you may say that being on your phone is anti-social, but only to the people around you who you most probably don’t know. they’re probably being very social to friends, or at least to people they almost know on Facebook.

jekkyl – Member
why should I hang up on my mate to punch in 4 digits to pay for my 80 quids worth of fuel and a twix. Like I say I do smile and make eye contact and say thanks.

Erm because, the implication is, you are using your phone on the forecourt and you shouldn’t be?

Erm because, the implication is, you are using your phone on the forecourt and you shouldn’t be?

The amount of petrol stations I have visited in Leeds and Bradford, where the cashier is babbling on their mobile, is probably a dozen.

And……………….?

And……………….?

Nothing; your vernacular prowess has beaten me! 😉

Beeb reporter said it in one ‘would you like it if someone came into your work and did they same to you’?

We ALL have customers. Even the folk who pay 450 @ month to hire an Audi to look ‘important’ to their neighbours.

hora – Member

Beeb reporter said it in one ‘would you like it if someone came into your work and did they same to you’?

We ALL have customers. Even the folk who pay 450 @ month to hire an Audi to look ‘important’ to their neighbours.

I don’t get the Audi haters. I’d like an Audi. You’d like an Audi I guess??!

This thread is silly. Treat people nice is all this amounts to.

If you catch yourself having a conflab while being served; apololgise, be nice, fumble through the 2 transactions to make sure both parties are ok and don’t feel offended, and move on!

piemonster – Member
Im siding with the checkout operator.

+1

But I was brought up in a generation who did not have mobile phones.

I dont hate Audi’s. I think they attract the wrong-type.

I hope Mre Mobile doesn’t come to my local Waitrose. She sounds more like an Asda person to me.

My wife has an audi. We don’t pay 450 a month for it though. We bought it, with money.
I don’t think she thinks she’s important in it either. She has a rule. The speed limit is a limit, not a challenge. If she feels like doing 25mph in a 40mph area, then 25mph it is.

I should imagine this goes down immensely well with people behind her. I’m assuming so anyway, they’re always waving at her, she tells me.

would you like it if someone came into your work and did they same to you?

my clients are always checking their Blackberrys in meetings for really important emails like those ones telling them that the Fungspan server will be off for 2 hours on Saturday, and the one from the COO saying that Jackie Meyer-Fishbomb has been appointed Regional Client Bottom Polisher in Alaska.
I’d care more, but they’re paying for my time, so they can waste as much as they like.

I work in aldi on avarage it takes around 30 seconds to get served at the till, if you cant ask someone to wait for 30 seconds on the phone or wait till you have finished on your phone before coming to my till, you’ll have a much bigger wait for your shopping,i will walk off, and return when you have the common decency to treat me with respect,yes my job may not seem important to you but you’d all be screwed if we just sacked you off and stayed closed.

Its come on decency and I will judge you as a absolute Piss bucket **** if you cant give someone serving you a little bit of respect.

I’ve worked in Tesco, Marks and Spencer and also Dillons (The Newsagent) in the past and can honestly say people being on the phone didn’t bother me.

As long as they’re not holding up the queue so you can keep serving people what difference does it make?

It’s just a supermarket at the end of the day and you’re being paid to scan the goods and maybe bag them, not forge a relationship. I don’t understand why the checkout girl in question here would take it personally- it’s really not a personal slight at the end of the day, or I never thought it was anyway. Context is everything and imo in this context there’s really no need to enforce some kind of advanced etiquette. It’s not a funeral ffs.

To be honest I never found it that bad when it came to the customers, can only really remember one or two isolated incidents where people were really rude and both times they involved kids/teenagers rather then adults.

It’s not just bad manners, it also tends to be inconvenient for other customers. People who insist on having a conversation with someone on the phone whilst they are being served generally take longer as they attempt to jiggle two separate conversations with two different people at the same time, forcing everyone else in the queue behind them to wait as they fart about unnecessarily.

Purchase something, or, make a phone call. Life is full of choices.

I’ve had the misfortune of working on tills for a large supermarket chain and have actually had a customer ask me to pack for her while she checked her twitter. I asked her if she was winding me up, fired her items at her and bid her farewell. You wouldn’t believe some of the dick heads you meet in retail.

The irony of the multi-tasking scenario being that they have to do both as they’re living such busy productive lives. In reality the woman in question was likely to have been doing both so she could get the ready meal and bottle of rose in quickly so she didn’t miss Hollyoaks

I hate this sort of behaviour and have adopted a somewhat zero tolerance to it for the last 18 months or so, specifically:
1) People who answer the phone and then say they are in a meeting. They lose points immediately for that sort of behaviour and if possible I’ll ask them not to answer but let me leave an informative message next time. If someone does it to me in a meeting I will enquire if we should schedule another time as obviously something important has come up. As an aside I interviewed someone last week who answered their phone during it and it wasn;t a death or some hideous accident.
2) In meetings if someone checks their phone I leave. Have been doing this a lot, if the meeting isn’t that important then i don’t actually need to be there. Checking your phone indicates that it isn’t important unless you have pre-warned me that something may need dealt with (death, taxes etc.)
3) If i turn up to a meeting internal or external and nobody arrives for 5 minutes I leave. Same thing, i know people get held up but I am never late, never. Bad manners and bad planning.
4) If someone tries to talk to me while they are on the phone I refuse, multi tasking isn’t possible.
5) People driving with Bluetooth headsets must be the Prime Minister. Nobody is that important that they can’t miss a phone call.
I don’t want to sound pious about it because I really am not. I just hate the lack of basic manners around phones and decided that my life on this planet is limited so I won’t wait for others to fanny around on phones. I’m not big or important, just like to treat people the way I would expect to be treated. With respect and basic courtesy. Funnily enough it has resulted in my colleagues and team actually talking to each other more face to face and our staff survey had a 100% positive rating around engagement which was interesting.

if they act like an 11th century lord of the manner

:O)

I go into people’s homes to talk to them about their weddings and convince them to hire me to be their wedding photographer. Increasingly, younger couples think it’s perfectly normal to respond to texts mid-conversation and even take calls.

