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Annoying customers

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At my workplace we sometimes have tasting. You know a little stand with biscuits, mince pies, wine, chocolates or something.

I have had the misfortune of working on the stand. The idea is, you taste, you like, you see or I tell you what the offer is/price and you buy. Simple.

So I am standing there and I have the mince pies on the tray, they are cut up into small reasonable size pieces. I say hello to people passing offering a taste if they are looking and interested. It's fun for about 5 minutes.

I was getting people who thought they were being sly. I am young and even though I work in a food hall I am not stupid or thick. So you get people coming round taking 2 pieces then coming back round and taking another one then coming over again taking 2 more pieces. They seem to think I don't notice them. It was just sheer greed I really wanted to say NO your not taking anymore if you want anymore then buy. Of course I am not allowed to say anything.

I also had people taking 3 or 4 pieces at a time laughing at me and walking off? OOO Your good you took 4 pieces of product and laugh thinking you've 'won' yeah you would be laughing the other side of your face if you knew what I did to them.

The amount of time you hear people complain, oh I don't like mince pies you not got anything else for me? oh is that it? could you have cut them up any smaller? FFS it's free.

You quickly realise the amount of people that have no manners not a please or thank you muttered.

Reply 281

Cyril*Sneer

Oh and whilst I am on my high horse I be aswell add on about the time I worked on the event.

Basically there was an event for store card holders, they were sent and invite to come in store for some entertainment (live singer keyboard and guitarist) tasting in the foodhall and some snacks and nibbles. They also received a 5pound voucher to spend that day.

I was on the event serving the snacks and by god it was like feeding time and the zoo. The event started at 12 lunch time, we were set up in a cordoned off area so you only got in if your produced your invite. We were setting up about 11,40 and already people were queuing up. We were set up and ready at 11.50 and again the same people were saying can we get in yet. NO you cannot the snacks are served from 12 onwards as stated on the invite.

At this point I'd like to ask you what you would expect from a free snack/nibbles?
To me I'd maybe expect some crisps, biscuits or sweets and maybe a beverage.
We had chilled fresh orange juice and chilled water for drinks. (I am in Scotland so due to legislation law alcohol cannot be sold or served anywhere instore only in the alcohol area in the foodhall) So no wine, bucks fizz or whatever. There was a selection of sandwiches and wraps (meat and vegetarian selection) crisps 5 different kinds, sausage rolls, mince pies, mini sausages, mini scotch eggs, pork pie with egg and normal pork pie and selection of fruit like loose tangerines, bananas, apples. So quite a good spread I'd say.

People moaned first of all about there being no wine. I explained that wine tasting is along in the food hall. Due to the law being changed we cannot serve or sell alcohol in any area of the store apart from the alcohol section. Cue: Oh but I went to House of Fraser last week and we were served alcohol. Oh last year we got it. Oh thats stupid. Are you lying to keep the costs low?

Complaints about the free snacks and nibbles provided, no hot food? not a big selection is there? urgh I don't want a sandwich which someone has breathed all over. Last year there was breadsticks and dips. Why are there no seats? I want to sit down. Not happy that I had to queue to get in. Last year there was much more food, are you cutting back? waste of time coming down it's rubbish.

Then there was sheer greed, people having 4 or more sandwiches, loads of crisps and then coming back for more. There is no rule to say your not allowed to have X amount of X or whatever but frankly I'd never take loads, it's embarrassing.

At the end of the day everything was free and they received a 5 pound voucher. It's never enough though.

When I went home that evening I felt so drained. I thought people would be pleased to get a free sandwich, some crisps and a couple of nibbles, also they got the voucher but not the case. I didn't expect people to be moaning and so picky, FFS it was free. I have never experienced anything like it. My eyes have been well and truly opened to the way the public can be well some of them. The way you can get spoken to in retail by 'customers' is disgusting. You are a human too and you should not have to take abuse, swearing, lies, aggression but as you are doing a job you cannot speak back like you would if someone spoke to you like that in the street. I have RESPECT for all retail workers.

