Rude Customers >:(

flimsier

Unintentional wrote: »

I don't give a !!!! how long ago you bought it

I think you could stop after five words and maintain the accuracy in this sentence.

I've been serving rude people for over 8 hours

Says a lot about you.

Doing your own research won't kill you.

Sorry, what do you get paid for then? Because I call 'asking in the shop' a form of research.

I don't care if you're parked on double yellow lines and need to get in and out quickly. Go park somewhere legal, I'm not rushing around because of your stupidity.

Again, you could have stopped this paragraph after three words.

I don't care if you need to pick your kids up from school, if your bus is nearly here and you're in a hurry.

Nice.

Try something called parenting or keep your legs shut in the future.

You expect to write something disgusting like this and then expect us to believe...

People who work in retail are people too. We're not animals, or stupid. So stop treating us that way. If you're nice to us, We'll be nice to you.

For what it's worth, I think people who work in retail are in general people who are nice.

I don't think you are. FWIW, I agree with your statement

The sooner I get out of retail the better

You're better off not getting paid to sneer at everyone with an attitude worse than the worst 14 year old we sent on work experience.

flimsier

DCFC79 wrote: »

Yep i totally agree OP, most of the customers ive met have been nice to talk to, help them find what they're after but there is the odd 1 or 2 who for some reason think you have a magic wand in your back pocket that you can use to make the queues go quicker, conjure up new staff to serve customers on the tills or conjure up an item the customer wants to buy.

He or she doesn't write like it's "1 or 2" though. "8 hours serving rude people" etc

I don't have a problem with a rant about individuals, including a rant about people who park on double yellows, but the judgemental crap in that post is pretty nasty and it's generalising.

vyle

CraigDavid wrote: »

You don't work in Currys/Dixons by any chance?

Hah, no. An independant. I've had some colleagues from currys and they're actually really nice when their every move isn't being scrutinised by management and compared to arbitrary targets that punish them for simply answering a customer's question.

But yes, there's a reason real experts are on £50k or more a year. There is no comparison between that and shop staff. Are some of us more well informed than the average person? Quite possibly.

Do some of us have an interest in the technology and a natural aptitude towards remembering the details? Perhaps.

Are we experts? Hell no.

The only time that becomes an issue though is when there's a customer who keeps referring to you as an expert (entirely unsolicited) and then asks a really obscure question. For instance, I'm an awful, awful programmer, and a customer was asking stuff, and then wanted to know what country each component was manufactured in, what month, and how long it had been sitting in the warehouse BEFORE it got shipped to england, and how long that meant it would be before it was replaced.

When I didn't know, he went off on one about how I'd been lying to him the whole time about being an expert.

Another common one is people who come in with the start of a laptop model number and expect me to know exactly which one they mean.

For example, take Acer. You've got the Acer Aspire laptops. You might have someone come in asking for the "AS5" but what it could ACTUALLY be is the:

AS5742G-486G64Mnkk
AS5742G-486G65Mnkk
AS5742G-486G66Mnkk

or EVEN

AS5742G-586G64Mnkk etc.

And so they get cross because alas, I do not have the mental capacity to remember a series of 18 character model numbers that have little reference to what they mean, nor do I remember the individual specifications of each one, but the worst affront is not knowing which one they meant based off of three of the 18 characters.

flimsier wrote: »

He or she doesn't write like it's "1 or 2" though. "8 hours serving rude people" etc

It seems to depend on the shop. Depending on the perceived reputation of the shop, you get different kinds of customers. I used to work in Ryman and I got everything from druggies to professors going in, and some customers were just plain horrible, and because it sold relatively inexpensive everyday items, you'd get all sorts in there from the nicest to the very worst. Sadly, it seemed to lean more to the latter.

Where I work now, we're a relatively well known independant electrical store, and it's mostly a different class of customer, and they're usually quite nice because they come in looking to buy and they want to know about what we sell.

Of course, it does depend on attitude, too. Sometimes I'll get a customer who may turn out nasty, but you can tell when they're on the defensive "am I going to get generic sales crap, or real service" attitude, and I can turn that around, whereas somebody else might end up aggrivating them.

But there are some, who I mentioned above, who will expect something unreasonable, and will fly off the handle for no reason, and they can spoil a day and make you question why you even bother, just as easily as somebody ringing in to thank you can make all the bad stuff worthwhile.

dickydonkin

Azari wrote: »

What a ridiculous post.

By your reckoning, the only people who should be in customer facing positions are those with incredibly thick skins and no self respect (who are, let's face it, unlikely to be very effective with customers anyway).

What I alluded to was that people in 'customer facing positions' should have the personal skills and tact to deal with difficult customers and not to treat them with utter contempt.

Why should those of us (probably the majority) who are unfailingly polite to retail staff have to put up with less effective staff because no one decent is prepared to put up with the crap that a few self entitled morons feel they are able to dish out?

