Am I being sucky?

[mathnerd]

I'm trying to order my Christmas cards and it's proving to be very frustrating. First I tried to order from Walmart's website. The order didn't go through. Then I tried Staples, as they had a Groupon. Groupon's site was down Monday night. Today, I tried Walmart again. Still can't log into my account to put either the old order through or make a new one. When I click "log in", it just gives me a blank pop up window.

So I decided to go to the store itself. It's a little bit more expensive, but whatever. I go through the process of picking a card and get to the part where I need to upload a photo. The app they make you use won't connect. They don't have cables to connect directly to the kiosk. I go to another machine and try again. Same result. I try with *all four* kiosks. No dice, and no employees anywhere in sight to ask questions of. So I give up.

Then I went to Staples. They're just across the street. The lady there was super nice, but she kept leaving. To order in store, you have to email the photos and they have to retrieve them, you can't do it yourself. The website was also doing weird things. So she'd help me for ten seconds and then disappear for 10 minutes. The first photo I tried to use wasn't fitting with their layouts, so I tried to email another photo. Cue another ten minutes of twiddling my thumbs waiting. Then the text box wouldn't update. Still waiting. Just everything was going wrong, and she kept walking away, helping other customers. I get that she was trying to multi-task, but at this point I'd been there for 45 minutes for something that should have taken five minutes, maybe ten minutes. I have physical disabilities that make me all but housebound, and standing for that length of time was excruciating. I quietly closed everything down and walked out. She didn't even notice.

Am I being sucky expecting that she at least pay a little attention to me, since there were steps that I physically could not do because of the way they had their system set up? I get that she was busy and trying to multi-task, but I was a customer too. There's no reason the person who came in 30 minutes after I did (and the 5 or so people before him) got her undecided attention and got finished while I was still staring off into space waiting for her to realize I really did need her again, hence the polite attempts at getting her attention. Again. In a perfect world, she'd have just stayed with me for the 5 minutes or so it would have taken to finish if she hadn't kept wandering away, and she'd have been rid of me. They're probably understaffed, but still. Ugh.

So am I being unreasonable?

[Food Lady]

Leaving wasn't sucky. It might've been better to get someone else's attention, but you were not wrong not to do so, not at all.

Could I suggest: https://www.mileskimball.com/view-christmas-cards I've worked for them as a seasonal employee twice. People get so excited about those cards that they sometimes order in August. At this point they're an institution. Plus: have them made and delivered to you.

[mathnerd]

I did try to politely get her attention, but after she made eye contact with me, I thought it would be rude to get pushy and/or yell across the counter, especially while she was with other customers. After it happened a few times, I just got frustrated.

I totally understand that she was probably way overworked, but geez.

I did wind up getting my Walmart order to go through a few minutes after I posted this and decided to pay the extra for one hour printing, so now I'm home with my super awesome cards. Yay! I actually liked the Walmart card the best out of all of the ones I looked at, so I'm happy.

[notalwaysright]

I have to help multiple people all the time. It's hard, but the thing that I try to remember is to give most of my attention to the person who waited their turn. If someone else walks up and asks a simple question, sure I'll answer it. If they ask a complicated question, I ask them to take a number. It's only fair. I know the place you were at didn't have a formal number system, but the premise is the same. It was your turn, and 45 minutes is waaay too long.

[raudf]

I hate to rag on a retail worker, but she was the sucky one, not you. Helping multiple people is great and good, if all you are going to be doing is answering questions or even taking orders, but she knew you were there, what you were doing, and that what you were doing would require something on her end to make it work. She should have been paying more attention and told the next customer, "Wait one moment, I need to help this customer at the kiosk, she has been waiting" and made sure you were taken care of.

Yeah, I've done something similar at the repair center. I would have one customer waiting on something that takes a while and would check on them between every single customer I helped. That way, I didn't feel swamped (which she may well have, but still...) and the customer was happy. Sorry, hit a pet peeve of mine, because I'm seeing the "I don't have time for this," attitude more and more...

[Sandman]

There's one thing that you didn't mention.. was she the only person working the copy center? If she was, then the situation was sucky, not you or the employee.

She might have had jobs that came in that needed manual attention, or setup that couldn't wait for later.

Just posting my two cents as someone who worked in the CPC during the holidays.

[mathnerd]

There was another person there who was working just on setting up jobs. The one working with customers was literally just retrieving orders helping customers place new ones. And to be clear, I wouldn't have minded waiting a minute here and there while she multi-tasked, but after being ignored for 5-10 minutes at a time four or five times, I grew impatient. And I didn't make a deal out of it. I just left. It's really not her fault corporate isn't properly staffing the stores, but she really wasn't very good at multi-tasking at all. Also, to be clear it was things like "oh, you need to do this ten second task followed by something a store employee has to do", but then she'd be helping other customers for five minutes while I twiddled my thumbs. The more I think about it, corporate bs contributed greatly, but she wasn't managing multiple customers well either.

But, this is neither here nor there. After thinking about it, I don't think I was sucky. I didn't make a scene, I didn't yell, I didn't berate. I simply refused to wait further and quietly walked out. If I'd yelled or berated or anything like that, I'd have been sucky.

ETA: When I came in there weren't any other customers. The first customer came in after I did, and there was a steady stream of new customers. I don't think I'm being unreasonable thinking I should have been somewhat of a priority since I was actually there first. Like help them when I didn't need her kind of thing, but let them wait their turn, instead of making me wait for people who came in after me.

[Food Lady]

I don't think you were sucky at all.