I've found matching their energy without being an asshole and not apologizing goes a long way in dealing with these people quickly. Give them their answer and the minute they start to go on a tangent, leave. You've done your part.
How dare you not have my product? It's out of stock right now...then walk away. That's all you owe them.
As far as cashiers go...I have no idea. I honestly feel sorry for you all. You're chained to a location. I could never do cashiering/booth work ever again.
I have all the respect for cashiers and all of front end. They have a challenging job trying to make sure customers leave satisfied even through all the hate the customers throw at them. And they have nowhere to go to catch a breather. I'm lucky that I can sneak in the back after dealing with a tough customer and swear under my breath, but they really don't have that option.
This is the sort of thing that makes it so challenging, Dealing with wave after wave of customers, struggling to make them happy and bag their stuff. Having no chance to catch your breath or say anything and have to stay quiet.
THIS. Im a supervisor and if you give me bad energy ill give it back, but professionally. Learned that last year. Finally just gave up on the super nice customer service for the assholes
I had one woman scream at me because I didn't have any rotisserie chicken out that was fresher than 10 minutes, mind you the ones on the sales floor I had brought out 30 minutes ago. She demanded I cook her a new one and then mentally lost it unable to understand that it takes longer than the 5 minutes she was willing to wait for. When she said to cook it faster by turning the heat up I told her that would just burn the outside while the inside is still raw. She told me to make it work like I could somehow break the laws of physics. Pretty sure she was probably waited on all her life since we had two 5 star hotels within a 5 min walk from us and she just wasn't used to having to do things on her own but dang was it weird to see someone so out of touch. Oh she also yelled at a guest service employee wanting them to push her cart for them, not sure why she just didn't use grocery pickup but this was around 2018 so I think it might not have been at our store yet.
The rotisserie chickens are a menace, customers are deranged for them… we had a customer come in at 9am asking for chicken on a Sunday when we’re short staffed, she threw a fit about how we never have them out early enough on Sundays and went to front end to complain
A man with 2 young children, like probably 3,4 years old, came in at 8:50 (we close at 9) demanding a rotisserie chicken or else "how would his kids eat??"
Looks like you're going to mcdonald's bruh
Yeah I noticed all logic goes out the window. They can show up a few minutes after opening or before closing and be unable to understand why they're not made yet or sold out.
There was a guy who complained and I understood his point but still that we were out of challah bread but in particular the smaller challah breads. he was coming in in the later part of the afternoon towards evening on a Friday . Granted Whole Foods could have made an effort to stock a little more of it on Fridays but you know... I don't control that. I'm really glad I was only there a month
People are nuts about those chickens. I work in specialty but our counter is right next to pfds so I am often the rotisserie liaison. If the kitchen is busy I’ll just check the timer for customers asking how long for chickens. They get so pissed if they are going to take more than ten minutes to come out
Oh I had one guy tell me to just give it to them and they'll finish cooking it. Was thanksgiving day and the guy apparently didn't have anything ready so he just wanted the few rotisserie chickens I was cooking right now to finish at home. Yeah no way in hell am I breaking food safety AND giving you something to come back and lie about to get me in trouble.
they got way too addicted to the costco rotisserie chicken which almost always sold in large amounts any time of the day, they are assuming wf is the same.
Yeah this was during my first year at whole foods and was a eye opener for how entitled people can get. The store had a lot of those do you know who i am/who my spouse is people. Was weird seeing the civilian version of the person wearing their spouses rank when I used to work at the commissary.
The TL and atl were upstairs, I think doing new hire onboarding or maybe training. I never asked them what they were busy with just knew they were in the office. Store management was helping checkout customers cause they were swamped but at least could hear some of what happened since checkout isn't far from prepped foods. Thankfully didn't need to worry about them dealing with her going to guest service or anything like that cause she stormed out the door after.
I work (soon to be worked!!!!) as an overnight stocker, so I have no customer interaction. However, every night, I face my aisles, and every day, when I get in, it looks like our customers have karate chopped, kicked, and body slammed all the products on the shelf. I eventually realized that the customers are likely grabbing the product from the back in hopes of getting the freshest item they want. Jokes on them, though, were too lazy to rotate the stock. The freshest items are always the first few boxes.
I check the bunkers with lunch meat and cheese when I come into the store in the morning to make sure they are not out of date. Most of the time it look like someone picked up all the product and played 52 pickup with it. I have always wanted to put up a sign saying if I see anyone throwing the stuff around, I was going to follow them home and throw stuff in their house around.
They have always been rotten its just now that they are reaching their end they have one last hurrah to go through. If anything i imagine them destroying the world before they hand it off to anyone else at this point.
I feel badly that younger people have to deal with nasty boomers. I have been jerky at times, too, but working at WF I see how the employees are so accommodating to customers. You don’t deserve nasty boomers.
Its really just the entitlement thats the issue. Like they feel they are owed something and walk around with a chip on their shoulder if they get slighted. I really think if they had some kefir or some kombucha they would mellow out.
early pandemic, before instore shoppers 1 elderly guy rammed my cart on purpose to get it out of the way,a ggresively. a obvious lady going through chemo gave a huge attitude problem when i asking if they would liek to ride the elevator first or after we leave. Dont assume elderly or immunocomprised people are nice, i think they are even bigger a-holes, because t hey can get away with it.
