Saturday 23 April 2016

What Is The World Coming To!

I'm enjoying my time working at the charity shop, but I've been very surprised at the behaviour of some of the customers over the last couple of weeks and at the number of people who complain needlessly.

I don't mean genuine complaints, where there are genuine grounds for complaint.  I mean unnecessary complaints, that just waste time and sap your energy and positivity.  Are we a nation of complainers or are people just rude or have nothing better to do?

As a non-paid volunteer or intern, you do your best and try to be polite and friendly to people, and you would think that this would be enough.  But no, some people must think that they are entering Claridges when they come into the shop.

As the manager succinctly put it the other day, people expect exceptional customer service everywhere these days, and volunteers and interns are trained on the job, without degrees in customer service or lots of corporate training courses and of course can't always meet today's exceptionally high expectations.

A small example is that being completely new to working with a till, I do sometimes make mistakes and take a little longer to carry out a transaction whilst I'm training.  It really doesn't help aide my confidence when a customer is tutting and looking disgruntled that the transaction doesn't take just two seconds. Don't people realise that everyone has to learn sometime.

I've also heard tales of unnecessary aggression towards staff which concerns me, not to mention shop lifting from the charity shop.  I know it goes on everywhere and why should we be any different, and yes, some people are probably desperate and we are a charity after all, but really?

Every shift I am ever more surprised by things that happen in the shop. If this is a microcosm of the world outside our home, I'm quite pleased that I've been cocooned from it all this time, although I realise that this is not necessarily a good thing.  I feel like Kimmie Schmidt coming out of a bunker after 15 years and finding the world changed beyond all recognition.

I think I'm just a little shocked and it will subside, as I get used to working there a little more. It's taking me a while to readjust, and I do find it very tiring at times, but hopefully I'll get used to dealing with the more difficult customers eventually.  I'm sure it will become easier with practice.

Having had this little rant, please don't misunderstand, the vast majority of the customers are lovely, it's just the few that make me wonder what I've let myself in for.

8 comments:

  1. Welcome to the charity shop world!

    Don't take it personally, if it wasn't you learning the till it would be something else. Some people just love to whinge and feel superior. Someone complained to me recently that the shop was too tidy, you can't win them all.

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    1. I like that. I must remember to mess it up a little!

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  2. Oh dear - please don't take any notice - a few tuts are nothing to worry about - you should have worked front desk with me at the council offices in the '90's - now that was an education in how horrible people could be (but there was also the lovely tenants too) I once had a dead rat thrown at me! (Accompanied with a few choice words cause it had got to be the councils fault that shed got rats - nothing to do with her husbands pigeons) so if someone's tutting at you - just smile ever so sweetly at them and kill them with kindness - then call them all the so and so's under your breath when they walk out of the shop - you're doing well xx

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    1. Thanks Trudie, my pathetic niggles must seem very silly compared with what you have had to face in your working career. I've been reading your posts and been truly shocked (but also not in many ways) at the situations you've had to handle. I admire your tenacity and strength of character in safe guarding precious social resources.

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  3. Keep smiling. You have manners even if some of your customers don't.
    xx

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    1. Thanks Mum, I'm sure I'll get a handle on it before long.

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  4. I sometimes think people complain just for the sake of complaining.

    Take a deep breath and just continue on as you normally would. Good behavior is always the best way to beat the complainers at their own game.

    God bless.

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