Melbourne-based comedian Joe Salanitri has received a response from Coles after his humorous rant about the store’s self-serve checkouts went viral online.
If only Woolworths’ outgoing CEO Brad Banducci was as as good at responding to criticism and answering questions as Coles’ social media team. That way he might have made his way through that senate inquiry without having jail time threatened onto him.
In a video posted to his Instagram, one of the members of the Sooshi Mango comedy trio decided he had had enough of being forced to use the self-serve checkouts, and wanted his viewers to know it.
Unlike other comedic observations on the topic that make fun of how confusing or slow the customer-operated checkouts are, Salanitri focused his rant on the fact that he felt like he was doing work for the grocery store despite not working there.
Salanitri was particularly upset about the times he has to use a self-serve checkout for an entire trolley of items.
“I’m working for Coles now,” the comic says, before correcting himself. “We are working for Coles now!”
He then threatens the supermarket giant by saying that he will send Coles his tax file: “So I can start getting fucking paid.”
In the video, which has more than 25K likes at the time of writing, Salanitri then proceeded to make a list of other things he can start doing for Coles, considering he’s now its “employee of the month”.
Some of the tasks he listed include:
- Stacking the shelves.
- Reversing the delivery truck in.
- Opening and closing the store each morning and night.
- Packing other customers grocery bags.
The high-energy rant ends with the comedian asking rhetorically: “What’s next? Want me to make my own fucking Cocoa Pops?”
Though he may have asked it rhetorically, Joe Salanitri did end up getting an answer back from Coles in an unlikely way, as the company commented a somewhat humble response under his video.
“Ohhh this was a hard watch for us! We’re sorry we let you down,” Coles wrote.
“We should always have a range of checkout options open for the convenience of our customers, but we hear you loud & clear that this didn’t happen when you visited and we will share your feedback with our Ops team (feedback as in, your actual video!) because we are always listening and learning, and your vid makes your point clearly.”
Some on Instagram agreed with the comedian’s rant, however others also pointed out the crucial flaw in his premise.
“It’s not just Coles it all the supermarkets,” one wrote.
But at least now we know that if you need to get a response from Coles for anything, the best way to get one is by posting a cheeky rant monologue to your 235K Instagram followers, as Salanitri did.
And hey, it’s still better than trying to get a straight answer out of Brad Banducci.
Coles and Woolworths have both faced allegations from the public, the government, and the ACCC that they have been price gouging Aussie customers, and are currently facing inquiries onto their business practises.
A full list of what the inquiry could mean for you as a shopper can be found here.