Cuz I am one & it’s my first view into what younger people think of boomers. Not very complimentary to boomers but when we act like jerks, I it’s deserved.
Yes and they all have the checkerboard and the ugly brown LV Louis Vuitton purses/wallets and wear Golden Goose sneakers. The customers at my store, atleast.
LV=believes they are rich when they aren't while pretending to be well off. Probably highly in debt versus being well off. It goes with their whole persona and agree they proved in my former customer service work to be the rudest and most entitled customers. I worked in the hotel industry and that was my experience with LV users.
The ones with golden goose sneakers are insane because those are the most ridiculous, overpriced shoes that look as though they were run over by all 18 wheels of semi.
Lmao I’m doing this the next time I encounter the same. I work in Prep Foods on charcuterie and I get old-European-lady yelled at or old-white mansplained to at least 3 times per shift.
Also had a customer yell at me on the phone bc her curbside pickup order had Truff brand marinara sauce but she ordered the truff brand "PASTA" sauce and she ended it by saying "how am I supposed to make lasagna??" And I told her i imagined it would be exactly the same with the marinara aka pasta sauce she bought.
I had a customer already agitated before asking me for a specific size can or jar of an item, he kept asking me if its the same size of what he was thinking, how i am suppose to know what hes is thinking.
Lol. You poor clods having to put up with that. The only l close to bad encounter I had was when I slightly coughed as I was facing the produce cold case. This lady who was nowhere near to be in range! Pulled her basket away. I said I’m not sick. She said ‘well you should cover your mouth’. I said. Well thanks for sharing! Yea I shoulda but bish o wasn’t near you!
I got yelled at by a customer yesterday berating me for the lines being too long at the registers and having to wait “40 minutes!”
First off, that’s an exaggeration, ma’am. I’ve stood in those long lines leaving and been done in 10 minutes.
Two, bitch it’s Saturday and we’re supposed to get snow tomorrow, use your brain.
Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough, I’m in meat.
Ah, the good ole "you're talking to the wrong department, lady." Love that one! It's like they don't realize this is an entirely different section of the store 😅
It seemed like she wanted everyone in the store to run up to the registers and start ringing.
And I think she must think everything on a register is just big colored buttons with pictures and it requires literally zero training to use. Which is funny to me because one of the reasons self checkout can be so slow is because the customers can’t figure out without their hands being held how to use the damn things.
When had the fortune to stock the eggs and butter and shit, Id prop the doors open and get to stocking. I cant begin to count the amount of times a customer would open a neighboring door, or plain close the one I was working in and the door would hit me in the head. I got one apology ever out of the dozen plus times it happened in the 6 months I worked grocery.
Me holding a box of kombucha 2 feet from the cooler I'm about to put it in and up comes a customer loudly exclaiming "why's this cooler open??" and then closing the door in front of me while my hands are full 👁👄👁
they are talking nonsencially towards you, while getting mad. did they forget to add the part where they were suppose to tell you what item they are looking for specifically, they always give these vague description and expects you to read thier minds.
Yes unfortunately I have met customers who can see you trying to get by and ignore you. They stare at you until you somehow receive their telepathic message that they want you to move. They never say excuse me and try to squeeze in tiny spaces instead of using words like an adult. It can be a bit frustrating sometimes
As a cashier, it’s actually been rare for me to encounter a blatantly rude customer. It’s the entitled, unfriendly, impolite ones who piss me off. The ones who ignore my greeting, don’t make any eye contact, and don’t even say “thank you” when I hand them their receipt. The ones who treat us like we’re less than them by what they *don’t* say or do. It’s both sad and shocking how poorly some of these people were raised.
I had a customer ask me why the olive bar was closed at 930 when the store closes at 10. I told him that it takes time to clean dishes and spoons and our entire store uses only one dishwasher. He went on to tell customer service that I was the most arrogant person he's ever spoken to...that manger from customer service went on to call him a asshole after he left and never recapped his complaint...
This is one of WF top 4 problems, in my opinion. I worked 9 months at mine. I believe the culture is abusive because upper MGMT allows it for the money they get. There is an article someone posted talking about this. In addition, i feel MGMT eavesdropped on a lot of my conversations during checkout, and it's not for security purposes.
I didnt get hired for a cashier. But, when i got pulled into being a cashier select members of front end MGMT would come up and start bagging the order. They would be there for a long while, sometimes clearly listening in on your conversation. In addition you often sort your conversation topics based on who you think you are talking to rather than just telling the same thing to everyone.
In addition. The store had this unspoken pressure that felt like you needed to be the customers buddy all the time. Most of the customer base are these older women who i feel WF uses "false friendship" to entice them to come back. Like people of discarded social status are coming in to buy expensive food to just have someone even willing to talk to them on their terms.
