How to Shop 101
Shopping guide for dummies who drive store associates insane.
This is for people who didn't have a retail mom to teach them about the respect they should provide to store associates.
♥︎ If you're not a shopping dummy, you can still read this if you want to, but you're already following shopping etiquette and humane decency, so you're a highly valuable and appropriated soul.
I don't care if people hate me, but there are a lot of people who seem to do a lot of things that are convenient to themselves, but inconvenient to others, and the excuse is employees are paid to deal with it, and who cares about other people when I need to care about myself? Employees get paid per hour to handle customer service, but they don't get paid per every customer or inconvenience that they serve, and people don't care about the multiple hats that one employee carries as they struggle to find time to serve every individual. In short, stop adding more bullshit on top of the bullshit that they're already working on.
Employees are expected to provide a fast service and employees cannot provide this service to everyone if people choose to be undecisive, slow, unconcise, and raigbaiting. You get mad, anxious, or impatient when you're not served fast, right? Here are some tips to make customer service more expendable and speedy for everyone:
Before you enter a store, make sure you have money to pay with. A lot of people go shopping for a bunch of odds and ends, and the cashier scans everything, and then it's time to pay, and…
★ Why have you forgotten your wallet?
★ Why didn't you transfer your funds to your card and get irritated at the cashier for not waiting cause your seconds turned into minutes?
★ Why do you have to go back to your car?
★ Why did you depend on your battery/wifi?
★ Always check your pockets and wallet before you enter the store.
★ Always have the physical card on you or have cash as a back up option.
★ Always have a concrete budget and add some extra money just in case.
If you have a budget, price check your items using the price scanners in the store.
★ Cashiers can't get the manager to come process multiple voids when the manager is busy, so limit your returns to zero if possible or else you'll be responsible for holding up the line, and you'll be tortured to wait or forgo your purchases.
★ You have a calculator on your phone and you can buy an old fashioned one. Learn how to utilize math. I hear some people don't even know how to count cash and change.
★ Don't complain about the prices as if customer service people don't already wish that things were free. Getting snippy with a cashier is not going to get you a discount, so save your energy.
★ Stop asking cashiers for the prices. Most times they don't even know themselves cause they're not informed of price or catalog changes. They roll with the flow and only know the prices of things that they've bought before or were interested in buying. Price checking scanners exist for that reason.
Before entering a line, ensure that you're buying everything that is in your cart.
★ Stop making changes when the cashier is ringing up your stuff. That makes you a confusing customer and cashiers have to be careful because some of you change your mind after something is scanned. A cashier being careful means a cashier has to scan slow and correct your mistakes, holding up the line in the process.
★ If you want to put something back, don't think about getting into the line. The line is for people who have finalized their purchases, so your undecisiveness is not welcomed.
★ Don't fill an entire cart to the brim and then not buy anything. That's a huge mess that cashiers have to clean. A huge mess that someone else made because they had the fun ideal of shopping, didn't want to pay, and decided to make someone else do the chore of returning everything.
Don't ask what the total is if you're buying one to a couple things that are extremely cheap and you have a $20-100 bill in your hand.
★ You can read the total on your receipt. You don't need the total if money is not your problem.
★ That huge bill on a short order makes every customer associate in the world pissed. We don't have a lot of cash in our register.
★ If we say “No cash back.”, but the card system has a cash back screen, don't ask us if we still have cash back because the answer is we have no control of the screen.
Don't complain about a past experience where you paid $40 to a cashier that doesn't remember a person complaining about having to pay $40, even if they had a shift that day. It was likely another cashier and you're making the current cashier get anxious to the point where they believe they made a mistake, but it's just you being irratingly pushy on their sleep deprived day.
★ A very specific story for a generalized concept that happens often. Shut up if that type of person is you, cause nobody is getting free stuff unless the cashier feels generous.
If you require assistance, whoever is fast gets served first.
★ A cashier shouldn't have to ask a customer 5-7 times what they need help with. If a customer can't communicate with the cashier, the cashier can't help you. It's not like they know how to help you and are refusing to provide service.
★ Every cashier has a patience limit before a supervisor/manager gets annoyed that nobody is at the register. If you want help, you need to not play mind games and then get upset when a cashier refuses to help you because they have other people to serve, stating that you want to complain to a manager or the customer is always right.
