Having ventured into the shops just before Xmas (to avoid the Dog House!), I came away feeling they deserve their plight. I was met with:
Assistants (M&S) talking loudly amongst themselves (complaining about their manager) when they could have been helping me to spend more money.
Assistant in M&S unable to deal with an item as it didn't have a bar-code. She went off to find an alternative - but failed, so I had to go.
Unable to find an assistant other than "concession staff" in Debenhams so I came away empty handed. I was hoping to find something that my wife had seen there earlier.
Dreary, depressing Bing Crosby songs being played.
Expensive parking
Coupled with a trip to the pub: Wanting a pint and finding yourself behind someone ordering 6 meals with combinations which are not set up on the till. Getting behind someone and the debit card machine is playing up. Standing in the "invisible" spot waiting to order. Not wanting to interrupt the serving-kids who are chatting amongst themselves and avoiding giving you eye-contact. Unpolished brassware - shabby toilets - sticky tables.
I think I will shop on the internet and drink at home.
That'll teach you to go into a JD Wetherspoon pub, or maybe not as the 'staff'' are usually too busy polishing that brassware to serve anyone. :) Why do these pub chains still employ McDonald's rejects as managers and staff?
I must admit that a Wetherspoon example is what I had in mind - but many others are the same (or they are depressingly quiet and lacking atmosphere as the landlord moans about his plight. Wetherspoon's does some good beers at a good price. I just wish they would have some roving waiters to cream off some of the food orders. How come when you go overseas for a holiday you always get served?
We've never had less than really good service from Wetherspoon's staff, but we generally only go there for breakfast, so it's less busy, and always clean and tidy.
I am usually waiting behind someone who is ordering a meal and I only want a simple pint! The transactions (logging on to the till, dealing with options, etc) take too long
Same thing in Burtons, apparently they hate him because he stands doing nothing!
I found that in Matalan, they didn't have a clue what to do, or how to print off a receipt. It took 10minutes for someone else to fix.
That is so annoying - it's also annoying when you ask for something and you're given the answer, "if it is not on the shelf then no". Not even a "I'll have a look to see if we have any more". Even if they pretended to do it! That spoils a surprise as you will have to take your wife back to the shop.
Hate it, hate all the loud music in shops - I end up leaving as I can't stand it. There is also a law about background noise not being over a certain dB level which shops are breaking.
I don't use my local town centre now because of that, I drive 4 miles to a different area or another 8 and park for free. No wonder the town centre is going down the drain.
I also hate Tesco, they have huge signs which lie about being open 24hours. They are on 4 or 5 days a week at a push, so why stack shelves and leave huge trolleys and loose packaging in the way at 6pm at night. The checkout people are just as bad, turning around having conversations amongst themselves. I was told I was only allowed 4 carrier bags so piled a trolley full of shopping in and they broke. So I stood there slowly taking ech item out and waited until a manager come over to say I could have more. The ignorant woman tried to continue to serve people so it took me longer. They just don't get it. Price fixing and wild claims of sales and the dreaded - "HALF PRICE" is just to attract silly women and pensioners. They fight to grab and buy items then wonder why as they didn't want them. They just saw "half price" and went in to some frenzy.
Shops put themselves out of business. Burtons changed about 6 years ago from a UK supplier to a cheap nasty one abroad. So the result is that the sizes of clothes are based on the Korean size data. UK people are bigger so you either buy something far too big and hope it fits or leave it and go elsewhere. All of their trousers have the same leg width despite being different waist sizes. Shirts are the correct neck size but called "tailored" as they are so tight the buttons fly off compared to a quality item from M&S.
There are so many things wrong with retail now, apart from skimming off vast profits and watching companies go bankrupt, the clothes look like they were designed by a man of questionable sexuality for women but for young males to wear! It's all very odd now. Companies going bankrupt show only one thing and that is bad management. Staff that haven't a clue how to run a business. If you sell things people don't want or at a price too high, they will walk away. All the sale items in some shops were collected from outlet villages in the hope people would be fooled.
There is no recession, it's just people have had enough of being ripped off so refuse to pay prices shops are inflating all the time. A shop (and local garage to me) will decide how much profit they want from a particular item. If they have 20 they might want £5 on each. If they don't sell they will INCREASE the price to make up the difference. This is silly! A local Tesco garage has a variable pricing system. When the tanks are full the fuel is cheaper, when it runs down the price changes to make it more expensive. Very strange that one!
My favourite Tesco-ism of the moment is their claim to have custard cheaper than Morrisons. (78p instead of 79!) And completely ignoring the BOGOF which actually makes Morrisons only a smidgen over half the price. But they all do that...
A bunch of us at work went down to the new TGI Friday's in Belfast. Yes, I know it's a chain, but I've been in the ones in Glasgow and Birmingham and they've been just fine, so I figured it would be something similar. Not brilliant, but at least good enough and predictable.
Turned out to be wrong. The menu was not what we expected, and when we raised this with the manager he shrugged and said "well, what do you want me to do about it?". You would have thought it was in his gift to offer some free drinks or a 5% discount to stop us getting pissed off - but no.
The comments earlier about not knowing how to run a business are very true. A lot people working in retail do not seem to understand that their jobs flow directly from the paying punters coming through the door, and helping the punters and encouraging them to buy their stuff there translates into more revenue and safer jobs. We don't have John Lewis over here yet, but it looks like they are the only major UK chain which seems to understand this .. ?
What do you expect, when they are paid the minimum wage or just a little above, and are bullied and variously shat on by incompetent middle management who are obsessed with meeting often arbitrary and unrealistic targets imposed by very highly paid senior management and are constantly in fear of losing their jobs?
The combination of low pay, incompetent managers and ridiculous top-down targets is enough to demotivate anyone.
You mentioned John Lewis - I snipped that bit. The reason John Lewis staff are more motivated to help customers is that every one of them has a share in the business. John Lewis is a Partnership and all the "staff" are Partners. They stand to gain if the company does well.
The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:
I'd like to support local traders who've been helpful and free with advice, like Topps Tiles and Fixings Direct, and of course TLC[1]. But in general it seems that the Internet offers more choice, better prices and faster service for specials (vs the shop trying to get it).
But the rest of the surley unhelpful traders are going to get what they deserve.
[1] I try to give them first refusal to quote, and I have a rule, that if they can get to within 10-15% of Internet price, I'll let them have the sale, because after all, they are able to offer good advice which most internet stores can't.
The women's clothes shop that will do well will be the one that has a bloke's lounge next to every set of changing rooms - leather sofas, TV, coffee machine, free crisps and today's papers.
Don't know why such an obvious idea hasn't been done...
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