Annoying customers

The other night I was working at a different store in our area, which has clearly marked self serve and till queue lines. I'd called someone to help me as there was about 4 customers in my line, and everything was fine until a woman who had been in the self serve queue (there was a machine free and everything) stormed over in front of the man I'd just called to my till and said "EXCUSE ME, I was here before this man." So I calmly pointed out the signs and said it was a different queue, that I was very sorry but if she wanted serving by a person and not to use the machine she'd have to join the end of my queue. She refused to believe that she was wrong, said it was disgusting that I was so stupid that I couldn't tell who'd been first in either queue (I serve who's first in my queue then call over people from self serve if I have nobody waiting!) and THREW HER PACKET OF PARACETAMOL AT MY HEAD and left.

The thing that most annoyed me though was that I apologized to the man I'd been about to serve for the little hiccup in his customer experience and he didn't even thank me for not letting the woman push in, he continued to be totally grumpy for the whole transaction!

Plus then a woman who looked under 25, so I ID'd her, who then got annoyed and walked out as she had apparently NEVER EVER been asked for ID. Her mum came in a minute later all angry saying I'd totally insulted her daughter and wanted to see my manager as I'd refused to serve her, as she'd asked for the exact same thing and told me who it was for, so I couldn't. He said the exact same thing, but then she kicked up so much of a fuss that he told me to just serve her (in my own store, we'd have just told her to jog on, but that manager backs down if they get annoyed..) - I had to point out to him later that she'd ranted about how her daughter was in her 30's, but then gave her age several times during her rant as being March 1983. Making her 28, and only just. If she's going to get that annoyed about it, I'd expect her to know her own daughters birthday.

In other news I started a new second job at an estate pub yesterday, all went really well and I got on with everyone, except a couple of the old men who are regulars, but not very sociable or friendly ones. As I'd never worked in a bar before it was a bit confusing serving all these old men, who all seemed to be called John, and some apparently usually had their drinks in special glasses, or didn't have a fresh glass between drinks. So I had to keep asking "Would you like a clean glass?" and they'd give me a funny look, especially one guy who looked like I'd just asked him if I could lick out the glass for him or something. I'll get used to it though I guess!

I was again pulled onto the tills when it was busy on Saturday, and served a really rude gentleman.

He asked to pay for some of his shopping with his Nectar card, saying he had at least a few thousand points, which I said was fine. Pressed a few buttons on the till, and it says he only has £2.50 to redeem, so I apologised and said this to him. He asked how many points he had, and I explained that I wouldn't be able to tell him that, but it will be at the end of his receipt. He started shouting at me "What? You must be able to find out! I DEMAND TO KNOW HOW MANY NECTAR POINTS I HAVE. NOW!"

In the end I had to call someone over, only to say the same thing I had said to him before. He snatched his receipt out of my hand and surprise surprise, he didn't have as many points as he thought. He didn't apologise at all, not even to the 7 people queuing behind him.

You'd think Nectar Points were crack.

They could have just done a balance enquiry on another till to shut him up. That's what we used to do when I worked in Sainsburys. I don't know why they disable that function once you have scanned something tbh.

It is silly. Recently, they disabled the 'quantity' function. It causes no end of problems. On Saturday, I had someone with 24 of one thing and plenty others with 6+ of a certain item. Given how busy it was and how there were no supervisors available [as they can over ride it and still use the quantity function], I just had to scan them all / scan one x number of times. Customers usually give me a funny look, especially as we used to be able to do it with one scan.

They could have just done a balance enquiry on another till to shut him up. That's what we used to do when I worked in Sainsburys. I don't know why they disable that function once you have scanned something tbh.

Removing the quantity function is such a pain! I feel very silly scanning the same item over and over and over and over... you get my point.

Earlier today, we didnt have any fizzy drinks for a while. All of the fizzy drinks tasted like they had gone flat. So we had to not sell them untill it was sorted. It was ok though, because we had a maintinance guy come to sort it out. Plus we still had plenty of other drinks that people could have- still fanta, milkshakes, bottled drinks and hot drinks. Anyway, most customers where fine about it, but one customer who came round drive thru said "you havent got any fizzy drinks! thats ridiculous, surely that must be illegal".

Earlier today, we didnt have any fizzy drinks for a while. All of the fizzy drinks tasted like they had gone flat. So we had to not sell them untill it was sorted. It was ok though, because we had a maintinance guy come to sort it out. Plus we still had plenty of other drinks that people could have- still fanta, milkshakes, bottled drinks and hot drinks. Anyway, most customers where fine about it, but one customer who came round drive thru said "you havent got any fizzy drinks! thats ridiculous, surely that must be illegal".

Discovered a new type of rude customers... ones that are impatient and rude to people training. I was training up a new girl on the tills on saturday and there were at least 3 customers who were unnecessarily rude and impatient. Whereas most people appreciate the situation I don't get why some people can't.

Not a complaint about a customer for once, but our store in general.

Our duty manager is currently obsessed with totally cutting down our wage budget. This means that the other students who work here who don't stay for the summer have not been covered as they leave. Which means that amongst other nights, my Friday night shift now consists of me on my own with a manager from 9 til the shop shuts at 11. Meaning that I not only have to face up the entire shop alone, I have to do this whilst manning self serve, passing cigarettes over the counter as we close off the tills at 9, working stock (as our duty manager also gives us unreachable targets on delivery days with such short staff) AND watching for shoplifters, as if one gets away it's my fault (I had an informal yesterday because I didn't get to the till fast enough to ring three bells, as I had been on the shop floor and more concerned with not letting him get out of my sight whilst letting my colleagues know what he was up to)

In addition to this we keep failing mystery shopper because aisles aren't clear and apparently we're not friendly enough - since we were always fine before we started being so short staffed, I'm putting it down to this. So all the customer service lectures and rollocking we keep getting from management are totally pointless because if we had more people on, we'd be able to give much better customer service.

It got so bad tonight that I was actually apologising to the people in the huge self serve queue, it was so embarrassing. It's so stressful having to do all these things at once where previously from 9 there'd always be two of us on, one around the till area to help out and the other looking after the rest of the store.

If I didn't need this job so much I would be out that door so fast..