Confessions Of A Tesco Employee
Tesco is an interesting place to work. Ever wondered what goes through the mind of the checkout assistant as they idly scan your shopping through? No, they’re not judging you for buying 3 different types of biscuits. It’s more likely that they’re actually trying to figure out why Julie from aisle 3 would need to talk to your duty manager, and wondering if it’s anything to do with them!
Okay, so that’s a pretty lame example but you catch my drift. Tesco employees are people too, and as an ex-customer service desk worker, I’m going to give you a little glimpse into our lives in the superstore.
1. Plastic bags
Starting off simple here – if you have 5 items or less we will judge you so hard for getting a plastic bag. You don’t need it, think of the environment!
2. Complaints
If you come to us with a complaint about the fact that your obscure brand of flavoured fancy cheese is no longer in stock – especially if your store is only small – we will ask for it to be brought back, but we know it won’t come back. A lot of what we do is just to appease customers so that they leave happy this time.
3. Can I just…?
Okay so this is a HUGE personal pet peeve but bear with me. If you come and get cigarettes from the customer service desk when theres a queue, then pop a basket on my counter with a little “Can I just get these here?” I have to tell you that I hate you. We all hate you. you’re holding up the queue of customers that actually need us so we can scan your Sunday dinner fixings. Not cool.
4. Lovely locals
We do remember a lot of the customers we have, and we have our favourites! We encounter so many lovely people and do end up becoming friends with lots of them. The highlight of my morning shifts was seeing my lovely old regulars coming in for their papers, and just having a quick 5 minute chat with them about their day made my day so much brighter.
5. Reduced price
Watching all the customers swarming around the reduced price section is quite entertaining I’m not going to lie. Although we do always feel a bit sorry for the poor soul who has to do the reductions, they can really get harassed sometimes! Something that you may not know about Tesco as well is that any reduced stock that isn’t sold gets put together with other stock and is donated to local homeless charities every night. Pretty lovely, right?
