Post a pet peeve.

[Annoyed]

In a grocery store/supermarket there are tens of thousands of lines of product. the attendant, depending on how long they have worked in the store should be able to point you in the right direction. If they are like me and have worked in a store for years we can tell you off-hand what aisle and shelf things are on, not an issue and we are happy to help. When self entitled pricks come in DEMANDING stuff, guess what, we get belligerent as well.
You get what you give, service staff are not slaves and it's about time the GP actually realised that. You pay us like crap, you treat us like crap and expect US to treat you as kings and queens??
Piss off.
We are doing the best we can, working when many others can't or won't, being in an environment where social distancing is a joke because everyone is desperate for their essential needs and WE are the people getting abused?
Piss off.

These were both people working in the tool dept. at Lowes. Wouldn't you expect someone doing that job to know what tools were? It's not like I asked someone in the pesticide department! And I wasn't snotty about it until they had proven themselves to be incompetent.

[Gatefan1976]

These were both people working in the tool dept. at Lowes. Wouldn't you expect someone doing that job to know what tools were? It's not like I asked someone in the pesticide department! And I wasn't snotty about it until they had proven themselves to be incompetent.

Dude, we go through staff weekly and it takes months to train someone and as the trainers are no longer given the time to do it, it sucks. Back in the day when I was in charge I DEMANDED it, but that no longer works.
What I am telling you is not every staff member will know what a 5/8 wrench is, or when you have 40 odd aisles where things are exactly. Yes they should be able to tell you -generally- where things are but unless you have specialty staff for aisles and they stick to them, and customers accept that fact, we a just as screwed as you.
You see incompetent staff, I see lazy customers.

[jelgate]

I technically don't work for the stores. My company pays me to sell and stock the shelves of the grocery stores we sell our product. I really only know a small area of the grocery section but I still get customers like Annoyed. It's really our own fault by fostering the customer is always right philosophy. Retail enables that we put up with their whining

[The Flyattractor]

Allergies and the fact that my entire State appears to be covered in SMOKE! WHY!

[P-90_177]

Dude, we go through staff weekly and it takes months to train someone and as the trainers are no longer given the time to do it, it sucks. Back in the day when I was in charge I DEMANDED it, but that no longer works.
What I am telling you is not every staff member will know what a 5/8 wrench is, or when you have 40 odd aisles where things are exactly. Yes they should be able to tell you -generally- where things are but unless you have specialty staff for aisles and they stick to them, and customers accept that fact, we a just as screwed as you.
You see incompetent staff, I see lazy customers.

Absolutely this. I worked retail for 5 years and customer service generally for almost 10 and the General Public just don't get it.

I used to work in a big department store and fortunately was lucky to be on my set department often enough but often people would get sick and their role would need to be covered. I worked on furnishings. Of course I didn't have a clue about electrical items but of course the General public never understood that distinction.

[mad_gater]

At Whole Foods even though I'm a cashier assistant (person whose job it is to gather the carts, help people bag their groceries, and fill up the paper bags at the register, and other duties as requested) I'm still able to help people find most of the stuff they haven't been able to find....mainly because in the course of my duties I wind up walking up and down just about every single aisle we have and I've also done plenty of my own cooking so can generally make an educated guess as to which section of the store a particular grocery item might be in

[mad_gater]

Yeah, we had Ames around here too, long ago.

The funny thing is that all of these dead retailers blame online shopping for their failures, when in truth, it is their own fault.

I can't speak for your area, I've only been there a few times for shopping, but around here, it seems as if stores go out of their way to make shopping at their stores as miserable as possible. They locate them in very high traffic areas that discourage people from even trying to go there. Once there, they further aggravate the shopper with endless waiting lines that clearly send the message that their time is more valuable than yours.

In many cases, they hire complete and utter morons. A perfect example of this. Sears, the former home of Craftsman tools has gone the way of the dinosaur. (and it wasn't even on a spaceship). Lowes has taken over that line around here.

So, I went into a Lowes, looking for a 5/8 spark plug socket last spring. The sorry excuse for a sub-human that I asked for help locating one shrugged, walked around the tool dept. a few minutes and said they didn't have it. A 5/8 plug wrench? C'mon, I ain't buying that excuse. And sure enough, I was able to find the proper tool. The idiot was just too lazy to do his damned job.

Several months later, I was after a timing light. I was working on an 80's vintage V8 that predated electronic/computerized ignition. So, into the Lowes I go, to the Craftsman tool section. I didn't see any timing lights. So, find an employee.

Employee response: "What's a timing light?". (Insert facepalm image here.)
I asked to speak to this chimpanzee's boss. His boss defended him!

Walked out and ordered one off the Internet.

These examples are not unique to me. This kind of thing happens very frequently.

