I'm In A HURRY!

[Retail Associate]

My store recently clearanced out all their junk jewelry and have a new line which is outrageously priced. I'm talking simple chains for over $500.00! Rings near $3,000.00. It's really bad, especially for this depressed area. No one has much disposable income in Michigan. Needless to say, we don't sell much and I'm hoping the jewelry dept will cease to exist soon.

Anyhow, this pricey jewelry does not display any prices. The only way for an SC to know the cost of an item is for us lowly peons to open the cases which have 2 locks on each. It's time-consuming and a real PITA!

Tonight I was showing one customer some watches. She didn't like the ones she looked at in the first case so we had to move on to a second case. This meant unlocking 2 locks, show her watches, lock the 2 locks back up, move to next case, unlock 2 locks...you get the picture.

During this most enjoyable scenario, an impatient SC approaches and starts with:

"Excuse me."

Me: Ignore her...she will wait her turn.

Impatient SC: "Excuse me."

Me: Don't you see me ignoring you bitch?

Impatient SC: "Excuse me."

Me: ...with my index finger in the air..."I'll be with you when I'm finished here."

She finally shut up for a bit but then she noticed that the woman I was helping had a cart full of groceries.

Impatient SC to first woman: "Are you planning on ringing all those groceries up here?"

First Woman: "No. They don't ring groceries at the jewelry counter. I'm just buying a watch."

I finished up with the woman looking at watches then asked the Impatient SC what she wanted to look at.

Impatient SC: "I'd like to buy a sterling silver chain for my daughter. I'm rushed for time so if you could please hurry I'd appreciate it."

Me: oh...wrong thing to say. "If you're in a hurry Meijer isn't the place to come, especially on a Saturday. I'm covering 7 depts and we never have enough help. Anytime you come here you will more than likely have to wait a while to be served."

I hate people who don't want to wait their turn. Do they really think I give a rat's ass if they're in a hurry? Once they express their need for speed, I automatically go into slo-mo!

[crazydaisy]

I feel your pain! In my store, we only have one till (we used to have two but Head Office decided we didn;t need them both) and so we're well used to the 'I'm in a hurry' brigade.
To add to that, we're short staffed right now, and often there is only one person on the floor, when the other is at lunch, and so many people seem to want me all at the same time.
I'm tempted to stand there and shout 'I have ONE PAIR of hands!'

[I See Stupid People]

If you're in a hurry Meijer isn't the place to come, especially on a Saturday

Meijer has 3K jewelry now? Dang! Yeah, I don't know anyone here in the mitten state that's gonna be buying that anytime soon.

Anyway, I love Meijer, but only at the time of day I go, which is before the sun comes up. I hate crowds but do love the one stop shopping. Sure I have to dodge the floor polishers and random stacks of cardboard boxes, but I don't care!

[GayleShy]

GAH! I hate it when people come through my line with a whole cartful of stuff, then tell me how much of a hurry they're in and how they have to be at work in ten minutes. I just want to tell them "guess what, we're open until midnight, you have to go to work at eight in the morning. I'm more than willing to bet you could have done your shopping after the fact." Usually I simply nod, but will not change my pace. If I go too fast it flusters me and I end up screwing up more anyway. A wait at customer service would be even longer.

And yes, I have actually told a customer that I didn't have three arms. She got pissed off and complained to a CSM about it. I guess she'd "never been insulted at this place in all the years she'd been coming here." Stupid entitlement whore. She needed to be put in her place, I swear to God. Besdies, by complaining about me she made herself even later and my CSM just thought the way she was acting was funny.

[ArenaBoy]

No one has much disposable income in Michigan.

Unless you live in Oakland County, which is where all my VIP SCs flock from. But 3K jewelry at Mejier? Wow!

[CherryB]

During this most enjoyable scenario, an impatient SC approaches and starts with:

"Excuse me."

Me: Ignore her...she will wait her turn.

