Am I Making A Fuss About Nothing? Opinions Please.

mulled_wine

libertysurf wrote: »

I have a hunch they will :rotfl:

OP already said at #20 they were letting it drop... and hasn't posted on here since.

the thread carried on regardless! :rotfl:

hippyadam

mulled_wine wrote: »

OP already said at #20 they were letting it drop... and hasn't posted on here since.

the thread carried on regardless! :rotfl:

Hehe I only read page one I just like to weigh in wi my two pence!

catkins

bowdengr37 wrote: »

A lot of people may have complained about this sort of customer service, and quite rightly too, but if this shop assistant had dropped what they had been doing, run around the store like a headless chicken in search of the vol-au-vents and having found them, personally escorted you to the shelf/freezer where they were to be found, would you have spent half an hour of your precious time waiting to see the manager to enthusiastically compliment the worker on his exemplary performance?

The answer is 'No'.

Perhaps, if more positivity were to be shown, and more reward for good service were to be handed out, frontline customer service staff would strive to be more helpful and polite. Instead, it has become common practise to criticise, in an attempt (sub-concious mainly) to prove that we are above the mere hoi-poloi.

I totally agree with this post. After 20 odd years of working in an office I went into retail - what an eye opener! I never knew people could be so rude. They treat you like you are something nasty on the floor, they shout at you, they carry on talking on their phone all the time you are serving them, they expect you to know the title and author of every book ever written - if it's fiction you should know the story and if it's non fiction you should know the contents. Oh also you should know the price of every book without having to consult a computer, know the publication order of all series of books, know exactly where every book in the store is located. If they heard about it on tv or read about in the paper even if they have no idea what it is called or who it is by you must know.

Also you must never expect the majority of customers to even attempt to look for a book - they must walk through the door and ask, or more likely shout, to whoever is closest. Sometimes if you are really lucky they will just shove a piece of paper or even a list at you without saying a word!

The staff are expected to always smile, always be polite, try and work out what book someone is after when all the information they can give is "it's got a green cover" (I am not joking) or "it's got an old lady in it", always run around the entire shop looking for a book which the customer is too lazy to even spend 1 second looking for, spend hours every day taking customers to the shelves again because they are too lazy to look for themselves and then get shouted at by the Manager because the shelving has not been done, the shelves have not been tidied etc etc.

I know I give good customer service - I smile and try my hardest to find what they are looking for (I do like a challenge) but sometimes after a hard week when every single customer has been a pain and/or rude to you, you are not feeling 100% (you don't dare take time off because your Manager will then be nasty to you), your dog has died etc etc it can be very very difficult to give 100%. I have never been rude to a customer but there have been times when I have had to bite my tongue. All this for minimum age!!

People are so so quick to complain and be rude to us and, sometimes to report us to the Manager. How many people have told the Manager how pleased they were with one of us - not many

meritaten

to redress the balance here - In my forty years of retail and bar work - MOST customers were nice! shock to some of you I know! the nasty ones stick in the mind (like the woman who hit me because she claimed I had given her change for £5 when she had given me £10! luckily the till proved me right as I would have lost my job because SHE claimed I had hit HER!). OR the drunken git who was waiting me for me to finish work - who knows what would have happened if I hadnt told my boss this guy was creeping me out and the boss left the pub with me - and the guy was waiting in the car park!
these were just a few people I had trouble with! nearly everyone else was just nice or indifferent! You come across AHoles like this in life. You deal with them and move on!
my last retail experience was working in Argos a few years ago - thousands of customers were nice people who just wanted to shop! a FEW people were difficult! but you learn to deal with those and tbh in some cases they WERE justified in their complaints! so you help people and if they are complete AHoles then you just shrug and feel as long as YOU did your job then you cannot do more!

MCGONIS

Originally Posted by Money_User
I do not believe that for a second,

Why have you removed your [rude] original comment?

rustyboy21

catkins wrote: »

I totally agree with this post. After 20 odd years of working in an office I went into retail - what an eye opener! I never knew people could be so rude. They treat you like you are something nasty on the floor, they shout at you, they carry on talking on their phone all the time you are serving them, they expect you to know the title and author of every book ever written - if it's fiction you should know the story and if it's non fiction you should know the contents. Oh also you should know the price of every book without having to consult a computer, know the publication order of all series of books, know exactly where every book in the store is located. If they heard about it on tv or read about in the paper even if they have no idea what it is called or who it is by you must know.

Also you must never expect the majority of customers to even attempt to look for a book - they must walk through the door and ask, or more likely shout, to whoever is closest. Sometimes if you are really lucky they will just shove a piece of paper or even a list at you without saying a word!

The staff are expected to always smile, always be polite, try and work out what book someone is after when all the information they can give is "it's got a green cover" (I am not joking) or "it's got an old lady in it", always run around the entire shop looking for a book which the customer is too lazy to even spend 1 second looking for, spend hours every day taking customers to the shelves again because they are too lazy to look for themselves and then get shouted at by the Manager because the shelving has not been done, the shelves have not been tidied etc etc.

