That’s really the bottom line…when you put stuff where it doesn’t go, you are basically robbing the store of an opportunity to sell that item. Even if it’s a small thing, if enough people do it it will seem to the customer that the store is out of stock of that item (they may only have 1 or 2 left of a given item). The inventory system won’t know there are none on the shelf, because the items haven’t been purchased…they’ve just been moved around. Even if there is enough staff to go around constantly finding the “lost” items and putting them back, there are still often a lot of items sitting in the wrong place, where customers can’t find them. Just doesn’t seem fair to me.
Lemme 'splain. My wife likes to shop (big surprise). Any store that she won’t go to anymore is less money out of my pocket, in theory anyway. I thought it was pretty straightforward.
I was on a second date with a women. The first date was for coffee. The second date was spontaneous. She gave me a call and said that she was at a tire shop close to my house with her two year old and the wait was going to be a couple of hours. She suggested that I pick them up and we all go to lunch and then she would take her kid to the toy store.
So we did and it was a nice time. She told me that this was her daughter’s favorite toy store in town. For about an hour we followed her daughter around while she picked up various toys and played with them and dropped them on the floor. I was mortified because although the clerks in the store were polite and didn’t skip a beat, they probably thought that I was one of the parents. I picked up after the kid as much as we could. Right after we left, my date said to me, “That place is so expensive. I would never buy anything there but it’s her favorite store so I take her there sometimes.” W.T.F?
Recently I was in a fancy market and I found a wedge of brie cheese thrown on a shelf of crackers. If this isn’t bad enough in and of itself, the cheese counter was literally five steps away. The cheese was still cool to the touch so I walked it back. If I would have seen the person leaving it there, I would have made a rude comment.
I hate shit like that.
Wow, this thread has opened my eyes. I would never think to misplace perishable food at a grocery store, but at a clothing store or something… I honestly didn’t think this was that big of a deal. I’ll think twice next time.
I hate to disagree with you here, but when I worked as a waiter, some of the absolute bitchiest, rudest to the waitstaff people were the ones who used to be waitresses before but “married up” and thus felt it was their duty to treat wait staff like second class citizens.
It is and it isn’t a big deal 
Yes, we get paid to put stuff like that away. Absolutely. However, if it’s mis-racked (is that a word?!) - it might be you who is looking for it next time and we can’t find it.
I guess it just kinda boils down to common thoughtfulness.
VCNJ~
If you’re misplacing your perishable items at the clothing store, well…
As one of these underpaid clerks who get to pick up after lazy customers, I must reitterate the plea to bring unwanted items to the cash with you. In my store, we each have an ‘overstock’ basket under our cash, we are happy to take any items you don’t want off your hands, and its so much easier than finding a box of toothpaste mixed in the with the asprin.
On a related note how difficult is it to put a magazine back in its proper spot on a rack? You’re hiding the other magazine and potentially losing us sales. As our magazine lady says, “We don’t go into your office and rearrange your files for you, do we?”
I was suprised by that, but on reflection I shouldn’t have been. Don’t abused children frequently grow up to become abusive parents?
Absolutely agree. I used to work at Target. We were open 7 days a week, and the end of every day was like a battlefield upon which the holy wrath of heaven had descended. Every. Frickin’. Day.
They have a sizable night crew who comes in and spends the entire night picking up after people and re-arranging the store. So just know that by creating a shitstorm in the store you are paying for it by paying those people’s salaries (and those of us who don’t make a shitstorm are paying for you too)
Another store clerk chiming in, and while I’m most certainly not underpaid, and will cheerfully pick up most minor messes, I’m amazed at how inconsiderate some customers can be. Now, I expect to make an hourly cruise through the store to just to pick up or straighten out a few displays, especially since I work at a consignment shop for expecting women and for children. We have a very neat and tidy store, with our merchandise organised by size, colour, etc. for our customers convenience. It’s a bright, colourful store and we’re quite proud of it. It doesn’t have a thrift store aura (we’re a “quality consignment” shop), but it’s shocking how many folks come in and just treat the place like it was a dump. My manager asked me to make up a nice, tactful sign one weekend, and I printed it up in big, clear letters on a large art easel near our toy section so everyone can see it.
What it says:
Dear Customers,
We ask that you kindly leave the store as you found it. Our friendly staff has more time to answer your questions when we work together to keep the store NEAT. Thank you!
What it means:
Please stop leaving your shitty diapers on the toy shelves. It’s truly disgusting. We have a changing station in our bathroom, which is open to everyone and easy to find. Those pants your kid made a mess in? We’re happy you came to our store to purchase new pants, but please take the soiled ones with you - I’ll even give you a bag for them! - and stop leaving them on the dressing room floor. Speaking of the dressing room, please don’t take half of our stock of maternity clothes, try them on, and then leave them inside out and off their hangers all over the floor, racks, and curtain rod of the dressing room. We have a nice, neat rack waiting for your clothes just outside the dressing room. And please mind your little terrors as they plow through the toy section and destroy our merchandise. They may be gently-used second hand toys, but they belong to somebody, and we need to sell those toys in order for them to get paid. Maybe even you, if you’re a consigner.
