Customer Service Complaints: People who take calls while being served

I have an issue with mobile phones.

Well actually I have an issue with talking on phones in general, but that is another story for another time.

I don’t like when people take calls in restaurants, I don’t like when people take calls on public transport and I sure as hell don’t like when people take phone calls while I am serving them.

Customer Service Complaints: Loitering Customers

I have never made it a secret that customers often do my head in.

They don’t know what they want, grunt out one word and expect me to know it’s a question and a lot of the times are simply just rude.

Nothing annoys me more, however, than idiots who come into the store and instead of shopping, just loiter in your section having a mothers club with their friends.

Customer Service Complaints: Clueless Customers

Our job, as sales assistants, is to help customers find what they want…and to highlight things that would compliment that product in a manner in which they feel compelled to buy more than they were shopping for.

This is pretty simple to understand, for customers and retail employees alike.

There is nothing worse however, than getting a customer who has no freaking idea what it is they are shopping for BUT instead of telling you they are browsing, require your assistance finding that unknown entity to fill the void that they have in their soul.

Customer Service Complaints: Peep Shows

Majority of men, myself included, despise shopping.

Each day I am met with annoyed women who don’t know their husband, boyfriend or brother’s size and just wish the respective men in their lives would get into the shops and buy their own clothes.

Then there are the men who go shopping for themselves, grudgingly, and will try and make the trip as quick as possible. This generally involves them agreeing with everything you show them and leaving without trying anything on (which generally wastes more of their time when they have to come back…but that is another story).

Customer Service Complaints: Rageaholics who shop on public holidays

In a follow up to Monday’s rant, I feel it best to deal with the major issue I had with customers that day. You see in Queensland, and most other Australian states, it was the Queen’s Birthday public holiday.

Being a public holiday it meant that all the people out shopping were enjoying a free, extra day off that all the employees working were not getting to enjoy.

My issue with customers that day is that they had the hide to be rude and aggressive with my fellow co-workers and me.

Customer Service Complaints: Today

Welcome to what could go down as the most vitriolic, of my vitriolic rants about working in retail…today was hell.

Today was one of those days where all the factors are in the exact alignment to create the perfect storm. Like the movie, The Perfect Storm where a few storm cells joined together to create…the Perfect Storm, the retail horrors of no staff, jerk customers and faulty technology joined together to shit on my day.

It was so awful I had to be talked out of running upstairs, finding the store P.A and screaming down the microphone,

Customer Service Complaints: Flashing Your Cash

I’ve already complained about people that throw things on a counter that they wish to purchase.

It is an action that is filled with such attitude, is rude and I well, I just don’t like it.

There is one thing that pisses me off more than that however and it is the customers who insist upon throwing cash on the counter.

Customer Service Complaints: Just Browsing

I thought I would begin today with a brief rant about the “just browsing” response.

It is completely nonsensical and unrelated to anything that I’ve just said.

I’ll pop it into a scenario…

Customer Service Complaints: Mr. Cellophane

As I’ve detailed throughout the last few weeks, I hate a lot of things about working in retail. None of them compare, however, to the retail rage I feel when customers ignore me. At least once a day I have my greeting ignored by a customer.

I just don’t get it.

Don’t they realise that I am paid to be standing in the section and they are not? If anyone should be doing the ignoring, it should be me…you’re on my turf!

Customer Service Complaints: Damaged Goods

I hate the leniency of returns in the Australian retail industry.

Customer’s try and complain if you don’t do exactly what they want in regards to their complaints and unfortunately, nine times out of ten, it becomes a case of the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

I’ve touched on it before, but I don’t understand what customers expect.

Customer Service Complaints: I’ll Give You Something to Do

The brand I work for has some pretty god-awful adjacencies. To my left is underwear, diagonally opposite is swimwear and in front of me is the abyss of unloved and unstaffed clothing mediocrity.

In any given day I can be asked what size Speedo someone would fit (I don’t know, nor care), where the male g-strings are (they dry quickly when travelling…allegedly) and whether there is another size of a five-year-old t-shirt that has been sitting in a pit of neglect. This annoys me, but not as much as the six little words some arrogant customers like to say on approach, thinking they are charming...

I’ll give you something to do.

Customer Service Complaints: Go Long

Picture it, my counter, any day. There I am peacefully folding clothes…clothes from my brand, when a customer walks up silently and simply throws a garment on the counter (not of my brand), and stares.

I imagine the feelings bubbling through my veins is what the Hulk goes through when transitioning from Bruce Banner; unbridled range and an overwhelmed urge to smashing. Needless to say, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

I don’t know what annoys me more; the complete disregard of the work I was doing, the belief that it is my responsibility to act as a check-out (I’m only paid by one brand, so technically it is not my problem) or the assumption that I am a servant that doesn’t even warrant a basic greeting like, fucked if I know, “Hello”.

I don’t know what these people are thinking? Lets run through the logic of it all shall we…

Oh look; it’s a sales assistant standing at a counter…I want to buy this garment. Golly gosh, what luck! Now, instead of saying “Hi, Can I just grab this?” I’ll simply throw it at the staff member and give a bovine stare and wait.

Well THAT makes sense…

Instead of letting Hulk overtake me I like to fight stupidity with stupidity.

“Hi…did you need a hand with something?”

With much annoyance the customer responds, “um, yes, this garment (holding up whatever they threw)”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t understand throwing something at the counter meant you wanted it. I’m so sorry.”

I’m not sure if it’s pity for my perceived stupidity or an insane ability on some customers’ part to hold their tongues, I have never gotten into a brawl over this…yet.

