The Woolworths Thread (17 Viewers)

[obliviousninja]

My pay only came in this morning, I just assumed it was late due to a public holiday.

Had a girl last night steal cigarettes from me. She had a handful of groceries (nothing important, Iced Coffee, a few bags of chips etc), and then she asked for a packet of Winfield 20's. Got them for her, scanned them, handed them to her, and she put them in her handbag, as most customers do.

However, her card declined when she went to pay for it. She tried again, but got the same result. She said she'd duck out to her car and grab her other card. Yeah, she never came back.

Unsure if this was her plan all along, or she got out there, realised she had the smokes and then decided to leg it. A co-worker was next to me at the time and said it happened so quickly we both can't be blamed for not reacting until she was already out of the store.

That's really poor practice to let them take the item in the bag before payment

 

[T_Knight]

Peeps are being a little too critical of bernie14 here. You occasionally make a mistake here or there out of 100's of transactions daily, especially during peak trading. He'll learn from it and next time, be not so absent-minded when any card declines & customer needs to leave POS to get partners card, which is not uncommon. Yyou have to loudly & clearly tell them "excuse me, those items have to stay here" or "those groceries are unpaid for so they have to wait here…..see you in a bit". Pretty much, being more aware anytime payment was unsuccessful. Sometimes you'll have to physically chase them down cause there too "busy" on their phone (office workers) & they just walk away thinking its all done, then get brought back red-faced lol.

@speed6, its a pointless exercise to acquire CCTV footage when 'employee error' can be cited as the primary cause of the unpaid items PLUS there's 0% chance of stock recovery. Centre security/LAC won't even bat an eyelid at such immaterial stock loss unless it was an intentional act by a repeat offender. Pretty much the only takeaway here is, "learn from it and move on".

 

[Speed6]

When customers break an unpaid item in the store, are there any measures taken to compensate the loss? Or is there leniency?

 

[nanakid12]

If you're passing this info onto Woolies management how about you tell us what we should be doing.

 

[Speed6]

I can't make any particular comment about that thanks.

 

[nanakid12]

Well like a filthy, feral and ferocious animal you sound and look like, I hope you get served the shittest food that the restaurant can offer to you as a filthy animal your are. I hope you get to taste that dog meat in your mouth you bitch.

@speed6 everyone. Incredibly unprofessional if he actually IS affiliated with H/O.

But most likely full of shit.

MORE:

And you're fucked in the head? Is that how it works KATY??

Hahaha I thought you were at 1 Bitch Way, Bitchavista.

Well it looks like you've finished work early today, how was work? I hope it was shit.

So what are you eating for dinner? Dog food fresh from the shelves whilst listening to stupid Woolworth music you little animal.

lol I'm just trying to get ideas for my creative, I'm not from head office or anything, why should I report these interesting stories for? I doubt head office has time time to read these stories anyway...

 

[Speed6]

@speed6 everyone. Incredibly unprofessional if he actually IS affiliated with H/O.

But most likely full of shit.

MORE:

@nanakid12

I may give your store in Melbourne a visit on the basis of discussing employee online related matters.

Other than that curveball, when an item has been marked down considerably, due to the expiry date approaching, have there been occasions where an employee has gained a financial advantage, by often storing the product at the back and then purchasing the product at the end of their roster?

 

[T_Knight]

^if you have ever worked in retail store operations, you would know the answer.

In other news, we recieved a whole bunch of ipads for frontend department just recently. Apparently we're suppose to be conducting a quick 1-min survey to customers waiting in the queue about their "in-store experience". For now, there just sitting in their boxes still shrink-wrapped in the corner lol. So I guess, at the very least ... our store's overall score can't be a fail.

 

[nanakid12]

I would love to discuss online related matters with you. Maybe you can even swear and call me rude names in person!

@T_Knight that is a really good idea I think! More of this VOC stuff?

 

[T_Knight]

Not buying the idea personally, cause customers just want to get hell outta there. Plus for that VOC campaign that ran till the end of last year, our store was basically bottom half of the state in all of the performance indicators haha:

- Trolleys or baskets available: hardly
- Queue lengths in checkouts: yep, pretty farkin long
- Out of stocks: we got plenty of those
- Wrong price tickets: we all make mistakes .... especially with tickets
- Friendly staff: um, we've got warm bodies in uniforms, that's something right?

Recall overhearing our store manager commenting about our overall score at the christmas party no less - "at least we didn't come last". Yep.

 

[danj1]

hey,
I'm from a store in SA. Been reading this thread pretty much since I started with the company 5 years ago, it's also the reason I was originally promoted to Supervisor - God knows how long ago someone posted how to do a spot check on here, couple weeks later the store I was at was down on supervision and the question went out "does anyone here know how to spot check a till", guide worked a charm - little while on and I'm now service 2iC and frequently close as duty manager. I've worked at 6 stores and have plenty of stories for this Speed6 character. Figured I'd say hi.

