I swear I've had just about enough

[shelly2jn]

I know I'm not the only one disillusioned with people out there.....is anyone else on the verge of going postal on their asses?

Today was a wonderful day at work. (csr at a major uk supermarket) I was shouted at, sworn at, had money thrown at me, told I was thick, berated because I wouldn't take back a product from another supermarket and you know what? I could cry for humanity.

case 1: telephone call from punter - he was in our store, bought beer, thought it was on offer and rang to query the price - turns out the offer was in selected stores only and ours wasn't one of them - no problem says me, bring the beer back and well refund your money - but no he wants his refund now. Now how in the name of all that's good and glorious am I supposed to refund a product that I don't physically have, have no receipt for or debit card to refund on to - according to him I should have been able to do it over the phone - jeezs

case 2: punter wanted a refund - ok, need the receipt - hands me receipt from rival store - umm - you need XXXXX down the road - customer wouldn't accept that the item wasn't purchased in my store despite the receipt stating the store name and the product having the tags from other store on it. I had to get the manager!

case 3: our customer services is located in the cigarette kiosk along with the lottery machine so I help out on those tills as well when I'm not busy. I had a guy who had me walk up and down the kiosk I'm sure 8 or 9 times with different lottery requests and each time I would ask is that everything sir, he would say yes and when I came back with his tickets he asked for another ticket. Finally I said, sir, tell me whole lot, it'll be alot quicker for you and me - his reply - I don't want to confuse you - you people get confused with more than one order at a time - my reply - sir with an iq of 140 you'll have to get out of bed a hell of a lot earlier than this to confuse me....

anyway - off to drown my sorrows

[RobertM]

I spent 17 years in retail starting as the junior and finishing as a regional computer trainer and branch manager.

I sympathise with you, people get no better over the years and I have experienced all you have written about plus a lot more.

In the end I left and eventually set up my own business, now I pick and choose my customers, and have a lot less grief.

[vloglady]

Shelly2jn, what's a "punter"? never heard the term before. Is it like customer?

Susan

[Salted Grump]

Probably translates to a 'Customer you want to kick in the backside until they can taste shoe leather'

[RobertM]

Shelly2jn, what's a "punter"? never heard the term before. Is it like customer?

Susan

A punter is a slang name here in the Uk for a customer

[BookstoreEscapee]

I worked in the stores for about 8 years, most of them as a head cashier (and even when I moved to a lead position on the floor they still kept my authorization code active because we were always short on people who could do returns, so they could call me if necessary). I recall one time I did a refund over the phone, and that was a special case. The customer called to say they had been charged twice for an item and ask what she should do before she drove all the way back. I had rung her up, the store copy of the receipt was still in my folder, and, the big factor: I remembered her from earlier in the day. This was way back when they still printed the whole credit card number on the receipt so it was possible to charge it back without having the card. Once they switched to only printing the last 4 digits you couldn't do it even if you wanted to be nice. Recently they've started printing bar codes on the receipt; I assume that accesses the payment information to automatically refund the card used to pay (a la Target and others) but I don't know for sure (since I don't work there anymore).