Extracted from News Straits Times Malaysia
Spotlight: The ugly side of Malaysian shoppers
21 Jan 2007
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Snot smeared on chairs, urine and faeces on the floor and dirty
diapers on top of shelves these are the souvenirs left behind
by Malaysian shoppers for retail staff to clear up every day. TAN
CHOE CHOE, CHAI MEI LING and MALINA JEYA PALAN reveal some shocking
Malaysian shopping behaviour.
WORKING in the retail industry in Malaysia takes more than just a
pleasant personality and an interest in sales.
You need a strong stomach and loads of patience too.
You need that as some of our shoppers treat retailers premises as
dumping grounds or toilets, and the retail staff as their personal
maids.
Some Malaysians just do not know what proper shopping etiquette
is.
Walk into any hypermarket on a weekend and you can see misplaced
items on almost every aisle.
These are things that customers want to buy but change their mind
about, so they "conveniently" leave them on a nearby shelf.
"Some customers also open pre-packed items to try them out.
Sometimes spillage occurs and our staff have to clean up after
them," said Yuswanis Yusof, public relations and corporate
communications manager of a hypermarket chain.
Yuswanis said her company practised the "customers are always
right" policy and staff were trained to quickly replenish any
damaged goods and ensure that items put on the wrong shelves were
reorganised immediately.
House detectives, she said, were employed to "discreetly" remind
customers who "forget" to pay after taking an item.
Even bookstores, the supposed meeting point of educated people, are
not spared.
You can find torn books to crumpled origami figurines and carpets
stained with urine and faeces. Rodney Toh, MPH Bookstores Sdn Bhd
area manager in 1 Utama, has seen them all.
While children are the ones who usually damage the items, the
biggest problem is parents who do not care, said Toh.
"Ive seen a teenage boy cutting out a picture from a book and his
parents just looking on without saying anything," he said.
Some parents also have no qualms about joining their children to do
certain exercises in a workbook and then leave the store without
paying for it.
"There are those who get very defensive when we point out that
their children have mistreated our books."
Toh cited one incident where, instead of apologising for her
four-year-old daughter who had ripped out the pages of a book, the
mother faulted the staff "for not teaching children how to properly
handle books".
Besides being a "library" to customers who read its books for free,
MPH had also become "a nursery for some parents to dump their
kids", said the companys marketing manager, Renee Koh.
Children as young as four years old have been left behind for hours
in MPHs Kidszone by parents who go off shopping.
"In one of our stores some time back, a small girl cried for her
parents for hours until she vomited. When I saw her, she was all
alone in a pool of vomit. We had to clean her up and locate her
parents who were shopping without a care in the world," said
Toh.
A child also once defecated at the Kidszone and a member of the
staff had to clean up the place and replace the carpeting, he
added.
Children could be forgiven for lack of supervision but when adults
mistreated books, it became unacceptable behaviour, said Koh.
"Malaysians think they can always go to the competitor if we do not
give them the service they demand.
"So they think nothing of it when they damage our goods, disregard
our warning or exhibit rude behaviour."
He said a customer once tore a discount voucher and threw it at the
cashier when he was told that he needed to make a purchase before
he could get the discount.
Personal hygiene is a priority in every store but some customers
make it very difficult for retailers to maintain that.
A store manager of a well-known clothing retailer in Mid Valley
Megamall in Kuala Lumpur said some customers liked to try on the
bikini bottoms, despite the "no-trying" policy.
"One even stained it with her vaginal discharge. She rolled up the
piece and passed it to our staff before quickly leaving the store,"
said the store manager who only wanted to be known as Aini.
"The soiled bikini bottom had to be thrown away."
Visibly upset when she related the incident, Aini said some
customers "are inconsiderate and lack basic hygiene values".
In another incident, she saw a middle-aged woman pick her nose and
smear the snot onto a nearby stool while waiting for her daughter
to come out of the changing room.
"It was so disgusting! As soon as she left, my employee and I
cleaned the stool."
There were also occasions when customers with feet of different
sizes swapped slippers before making their purchase, "leaving us
with ill-paired stocks", she said.
Some women shoppers like to try on clothes a few sizes smaller,
thus tearing up the clothes.
"Of course, they dont pay for them," said Aini.
Some retailers have the policy that "goods sold are not
returnable", but a lingerie stores retail manager who wanted to be
known as Rachel, said customers still insisted on exchanging the
items they had bought.
"We told them that it was against our companys policy but they
still argued with us and asked us to change them."
One of the last things one would expect to find when shopping in a
toy store is a soiled diaper wedged between some toy boxes.
Chong, 38, who works for a giant toy store in Bangsar, said she
noticed a couple with a baby entering the store and later
discovered "a poo-filled diaper" after they had left.
"Some parents also treat our shop as a playground and leave their
children here while they shop. When their children play with our
toys and spoil them, they just leave without paying," she
added.
Some customers litter her shop, leaving behind things like
ice-cream cones and water bottles.
"The least they could do is ask us for a rubbish bin," she
said.
Koh said customers were generally sincere and well-behaved.
"But there are some bad apples. Because of them, we have incurred
losses up to hundreds of thousands of ringgit a year on damaged
goods."
Hasbeemasputra Abu Bakar, 32, who worked in a toy store for about
two years, said: "For us staff on the ground, such appalling
shopping behaviour can really jack up our stress levels."
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