To think that most shop assistants do a great job and and have to take alot of cr@p from the public...

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and yet are looked down upon on the whole because some people think they must be stupid because they work in a shop as an assistant.

I work in a food shop where we serve what feels like hundreds of customers everyday. Most are students or office workers. All the staff there work their ass off, running around doing 101 jobs at the same time, remembering orders etc.

Last week i was serving a customer and could hear these two women behind my customer talking loudly. They both worked in offices and one was talking about how she was leaving her job and that she wasn't sure what she was going to do next. The other woman said "Well you could always work in here!" and they both starting laughing hard. I thought what stuck up, patronising idiots they were. Like it is somehow beneath them to work in the place that does their lunch for them.

Anyway, i have noticed on MN in recent times that customers have been complaining about shop assistants. Well there are two side to every story and shop assistants have to put up with alot of crap from awkward customers, as well as being looked down upon by some, like they have failed their career or something and god forbid, have had to resort to working in a shop.

Now i know there are bad shop assistants out there, although i know from experience that you can't expect a Saturday girl/boy to have the same customer service skills as someone older with experience. But on the whole, they do a really good job and working directly with the public is strain on anyones patience.

hully - are you having a "lurve day" today? Have just seen you on the UQD thread where you wanted a love fest!!!

Cherish the love. We NEED more love. Who can deny it? Why not choose the path of more love?

so embrassed,

i'm really sorry, i've got overloaded in work before and said i was going to work in the tesco round the corner cause it wouldn't be as stressful...i didn't realise.

although i'm not rude to shop assistants, i always say thank you.

I guess you just had a grass is greener on the other side blondie We all get that...

hullygully great idea - I'm going to take my favourite some choccy or flowers this afternoon

My Mum is a shop assistant, and I worked part-time in the same shop for some years. I always enjoyed the work, and took pride in doing a good job.

As with any job role, there are people who will do their best and try to excel at what they do - something as simple as packing bags well on the checkout can make a huge difference to the person you are serving! We were always taught to concentrate on the one person you are serving, greet them, say thankyou, say goodbye etc. I expect the same level of basic courtesy from anyone else in a shop.

With regard to one of the recent assistant-bashing threads - I was horrified by the one about a gentleman who was turned away because of his skin condition. I'm pretty sure I'd have had the bollocking of my life from my Supervisor (and my Mum) if I'd done that! But it is this small few who make everyone else look bad.

I work in a mobile phone shop and i only deal with problems/complaints etc, i rarley do any selling now. I lvoe it but some people need to geta fecking grip, dont moan at me that you had to come all the way into town, pay for parking etc when there is aperfectly good customer services number that is free of charge! not my problem.

and the customrs who tut when one of us goes on lunch when its busy, errm you stand up for 9 hours with only 30 mins break and see if you woudl be willing to give it up!

Pisses me right off but then i also receved the highest grading for my customer service so i do ok really :D

I used to work for Asda and I can quite honestly say, never ever again. I used to wake up in the night with my hands going to and fro because the horrible putting-things-through-checkout motion had worked its way into my subconsiousness. I did have some fun days but most of all it was Another Shit Day Ahead.

I do obviously make sure I am super polite to shop assistants now though, even if they are being rude. I do have a lot of bugbears about service though, in my local Tesco the checkout assistants all seem to have a massive conversation with each other while serving, completely ignoring me or worse still making me wait while they finish their conversation before they serve me. I always think about complaining but never have the bottle because I don't want to get them in trouble

I never really thought about it until I went to the US recently. The extent to which the shop staff there will be really lovely and make an effort is amazing!

I do now think that shop staff in the UK do not make a great deal of effort, except in small shops in small towns, where they do seem to make a huge effort.

The person who posted about turning someone down for an overdraft because they did not like the customer's attitude - I hope you are found out by your employer and given a formal warning.

YANBU, i work in retail and am amazed with the rudeness that i have to put up with. I work in a baby dept and one of the things that annoys me the most is when someone asks me about, say a travel system and i spend ages with them.

Then they start chatting away in some foreign language, leaving me standing there like a spare part! I try to butt in with "well is there anything else i can help you with" so i can get away, and am then answered with "hold on please" and then they start gabbling away again while i'm wondering if they are slagging me off!!

Then we have the customer who whistled to me to get my attention! What am i?? a dog??, needless to say, unfortunately i didnt hear him and carried on working.

And then the most hated type. The ones you want to smother with honey, dig a hole in the desert, put them in it, and watch the sand ants devour them!! yes the ones who open all the packages, aaarrrrgggghhhh!!!! and then say "scuse me, you got another box, cos i want it for a present and this one is damaged!! "NO I FUCKING HAVENT YOU SONOFABITCH!!!!"

Ok rant over

PS, then we got the odd rare ones, who actually take the time to tell a manager about the fantastic service you gave them, very far and few between, but they just make my day

pmsl my employer knew!

contrary to popular opinion (in student circles anyway!), bank customers do not have a right to an overdraft, and if they display the wrong attitude to staff and are rude then damn right they aren't going to get anywhere!

Having said that, usually the customers being rude wanted the increase to go on holiday/buy lovely new clothes. er no, it's a student odraft, to be used for course related expenses!

people who genuinely needed help were always helped, but then they were always polite

bet if i worked as a waitress i'd find myself spitting in rude customers food

The one thing that really gets my goat is the assumption that because you are 'only' a shop assistant they obviously know more about the product you are selling than you do. I have repeatedly told customers that they are buying the wrong thing, only for them to be rude - and then complain and bring it back saying it's not what they wanted. I KNOW. I TOLD YOU. argh.