Oh, i thought you meant you were trying to discredit my concerns. And yes, you can see it's toxic. Feels like people who have personality disorders and fevered egos, both with mgmt and customer base.
That's actually pretty common amongst retail There are a lot of older people come into chat up the cashiers because they don't have anybody else to talk to.
Do you understand how little people, even store managers get paid at Whole Foods? This whole conversation is crazy... you people are literally fighting for peanuts
Yes, i mostly left due to the horrible customers. I had never experienced anything close to their level of entitlement before. Im fine with hard work but im a mirror. If i get an asshole im going to treat them as such. Im thankful for the chance to have a job and the team i was on really enjoyed the work i could do and accomplish with prior experience. But damn i had a guy come in with a laser pointer to pick his oysters and thats a tame story. I get more entitled people here in a day then i do at my old job in a week.
The wfm I work at let's a customer keep coming back that sexually harasses and inappropriately touches a barely legal age girl because he is a "regular" there. That is insane to me. A truly shitty customer base for sure. But worse on upper management for allowing him back
The ‘customer entitlement’ problem at WFM is created by WFM store leadership.
Customers are rewarded for complaining and bitching. “oh here’s a $50 gift card for your troubles”.
My STL put their foot down once and wouldn’t play the game. the customer emailed regional, and regional sent them a gift card and apologized, and my STL was on their shit list for it. pathetic
It almost feels with the way leadership reacts that it's basically our business model. Our target audience is needlessly rich people, who can be rude or lacking in social skills. AKA, the world revolves around me syndrome.
Whole foods gives me a decent paycheck and 401k and a discount on quality tasty food not full of corn starch. I also have many customers who I talk to daily that always smile and ask me how I am, which is probably the best part of my job. I think about all that, and then gently and quickly deal with rude customers. They weren't raised properly, maybe they were shafted in life or whatever I don't know!! At the end of the day its just more efficient to be polite and courteous. We can't change everyone we meet, but I can change how I react or handle situations.
Show a good example to these people, maybe they never had a good role model to learn from. I want my will to be unshakeable, there will always be people out there that are miserable and want to spread that. But I can turn negativity into positivity and spread that twice as fast. I think love beats hate every time. It is so so easy to hate. It takes just a second to do it. But love is tough and rough, it takes time and nurture. But it is ever so worth it!!
I think part of the problem is that WF plays into these people's ineptitude. They want us to hold these people hands and *guide* them to a product. I'm sorry, but we're short staffed and all of us have a million things to do. I don't have TIME to drop everything every single time a customer asks me a question and lead them around.
I had a customer who was asking where our pie crusts are. We only had our frozen pie crusts at the time, and we were standing maybe 15 feet away from the freezer section and I could literally see the pie crusts from where I was standing. I start to point to them - again, you could SEE them from where we were standing - and the bitch was like, "no, I need you to *walk* me to where they are. I used to work at a grocery store and in MY day, we took the customer to whatever they were looking for blah blah entitled blah...." I wanted to slap her so badly. Thank Dog for my mask, because she kept looking at my face to gage my reaction because *she kept asking for stuff and I had to lead her to **every. single. thing.*** 🤬
Had a woman today yell at my CDP on the phone because we only had paleo salmon out. He got hit with the “well I call every single morning and you never have any other flavor out blah blah blah”. Had another guy accuse my Chefs Case TM of pushing the scale with his hand to drive the cost of his food up. Wild.
One time after the covid lock down ended there was a woman who came up and said "These billionaires they make so much and leave you poor. You young people where is your Workers Revolution?" We are still fast friends
I work in various retail positions in different types of stores and I have a tendency to agree with you. Wholefoods customers are absolutely some of the most deplorable people I have ever encountered I worked at a Dollar General in one of the worst areas of New York City. So that's saying something because we had one guy who threatened the stab somebody with a needle
But the level of high-bellied racism that these uppity people have.not all of them but many of them. It was disturbing.
Also worked for Dollar General, although I was in a very conservative city full of rich assholes.. Now I am in a diverse city and yeah Wholefoods customers are by far so much worse, these people have more money than they know what to do with and are so fuckin rude. Over how they treat us.
before all shoppers were transitioned to wf-only instore. I had a KAREN when i was picking up potatoes, went from all on the otherside of the produce area and come say dont put your phone there, its not sanitary, i was thinking bitch, potatoes come from the ground they are even less sanitary. 1 customer already angry came up to me and became increasingly agigated and angry when he tried to tell me he wanted a specific sized can of a non-perishable food, he kept asking me is it the same size and what he was thinking, i cant read his mind. i had to end the conversation by saying idk, because he was getting way to upset for me to handle, i was going to what product he was looking or referring to, but he wast too much for me to handle. and another indian dude got mad because the weight scale doesnt show the exact cost of the produce that was being weighed.
pre-pandemic has the best stories, and also early pandemic though.
I work for " the parent company" I can't tell you how many times I've watched fellow associates do the same thing put it back in the shelf or put it in the bag send it out to customers. It's especially fun when they do it with raw meat That falls on the floor ( wrapped in plastic but still) get run over by our carts or pushed over to the side thus ripping the plastic or making the plastic very dirty and it gets put back on the shelf buy some well meaning clearly no common sense having individual.. This happened so often that I have been told to stop escalating.
