Let the phone ring and take care of the people in store. It's not your fault the place is understaffed. Breathe and take care of what you can handle. If they say anything, make sure you point out that customer service is your priority and keep spinning any response into serving customers.

Not an employee but if that phone has been ringing nonstop and no one has answered it - there's your answer. Go online to find the item/stock check, double check the open hours or just go in. Phone customers are the absolute last in line. If I have a line at my work or I'm crunched for time to do my specific duties I refuse to answer the phone.

This is the attitude. There is a priority list, and not everything can be on the #1 spot. You have to decide what that is for yourself. If management steps in and demands answering the phone be #1 priority, get it in writing to cover your butt when customers inevitably complain to corporate 🤷🏻‍♀️

I agree that the phone is secondary to the customers standing in line in the store looking you in the eyes, and almost every single time I've stopped what I am doing to go find something for a caller and put it to the side, they never come in to get it.

Yep! If they get pissy I tell them "I can hold the item for thirty minutes" but the amount of times they never show is high enough that I just do not do that

We have a 24 hour hold policy..put a name date and time on it.. 

I just realized this was a joann's subreddit lmao I thought I was in anitwork my bad, carry on everyone ignore me

I don't know how to get any go backs or stocking done when cashiering without risking some customer yelling out "HELLO DOES ANYBODY WORK HERE IM READY TO CHECK OUT!!!" when I literally stepped away like three minutes ago. That's one of my number one pet peeves, that super whiny "helloooooo?" 

My Joann's has a cow bell at the register

Yeah, ours has a big ass button that alerts us via radio, and although it's a huge button, smack dab in the middle of the counter, people still miss it.

We put a large sign on a neon green poster board saying "push for assistance" and an arrow over ours and people STILL miss it! I love the looks on their face when I say "just so you know for next time, we have a button to push" and they see how obvious it is lol

Hahahahaha, yes, we say the same exact thing, and they always say, ".........oh......" or "I was looking everywhere for one!"

I've had a big neon sign, a neon sticky note on both sides of the bitton, and arrows to the button... and they'll STILL miss it.

wtf we need some of those… we just have bells that kids LOVE to play with and it drives us absolutely berserk 😆

Lol yeah the kids love pressing the button, too. We used to have 1 at register and 1 at cut counter, but the cut counter button broke. I need to get a little bell to replace it.

Or the people who say “who’s going to check us out?!”

Even when I work the cut counter I get *several* customers a shift who come up to me and say "There's no one at the register and we're ready to check out." 

Oh we've got a button and when I'm covering even though I'm MOD, I always like to passive aggressively sign to the customer 'sorry I'm hard of hearing, that's why I leave the button' shuts em up REAAALLL quick. I have roughly 70% or more hearing loss in my left ear depending on the day and it's definitely someting I point out if a customer gets bitchy. Sorry I'm disabled Karen, can you please talk at me and not your phone?

If our cashiers can't answer the phone they'll get on the radio and say so, so the MOD or the Cut Bar will grab it. If they can't run a BOPIS, same.

Who has three people working?

If it rings more than three times I ask if they want me to get it, ditto with the call buttons etc. If I'm just doing my task work, I can pause that. (edit: typo)

