Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
FYI...
Wife went to the store with the kids and had to ask to see the manager as the staff refused to honor gift cards or vouchers.
They were spending above and beyond the value of the cards as well.
In the end, the store crew admitted that they were incorrect as it's not the 5th of July yet.
Amen to that. It's bad enough that they're losing their jobs, but to have to put up with rude and out-of-touch customers just rubs salt on the wound.Originally Posted by SMHFConvoy
Was in TRU Campbelltown on Thursday and there was a guy disputing something about a gift card. The cashier was having none of it and I couldn't blame her
That's the society we live in sadly. Some people are losing their livelihoods, while all we care about is whether we get cheap toys
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
I went into Bankstown a couple weeks ago to price match a toy. the place was deserted.
I went in yesterday on my way home from baseball to use a gift card I received a couple months ago and the place was packed. It's odd but I'd suggest they may have had more staff on than usual to support the crowd.
I bought the couple things I was after and grabbed some baby clothes that were on clearance prior to the sale. The staff were working quite hard and efficiently but were still overrun.
it's an odd feeling, I feel I got great value for the stuff I bought, except perhaps the Infernocus that I've been waiting for them to discount, that I used the gift card for before I couldn't use it any more. I also used a couple Craft cheese vouchers on legends battleslash and road trap.
I would have made these purchases either way to use the gift cards and vouchers before they expired but I felt like I was part of a pack of vultures picking at a corpse before it had properly expired. I'm possibly not going to get a chance to go back before they close, so while I was happy with my purchases I felt a bit sad, potentially walking out of a TRU for the last time.
I had 2 staff wish me a good day on my way out and I returned the gestures in kind.
Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
I went into the Innaloo store last weekend, mostly because it was next door to the local cinemas where I was at in any event. I don't think I would've made a special trip out otherwise.
There were quite a few customers there, and I didn't see any asshole customers trying to harass staff or the like.
Given that I don't buy much, if anything, in terms of new Transformers or Star Wars, there wasn't a lot I was interested in. I jokingly said to my partner that we should start stocking up on baby stuff if we're looking at having children in the next year or so.
In the end, I got a 2-pack of Star Wars figures, some toy trucks for when friends' kids come over, and some gifts for relatives/upcoming baby showers.
My partner actually recognised the cashier as a student she formerly taught at high school. He'd only been working for 8 months, and I didn't have the heart to ask him what he'd be doing after TRU closed.
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
They had this at 10% off. It's $119 to start though...
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
It is annoying. The others in that size start at $100 and TLTC has them for $75. Was going to get one through them if I order something else from them.
Thanks for having a look for me.
And hopefully this is a wakeup call to those people that working in retail these days is an exercise in masochism. The best thing anyone working in retail these days can do is take whatever steps they can to retrain and get out of the entire industry.Dude people have lost jobs, show some respect
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
Are you kidding me?
I don't know you from Adam but I imagine you must be insufferable and probably the worst type of customer: the one who believes they're always right.
You post all over the boards as if your opinion is mana from heaven, wear people down with ridiculous paragraph long arguments over the tiniest minutiae of trivial, trivial things and now you have the audacity to lecture people who are in the process of losing a job through no fault of their own?
There's a few more choice words I'd love to share with you but I'll keep it civil:
you are the worst.
Last edited by SMHFConvoy; 25th June 2018 at 09:14 PM. Reason: Too civil a response
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
People need to work. People in retail are always needed. I deal with self entitled people every day in transport. Is it as simple as retraining and moving on? No. Customers need a wakeup call and not flip out at the workers
Are you kidding me?
I don't know you from Adam but I imagine you must be insufferable and probably the worst type of customer: the one who believes they're always right.
You post all over the boards as if your opinion is mana from heaven, wear people down with ridiculous paragraph long arguments over the tiniest minutiae of trivial, trivial things and now you have the audacity to lecture people who are in the process of losing a job through no fault of their own?
There's a few more choice words I'd love to share with you but I'll keep it civil:
you are the worst.
I find it ironic that in your pontificating, hypocritical, virtue signalling, you cannot see how much you need to take a long hard look in the mirror and recognise that your behaviour here is everything you level at me and claim to despise in me.
