In fairness, the Food Lion nearest me on the Rogers Lane isn’t as wretched as the Mos Eisley Walmart a bit closer to downtown Raleigh along the New Bern Avenue.
But it’s honestly not too far away from the now with 15% more scum and villainy standard of customer service the Mos Eisley Walmart is so proud of if recent interactions with some of the staff are anything to go by.
I’d actually stopped at the Reedy Creek Food Lion in Cary earlier today to pick up a couple of items after collecting Alex from school and it was a reasonably pleasant experience other than wandering a lot longer than I wished trying to find things because no two Food Lions will ever be laid out the same.
But once I got home, I realised I’d forgotten a couple of items I needed because I never made it to the dairy section in the Reedy Creek Food Lion.
OK…I’ll just head up to the Rogers Lane for a quick run through my least favourite Food Lion ever.
How hard can it be?
I end up getting three items: two packages of butter quarters and a jar of sweet pickle relish for a whopping total of $8.33.
Then it’s off to the front in hopes of a reasonably quick trip through the tills and resuming more enjoyable aspects of my life.
The first thing you notice is that none of the checkout queues with actual human beings is available round 1845 on a Thursday evening. The people manning those queues were finishing off the people lucky enough to get there before the light got shut off but there were more than a few people with only a couple of items getting the bum’s rush to the ever growing queue to get into the self-checkout bullpen which is already chock full of people that have full trolleys who should never be there in the first place.
The self-checkout bullpen was never meant for a trolley full of groceries but sending people with massive trolleys that would be very easy for them to rob the place blind seems more than a little ironic with the experience that was awaiting me.
After a few minutes of watching one person trying to keep an eye on five self-checkout tills in various stages of operation, I finally make my way to an open self-checkout station and do as I usually do…scan the MVP card and then grab the scanner gun and quickly scan the three items that are in one of those small baskets you can carry round.
All three items were scanned and registered in the system and visible on the screen.
I put the items into those impossibly thin plastic bags and just as I’m about to use the Apple Pay function on the attached credit card terminal, the machine apparently decides on it’s own that the one human employee has to come over and assist.
And by assist, it means he wants to check the blue plastic bags because the machine’s camera that’s surveilling the scene has somehow come to the conclusion that I’m apparently trying to shoplift from the store in yet another stunning display of being presumed guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Put a pin in this…we’ll come back to it toward the end.
Congratulations, Food Lion!
You’ve managed to discover why these second-hand machines that were originally owned by ASDA in the UK were quickly removed from their stores so they could be sold off to those poor gullible suckers at Delhaize to let Food Lion deal with the massive number of bugs in the system.
In fact, these machines “AI pilferage detection algorithms” were hands-down the most unreliable with so many false positives that the feature was very quickly and permanently disabled and the ASDA store security employees stopped bothering to monitor the cameras or respond to it’s alarms.
They didn’t bother telling the punters that they’d done this so customers were still checking out thinking those machines were watching them even though no one really was and that probably cut down the shrink rate at least slightly. A bit of diabolical thinking on ASDA’s part but you’ve got to admire the devious cleverness of it.
Guilty Until Proved Innocent
But as he’s mumbling something vaguely accusatory about the machine not scanning the items correctly as if I were somehow at fault even though the list of items scanned on the screen is the three I had actually scanned and eventually placed into a bag, I had to open up the bag anyway to prove my innocence that he didn’t even have probable cause (much less any real proof) to doubt and then he scanned a paper ticket and punched a code in so I could complete the transaction.
As he’s doing this, he’s saying something along the lines of “you’re not in any trouble” (why on earth would I be when I’ve done nothing wrong?) and “it’s OK” (only if you completely ignore that your machine and you have just stomped all over what is probably the deadliest insult known to Hungarians to imply or outright say that we are without honour).
I understand that this ZIP code is one of the lower rings of hell for a retailer and I also get it that the design of the self-checkout bullpen is not only an implicit statement on Food Lion’s part that they not only presume you’re a thief until you prove otherwise, the area is small and congested enough that anyone who’d likely try would have a hard time legging it for the door. So you’ve already sent a more than subliminal message that I’m considered to be without honour and any regard for protecting my commission as a Notary Public for the State of North Carolina which would almost certainly be rescinded by the Secretary of State should I engage in moral turpitude such as thievery or dishonesty.