Whoever created, “The customer is always right.” was a narcissist. So many customers turn me into Sherlock Holmes, an INTP who is tired of idiots. If you're always right, then why is it that cashiers have to correct customers so many times?
★ Yes, I voided your items that you chose to put as a separate order last second.
★ No, the red sticker is not a discount and I told you that 10 minutes ago.
★ Girlll, I scanned your three items that you think are not yours because I touched an item of someone else's order that is too close to yours all the while you're not paying attention to the belt or register.
★ Why can't cashiers have an attitude that says, “I don't want to work on days where I was called in and neglect my soul, yet you never answer to my “How are you?” after I answered yours because you get angry when I don't answer?”
★ Why do cashiers have to bug a manager to come repeat store policy to you as if the store policy is wrong when a cashier tells you?
Stop conversing with people at the belt and pay attention to your order.
★ A lot of times, a customer gets snippy at a cashier because they weren't paying attention to what they can afford from their budget, if they wanted separated orders, and/or if they accidentally placed their order with someone else's.
★ Stop blaming the cashier instead of taking accountability, expecting the cashier to know shit unseen from the naked eye, whilst you don't tell them before the mistake is made.
Cashiers are human, so why do you gossip about their attitude to avoid yours?
★ Some cashiers are empaths capable of reflecting your energy. Do you hate yourself?
★ Some cashiers have RBF. Who are you to tell them to control their face when they can't?
★ Some cashiers have a bad existence. Are you going to add to the pile or be kind?
★ Do you want a robot to serve you instead? We all have a robot mode system, with monotonous tone, a dead expression, and a lack of humane communication.
Learn what shopping etiquette is.
★ There shouldn't be a tornado of carts when cashiers are too busy with lines to handle the mess, and customers take a glance and add their cart to the mess. If you have the energy to place your cart into a mess, you have the energy to place it where it really belongs.
★ If you make a mess, don't expect janitors to be able to clean it. There's more of you than there are of them, so just imagine how many other messes they're cleaning at the moment and the many more they have to clean. If you throw your own trash on the ground, clean it. If something fell out of your cart, pick it up and put it back in.
★ Control your kids. The toy aisle is one of the messiest places in the store. Your children shouldn't be touching anything unless you're buying it. My mom always told me off if I touched something she had no plans on paying for and the reason will save you money in many markets + stores.
★ Your budget is your personal responsibility. Don't get snippy at a cashier or expect free stuff when you miscalculated it. Don't make it seem like the cashier is doing their job horribly by saying that they're over charging you when they have no control of the prices.
★ Don't ask people for charity. There are churches and food banks in the world that you can go to. If you ask for charity, you're panhandling someone inside an establishment, which can be considered illegal or something that goes against store policy, making you banned from the premises.
★ If you bought something and you lost it, you are responsible for not having your product, and you cannot blame an employee or the store. It is highly despicable to place someone's job on the line for your own casualty caused by yourself.
★ If you need help, don't scream or yell at employees. Most likely, they will not help you to make you regret your behavior, hoping that you'll ask kindly next time. If they do help you despite you shouting, they're very empathizing and kind souls.
★ If a store doesn't have something in stock, don't act like the store has it in the back or the employee didn't tell you that they didn't have it in stock. It's annoying to have to tell someone multiple times that the store doesn't have it. Cashiers are not magicians. Boohoo on your ego if you're going to keep asking anyway and then question if the employee knows what you're talking about.
★ When you enter the store, explore the aisles. The cashiers don't know the entire store themselves, but they have a basic knowledge of some aisles, like the food, toys, and medicine section.
★ If you want to return something from your cart, don't just leave it anywhere. Put it back where it belongs
~ I keep accidentally almost stealing these and returning them, which is why I have a picture of a Stop and Shop scanner outside. I should have taken a picture of a shopping cart for the content. ~
This is the end for now, but I'll probably edit it.
☕️ If you desire to seek more of my world, you can join it with a click of a button. My world is yours to read and travel. 📖
Haha excellent advice. Hope you are doing well! We’ve missed you!
I’d ask how the new job is but I’ve got a feeling..