Lots of halfords staff on the forum keeping quiet in this thread :p

TBH the main problem lies with the kind of staff they hire. As mentioned earlier, pay peanuts get monkeys. Saying that myself and another guy in my shop are literally the only 2 guys who know anything about cars, motorbikes or audio. That means any customer with a technical question gets pushed to us or a return customer will only want to deal with us. And my boss wonders why I complain about being under pressure when the others struggle to do a simple task such as print out tickets.

Connor

I understand what you mean, Like that at my work but i just crack on with it.

its the same in my business (Wickes) hire a load of inbreds that don't care about providing a good service because its a dead end job. however I know I won't be staying much longer (finish my degree next year) yet I provide the best service possible to the customer (I do stop short of BJ's and anal mind!). As a result, I get a large proportion of customers asking me technical questions that my colleagues can't answer, I have no formal training but I can read the back of packets, that gives all the info needed but no one seems to be able to read anymore. and I'm an easy target as I'm one of the only folk wearing a shirt and tie (work in Kitchens and Bathrooms) and I convey an air of authority, most people miss the fact my name badge states "Leon Humphrey, Showroom Assistant" and assume I'm the Manager and divert any anger or stupidity towards me and its difficult at times but as all retail staff know, there is no hope for humanity anymore.

Which wickes do you work at? I might come and take a dump on one of your mock toilets, "excuse me sir, are you the manager? I think this toilet is broken"

Edited 21 May, 201214 yr by Mclovin

Which wickes do you work at? I might come and take a dump on one of your mock toilets, "excuse me sir, are you the manager? I think this toilet is broken"

you are gonna drive what 200 miles to my work? besides I only work two days a week so the chance of catching me when you poop is low, however my stance on that sort of situation is to beat the shit out of every man, woman, child or bear that is related to the situation then shit in their kettle and make them a frickin coffee.

my stance on that sort of situation is to beat the shit out of every man, woman, child or bear that is related to the situation then shit in their kettle and make them a frickin coffee.

Retail workers everywhere know this feeling.

Not really halfords fail, but does anyone else think it's a complete ball ache to buy any form of ICE parts?

I don't understand why they can't put stuff on shelves, cos instead you have to ask a member of staff (if you can find one)

Talking about work and stuff, I'm a cnc programmer/operator/all round don and I'm usually the one who has to help the other workers and explain stuff to them. It sucks having to do more work than everyone else but firstly I love my job so I love the challenge and secondly when it comes to people being laid off my boss will and has seen me as someone he can't afford to lose.

So the people above should be grateful about doing more work cos when it matters it'll pay off.

Edited 22 May, 201214 yr by liamcr

Last time i worked in retail, it was as a caterer in a motorway service restaurant on the M1. And it was the early '90s.

This was back when staff were allowed to enjoy being at work, didn't have to dress up like a pest control commando to do anything that risked a paper cut, and write a full report about it every six minutes.

Wet T-bag fights woke you up in the morning, ready to eat more food than a minibus full of African immigrants.

It was fun, despite some customers. From those who rarely visited, and gasped at the prices i had to boldly and shamelessly charge for some shit i'd been picking at for the last hour, to the posh businessmen who needed someone to talk down to them, so they could go and take it out on their own staff/wife/etc.

But you think you've dealt with bad customers. You don't know shit.

Coach drivers. The fat fucks, seriously i never met one who didn't need to use two chairs to sit down. Why? Because i fed them with all the fry-up they could shovel in there, that's why. For free. Every day.

And they knew how important they were. Stop in my restaurant and you bring me 70 customers all wanting breakfast. Pensioners, most of them. Well behaved, old skool holiday goers, proper. His mate in the other coach joins him and it's bloody christmas for us.

So the smug bastards walk in, with 150 people literally standing behind them, i can't see the till, the poor girls on there could be getting mugged for all i know, the gummy mob clean the place out in minutes displaying how the war was won, and i've gotta serve the coach drivers. Five minutes ago.

They decide there and then how much arse kissing is gonna go on. Especially if they know there's another six coaches half hour behind them. It's gonna make or break my week.

There's only so much arse you can kiss in your career. Mine was all out the way in my 20's. No more retail for me. I've done my bit, out of it, hell no.

These days, these machines, they can be a pig sometimes. But this is much more my kinda deal.

