Retail Hell, and What It Has Taught Me About People

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So after six weeks in the curtain department of a household textiles store, my Christmas job is over and I’m officially unemployed again. But oh, my was it a learning experience. I learned…

People are basically slobs. Well, not everyone, but quite a few people do not hesitate to leave a mess behind them if there’s no chance anyone will make them clean it up. :mad:

Others are just cheap. If the clerk has to waste fabric to get their curtains to look nice, the pattern running evenly from curtain to curtain… well, that’s an expense the store should expect to eat, isn’t it? Certainly not something the customer should be charged for…

A truly frightening number of people are out there, working, driving, presumably even voting, without the ability to think simple things through. For instance, they will tell me they need curtain fabric for two windows, and when I ask how long the finished curtains should be, a rather crucial bit of information before I begin cutting the fabric, they will blink with surprise. “But these are perfectly STANDARD windows!” they will protest, which means, of course: I haven’t an effing clue. I guess I assumed that you would tell me. (“That’s one thing there’s no European standard for, ma’am. Playground sand, of course; banana curve angles, sure; but when it comes to window sizes, it’s still the wild, wild west as far as standards are concerned. Will one meter sixty do it, y’think?” :stuck_out_tongue: )

Another group of people… well, it’s not that they think the world revolves around them, exactly. It’s just that it hasn’t really sunk in that all of those other hairless ape-like creatures around them are the same species, and might possibly have some of the same goals and desires. It’s hard not to sympathize with them when they express surprise that December 12 is too late to order new custom-made curtains to be sewed before Christmas, because the seamstresses are long since booked solid. The idea that other people might also like to redecorate before the biggest holiday of the year has just never danced across their little brains.

Happy New Year, everybody…

2

I went out the other night to eat with a friend, and we went to this little area where there are a lot of high-end more expensive restaurants, all with like a 45 minute wait (at least.) We watched the hostess tell the guy in front of us that she gave away his table because they called him three times and he never came up to claim it, and she had to repeat herself at least as many times before the poor guy realized she wasn’t kidding. (She herself was giggling, I guess amused that he didn’t believe her.) My friend suggested that would be a good job for me.

I confess that I do get some measure of amusement from the kind of person who would wait until a week or two before a holiday they’ve known was coming for an entire year to get something done like having curtains custom made. I work(ed) in a frame store, and December 16th is always my favourite day, because the orders for the 16th come up due on the 26th, and I love telling people No. I’m sorry, I would say, the cutoff for custom orders for Christmas was the day before yesterday. “Please, can’t you make an exception for me?” I’m sorry, I can’t do that, because I can’t promise the same for everyone, my work schedule is just totally filled up. Perhaps I am cruel, but I’m also fair. But my heart is not completely black. I did complete early a few orders for customers who truly seemed heartbroken that they wouldn’t have it in time, and who did NOT beg me or outright demand that their items be completed early. Of course since they’d been told it was not possible to have them before Giftmas, they got a very nice surprise.

Anyway, the moral of the story is don’t wait until the last minute for things like that. I had one order that was a gift, but the woman waited until the last possible minute to bring it in, and the frame was damaged by the vendor when it arrived – she almost cried at the counter, and while our vendor and whatever goober at our store that built the frame were largely to blame (I wasn’t involved with it until damage control), she was also a little bit at fault for giving us no time to correct any problems there might have been with the order. We did refund her a large portion of the order, but all of it could have been prevented by bringing her father’s precious heirlooms that she had known she wanted to give him framed for months, at the beginning of November instead of during the Thanksgiving/Giftmas holidays.

In my experience, some people truly are clueless, either of the time or work involved, or the experience of having such work done (as I think she was), and some (like some of my other customers) know the amount of work involved, they just don’t care about anyone but themselves and want the workers to have to put in 10 and 11 hour shifts (like I did) the few days before Giftmas, trying to meet all their demands. Some of these people act like just because they paid you $50.00 they own the store, and the asses of everyone employed at it.

You kind of learn to ignore it after awhile.

3

Thankfully, I haven’t worked in any sort of customer service job since April, that was at a gas station (now I tutor fellow students at my university).

