Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What makes you think so? I never discuss with the customers the other's customer behavior. I never even had such idea in my head.
I think it is OK for people to get what they deserved. One more time - the fact that you are the customer doesn't give you any extra rights over others. The customer needs are going on the first place, right. I agree with that and i ready to do my best. But i don't understand why the store management don't want to kick out some customers because of their bad behavior. Instead of that they shake their hand and provide them some additional discounts as the compensation of their bad experience in the store. Now i am thinking that maybe that lady started all of this just to get some additional discount. Who knows. I don't understand why the employees don't have the right just to tell the customer "f**k off* in the polite form because of their rudeness? Something like this - "Madam, you are very rude to me so i am leaving you alone, have a good day".
The customer doesn't earn any rights over you, but at the end of the day, your employer wants their money in your register. If you do things to cause that not to happen, you will be fired. It's as simple as that. You have to try to do your best to get them to buy something or, at the very least, don't do anything to cause them not to buy anything. Like I said, unfortunately, this is the kind of job where people can get away with abusing you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anton_LF
I have to be very fluent, actually. Every day here, in Charlotte, i see a lot of people, who physically cannot speak the proper English with the proper pronunciation.
1) Some black Americans who have vary corrupted English. They can't speak clearly, every time i have struggle trying to understand them. Some of them even don't know how to call the English letters properly.
2) Some white Americans who have so called "southern accent" - sometimes it is hard to understand them too.
3) Latino people. Many of them don't speak English at all.
4) Indians - these people just ignore all pronunciation rules of English. They just don't care. So when the Indian person says "Pipe" it actually means "Five".
And this is not the problem of the accent. The problem is that somehow people just don't follow the language rules. It is not i was learning in University in Moscow.
That's regional American English for you. You're in the south, so people talk a certain way down there. If you come up here to New York, albeit speech isn't slurred that much, there are certain accents too.
All 4 of these problems come from you not having a strong enough command of the English language. Again, just something you're going to have to deal with.
Unfortunately, in US American culture, service workers are expected to wholly submit to the Almighty Customer and tolerate absolutely anything from them, short of performing sexually.
Having run a successful small business before, I've found that the customers that really forced me to exercise that mentality were almost never worth it. There was an inverse correlation between how unpleasant they were and how much they even spent.
I dumped those clients and focused on the remaining majority -- pleasant people who actually spent money. Profits improved considerably just from doing that.
So, if I were your manager, I'd tell that lady to find her flowers -- somewhere else. She can be someone else's problem.
But that's me. Most managers in this country will unwittingly lose dollars because they're obsessively licking the cents off of the soles of one nasty customer's feet.
Last edited by ohhwanderlust; 06-01-2015 at 05:11 PM..
And yet, another apologist for bad customer behavior.
Another example of the "Don't you know who I am" syndrome, complete with foul language, foot stamping and demands for discounts/free stuff for "imaginary stress". Customers like that should be escorted off the premises, until they can behave themselves in public.
Oh please, I'm not making excuses for bad behavior...though I do wonder if the OP isn't exaggerating just a little.
If you read my posts thoroughly, you would have seen the part where I said I used to work retail myself...so I know what it's like. That's why I'm very polite and courteous to clerks. I never yell or call someone a name or get upset. I don't even yell at people on the phone. It doesn't work. Plus, I'd be embarrassed to ever go back to that store.
OK...I'm not excusing this woman's behavior at ALL, but here's what you did wrong.
1.) She asked you a question. You said "I don't know." That's not an acceptable answer.
2.) You offered to get help for her "if you want." Um, DUH...if she didn't WANT help, she wouldn't have asked you a question.
I know English isn't your first language, but people here (especially in the South) would interpret your responses as rude and flippant, even if that's not how they were intended.
Here's what you should have said: "I'm sorry, I'm new here and that's not my department, but let me get someone who can answer all of your questions for you."
The reason companies care about customers is that none of you would have a job without customers. Customers are the reason you're in business. Customers are the reason you have a job, and your job is to service their needs.
That's no excuse for people to be rude for no good reason, but you also need to get into the "customer service mindset." You're not in that mindset.
Exactly! And it's not just in the south. Those answers would be considered rude and flippant to just about anyone standing on this side of the equation. Now I wouldn't have started screaming or anything, but I would have been pissed and I probably would have mentioned it to whoever finally was able to answer my very simple question. No one should be expected to know all the answers, but they should know how to find the answer out and that should be the first thing out of their money "I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that but I'll be right back with someone who does." Or something along those lines. Not "I don't know." "Yes." Then finally, like pulling teeth, offering to get someone who does know.
