Stop & Shop

I had a very unpleasant interaction with an employee at Greenfield, MA Stop & Shop today. I have shopped at Stop & Shop for over twenty years in Danbury Connecticut, Oxford Connecticut, and now for the last five years in Greenfield, MA. In those years I have never had an interaction which depressed me for the rest of my day and which may last for a few more days. This interaction did.

I am a customer that uses Curb Side Pickup quite often. I am over 75 years old. Yesterday I ordered three Natures Promise Low Fat Yogurt containers at 2 lbs each as part of a larger order. They cost about $4,00 each. A substitution was made using Natures Promise Greek Yogurt which cost approximately $8.00 for the same size container. We had ordered three containers. My wife and I have never liked Greek yogurt and the price was double the price of the yogurt we ordered. So we decided to make a special trip to the store today to return the Greek yogurt. We were directed by the service desk to the Curb Side Pickup room being told we had to return it there.

We returned the yogurt then I went over and bought the low fat regular yogurt and paid for it in a check out line. At that point I found that I did not have the invoice from the previous day and so I went back to the curb side room to get it back from them. I figured they did not give it back to me. No one was there that I could see so I walked into the room to see if someone was around the corner.

At that point a young woman employee behind me said in a very aggressive way "What are you doing in there!" I said that I was looking for the invoice for the items that I returned. She said something approximating "You cannot go in there" and pointed to the 6 inch or so sign on the wall near the left side of the entrance. I said I did not see it. She aggressively said there is another one there and pointed to another small sign on the other side of the entrance. The entrance is five feet or so wide and there are no doors on it. I said I did not see them. I had walked into the room a few minutes before to give the Greek yogurt and the invoice from the prior day to the lady standing by the register in the room. She had asked me to come in by saying "Can I help you." She did not object to me coming over to her. The woman employee behind me continued on berating me with her tone and my wife tried to explain everything to her. At some point I got mad at her attitude and told her so. The conversation never did end up with her treating me like I was a human. She continued berating me with her loud voice and tone for a few more minutes. She finally printed a copy of the invoice and gave it to me.

I have never in my life ever been treated so poorly that I can remember. If ever someone else treats me that way at that store I will have to find a new store to shop at. My thought is that the employees need a class in methods for treating customers like they matter. Also if this area is a high security area it should have a door or barricade so that innocent people do not accidentally walk into a buzz saw. A friend once walked into the highly classified section of Lawrence Livermore Labs (Nuclear Weapons Research) and was confronted by Soldiers with assault weapons. I think that he may have felt better about the interactions with them than I did today. They had been trained on how to interact with others that made mistakes. Nuclear weapons research vs. yogurt which one wins on security protocol.

Anyway I do not believe that it is appropriate for that store to allow their employees to treat customers the way that I was treated. In the past there was a woman in one of the check out lines at a grocery store in Rohnert Park, California. She was so kind that people started switching lanes at the check out lanes so that they could go through her lane. I would prefer to shop somewhere like that where I was welcomed. I really do not want to shop at a store where the employees aggressively berate me.