Britons: your customers are too polite.

[KaeZoo]

This needs to change.

The part I find most disturbing is that this opinion comes from a group "created by Parliament to champion consumer rights".

[candyshopgirl]

Oh god NOOOOOOO

You know there is going to have be a time that customers need to relize that if they keep making employees lives hell...
That there is going to be no one to work in retail. It make me mad as hell that I keep reading these articles that encourage sucky behavior.WTF

[dougall]

I think that article is saying that Britons should not accept the fact that some company's don't staff the tills with enough people knowing they will accept the wait with good grace. I know I get annoyed if a supermarket is busy but there are tills not staffed.

[PepperElf]

well i am reminded of something from the Hitchhiker's tetrology series. i forget which book it was in but.... Arthur told a story about how he was sitting in a train station with a package of cookies and another man reached over, opened the package and started eating the cookies.

Instead of telling him to stop, Arthur just started eating them too, staring at the other man, too polite to tell him to stop.

... after the cookies were gone, the other man got up and left... and arthur looked down to realize.... his package of cookies were right there on his lap, unopened.



sometimes being too polite can bit you in the ass
but i doubt anyone working retail will ever be upset about having customers who were polite to them.

[Rapscallion]

Old urban legend. However, I once genuinely drank a colleague's cup of tea during a training session. She was giving me funny looks and I wondered what was up, then I wondered why the cup of tea had lasted that long...

Rapscallion

[PepperElf]

o well i never said it was real. ... i thought it was just a story made up for the "hitchhikers' guide to the galaxy" series

[ShinyGreenApple]

"We need to ditch the service culture that assumes that the customer can wait,"

Are you kidding me? While I understand that some wait times are unreasonable (We spent over 30 minutes in the checkout line at Wal-Mart last week!), waiting is a part of life. Someone needs to show me in this mysterious almighty book of law where it says that customers don't need to wait. Pretty much every single person on the planet has, at one time or another, been a customer. We all have to wait once in a while, people. Get over it! *headdesk*

Also, I'd highly discourage the few societies not given over to entitlement whorism to use the U.S. as a role model

(for the record, I live in the U.S., but that doesn't mean I don't find the people's general attitudes appalling)

[MannersMakethMan]

Oh no they aren't. If you've ever worked for the laminated books of dreams on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, you'd soon see otherwise.

The only time I got complained at for tills not being staffed was in the run up to Christmas 2007. I was by myself holding back a line of 30 or so customers, and the schedule had been cut so drastically that there wasn't anyone else available, except the manager who wouldn't ever dream of coming to help. Some woman in the queue shouted over "Why aren't there any more people on the tills? Get someone down here now. I'm going to complain."
Having been taking the blame for the management scheduling for the last 4 hours without a break, I said right back to her "Please do. Maybe then I'd get somebody to help down here. Customer services is over there." She never complained. Just had another good go at me, because I was personally responsible for everything wrong with the shop, then left. Admittedly, I was as sucky as she was, but what she thought harassing the only person with the power to serve her was going to do, I don't know.

As far as I recall, she was the only one that day with a problem. Everyone else seemed to realise that they should have shopped earlier, and that there was no magic button to summon a new employee. Everyone else was clearly visibly working as hard as they could. Sure, it's annoying, but suck it up. You must have realised things would be bad at peak times. The employees are doing all they can!

All together now: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

[lordlundar]

Gee, acting like impatient Americans. There's a good idea! They haven't had someone killed by greedy, self-important twats yet! (not factoring in chavs of course)

[Lady Legira]

Oh no they aren't. If you've ever worked for the laminated books of dreams on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, you'd soon see otherwise.

LOL gotta love Bill Bailey!

I think they have this wrong the US people should have some of our politeness.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Customers are always polite in the UK? Which part? It's sure as hell not where I live, cuz I've experienced loads of horriffically rude people, especially on Christmas Week. -.-

Like the bad tempered bitch woman who had a go at me cuz my till broke down on Christmas Eve; she demanded I fix it. Not to mention all the idiots who turn up after closing time on Christmas Eve and then throw a tantrum cuz they're not allowed to come in cuz, you know, we all want to go home!

I'm working on Christmas Eve this year, too. Thank cheese I'm in the petrol station; as soon as I'm done, I'm going home and heading to the pub.

[MannersMakethMan]

LOL gotta love Bill Bailey!

The worst part is that I applied to Woolworths before them and didn't hear back...

[cinema guy]

I will agree that the post office usually has too few staff on and the queues are too long. But most supermarkets I've been in are well staffed and queues are short, except at weekends, when its busy (duh!).

But queueing is polite, reasonable behavior.