Upselling
Once upon a time, this charming practise was reserved to shoe stores, who would try and "upsell" shoe horns, expensive cleaning kits, spare feet etc etc to you at time of purchase.
Now, this loathsome habit is everywhere. Order food from a fast food place (OK, you only have yourselves to blame): "Would you like that meal max'd / fries with that / something to drink".

Oh yes please, I've got such a low IQ I forgot my order between thinking of it and placing it with you.

It's even at WH Smith's now for goodness's sake. You try and buy a newspaper, they try and upsell you a bar of chocolate the size of a small roof-tile.

And staff look hurt if you fail to respond to their tactics and say "I'm happy with what I've ordered, thanks".
( I_Was_Mordred, Wed 7 May 2008, 9:02, 8 replies)

They'd stop
if it stopped working.

But it does work. There are many people out there who need to be asked.

Also, I'd wonder how you'd feel about being simply informed of offers. In WH Smiths, if I buy a magazine, I don't know that I can get a half price bar of chocolate, or Haribo, or whatever. And when the nice young till worker tells me that I can have half-price Haribo with my magazine, I'm not going to turn the offer down.
( Thinker, Wed 7 May 2008, 9:20, closed)

hahaha
pwned
(Gorbotronic 01100111 01101111 01110010 01100010 01101111 00001, Wed 7 May 2008, 9:24, closed)

it happened to me last week in poundland
i was buying coat hangers, and the girl at the check out waved a chocolate bar under my nose and asked me if i wanted to buy it as well

it was weird and a bit annoying
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Wed 7 May 2008, 11:32, closed)

Yesterday in JJB
buys 3 tshirts.
SP: Would you like to buy 3 pairs of socks for 1:99?
Me: are they coolmax?
SP: Yes.
Me: Are they really made of COOLMAX fabric?
SP: No. They are not very good socks really.
Me: No thanks
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Wed 7 May 2008, 11:44, closed)

I work in fast food
and upselling is where most of the profit is.
example - where i work we can buy a box of 60 belgian waffles for E16.00. We can sell two waffles for E4.00. 30 portions for E120.00 = 750% profit. I think.

Having said that I hate upselling - I like to assume that people are smart enough to know what they want before they talk to me about it.
(spent.fish flipping and gasping, Wed 7 May 2008, 11:47, closed)

In a lot of cases
the staff make extra cash by selling you the extras.

If I was earning a fiver an hour I'd do my damndest to make sure every cunt that came in walked out with something they didn't want
( Joe Scaramanga with a G-double-O-D vibration, Wed 7 May 2008, 11:50, closed)

It always seemed the height of rudeness to me.
I hated upselling when I worked in the "catering industry". But I got round that by asking them if that was everything they wanted. A simple question of language and it used to drive the slack-jawed boss mental.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Wed 7 May 2008, 12:53, closed)

license
I take any attempt to upsell as free license to be as impolite as possible. If they are going to insult my intelligence in such a way, I figure the feeling is mutual. It's enough to say "No" is a tone dripping with such acid sarcasm that you might as well be saying "What kind of fucking retard are you?"
(frankspencer, Wed 7 May 2008, 13:15, closed)