Customer aggression can arise quickly and cause lasting damage to those involved. We speak to retailers about how they handle abusive situations and make staff feel safe.
by Sarah Britton
Three quarters of retail workers have experienced abuse this year, with 43% wanting to quit their jobs as a result, according to a recent Retail Trust poll.
In addition to having to contend with abuse from shoplifters, Chris Brook-Carter, chief executive of the Retail Trust, claims that shop workers frequently face “rudeness, hostility and contempt” from those they are trying to serve.
Nathalie Fullerton, owner of One Stop Dumbarton Road in Glasgow, can’t get her head around why people find it acceptable to abuse retail workers. “The majority of our customers are lovely,” she says. “My staff are amazing. The customer service that comes from them is phenomenal and they go over and above. But there’s always that bad apple that comes in.
“The sense of entitlement and impatience is mental – it’s getting worse and worse.”
Wendy Stephen, owner of Spar Condorrat in Cumbernauld, says she and her staff regularly fall victim to customers losing their temper. “It’s not just shoplifters, it’s total abuse,” she says. “Being behind the till, customers think it gives them the full green light to treat people how they like.”
Simply waiting for what they deem to be too long in a queue can be enough to flare tempers.
“It’s such a hard time at the minute for retailers,” she says. “In the past, any more than two customers in the queue and we’d get till number two open and get them served. But we’re under so much pressure to get other things done in the store, that we can’t do that unfortunately. Our customers had always received and expected that, so now to dial that down, they don’t understand. I get quite frustrated because I go into other, bigger retail stores and you’re lucky if there are two tills on. We’re just a small 1,800sq ft convenience store and if people have to stand for more than five minutes it’s the end of the world.”
And queuing is just one of many triggers for aggression. “A customer’s card was declined and the way she spoke to us was appalling,” says Wendy. “I said ‘I’m going to ask you to leave the store and come back when you’ve calmed down’.
“An hour later I got a phone call with her screaming saying she’d commit suicide over how she was treated. I said: ‘I am not equipped to deal with what you’re going through. I reported it to 101, but it left a mark on me for rest of the week.”
Human errors made with home deliveries is another area where customers quickly become agitated, as is the store’s refusal to accept £50 notes.
“We don’t accept £50 notes because we were once hit with four fakes in one weekend,” says Wendy. “We have signs up to explain, but people don’t see them. They get really, really angry about it.”
Parcel problems
Parcels are another bone of contention for convenience retailers. “The only time we ever experience customer anger and aggression is from Evri parcel customers,” says Sophie Williams of Broadway Convenience Store in Oxgangs, Edinburgh. She notes that all her regular customers are local and well known to staff, whereas parcel customers can be unfamiliar, which is part of the issue. “It’s crazy busy – everyone’s trying to make a quick buck on the side – we get masses of parcels, and it becomes a health and safety issue. We have to refuse parcels and sometimes that does not go down well.”
Nathalie has also faced difficult situations with parcel customers.
“There’s no parking when Evri drivers come to us [to collect parcels] at 3pm. I relayed this to Evri – that they need to come in the morning or after 5, but it didn’t make a difference. They were just coming past in the day and driving on because they couldn’t stop and pick up our parcels.”
One customer got particularly angry about the situation when he realised his package wasn’t being delivered and demanded that it be returned. “I could understand the guy’s frustration – he’s selling items and they hadn’t been collected,” says Nathalie. “I explained they’d been scanned into the system and were no longer in our remit, but Evri’s, so we couldn’t give it back.
“He started shouting and swearing at me. Another customer said, ‘It’s not the lassie’s fault’, but he still shouted and screamed at me.”
The following day the customer returned and verbally abused a member of staff over the same issue, driving them to tears.
That was the final straw for Nathalie. “We just got rid of Evri parcels for that reason. We’re getting all this abuse for 20p a parcel – you can keep it.”
Shockingly, being shouted and cursed at isn’t the worst of Nathalie’s experiences. A customer in Halloween fancy dress recently fled the store with a stolen bottle of Buckfast when their card got declined, and when Nathalie gave chase, she was threatened with a knife.
“He could have stabbed me, you could see the rage in his eyes,” she says fearfully. Thankfully, she returned to the store physically unharmed, but the incident has left a huge emotional scar. “I was in store yesterday and every time the door chime went off, I jumped thinking: ‘Is that him?’”
Tech solutions
She has the Facewatch facial recognition security system in place, which can identify known shoplifters, so that staff can challenge them if they’re banned from the store. But because the man had been masked, it doesn’t help in this instance.
