Christmas Eve rudeness

[mariamousie1]

London Ontario, where I live is sadly lacking in places to buy toys. Besides the department stores like Wal-Mart, the only places to buy toys are at A: Toys 'R' Us (which is really far from us) or B: This cute little toy store, called Toy Shoppe of London. The people there are usually great and it's totally cute, lots of science toys, games, puzzles and books, and a painted VW bug and a big Thomas the Tank Engine for kids to play in. It's a very cool store and is the best place to buy Lego.

Anyway, this happened to my sister-in-law. She and my brother tend to over react, so I thought I'd get some opinions. On Christmas Eve, it was close to closing and my SIL was walking around the store looking for last minute presents for their kids, and one of the employees came up to her and said "We're closing, could you make your way up to the cash register?" SIL said "Okay." and turned to go over there, and the employee said really rudely, "NOW???"
Anyway, she just left without buying anything, and says that she's never going back, they've lost her business forever, and my brother wrote a letter saying that he's a father of small children and is studying to be a school teacher and they will not be benefiting from all his toy buying for the future.

What I think: Okay, this did suck. The Employee should NEVER have talked that way to a customer. But it was Christmas Eve (I don't know what time) and that employee was probably exhausted and pissed off from a day full of SC's and wanted to close up and go home. Bad service, but I wouldn't cut the store off forever over one comment. Especially since I have never had bad service at this store before, everybody there is usually awesome.

[Peppergirl]

Hmmmm - if they tend to over-react anyway and are generally dramatic people (which is what it sounds like), I think I'd probably think the story was embellished...

Meaning, the emp was probably exasperated, like you said - and perhaps was *short* with your SIL, which isn't right, but I'd be willing to bet that she wasn't as 'rude' as your SIL said.

So - Probably a little suck on both parts. For the emp likely being annoyed and tired, and for your family for still shopping when the store was closing. That never bodes well for anyone.

[retail_vigilante]

Does your SIL realize that employees never care when you say that you won't come back? I always thought, "Oh.. okay. Good. Don't want to see you again and I still get paid with or without you."

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I can't say I blame the toy store employee too much. In fact, I might even go so far as to offer them kudos.

This is probably because when I was younger, I closed just about every single Christmas Eve. Getting out of work well after close sucks any day of the year, but doubly so on Christmas Eve. I just wanted to get home and open presents and be with my family.

But the SCs would not allow that. Every Christmas Eve, we got out of work no earlier than 15 minutes after close because of people trying to do their last minute shopping and ignoring our closing announcements. There was this one woman, who'd waddle on in a few minutes before close, and ask us where certain toys for her son were. Of course, he wanted all the hot toys we'd been out of for weeks, and when we told her we didn't have them anymore, she'd just throw a fit about how disappointed her son would be, and go on to the next item on his list.

And then there was this other woman who came in a few minutes before close another year, grabbed a shopping cart, and leisurely browsed the aisles like it was any ordinary day. That year we didn't get out until almost 6:30 (we closed at 6).

Store policy was you couldn't just kick these people out or tell them to go fuck. All you could really do was offer customer service on steroids--keep approaching them and asking them if they needed help finding something, and hope that they'd get a clue and find the exit. But if that didn't work, you could wait just as long as the SC could, because nobody was allowed to leave until all customers were gone and the all clear was given.

[mariamousie1]

I can't say I blame the toy store employee too much. In fact, I might even go so far as to offer them kudos.

This is probably because when I was younger, I closed just about every single Christmas Eve. Getting out of work well after close sucks any day of the year, but doubly so on Christmas Eve. I just wanted to get home and open presents and be with my family.

But the SCs would not allow that. Every Christmas Eve, we got out of work no earlier than 15 minutes after close because of people trying to do their last minute shopping and ignoring our closing announcements. There was this one woman, who'd waddle on in a few minutes before close, and ask us where certain toys for her son were. Of course, he wanted all the hot toys we'd been out of for weeks, and when we told her we didn't have them anymore, she'd just throw a fit about how disappointed her son would be, and go on to the next item on his list.

And then there was this other woman who came in a few minutes before close another year, grabbed a shopping cart, and leisurely browsed the aisles like it was any ordinary day. That year we didn't get out until almost 6:30 (we closed at 6).

Store policy was you couldn't just kick these people out or tell them to go fuck. All you could really do was offer customer service on steroids--keep approaching them and asking them if they needed help finding something, and hope that they'd get a clue and find the exit. But if that didn't work, you could wait just as long as the SC could, because nobody was allowed to leave until all customers were gone and the all clear was given.

The thing is though, is that my SIL was perfectly fine with leaving- she was not putting up any kind of argument. However, this employee had probably been kicking out SC's all week and had no reason to believe this customer would be different.