Common Issues that Arise in Retail Stores
The world of retail is riddled with errors. This is one of the universal things that happens at work in the retail setting. Workers are human and therefore we are going to make mistakes. Some mistakes we can live with, but other mistakes frustrate most workers because they are mistakes that can be avoided. Other mistakes might not be able to be avoided, but they still can cause problems that we can live without.One of the most common problems that comes up a lot at work, especially in retail, is the price tag being in the wrong place, or is out of date. The customer comes up to you and mentions that the brownies were on sale for $2.50, but it rang up $3.99 at the register. This is annoying because you know that the price is right, but you have to give it to the customer and you have to spend time getting yelled at for something that wasn’t your fault.Two common problems in retail revolve around scheduling. The first major issue is that someone gets scheduled outside of their availability and isn’t able to come in for their shift. This causes problems because there might not be someone else to come in, or the company might not let you fill the shift in favor of saving payroll. This is a common thing to do in retail settings even if the scheduling error was a management mistake.The other problem is with people just not coming in to work. I can see why people wouldn’t want to come into work and be bored to death all day, but it still isn’t an easy job to do. When one person doesn’t come in it can cause a ripple effect. If the dairy department is down a shift, it might be up to the Front End to free up a cashier. That might cause management to have to multi-task and have certain things not get done during the day.Some other common mistakes are usually at the register. A lot of the complaints about poor service at stores have to do with how people are treated at the cash register. Either the cashier is rude, slow or ends up crushing the bread under the coffee can. While this can be avoided, it all comes back to a lack of thinking and is one of those mistakes that is certainly avoidable.If you thinking about joining the wonderful world of retail, you should note that these are some of the common problems that you are going to run into. The little issues that cause customers to complain, managers to be upset and employees scrambling to fix the mistakes before they turn into even bigger issues during the day.
