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Wednesday 18 September 2013

Top 5 Worst Customers


Many people have worked in a shop or in some sort of job involving customer service. It can be incredibly rewarding and incredibly frustrating. Customers are the most important aspect of these job roles, but they are also the most annoying aspect. It's a great feeling to serve and help a really polite and keen customer - but the good cannot exist without the bad, and those bad customers will always find a way to irritate and anger you. If you can relate, then keep reading - here are the worst types of customer to ever walk through shop doors.

#5 - The ones with trust issues


So a customer comes up to you and asks: 'excuse me, do you sell this?'. You are very confident that the shop does not stock such a product, yet the customer doesn't trust you because you're a Sales Assistant. I mean, you only work part time, what the hell would you know about your own workplace? So, right after asking you, they say thanks and skip off, then immediately find your manager or supervisor and ask them the same question - getting the same answer.

#4 - The ones without patience


Isn't so frustrating to visit the post office and be greeted by a long queue because only two of the six million till points are in use? Nobody likes waiting, including myself, but sometimes we have to bite the bullet and be patient. I wish some of my customers understood this. Our shop has 3 tills, and due to recent staffing problems, very rarely are all of them in use simultaneously. So every now and then, a queue builds, but there's nothing we can do as we do have other jobs to complete. Some customers cannot accept this, and come marching to the till angrily asking why they had to wait so long (so long being 30 seconds) and why all tills aren't in use. As is usually the case with me, they then spend ages preparing their money to pay - meaning that they didn't use their longer than usual wait to actually get their money out and make it all quicker. Most illogical.

#3 - The ones without manners


I work for a company that pays me. The company pays me. Not the customers. I technically owe them nothing, and I only serve them with a smile because I'm told to. So why do some think they have the right to talk to me in a hostile manner, or demand things because they feel they have control over me? Examples of this include customers who do not say excuse me or even hello, but come up behind you and say a product. Like, 'audio books?'. That's it. They literally ask that, expecting you to know that they're talking to you. Other times you get customers who go off in a huff when you kindly explain you don't stock an item, or cannot reduce the existing price of one. Or if you cannot bag an incredibly huge item because the company has not given your store big enough carriers. These customers should understand that people who work in a shop are still humans, and shouldn't be spoken to like fucking slaves.

#2 - The ones who try and bargain



When working at a charity shop in 2012, I had many rude customers come up to me and dispute the pricing of many products. For example, a small ornament was priced at £2, and a lady tried to buy it for half that price - insisting £2 was far too costly. Too many customers try and play dumb to get items at a lower price as well, for example a lady in our shop once found an item with £9.99 clearly written on it. When she was about to pay, she disputed the price, and found a large sticker with 4 written on it on the back of the product label. This was in fact a sticker from a stock take that we forgot to remove, but this was not an easy mistake - the number had no currency sign and was hidden away, whereas the official price tag was right on the front. The lady was simply trying to get away with not paying the full price.


#1 - The ones who can't accept NO



These customers are the worst and most inappropriate ones to ever exist. They want a product and you simply do not have it - you know this for sure, and you even ask your manager. They concur - the product is not in stock. Unlike the customers with trust issues, these customers won't put on a thankful pretense and ask someone else, but will just get annoyed. Sales Assistants, last time I checked, do not control the products of the shop and have no influence on the choices by Head Office. Customers are often too retarded to realize this, and instead question why you don't have the product, criticize the shop for lacking it or give you blank, perplexed stares followed by complaints. Some will even walk away in a huff, or ask you to order a product for them. We're not Amazon - we don't just stock everything for your convenience and order single items just because you're angry. The nerve of some people astounds me. If you're a customer who does this, then listen up: I hate you.

Thanks for reading!