This isn’t a story of a bad customer service experience I had myself, rather it’s a bad experience I saw another person having. I was at Fred Meyer a couple of nights ago and was running my items through those new self-serve checkouts that never seem to work properly. This time it was my steak that wouldn’t scan because the bar code had placed over a corner and couldn’t be flattened for the scanner to recognize.
At the self-serve station behind me was an elderly woman who had a number of clothing items. She was obviously having a tough time getting each item to scan correctly, but she was giving it her best shot. As I was placing my bags in the cart, I noticed another Fred Meyer employee was standing next to this lady. I thought to myself how nice of her to give this customer some assistance.
But I was wrong. The Fred Meyer employee said to the customer: “I hate when people use these type of coupons because now I have to ring up all your stuff again manually”. The poor lady, who just wanted to make her clothing purchase, just stood there probably feeling like she was in the wrong for trying to use a coupon. The Fred Meyer employee grabbed all the clothes in a huff and bought them over to her station where I can’t imagine it took more than 2 minutes to ring up the purchases and redeem the coupon.
Nordquist Blog 
Self check out stations are meant to be used by people that are in a hurry and don’t have complicated orders. It is a huge inconvience when someone that will need customer service, that is provided by the traditional checker, to take off security tags, take hangers off clothing, provide different bags other than those offered, and has tons of coupons or is letting their child do the checkout. It’s as bad as someone with a 100 item order going through the express check out line and pretending they couldn’t see the sign. They should go through a traditional checker because it is a huge hassel for the cashier at the self checkout station to have to concentrate on one customer for an extended period of time because they are suppose to keep up to six stations running at a time, get credit slips signed, checks verified, and take cash when the machine doesn’t accept the cash. I’m not saying what the cashier said was right, but people need to understand the stress these cashiers go through and the purpose of the self-checkout.
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Right on. If you can’t do it yourself correctly, let someone else to do it right.
Most people are just plain ignorant.
jess sayin’
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I’m a cashier at Fred Meyer (won’t use my real name) and I agree. Slightly off subject, customers come in and check out and apparently think that us cashiers came specifically to be their cashier, full of energy, then after that, we get our things and go home. What people don’t understand is that we have to deal with different customers throughout the day, have to have a great productivity rate, and at that sometimes we don’t get rest for hours at a time. 15 minute breaks and/or half hour lunches don’t justify the $600, three-cart transaction. It’s constantly like that throughout the day. Well more like the $200 range but all those cans!!! I never noticed how many canned food people buy!!! It sucks. I’m not saying that I hate my job, I really enjoy working there because I get to meet very nice people who are very informative, but you also get the people who are mad at the world and think that we’re there for ONLY them. I don’t care who you are and I’m willing to risk losing my job so you as a customer know that we are people, doing our jobs. Not slaves. We deserve the same respect as everybody else so don’t go through the express lane with $200 worth of things…oddly enough the people behind them are very upset cause they’re in a rush (pretty much hence the name express). USCAN is ABOUT 15 items and EXPRESS is ABOUT 12 items. At USCAN anything above 20 items we have to override everything cause every item needs to remain by the scanner…everything is weighed…prevents theft for the most part. Oh and another thing…leave the heavy things in the cart (i.e. dog food, 24 can packs of soda, microwaves…etc.) we can scan it from there. And if you have a basket, TAKE THE ITEMS OUT OF THE BASKET! It’s VERY inconvenient for us to take it out. Frankly I turn everything over onto the belt to teach you how easy it is for you to do it. Not asking for much. Alot of customer even help me out by arranging the items to bag (canned items together, cold items together, frozen items together, produce together)…But anyways imma stop with this lol
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Generally apparel should be taken to one of the cashiers, not to a self service checkout (Due to the sensor tags). She probably thought it would be faster, but it's only as fast as the person using it. 🙂
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Fred Meyer customer service also stinks! Bad attitude on the phone and poor systems back up. Think about another store next time you shop!
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