If I ever happen to find myself outside Oslo, Norway on vacation and I happen to decide to go to a household textiles store, you can rest assured that I always, always, neatly put back (folding and whatnot if necessary) anything that I’ve examined. In fact, sometimes I stand at tables in clothing stores and just refold all the bunched up shirts that people picked up, shook open, and dropped. This is because I wanted to murder people who would do similar things where I worked.

4

I’ve worked in the pits of retail for seven years, and some people truly horrify me. Thankfully, I no longer work on the floor but when I did I was truly amazed at how some people found their way into the place.

Some folks are just plain dumb. Like the woman who insisted we carried a jacket with a Monet painting on the back. She wanted to know where it was because she had to buy it this instance! I told we didn’t carry anything like that, and never had, but perhaps she had seen it at XYZ? No, she insisted, that item was here one month ago and I was an idiot for telling her otherwise. She then proceeded to tell me that perhaps the item in question had been there before I had started working, so thus I was too stupid to know any better. I politely informed her that I had been working in the store for 5 years, for 50 hours a week. She wandered off, muttering something about water lillies…

Some folks are just mean. I had a woman pinch me (hard!) to get my attention. I saw a customer hit a clerk in the face with a book. I’ve heard mothers scream obscenities at a clerk while her small children are there, absorbing her behavior and words.

Some people are weird. I’ve been invited to a “love-in” in the park. One woman asked a clerk if the name on her badge was her real name or her “work name”, as if the museum employees did pole dances while waiting on customers. There was the incident with the man who insisted that the rocks in his pockets were petrified aliens…

Ah, the joys of retail!

5

Oh my God! Pinching! Pole-dancing! LOL!

Can we expand from retail to general direct customer contact? I worked as a receptionist/office manager for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for a few years. At least once a month I woud get psychotic telephone calls and/or personal office visits from people who had no clue what our office did, just that we were a federal entity and therefore responsible for EVERYTHING WRONG IN THEIR LIVES.

I had one woman call up and insist upon speaking to the President of the United States. It took me 45 minutes to get her off the phone. I had a man come into the office insist that we help him get his unemployment check and when I told him we couldn’t, he repeatedly banged his fists on my desk and yelled incoherently. When the boss stepped into the front office and he left.

People are strange.

6

I have fantasies about this happening in my store. Because I think it’d be quite healthy for me to be able to knock one of these assholes to the ground, keep them there, and have them hauled away for assault. Of course, it’s better that my co-workers don’t get assaulted in the first place, but, evidentally, that’s to much too ask. Customer’s always right and all that. :rolleyes:

7

God, retail.

Some drunk woman came in in the middle of the day and as she was stumbling around managed to pull down quite a bit of clothing off the wrack as she fell down.

Had this woman who was a college professor come in at least once a month ten minutes before we were to close and tried on every pair of shoes in the store. I swear she came in to just mess with us so we wouldn’t get out of their on time. I had a friend who worked in another store several blocks away and she told me this professor came in there and did the same thing.

Another woman would buy a little bit one day a little bit on another day and then about two months later (again ten minutes before we were to close) she would bring it all back - something like 5 pairs of shorts, 8 pairs of pants, and about 20 tops and want to return all of it. She did this at least 3 times during my 6 months there. A co-worker told me she saw her freak out completely in the middle of the store one day.

8

I know quite a few people who have “work names” - if you’re required to wear a badge with your name on it, some people like to retain their privacy by using a false name. That way the weirdo can’t find out who they are by researching staff lists.

9

I certainly agree with that. Our store is part of a museum, so we have to wear badges for security reasons, but it always made me nervous that our badges have our first and last name on them.

The customer who hit the clerk with the book was escorted from the building. Personally, I wanted to slam the book into his balls .

10

When I used to work at a custom-framing store (a la JinWicked) I remember a woman who came in with two framed pictures of her family.

She brought them in because, she said, she thought it would be safer if I, as the professional, broke the glass for her.

“And why do you want to break the glass?” I asked her.

She looked at me like I was nuts. “Well, to get the PICTURES OUT, of course!”

I don’t even remember what I said…but I’ll never forget the mental image of this woman, breaking the glass on all her pictures at home, trying to “get the pictures out,” before she finally “called in the professionals” to do the same damn thing. Oh my God.