To all of you who don’t do any of the above: I love you. Come back anytime. I will bend over backwards and juggle flaming bowling pins for you if it makes you happy. I don’t even care if you leave the occasional forgotten empty coffee cup on a display rack, or put a sweater on the wrong rack by accident once in a while. It’s okay. You’re cool. At least you keep your excrement to yourselves. That makes you infinitely lovable.
To the rest of you: Read the damn sign.
Even if they do treat her disrespectfully, who does it benefit for her to treat them disrespectfully? Maybe it gives her a little bit of mean satisfaction, but an adult really should be above that kind of thing. Talking to the manager about a disrespectful store clerk, on the other hand, might actually produce some results, and is less immature, passive-aggressive, and petty than taking it out on the clerk.
Agreed 100% on not leaving perishables on a random shelf.
However, on some of the other issues: Yes, people should not act like pigs. But did you ever notice that in high-end stores there is never a mess? It’s not because the customers are better; they’re not. Your Nordstrom’s store will have hired enough well-trained and motivated sales help to assist the customer so the mess never happens. If you either accidentally or through negligence put something back on the wrong hanger, somebody will be by unobtrusively within a few minutes to put it right. Or the salesperson will be out scouring the racks for another item while you’re trying on the first one.
Other stores, like your K-Mart, look like somebody makes a random attempt to organize and straighten the shelves maybe once a week at most, more likely once a month. If the place is already a trash heap, there is not much incentive to be a good person and put an item back where you got it; it was probably in the “wrong” place to begin with anyway.
In my local library, they specifically request that you NOT re-shelve books. Most people are less than 100% up on the Dewey Decimal System, and might do it wrong. Instead, they prefer that you leave any unwanted book on the convenient table at the end of each shelf; a library page will take care of it. That person will probably be glad to do it, too; I know I did when I had that part-time job in high school. If everybody shelved their own books, I’d have been out of a job.
On the supermarket carts, I am also 100% with those who oppose stealing the carts. Theft is theft. However: Some of us are old and/or creaky. Some of us have infants with us. If we had to park all the heck at the end of the lot, we may not have the energy to trek all the way back to the store. If there were a nearby place to put the cart, I’d do it, but sometimes when I’ve been on my feet for a half hour, my back and knees are about to give out, and I just can’t make one more back&forth trip.
If there were no need to do the cart retrieval, would the store hire fewer people and lower our prices? I don’t know. If so, would there be more unemployed people?
I’m kind of puzzled by why stores don’t have a “leave it here and we’ll reshelf” it table. I know of libraries that ask you to leave a book you took off the shelves on a table at the end of the racks. That way it gets reshelved in the right place. How hard would it be to have a station in each corner of the store, where I can leave the box of cereal I decided I don’t want. I wonder if the lost sales from not having product there would be offset by the time not being spend searching out misplaces items, and the loss of thawed/warmed food?
I don’t think you should have to fold/hang them exactly like they were. However, there is no reason for you to unfold five identical sweaters, look at each one, and then dump them in a heap on the table they were so nicely displayed on.
See the wife is keeping people employed. If you did your part even more people could be employed.
They do. They’re called “Return Baskets” and they’re at the front counter with the checkout staff. In an average store at busy times there should be at least half a dozen or so staff serving customers - that’s half a dozen baskets for customers to return stuff they’ve decided they don’t want.
There is no excuse.
“Half a dozen or more” staff even.
That is a huge, huge peeve of mine also, and I do believe that your wife should be verbally smacked every time she does it, by anyone else that may witness it. Rude bitch indeed. I bet she throws a fit when a store is out of stock, or if the prices are too high. It’s her fucking fault.
I was a cart returner, I always took my cart back into the store. Not just to the corral. Now I have a child and I have to say, I try like hell to get a spot near a corral so that some overzealous freak doesn’t call CPS on me because I was 20ft away from my car returning a cart. Don’t even get me started on using an ATM.
Here’s a tip, tell your wife you want to show her what she is doing. Perhaps she has brain damage and can’t fathom it, something is fucking wrong with her, anyway, whenever you go in a store this christmas season, make a note about all the shit strewn everywhere. Every time your cart gets caught on a sweater thrown on the ground, every time what you need isn’t where it is supposed to be, open her eyes to the effect it has on her.
My husband and I have been going through some crap. I told him he has no idea how difficult he makes it for me to do things. That didn’t get through to him, so the day I was full of cabin fever, ready to burst and just wanted to get out of the house for a few minutes and he asked me to wait until he finished a cigarette, and hold on, he needs to get some laundry in, and could I change the baby and wait, he left something in the car, could I pick him up a styptic pencil and wait, we need laundry detergent, I finally pointed out to him what he was doing. MAKING IT DIFFICULT FOR ME TO JUST GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! This is not an overstatement, this is what really happened. He had no clue what a pain in the ass he was being. Now, when those kinds of things happen, I tell him, instead of just getting mad or having my feelings hurt.
FWIW, I will admit my husband is mostly braindead also.
Why was the watermelon wearing a bra?