Reply 282

Emma:-)

Entertainment Forum Helper

Some customers can be so irritating.
Recently, we had a problem with the card readers and none of them would work. One of the managers who was in at the time had tried to sort it but couldnt so we had to not accept card payments that night. Some of the abuse the people on the tills and on window 1 got was stupid. Even the ones who had cash with them so were able to pay by cash instead of card gave some abuse. There is a cash machine outside so people can use that.
Some woman was asking one of the lads where the nearest mcdonalds was (as she didnt have cash so was going to go to another one instead). He told her where the nearest ones were (which were all 4/5 miles away in various places) but she was still not happy.
Then there was one bloke who stormed out when told that we couldnt accept card payments. Then there was one woman who came out with some comment like "well you will have to sort the card readers out then". She still wasnt happy even after being told that the system was down and there was nothing that could be done.

Reply 283

Emma:-)

Entertainment Forum Helper

Is there anyone getting annoyed with some of the many customers this christmas.
I had one irritating one yesterday. I was on drive thru and had to park up this woman because we were waiting for some of her food. So she was there winging "do i have to park up? The floors slippy outside". I was there thinking what the hell!!!! What does she care about the floor being slippy. All she has to do is park up then sit there in her car untill we take her order out. its us who will be walking on the slippy floor outside not her!!!!

Reply 284

emmaxoxo

I work in a supermarket.

Customers are so rude, no friendly polite 'hello', just 'BAG', no please. Nothing. If just you wait 2 seconds til I have greeted you, I will then ask if you need any bags.

Then giving you a bag, and you just leave it on the counter while you shopping piles up. Continuing not to pack your shopping, even after you have paid, causing me a queue. As I can't serve the next person, til your out of the way.

When a customer pushes to the front of the queue, and I have to apologize to him, why? Your in the wrong not me. "Sorry sir, but there's a queue"

Customers, you wants tons of bags to separate their shopping, if your that picky bring your own.

Customers, who want a bag for one item. Its bread, it has a handle!!!

Customers who moan at me, because they can't manage to press the buttons down on the Chip and Pin machine, and it's not recongised you entered you PIN, maybe because your finger only hoovered over the buttons.

Customers who can't put there card in the machine the right way round -- why would the chip not go into the machine.

Customers who when I ask if they need any bags, say 'does it look like I can balance it on my head?' **** off

Reply 285

hobo06

Ah I hate this time of year at work! The stress of sale set up and the customers = not fun! What really annoys me is the customers who assume they know how the store is run. We highlight bar codes to identify our sale in advance. This is for our use, not the customers. Of course, many customers have cottoned onto this, but when they question it, we give the excuse of 'it's stocktake' so that there is a greater chance of them buying it not knowing it will soon go down in price. Sometime's people will ask 'What does this highlighting mean? Will it go down in price?' That's fair enough, they're taking a guess, politely enquiring. Others are a little more certain they know what it means and ask if it is already half price or going half price. Does it look like we have a sale on? If you are a regular customer and know what it means then surely you are aware of the bright red POS we use to highlight ou sale areas. Then there are the customers that think if it is highlighted, it must be sale now. I.e. scanning items through till:
'That should be half price'
'No it isn't'
'But it's highlighted'
'It's not half price, we don't have a sale on'
'Then why is it highlighted? That means it's half price'

Don't try to tell me what it means when I've worked there over 4 years! When we have POS advertising a sale, and the item is priced at half price, then it is half price. Otherwise, you can :snow:

right off. People fail to understand that it would be near impossible to identify and highlight every single item for a sale a couple of hours before we open the doors on the day. Secondly, the highlighting is for our benefit, not theirs. We sometimes make mistakes, I myself have highlighted at least 2 lines by accident, these lines will not be priced at half price, but I just know some know-it-all customer will bring it to the till insisting it is half price because of it. The customer will then insist they picked it up from the sale area, and then we point out it says 'selected lines only' on the POS, the selected lines being the ones actually priced at half price, not just highlighted. At this point the customer should give up, but some will try to push even further, accusing us of false advertising and whatever else they can think of. It's my 5th Christmas there, I know what to expect, and it all starts tomorrow!

