Shoppers Drug Mart review: Sdm prince michael (#1203) oakville sales associate

I am a regular, frequent customer at the Shoppers on Prince Michael in Oakville and am normally extremely happy with the customer service representatives. They're happy and helpful. Unfortunately I was recently shocked by the way a service representative I hadn't encountered before dealt with both myself and a friend who was shopping there as well. (I'll only speak to my experience here.). The customer service representative was female, somewhat heavy set with dark hair.

Firstly, I approached (from a social distance) said new to me customer service representative to ask her if she would please do a price check on an item that was in the seasonal clearance area but not priced. Without checking she informed me that the item ‘was just dumped there by someone and not on sale'. As there were multiple units of the same item I questioned this yet she persisted and refused to price check it for me. I decided to take it to the check out with the hope someone would check for me there.

It is notable that the store was not busy at all. Besides myself and my friend there were only four or five other people shopping at the time.

At checkout, there were no representatives on cash but the self checkout was available so I proceeded. (The same customer service representative was putting items on shelves just behind the checkout area adjacent to me). When I scanned the item in question, it was indeed marked down so I bought it. I was glad that I checked myself. I proceeded to self checkout everything that I'd picked out and I paid.

As I was placing my paid items into bags, I noticed that there was a security sticker on the box of Gravol that I'd purchased. Normally this would have been deactivated by customer service but given that I was in self checkout I figured it would ‘beep' when I went to leave the store. I then asked the same customer service representative who didn't help me with pricing if she could please deactivate the item. Without leaving where she was, she told me to ‘read the sign' about how to deactivate it myself. I turned back to the kiosk but couldn't see anything that told me how to deactivate a security sticker. (I wondered to myself why the store would ever post such information since shoplifters would love to know, but I said nothing of this aloud) I then asked the same representative where the sign was and she told me to read the red and white sign above the scanner. This sign didn't tell me how to deactivate the sticker. It read something about the use of scanning being more COVID friendly. I then told the representative that the sign did not tell me how to deactivate my paid item. Finally she left her post, came over to me in a huff, grabbed the box of Gravol from my hand and began aggressively rubbing the box on the edge of the scanner. After she rubbed it back and forth a bunch of times she said ‘there!', dropped the Gravol into my bag, turned on her heels and returned to her post that she'd been clearly reluctant to leave all along.

I understand that these are hard times and I regularly voice my appreciation for all the Shoppers people who have kept stores open and been heroes through this pandemic. I realize that there are challenges with staffing and a host of other problems that employees must deal with. I don't lack empathy for people who find the holiday season everything from exhausting to painful either. I have no idea why this customer service representative was so unhelpful, gruff and condescending to me but it was not what I have come to expect from the team at Shopper's Prince Michael. I hope it won't happen again.

God Bless