Etiquette, not pictures.



Wasn't there, didn't witness it so can't really comment on the customer being rude or not but in general, doesn't this kind of rudeness p&ss you off?

Imo, all buildings open to the public should have mobile phone signals blocked. Anyone wanting to use one should be forced outside, like the smokers are.

I heard that story on the radio news this morning, what is most annoying about it is that Sainsbury's offered the customer an apology and vouchers for free shopping.

They should have ignored the complaint.

That would also interfere with email, text etc.

But I agree on the rudeness. And Mr Chicken's point about Sainsbury's actually apologising to her.

Shouldn't have apologised and I bet the majority of people would agree with what they did.

If I'm ever on the phone or have headphones in, I'll always end the call/take them out. It's just good manners.

One thing I can't stand though from cashiers in shops is when they're serving you and they're having a full-on conversation with someone on another till, barely even acknowledging you're there.

I'll tell you another thing that is correct etiquette and yet I bet at this time of year most people won't do (I learned this in a hot country

), removing your sunglasses when speaking eye-to-eye to other people especially if your glasses are mirrored or extremely dark - in the Carribean and in Portugal (two random places where I've done it) its regarded as polite to remove them when talking to others, especially in a business setting.

The customer is always right.

I think she was being rude, but she was being rude while spending money in their store.

The cashier was COMPLETELY out of order by doing what she did. She was LYING to the customer about it being store policy when it was clearly not.

The woman has been offended by the cashier and said she'll shop at another store now. Sainsbury's are the losers in this, when really it was only the cashier who acted incorrectly.

So your mother calls you on your mobile phone with some "emergency" right while you're at the checkout of Sainsbury's.

Your priority is to not offend the cashier, rather than your mother?

That anecdotal phrase is one of the least correct sayings in regular use today, I work in customer service at the sharp end and believe me, the customer is not always right.

Our MD likes to use the phrase often but soon changes her mind when I start sending service engineers on 200 mile round trips for free because the customer said they were on a service agreement when in fact I found that they were not and should have been charged "But the customer is always right" would get me sacked under those circumstances

Unless you personally witnessed the event how on earth can you make this statement????

Well that excuses any behaviour.

I know of shop assistants who have been slapped by an unhappy customer: 'always right', though.

Mind, that was in Knightsbridge, so it's a posh, rich person's right, innit?

I'm terrible at answering the phone so it's not the best example to use for me! I more often than not call people back and if my phone went while I was at the till, I'd wait until I was done to check it - I wouldn't know it was an emergency until I answered it. If I was already on the phone and it was a real emergency, I'd be leaving without buying anything.

And I agree with what people say about the customer being right. Experience from when I worked in Tesco when I was younger showed that the customer, in a number of instances, is rarely right. I had a jar of peanut butter thrown at me because the till was closed, I was verbally abused on numerous occasions because certain items weren't in stock, and more that isn't coming to mind at the moment.

Clearly when a customer is trying to con something out of the company then the "customer is always right" maxim goes out of the window.

But that doesn't extend to cashiers refusing to serve customers for minor breaches of etiquette.

I don't believe for a second that any manager would have permitted her to refuse to serve a customer who was on a mobile.

I think she was blatantly lying when she says it was a store policy.

If I did that I wouldn't be able to see the other person

but I see the point of it

The full quote including at the end, as i was taught many moons ago, "except when they are wrong"

I think that's the bit where she falls down. A better response from her would have been along the lines of 'its not store policy but just good manners' or something of that ilk.

Then in the resulting fallout Sainsburys would have had to decide whether its better PR to back their till operators against rude customers or go for the customer is always right line.
Think I know which way they'd have gone though.

You didn't witness the event. No one on this thread witnessed the event. But you're all condemning the woman.

What if this woman only had a 30 minute work break to get the shopping done and received an unexpected call from her husband who's a serving soldier in Afghanistan?

She should hang up on her husband so that she doesn't offend the cashier?

Should she witter on about what she's wearing on Saturday night with her mate?

All of this is ridiculous speculation and completely pointless.

It's pretty much certain that she was talking inane drivel to someone. But that still doesn't give a cashier the right to refuse service.

From Sainsbury's PLC point of view that customer could spend 100 pounds a week on groceries in their store every week. That customer is worth 5,200 pounds a year to Sainsbury's. And that cashier has just sent the customer to a competitor.

I think LGJM has a point. Of course it's incredibly rude to be on a mobile phone whilst being served at a checkout, but if retailers only agreed to serve those members of the public who were polite they'd soon go out of business. Every customer-facing employee has the right to go about their business without being abused or intimidated, but they don't have the right to dictate who they will and won't serve based on the customer's manners (or lack thereof).

You can be on the phone and acknowledge the checkout chick without causing any offense. You can bet this woman was being rude with her body language as well and completely ignoring the checkout woman. You can also assume she was then sent into a furious rage by being challenged over it.

Lack of class from the customer, but the checkout girl should just have carried on regardless.

No, you may want them to think they are always right but they are not always right. Sometimes in some situations they need to be told that they are not right. Often earns a lot of respect.
In this situation it was just bad manners on behalf of the customer. That said, supermarkets pretending they want to interact with customers, even at the checkout, is laughable, they are not about customer interaction that was lost when they forced the closure of small, owner run local shops.

Hmm. People seem to be commenting without bothering to read any report or article. I have read the Wail report and it includes teh following:



Whilst having an endless and loud convo about pointless inanities would indeed be rude, this doesn't seem to be the case at all here. The shopper seems to be harmless, and I can't see what she did wrong.

In general though, if I've loaded a trolley for which I'm paying, and if I choose to have a conversation with anyone at the checkout, I am struggling to see what it has got to do with the checkout operator. His/her ONLY sensible course would have been to raise it at a staff meeting or later with a manager and IF Sainsbury's wanted to bar customers from mobile phone convos at the checkouts then that is a decision only they should be taking.

Oh well, if we are dreaming up unlikely alternative scenarios to justify what was clearly plain rudeness, what if the checkout lady had an undiagnosed mobile phone phobia?

FWIW, the checkout lady should have put up with it, even though the one with the phone was, in my view, bloody rude.
People operating checkouts are people too and deserve eye contact and acknowledgement of their existence.

Just extending the area of discussion slightly, I often see people, even couples who are obviously together in a restaurant or pub, spending more time fiddling with their phones than actually conversing.
If anyone did that when I was out with them, I wouldn't be out with them much longer.
I recognise that I am of an earlier generation but, come on, what is so important in all these people's texts that they can't wait?

Actually it turns out that her children had super glued it to her ear

It wasn't her fault.