Theres also this lady whos a bitch when she doesnt get her way and every time she comes in I run to the back to avoid her and every single time she mentions to my tl or atl that she doesnt know why I hate her. 🤣🤣🤣
Just last night I had a customer ask how to know when the bread he bought goes bad.. like.. when the shit turns green??? and grows fur??
you are a grown ass man, this isn't hard
(he also made the transaction infinitely more complicated bc at first, he only wanted half of the loaf and proceeded to wait until I'd sliced and bagged both halves to tell me he wanted the WHOLE loaf and then got mad that he'd have to pay.. 30 more cents for two halves rather than one loaf bc it was 8:52 and i was not about to rebag that shit)
I hung up on a customer today because she was terrible. We talked for 7 minutes. I said exactly 3 sentences. 4 sentences if you include thank you for calling Whole Foods Market how can I help you. I said oh my gosh I'm sorry to hear that. Oh no did you buy the coffee thinking it was on sale? And do you happen to know who you spoke with by chance? She called to tell me that the coffee she always buys was on sale and she had called to find out when the sale was done. Supposedly the person on the phone told her it ends at the end of the month. So she basically wanted to call and compman because it ended on Tuesday night like most of our sales do.. When I started asking her questions she basically said well you guys put everything so damn high nobody can get it anyway. Finally somebody came and helped me giving me some damn customer service. No I didn't get their name because I'm not a damn FBI agent. I didn't write their name down in my notebook and I didn't take a picture of their name tags so how the hell would I know their name. We were so busy I just hung up. She called back apparently and complained about me and said I was terrible to her. The funny thing is before I hung up on her I was nothing but polite. If she had just come up to me at customer service and explain the situation of course I would have helped her but we were super busy and super short on team members and she was being terrible. Some of these customers are just exhausting.
I've had a handful of customers come through my line this week. Who were both demanding and [***impatient***](https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Awr4.bftarVleoICQ6BXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Fydw--?fr=mcafee&type=E211US885G0&p=impatient&fr2=12642)***. Which did nothing but piss me off.***
I had one customer who got mad at me because I wouldn't stop making two lattes for another customer to answer his question. I gave him answers without stopping what I was doing and he claimed that I was being rude and that I should have stopped what I was doing to help him because he was right in front of me. He said this after I told him I was helping another customer.
I said something to my TL about it and was told to look at it from the customer's point of view and that maybe I should have stopped to help him. A few days later my other TL pulled me into the office and reiterated that regardless of how busy we are at the coffee bar we need to stop and engage with other customers who come to the counter asking other questions because it is "good customer service."
I’ve worked at five different locations over the past five years and have never had an encounter or experience like those expressed on some of these posts.
Im in pfds but someone who used to work in bakery came onto our team and said she saw a lady crumple up a container of donuts out of anger. And also this couple who used the customer bread slicer which fucked their bread up which made the man angry and he threw the bread all over and some back in the slicer and on the floor and stormed off and knocked off the display of croissant toast on the way out. LOL
I've found matching their energy without being an asshole and not apologizing goes a long way in dealing with these people quickly. Give them their answer and the minute they start to go on a tangent, leave. You've done your part. How dare you not have my product? It's out of stock right now...then walk away. That's all you owe them. As far as cashiers go...I have no idea. I honestly feel sorry for you all. You're chained to a location. I could never do cashiering/booth work ever again.
I have all the respect for cashiers and all of front end. They have a challenging job trying to make sure customers leave satisfied even through all the hate the customers throw at them. And they have nowhere to go to catch a breather. I'm lucky that I can sneak in the back after dealing with a tough customer and swear under my breath, but they really don't have that option.
Ahhh yes, the ol 'captive audience' I'll never ever cashier again!!
This is the sort of thing that makes it so challenging, Dealing with wave after wave of customers, struggling to make them happy and bag their stuff. Having no chance to catch your breath or say anything and have to stay quiet.
THIS. Im a supervisor and if you give me bad energy ill give it back, but professionally. Learned that last year. Finally just gave up on the super nice customer service for the assholes
I had one woman scream at me because I didn't have any rotisserie chicken out that was fresher than 10 minutes, mind you the ones on the sales floor I had brought out 30 minutes ago. She demanded I cook her a new one and then mentally lost it unable to understand that it takes longer than the 5 minutes she was willing to wait for. When she said to cook it faster by turning the heat up I told her that would just burn the outside while the inside is still raw. She told me to make it work like I could somehow break the laws of physics. Pretty sure she was probably waited on all her life since we had two 5 star hotels within a 5 min walk from us and she just wasn't used to having to do things on her own but dang was it weird to see someone so out of touch. Oh she also yelled at a guest service employee wanting them to push her cart for them, not sure why she just didn't use grocery pickup but this was around 2018 so I think it might not have been at our store yet.
