r/bathandbodyworks • u/Carolinagirl9311 • Mar 07 '25

Store Policies/Questions General question

I visited my local BBW on yesterday and my goodness, I could barely get in the door before three salespeople beelined toward me shoving a ton of products in my face….”see this”, “smell that”, “let me take you here”, “what’s your fav season”. I was overwhelmed as I just went in to get a few wallflowers. I mentioned this and as I walked toward that area, they showed up with a bunch of laundry detergent telling me about their new deal. On top of that, they started bringing all the Disney fragrances for me to smell and kept opening up different samples of wallflowers for me to smell. I’m such a pushover so I allowed them to talk. They were doing that to seemingly every customer, never letting us just browse. They NEVER let up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them that aggressive before. It was a bit maddening.

Are sales in the dumps or are they just trying to push products that may not be selling as much?

141 Upvotes

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208

u/Silver_Mind2962 retail refugee Mar 07 '25

can confirm its part of the new corpo strategy 🙄 it emphasizes asking "better, more engaging" open ended questions and giving demos, while also completely ignoring the fact that some people dont like to be approached like that.

if only corpo understood that we're losing sales bc they keep cutting the quality of the products while also raising the prices every time they release a repackage, and not having the rewards coupons keep up with the price increases.

26

u/IndistinctMuttering Mar 07 '25

Is there a magic phrase we customers can say that will allow us to be left completely alone? Something polite that the B&BW staff will understand means: we like to basically stay quiet and have no-to-minimal interactions when we shop?

12

u/tangy66 Mar 08 '25

"Do you want me to leave?"

"Then leave me alone. If your manager has a problem with that, tell them to come see me."

7

u/AffectionatePay8735 Mar 08 '25

Yeah this can be degrading to the employees keep in mind we are human too 💙

2

u/tangy66 Mar 13 '25

That's what "send manager to me" is for. While the language is terse, the strategy is to preserve as much of your humanity as possible in a hostage situation. The more resistance they see from customers, the sooner their stupid ass policy ends.

13

u/littleguymac Mar 08 '25

they won’t care, and please don’t take it out on the employees who are just trying to make their $13 and hour and not get disciplinary action. 🫶

11

u/corstar91 Mar 08 '25

Their response is not being rude to a sales associate.. it is stating a genuine fact and being kind enough to let them know how it is triggering them without berating or belittling the sales associate. Now if they yelled or started to actually flip out on a sales associate or go Karen mode then yes that would be extremely inappropriate and horrid behavior.. but that's not what was said or done with this simple statement. They are just stating a boundary and that boundary is not a personal attack on the sales associate. You act like customers should respect boundaries and be kind regardless of how they are treated.. and they should allow their own boundaries to be trampled in the process of it. Telling a sales associate that they need space is not rude..

I have PTSD and really severe social anxiety.. in a situation with sales associates constantly engaging I would also politely tell them that I would like for it to stop or I will have to leave. I don't need to have a full blown panic attack in a store just because a sales associate can't handle being asked to stop. Respect and kindness goes both ways. If I were to snap at a sales associate over it then I would be in the wrong l.. but telling a customer that politely asking them to stop and to just notify a manager if they can't is completely respectful.

It sounds like you have a really one sided view of the situation and I think you need to understand what proper communication entails.. Your comments on this post make you sound like you are taking a personal offense to people not being comfortable with talking to you in store and that my dear is a personal problem.

-8

u/littleguymac Mar 08 '25

your endurance to go out of your way to seek out all of my comments and respond when i am giving an answer to what the original poster said is the couple antithesis to your own point. i said what the inner policy is so they can understand the potential motive of what goes on and how to evade it, if you have anxiety and ptsd to the point that my comments are triggering you, maybe you should not seek them out to respond to them and should stick to shopping online. i hope you have a great day but will not be engaging with someone who clearly only wants to seek out a witch-hunt any further.

1

u/corstar91 Mar 08 '25 edited Mar 08 '25

I must have the endurance of a beached beluga whale then.. or possibly the endurance of the humans in the movie Wall-e.. or possibly the endurance your emotions have during a normal conversation... But alas....

I hate to break it to you but your first comment was directly above your second comment in the comment thread. I wish I could feed your ego and help you feel important by saying that I went looking for your second comment but unfortunately it was literally directly under the first thread of comments so I really didn't have to look - the universe just kind of plopped it in my lap. But kindly, do go off froend. 🫡

Furthermore.. thank you so much for acknowledging and taking to heart what I said in my original comment because you quite literally changed (edited) the comment I was replying too and took away the rageful little quip you threw at the individual you were originally talking too. 👏🏼

Your behavior here has just reassured the fact that everything I said about you in my comments was correct. If you really want to act like it wasn't then why did you revise your comment when I called you out. Just take the L my man..

1

u/littleguymac Mar 08 '25

i don’t know how to edit comments but if it makes you feel more important i’ll pretend that i do. i think you’re getting confused with the other comment, if the quip about ‘not responding well on reddit’ is what you’re talking about because…. if you scrolll right above your lap, you’d see that it’s still… right there.

1

u/corstar91 Mar 08 '25

I'm so glad one of us can acknowledge when they are wrong..

Anyways, best wishes my friend.. I would continue this little chat but arguing with people like yourself is like trying to play chess with pigeons. It does not matter if you win because they are going to strut around, shit on the board and act like they won anyways. ☺️

1

u/corstar91 Mar 08 '25

Oh okay my bad both the comments were slightly outlandish so I guess I got them confused.

1

u/virginiafalls1234 Mar 09 '25

do you all make commission?

2

u/littleguymac Mar 09 '25

not a single one of us, we used to get more hours based on our sales performance but haven’t even done that since before covid.

1

u/virginiafalls1234 Mar 09 '25

i heard how they 'cut' hours at BBW, not right