Lidl saleswomen become clear: this is how customers make them mad
Created: 11/23/2022, 5:16 p.m
By: Vivian Werg
Tensions often arise in supermarkets between salespeople and customers © Wolfgang Kumm/ dpa
More and more employees at Lidl and Co. are reporting hostilities in their everyday work.
Now they reveal what annoys them the most.
Kassel – In supermarkets, tensions often arise between staff and customers.
More and more former employees of discounters such as Lidl are speaking up and revealing the quirks of customers they had to struggle with on a daily basis.
The time at Lidl was like a conflict seminar, a former employee of the discounter told
Business Insider
.
In their eyes, many customers would have behaved in an impossible or aggressive manner.
They often lack respect - both towards the supermarket employees and towards the food.
She revealed the three most annoying peculiarities to the news portal:
At Lidl and Co. - What employees find most annoying about customers
Lack of communication or no communication at all:
When dealing with supermarket staff, there is the other extreme besides yelling at them - no communication at all, says the former employee.
Customers often either ignore the employees at the checkout or make their concerns known with impolite hand movements.
“A “hello” or “good day” would usually improve the mood.
Do not put meat back in the refrigerated section:
It is increasingly the case that perishable products that have to be in the refrigerated section or even in the deep-freeze section are simply placed on the shelves arbitrarily.
These would then have to be thrown away immediately because the cold chain was interrupted.
"You can tell that people have no respect for food - maybe because the products were cheaper until recently," the employee continues.
Go back to the store at the checkout and keep others waiting:
Many customers at the checkout are more stressed than anywhere else. If the atmosphere is already tense, some customers are happy to run back into the store when they remember that they have forgotten something .
Other customers then have to wait.
This is very annoying when there are long queues.
"If it really only lasts a short time, that might be okay," she says.
But the same applies here: communication with the staff.
If asked, customers were more than welcome to leave their purchases with her at the checkout while they scurry back to collect the forgotten items.
Trouble at Lidl and Co. - What makes cashiers particularly angry
A cashier from another discounter shares similar experiences.
She told
Der Spiegel
that she was the lightning rod for many customers.
Despite this, she remains calm in tricky situations, since complaints about individual employees are grounds for dismissal.
There were also minor thefts several times a week.
After weighing the fruit, many would add something afterwards.
However, this cannot be weighed and checked at the checkout.
But it's not just criticism for customers.
The discounter itself is also being targeted by its employees.
In the ZDF documentary "Lidl: Die Insider", employees of the discounter anonymously revealed which sales tricks their employer wants to use to make more profit.
(Vivian Werg)