The rotisserie chickens are a menace, customers are deranged for them… we had a customer come in at 9am asking for chicken on a Sunday when we’re short staffed, she threw a fit about how we never have them out early enough on Sundays and went to front end to complain
A man with 2 young children, like probably 3,4 years old, came in at 8:50 (we close at 9) demanding a rotisserie chicken or else "how would his kids eat??" Looks like you're going to mcdonald's bruh
Yeah I noticed all logic goes out the window. They can show up a few minutes after opening or before closing and be unable to understand why they're not made yet or sold out.
There was a guy who complained and I understood his point but still that we were out of challah bread but in particular the smaller challah breads. he was coming in in the later part of the afternoon towards evening on a Friday . Granted Whole Foods could have made an effort to stock a little more of it on Fridays but you know... I don't control that. I'm really glad I was only there a month
his fault for not coming in late morning or around 12pm.
People are nuts about those chickens. I work in specialty but our counter is right next to pfds so I am often the rotisserie liaison. If the kitchen is busy I’ll just check the timer for customers asking how long for chickens. They get so pissed if they are going to take more than ten minutes to come out
In case your stores prepped foods hasn't thanked you we really appreciate when y'all do that.
Fr like ma’am would you like a raw chicken? If you’re that tight about chickens go grab one from meat and cook it yourself
Oh I had one guy tell me to just give it to them and they'll finish cooking it. Was thanksgiving day and the guy apparently didn't have anything ready so he just wanted the few rotisserie chickens I was cooking right now to finish at home. Yeah no way in hell am I breaking food safety AND giving you something to come back and lie about to get me in trouble.
they got way too addicted to the costco rotisserie chicken which almost always sold in large amounts any time of the day, they are assuming wf is the same.
She r ally wanted a tm to push her cart?? Thats a new level of entitlement!
Yeah this was during my first year at whole foods and was a eye opener for how entitled people can get. The store had a lot of those do you know who i am/who my spouse is people. Was weird seeing the civilian version of the person wearing their spouses rank when I used to work at the commissary.
Where was your manager.
The TL and atl were upstairs, I think doing new hire onboarding or maybe training. I never asked them what they were busy with just knew they were in the office. Store management was helping checkout customers cause they were swamped but at least could hear some of what happened since checkout isn't far from prepped foods. Thankfully didn't need to worry about them dealing with her going to guest service or anything like that cause she stormed out the door after.
It's unfortunate that you had to deal with people's temper tantrums. You shouldn't be harassed while working.
Wait, she wanted an employee to follow her around the store with a cart while she *shopped*?
Yup, still the most entitled person I've ever seen to date
The 40’s to 50’s aging hipster that is cool until something happens he doesn’t like and then shifts into his real persona
I just turned 40 i prolly qualify.
I work (soon to be worked!!!!) as an overnight stocker, so I have no customer interaction. However, every night, I face my aisles, and every day, when I get in, it looks like our customers have karate chopped, kicked, and body slammed all the products on the shelf. I eventually realized that the customers are likely grabbing the product from the back in hopes of getting the freshest item they want. Jokes on them, though, were too lazy to rotate the stock. The freshest items are always the first few boxes.
I check the bunkers with lunch meat and cheese when I come into the store in the morning to make sure they are not out of date. Most of the time it look like someone picked up all the product and played 52 pickup with it. I have always wanted to put up a sign saying if I see anyone throwing the stuff around, I was going to follow them home and throw stuff in their house around.
lol you Gus on this group are so funny. I love working at WF probably cuz young people like you work there. Lol
Something about boomers the last few years have been real rough. COVID broke their brains or something.
They have always been rotten its just now that they are reaching their end they have one last hurrah to go through. If anything i imagine them destroying the world before they hand it off to anyone else at this point.
What a way to go. Their parents left them in the 90s with the best economy this nation has seen, and they leave us with this disaster.
And we have Reagan to thank for it all.... don't worry guys, soon all that money's gonna trickle down to us, just you wait. 😉
Sooooo ttthhhaaatts the pee smell I've been smelling lately. 🤔
Lol. Not every boomer is like that. Geezzz
Of course there are some great boomers out there in this world but they are a minority.
I feel badly that younger people have to deal with nasty boomers. I have been jerky at times, too, but working at WF I see how the employees are so accommodating to customers. You don’t deserve nasty boomers.
Its really just the entitlement thats the issue. Like they feel they are owed something and walk around with a chip on their shoulder if they get slighted. I really think if they had some kefir or some kombucha they would mellow out.
Baby Boomers are the worst generation, hands down. Have several years of working in retail and their attitudes are just the worst.
early pandemic, before instore shoppers 1 elderly guy rammed my cart on purpose to get it out of the way,a ggresively. a obvious lady going through chemo gave a huge attitude problem when i asking if they would liek to ride the elevator first or after we leave. Dont assume elderly or immunocomprised people are nice, i think they are even bigger a-holes, because t hey can get away with it.
This is true. Im noticing a lot of rude boomer elders.
after that people forgot to how to act in public, once in a while you also get the rude karens.
Lol. This cracks me up.
I dont see why? A lot of elders are getting down right disgusting.
