September 2020 by Tulippebbles Tulippebbles
I use charity shops all the time and have done for many years. Friends joke that "British Charity Shops" could be my specialist subject on Mastermind if I ever went on the show! A few months ago, I visited the Salvation Army store in St Helens as I have done many times over the years and, on this occasion, encountered one of the rudest members of staff I guess a customer could ever come up against. As I was browsing the store, I could hear her dealing with other customers and couldn't quite believe what I was witnessing, She was abrupt and surly throughout transactions, responding to questions about items with one word answers, impatient when customers did not have change or requested a bag. Ordinarily I would have just left the store having observed all of this however I had found a stack of books which were too good to leave. I thought I'd try an approach which typically works when dealing with difficult people, I smiled as I approached the counter - nothing. I commented on how great the books were - nothing. I asked for a bag - got one plonked on the counter. Throughout the whole transaction, she neither spoke or looked at me but rather huffed, puffed and scowled as if she was doing a massive favour serving me or that I had interrupted her from some once in a lifetime event (as opposed to standing arms folded, eyes rolling, chewing gum in a charity shop on a Saturday afternoon in North West England) At the end of the transaction, I wrote a comment in the Customer Comment Book on the counter; this prompted her to aggressively offer me her name in the manner of a petulant teenager who' knows she's behaved badly but is trying to face down their accuser. I was waiting for the "Am I bovered though?" comment to come. A few days later I 'phoned the area Manager and listened to a rebuttal of my description of what had happened, incredulity that one of her staff could have behaved in this way and, as this person, was a volunteer (I guess as opposed to a member of her staff who was actually being paid to be rude to people) there was, I quote "nowt" she could do. Mmmm...had a quick look at the mission statement of The Salvation Army which seems at odds with the manner of these two representatives of this charity not to mention the good folk of St Helens who surely deserve a better standard than this.
