I went to Tesco (a large (perhaps too large ((brackets)) grocery retailer in the UK) a while back with some raspberries that hadn’t even lasted until I got home before going mouldy.
Literally, all I wanted to do was show the customer service desk lass the issue, show them my receipt, get a replacement, and fuck off to make the interaction as easy as possible for them.
An honest appraisal of what the problem was; some witty banter; and a general understanding of the “don’t be a dickhead” principle to frontline staff meant that she kept hold of me for ten minutes, noted down details and times and whatnot, and it ended up with a £10 apology gift card in the post - which in turn purchased a rather nice bottle of wine.
Where I’m going with this: I cannot fathom how people cannot be polite about issues like this. I’ve never understood how being a wanker to someone whose job it is to sort issues out somehow nets you a better end result. Perhaps the best advice I’m going to give my kids is to spend six months or a year of their teenage starts to their careers in an inbound call centre in a field they’re interested in - yes the job can grind you down and yes the pay sucks, but the basic life skills and soft people skills it teaches you is fucking invaluable.
tl;dr: solid advice, ask nicely, don’t be a twat, and you’ll probably end up with a net result better than you started.
Psythik@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You could probably get a replacement even if the jar is completely empty. I used to work customer service in a grocery store. One time a guy returned an empty wine bottle. I gave him a full refund. Why? Because they steal from their employees every single day. I’m just evening the plating field a bit.
papalonian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yup yup yup. Former service employee. You yell in my face and complain to my boss, I’ll give you the bare minimum of what you’ll consider as “what you want” for you to shut the hell up. Come up and level with me, treat me like a person that you are asking for help, I’m gonna do literally everything I can to get you what you’re asking for and more.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Hmm, i dunno, when people start yelling at me suddenly everything techy stops functioning oddly. Its not my fault the conputer mysteriously rebooted. I also cant be blamed that the wifi is down, so we only accept cash. But also I cant accept $100 bills. Also in order to accept any denomination above a 5 i have to use a counterfeit pen. Oh no! Our pen is gone, oof. Oh dang, you dont have 75$ in ones? Thats a real shame, mate. Also due to an issue with our security system were closing early today, in about 30 seconds.
Someone called in to corporate to falsely complain about me, so the next time they came in i told them they were banned. They complained to corporate about that too, so when corporate came to check on us. They proceeded to offer us a free rug cleaning service, but other than that had nothing to say. Im not sure if its just my current job or what, but I have a startling amount of power to completely shut down peoples ability to utilize my store. So be nice to workers, you never know how difficult they can make things for you. Also yknow just dont be a dick