The design of the area and the cameras supposedly watching your every move makes that abundantly clear.
Ironically enough, the queue for the self-checkout bullpen had grown to such an extent that magically two real queues were opened back up when there were none available when I first came to check out and people were being directed that way as I’m completing the purchase transaction.
Have They Got Rid Of Competent Managers As Well As Checkout People?
I ask for the manager to attend not really thinking I’d get one given the clear indications of an Operation Hairshirt in progress cutting down on employee staffing costs.
Implicit in that request should have been an understanding that I want to speak to the manager without any interference from the bullpen employee.
Someone purporting to be a manager arrives from the general direction of the rear of the store and the bullpen attendant decides to abandon his presumed job of watching five active self-checkout tills for pilferage and the false positives and tell this person a variation on the story that simultaneously manages to accuse me of somehow being at fault for his machine’s failure to operate correctly and paint a much more favourable version of his personal interactions with me than actually occurred.
I was annoyed before and was just going to leave it at a friendly observation that being presumed guilty rather than innocent is a dreadful way to conduct business and one that Tom Smith would have instantly fired anyone for engaging in that behaviour.
But now I’ll admit that I’m truly pissed at the appalling lack of judgment on the part of the employee to even dare to try to manipulate the narrative and his manager to save his own ass and essentially poison the well before I’ve gotten a chance to say one word.
Then there is the matter of the even worse judgment of this “manager” who should have told the bullpen guy to mind his own business and to actually attend to the duties that he was neglecting and that if need be, they could have a conversation later once I’ve had my say.
It became clear in the next couple of minutes that the damage had already been done and that the manager had already come to whatever conclusion in his mind he wanted before I’d had a chance to say one word.
If outright dereliction of duty wasn’t enough for that bullpen employee to have earned termination, the conduct unbecoming he displayed toward his customer and disrespect shown to his superior by not allowing the manager to personally handle the situation without the employee’s “help”…a situation that had been intentionally escalated above him no less…certainly is worthy of being sent packing to the dole queue.
But the manager didn’t exactly cover himself in glory and it didn’t take long for him to try to feign that he was somehow the victim in the conversation and try to tell me multiple times “we’re not going to do this”.
Do what, exactly?
I was very pissed off by this point and I believe understandably so given the context of what had happened to this point and the employee’s and manager’s attitudes really didn’t help the situation and he seemed hell-bent on being in charge of the conversation *I* had initiated when that was clearly an inappropriate tack for him to take.
At no point during that conversation did I ever yell or even really raise my voice and never used any sort of profanity and vulgarity. Anyone who truly knows me knows full well that when I’m so angry that I’m seeing red, I actually get quieter and more measured.
There was certainly nothing in the interaction that warranted this manager trying to establish some sort of psychological control over someone who is merely trying to provide some useful feedback when when they know it’s probably a hopeless endeavour.
If that is the manager’s idea of “de-escalation” then they are in serious need of re-training on the subject.
He’d made up his mind and that was going to be that and his attitude tended to alternate between bored, irritated that I was bothering him with feedback or even trying to get a word in edgewise to make a point, or actually hostile and refusing to actively listen.
I understand a manger’s natural tendency is to side with their employee and presume the customer has to be wrong. I actually respect when a manager is willing to stick up for their employees because it’s good for the general morale.
But this wasn’t one of those instances in the slightest.
That is exactly why an employee should *NEVER* be allowed to poison the well in such a way and that efforts to save their own skin should be shut down instantly and handled at an appropriate time after the manager has had time to (at least theoretically) handle the situation.
I was told a couple of times by this manager that clearly I had no idea how these self-checkout scanning machines worked nor did I seem to understand in his eyes what proper customer service is or should be.
In fairness, on the latter point I am forced to agree…if what I experienced is what that employee and this manager thinks is proper customer service, then I truly do not understand how they could have possibly come to the conclusion that what they’re doing is at all customer-focused and in the customer’s and store’s best interest.
A Design Flaw I Could Drive The USS Nimitz Through!
Remember that thing we pinned a bit ago?
The manager tried to again blame me for the machine’s false positive when I pointed out that I’d scanned the items with the attached scanner gun like I always do.
He seized on the fact that I’d not immediately put the items in the bags as a way of trying to blame me for the problem.
