A Week of Rants, Suck and other Oddities

[fireheart]

So like I said, I was planning on doing a weekly update now and here we go...

Loyalty Card Suck.

OK, now we've got pressure on us to maintain 20% of our customers have this loyalty card. Dunno why, don't really care, unless corporate is getting desperate. Obviously I haven't mentioned THIS to my customers, but I've had the following happen to me all week:

-I can CLEARLY see that they have a card and yet they still say no.
-They tell me "oh I want the fuel docket." (part of the program is that they can get fuel savings from it, or they can have them on the bottom of the docket)
-They wind up splitting their purchases so they can get as many vouchers as possible...in the busiest of times! (and no, we cannot refuse)
-I had one case where someone handed me their staff card AND the loyalty card. Now it's one or the other. In the end, they took the staff discount over the petrol saving
-They give me a CBF look or something similar when I DO ask.
-They tell me "it'll track my purchases." True but...I'm wondering if anyone else can agree with my logic: specials being determined by said "tracing" of purchases i.e. what's more common could be on special?? (Ours stays within the company, information does not get sold to telemarketers)
-Despite about a year's worth of advertising, it's all over the store and yet they still ask me "what is it?"

Now I'm an info desk yay!

People, there's an information desk for the mall about 50m away from us! Go and ask them if the mall contains a bank or an Orange Julius stand or something similar! Seriously, I may know the mall inside out, but I don't know it THAT well! I don't mind directing for toilets because our store doesn't have them (we're a supermarket!) but asking me if there's Bank A or Bank B within the mall is not appropriate.

I can count.

Probably a minor suck, but it's getting really annoying lately that people will put all 10 of the bottles onto the conveyor belt and then when I go to pick one up, they'll tell me "oh there's x number of this". We have a special this week with long-life milk. People have been buying it by the caseloads which doesn't surprise me, but even though the cartons say 6 on them and they may have three of those cartons, they'll still tell me "there's 18."

I'm in uni. I Can Count.

Political soundboarding:

Please don't ask me for my opinion on this, this and this. Especially with the plastic-bag free crap. I only know what my managers tell me. And seriously, can people STOP asking me about the meat?! We have produce bags, they'll work for the smaller cuts, which are usually the ones that drip blood anyway. Have people NOT heard of washing their reusable bags?! (usually can just be run on a standard cycle) Also making comments like "the idea's crap" or whatever will not endear you to me. Go write to the government. March on Parliament House. Write to Planet Fleabag for all I care They made the decision, we ALL have to stick by it...and seriously, garbage bags do NOT cost that much!

Odd bakery items:

Think I've already mentioned it but we had two "Cheese and Fruit Platters" aka Finger Buns on Monday night. Someone obviously had one too many in bakehouse and mucked it up. Much laughter among the bakehouse girl and myself.

[jerkface11]

I just invented disposable plastic liners for the canvas grocery bags!!!! I'll make billions!

[LingualMonkey]

Probably a minor suck, but it's getting really annoying lately that people will put all 10 of the bottles onto the conveyor belt and then when I go to pick one up, they'll tell me "oh there's x number of this". We have a special this week with long-life milk. People have been buying it by the caseloads which doesn't surprise me, but even though the cartons say 6 on them and they may have three of those cartons, they'll still tell me "there's 18."

I'm in uni. I Can Count.

Guilty. But I do this to help save the checker a little time. If I have 9 identical items, I put them on the conveyor together and let the person know. In my case, it's an effort to help make their job a little easier--scan one, add in 8 rather than scanning all 9.

[bainsidhe]

Your company is getting desperate for customers. They figure, if 20% of people have the card, those people are more likely to continue shopping here instead of the competition. And yet. I remember how we had a lot of pressure selling our Replay rewards cards at Media Play. The pressure kept mounting...and then they went out of business. The Replay cards were not refunded. Yeah, I know life's a bitch and customers were NOT happy. It became clear that we were pushed so hard to sell sell sell because it was a last final grab at income before filing for bankruptcy. Sorry to be doom and gloom, I hope that isn't the case in your company.

[Javarod]

Chuckles, "I don't get the tracking complaints, i actually love it, Fry's over here in Phx does it, i get coupons in the mail based on what i typically buy, and i usually use at least 90% of the coupons they send me. Why would anyone complain about the store helping you save money?"

[fireheart]

As far as I know, people on the card DO get special offers that are only with the card. What's made me laugh at the moment is that there are two forms of special offers with the card:

1) So much off a multi-buy purchase.
2) Extra petrol savings.

Most people tend to follow the former than the latter. No suck yet thank God. And I get the feeling that the 20% isn't per person, it's per the store.