I know I give good customer service - I smile and try my hardest to find what they are looking for (I do like a challenge) but sometimes after a hard week when every single customer has been a pain and/or rude to you, you are not feeling 100% (you don't dare take time off because your Manager will then be nasty to you), your dog has died etc etc it can be very very difficult to give 100%. I have never been rude to a customer but there have been times when I have had to bite my tongue. All this for minimum age!!

People are so so quick to complain and be rude to us and, sometimes to report us to the Manager. How many people have told the Manager how pleased they were with one of us - not many

Woleheartedly agree with you on all aspects.

The problem you have on here, is that there are some forum members who don't think customers do any wrong, so watch out for the flack ! It's even worse when you dont even work for the shop and are purely shopping.;)

rustyboy21

goater78 wrote: »

I was standing in Primark once and this woman asked me where the shoes were. I said I didn't know and she got a bit shirty with me as she said I should know where they were, so i told her to "go away". She said she was going to make a complaint to the manager about my attitude. That would have been fine but I didn't actually work in Primark I had just popped in with a friend for 5 minutes as they wanted some flip flops. Because I was wearing a shirt and tie with my work badge on she assumed I worked their. So the morale of the story is when you are complaining about a member of staff make sure they actually work in the shop!

:eek::eek::eek:
Unfortunately, that is the most heinous crime you could have done, telling them to go away. You should have took her to the shoes and said you would pay for them, for her.;)

Madjock

I was at work last week and trying to sort out a customer's problem but being interrupted every few minutes by a farily obnoxious member of the public, in the end I said "I don't care" in response to their last question. She left the office shouting about what she thought of me and my organisation. I was glad she'd finally gone.

mrs-stressed

rustyboy21 wrote: »

:eek::eek::eek:
Unfortunately, that is the most heinous crime you could have done, telling them to go away. You should have took her to the shoes and said you would pay for them, for her.;)

Yes, and also try them on first and then asked if there were any other colours in it? And then asked what the refund policy was?????

I think 'go away' was actually quite lame - I have been told to eff off before now and I was being nice, AND I worked there!!!!

mrs-stressed

catkins wrote: »

I totally agree with this post. After 20 odd years of working in an office I went into retail - what an eye opener! I never knew people could be so rude. They treat you like you are something nasty on the floor, they shout at you, they carry on talking on their phone all the time you are serving them, they expect you to know the title and author of every book ever written - if it's fiction you should know the story and if it's non fiction you should know the contents. Oh also you should know the price of every book without having to consult a computer, know the publication order of all series of books, know exactly where every book in the store is located. If they heard about it on tv or read about in the paper even if they have no idea what it is called or who it is by you must know.

Also you must never expect the majority of customers to even attempt to look for a book - they must walk through the door and ask, or more likely shout, to whoever is closest. Sometimes if you are really lucky they will just shove a piece of paper or even a list at you without saying a word!

The staff are expected to always smile, always be polite, try and work out what book someone is after when all the information they can give is "it's got a green cover" (I am not joking) or "it's got an old lady in it", always run around the entire shop looking for a book which the customer is too lazy to even spend 1 second looking for, spend hours every day taking customers to the shelves again because they are too lazy to look for themselves and then get shouted at by the Manager because the shelving has not been done, the shelves have not been tidied etc etc.

I know I give good customer service - I smile and try my hardest to find what they are looking for (I do like a challenge) but sometimes after a hard week when every single customer has been a pain and/or rude to you, you are not feeling 100% (you don't dare take time off because your Manager will then be nasty to you), your dog has died etc etc it can be very very difficult to give 100%. I have never been rude to a customer but there have been times when I have had to bite my tongue. All this for minimum age!!

People are so so quick to complain and be rude to us and, sometimes to report us to the Manager. How many people have told the Manager how pleased they were with one of us - not many

Catkins I have quoted the whole thing as I dont know how to do just a line or two!! But I know where you are coming from totally. I give excellent customer service and twice over. In fact I bend over backwards to please but sometimes, just sometimes you get the person who is having a crap day and boy do you get it - in one foul breathed invective. You can see them boiling from two queues away and a message goes down the till bank - 'im not serving her/him' or 'just going to the loo - be back after him/her has gone'. If I am in a good mood (which is always in the morning before I get a shed load of bad tempered twits out for a fight bussed up for a days 'shopping') I will tilt my head slightly and my eyebrows go all soft and pathetic and go arh -I am sooo sorry you feel this way blah blah. If however, they have their sleeves rolled up they get the withering look, the cold vibe and the dead-eye and the mouth like I have been sucking lemons.! Then I accidentally on purpose shove their sweater into bag and dont say another word. Flounce is the word to describe some of them when they have been foiled!!!

But these days are not the norm! And some of you guys are the nicest, funniest, happiest, most cheerful, considerate and thoughtful people.

love to all mrs s