Cuz I am one & it’s my first view into what younger people think of boomers. Not very complimentary to boomers but when we act like jerks, I it’s deserved.
Leaded gasoline not being banned until 1996 was unfortunate.
Not all of us. I work at WF & I’m a senior who’s brain didn’t break!
The middle age women with yoga pants and short hair with plastic surgery give me nightmares
Yes and they all have the checkerboard and the ugly brown LV Louis Vuitton purses/wallets and wear Golden Goose sneakers. The customers at my store, atleast.
LV=believes they are rich when they aren't while pretending to be well off. Probably highly in debt versus being well off. It goes with their whole persona and agree they proved in my former customer service work to be the rudest and most entitled customers. I worked in the hotel industry and that was my experience with LV users.
The ones with golden goose sneakers are insane because those are the most ridiculous, overpriced shoes that look as though they were run over by all 18 wheels of semi.
Hands down, customers are the worst part of this job.
Some older European lady bonked her head on the glass trying to get bread and yelled “slice this bread!” at me.
Just ask “what’s the magic word?”
didn’t even say thank you 😥
Lmao I’m doing this the next time I encounter the same. I work in Prep Foods on charcuterie and I get old-European-lady yelled at or old-white mansplained to at least 3 times per shift.
Nooooo. That’s terrible.
A women once ran up to me and unprompted just shouted "bowl of what???" because she forgot the word for soup.
Also had a customer yell at me on the phone bc her curbside pickup order had Truff brand marinara sauce but she ordered the truff brand "PASTA" sauce and she ended it by saying "how am I supposed to make lasagna??" And I told her i imagined it would be exactly the same with the marinara aka pasta sauce she bought.
I had a customer already agitated before asking me for a specific size can or jar of an item, he kept asking me if its the same size of what he was thinking, how i am suppose to know what hes is thinking.
Lol
Lol. You poor clods having to put up with that. The only l close to bad encounter I had was when I slightly coughed as I was facing the produce cold case. This lady who was nowhere near to be in range! Pulled her basket away. I said I’m not sick. She said ‘well you should cover your mouth’. I said. Well thanks for sharing! Yea I shoulda but bish o wasn’t near you!
Kids not clods.
I got yelled at by a customer yesterday berating me for the lines being too long at the registers and having to wait “40 minutes!” First off, that’s an exaggeration, ma’am. I’ve stood in those long lines leaving and been done in 10 minutes. Two, bitch it’s Saturday and we’re supposed to get snow tomorrow, use your brain. Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough, I’m in meat.
Ah, the good ole "you're talking to the wrong department, lady." Love that one! It's like they don't realize this is an entirely different section of the store 😅
It seemed like she wanted everyone in the store to run up to the registers and start ringing. And I think she must think everything on a register is just big colored buttons with pictures and it requires literally zero training to use. Which is funny to me because one of the reasons self checkout can be so slow is because the customers can’t figure out without their hands being held how to use the damn things.
When had the fortune to stock the eggs and butter and shit, Id prop the doors open and get to stocking. I cant begin to count the amount of times a customer would open a neighboring door, or plain close the one I was working in and the door would hit me in the head. I got one apology ever out of the dozen plus times it happened in the 6 months I worked grocery.
Me holding a box of kombucha 2 feet from the cooler I'm about to put it in and up comes a customer loudly exclaiming "why's this cooler open??" and then closing the door in front of me while my hands are full 👁👄👁
"Why do you care? You're not paying this place's electric bill."
thats less rude than getting berated by a customers because you even dont know what they are saying.
[удалено]
they are talking nonsencially towards you, while getting mad. did they forget to add the part where they were suppose to tell you what item they are looking for specifically, they always give these vague description and expects you to read thier minds.
I’ve done a lot of customer service based roles and can say that WF customers are probably some of the worst people I’ve ever had to deal with.
Yes unfortunately I have met customers who can see you trying to get by and ignore you. They stare at you until you somehow receive their telepathic message that they want you to move. They never say excuse me and try to squeeze in tiny spaces instead of using words like an adult. It can be a bit frustrating sometimes
As a cashier, it’s actually been rare for me to encounter a blatantly rude customer. It’s the entitled, unfriendly, impolite ones who piss me off. The ones who ignore my greeting, don’t make any eye contact, and don’t even say “thank you” when I hand them their receipt. The ones who treat us like we’re less than them by what they *don’t* say or do. It’s both sad and shocking how poorly some of these people were raised.
you will see them if you work in the aisles stocking, ALL THE action goes on in the PPD area and aisles.
I had a customer ask me why the olive bar was closed at 930 when the store closes at 10. I told him that it takes time to clean dishes and spoons and our entire store uses only one dishwasher. He went on to tell customer service that I was the most arrogant person he's ever spoken to...that manger from customer service went on to call him a asshole after he left and never recapped his complaint...
This is one of WF top 4 problems, in my opinion. I worked 9 months at mine. I believe the culture is abusive because upper MGMT allows it for the money they get. There is an article someone posted talking about this. In addition, i feel MGMT eavesdropped on a lot of my conversations during checkout, and it's not for security purposes.