Reply 286

FormerlyHistoryStudent

I don't like the customers who are really abrupt in their tone, and don't say please or thankyou. I'm always polite, why can't customers be? Another thing I don't like is when customers speak gibberish - it's so embarassing having to ask them to repeat themselves (several times if they keep on speaking the same way), because they always look at you as if you're stupid.

I had a woman come in yesterday and ask for a 'jam tatt'. 'Jam tart', you'd think, but we don't actually sell jam tarts. I said 'sorry, what was that again?' and she just replied 'jam tatt!' really abruptly and impatiently. The only thing we sell with jam in is the jam doughnuts, so I showed her one and said 'did you mean a jam doughnut?' She just said 'yes, a jam tatt!', and bought it. I was left feeling rather taken aback, to say the least.

Reply 287

polka_dott

Have to work tommorow, shall have lots of people trying to take stuff back when we don't do refunds on boxing day :|

Reply 288

hobo06

We have signs up saying something along the lines of 'To help us provide better service, please return items after 27th December'. We won't refuse any returns though, it's just to hopefully prevent some.

Reply 289

stainedglass

Working in a restaurant/pub can, for the most part, be fine but there are always customers who try your patience. I had someone last week who ordered a BBQ smothered chicken and moaned about the lack of "smothered" and demanded more sauce. I told her that she would have to pay for more because we have a new kitchen manager who sticks to the set portion sizes religiously and she looked at me as if I was something under her shoe. That irritates me when I've been polite to her in the first place.

I find the customers who let their children run up and down/roll around on the floor right in the middle of the room where I have to walk to take food out to table annoying as well, especially the looks some parents give when you ask them nicely to get their kids up from the floor so I don't drop a hot plate on top of them.

Reply 290

Meh9281

I hate Boxing day sales. So busy. You get all the tw@ts coming in just because they have nothing better to do than mope around at aload of overpriced electrical crap.

Me: That comes to £69.99, sir
Customer: OH BUT ON THE STICKER IT SAID £39.99!!!!!11
Me: No retard, that's for the 1GIG version, not the 2GIG you BIG FCUKING IDIOT.

Rant over. :p:

Reply 291

manx1991

Meh9281

Haha, I get that without the sales. Say a large box of tissues is so big it has it's own ticket price underneath and another one for a much smaller packet.

Me: That's £4.29 then please
Woman: The ticket says £1.99! (I actually almost burst out laughing when she said that).

*Walk over*

Me: No, someone just hasn't moved over the ticket, you'll see the £1.99 is for the packet tissues which are out of stock, the the £4.29 is for the man sized tissues.
Woman: They should be sold at the price they have on the ticket!

(ARRRGHH the right price is on the ticket you just can't be arsed reading!)

Reply 292

aimeelala

I used to work at Waitrose and a clothes shop...would never do it again! so much abuse from customers for no reason (especially in Waitrose because presumably they all thought they were better than me! :wink:

) and customers getting me in trouble for no reason. Customers think that they can speak to you like you're a piece of **** just because you work in a shop. I had a group of girls claim I was rude to them once, and my manager came and shouted at me! I wasn't rude to them, in fact they were rude to me! I told my manager I wasn't rude and that they had been rude to me, but she didn't listen. Guess she likes the whole "customer is always right" rubbish. Grrrr.