I totally agree with you - I have seen first hand many 'morons' treating retail staff like crap, but by the same token, I have also seen retail staff treating customers like !!!!! as well - it happens, and I wonder if the OP's obvious dislike of her job and indeed her attitude sends out messages to customers.

If retail staff appear rude to customers, then it is hardly surprising that this is reciprocated.

You avatar seems pretty accurate.

Very amusing :rotfl::rotfl:

Perhaps the OP should also use the same - or perhaps caustic or vitriolic would be more appropriate.

The original post is too general and I accept there are some customers who can be difficult - as can some retail staff, however, the OP's drivel does her no favours and I suspect many of those defending this rubbish are those who themselves work in retail.

As I alluded to earlier, nobody is forcing the OP to work in retail and as she obviously does not like her role, there is the option to get out.

Certainly if I was her manager and I was aware she showed such contempt for customers, I can assure you she would be out on her @r$e as soon as!

There are plenty of unemployed out there who would jump straight into her job and would likely have a better attitude to those who pay their wages.

Mista_C

You think retail is bad? I worked in retail for about 5 years before I became a computer engineer, never imagined the grief you could get in technical support could be worse than my retail experience.

I used to log some of my experiences on a website that is long gone but a couple of favourites stuck with me. Dropped in quotes just to break it up...

An_education_centre wrote:

I got called to proof-read a manual on using Internet Explorer. The author, a lady who worked at the centre, had been working on it for 3 weeks and the manual was due to be published the next day.
I pointed out that she hadn't written about Internet Explorer but instead had gone into exceptional detail on using Windows Explorer.

The lady got into a panic (because of the imminent deadline) so I said I would dictate everything to her, all she had to do was write it in her notebook and type it up into something more meaningful afterwards. She did this and started to relax.

The next morning I came into the centre and she was on the warpath. She went ballistic at me, I can't remember her exact words but I do remember her waving the notebook at me and saying "This is just not good enough, it's all your fault". After I calmed her down I asked "What isn't good enough with it?" Her reply?... (you'll love this)... her reply... "I can't read my handwriting"

The other..

I received a call from a remote centre approximately 5 miles away. This centre was unusual in that it was isolated purely for exams, with no external network connection (therefore no remote access). The guy on the phone called to say there was a Microsoft Office exam taking place and the last part of the exam required the examinee to print their document except the printer wouldn't print.

I went through the crib sheet with him, "Is it switched on?, has it run out of toner?, has it run out of paper? Any lights flashing or error messages on the display/computer? Switched it off and on again?" I couldn't work out a fault over the phone and because it was an exam the job automatically classifies as a P1 (Priority 1) which means 2 engineers were assigned and a 30 minute resolution window is opened.

I rushed over to the site with one of my team to sort the problem. I got there to find the printer was out of paper so I said to the teacher "I asked if the printer was out of paper and you said no", he replied with "Well if I'd have said yes then you'd have expected me to put paper in the printer and that's not my job."

How dare we expect the man to pick up some paper from the ream that was sat right next to the printer and drop it into the tray when we can jump in a van, at the cost of fuel and man-power, to do it for him.

s_b

dickydonkin wrote: »

I suspect many of those defending this rubbish are those who themselves work in retail.

.

give him/her a badge

of course we work in retail,thats why we know what we are talking about
you are obviously a primary school teacher who drives a clapped out old polo and eats lentils and thinks you is middle class and above us plebs

but who am i to judge

Padz_2

I think part of the problem is that shopping isn't any fun any more. Petrol is expensive, parking is expensive and you can never find a space and towns are full of morons wandering about like they have all day. Some of them smoke - yuk! So customers are grumpy and that makes shop staff fed up and grumpy and so it is a vicious circle.

Hurray for Amazon and being able to buy stuff without having to talk to anyone after having done your own research from the comfort of your home.

nuttyp

I used to work for an independant camera shop. People would buy off the internet or argos and than walk around the town to our little shop. They would place the box on the counter and say you have to set this up. It was always a gift from some random family member. So our boss in his wisdom started a setting up service of £5 per camera. Now some people got angry and rude others just walked out threatening to report us.

I dont work there now, but this setting up service generates a quite good income.

sweep9

Like the rest of life 99% of people are nice and wonderful...

It just takes the 1% to mess it all up for the rest of us!

Don't get me wrong here, I love being a retailer, I love retail, it's just sometimes an extra brain cell here and there would make all the difference!!

I remember my days in DIY retailing trying to explain why you couldn't run a 5amp extension lead through the garden to run your 13amp tumble drier that you'd put in your shed...

arcon5

My partner works in a restaurant an has on many occasions told me how customers would eat every bit on their plates then complain the food was poor quality and demand a refund. :huh: