Retail common sense

Hi Wvgal, I know what you mean, I used to work retail for a short time, and it can be very frustrating with some customers expecting you to bow and scrape to them. I heard on the radio recently that a lot of people in the U.S. for instance, have gotten this 'entitlement mentality', where others should bend over for them. If a customer catches wind that you work there, you are subject to all kinds of misappropriation, lol. Hang in there kiddo!

It's because they don't realize there are different types of sales associates. Ones that are on the floor to assist customers with product knowledge question and the ones who stand by the register who may know about what products the store carries but may not know in depth information like if the product is compatible with another or if product comes in different colors.

Just like how the floor associates get an attitude if they don't jump on a register, a cashier will get the same attitude if they don't know the answer to a product question and they have to call someone else to help the customer.

I worked in retail years ago as a floor associate and got the grief. I had one customer get mad at me because I helped her pick out a computer by answering her technical questions but then she copped an attitude when I couldn't ring her out. She actually said to me, "You mean to tell me you can talk about the features of this computer but you can't use that computerized register to ring me up?"

My answer, "No ma'am I'm only programmed to sell them and I don't have cashier 2.0 installed."

At least she took the response well.

To be honest I too would be a little be confused if I was waiting to be served and there was nobody behind the till but there was a store worker nearby who did not come to serve me. I would not get an attitude but if I was waiting for a while I would ask if you could serve me as I was sick of waiting around, or I would just walk out of the store. I do not know every stores workers policy and outfits so I do not think this is that big of an issue in the above circumstances. In the case of it being very clear then people should use some common sense.

Ungh... The only thing I hate as much as I hate fast food... is retail, because some people push the envelope and just go overboard. Many shoppers just assume that everyone is trained to do everything and that everyone is allowed to do whatever they want. Oddly enough, I enjoyed working the RETURN counter so much more enjoyable than actually working a cash register. The last two jobs I had, I worked ONLY register, never the floor and people expected for me to know everything about everything. To make it worse, I had one of those stupid management teams that would tell you one thing, but change it when a customer had a problem with something and make the cashiers look like the jerks. Most of the time if I had a line of customers or several things going on while I had to answer the phone I'd just say Hi Ma'am Im sorry but Ill be with you in a moment. And if they were still waiting a couple of minutes later, Maam Im sorry about your wait it'll be just another moment. That usually made people feel important. I also hate companies that have the Customer IS always right mentality, because many customers then believe that they can treat employees however they like. I was actually told once (even though I was making more than most of the factory workers in the area) that if the only job I could find, that I must be a lazy sloth and didn't deserve to make money at all - I honestly have no idea what prompted the man to say that either. I also got a LOT of crap from people about race and about being hard of hearing.

I once thought about writing a book about how to get a better shopping experience by being a smarter consumer. I wonder if it could sell big!