You got it! And if my boss gave me shit, I'd give him the big eyes and earnest expression, followed by "I was all alone on a shift that should have had 2 people at least, I did the very best I could" or "But I was never trained to do that, I did the best I could." What was he going to do? Fire me? lol.
When I worked at Kohl's, I was assigned to work returns after Christmas.. Since I learned how to do returns, then I suddenly got stuck running customer service sometimes, even though I had never been trained to do anything else back there. I had so many coworkers who would get all upset about customers trying to work the system to "steal" from the company, and I could never understand that. I got paid the same every hour no matter what, and we had a "Yes we can" policy. You want to return that ancient item for the price on your receipt, even though it's been waaaaaaaayyyyyy marked down since then? Sure, no problem. You want to use that coupon that's been expired for 2 weeks? Yes we can! If it was big enough, I'd call a manager just to cya, but for the most part the "yes we can" policy was enough to keep me out of trouble, and I didn't have to argue with irate customers. Just give them what they want and get them out the door. Meanwhile, some of my coworkers would get into arguments, just to be overridden by management because, again, "yes we can" and have their day ruined by customers "stealing" from the company. Why on earth would you care? And then there was the time I got stuck closing down customer service one night. I had to call another store to get someone to tell me what to do, and they had their own shit to deal with so they weren't very helpful. It was a little nerve wracking because it was so. much. cash. to deal with from all the registers for the day, but again, if I fucked it up, that was not my problem. Big eyes, earnest expression, "I did my best, I had never learned how to do any of that" lol.
Yep. I ended up being a supervisor in retail print/copy, and I basically said yes to whatever unreasonable pricing demands I had control over. I definitely took the difficult customers when other staff was about to have their job made harder than it should be, and it almost always ended up as "sure, we can help you out."
The line I drew was anything in-house production that would fuck over my colleagues. I know you own a restaurant and have a New Year's Eve event coming up, but no, we cannot bump the people who placed their orders in advance to accommodate your need of 4,000 fliers for your shitty event. That would put too much strain on my staff.
The thing I did the most often, though, was fax shit for free. $1 per page for faxing? Fuck that, here, let me type in the service code real quick. Have fun.
That's a good strategy-- I'll give you what you want to get rid of you to make my day easier, unless giving you what you want will actually make the day much harder for my team.
Yep. Also try not to directly contradict something my team says without a little back and forth. Makes it easier for me than just saying no, but doesn't throw my team under the bus. But if there's no compromise between those, I would stand by my team 100% of the time.
Whatever I did worked well for the store, too. We made our sales goals and got the bonus every quarter.
You got it! And if my boss gave me shit, I'd give him the big eyes and earnest expression, followed by "I was all alone on a shift that should have had 2 people at least, I did the very best I could" or "But I was never trained to do that, I did the best I could." What was he going to do? Fire me? lol.
When I worked at Kohl's, I was assigned to work returns after Christmas.. Since I learned how to do returns, then I suddenly got stuck running customer service sometimes, even though I had never been trained to do anything else back there. I had so many coworkers who would get all upset about customers trying to work the system to "steal" from the company, and I could never understand that. I got paid the same every hour no matter what, and we had a "Yes we can" policy. You want to return that ancient item for the price on your receipt, even though it's been waaaaaaaayyyyyy marked down since then? Sure, no problem. You want to use that coupon that's been expired for 2 weeks? Yes we can! If it was big enough, I'd call a manager just to cya, but for the most part the "yes we can" policy was enough to keep me out of trouble, and I didn't have to argue with irate customers. Just give them what they want and get them out the door. Meanwhile, some of my coworkers would get into arguments, just to be overridden by management because, again, "yes we can" and have their day ruined by customers "stealing" from the company. Why on earth would you care? And then there was the time I got stuck closing down customer service one night. I had to call another store to get someone to tell me what to do, and they had their own shit to deal with so they weren't very helpful. It was a little nerve wracking because it was so. much. cash. to deal with from all the registers for the day, but again, if I fucked it up, that was not my problem. Big eyes, earnest expression, "I did my best, I had never learned how to do any of that" lol.
Yep. I ended up being a supervisor in retail print/copy, and I basically said yes to whatever unreasonable pricing demands I had control over. I definitely took the difficult customers when other staff was about to have their job made harder than it should be, and it almost always ended up as "sure, we can help you out."
The line I drew was anything in-house production that would fuck over my colleagues. I know you own a restaurant and have a New Year's Eve event coming up, but no, we cannot bump the people who placed their orders in advance to accommodate your need of 4,000 fliers for your shitty event. That would put too much strain on my staff.
The thing I did the most often, though, was fax shit for free. $1 per page for faxing? Fuck that, here, let me type in the service code real quick. Have fun.
That's a good strategy-- I'll give you what you want to get rid of you to make my day easier, unless giving you what you want will actually make the day much harder for my team.
Yep. Also try not to directly contradict something my team says without a little back and forth. Makes it easier for me than just saying no, but doesn't throw my team under the bus. But if there's no compromise between those, I would stand by my team 100% of the time.
Whatever I did worked well for the store, too. We made our sales goals and got the bonus every quarter.