The first few times it happened I was gobsmacked. So bloody rude! Now, I just stop talking until they look up questioningly. People like this tend not to book me…

:O)

I think atlaz meant to say “if they act like an 11th century lord of the bad manners”.

At least that’s how I read and it made perfect sense to me.

I work in aldi on avarage it takes around 30 seconds to get served at the till, if you cant ask someone to wait for 30 seconds on the phone or wait till you have finished on your phone before coming to my till, you’ll have a much bigger wait for your shopping,i will walk off, and return when you have the common decency to treat me with respect,yes my job may not seem important to you but you’d all be screwed if we just sacked you off and stayed closed.

Its come on decency and I will judge you as a absolute Piss bucket **** if you cant give someone serving you a little bit of respect.

Agree with this

It’s just a supermarket at the end of the day and you’re being paid to scan the goods and maybe bag them, not forge a relationship. I don’t understand why the checkout girl in question here would take it personally- it’s really not a personal slight at the end of the day, or I never thought it was anyway. Context is everything and imo in this context there’s really no need to enforce some kind of advanced etiquette. It’s not a funeral ffs.

Disagree with this. For me it’s an interaction with another human being, they deserve to be treated with a bit of respect. Acknowledging their existence is part if that. It’s only a please and thank you and maybe a smile.

You wouldn’t believe some of the dick heads you meet in retail.

Oh, I definitely would 😉

I remember a while back.. answering a call as I was at a counter in some shop. I had been waiting for the call for a few days and they finally got back to me. I said sorry to the guy at the counter and walked outside to take it. Once the call was over I felt so bad and explained about waiting for it. I told him how I hate when folk do that to me while I’m at the counter and that I was really sorry. He was fine and had a laugh so all seemed good.

I hope Mre Mobile doesn’t come to my local Waitrose. She sounds more like an Asda person to me.

I doubt she’d be welcome in Waitrose TBH.

Its nothing to do with getting old. I no longer take my phone on rides and often just leave it in the car as a fancy carphone now. Its just a pain and you constantly check it as well.

Really? I find it’s dead easy to not constantly check my phone, which is with me at all times. When I do get around to checking it, I often have twenty or thirty emails sitting there, but none are that important, and having had to take an unexpected call once while helping out with a Sustrans event, which informed me my brother had been helicoptered to Bristol Royal Infirmary after a bike accident, I’m always sure to have it with me.
It’s also my camera, and I have OS maps on it; it’s a useful tool, not something that you let rule your life.
Unless, of course, you allow it to…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222282/Well-mannered-shop-County-Stores-Taunton-bans-customers-mobiles.html

not going to read all 5 pages, but jekkyl and pebblebeach… really? you’re kidding right?

business call…in sainsburys? cant it wait? if not dont shop yet. or if in the queue have the decency to leave for a moment.

have we forgotten politeness? Whats with this attitude of – they are paid to serve me so i am king and can do whatever i want? They are human beings you know?

Scotia +1. The level of ignorance is incredible.

Plus boop! Boop! Quite audible it’d sound annoying/unprofessional

Scotia, nobeer, hora: are you employees or self employed?

what difference?

kb – are you polite?

Yeh I don’t get that either. Why would that make a difference?

I’m an employee and I can manage it, and by far and away the politest people I know are those that are employers. Of well known (locally) retailers to boot.

i think kb is referring to the fact that if self employed then work is ‘more precious’ (not really but i can appreciate what is meant).. but seriously that is just rubbish and a poor sign of the times.

glad im no longer in the money grabbing culture of the uk..

Surely it just boils down to common courteousy, its almost on a par with people who don’t remove sunglasses in a shop.
Eye contact is so important

Scotia, nobeer, hora: are you employees or self employed?

Employed but my mobile is with customers and I’ve been known to text/receive calls even on a Friday pm/weekend.

As I said earlier, would you want someone to come into your business and do the same to you?

What it boils down to is people see staff on checkouts and (unless they are pretty) in shops as beneath them.

I remember once I was talking to a senior bloke in a defence company, he said he was in a bank, ‘hang on I need to get a pen’ then
“you, give me that pen” (those words). Gobsmacked. When he called reception he used to be really blunt/bordering on rude then polite when put through to me.

NZCol is my new hero! Being late for meetings and appointments is one of my bug bears too – unless the person immediately apologises, I just get the impression that ‘lateness is the norm’ for them…

I run lots of educational sessions, and TBH the same regulars ALWAYS turn up late. I’ve yet to adopt the ‘you can wait until break to rejoin the group’ policy, but it’s not far off…..

DrP

Working on a checkout, it annoys the hell out of me when someone comes through and just seems to complety ignore/dissmiss you doing your job of actually trying to help them do their shopping. I just sit there and do nothing till i’ve got their attention. This sainsburys worker is bang on right and nuff respect to ’em!

As a shop owner myself I will not serve anyone who is so arrogant and rude as to continue talking on the phone whilst attempting to be served.

My parents told me

Do unto others as you have have done onto you.

I will be passing this onto my son and hopefully his children one day.