I'd flag you BigDGeek but I have to spread it around some first.
Of course, a native English speaker understands all of the "accents", just because he is automatically catching the whole idea of the sentence and automatically translates the wrong spoken words to the right ones. For the not native speaker it is not so easy. However, i spoke with some Americans here (not only my colleges, but also with people who are not working there) about all of these "accents" and all of them agreed with me, that yes, some Americans just don't speak proper English. Some of them told me that it is because of the slavery times here, in US. I didn't get how does it relate with the ability to speak properly, and not as a drunk-person. But OK. After month working there i already understand them better. So i am making some progress.
I think you people do not understand what i was trying to say. I am not talking about accents. I am talking about ability to speak properly. I will give you one more example.
One day i had a customer, one black man, who asked me to type name and other personal data. I asked him to tell me, how this name is spelled. So he started to tell me that name letter by letter. Right now i don't remember that name (it was very long and very strange name that i never heard before, it was clearly not British and not Latino name), but i remember, that i was very confused, when he called one of the letters as "ɑ:" (phonetic alphabet, you have this sound in the words like father). I told him "Sir, there is no letter "ɑ:" in English alphabet. Did you mean the letter A ("eɪ") or the letter I ("aɪ")?" And he was very upset of this and just repeated again and again. So finally i found that it was letter A.
I want you to pay attention - he was American, for whom English is the first language. When i came back home i told this story to one of the white american, who live close by. And he told me, that yes, some people just cannot speak the proper English.
So please, tell me, in which English-speaking country they have alphabet with the letter, that officially sounds like "ɑ:"?
But now i think that probably this man was speaking so indistinctly because as far i remember he had huge problem with his teeth. Basically all his teeth were made from iron. And this is not just one case. Periodically i see people here in Charlotte with iron teeth. I don't understand what happened with them, but apparently Charlotte needs more good dantist. It looks terrible.
Ok guys, i had made some conclusions from that incident and i will try to be more professional next time. There is absolutely no need to repeat again and again that i should not tell the customer that i don't know something. I think i admitted that in the beginning.
Everyone has an accent, some people speak with a very heavy accent. One woman I spoke to on the from from Alabama, I could barely understand what she was saying. It happens to everyone.
Everyone has an accent, some people speak with a very heavy accent. One woman I spoke to on the from from Alabama, I could barely understand what she was saying. It happens to everyone.
So you want to say that one American person can have problem with understanding another American person from another state?
I have to be very fluent, actually. Every day here, in Charlotte, i see a lot of people, who physically cannot speak the proper English with the proper pronunciation.
Get over this. Let it go.
This happens everywhere, every Country.
So what. You have the power as the second person who will respond how the rest of the conversation will go.
You can either be patient and helpful or create tension.
Have compassion for those that maybe were not raised as lucky as you were to have proper pronunciation.
I didn't talk back to her when she started all this craziness. The reason of that is because first of all if you want to have verbal confrontation or arguing with somebody, you have to be VERY fluent in that language. I saw a lot of foreigners in Moscow, who were trying to have verbal confrontation with Russians in some reason, and in all cases they looked pathetic, even if they were right. So i didn't want to repeat their mistakes. She is American, i am immigrant. So i realized my disadvantage here and that is why i didn't talk back. Second reason - i am not a person, who feels himself confident enough in such situations. I know myself, i am very sensitive and i stutter. So it would be even worse. This is a second reason. And finally, i just didn't see any reason to explain her something, because it was absolutely obvious for me, that this person is unreasonable.
I guess I'm not done. I wanted to respond to something that seemed directed at me. I took, from the above bold words, that you were hesitant to "work things out with her" because of a language barrier. Also from your posts, though you are very articulate, you misuse and leave out JUST AN OCCASIONAL word or two. Yes, I know Americans do, too. I'm sure I make dozens of mistakes every day and I've been called a grammar nazi.
Also, in re-reading, I see the other customers witnessed the rude customer and voluntarily took your side. I apologize for insinuating you were discussing problem customers with other customers.
Your last statement above is very perceptive. She was unreasonable. You should be confident because you are very bold in your writing. "Kill them with kindness" is a really good technique. Not everyone is going to like you and there are some prejudiced people in the world. By being super nice to them anyway it makes them appear foolish by throwing tantrums. Chalk it up to bad upbringing and lack of manners.
Also, you said you were moved around to different departments in the store every day. Maybe that was a chance for you to become more familiar with the inventory.
Sorry if I seemed hard on you. I was pretty sure you could take it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