I have to say, I'm really glad I don't have to do it anymore... I'm not good enough at hiding when I am pissed off with somebody!

YANBU. I worked in a bank for several years and regularly despaired at the rudeness of customers of all ages .I always wanted to say "Did your parents not teach you to say please and thank you".Those who use mobile phones throughout the whole transaction - very irritating. The ones who swear and threaten violence - not much fun either.

lol at being whistled at like a dog!

I get customers - usually old well dressed women who seem to think they are very important - standing at the end of the aisle I am in and saying in a loud voice "paracetamol". No"where's the paracetamol please" or "can you point me in teh direction of the paracetamol" or even an excuse me. I often ignore them, and on one occasion was ignoring a woman who was repeatedly saying "asprin" at me. When my manager came along she complained that "I've been asking this person to go and get me some asprin for half an hour and she is ignoring me". To which I repplied
"oh I am terribly sorry, I didn't actually realise you were speaking to me, as you were at the end of the aisle quite a bit away from me, and only shouting out one word, so I thought you were talking to someone nearer you. If you had said excuse me, I would have known you wanted me to help".
My mannager smiled swetly at the woman and said "saltire's correct, if she didn't know you were talking to her then she wasn't actually ingoring you was she"

I have worked in retail and would never want to do it again, not because it is menial but because I really did not like dealing with the small percentage of customers who were extremely rude.

I have experienced good service and am always very thankful to the people involved, however it is the bad ones that stick in your mind.

I am pleased to see this thread.

Although i havent work in a shop i always feel that they work very hard.

I get pissed off when i see threads saying that a shop assistant for example couldnt calculate the change or said something daft and then everybody goes on and on about how dim they are and thats why they are shop assistants anyway and crap like this.
People dont think at all sometimes. If you are all day on your feet you are tired and if you deal with money all day sometimes your mind stops for a second.

I always try to be very polite to shop assistants and catering staff, i hope i am.

shop assistants are treated appallingly.it can be excruciating working with dingbats the public

I have been at home with dd for the last 2 years but i have always worked in retail.I agree people can be awful,people don,t feel the need to even look at you let alone say thank you! throw there money down,talk on there phone.I can remember when i started work in a new Boots store a fellow memer of staff called me over to ask if i knew anything about digital cameras i said not really so the woman said for god sake you,d think they,d be someone who worked here with a once of intelligence!!nice i,ve also had someone ask for a bin and i held out my hand in which they placed the gum they,d been chewing!!.Thing is i really believe in good customer service i go out of my way and work hard.I used to be manager of a card shop and esp over xmas would stay behind for a extra 2-3 hours to make sure it was looking nice and tidy despite i did,nt get paid for it i had pride!!.When i return to work i,m hoping to do something different,i,m sick of dealing with ignorant people who think there above you.

I was complaining about a product in Marks and Spencers and the girl on the customer service desk went behind the screen thing and called me a fucking bitch within earshot of me and the que, so it works both ways, some people are not cut out to deal with the public full stop.

Opps just spotting my mistakes,i,m trying to be clever and type too fast!!

Well I think those women were extremely rude to say that in your hearing and they were acting like idiots. I can't stand any kind of snobism - it's just bad manners IYAM to look down on people. Good manners are about putting other people at their ease.

Shop assistants were the bane of my life in Berlin though I can tell you. On the whole they are well-trained and well-informed since they are obliged to train as an apprentice at their job whilst attending a school for a couple of years I think it is. You train to be a shoe salesperson for example in that way. A furniture salesperson has a different training and so on.

Generally though, with some exceptions, they were unspeakably rude and unhelpful. Never come across anything like it anywhere so these days I have to say shop assistants aren't right up there in list

We used to get alot of druggys and dossers come in the shop and try to get free food. If you give to one, you give to all, so policy was to say a firm no.

A man came in and wouldn't leave, he wanted free food. We just had to keep telling him no and tried to get him to leave the shop. Some big shot in a suit bought him something, making himself look quite the hero and making us look like the mean, tight ones. What people didn't understand was, the big shot in the suit can swan in, buy him something, make himself look like a hero and go back to his cosy office and shut the door.

We on the other hand can't shut the door, we have to face these people everyday. So if we had given the man free food, he would have come back time and time again and probably would have spread the word whilst he was at it. We are trying to run a business, not a soup kitchen. The left over stuff was boxed up and collected by the homeless shelter anyway at the end of the day.

when i worked in a posh shop i had a minor schleb in a tizzy "do you know who i am?"

i looked askance

and replied "nope.do you know who i am"

t'was funny

I'm amazed by this post. When I worked in retail it was the managers who were the complete and utter ruthless bastards. One of my colleagues basically had a miscarriage on the No7 counter because her bosses were giving her shit about the time she was taking off for her pregnancy.

Some members of the public were shit and my pet hate was when I had no customers at my till and people would say "let's go to this one - she's not doing anything!" because in my mind I was still at work. Sitting on a boring till. Doing nothing would be lying on a sofa at home.

Overall though, looking back, if you were polite and helpful to the customers - they were usually ok back.

a jobs a job. i worked in boots the chemist when i was younger, i was shit, customers are horrible in general, managers are pompous power happy meglamaniac arse wanks.

however, its not exactly a career of choice is it - its more of a thing one has to do to bring money in. so in most cases we are talking about students or those not educated enough to get a better job - becuase lets face it - it is the shit end of the stick along with facory work and other minimum wage jobs.

there is no question its hard work, on your feet all the time - but then aren;t most 'grunt' jobs - the poor work hard for shit all - it's always been teh way