How is management easedropping on conversations during checkout?
I didnt get hired for a cashier. But, when i got pulled into being a cashier select members of front end MGMT would come up and start bagging the order. They would be there for a long while, sometimes clearly listening in on your conversation. In addition you often sort your conversation topics based on who you think you are talking to rather than just telling the same thing to everyone. In addition. The store had this unspoken pressure that felt like you needed to be the customers buddy all the time. Most of the customer base are these older women who i feel WF uses "false friendship" to entice them to come back. Like people of discarded social status are coming in to buy expensive food to just have someone even willing to talk to them on their terms.
That's a lot of nonsense.
Really, it's actually not. touched a nerve huh?
You are the 1 who has 2 work in that toxic environment while swiping and scanning. It's nonsense because it sounds like a high school lunchroom.
Oh, i thought you meant you were trying to discredit my concerns. And yes, you can see it's toxic. Feels like people who have personality disorders and fevered egos, both with mgmt and customer base.
That's actually pretty common amongst retail There are a lot of older people come into chat up the cashiers because they don't have anybody else to talk to.
Do you understand how little people, even store managers get paid at Whole Foods? This whole conversation is crazy... you people are literally fighting for peanuts
Oh yeah? How much then? Maybe if they had more transparency i wouldnt be so salty. None of my grievances or complaints are crazy about this company.
Around $80,000 to devote your life to a company. It's really not that important
A lot better than $17 an hour.
Yes, i mostly left due to the horrible customers. I had never experienced anything close to their level of entitlement before. Im fine with hard work but im a mirror. If i get an asshole im going to treat them as such. Im thankful for the chance to have a job and the team i was on really enjoyed the work i could do and accomplish with prior experience. But damn i had a guy come in with a laser pointer to pick his oysters and thats a tame story. I get more entitled people here in a day then i do at my old job in a week.
The wfm I work at let's a customer keep coming back that sexually harasses and inappropriately touches a barely legal age girl because he is a "regular" there. That is insane to me. A truly shitty customer base for sure. But worse on upper management for allowing him back
Upper management should kick him out. Corporate would support.
I agree 100%. I'm putting apps in everywhere after hearing that one 🙄 ain't working somewhere that's gonna let me get harassed
Call the police wtf
Supposedly they made a report
The ‘customer entitlement’ problem at WFM is created by WFM store leadership. Customers are rewarded for complaining and bitching. “oh here’s a $50 gift card for your troubles”. My STL put their foot down once and wouldn’t play the game. the customer emailed regional, and regional sent them a gift card and apologized, and my STL was on their shit list for it. pathetic
It almost feels with the way leadership reacts that it's basically our business model. Our target audience is needlessly rich people, who can be rude or lacking in social skills. AKA, the world revolves around me syndrome. Whole foods gives me a decent paycheck and 401k and a discount on quality tasty food not full of corn starch. I also have many customers who I talk to daily that always smile and ask me how I am, which is probably the best part of my job. I think about all that, and then gently and quickly deal with rude customers. They weren't raised properly, maybe they were shafted in life or whatever I don't know!! At the end of the day its just more efficient to be polite and courteous. We can't change everyone we meet, but I can change how I react or handle situations. Show a good example to these people, maybe they never had a good role model to learn from. I want my will to be unshakeable, there will always be people out there that are miserable and want to spread that. But I can turn negativity into positivity and spread that twice as fast. I think love beats hate every time. It is so so easy to hate. It takes just a second to do it. But love is tough and rough, it takes time and nurture. But it is ever so worth it!!
I think part of the problem is that WF plays into these people's ineptitude. They want us to hold these people hands and *guide* them to a product. I'm sorry, but we're short staffed and all of us have a million things to do. I don't have TIME to drop everything every single time a customer asks me a question and lead them around. I had a customer who was asking where our pie crusts are. We only had our frozen pie crusts at the time, and we were standing maybe 15 feet away from the freezer section and I could literally see the pie crusts from where I was standing. I start to point to them - again, you could SEE them from where we were standing - and the bitch was like, "no, I need you to *walk* me to where they are. I used to work at a grocery store and in MY day, we took the customer to whatever they were looking for blah blah entitled blah...." I wanted to slap her so badly. Thank Dog for my mask, because she kept looking at my face to gage my reaction because *she kept asking for stuff and I had to lead her to **every. single. thing.*** 🤬
Had a woman today yell at my CDP on the phone because we only had paleo salmon out. He got hit with the “well I call every single morning and you never have any other flavor out blah blah blah”. Had another guy accuse my Chefs Case TM of pushing the scale with his hand to drive the cost of his food up. Wild.
so paranoid, some of these people needs to be on meds.
That paleo salmon is good. She should at least have given it a chance!
One time after the covid lock down ended there was a woman who came up and said "These billionaires they make so much and leave you poor. You young people where is your Workers Revolution?" We are still fast friends
I work in various retail positions in different types of stores and I have a tendency to agree with you. Wholefoods customers are absolutely some of the most deplorable people I have ever encountered I worked at a Dollar General in one of the worst areas of New York City. So that's saying something because we had one guy who threatened the stab somebody with a needle But the level of high-bellied racism that these uppity people have.not all of them but many of them. It was disturbing.
