Customer Service - A Living Nightmare - a true revelation

     I know what it is to work with the public and that is the nightmare component of this article.  I was in the local Sam’s Club one Sunday in 2003 and after standing in line for quite a while, I decided to ask if they were hiring.  I had been in Maryland almost a year and had been unable to get myself hired on my college creds so I went looking for something to do that was from my experience outside of college.  I had been a cashier in college at Family Dollar Stores in South Carolina and guessed I could handle that as part-time work until something opened up.

     They were indeed hiring so I came back, filled out the application on the phone as was the way then and reported to the store when called for an interview.  The front end manager was the one who recommends hiring for the customer service and cashier applicants.  You do three interviews before they say yes or no and the store’s general manager is the last to interview which means you are 2/3 of the way there if you get the third interview.  The manager’s first question was why I wanted to work there and I was honest – we needed me to be working, I was not getting hired on professional jobs I had applied for and I had been a cashier and had worked with the public for more than 25 years as a public and then a school librarian.

     I was hired but not on my merits as a cashier, he wanted someone at customer service with people experience.  So I began another set of interviews with the manager in charge of customer service and was hired.  When you are learning the ropes at the membership desk, you do not have access to a register right away – you have to train under the present employees as they wait on customers.  You punch the keys, scan the items and take money/make change under their tutelage and on their register number – all transactions are recorded by the register and stored so a complete set of sales, refunds, exchanges is available for every operator’s number.  You don’t have a number so your actions are recorded under the tutor’s number.  What people at the desk as customers don’t understand is that you can help them at the computer with membership information – that is another set of credentials – but you cannot ring up their monetary needs without your own register id which you do NOT get for two weeks.  They scream at you and assume you are stupid, question your presence if you “can’t do anything” and do not act in a way that makes you fond of them when you can finally finish the transaction. 

     Receipts are required for refunds – for two reasons, to ascertain what you paid, where you paid and when and to guarantee you are the person who bought said item(s) and can interact with the computer registers that will not allow access if the customer is NOT A MEMBER.  You must have a valid card to scan; a readable, verifiable receipt and if you are returning for credit it must be on your own credit card – not someone else’s – and no cash given back for credit card purchases.  All of this is on the wall but, of course, no one has read it because they believe the customer, no matter how rude, crude, ridiculous or immoveable, is always right.  Doesn’t work that way.  Under the right circumstances any item at any  Sam’s Club is  returnable for another if the receipt stating the amount paid is present and able to be read or scanned; cash may be returned for a nonreplicable item if it was originally bought with cash or a debit card; credit can be issued if the person returning or refunding is the owner of the original card used for purchase – not a second or authorized user and, lastly, no refund or exchange can be completed without a COS’s signature if the operation exceeds $100 and a manager’s signature if over $500.  For the membership desk partner to overlook these rules is to ask to be fired.  Customers always are in a hurry and think you are just stalling, making them later than they ought to be.  Sometimes a manager does not respond and then the desk partner is verbally attacked and sometimes ugly scenes result if the partner tries to allay the customer or defend him/herself. 

     Because the membership desk does refunds, returns and membership sales, the desk does not do checkout for original sales.  Try telling someone who has stood in the line with an original sale that and the abuse can be screaming, spitting, throwing items or attempts to walk out the door with items that were not paid for.  Managers spend half of their time in the store at the membership desk explaining the rules and saying that the desk partner did all they could do without managerial intervention – and the response is usually – “Well, she didn’t explain it to me.”  When it WAS explained.  “That’s a stupid rule!”  The desk does not make the rules.  “I’ll take my business elsewhere where the cashiers CAN do what they are supposed to do!”  If only they would carry through on that threat.

     I was never one to hound employees at the exchange desk but I became so empathetic that I did not return things I should have because I did not want to contend with people who put up with the other customers in my need to exchange or refund.  Just think about your needs prior to encountering the employee – 1) if this is your lunch time, remember that others are trying to squeeze their needs into that time frame as well and if the line is long, reschedule; 2) if you did not buy it, did not charge it, did not use it and found it not working – don’t try to return it; 3) computers control the financial world and they are not able to be reasoned with – they only understand the things they have been programmed to understand and manipulate; 4) if you have a question about a return or exchange, call the store and ask and 5) don’t assume the employee is an idiot, unfeeling, has it in for you and wants to see you miserable.

     One lady was very upset with me and even after the manager explained I could not do what she wanted, she promised she’d have my job as she walked out of the store cursing and screaming at me for being a racist b**ch and she’d make sure I was sorry I did not wait on her the way she wanted.  She called every day reporting me to a manager for being incompetent and racist.  Since most of the managers were there when the original event happened, they did not record the complaints; one who had not been there took a complaint call and added it to my employment record and sat down to tell me how upset she was with me.  I asked about the call and she told me it was on Wednesday and I had been rude and racist to a female customer – I looked at her in disbelief because she had changed my hours to work the weekend so I was not in the store on Wednesday.  She shrugged her shoulders and said she forgot to check but the complaint had to stay because once entered it could not be expunged without an order from the district manager.  I took this for three and half years until the grind just wore me down to a mere fraction of my former self as far as wanting to deal with people.  I cannot, will not go back to that way of treatment by employer and customer.