{"id":33441,"date":"2021-03-11T12:38:23","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T12:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shefnews.co.uk\/?p=33441"},"modified":"2021-03-11T12:38:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T12:38:23","slug":"retail-staff-in-sheffield-raise-concerns-over-increased-hostility-from-customers-during-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shefnews.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/03\/11\/retail-staff-in-sheffield-raise-concerns-over-increased-hostility-from-customers-during-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Retail staff in Sheffield raise concerns over increased hostility from customers during Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retail staff in Sheffield have voiced their concerns over increased aggression and verbal abuse from customers during the pandemic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Olivia Redfern, 20, a retail worker in the city, said: \u201cCustomers don\u2019t see retail workers as people. They see us as objects just there to serve them. But we are people too. We are also struggling through this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Olivia Redfern, a University of Sheffield student.<\/p><\/div>\n

She started her job in 2019 and left a few weeks ago. She added, she \u2018100%\u2019 found customers more aggressive during the pandemic than before.<\/p>\n

Olivia said: \u201cI\u2019ve had a customer on the phone ask me where an item was and I\u2019ve said, \u2018it\u2019s out of stock.\u2019 They then asked me to go check in the back and I said, \u2018no, I know it\u2019s out of stock because I\u2019ve just checked the same item for another customer\u2019. After that, they just started swearing at me. They were like \u2018Oh you fxxxing Bitch!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Olivia added that sometimes people would pull their masks down when asking questions because they think staff can\u2019t hear them.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cA lady came up to me and pulled her mask down to ask me something and I said, \u2018please don\u2019t do that.\u2019 Suddenly, she got into this huge argument about how Covid-19 didn\u2019t exist and how this was made up and how she couldn\u2019t wait for everything to go back to how it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just crazy how me telling her to do one thing evolved into a whole barrage of comments against me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlotte Crompton,19, another Sheffield retail worker, said: \u201cI was once behind the tills and a woman was about five metres away. I coughed quietly just to clear my throat and she ran away from me.<\/p>\n

“She said if she came close to me her daughter could die because she had asthma. Then she made me find someone else to serve her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was another lady who said that surgical masks were poisonous, and it was a means of government control when asked to wear one.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Credit: The Institute of Customer Service<\/p><\/div>\n

The Institute of Customer Service launched a \u2018Service with Respect\u2019 campaign in July 2020 calling the government to take action, after their research found that more than half of customer-facing staff were subject to abuse from customers since the pandemic started.<\/p>\n

They have had 133 campaign supporters so far.<\/p>\n

Data from the institute on the UK workforce showed:<\/p>\n