A bizarre sign displayed for customers showed a photograph of the store manager and gave a number for shoppers to call.
The notice has been slammed(Image: Paul Diamond/Facebook)
Supermarket giant Morrisons left customers divided after asking them to call the manager if queues got too long at an Edinburgh store.
A poster with a photograph of store manager Christopher Milne was plastered outside the cafe at the Pilton Drive branch in the capital.
The notice asked for customers “queuing behind the line on the floor” to call the store manager on the number provided so that he could open another checkout.
It read: “Dear customer, I’m Christopher Milne your store manager. We are working hard to improve your queueing experience in our store.
“If you are queueing behind the line on the floor, please call me on the below number and we will open another check out for you.”
The notice has been slammed(Image: Paul Diamond/Facebook)
The poster was spotted by customer Paul Diamond who questioned why the store doesn’t hire more staff when the company recorded “billions in profit”.
Reacting to the notice, he wrote: “Dear Morrisons, You know how you turned a profit of more than £2B last year? Do you know what that means?
“It means that if I’d been alive since the battle of Hastings and had somehow accrued a million pounds a year, I’d still have half of what you made in a year.
Morrisons supermarket(Image: Getty Images)
“So, it’s just a suggestion, but hire more staff.
“Rather than making me phone Christopher Milne and pressing option 9, which sounds like a pain in the a**e, just hire a few more staff. Put more staff on. Get a few more staff. Or team members or whatever you call them these days.
“Yes – it’ll trim your profit, a bit. But then there will be more staff. And the shop will be better. And more people will have a job.”
The post, shared in a community group of social media, has since gone viral after shoppers were divided in opinion about the request.
Robert Phillips wrote: “How about this for a really out of the box radical idea: Have another checkout open anyway, and avoid the queue reaching the line? Happier customers = more likely to return and spend further money.”
Kevin Randall said: “If they have more staff and the store is better stocked and works more efficiently they might just even increase their profits as the stores will be somewhere that more people will wish to shop in.”
Roisin Caulfield came out in support of the store. She added: “I used to work at this exact Morrisons and Chris is by far the best manager I’ve ever had, and this system fixed a lot of problems. It gives the customer a direct line to the person who can help, and helps the staff be protected from volatile customers who take it out on the wrong person.”
The supermarket chain said offering a direct line to store management was a company-wide initiative to make customers feel like they could directly provide feedback.
Morrisons said: “This isn’t a new initiative – it’s something that has been in all our stores for a while now. Customers tell us they like having a way to reach out to store managers directly to raise suggestions and/or provide feedback.
“The poster is one of a number of tools we are using to help our store colleagues improve the queuing experience for our customers. “
Morrisons reported a pre-tax profit of £2.1 billion for the year ending October 27, 2024.
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