Let me get into more detail
Well, to continue on my rant from yesterday...

I work full time in a Shoppers Drug Mart for those of my many millions of readers who don't know, and is these full time shifts I ring through many many people. Now granted I DO work in a drug store so the percentage of irratible people might be a little higher then a standard retail chain like Wal-Mart, but even still I have to wonder if the commen lessons of kindness and politeness are often set aside when in dealings with the person at the cash. Or even in some cases the other people in line.

I give you as evidance one happening last night. I was working the third cash, thus meaning I really not going to be called up unless a bit of a line has formed around the first two cashes. I'm called up to cash, I take my cash. Now, usualy I use my outside voice in proclaming that I will take the next person in line, if only to remind those in line that we do in fact work with a set of rules called DUH that you might want to consider. This time however before I could bellow out my call for some civil behavour, this lady (not even in the line at all) pushes ever-so-rudely past another lady and plops her stuff on the counter with a snarl. The lady who was eating the dust off the rude persons shoes wasn't too thrilled and responded in a comicly cynical tone "Well, so much for 'next in line' then". Meanwhile the person who did the butting in line was rang though and snached her bag and proply walked away as though she had won something.

I fail compleatly to understand the lack of the very basics of respect for the people around you. I can't even grasp how things like this happen, maybe because of my rather awesome upbringing by good and honest people. I dunno.

Other things drive me up the wall, like cell-phones as mentioned before. But I think its the people who seem to live there lives in a hurry...I'm not really going to get into that today but gah, slow down people.

But little made me as fustrated as this news clipping posted in the store about a Toronto Shoppers...lets see if I can't find it online and post it here...

You buy something at a drug store and take it to the cashier for scanning. Wait a minute! The price is not right. Now what happens? Here's an example of the wrong way to handle a pricing error, drawn from an experience last weekend at a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Toronto.A customer buys a package of eye drops, displayed at the checkout station. The shelf price is $6.99, but the scanned price is $7.49."That's wrong," the customer says to the cashier, who tries to scan a second package of eye drops.Again, the price is $7.49.Since no more eye drops remain on the shelf, the cashier starts over and punches in the $6.99 price by hand."That's not right, either," the customer says. "Isn't there a policy that you get the item for free when the scanned price is too high?"By now, there's a line of people waiting to ring up their purchases. Only one cashier is on duty. The customer feels embarrassed, demanding the right not to pay for her eye drops.But she remembers hearing about a voluntary code on scanner accuracy. She looks around to see if signs are posted and finds one right on the cash register."This says I'm entitled to a free item when I'm overcharged," she says.The cashier reads the sign. But she refuses to give away something for nothing."I'm calling the supervisor," she tells the customer.Fortunately, another cashier shows up to handle the growing line of people waiting to get out.The supervisor arrives and sizes up the situation. "Don't charge for the eye drops," she tells the cashier.Not knowing how to scan a free item, the cashier asks the supervisor for help.For several agonizing minutes, they work together until a correct bill is finally produced.Back at home, the customer tells her husband about the experience. Is this typical of Shoppers Drug Mart — or an anomaly?She calls the corporate office on Monday morning and speaks to Lilian Relph, director of consumer and corporate affairs, who promises to investigate."The cashier serving you was a part-time employee working very limited hours and unfortunately, although she was trained, had not had a pricing accuracy issue," Relph writes back on Wednesday."As a result, she did not know what to do. This has been addressed and necessary action has been taken at the store to ensure all staff are up to date on the necessary procedures for pricing accuracy issues."The eye drops were marked down by 50 cents on Nov. 17 — and while the shelf signs had the right information, the scanning system didn't."The bottom line is we made a mistake with the pricing," Relph says. "Please rest assured that all staff are thoroughly trained in managing pricing accuracy issues."In this instance, however, that did not appear to be the case."The Canadian Association of Retail Drug Chains (of which Shoppers Drug Mart is a member) signed onto the voluntary code in 2002. So did the Retail Council of Canada, the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors and the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers.They agreed to honour the lower price when the scanned price at the checkout was higher than what was displayed in the store."If the correct price of the product is $10 or less, the retailer will give the product to the customer free of charge," the code says."If the correct price of the product is higher than $10, the retailer will give the customer a discount of $10 off the corrected price."When there's a recurring error with multiple units of the same product, only the first product purchased by a customer qualifies for special treatment.Participating retailers — such as Loblaws, Dominion, Longos, Costco, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, Future Shop and Best Buy — are supposed to put signs near all store entrances and at each checkout station.The federal Competition Bureau, which endorsed the voluntary code, plans to launch a public awareness campaign for the holiday shopping season. Let's hope the store signs are more prominently displayed and the staff members more thoroughly trained.Customers need to know they're entitled to free items or discounts when they're overcharged.That's the only way to ensure this voluntary code on pricing accuracy has any teeth.


Sorry for any formating issues the there might be...anywho take a read of that artical and your thinking perhaps "She's darn right to be upset, she has the right to her free whatever" but before you start jumping onto that little red wagon take another look...

First and formost she's so upset about what? She got her free item did she not? I love how she adds the rather useless fact that there was a line forming into this little writeup...of course there is, this person is dealing with a situation that would take a little longer then your avrage "beep-ring-here's your change" and its not like someone didn't come and the line got crazy and people died in protest...but this isn't the real issue I have with this little journal entry about shopping gone wrong.

Taking a look at this from the perspective of a shoppers enployee...its obvious to me that the poor individual who was working cash that day was very new...probably first few days of work. I say this cause you don't go many shifts at all before you have to know how to do a price override or how the priceing system works, this is further backed up by the fact that this person was placed on cash one to probably give her some further training...that what you do with the newbs...place them on main cash till they know what they are doing :P. So we have this newb at Shoppers who just went through trianing (training btw is just being up on cash...if something doesn't come up, your not taught it...it sucks yes and yes there should be a better training method to makes things like this artical not happen) and she's hit with a situation she's unaware of...first of all she realized right away there was a price issue and used commen sence enough to correct it. Then she was made aware of something by the custimer that she knew nothing about...she called the supervisor...things where settled.

Then this artical...if not for this I'm sure the person on the cash would have just been told about the policy and then life goes on...but now, that store is under heavy fire...I'm sure she was fired as a PR thing and now all shoppers in Ottawa are being subjected to the mystery shopper syndrome. Its silly that one can't grasp the concept of the newbie not knowing any better....but gah, now I'm just ranting about nothing sooo.......bye.

- posted by Kai @ 11/30/2005 12:19:00 p.m.