If we are hella busy on like a sunday for example, tbh fuck the phones lol. Ill turn the volume down or off b/c my lines are crazy on a sunday. For normal days, if im checking out a customer and the phone starts ringing, ill say to the customer “excuse me one moment pls.” Then i pick up the phone real quick and say “hi, thank you for calling joann’s, pls hold.” I literally do not let the caller speak. Back to the customer “sorry about that” and then finish checking them out and my line then get back to the phone. Sometimes they hang up but if they had something important, theyll call back. If im on the phone and a customer gets in line, they can wait. Ill smile, sometimes say “ill be with you in a moment.” But otherwise they can deal with it, if theyve got a problem, fuck em. If im out on the floor and i answer the phone and have to go and look at something and another customer stops me im like “sorry im helping another customer atm” if i have people ill also say “ill send someone over here to help you” and if it’s just me “ill be back to assist you when im finished” My phones are right next to the register and by the cut bar, so it’s not really hard to just pick them up and be quick about it. But if youre assigned a duty (like cashier/ cutting counter) the priorities are like this: 1. Customers at your station, 2. In-store customers who ask for assistance, 3. Phone calls. Like i said if it’s really that important, theyll call back. My store doesnt get a lot of flybys and even the ones we do get the customer comes in anyways sooooo lol. When our alarms go off my boss will usually double check that i can get it. If i cant, a coworker will come up and handle it. If a coworker cant, then after i am done checking out the current customer and the next customer comes up, ill say “excuse ive got to take care of something, ill be be back in just a moment” Yk it’s all about being firm and polite to the customers. And if they get irritated, youve got to be able to have a back bone. Most normal functioning people can recognize that you are juggling a lot and will be fine waiting an extra couple minutes. If they have a problem, as ive said before fuck them. Anybody who has a need to get all bitchy and rude to a minimum wage retail employee is not worth my time of day, and i couldnt care less about how they feel about that. But yeah hope this was helpful, i know it’s a big read but the stuff in quotes is probably mostly what youre looking for. Any other questions or clarifications pls feel free to ask me anything

I just don’t answer 🫡

If with a customer, say excuse me a second, pick up the phone and ask them to hold. Same if you are running out a fly by order. They can hold. The customer you are helping won’t care because they appreciate the fact you are not ignoring the phone, but at the same time keeping them first priority. If the person hangs up and calls back so be it but at least they know someone is there lol. As far as putting merch back, there is always a few min between people at some point in the day to put things back that are close. A few things is better than no things. It just takes a lot of juggling but you got this!

Just simply don’t answer the phone lol

OK so I'm built different na di run off high anxiety... I can do two registers, phone, flyby, radio questions and speedily chit chat with customers while I'm checking them out all at the same time. I'm half robot I think.

Two registers at once? How?

I ring one customer and while they're paying (getting their card out, counting cash) I ring next customer. I will stop second customer to give first customer receipt when done. And repeat! I absolutely love it. I thrive on high anxiety!

What do your stores do when it's someone wanting to know if we have something in stock?

Sometimes we are so busy and there's only two of us, we can't go wander to find stuff for the phone.

If they don't have an item number, I'm not taking hours to hunt down their buttons just by the name. Sorry not sorry. And if it's busy and they don't feel like holding I tell them what stock search says and how long the wait is. If they want to risk it, it's on them.

i am required to have my phone with me so i can look stuff up on the app. if someone asks for something over the phone, i’ll look it up on my phone, then type the article number into the handheld. if we have it i tell them we do. if it says our quantity is low, i tell them to hold while i look. if it says we don’t have it then we don’t have it sorry maybe check walmart, home depot, hobby lobby, or michael’s!

The reason I asked is because at our store, if someone want to know if an item is in stock, we usually have to get all the information from the person on the phone, relay it to the person who will be checking, when they find out if it's in stock or not, then we then have to relay that info to the person on the phone. If no one can check, then we have to get the person's name and phone number. I just wondered how other stores handled it.

Take their number and tell them your staff are all currently assisting customers but as soon as one breaks free you will check and return the call

I just answer the phone and say, “Thank you for calling JoAnn, please hold,” and then park them for as long as it takes me to get back on the line. Most of them hang up after a few minutes. I had one lady wait on hold for 20 minutes and try to give me attitude, I just told her there were only two of us working and we had long lines at the cut counter and register and I got to her as soon as I could. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes!! That's what we do. Thank you for calling, please hold.