Reply 293

hobo06

I've yet to have anyone particularly annoying over Christmas, but our deputy store manager has. A woman had no receipt, claimed she bought the item before the sale started (Christmas Eve). The item had gone down in the sale, she wanted a full refund. She may have bought it before the sale, but no receipt, no proof. She was offered and exchange or refund vouchers at the current till value, as per our policy. She wasn't happy, demanded to speak to a manager, our deputy was the duty manager, so she came down, explained the policy as the receptionist had already done to her. After some arguing, the woman said something along the lines of 'You want to be careful who you piss off, you :snow:

!' (The starred/snow flake words beginning with 'F' and 'C' respectively.

Reply 294

schpanzy

"Whats the difference between white bread and brown bread?"

"Girl, you there, I say you! Where are..."

Creepy stalker customer: "I went to *town I live in* the other day and was looking for you, but I didn't see you"

Also being literally mobbed during Christmas Eve reductions.. nothing exciting just a few pies, but it was practically a riot - the elderly, the infirm, the usual snobby foodhall types fighting over a few £1 off reductions! Also got a pack of Goats cheese thrown at me the other day by this bloke - 'why can't you reduce the things people actually want?!' and walked off all huffy.

I love my job anyhow!

Reply 295

Foulish

manx1991

Woman: They should be sold at the price they have on the ticket!

(ARRRGHH the right price is on the ticket you just can't be arsed reading!)

When I get customers that say that to me I reply;

"We only need to give it to you at that price if it is intentionally misleading. As it appears to be a genuine mistake I am under no obligation to reduce the price of it."

Reply 296

hobo06

I had the worst customer I have had all over Christmas yesterday. I ended up on refunds and exchanges due to lack of staff. A couple wanted to return an item they bought the day before. The item was ticketed at full price, £16, but was actually 75% off, and so was on the receipt at £4. I continued with the transaction, assuming they were aware since it is quite a large difference. They were buying some other stuff, and questioned why they had to pay another £10 after the return. I explained that the item was in fact only £4.
Customer: 'No we paid £16, like it says on the label.'
Me: 'Actually it's 75% off, it's just not been labelled.'
Most people would accept this and be glad they got a bargain. Not these people.
C: 'Well we didn't pay that for it, we paid full price'
M: 'It's definitely on the receipt at £4'
C: 'Well that's the wrong then!'
M: 'There's no need to raise your voice at me, just let me explain. Here is the item on the receipt, this is the item number, which you will see matches the bar code on the item, and there it shows you paid £4.'
C: 'No we didn't, there are more of them over there, they are full price, go and check'
M: 'Again please stop raising your voice at me, I can check with another one but I guarantee when I scan it through the till it will be £4, it has just been missed when the sale was identified.'
C: 'Yes go and check it then because we did not pay £4 for it.'

I ask the customer to direct me there, as I'm not so familiar with the ladies department, the man (it was mostly the woman who did the above talking, with the man chipping in in agreement with her) walked me over there, and went on about how there was a problem with the receipt printing and the cashier messed said something like 'that will do' and gave it to them. I explained that there is absolutely no way the price on the receipt could have been changed from what was actually paid, and that when I recalled the receipt on the till it also displayed the £4 price. He wasn't having it and continued insisting the receipt was printed wrong. I went on to explain that I really do not appreciate people raising their voice at me when I am trying to explain something to them. I pick up the item off the rail, he points out (correctly) that none of them are marked at the discounted price. After looking at the barcode whilst walking back to the till:
M: 'The barcodes are identical, it's the same item, this will go through the till at £4, it has simply been missed from the sale.'
C: *crap about receipt printing wrongly again*
As we get back I hear the woman, after having studied the receipt in the time we've been gone, speak quietely to the man: 'That is it on the receipt', presumably realising her mistake. By this point I'm pretty pissed off already, so I make a point, I point them towards the display that shows the price when an item is scanned, and turn my till monitor to face them, point out what is currently listed there on the transaction, move my hands away from the keyboard to show that I am in no way altering anything, and scan the item. £4.
M: 'That is the price it is going through the till at. That is the price you paid yesterday. That is the price listed on the receipt proving you paid that. It just hasn't been identified in the sale.'
C: 'Oh, sorry. We thought we paid full price as it's not marked.'
M: 'Well I already explained that but you insisted, and clearly raising your voice at me doesn't get you anywhere.'
C: 'I'm really sorry about that.'

