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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.
"I’ve 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 company’s marketing manager, Renee Koh.
Children as young as four years old have been left behind for hours in MPH’s 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 don’t pay for them," said Aini.
Some retailers have the policy that "goods sold are not returnable", but a lingerie store’s 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 company’s 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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