In my book, this is wrong

[TheUnquestionedAnswer]

Taken from Sainsbury's email confirmation of order:

When your order has arrived in store, follow the 'Click & Collect' signs to the collection desk or ask a colleague if you are in a smaller local store.

Surely it's only colleague if you work there. Boring thread, first of the year

It is wrong. It should read staff member (or something similar) - the staff in Sainsbury's are not my colleagues as I do not work there.

Colleagues aside, I particularly like the idea of
questioning staff in various Sainsbury stores about the relative size of the shops...

Thanks for confirming. It must be my day for spotting errors as just seen another on the Radio Times website but won't bore you with that one

@TwigTheWonderKid

Colleagues aside, I particularly like the idea of questioning staff in various Sainsbury stores about the relative size of the shops...

Ooh love your user name - fellow fan here

Aye, you have a point!!!

It is a colleague of the person writing the email. You might, for instance write “if I am not here when you call, any colleague will be able to assist you”. It’s not well phrased but it’s clear it’s the writer’s colleague, not the recipient.

I read it the same as Twigthewonderkid.

Oh no, I have just used three exclamation marks in Pedants' Corner. Genuine slip there.

Lots of retailers refer to employees as colleagues (rather than staff members or sales assistants) to customers and have done for years so YABU.

I think "colleague" has now replaced "workers/assistants" in many workplaces and is now accepted as an alternative. I get what you mean though; colleague to me means co-worker not a generic member of staff.

Something else is not quite right about that sentence though.."ask a colleague if you are in a smaller store" sounds as though you're expected to ask the question "am I in a smaller store"? .

Also, just because it’s a smaller store, that doesn’t automatically make it “local” to everyone shopping in it.

But as the message isn't explicit about whose colleague the writer was referring to, perhaps she or she might say the mistake is yours to assume she meant 'a colleague of yours' rather than 'a colleague of mine.'

I’ve noticed signage for ‘colleagues’ (to indicate their entrance) at our Asda. I guess suppose they’ve decided ‘staff’ is demeaning or something.

Rogue ‘guess’ there!

Not strictly correct but they are using it in the same way that John Lewis call (or certainly used to) their employees “partners”

I'd object more to the last part of the message “ask a colleague if you are in a local smaller store” suggests that you go to them and say “am I in smaller local store?”

ask a colleague if you are in a local smaller store” suggests that you go to them and say “am I in smaller local store?

That's exactly what I thought.

@MerryChristmasToYou

ask a colleague if you are in a local smaller store” suggests that you go to them and say “am I in smaller local store?

That's exactly what I thought.

No, if that was the instruction the wording would be "ask a colleague whether you are in a local smaller store".

OP, I had had exactly the same thought a year or so ago in the Sainsburys near my workplace - because I do often go in there with my colleagues! (Or at least I did pre-Covid). There was a sign up about asking a colleague if you needed help.

In my local Tesco supermarket I've noticed all this "colleague" terminology and signs instructing customers to "contact a colleague for help" all over the bloody place.

Colleague - "a person with whom one works in a profession or business"- so clearly different from a good old-fashioned shop assistant then.
I hate it!