But that completely ignored the fact that the fault is really that the machine’s software and/or the humans monitoring it is dodgy at best and prone to errors and that if it’s triggered by not moving items to a bag fast enough to suit the AI or person monitoring, there is a gaping hole in the logic of whoever designed it.
After all, I usually have a trolley when I’m shopping and go through the self-checkout bullpen and the items rarely leave the trolley at all other than to be scanned with the attached scanner gun and very rarely would the items that are scanned ever get placed in the plastic bags of unbelievable optimism because they’re going to go into the insulated bags in the car’s boot.
BTW, please stop being cheap and actually invest in 6 mil or even thicker bags as those 2 mil bags are rubbish and it’s a minimum double-bagging to have a chance of it not breaking!
In all this time, scanning items in the trolley and never bagging them at all has never triggered this shoplifting alert functionality which would indicate that your system has an even more glaring design flaw that is easily worked round and you’re left to trusting the humans in the bullpen that seem disinterested in proper and respectful customer service as it is. Your employee in this instance left his post to get his side of the story in with the manager allowing goodness knows how much pilferage to take place whilst his back was completely turned toward the occupants of the bullpen.
There were a couple of other instances in which his phone was far more interesting to him than what was happening in the bullpen. I get it. The employee seemed to be on the younger and much more inexperienced side of things and that no process or technology will defeat Gen Z’s and the Millennials and their ability to ignore something important in front of them to check out their phone and good luck enforcing a policy requiring them to leave the thing in their car or a locker.
You’re Not The One
It was at this point that I had pointed out the lack of human checkout personnel as an option when I’d turned up to check out (but now there were two active queues) and the manager’s take was a dismissive observation that he doesn’t set the hours or staffing for the queues and he dumped any accountability for the staffing levels on the store manager which he apparently…wasn’t.
Interesting.
If I had to guess, I was passing through at the time of a shift change (as one young lady in Food Lion chic attire walked by and out the door round 1900) but it seems more than a bit weak on his part as a leader to not be able to handle with some measure of flexibility the excessively long queue for the self-checkout kiosks with real humans. The Americans With Disabilities Act implications of that decision (or lack thereof) is something that your risk management/lawyers would probably be horrified at the potential exposure for legal action.
But this was the point that the penny dropped that the person I was talking to might well have the title of manager but clearly doesn’t seem to have any real authority to go with it to hold his people accountable for their actions or indeed take any accountability for his poor decisions.
Apparently that can only come from the store manager and they only work in the mornings.
That revelation really should have come well before we got into that conversation and then I could decide whether I really wanted to waste my time with this “manager” or have a conversation with someone who theoretically ought to care far more than what I’ve observed in the employee and the manager this evening.
Tom Smith Would Be Rolling Over In His Grave!
Anyway…I had thought that by asking for a manager, I was hoping to get someone with whom I could have a reasonable and constructive dialogue with a representative of a grocery store I’d shopped at for years before it was named Food Lion because of the expansion into Tennessee where there was already an existing Food Town grocery store chain.
A person who actually took accountability seriously and instead of pouring petrol on what was already a raging dumpster fire of piss-poor customer service entirely of Food Lion’s own creation all round might have actually tried active listening even if he wasn’t inclined to or even have the power to do a darned thing to address the concerns that I’ve raised.
Maybe I could dare to dream that he might even be bothered to show some measure of respect for the customer.
Instead, what I got was an even worse waste of my valuable time by someone who showed that just because someone has some measure of authority, it really isn’t useful or productive if it’s not coupled with an innate understanding that proper leadership often starts with a sincere desire and capacity in serving the needs of others. Being in command is often lonely if not the most abject form of servitude still allowed by law that can be quite uplifting and fulfilling when one’s attitude toward the calling and the task are appropriate.
In this, this manager failed utterly and it’s not any particular surprise that those in his employ can’t be bothered to show any pride in the Food Lion brand, their store or indeed any respect for their customers.
Tom Smith would be rolling over in his grave at the current state of affairs at the Rogers Lane Food Lion.
And that’s the real shame here because Tom Smith was a real stand-up guy and exemplified the concept of the servant leader better than the vast majority of people whose jobs are in the lofty reaches of the executive suites.
Perhaps it’s time those people in Salisbury start paying attention to the damage being done in the stores by an increasing population of employees who are disinterested to actively not caring about customer service.