I hurt my back on Monday with a lovely 25-pound box of cat litter. So I wasn’t too excited about shopping yesterday to begin with, and my back was hurting by the time I got to the checkout line.
Yesterday evening I went to Safeway to stock up on things that the food stamp card doesn’t cover since a friend loaned me some money. In my cart I have two 25-pound boxes of cat litter, a large bag of cat food, 3 multi-packs of toilet tissue, 2 large bottles of bleach, 3 packages of frozen macaroni and cheese, 2 large bottles of laundry soap, and 6-8 candy bars.
I’ve already had to get these things off the store shelves, put them in the cart, and then unload the cart at the checkout stand.
In my opinion its bad enough that I have to take this (mostly heavy) stuff out to my pickup truck myself since there are no carryout clerks available, but what was really the icing on the cake is that the checker was mad at me because I didn’t load my own cart as she rang up my purchases.
Isn’t loading the cart part of HER job description? If it isn’t, then she should have called for a carryout clerk.
Getting all snotty and acting like you are SO inconvenienced because your paying customer expects you to do something that probably is part of YOUR job description–and that has been done for that customer for nearly 5 years at this Safeway store alone– is incredibly poor customer service, and in my opinion its tacky behavior to boot.
If I wanted to load my own cart, I wouldn’t have gone to Safeway in the first place. I would have gone to Food 4 Less or Cub Foods, where the trade-off for lower prices is that you load your own cart. You know that from the start too, so its not some big surprise.
I’m really tempted to stop shopping at Safeway. Food 4 Less or Cub Foods would be cheaper, I would know going in that I would be loading my own cart, and I would know going in that I would be taking my cart out to the truck myself.
The expectation of a reasonable level of customer service at stores like Safeway is in my opinion justified because the wages of the carryout clerks are included in the prices charged at these stores.
Am I ever going to load my own cart at Safeway? I DON’T THINK SO!!