We Hate You Too: Pet Peeves from Consumers—and from Retail Workers

Apparently, consumers and retailers are equally good at driving each other nuts.

The NY Times’ Haggler lists eight top consumer pet peeves, which include modern-day nuisances such as constant upselling, annoying after-call surveys, nonstop e-mail address requests, and especially pushy sales reps:

This can be a particular problem in clothing stores, which for some reason are home to the most cloying and relentless of the breed. Shopping, as far as the Haggler is concerned, is awkward enough. It doesn’t need the awkwardness added by a too-chipper smoothie, trailing in your wake, pretending to befriend you in the hope of earning a commission.

Meanwhile, MainStreet.com offers a roundup of five retailer pet peeves, culled (and softened) from an expletive-laden discussion at Reddit. The retail worker peeves include customers who rudely don’t get off the !#@!*!@# cell phone at the checkout line, customers who sprinkle coins all over the counter and then get annoyed as the clerk takes his time picking and adding the mound of change up, and customers who take stuff off shelves and then put it back in some other part of the store after deciding not to buy it:

A Walmart employee named VinFx describes his frustration with this: “The other day at Walmart, I saw a pack of turkey bacon in the candy shelf before the register. I touched it and it was fully room temperature. Ruined,” the user wrote. “I have no idea why jerks have to do that. They were 3 feet from the cashier and could have said they didn’t want it. Instead, they jammed it in between the Snickers and Bubble Yum racks costing the store $4 for nothing.”

http://allbummedout.wordpress.com allbummedout

Although I earn a fair six digit income, I have fingers left over when counting the number of time I’ve set foot into a retail establishment. Since 1995 I have done all my shopping online (except for food purchased at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and a few mom and pop specialty seafood shops).

Look, retailers send the message they don’t need me as a customer in their way, interfering with their business. Isn’t retailing about creating jobs for cashiers and pesky sales clerks? Customers need not apply.

Every glorious modern good from the finest made clothing to furnishings, appliances, the most natural fresh foods (including dry ice packed meats and fresh sea food from Alaska) is available online often with even free shipping thrown in! Why do we need department stores and other retail establishments? Oh, that’s right, so 80% of the population remains employed. So long as people subsidize retail, those employees don’t have to train and become productive. While I struggled through school to earn six digits, that effort is beneath many people who are entitled to government support. Why insult their sensibilities with the concept of productivity? And they will read this, and hate me for breaking the status quo, being productive, and earning what they consider an obscene salary for helping the company to succeed. In their ideal world, the state would support us all, and I would be sent to Siberia for being so damn smart.

Which gets back to why I avoid retailers, especially Walmart who exploit workers in countries like Bangladesh. It’s the principle of the matter.
gbtate

I agree completely. At 66 now, there was once a day when I would be fired if I showed anything less than an eagerness to serve the man with the money who walks in the door. A friend once told a rude clerk, “You are overhead and I’m profit… is there anything wrong with this picture?”

Productivity is tied hand-in-hand with contentment with a business’s workers. But, rather than pay a clerk or cashier a livable wage, businesses pay extra for someone to continually train a revolving door of 9-year olds who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. IF the same retailers paid a GOOD employee a DECENT wage to SERVE their customers, is there even a possibility that their customers might develop loyalty to the business? That just might increase profits, cultivate repeat customers… and (wait for it)… satisfied employees.

Contentment in the workplace. Productivity through knowledgeable communications and confidence in the workers. It all spells SATISFACTION… what a concept in the retail business!
eveywhite

I’ve been working in retail for about a decade, and I’m astonished to hear someone call every person in the very broad field of retail lazy and unproductive. I am curious how the first person who commented on this post paid for the education that got him that six figure income. I myself have been trying to put myself though school, but I am paid a relatively low wage and must save for two or more years to pay for one semester (and I have two years under my belt). My boyfriend got a scholarship, went to school, and got an architecture degree (not an easy one to attain) and then the recession hit. He manages a retail store now. Not everyone is in retail because they don’t want to try.

The policies that you hate are created by people who are rarely, if ever, in a store. They are carried out by employees like myself because we fear to lose our jobs (not because I would have to train to be productive, but because I still have two years of school to pay for and jobs are hard to find these days). I don’t like upselling or asking for e-mail addresses. I just don’t have a choice in the matter. At this point in the recession, most retailers have stopped offering commission. Large items, like cars, and businesses that are still vastly lucrative, like cell phones, still do. Clothing stores usually don’t. The incentive these days is keeping your job.

As for employees receiving government support, there are none at my job or at my boyfriend’s. I would not be surprised if some businesses pay their employees low enough that they struggle to support themselves (how do you think companies keep their prices so low?) and I applaud your decision to boycott companies who don’t take care of their employees. I heard once that as a consumer you vote each time you open your wallet, and I think nothing is more true.

I think that consumers have a right to be angry. Retailers are treating them like easily-duped morons. However, not everyone behind the counter is a hateful, lazy, idiot. Some of us are going to work every day and trying our best so that we can do something more with our lives. It is hard enough to go in every day and something that feels beneath you without having a constant stream of customers yell at you for things you have absolutely no control over (like the aforementioned policies). I still go in every day and try to be nice, and I still come out at the end of the day really beat down. It’s no wonder to me now why people who do this job don’t go elsewhere. I’m sure in time you would just give up on everything. So, please, please, please don’t take it out on us. It’s just our job.