This is sort of a personal vent, but at the same time pointing out things that happen quite often and sometimes daily, in my hours of working in a ghetto downtown department store^^ Ignorance has been rather a HUGE pet peeve of mine, since I'm VERY surprised with many of the things that go on that people just do not understand... So here's a bit of a guide of things that do go on, tips for people who may not know how to shop and well, maybe others can sympathize as well with things on the list^^ From my experience of cashiering and working in electronics:
1) Cashiers do not have universal store knowledge, and although we are expected to know most of the sales in the flyer every week, I'm sorry but we do not memorize every sale item (coming from a place with a BAD history of sale prices not coming up, and we have HUGE sales too, and with non-flyer sales and weekend sales flying out of our ears, we simply just don't know...)
2) If you ask someone for help and they do not know the answer, they are either new, or covering for someone in a department they know little about.
3) We only sell cell phones. It's up to you to phone/go online to active and pick out your phone plan.
4) The display cell phones you can open up and touch are NOT REAL PHONES!!!! If the piece of paper with a logo of the phone company constantly on the display screen doesn't give it away, I don't know what does... (Yes, I had to put a sign up to let people know because people OFTEN asking to buy fake phones was just annoying me >_<)
5) Please, LOOK before buying you cigarettes. Don't assume we carry every single brand, you must look to see if we even carry it, or have your brand in (and cranky smokers aren't fun, and don't like to cross the street to the 7-11 :/)
6) No, we do not know when things come in, nor why the company hasn't sent us anymore of the product you are looking for. Trucks never phone us up and tell us the exact day and time they will be delivering.
7) If you love Walmart so much, then GO SHOP THERE! We know they're cheaper most of the time, but we don't care to hear about it :/ (We're the town's 'other' dept. store, sooo competition is rather annoying concerning this :/)
8)Please, read ALL of the sale sign. Remember the old 'read the fine print' saying, because although we do not make the signs ourselves, it is quite in effect here. If 2+ different brands are on a rack, READ to see WHICH is the sale item.
9) When a new hot item like Wii comes out, no, we don't take names/put them aside. That would not be fair to the 100 other people that would like them (pre orders are the only exception).
10) I'm sorry we stick security stickers on our movies and CDs and it's a bit of an inconvenience, as well as having to purchase them at Electronics. Do you not realize that this store is in the middle of a ghetto? Do you have ANY idea how much theft we encounter every day??
11) No, we cannot order a specific movie/CD/etc you want. We are a dept. store, you're thinking of a specialty store.
12) Please, don't change your babies on our work trolleys. We DO have public washrooms. (Only heard of this happening once, but yeah...)
13) (Almost forgot!) If an item is on a special hook and will not seem to budge to come off, forcing it out will NOT work. PLEASE ask for assistance before you break anything, since it probbaly involves a special key or magnet to open up the security device.