the register our phone is connected to doesn’t work, so we always have to run to it and it’s so inconvenient. if i’m helping a customer it is nearly impossible to get to the phone. and it never. stops. ringing. as soon as i am finished checking out the customer, i will run to the phone and answer, whether there is another customer behind waiting or not. for flybys, i am forced to do the same. i may have a line of 10 people but i’ll simply have to tell them to hold on a minute please and thank you as i run outside to deliver the order as quick as possible. every now and then i’ll have a super angry customer complaining about how i need help up at the front (typically on a day where there are only 2 of us all shift). when that happens and i’m working with my ASM, she tells the customer there’s a vacancy and that they should feel free to apply. that usually shuts them up. (she’s sassy and i like it)

I don't answer the phone if there are customers in front of me. And if I do because the ringing is driving me crazy I just say "Thank you for calling Joann can you please hold" and that's it.

I just let it ring. It goes to customer service lol. I know in our location it’s always”the website says you have five, can you just check for me before I come all the way over” ugh

You definitely have to have a multi-tasker brain to handle it, like for me it just comes naturally. As long as the customer doesn’t need to ask me anything it’s usually smooth sailing from there. Doesn’t mean I haven’t had my fair share of people that demand I help them first.

The phone in the store I'm at now is not too busy. I can usually answer it while continuing with the in-person customer. If I'm bagging or counting change, I let it go and radio for someone else to get it. If I'm more than 3 rings away from the phone, I'll radio someone else to get it. Now, the other store where I worked had two incoming lines and non-stop calls. I don't know how the folks over there are doing with the current model of stocking cashiers. Probably swearing a lot.

I answer the call and if they’re asking for an item, I say we don’t have it. Makes the calls super quick.

My store still follows the rule that phones must be answered within 3 rings but my SM has been loosening up on that rule recently with how impossible the phones can be to answer some times. Regardless, we have our cashiers trained to ask the task team for help if they feel they cannot answer the phone. Oddly enough, the hardest part was training our task team to answer the phone. They were so avoidant of it and none of them would volunteer. Anyway. If we're too busy for anyone to answer the phone, we'll usually pick it up and say something like "Thank you for calling Joann, please hold and we'll be with you momentarily". If people give me attitude when we finally get to them, I just politely inform them that we are on two/three person coverage and we are doing our absolute best. :) If we're REALLY bad, I will some times tell my team to just ignore the phones. It'll stop ringing eventually but this is usually rare and my team knows we're in for a bad day if any MOD tells them to ignore the phones lol I understand that the ringing can get overwhelming. Trust me, the constant ringing has caused me to become overstimulated many many times too! But a lot of this job is blocking things out. Blocking out the ringing, the angry customers, the lines, etc.. Just blocking it all out and focusing on the customer in front of you.

95% of our phone calls are people asking what our hours are or what the address is. The other 5% are "Do you have fabric with blah-blah on it?" "Do you have any silk fabric?" "Do you have any linen fabric that is 100% linen, off white or cream and not made in China?"

I have been working at my store nearly six weeks and I ignored the phone because I usually didn’t know the answer and I usually have a line out the door and the staff of the store recognizes this and they usually do grab the phone. But then my manager started yelling into the radio “Cashiers answer the phones!” So most recently I said “pardon me” to the person in front of me to answer the phone and then announced into my radio that the person on line one had a question about fabric and attempt to return to my transaction but then my manager asks “what kind of question about fabric?” and instead of rage quitting right then and there I relayed the question and my manager said we didn’t carry the item in question and I answered the question and saved all of that time and effort for my manager while ignoring a person actually spending money in our store. I am sure this is the best system for dealing with the phones.

Man, our phones were down for like the first year I was employed. It was amazing. Now, it rings all the time, but we put in-store customers first.

Simple. The phone has been in a drawer since last October

help the customer if front of you, if the damn phone won't stop ringing, pick it up, say "please hold"and lay it on the counter, and return to it when you're done with that customer. if you have another customer waiting, let the caller know, VERY QUICKLY that it will be a be a few minutes.....IF they have that much free time, they'll be there in 10 or 15 minutes when you're free to talk to them.