 

[Speed6]

hey,
I'm from a store in SA. Been reading this thread pretty much since I started with the company 5 years ago, it's also the reason I was originally promoted to Supervisor - God knows how long ago someone posted how to do a spot check on here, couple weeks later the store I was at was down on supervision and the question went out "does anyone here know how to spot check a till", guide worked a charm - little while on and I'm now service 2iC and frequently close as duty manager. I've worked at 6 stores and have plenty of stories for this Speed6 character. Figured I'd say hi.

Hey Dan, welcome man.

This is the first time I'm coming across a member from SA haha.

You've got plenty of years of experience and certainly you would have plenty of stories you would love to share with us-that's right. Some people here don't tell me stories anymore, they did in the past but for some reason, one day it just stopped

Welcome again buddy! We look forward to seeing your name frequently around the thread!

 

[FrontEndHero]

You're from SA? Didn't you guys get rid of plastic bags a good while ago? How do you guys bag things then? Also people always bringing in their bags must be a pain since theyre so difficult to serve and pack fast in.

 

[danj1]

You're from SA? Didn't you guys get rid of plastic bags a good while ago? How do you guys bag things then? Also people always bringing in their bags must be a pain since theyre so difficult to serve and pack fast in.

Don't get me started. The flimsy free plastic bags have been 'illegal' here well before I joined the company, just over 10 years I believe, instead we have to sell these thicker green woolies bags for 15c they're still plastic but 'reusable', life would be so much easier if we had free bags, every 3rd customer still complains about it "You know you don't have to pay in [insert over state]!" - and no one wants to buy them so you end up with people dropping stuff everywhere because they refuse to pay for a bag, or wanting 3 bags worth of stuff crammed into one.

Hey Dan, welcome man.

This is the first time I'm coming across a member from SA haha.

You've got plenty of years of experience and certainly you would have plenty of stories you would love to share with us-that's right. Some people here don't tell me stories anymore, they did in the past but for some reason, one day it just stopped

Welcome again buddy! We look forward to seeing your name frequently around the thread!

Why Thank you Speed6! I have a story for you actually right now, today I was serving a gentleman at our smokeshop counter, tried to buy his packet of JPS Red 26's with a Returns card, when I told him he couldn't he proceeded to throw all of our magazines over, then completely destroy a valentines day display.
Classic day.

 

[Speed6]

Why Thank you Speed6! I have a story for you actually right now, today I was serving a gentleman at our smokeshop counter, tried to buy his packet of JPS Red 26's with a Returns card, when I told him he couldn't he proceeded to throw all of our magazines over, then completely destroy a valentines day display.
Classic day.

What an absolute half-wit, I feel sorry that you probably had to pick up and clean the mess he created. I would advise that you find his face on CCTV, print it out, find his name and then proceed to shaming him by placing his face on the store billboard (if there is one).

 

[nanakid12]

Whaaat? Didn't know that you couldn't serve smokes on returns cards? Essentials cards I knew about...

Not that we ever get any of those things come through lol.

BTW does anyone ever have those Basics cards come through? Seen the sign up that we accept them for years but have literally never ever seen one.

 

[danj1]

God no! haha, that's the main reason that they have returns cards so people can't just take stuff back and use the money ($15+ without a receipt) to get smokes and alcohol etc.

And yeah we have heaps here, the local salvation army gives them out to the homeless etc so that they can use it for groceries only.

We had a new store manager start this week and he's completely changed every way we operate the store lol. Lovely.

 

[nanakid12]

Dude, I just checked storenet... there is literally no mention of an exclusion of smokes/alcohol. I thought the whole point of a returns card was to be able to get the customers ID if they are always refunding stuff. There's a seperate document which says "Groceries Only" and "Essentials" cards are not to be used for tobacco/alcohol purchases, but nothing to say Returns Cards are not allowed.

And fair enough. I thought it was like an old-school version of that centrelink card that's being proposed. But yeah.

 

[Speed6]

Just an early reminder that tomorrow is story day.

 

[rondo96]

Hi there Rondo,

We welcome you to this forum, we all look forward to reading your best stories.

One of the most interesting stories that I like reading/hearing about from my friends who work at Woolies/Coles and also members of this forum are in-store thefts/catching those in the act and how they react to the situation.

Also, on a side note, what is the most expensive item you broke whilst working at Woolies?

Ahhh, I had a customer threaten to punch my pregnant female duty manager after she asked him to leave the store for stealing. That was a pretty cool night.

Most expensive thing i've broken...hmmmmmm I've never really broken anything of value, sorry to disappoint on that one.

On another note, can't log into successfactors b/c I have no clue what the password is for it. Account has been locked and I called the help line number and no of the options were helpful. WOOO go woolworths