"They Will Get Written Up" — Former Ross Employee Explains Why They Don't Talk to Customers

As people have learned lately, store clerks and service industry employees don't always want to get personal with customers and clients. For the most part, they want to be left as alone as much as possible in their line of work. A friendly interaction or quick conversation might be OK every now and then, but these employees shouldn't be expected to handle trauma dumps or life stories from customers just because their name tag says "Hi, I'm [insert name here]."

For most workers in certain places of work, that's a personal preference. But apparently, that's store policy at Ross Dress for Less. As a former employee of the department store chain explains on TikTok, there's a reason why employees there don't talk to customers. Put simply, it's because they are encouraged not to. Here's why.

@drag0nsp1t on TikTok claims to be a former employee at Ross Dress for Less. As such, they have an interesting explanation for why Ross employees don't take the time to chat with customers.

Realistically, most store clerks might get in trouble if they're caught shooting the breeze with other customers. However, doing so at Ross is apparently against store policy.

If you've ever felt rushed along when shopping at Ross, there's a reason for that. According to OP, "Ross employees don't get paid to talk to you." In fact, these employees are specifically discouraged from having conversations with customers. Apparently, timing is everything at Ross.

"Everything is based on how fast you go," OP explains in her video.

They also reveal that Ross employees are timed on how fast products are displayed and sold.

"When you are at the cash register, the cashier is timed on literally everything that they do," OP claims. "The cashiers are timed on how quickly they scan the items, how quickly they put the items into the bag, how quickly they handle the transaction, and how [quick] the time is between them calling the next customer and the time that that customer comes up to the cash register."

OP continues, stating that if Ross employees aren't fast enough with these tasks, they'll get written up. By that same measure, having a conversation with a customer can get them penalized.

Most employees wouldn't want to have a lengthy conversation with a customer, to begin with, but if OP is to be believed, Ross's work policies seem wildly oppressive.

Some folks in the comments section corroborated OP's story, with some folks claiming that the store even tried to be sneaky about this.

For instance, one person claimed that "some employees would be on cash registers and if their times were slow, they would be moved to fitting rooms."

Another person called working at Ross "a nightmare" for this.

Customers should be chatting up employees on the clock in the first place, but employees also shouldn't be penalized for something out of their control.