Impatient SC: "Excuse me."

Me: Don't you see me ignoring you bitch?

Impatient SC: "Excuse me."

Whatever happened to acknowledging the waiting customer with a smile and "Hi. I will be with you in a moment."

Now I truly understand how SC's are, I worked retail for 25 years and I still work with the public, but it is rude and unprofessional not to acknowledge and greet a waiting customer. It cuts both ways. How many times have you been a customer in a store needing service, and you have been treated shabbily by someone ? Not a pleasant experience.

Just my take on the view from both sides of the counter.

[powerboy]

Whatever happened to acknowledging the waiting customer with a smile and "Hi. I will be with you in a moment."

Now I truly understand how SC's are, I worked retail for 25 years and I still work with the public, but it is rude and unprofessional not to acknowledge and greet a waiting customer. It cuts both ways. How many times have you been a customer in a store needing service, and you have been treated shabbily by someone ? Not a pleasant experience.

Just my take on the view from both sides of the counter.

That is exactly what I was going to type. It does work both ways. So in my opinion, you were the SE. Even with you being busy, you shouldn't try to ignore anyone. Yeah I get frustrated at work also, but I am still nice to the customers, because of them, they help pay the bills, you know what I mean?

[georgiab]

First it is rude to interrupt ANYONE!! Secondly it is even more rude to question another customer about their purchases and thirdly If you are in that big of a hurry you should have set aside enough time to shop!! That's all I am saying!

[Anthony K. S.]

Originally Posted by CherryB :

How many times have you been a customer in a store needing service, and you have been treated shabbily by someone ? Not a pleasant experience.

It depends on what you mean. Are you asking . . .

"How many times have you been a customer in a store needing service, asked politely for help, and was treated shabbily by an employee?"

Or are you asking . . .

"How many times have you been a customer in a store needing service, asked rudely for help, and was treated shabbily by an employee?"


I could be wrong, of course, CherryB, but . . . I have a very strong feeling that the experiences you are referring to are of being a polite customer and getting treated poorly in return.

If so, then I truly believe that you are comparing apples and oranges here.


What, exactly, constitutes "rude" behavior is, to some extent, a matter of opinion, of course.

But I truly believe that interrupting an employee in the middle of helping another customer is inherently rude and disrespectful, both to the employee and to the other customer.

(Sometimes, however, it might be unavoidable. If, for whatever reason, you absolutely need to buy something in a store immediately and you simply can't wait your turn or come back later . . .

Well, I would argue that in that case, the appropriate course of action would be to apologize to both the employee and the customer, as you are interrupting them :

"I'm very sorry for interrupting here, but I really need help right now, and I just can't wait. I really am sorry, but if you could please . . ."

If a customer did that, then it would be different, because the customer is at least acknowledging that he/she is doing something rude and is apologizing for it, but explaining that it's simply unavoidable.)

Anyway, if a customer behaves rudely, and the employee treats the customer rudely in return . . .

You could say that the employee was still at fault, because the employee should not have been rude to the customer, even if the customer arguably deserved it. (I wouldn't really agree with that position, frankly, but that's not the point.)

But it would surely not be the same thing as an employee being rude to a customer who is politely asking for help, or otherwise a customer who gave the employee no provocation at all to be rude.


Personally . . . If I ever treated somebody rudely and got treated rudely in return, then I would view the situation as entirely my own fault.

In my view, when you are dealing with people in every day life . . . What you give is what you are entitled to get back. If you are rude to people, then you have no grounds to complain about being treated rudely in return.

Some may disagree, but I don't believe that the fact that you're a customer and the other person is an employee changes anything. Being a customer does not entitle you to receive courtesy in exchange for rudeness.

Just my two cents. (If it's even worth that much. )

[Retail Associate]

Whatever happened to acknowledging the waiting customer with a smile and "Hi. I will be with you in a moment."

