least NYE because they're not just for xmas day) "stupid".

If you work in retail then you don't deserve any of the awful treatment that many customers dish out, but answering basic questions like that is literally part of your job 🙄

Thankyou! This has reminded me my indoor tree lights have gone off and Amazon has also saved the day for me!

I know which one that is.

I thought the PP meant Easter eggs

When I worked at Asdas my dad kindly offered to drive me in and pick me up for the Christmas Eve shift one year. It was a 24 hour Asdas normally but it was widely publicised that on Christmas Eve we shut at 7pm.

Our security guys were excellent at stopping people from coming in from about 6.45 onwards.

By about 7.30 I'd finished and got out to where my dad was waiting in the car park. He was having great fun watching people park up, put a pound in the big trolleys - not the little ones - and then stare totally aghast at the shuttered doors. There were quite a few of them too.

I can't comprehend why you'd wait until after 7pm on Christmas Eve to do your food shop. It's insanity. And it wasn't just one or two unlucky people who'd been caught out either, it was a fairly steady stream.

PRICELESS!