How the heck do brick and mortar stores expect to stay in business offering service like this?

that's your problem then....if the employee's still got pimples then they likely are too young to remember the days of non-electronic ignition systems

just like I have co-workers at Whole Foods who are like "What's DOS?" when I talk about the kind of computer technology I grew up with

[Annoyed]

Dude, we go through staff weekly and it takes months to train someone and as the trainers are no longer given the time to do it, it sucks. Back in the day when I was in charge I DEMANDED it, but that no longer works.
What I am telling you is not every staff member will know what a 5/8 wrench is, or when you have 40 odd aisles where things are exactly. Yes they should be able to tell you -generally- where things are but unless you have specialty staff for aisles and they stick to them, and customers accept that fact, we a just as screwed as you.
You see incompetent staff, I see lazy customers.

And whose fault is it that they can't keep employees? The store. If the store would pay them decent wages and benefits, they would be able to hire better workers, and they wouldn't have such high turnover. That's not on the employees, that's on the store. So are the poor training issues.

And... Maybe you don't have big box home improvement stores in the down under. Lowes/Home Depot and such have employees who wander the aisles of their specific department, and their job is to help customers with the products in their department. So, these were specialty staff who didn't know the basics of their own departments. That's why I didn't go ask the guy in pesticides about products in the tool dept. I always be sure I'm barking up the right tree before bothering one of the workers, 'cause I don't expect the guy from arts & crafts to know anything about plumbing.

I don't care how you slice it, this is just extremely poor customer service. And this is on top of all the other way stores go out of their way to make life miserable. Their locations in the most heavy traffic parts of town, the automated checkouts which assume you are a thief (They make you weigh each item after you scan it to prove it is what you scanned in)... I could go on, but it's amazing that a lot of these brick and mortar stores are still in business. If you didn't know better, you would think they were trying to drive customers away.

Let me give you an example of the location issue. 30 years ago, if I was working on something and needed a tool, bolt or something, there was a hardware store nearby. Up to the store and back at the project in about 15 minutes. These days, all those hardware stores have been driven out of business by the big boxes. If I need a mid-job trip to get a tool or something, it takes a minimum of half an hour to fight through the traffic just to get to the local Home Depot. The store is located on a divided highway, where you can only approach the store from one direction, so you have to go past the store to an u-turn area, turn around and then get to the store's parking lot which is poorly designed so that it looks pretty, rather than being an efficient way to park cars. Once you do get whatever you need, you wait 20 minutes in line to pay for it, then the struggle to get out of the parking lot which is even worse than going in. This is located at the end of a large strip mall, and because the entrance is off a one-way street, the only way out is driving the entire length of the strip mall, directly in front of the entrances to the rest of the stores, with a stop sign in front of each store's door. It usually takes a good 20 minutes to even get to the stoplight leading to the main road!

Why would anyone in their right mind want to go there if they didn't absolutely have to. The store could have just as easily located itself in area with less traffic. Again, going out of its way to make a trip there as miserable as possible.

[Falcon Horus]

I used to work in a store selling materials for ponds, including fish food and the fish themselves. I made it my point to know exactly what the place was selling, and I only worked there for 2 seasons (2x from March to the end of September).

Always had happy customers.

[Annoyed]

I used to work in a store selling materials for ponds, including fish food and the fish themselves. I made it my point to know exactly what the place was selling, and I only worked there for 2 seasons (2x from March to the end of September).

Always had happy customers.

And the result if you had asked a customer "what is an aerator pump?" in response to his question about them?

[BruTak]

just like I have co-workers at Whole Foods who are like "What's DOS?" when I talk about the kind of computer technology I grew up with

*twitches* Yeah, I got that off my eldest niece about ten years or so ago. She'd just gotten her first mobile phone for her birthday, and was telling me what games it came with.

I remarked that I only had Tetris on my phone.

She frowned up at me and asked, "What's Tetris?"

[Gatefan1976]

And whose fault is it that they can't keep employees? The store. If the store would pay them decent wages and benefits, they would be able to hire better workers, and they wouldn't have such high turnover. That's not on the employees, that's on the store. So are the poor training issues.

But you folks DON'T pay them well, and that's not just on the store, it's the culture as well. Retail workers are treated like crap and now when you have an emergency and WE are the ones still working, we are still treated like crap by both the stores, AND the GP.
People don't last long in retail because the job is actually harder than most people think and only under these kinds of situations do the GP realise that (sometimes). If a worker only stays on for a few months or weeks, they simply won't have the experience to know everything, and then they get abused by customers for not knowing everything, it turns them off even more.
I get what you are saying, but customers need to learn some patience and not be such demanding douchebags, especially now.

And... Maybe you don't have big box home improvement stores in the down under. Lowes/Home Depot and such have employees who wander the aisles of their specific department, and their job is to help customers with the products in their department. So, these were specialty staff who didn't know the basics of their own departments. That's why I didn't go ask the guy in pesticides about products in the tool dept. I always be sure I'm barking up the right tree before bothering one of the workers, 'cause I don't expect the guy from arts & crafts to know anything about plumbing.

