Employee Phones Are For EMPLOYEES!

[Mike Taylor]

Long story short, we had a dude decide he would go behind an unoccupied register and call the loss prevention desk at the front of the store to ask for some help with car stereos. All it would have taken was a quick look in the computer and camera departments immediately adjacent to him to see there were staff who could help.

Needless to say, the LP associate on duty was not pleased.

[Kristev]

That's awful. Simply awful.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We used to have little sheets with the instructions on how to page taped up over every phone on the salesfloor.

They have since been taken down, after we had a spate of customers using our phones to page people over to where they needed help.

[stargirl195]

The guy sounds like some of my customers - the ones who decide that they'd like to try my job and scan their alcohol by themselves. But using an employee phone? FAIL!

[Project_Mars]

We used to have little sheets with the instructions on how to page taped up over every phone on the salesfloor.

They have since been taken down, after we had a spate of customers using our phones to page people over to where they needed help.

were they taken down before or after the racist customer at wal-mart incident?

Fun Fact: A good Majority of the phones in Wal-Marts have been taken down due to this. I found this out as i was trying to tell a customer that we did have a product, but I had to walk around a couple minutes before heading back to the only phone in that area of the store at the time in my department. The customer hung up before I could get back.

[JLG]

I have had customers pick up one of our phones and call the managers office and tell them they need more cashiers up front.

Kids page their friends to the front of the store.

I have also had people pick up my scanner to scan the merchandise and try to take off the sensors.

[mikoyan29]

Damn...now I wont be able to say, 'Mr. Herman you have a telephone call in the lobby"...

[GroceryGIrl]

We often get customers who ask to use the phone at the service desk only to make personal calls and chit chat for 10-15 minutes. There are pay phones in the lobby, use those! Or are you too cheap to spend 50 cents?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

were they taken down before or after the racist customer at wal-mart incident?

Oh, I'm sure they were down well before that happened.

[Red_Dazes]

Or are you too cheap to spend 50 cents?

Do you really have to ask? These ARE the special snowflakes we are talking about... they are ENTITLED to have us bend over backwards for them.


Our phones at Dress for Less had a 3 button combo you had to push to make a page... so customers never really could figure it out... also only the phone in the office could actually call out to any number other than 911

[C-130]

I have a term for such a gentleman-an a**hole. None the less I believe he should be implaed within your store as a reminder to customers why not to mess with your phones.

In my work our phones require a 3 stage process (you press a function button and then the code which is usually two to three numbers). So for instacne to get onto tannoy it is function XY. No customer will know that. As for our tills any person seen trying to use them is quickly moved along as a) they are no touchy for customer and b) activate na alarm if you attempt to use them so many in times in a row in a space of time if they are not logged in. now no one except for customers which for the alarm to go off.

[casey13]

Hence why when I worked at Wal-mart, I always said we needed to have the wireless phones that Meijer has.

The store I worked at for Meijer only had three non-wireless phones that a customer could access and about eight more behind employee areas (excluding registers, those would be about twenty-six there). Lower chances of a customer paging as the phones were located in plain-view of the center aisle.

The wireless phones were easier as we could answer pages, outside calls (through some random extension number that service desk would page or the calls usually came to us), and call each other. However, it didn't work as well when someone forgot the phone on a shelf, the battery died (sometimes the phones gave zero warning) or the phone decided to forward randomly. Only managers could call an outside line though.

[ShadowTiger]

Our store now had walkie talkies. They come in really handy. They keep breaking though. I'm not looking forward to the point when we have half the radios we started with. At LEAST, all the heads of the department need radios so they can hear when they have a phone call waiting for them. I'd hear "Seasonal, call on line 1" over the walkie talkie, and would get no response. A minute or two later, I'd hear "Seasonal, call on line 1" and get no response. We can't even find the guy to let him know he has a call, 'cuz he's doing his usual rounds or whatever.


The customers can still access the occasional phone. I remember one woman with her shopping cart going to meet her husband down one aisle. This was one aisle that had a phone attached to the wall. While she had passed it, the phone rang. (It rings through out the entire store, and a cashier picks it up.) She picks it up, and I hear her say "Hello? Oh, I don't work here." and she just hangs up, and walks on with her cart. Funniest thing I've seen in months. I would have loved to have been the person on the receiving end of that.

[Mike Taylor]

In our case, the phones are by Cisco and have the names of the extensions on the readouts. I'm still annoyed by the fact that this loaf didn't bother taking the two extra steps over to the next section to get somebody.