You're right, you don't know me and if you did know me and where I was coming from in saying the above, you'd know that what you have done said here was utterly ignorant and paternalising; it reminds me of when people attack individuals like Black Americans who seek to instill accountability in their brethren and encourage them to do what is necessary to escape cycles of poverty. And yes, where retail employees are concerned, that is exactly what your attack on me here amounts to.
See here's the thing; most of my work experience has been in retail and I have always prided myself on customer service and many of my past employers have faulted me on that. In fact one complaint more than one employer has made is that I spend too long helping customers to the point where they feel that the company's bottom line suffers compared to if I took a more cookie cutter approach. I also prided myself on being a straight shooter with customers - even if it cost me or the company sales. What I have demanded of businesses I have dealt with as a customer, is no less than what I have demanded of myself when serving others when they were my customers. Heck, I'm sure Tober can even recall an instance where I can't remember if it was a Yamato VF-1D or a Toynami Masterpiece Shadow Alpha I was selling at a fair, but he pointed out that I was shooting myself in the foot by giving a very accurate description of what I was selling, to the point where it was hurting me. If I have been guilty of anything where my expectations of businesses is concerned, it is being an example of the old adage "doctors make the worst patients." Funnily enough, when people are straight with me and own mistakes, I'm nothing but patient and forgiving when dealing with them. You wouldn't know about those instances because I don't tend to warn others about them and call me selfish, but back when I found a great lot of stock with a great seller, I tended to treat it like a secret stash.
As for my paragraphs, it's how those of us on The Spectrum are - especially when we're high functioning. I find it highly telling that your repeated responses to me highlight just how much Cultural Marxists have blinkers on where the plight of people with disabilities are concerned - particularly where we also happen to be cishet white and male (oh, something for you to check your privilege on and wake up to here is that being cishet, white and male, in no way, shape or form makes ableism or its effects go away; in fact you and your ilk only succeed in blinding society to ableism based on race, sex and sexual/gender identity.
As per usual with Cultural Marxists - all you care about is your narrative and as per usual, paternalising and silencing minorities who dare commit heresy to that dogma, is acceptable to you, just as long as it advances that narrative.
After all, as anyone who works in retail or has worked in retail knows, losing your job because a business goes belly under, is the least of your worries in what is typically an utterly toxic working environment where employee health and welfare, as well as workplace bullying, is treated like a complete joke. As a retail employee, you are nothing but a disposable and expendable resource to your employers. Yes there are some good ones, but they're increasingly becoming unicorns.
Since the "right" I have to say what I've said has come into question, here is a detailed account of my time coming back to the retail industry in the past few years and exactly how I reached the entirely fair conclusion and dire warning to anyone still working in retail that I posted above.
When I recovered enough from years of hell, I got work in a retail chain that has been around for years and is a bit like how Dick Smith originally used to be. I'm not naming names here, but anyone who knows the electrical hobby scene should know the chain I am referring to. I started work there and after a few days, a manager made an ableist remark. I politely spoke to them about it and politely told them I didn't appreciate it being said. From there on in, the passive aggressive workplace bullying started - in fact as a former colleague recalled, a former 2IC she drove out of the place once referred her as suffering from "small dog syndrome". This took place for almost 18 months (fortunately I had a 6 month break where I worked in a store in Sydney which did have an awesome manager and where I built up a stack of confidence in the role, however I fell prey to a head office call there which told them to cut back their casuals - even thought their staffing choices once had just one person in the store the whole time on a Saturday). When I came back, they were just as bad - right down to the textbook task of giving me unreasonable tasks, only to throw them back on me (where even other people were scratching their heads at how unreasonable and time wasting the tasks were and her gaslighting responses to them). The area manager kept talking me out of formal complaints and then when it couldn't be ignored, he told me that if things didn't stop he was firing us both. Then when I took it to head office, they claimed that too much time had passed and nothing could be done. Not long after that, she left and I transferred to another store. Things were great for a while, although the hours were a minimum, the store environment was ok and the boss was great. Until the area manager ripped her a new one one day and from that point on, it was clear she was doing what he wanted her to do - which would cause the straw that broke the camel's back down the track.
A while down the track, I was working in another store (from memory it was June 2016), where I was asked by the 2IC who was knocking off to help a customer with buying components to build an emp device. It set off flags and I repeatedly politely warned them they could get in alot of trouble for it. The third time when we were standing on opposite sides of the counter, they pulled out a home made stun gun, held it over the counter and demonstrated it at me. Everyone heard the loud bang, the customers I served after tham saw how rattled I was and were shocked at what had happened. However the store manager left me feeling like I was making a big deal out of nothing if I said I wanted the police called.