The moment you acknowledge someone who absolutely refuses to wait their turn, they take right over. It's not as if she doesn't know that waiting is part of the shopping experience. The woman could clearly see that I was busy with another customer. She was not only rude to me, but to the customer who was there first.

Why must anyone reward rudeness with a smile? That's just reinforcing their 'entitlement' attitude. Sorry, but they will wait their turn. That's just the way it is and people need to deal with it.

How many times have you been a customer in a store needing service, and you have been treated shabbily by someone ? Not a pleasant experience.

I honestly can't recall a time when I've been treated shabbily by someone while shopping. Maybe it's because I behave like an adult and don't treat others shabbily first.

Oh BTW, I did smile and acknowledge the impatient SC when she first arrived at the jewelry counter...before she started getting pushy.

[CherryB]

Oh BTW, I did smile and acknowledge the impatient SC when she first arrived at the jewelry counter...before she started getting pushy.

You didn't put that in your original post. You posted about "ignoring the bitch"

That lil detail changes everything.

[Format C]

One time, I dealt with a rude student by helping another person ahead of him and telling him I would be with him quickly. He got the message.

[Chanlin]

I'm going to argue both sides of the fence for this one. I will state IMO that I think the OP was rude for ignoring the customer. This is unacceptable from any standpoint.

While the OP did say that they ignored the customer which is rude, the customer was interrupting the OP and a customer they were already helping. This in turn is also rude.

Now to be fair here by the terms of the post we can't say who was rude first. The SC in question did say excuse me but we did not get any details on the tone of voice. If “Excuse Me” was said politely, then the OP was being rude by ignoring her from the start. However, if the customer said “Excuse Me” in that tone of voice that I'm sure we here at CS have come to know and love then the customer was in the wrong. Since these details weren't really provided we have no way of knowing who was being rude first.

All of these considerations do not change the fact that both parties were rude to one another eventually. Who was rude first really changes nothing. Now one may cite the golden rule, do unto others..... but this is not mutually exclusive. It is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” There is not clause in there that says unless others are being rude to you. Who was rude first really means nothing, it was unprofessional to just ignore the customer after she said 'excuse me' despite the tone of voice. Now if she was being polite in her tone and she was ignored then the OP was definitely in the wrong for at least not looking up right away to at least say “I will be right with you sir/ma'am.” Again, in this case the customer even would have some cause to be a little upset for being mistreated. Now, if the customer was being rude from the start with her tone then she is being an entitlement whore, but that still does not excuse the OP from just ignoring her.

To be fair here, I'm sure we've all been in that situation where we are annoyed and simply don't think about our actions, we might be rude without intending to be so. I think this in part is where some SC's and even some SE's, as was put by CherryB, originate from.

So my 2 cents, both sides were being rude, but who exactly was in the wrong is unclear. I do however have to agree with CherryB one one point, ignoring a customer outright, regardless of their attitude is wrong.

[HALFHUMANHALFZOMBIE]

So I don't care

I just ignore people when they say that they are in a hurry. If people are such idiots and are in a hurry they would shut up about it because our co-workers will just go slow on purpose to annoy them anyways. It's annoying when people want a 20 cent price check and they are in a hurry. I guess some people find it hard to make a dime these days if they want to hold up their hurried time over 20 cents.

[myswtghst]

Echoing the Wow. Meijer sells stuff that expensive? Yeesh. Hardly anyone I know in the mitten state can afford that, and the ones who can, don't shop at Meijer.

And I know the feeling, when people rush. The techs I deal with don't seem to understand that talking as fast as they can and throwing all the info at me at once is only going to slow me down, and make the whole thing take longer when I make you repeat what you just said. I can type very quickly, and I'm very efficient at my job, but you have help me out and be realistic.

For the record, going into Meijer mid-day on a weekend and expecting to be served immediately is not realistic. And I agree with the OP: if she had given the interrupting bitch much more than a smile, the woman would have done her best to jump in and make herself at home, instead of waiting her turn.