In hindsight, she regrets not having used the store’s panic button, which is a silent alarm with a direct link to the police. “I one hundred per cent should have pressed it,” she says.
Racetrack, which has a chain of stores in and around Glasgow, has had to contend with numerous incidents of abuse from shoplifters. “We’ve got young staff in the site and shoplifters are becoming very aggressive and very violent,” says retail manager Guna. “We have to train our staff and tell them to back off, it’s not worth it. We don’t want them to get involved.
“The problem is in certain sites where it’s happened repeatedly, it’s getting tougher and tougher for those staff. We can only ask so much of our staff and for them to be exposed to violence all the time or threats is very hard. Some staff ask not to be put on the tills so that they don’t have to deal with it.”
Like One Stop Dumbarton Road, Racetrack employs facial recognition cameras to minimise the problem of shoplifters entering the store. “They help a lot, but the problem we have is then staff still have to confront the person. We get managers to do it as they are stronger.”
The firm recently invested in bodycams for its delivery drivers after a member of staff was threatened at knifepoint while on his e-bike, and they are now trialling bodycams on store staff as well in a bid to deter abuse and help staff feel safer.
One safety measure Wendy has in place is headsets, which can prove an invaluable tool in keeping staff feel safe and supported. Her Quail Digital units cost around £1,500 and are used on a daily basis. “We had an old bell system – by the time someone comes from back to front that takes time – the headsets give you instant access to communicate,” she says. “We can immediately put known shoplifters out of the store before they steal again.”
Nathalie has also found headsets to be an invaluable tool in providing instant staff backup.
“One gentleman came in when we had PayPoint,” she says. “He wanted to do a cashout voucher and the staff explained it wasn’t one we supported. He got really abusive, but I heard the commotion through my headset and came out.”
She asked the man what the issue was and as soon as he felt heard, she says he came down a notch. “I explained that the voucher was PayZone, not PayPoint and so we couldn’t accept it. He then apologised and said he was having a really bad day and hadn’t had electricity for a week.”
Cool heads
Anila Ali of Premier Muirpark agrees that when it comes to customer disputes, dealing with the person in a calm manner and listening to their concerns can often help reduce their anger.
“We do get [verbal] abuse, not a lot, but sometimes people want something on tick, and they don’t understand that we don’t accept it.
“Any situation we try to deal with calmly and tactfully. With adults, if they’re agitated and you’re the same, it just elevates the situation. Calling another member of staff often helps to alleviate the situation.”
Sophie takes a slightly different approach with heated situations at Broadway Convenience Store. “I try and assess the situation from afar; sometimes a customer can feel ganged up on if other staff are involved,” she says. “I stay back in case it’s unnecessary to step in. Have faith in your staff and let them resolve it on their own and if they want your support then by all means step in. My Dad’s generation is that the customer is king, they can do no wrong. I don’t agree with that. I listen to both sides.”
She agrees with Anita that a calm approach is best. “If a customer comes to you in an aggressive manner, we always say to be extra kind and that tends to make them reflect,” she says.
The Retail Trust has launched a Let’s Respect Retail Campaign to change customers’ mindsets and encourage them to treat shop workers with dignity and humanity. Visit retailtrust.org.uk for a downloadable toolkit. The charity also offers a wellbeing helpline on 0808 801 0808.
Retailers can also get support from GroceryAid by calling 0808 802 1122.
Even the most competent retailers can become overwhelmed when dealing with incidents of customer anger or aggressive shoplifters. “It can get soul destroying,” says Wendy Stephen, who runs Spar Condorrat in Cumbernauld. “Customers do not have any understanding of what a small business goes through.”
She recommends that retailers going through a tough time reach out to their peers as she has found incredible support from fellow retailers.
“That is really what saved me and is what’s keeping me in retail to be perfectly honest,” she says.
She regularly speaks to peers at the Retail Family – Online Safe Space, a mental health support group run by Glasgow Retailer Natalie Lightfoot; fellow Londis retailer Atul Sodha, who has a store in Middlesex; Peterborough retailer Neil Godhania; The Fed’s Nathan Hall, and Mondelez International’s Alisdair Hamilton.
“The fact that everybody welcomes you regardless of what symbol group you’re in is fantastic, and you can pick up just different things that you’ve maybe not thought of,” she says. “Having that support group of other retailers and leaning on each other really helps.”
The group hosts weekly virtual meetings, alternating between Mondays and Thursdays.
- Head to the group’s Facebook page, email: retailfamily@outlook.com, or call Natalie on 0795 059101 for further information.