It's difficult to keep calm and not come off as agressive sometimes, but I think I did well there to get my point across in the politest (well, politest they would allow) possible way.

Reply 297

Emma:-)

Entertainment Forum Helper

There are plenty of customers that annoy me but that is made worse at christmas as there are so many of them. For example:

* typical moaning about the queues/lack of staff its not me who does the schedule, its not my fault that the manager who does the schedule hasnt scheduled enough people to work today, its not my fault we are short staffed because x phoned in sick, we are trying to get down the queue as fast as we can and arent helped be moaning idiots like you, and when you finally get to the counter, at least make sure know what you want to order and have your money ready.

* Moaning about having to wait for their food
People moaning about having to park up in drive thru, people refusing to park up all together, people moaning when you take their order out to them, people moaning asking where their order is when they see you take out someoone elses order, people coming up to the counter moaning because they are sitting down waiting for their order they want to know how long it will be, people exagerating about how long they have been waiting (i hate the bare faced lying of some people), they can always have it half cooked or not cooked at all but i wouldnt recommend it.

*people ordering their food at window 1 then suddenly deciding when
they are getting their order at window 3 that they want to order
something else so we have to put the order through one of the tills at
front counter, holding the queue up.

*People taking 3 years deciding what they want to order, asking each
of their million kids who change their mind every 3 seconds, then
fiddling through their purse for the money for 3 hours etc holding up
the rest of the queue. At least decide before you get to the till.

*People ordering the wrong thing, then upon realising they have
ordered the wrong thing- blame me for giving them the wrong food
instead.

*People going round drive thru, getting parked up, then when i take
their order up they finallly realise they forgot to ask for sauce so i
have to go in to get it for them then take it out. They had plenty of
chance to ask at window 3.

*People looking down at me, just because i work at mcdonalds part
time while i am at college

And i am sure i can think of plenty more!!!

Reply 298

Corpsetaker

I actually hate the general public sometimes :angry:

.

-People who wait in a queue, approach front counter and still have to stare at the menu to decide what they want.

-People who complain they've been waiting too long, or something. Sorry, your four fecking special-make grill orders are taking awhile because you asked for them with/without (x).

-People who ask why everything is so expensive, then go on a rant about the recession. I mean, for feck sake, it's MaccieD's.

Ugh. I was sick today and just realised the work have put me up for yet more shifts I'm struggling to cope with.

le sigh

Reply 299

SoapyDish

Emma:-)

*People looking down at me, just because i work at mcdonalds part time while i am at college

And i am sure i can think of plenty more!!!

My boyfriend works at McDonalds, he said he's had people actually call him thick and stupid to his face. He's studying Economics at Cambridge, he's far from thick or stupid! But because the window he works at is right next to some really noisy machine, he can barely hear the customer, so asks them to repeat something, and they think he's retarded. Don't jump to conclusions!

Had an annoying customer on the phone the other day (Boots). She'd bought a watch as a Christmas present for someone, but wanted to return it because the battery was flat. She'd thrown away her receipt, so we can only do an exchange-to-the-value, and that's the price that it is in store at the moment. We didn't have any more of the watches in stock, but they came up as their sale price on the till system. She was flat-out not accepting that she couldn't get a refund of the full price, when she had no proof she'd bought it at full price! She wouldn't accept it from me, asked to speak to a manager...He said the exact same thing, and she hung up.

I had two lovely customers on the same day though, so it evened out. One had a nice little chat with me about uni, and one acknowledged that it actually wasn't our fault that his photos didn't come out right! People expect us to be able to make the photos perfect, even if they've been taken on a crappy £3 disposable camera, with no flash, by a small child with his thumb over the lens.