Dairy owner declines service to customers on mobile phones

Buzz off from a Queenstown neighbourhood dairy if you're trying to get served while you're on your cellphone.

That call's been made by fed-up Fernhill dairy owners, the Douglas family.

Last month, Mark Douglas put up a counter sign, worded by his wife Brenda, reading: "If you can't be bothered getting off your cellphone, we can't be bothered serving you. Sorry."

Douglas: "Up until about two months ago, it was anything up to three or four times a day, and what they'd do is they'd just point with their fingers to the cigarettes, or whatever, while they kept on talking, so we decided we'd had enough of that.

"We pride ourselves on talking to the customers – this is a community dairy."

Douglas says the worst offenders were, "I hate to say it, probably women between the ages of 25 and 35".

Reaction to the sign has been "absolutely phenomenal", he says.

"We point at the sign when they're talking and they immediately say, 'oh, sorry, got to go', and they put their phone down and apologise."

"Probably in town you couldn't do that because you're going to offend visitors, perhaps, though we've found, even visitors, they look at that and they go, 'that's fantastic'.