^^ You should have a column mikey

Just published the other day by a reputable website.................. http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/which-pol...in-store/013068

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shoppers-...-155745941.html

Says it all. Mc Donalds is now not the dumbest place to work ahahah

Whilst at school I did my work experience at a local halfords store, I worked there for a week and already had a pretty good understanding of my temporary co workers, fucking retards.

For 3 days I worked in the 'bike hut' section and I was having to show one of the senior staff how to set up the derailleur on a customers bike. I'm sure thier were some decent people working there and not all thick as pig shit, granted I never met them but as much as I put halfords down its helped me out a few times when I've been caught short and can't find a blueberry jelly bean anywhere!

Sorry for the rant

But you think you've dealt with bad customers. You don't know shit.

I'll see your service station and raise you working on reception in a high school

You want to meet angry and demanding customers with unreasonable requests? Try dealing with rude, obnoxious, time-wasting parents while doing two people's jobs.

I've worked in retail - dairy at Tesco on a Saturday - and they've got it easy by comparison!

Video killed the radio star. It's been too kind, technology. Sometimes too fast, and some get defensive.

It's going on in Newport Pagnell. Tesco's new store on the old bulldozed Aston Martin factory, a town screaming to save it's high street.

They needn't bother.

The first clue was when kids stopped going out. But if video games were a problem then, the parents weren't even ready for when they went live.

Now we wanna read the news online. Such a shame a pub closes everyday, but whatever. And we wanna buy online. Second hand goods to food shopping, strolling around the shopping centre is a thing of the past. Retail parks stepping in as the final transition before they turn into depots (where Halfords staff only need picking/packing slips to do their job), the final transition before the idle revolution. The revolution which sees not only the end of shops, but also offices as they can work from home. And schools - not that the end of the school run will be a bad thing (or school reception desks, replaced by call centres who don't care how much of an angel your brat is, the work wasn't sent madam).

A nation of people blissfully living in their homes, mentally more spacious than we ever imagined.. it's coming.

More to this than digital stuff.

The media has a lot to do with it - don't let your kids out, they might injure themselves, or get found by a pedophile and wind up being tomorrow's front page headlines. Net result, kids growing up scarless and fearful of 'danger' because of health and safety gubbins.

But people still shop in three dimensions. Whether they buy or go around with RedLaser, I'm not so sure, but there's still a place for going to an actual shop and it's become more important for the remainders to have a real sense of corporate identity.

The net isn't going to replace shopping with your senses but perhaps the future role of actual shops is just as a place to browse.

Totally agree we've just not got a customer service culture here in the UK. We're too fucking lazy though, that's the root cause. The Americans do pile high, sell cheap retail so much better.

Edited 23 May, 201214 yr by Alex

The media has a lot to do with it - don't let your kids out, they might injure themselves, or get found by a pedophile and wind up being tomorrow's front page headlines. Net result, kids growing up scarless and fearful of 'danger' because of health and safety gubbins.

You can blame the liberal left for that

The liberal left are responsible for screaming tabloids? Do you know something I don't?

No, for injecting a sense of fear into everything. Their irrational need to protect everyone at any expense, regardless of common sense, is prime fodder for the tabloids. The exception of cause is the Daily Mail. But there's exceptions to every rule

I was going to say, the Daily Fail is hardly a lefty paper

The Telegraph and Independent are lefty papers?

BBC News doesn't seem to carry any political bias, the way they roasted Labour MPs over expenses, Blair over the Iraq War and Brown over... everything.

Bullshit scaremongering comes from all sides, including the Daily Fail. Especially the Daily Fail.

The Telegraph and Independent are lefty papers?

Haha! I take it you've never heard it called The Torygraph?

All the tabloid press - red tops at least - are traditionally to the right too.

Independent is, as the name suggests, right in the middle.

The Guardian and Observer are the "lefty" papers

But we're not talking extremes in any of these cases, in real terms.

What i was saying was all tabloids will jump on a scaremongering band wagon. But its the liberals who provide fuel for the fire.

BBC unbiased? You must be joking

The BBC should be unbiased - that's supposed to be the idea of it. Not even any advertising bias there, supposedly everything it does should be accountable to either inform, educate or entertain the masses. Some of that has slipped, I think, though.

What it doesn't have in its favour is it's actually reliant on the government because it's a public service broadcaster. Piss off the government and, if they want, they can withdraw your funding (the licence fee).

The BBC shouldn't show any political bias though. Down to not being able to show a party political broadcast from one party that's a single second longer than one from a different party.

But their main output of factual information, the news, is certainly left leaning.