I will cut this rant short and finish with a simple plea; next time you walk into a department store and there is a staff member doing something, please do not approach them with your arm back ready to lodge your selections at them. Stop and think.

In most department stores a majority of employees are hired and paid by only one brand…lobbing a pair of undies on a mid-fold jumper will really piss off someone that has nothing to do with jocks.

Simply approach the counter and say, “Hi, can I just buy these?”

Chances are the reaction will be equally as pleasant…and won’t involve me diving over the counter whilst turning green.

Hulk out.

Customer Service Complaints: Size Matters

Working in retail, there are a lot of things that people expect of you.

Any day of the week I can be expected to be a mind-reader, open to bartering, willing to alter garments on the spot at no cost, have the store trade 24-hours a day, find the exact garment a customer is looking for despite it being something we do not stock, and my personal favourite, I’m expected to know what size a person is by simply looking at them.

I have a counter to this expectation; why should I know what size someone I have never met is, yet they can be clueless despite living in their body every day? Is it really that difficult to memorise a few numbers and letters? I’ve touched on this before, but I don’t think I addressed the issue adequately considering how much this shits me to tears.

I am sick of having to look down people’s shirts and pants so that I can find out their size after accidentally offending them with my estimation of their size. Why should I bare witness to their bare body because they can’t remember the number on the inside of the pants they put on this morning? I’m not trying to be a jerk by guessing a larger size; it is just estimation is simply not a skill of mine. Why punish me by showing of your body?

This I can handle. The forced witnessing of nudity isn’t something I have to go through often. The most annoying sizing complaint, hands down, is when I’m asked if I have something in “Mens” size. Let me clear this up right now…there is NO such thing as “Mens” size (at least in this day and age). I have tried to investigate the logic behind the belief that M stands for “Mens” rather than “Medium”…I have found none.

I’ll give you an example of how I covertly try to teach the customers…

“Sorry, do you have this in a mens?”

“Oh, everything on this floor is for men, you are in menswear.” You can get away with this response, as most people believe you are stupid as you work in retail.

“Oh no, I meant do…you…have this…in a “Mens”…size?”

“All sizes on this floor are for men.” Reiterating the point, I hope the customer will realise the idiocy of the question.

“NO, I’m looking for a “Mens”, my husband just tried on a Small and it was too tight. I just wanted him to try a “Mens” on.”

“Ohhh…you want a MEDIUM. Yes, I have one right here! The Medium, “M”, was just sitting here between an S for Small and the L for Large.”

At this point I would hope that I have made it clear enough for the customer to understand how it works. Our exchange is practically Sesame Street sponsored.

Let us take some time to use the customer’s logic; maybe there is sense to it. If M is for Mens, L is a “Ladies” rather than large. This would mean that ladies are bigger than men, which in general is false. The theory is flawed.

In a customer’s world a size run goes from Extra Small, Small, Mens, Large, Extra Large and Double Extra Large; if they also go with the L for Ladies theory, all aforementioned Larges would be replaced with the word Ladies. If this makes sense to you, please leave my place of work and go try ordering a Mens or Ladies Big Mac Meal at McDonalds and see if the staff there don’t think you are stupid.

In the words of my friend Liz, I’m a graduate…GET ME OUT OF HERE.

Customer Service Complaints: The Destruction of a Pile

I am anal retentive and think I probably have a mild case of OCD.

I like order, routine and structure (how boring). Nothing in retail makes me feel as comfortable, or as happy as folding a shirt or a fine knit, into crisp perfection. The buttons and seams all align, corners so sharp it should be deemed a health and safety risk and the fold so tight you could bounce a coin off it.

I really do love my folding.

I really do hate, however, when a customer walks into my section and proceeds to open out all my hard work and in under ten seconds, lead to the complete destruction of the pile.

I liken this moment to witnessing the rape of the physicality of your hard work. This may seem hyperbolic, but I can assure you that is the pain and anguish you feel.

I mean what is the point of going through an entire pile of beautifully folded garments when in reality you only need to open out one or two sizes, shouldn’t you? I understand that opening the piece at the top of the pile is instinct. You want to know what it is. That, fearful shoppers, I can forgive you for.

I cannot forgive you opening out each of the following garments in the pile. They are all the same, the style isn’t changing; the idea is to make the shopping experience simple for you, why would we mess with that? What a customer should do is look down the pile for their size and then open out that one to see if it looks right. I mean, what the hell is the point of opening out a medium jumper to see what it looks like when you wear an extra large? Where is the logic?

Now at this point, you could argue that you don’t know your size. If this is the case, you really shouldn’t be trusted to care for yourself. It is not difficult to know what size fits you. I understand that each brand fits differently and that a medium in one, is an extra small in another, but god, you should at least have a rough idea.

Anyway, using my shop-keep logic, we should have three ruined folds rather than eight or so; this is a level of destruction that I can both deal with and forgive. The biggest sin, in my eyes, is far worse than even destroying a whole pile; it is when I approach customers when they are looking at folded garments, as is my job, I offer them assistance finding a size or grabbing something out (to limit destruction) and they tell me they are just looking before proceeding to completely annihilate my hard work. I understand that they are “just looking” but I’m only offering to make it easier for them, and less painful for me.

I would equate this to the difference between wilfully murdering and committing manslaughter.

So next time you walk through a shop and you see something beautifully folded, tempting you to take a peek. Please stop. Think of me and be gentle. It is someone’s hard work and it isn’t difficult to a) only look at the appropriate size or b) ask a sales assistant for help…it is there job…and if like me, they will love you for respecting their folding prowess.