My bad experience at Shoprite Surulere Food section

Posted by Felix Okoli on Sunday December 9, 2018 at 13:28:40:

One of the places I like visiting in Surulere area of Lagos state is the Adeniran Ogunsanya Shopping(AOS) mall and one place I go shopping the most when I'm there is to Shoprite.

Shoprite sells a lot of household stuff like baby items, food products, body care items and electronics. There is also a special place dedicated to just selling ready to eat foods such as roasted beef an chicken, salads, rice, potato chips and other stuff.

I've bought ready to eat food items from their food section at Shoprite several times and I have to say that I'm not exactly a huge fan of them particularly at that section and that's because the customer service delivery speed there is so poor. The Shoprite staff available at the food section are very slow and uncaring when attending to customers who want to buy food. I do pity those customers who have become addicted to Shoprite bread and don't mind waiting for bread to be available because at times they wait for more than 30 minutes. I'm not a bread lover and even if I was, I would not want to buy it from Shoprite since the service delivery speed is so slow there. I rather prefer other foods like rice, potatoes and roasted beef.

This particular Sunday, I decided to buy food from the fod section at Shoprite and when I went there, there wasn't really the usual long queue and one Shoprite staff was attending to a customer while I waited in line. I had been waiting and waiting for almost 20 minutes and no none attended to me and so I though that they was only one Shoprite attending to customers at such as snail speed. It is one of the reasons why I don't like buying food at Shoprite in Surulere because they way they service customers is so SLLLOOOOOOWWWW.

While I was still waiting, I noticed that there were up over 5 Shoprite staff around the Kitchen area and yet only one of them was still serving a customer or just laying around. I waited and waited and almost got tired of waiting when an old man just passed buy an was probably doing window shopping across the section. As the old man passed by me, someone from the Shoprite staff around the kitchen area rushed to greet the man and asked the man how she could serve him. It was a tall fair woman wearing her white overall and cap who approached to serve the man even when he has not even waited at the food section for up to 1 minute. You cold imagine how mad I felt and had to explode in anger. So, they actually had someone who could attend to customers and they kept me waiting there for almost 30 minutes?

I shouted at the fair Shoprite employee who was practicallyu all hands out rushing to serve the old and told her she had to attend to me first. I'm the kind of person who believes in due process and so there is always a way to do things in a service area. I told her that I've been on the line for a long time and she did not attend to me and now wants to rush to attend to the old man. I personalLy have no problems with the old man going before me but if only she had at least noticed me and asked for my permission to serve the old man first.

The annoying thing is that the old man had not even indicated any intention to buy anything and and was practically passing through and yet she did not notice me before rushing to attend to the old man. It was really annoying and while I was still trying to tell her that what she was doing was not right, she started trying to justify herself claiming that it is Shoprite policy to attend to old people first. I still tried to make her understand that I don't think that is true, else, there would be no need for queues. I respected old people o, but I don't like my rights being taken away from me without my permission.

What really kept annoying me even after my shopping experience was that she did not even apologize and kept saying that she has to serve old people first. I would have gone to the manager at the shopping mall to make my complaint but I didn't feel the need to escalate the issue since my goal is not to make her lose her job.

I had to argue for a while with the tall fair employee at Shoprite Surulere's food section for a while but after a long argument which seems to be heading nowhere, I decided to stop arguing and just asked he to give me my order so that I can go which she did. You know there are some Nigerians who will do a wrong thing and still not feel sorry for it even after other people have told them that it is wrong. The best thing is to leave them to God.

It is not that the food at Shoprite Surulere is even that appetizing or as healthy as food one can eat elsewhere but I only buy it at times just to manage it. However, this bad experience has made me to stop patronizing their food area from now on and it may take a long time before I buy ready to eat food from them again. They really need to do something about the way their staff serves customers in that section.