SimplyNoah.com

The customer is always right, according to Harry Gordon Selfridge who originally coined the phrase but I disagree and though I will go out of my way to help a customer and make their shopping experience better if I can, a customer is not always right. Humans are not always right. If the customers had a code to follow, some expectations, it would make things a lot easier in checkout.

During a shift of work, I have plenty of customers come through my checkout lane. The majority of my customers, actually most of my customers are kind and there is no conflict of any sort. However, every one hundred customer I’d estimate, maybe more, it’s as if there must be a rude or unruly one. This customer does one or more things to annoy me, creating my own list of pet peeves related to shoppers.

The first type of difficult customer is not so much rude as they are unprepared or unintentionally making checkout difficult. This happens a lot more often than one in one hundred people, a customer will not place a divider on the belt to divide their products from another customers. Lately I have adapted to noticing this more often before disaster but if I am not to know whose items are which I will continue to scan the order and onto the other customer’s items as long as there is no divider. Some people think that a small space in-between orders is fine, well their wrong and it’s not always noticeable. If I turn away to bag items, the belt will remove the gap and continue to push items forward. When I begin scanning more products, the customer who did not place the divider will say something like; “No, that’s mine!” or the other customer who is currently checking out will say something along the lines of; “That’s not mine!” I then must go through the process of voiding the items off the order which takes additional time. Time is essential if I do not want to be backed up with too many people in my lane.

 There is still much to be said about the first type of a difficult customer. Another scenario would be that Person #1 is unloading their cart at the end of the belt instead of the beginning, to understand this more clearly, they are placing the items closer to me rather than at the start of the belt farthest to me. Person #2 begins unloading from the beginning of the belt (farthest from me) while Person #1 is still placing items onto the belt. Now if I’ve explained it well enough, you can image what happens here; A merger of items. This can make checking out very difficult, not to mention the customers become angry with me, not each other. I am always to blame to them, though this scenario it’s a debate as to which customer is wrong.

The second type of difficult customer is the person with too many coupons. I’ve taken countless coupons at my register but there are some people who have so much, it slows down everyone but that specifically, does not bother me at all. The difficultly of the second type is when a lot or most of the coupons do not work. It as if the some people do not even read the coupons they are handing me.

I must tell them why this coupon isn’t working and there can be so many reasons why. Such as, the coupon does not apply for that variety, size, or you need to buy two of these products.

Sometimes a customer will throw a bunch of coupons within their stack of coupons that apply to items they didn’t even purchase! I usually get the response; “Oh! I didn’t get that today did I? I’ll just get it next time.” Another response would be; “Oops. I didn’t mean to give you that one.” The worst of the second type is when they challenge each coupon, then I have to call managers and it really does hold up the line. Honestly I understand where most of these customers are coming from, I want to save money too but at least read the coupon and make sure it’s not expired, whether it’s for buying two or more, or that it’s the right brand before handing it to me.

The worst and final type of difficult customer that I will discuss is the rude ones. They get angry at me, the cashier, at problems that I have nothing to do with, this can be combination of the previous types I’ve wrote about. Most will get angry if the price of an item is not right but actually is right, if the mistake is on our part and them item scans higher, the company I work with will give the item to them for free. When they are wrong they will take it out on me. I don’t mark the prices on items; I don’t make the coupons and their precise specifications. I have to call supervisors for certain cases; this upsets a rude customer even more. There are just some things that I can’t do as a cashier but the customer expects it from me. I try my best to solve the problem but there is only so much I can do.

There will always be difficult customers and a person that has to deal with that difficult customer. I don’t hold grudges against my customers for getting angry, and I never have any harsh personal thoughts about them. I keep my cool at all times and try to help. At the end of the day, my slate is clean and the cycle starts over again but I can expect to be annoyed by these pet peeves frequently. I just hope that regular difficult customer doesn’t start to enjoy causing trouble in my lane, and visit me each time they can for the fun of it. I hope that one day every customer will have a better understanding of how things at retail store work, not get so angry with the staff, and to make it easier on us as we’ve made it for them.

I should not be required to explain the change again; if you have regularly viewed my website you would know by now that it changes a lot. I still cannot promise you that will stop however; I can say that the use of Wordpress as a main site engine will remain for some time.

I’ve decided it was friendlier to me than managing everything manually, and now that I have less time on my hands than ever, it is a beautiful thing. Of course, I was using it to run one of my many blogs in the past, the database of that was lost when my server was down. So it’s time for a new start… again.

My blog entries were not the only thing lost. The recent forum topics and posts are gone as well and considering I did not make a backup in less than 2 weeks that the server went down, they are unrecoverable. My new purpose of SimplyNoah.com is to share some of my recent programming work as well as other projects with friends and family. It is also a website which interests me, so it will contain subjects of that of which is me, like always. I don’t plan on posting any of my old blog entries; I actually prefer it that way because I desire more privacy in these recent times.

Thankfully I’ve got this lovely Wordpress theme (pixel) from SamK to get me started on the renewed website of mine. I was working on my own theme but as you can see here, there is still work to be done.

-Noah