A short time later, a new head of operations came on board and gutted all the casual hours, dropping me from 20 hours a week down to 8 hours if I was lucky (but it could even be 4). At the same time, an end of year retreat came up for 3 days in the middle of December, which would have helped me get over having a weapon pulled on me out of nowhere at the other store. The response that manager gave (which one of the guys I worked with even said, would have been the area manager telling her what to do) was that if I did go to it, they'd have to permanently put on another casual, and therefore my hours would be permanently affected - meaning one shift or none at all.
At that point, I looked for work in retail again, this time with a major Asian-themed appliance retailer (again, not naming names), whom I had worked for in the past. At first it was fine, but I soon learned that with the heavy drinking culture in that store, you were either one of "them" (the drinkers) or you weren't. The other problem was that one person there suffered from Bipolar which manifested itself in violent outbursts; everyone in the store felt threatened by him, but he was protected so he was kept there; the day before I left, he'd already started on the new guy who had only been there a week. Consequently I became the target of bullying and when I first raised it with my manager (who prided himself on being "a prick but fair"), he used the incident of me having a weapon pulled on me to justify the behavior. I nearly quit at the end of my probation period, but he and the 2IC talked me into staying. The reason that I was being bullied, as the 2IC told me point blank and as even the guy who had bipolar and terrorised me admitted once, was that I was such a hard worker that it made them look bad (when I had the awesome experience in the Sydney store of the other chain, the Sunday duty manager even playfully told me to slow down because I was making him feel tired).
The bullying kept going and the manager there was happy to let it continue, until it got to people messing with the point of sale in the section I looked after in the store (which was the biggest section by far - small appliances), and a customer saw how I was being treated and made a point of approaching me in horror over it. Even then it still kept happening.
At the same time the one rule for the star performers (one of whom did great work closing the deal, but was so terrible at getting good delivered that everyone had to fix his sales for him - in fact at one point a prior manager transferred $20,000 worth of sales in a week that had had problems to others who actually fixed them), and one rule for others. The star performers could leave early and take breaks all the time for any reason. Meanwhile were those of us who occasionally got sick were concerned, all that mattered was our figures - even if we were about to drop dead on the floor. At the same time, we were attacked for taking our annual leave because our sales figures were down (such as when I took a weekend off in June to attend a training camp for a youth organisation I still volunteer with).
I first learned this when I had been getting progressively sicker and the boss made a snarky comment about it - even though I had been dragging myself to work feeling like crap. I went to the doctor's the night before my two days off was told I had a golden staph infection in the skin and sinuses, and that while I didn't need a heap of time off, I would need antibiotics and that I should start to feel better after 2 days. I called the boss (who was drunk at the time), who was supportive and said that it was fine, just as long as I was ok. That Saturday, my first day back, I was still feeling horrible and called him up. I got back a snarky "typical, you guys always are always sick on the first day back after your days off!" I politely reminded him that I had told him on that Wednesday Night that I'd been diagnosed with Staph (I'd had pathology tests done 2 weeks prior). He then demanded "have you been to hospital?! You can only get staph if you've been to hospital!" I restated that that was what I had been diagnosed with. He barked back "Yeah, well we'll talk about your employment when you get back!!!" That stress caused me to need 2 days off sick with how I was feeling rather than just the one. A couple of weeks later, when I was switched over to a really powerful antibiotic, I felt like I was about to collapse, was unsteady on my feet, and all he could care about was my sales figures.
For weeks I'd had an ankle that was acting up, and unfortunately, had started seeing a new chiropractor who misdiagnosed it completely. The Monday before Christmas, I was moving a fridge when my ankle suddenly painfully gave out and I wasn't able to walk on it with how painful it was - I hobbled when I did have to move. My wife heard me on the phone and how much pain I was in and was insisting she pick me up early to go to the hospital (it was about 16:00 at the time and the store closed at 17:30). I refused as another guy had gone to the hospital that afternoon due to complications due to a motorcycle accident the previous Saturday.
