They are the life's blood of our business, giving them excellent service is the most important part of our jobs, and they are the reason we get paid...that said, I've never met a more aggravating, stingy, stuck up group of people in my life. I like to think that they are probably good people outside of the store (go to church, donate to charities, etc.) but for some reason when they go through those automatic doors, they think they become the king or queen of Kroger.
I was in a store other than my own recently when I overheard a lady demanding that a clerk help her immediately. The clerk said (very nicely) that he was getting an item for another customer and that he would be right with her as soon as he ran this item back to the other customer. The "lady" freaked! She said I am thecustomer you need to help right now!! The poor clerk froze. He really didn't know which way to go...the customer he had already promised to help or the demanding, self-important b***h in front of him. Since I was not in uniform, I took the opportunity to step in and tell her (politely) that she wasn't the only person in this store, and that this employee had another customer waiting. If she were that other customer, wouldn't she expect to get helped first? She turned her anger on me (the clerk took off...can't say I blame him). I listened to her b***h (with a smile on my face) for about 20 seconds. Then, (surprisingly) about 4 other lady customers came up and helped me put her in her place. She left her cart and walked off in a huff. I guess she really did think she was the most important customer in the place.
2 points I wanted to make: 1) In my experience, this kind of customer is the norm not the exception. The more the company kisses their a** and gives in to them, the more they want. It is good for business to say no sometimes. Certain behavior is unacceptable anywhere. 2) As a retail employee, when I'm at other stores (not just Kroger) and see this kind of treatment of an employee, I always step in and stand up for the clerk. I've even gotten a pat on the back from managers at other retail stores for doing what they feel they can't do...tell a customer they're out of line. Hope you all will do the same.
-- Edited by FileGuy800 on Thursday 14th of May 2009 05:23:54 AM
i hate customers like that! in my store they are the exception, not the rule (thank goodness!) like you, when i am in another retail environment, i always stick up for the clerk when they are facing a difficult customer.
to be honest, at 16 I wasn't outspoken either! i was easily embarrassed and shied away from difficult situations. that's okay! i would try to come back to the clerk and tell them something really positive...or, if i knew the customer was making a lot of trouble, i would quietly go to the manager and let them know so the clerk could get some assistance. it's not always necessary to make an immediate confrontation.
now that i'm old...lol!...(my daughter is almost 15!)...i'm not so shy and i have no patience for rudeness!
I was very shy when I was a teenager. That woman would have petrified me.
However, I'm one to step in when I see someone acting stupid... with two o's.
I have a technicolor memory of politely admonishing a middle-aged customer at a Meijer years ago. He was at the next register over from me, checking out. He was berating the teenage female cashier because the shelf stickers weren't properly aligned with the products. She was getting upset, so I said, "Excuse me sir, but it's obvious to all of us that she's a cashier and she's not responsible for that. You have an issue to take up with management. Not her." Because I was wearing a tie that day, on my way home from work, he thought I was a manager. So he started telling me off, how incompetent I was, how my store needed to be run better as such. I started laughing (which really ticked him off). He asked, "What's so funny?" I said, "I'm just another customer, just like you." He then invited me outside to "settle this." I said that would be fine as long as he stopped yelling at the girl. He said, "OK!"
Well, he finished his order, and I finished mine. At the end of the registers, he apologized to me, and said he he didn't know why he blew up. I didn't expect that.
Lessoned learned: FileGuy, you said it best: "The more the company kisses their a** and gives in to them, the more they want. It is good for business to say no sometimes. Certain behavior is unacceptable anywhere." Said another way, "Good behavior has to be managed. Bad behavior happens all by itself." This includes customers.
I now agree more than ever that kroger is not your personal army. You cannot just sick kroger on your enemies but that doesnt mean that justice wont come. Ive been a regular visitor to ED for about a year now, and I recently came to the realization that this was not my first encounter with kroger. I went to an all girls Catholic high school years ago so not surprisingly, this was a great source of drama. I tried my best to avoid it but could do nothing when two of my best friends fought over a certain guy.
This is the downside of an all girls school as many will hop on the first dick they see and many will try to hopping on to the same one. Anyway, the guy my friends were fighting over was the poster boy for LiveJournal emofaggotry complete with a whiny bitchy blog full of ****ty emo poetry. The minute I met him he hated me because he must have known I was onto his bull****. For months he ****ed around with both my friends, I got the brunt of this having to mediate between the two. For the year I had to put up with him I got little bits and pieces of justice but none were lulzy enough until some anonymous hero intervened.
One night my friends called me begging me to do what I can for this douche bag because apparently he was threatening to kill himself after someone ****ed up his LiveJournal page, the culprit thought to be his ex-girlfriend. I looked on the page and lo and behold, the putrid unforgiving image of tubgirl filled the screen. This being the first time Id seen this image I was disgusted but some how, satisfied. In fact, tubgirl was an improvement over this page containing emo poetry that would make Simple Plan wince. Unfortunately, the guy was too much of a pussy to go through with the suicide.
I never knew who vandalized his page but it was years before I realized that it must have been kroger. Who else would post tubgirl on an emofags LiveJournal page? My point in telling this story is that first of all, do not feel sympathy for /b/s targets because if they are *******s on the internet, they are probably the same way in real life. And finally, there is no need to sick kroger on anyone. If they are truly deserving, as long as anonymous roams the intertubes, justice in the form of tubgirl, lemon party, meatspin, or whatever will be done. To the /b/tard who trolled this guys page, thank you. You win the internet!
I obviously work in the deli. The people that come up are ridiculous... I actually saw a guy hit a kid that want his because the kid touched his cart. When i am taking a huge cart of my deli order to the deli from the back room people will pull their carts in front of me and just stop like im not really there or something. The worst part is when i greet a customer ready to buy deli meat cheese or salads by saying Hello how are you doing today and they counter with "half a pound of ham" YOU CANT EVEN SAY FINE??? how much time does it take? If your schedule is so tight that you cant even reply to someone trying to be nice to you then you might want to try to carve a few extra seconds out for *** wiping and possibly eating......