Yeah, we have mega hardware stores here with 50+ aisles and yes the staff are trained in sections of the store rather than the entire place, but MANY customers do not understand that, and they get rude and hostile. It's great that you do, by the sounds of it you would be a person I would go out of my way to help, but the fact is, MOST people are not, and that's not on the store or the staff, it's on the customer for being self entitled pricks.

I don't care how you slice it, this is just extremely poor customer service. And this is on top of all the other way stores go out of their way to make life miserable. Their locations in the most heavy traffic parts of town, the automated checkouts which assume you are a thief (They make you weigh each item after you scan it to prove it is what you scanned in)... I could go on, but it's amazing that a lot of these brick and mortar stores are still in business. If you didn't know better, you would think they were trying to drive customers away.

No, the SCO (self check out's) exist to make your life easier, not harder. Yes it is cheaper for the stores in terms of wages for staff, but people fly though them at a massive rate in comparison to a normal till. Yes you need to weigh your products but so what? It's not just because we assume you are a thief, its so we can know exactly what is selling and how we can maintain supply of what sells in a particular store. Some store's sell a lot of product A but not much product B and we NEED to know that to keep you whining idiots happy.
This whole discussion is about the customer being right, well guess what, they are usually wrong and self entitled and treat the workers like crap. Some realise how much of a thankless job we do, but most people don't.

Let me give you an example of the location issue. 30 years ago, if I was working on something and needed a tool, bolt or something, there was a hardware store nearby. Up to the store and back at the project in about 15 minutes. These days, all those hardware stores have been driven out of business by the big boxes.

Dude, 30 years ago I used to stocktake local hardware stores on the weekend for pocket money (yes when I was 12, probably earlier) and YES most of them are now gone but that is business, the big fish simply swallow the small fish. It's annoying ( ) but it's the reality of the situation. People wanted everything under one roof and now they have got it they are complaining again. What do you want us to do?

If I need a mid-job trip to get a tool or something, it takes a minimum of half an hour to fight through the traffic just to get to the local Home Depot. The store is located on a divided highway, where you can only approach the store from one direction, so you have to go past the store to an u-turn area, turn around and then get to the store's parking lot which is poorly designed so that it looks pretty, rather than being an efficient way to park cars. Once you do get whatever you need, you wait 20 minutes in line to pay for it, then the struggle to get out of the parking lot which is even worse than going in. This is located at the end of a large strip mall, and because the entrance is off a one-way street, the only way out is driving the entire length of the strip mall, directly in front of the entrances to the rest of the stores, with a stop sign in front of each store's door. It usually takes a good 20 minutes to even get to the stoplight leading to the main road!

Aww, boo-hoo to you. Where is the thought for people who have to do that EVERY DAY? We have staff who have to pay 30 bucks a day just to PARK their cars to go to work, and here you are whining about some inconvenience. Grow up. This is why the customer is usually a douche, they simply don't understand what the staff have to go through just to work, and they then get treated like crap by people, paid crap by the employers BUT now we are essential?
Convenient, isn't it?

Why would anyone in their right mind want to go there if they didn't absolutely have to. The store could have just as easily located itself in area with less traffic. Again, going out of its way to make a trip there as miserable as possible.

Do you need a tissue?

[Annoyed]

No, the SCO (self check out's) exist to make your life easier, not harder. Yes it is cheaper for the stores in terms of wages for staff, but people fly though them at a massive rate in comparison to a normal till. Yes you need to weigh your products but so what? It's not just because we assume you are a thief, its so we can know exactly what is selling and how we can maintain supply of what sells in a particular store. Some store's sell a lot of product A but not much product B and we NEED to know that to keep you whining idiots happy.

More later on the rest, short on time now... but...
The self checkout process here seems to be different. Here, it's scan product, place on scale and wait for it to weigh it then bag it. What is wrong with the way the cashiers do it? Scan, drop into the bag. On to the the next. The extra step breaks your whole rhythm up, slowing you down quite a bit.
As far as tracking sales so they can re-order what is selling is done with the scanning data, not the weight.

Just another example of retailers wanting to make the process miserable for the customer.

[Annoyed]

*twitches* Yeah, I got that off my eldest niece about ten years or so ago. She'd just gotten her first mobile phone for her birthday, and was telling me what games it came with.

I remarked that I only had Tetris on my phone.

She frowned up at me and asked, "What's Tetris?"

Much of what I listen to is on Vinyl. First time my niece saw my home theater/audio setup, she pointed at the turntable and said "what's that?".

[VampyreWraith]

More later on the rest, short on time now... but...
The self checkout process here seems to be different. Here, it's scan product, place on scale and wait for it to weigh it then bag it. What is wrong with the way the cashiers do it? Scan, drop into the bag. On to the the next. The extra step breaks your whole rhythm up, slowing you down quite a bit.
As far as tracking sales so they can re-order what is selling is done with the scanning data, not the weight.

Just another example of retailers wanting to make the process miserable for the customer.

Wait, that's not how it works by you? That's so weird. Every self checkout I've ever used has been scan it and put it in a bag (I think the bag area might be the scale on
the ones I've used though).