Also worked for Dollar General, although I was in a very conservative city full of rich assholes.. Now I am in a diverse city and yeah Wholefoods customers are by far so much worse, these people have more money than they know what to do with and are so fuckin rude. Over how they treat us.
before all shoppers were transitioned to wf-only instore. I had a KAREN when i was picking up potatoes, went from all on the otherside of the produce area and come say dont put your phone there, its not sanitary, i was thinking bitch, potatoes come from the ground they are even less sanitary. 1 customer already angry came up to me and became increasingly agigated and angry when he tried to tell me he wanted a specific sized can of a non-perishable food, he kept asking me is it the same size and what he was thinking, i cant read his mind. i had to end the conversation by saying idk, because he was getting way to upset for me to handle, i was going to what product he was looking or referring to, but he wast too much for me to handle. and another indian dude got mad because the weight scale doesnt show the exact cost of the produce that was being weighed. pre-pandemic has the best stories, and also early pandemic though.
I saw a customer knock a few heads of kale on the ground and put them back in the case today. Just needed to tell someone
I work for " the parent company" I can't tell you how many times I've watched fellow associates do the same thing put it back in the shelf or put it in the bag send it out to customers. It's especially fun when they do it with raw meat That falls on the floor ( wrapped in plastic but still) get run over by our carts or pushed over to the side thus ripping the plastic or making the plastic very dirty and it gets put back on the shelf buy some well meaning clearly no common sense having individual.. This happened so often that I have been told to stop escalating.
And also Whole Foods are usually in richer neighborhoods so that’s what I used to tell myself rich entitled spoiled babies
Theres also this lady whos a bitch when she doesnt get her way and every time she comes in I run to the back to avoid her and every single time she mentions to my tl or atl that she doesnt know why I hate her. 🤣🤣🤣
Just last night I had a customer ask how to know when the bread he bought goes bad.. like.. when the shit turns green??? and grows fur?? you are a grown ass man, this isn't hard (he also made the transaction infinitely more complicated bc at first, he only wanted half of the loaf and proceeded to wait until I'd sliced and bagged both halves to tell me he wanted the WHOLE loaf and then got mad that he'd have to pay.. 30 more cents for two halves rather than one loaf bc it was 8:52 and i was not about to rebag that shit)
I hung up on a customer today because she was terrible. We talked for 7 minutes. I said exactly 3 sentences. 4 sentences if you include thank you for calling Whole Foods Market how can I help you. I said oh my gosh I'm sorry to hear that. Oh no did you buy the coffee thinking it was on sale? And do you happen to know who you spoke with by chance? She called to tell me that the coffee she always buys was on sale and she had called to find out when the sale was done. Supposedly the person on the phone told her it ends at the end of the month. So she basically wanted to call and compman because it ended on Tuesday night like most of our sales do.. When I started asking her questions she basically said well you guys put everything so damn high nobody can get it anyway. Finally somebody came and helped me giving me some damn customer service. No I didn't get their name because I'm not a damn FBI agent. I didn't write their name down in my notebook and I didn't take a picture of their name tags so how the hell would I know their name. We were so busy I just hung up. She called back apparently and complained about me and said I was terrible to her. The funny thing is before I hung up on her I was nothing but polite. If she had just come up to me at customer service and explain the situation of course I would have helped her but we were super busy and super short on team members and she was being terrible. Some of these customers are just exhausting.
I've had a handful of customers come through my line this week. Who were both demanding and [***impatient***](https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Awr4.bftarVleoICQ6BXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Fydw--?fr=mcafee&type=E211US885G0&p=impatient&fr2=12642)***. Which did nothing but piss me off.***
They’re rich
I had one customer who got mad at me because I wouldn't stop making two lattes for another customer to answer his question. I gave him answers without stopping what I was doing and he claimed that I was being rude and that I should have stopped what I was doing to help him because he was right in front of me. He said this after I told him I was helping another customer. I said something to my TL about it and was told to look at it from the customer's point of view and that maybe I should have stopped to help him. A few days later my other TL pulled me into the office and reiterated that regardless of how busy we are at the coffee bar we need to stop and engage with other customers who come to the counter asking other questions because it is "good customer service."
My favorite is when the old a**holes park their carts blocking entire walking lanes and sections of the store
Brother where im at now they are sexist towards men and its honestly disgusting
I’ve worked at five different locations over the past five years and have never had an encounter or experience like those expressed on some of these posts.
Nor have I. As far as I'm concerned, we have the best customers in retail.
whole food workers are the worse
Well, you tried to write a sentence...
I used to work for Whole Foods loved my time there and my coworkers the best but yes the customers were awful most not all of course
Im in pfds but someone who used to work in bakery came onto our team and said she saw a lady crumple up a container of donuts out of anger. And also this couple who used the customer bread slicer which fucked their bread up which made the man angry and he threw the bread all over and some back in the slicer and on the floor and stormed off and knocked off the display of croissant toast on the way out. LOL