So I struggled through for the next 90 minutes, then went to the hospital, where I was told that I'd torn two branches of my left lateral ligament. My first question and thought, with it being the week before Christmas, was "please tell me I don't need any time off". I was told I wouldn't, but that I would need an emergency sport's physio appointment in the next 48 hours and that I needed to be extremely careful with ladders and only climb them if I absolutely had to. I also needed to be off my feet every 45 minutes. I didn't even ask about heavy loads. I called my boss straight away to give him the bad news, including the appointment, and said that I would do what I could to minimise its impact on work. I could tell he wasn't happy by the tone in his voice, but he thanked me for letting him know.
The following morning I was up at 05:30 as the physio place I was recommended opened at 07:00 according to Google. The plan was to try and get in before work which would solve the problem. It turned out Google was wrong and they opened at 08:00. When I called, the only appointments they had open were a 13:00 and 17:00 and it was a good 20 mins from where I worked. Naturally I took the 17:00.
I got into work and went straight to the boos, telling him I had bad news and that I had to leave at 16:30 that day for an emergency physio appointment.
He then demanded to know why I wasn't taking the appointment on my days off - because that was what they were for. I then politely reminded him that I'd told him about it the day before on the phone, which he denied, then claimed "I've got a business to run". I then asked if he wanted me to bring WHS into this with how he was being and the nature of my injury. His response was "WHO THE F*** DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!?!?!?!?!?!"
He then demanded "Can you do your job?!" I then start to clarify by saying "Are you in-[cluding or excluding climbing on ladders and lifting heavy objects?]" but was cut of with "Yes or no - wait, I'll get a witness!"
He then went out the back, grabbed the 2IC and returned what seemed like 5 minutes later. We sat down in his office and he said to my 2IC "As I told you last night, Andy isn't to climb on ladders or lift anything." I politely interjected saying "It's just the heavy things, light things are fine" To which he stated bitterly "No, you're not lifting anything!" He then continued with the 2IC "Now he tells me he's got to leave early for an appointment this afternoon! Well he can leave early, but he's not getting a lunch break!" I would have walked out then and there, but if the 2 weeks notice isn't given at this place, they can garnishee the 2 weeks worth of pay to make up for it as a term and condition of your employment. Instead I stayed and submitted a letter of resignation that night and everyone in that place knew with how furious I was, that I was done. By the time that the 17:00 appointment, rolled around, I had been on my feet for 7 and a half hours without a break and where my ankle had been easy to diagnose the previous afternoon, it was then that swollen that the physio couldn't diagnose it at all. The following morning, they accepted my resignation, I was let go of then and there and unceremoniously escorted out of the building.
I devoted myself to that job 110%. I put my health to one side to give the store everything, I worked through lunch breaks without making the time back, I stayed back after the store had closed to help customers without a second thought and when a few weeks prior two people had leave scheduled at the exact same time and the store was short, I volunteered to work 6 days to help them out at standard rates.
The fact is that retail isn't what it once was. A former manager of mine told my father that he was grooming me to work as the 2IC at an upcoming store due to my work ethic back around the turn of the millennium (which I only found out after the fact) which sadly didn't work out due to the store having to get rid of its casuals due to the effect which the building being renovated had on store traffic. It used to be that people would value you if you were hard working and saw retail employees as assets. Not so these days. I was telling a former colleague what happened at the store with my foot and she replied that it's exactly how it is everywhere in retail these days. You are expendable, you are disposable, and the fact is that people working minimum wage jobs deserve better than that.
Like I said, working in retail these days, is quite simply put - an exercise in masochism.
I'm now doing what I can to make sure I never have to go back to retail. I am now devoting myself to managing roughly the bottom third of NSW for a youth organisation on a voluntary basis, at great personal cost to myself and my family. However in the long term it is the best move I can make, because for the vast majority of people in retail, career advancement is incredibly limited and it is essentially a dead-end job. By all accounts I am proving to be very gung-ho in the role and by every measure I am making great inroads in the region compared to how things were, meaning that there is every indication that it will pay off in the long-term.
In short, everything I have said is entirely fair and accurate, comes from personal experience and is sound advice for the vast majority of people working in retail.
For you to attack me for telling others in the same boat to get out and demand better - and do whatever it takes to make it happen - smacks of blatant virtue signalling, hypocrisy and paternalism. After all, heaven forbid that us "little people" actually better ourselves so we're no longer the serfs of some hegemonic latte sippers who want service for nothing these days.
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