I also remember a grown woman who danced around in front of me like a two-year-old toddler, screaming, “Oh my God…oh my God…why does it cost so much? This is…oh my God! Why does it cost so much! Oh…MY…GOD…!”

I wasn’t denying her medical care. Just a really expensive frame.

:rolleyes:

I’ve also had frame corner samples thrown at me. I’ve been accused of lying, of taking a commission when I don’t, I’ve had grown women screaming at me like I’m trying to steal their firstborn child, and some days the general public got so bad that I just went into the back of the frame shop, where the public wasn’t allowed, and hid in a corner. Literally.

It’s hell on earth.

And so are the paychecks. :smiley:

11

Ah, I remember the last-minute buyers well. My favorite was the woman who came into the store with her husband and young son on a Wednesday night. They went to look at boys shoes in the back of the store, then raced up to me.

Woman: There aren’t any dress shoes in boys size X!
Me: We’re getting a new shipment in tomorrow, so we might have some available by the afternoon.
Woman: But church starts in an hour and 15 minutes! We need them now!

She then berated me for a good five minutes for not having shoes available when she needed them. It was a real exercise in self control to keep myself from making a smartass comment.

Don’t even get me started on the messes people would leave in the store …

12

A supermarket deli scene, if you will…

Customer: Is that real chicken?

Troy’s brain: As opposed to plastic chicken?

Customer: I mean, that’s a real chicken breast, not processed or anything, right?

Troy’s brain: Yes. Chicken breast always come off the bird in an absolutely smooth sphere that is bigger than the bird itself.

Troy: No, all of our meats are processed.

Customer: mumble mumble grumble blargh munf … [walks away without bothering to say anything remotely comprehensible]

Troy: Have a wonderful night!

Troy’s brain: …asshole.

13

These bring back many memorable customer service moments.
Back in the good ole days, when I was a beach bum, I worked graveyards, by meself, at 7-11. Literally from 11-7. Kind of like Night of the Zombie every evening and then the coffee clatch crowd would start rolling in around seven and act like nothing had happened! The weirdos were the friendly faces compared to the homocidal maniacs that roamed the night. And oh, the shit they could leave in the floor!

14

I have worked with the public for years, and I find them to be abusive, crude, sloppy and outright liars. Things are worse if the management won’t support their employees. One store I worked at took the customer’s word as GOSPEL, even if other employees vouched for you.

My theory is that customers, who take crap at their jobs all day, find a certain mean pleasure in messing up another person’s store, and feel a certain superiority in being able to make a clerk feel like crap. Extra points if you can make them cry.

15

I used to work at a well-known office supply store (think of the little stick-man-mascot place). Our store must have had a sign out front that only stupid people could see (it must have said, “STUPID CUSTOMERS WELCOME HERE!”). In my six-year torture (err, I mean tenure) I was astonished to learn how stupid and rude some people can be. I worked there at the time when computers and the Internet were beginning to make their way into the common household. This meant that people who didn’t know dick about computers were coming in wanting to buy them and asking a million questions I didn’t have the time or patience to answer. “What is D-O-S? (spelled out)” “Why do I need Windows to run Office, isn’t Office the same thing?” “How does the printer know which colors to print?” You get the idea.

Worse than the stupid customers were the rude ones (who were also usually stupid by default). They were the ones who didn’t care if you were in the middle of helping someone else, they wanted you to drop everythng and take care of them right away. I’d post some specific incidents that I had written about while I worked there, but this post is already quite long. Overall, I began to get the feeling that people should be required to take a course in computers and obtain a license to use one, much like how one must be trained and licensed to drive a car, (though this doesn’t prevent idiots from using cars, either, but I digress).

In closing, I should say that I didn’t regard all or even most customers as idiots. Most of them were pleasant or at least tolerable, but it was always those few rude and stupid ones who would ruin the day and make the job less pleasant than it should have been.

16

My sister took a seasonal job at the GAP for Christmas. She had a guy come in Christmas Eve, asking for assistance. He wanted a pair of pants, size 31x38. He didn’t care what they looked like, they just had to be size 31x38. The GAP, apparently, sells even sizes. 32x38 wouldn’t work for him…he was insisting on 31. They went through about 90% of the pants in the store, and finally found one pair of 31x38. “Oh no, those won’t work for me. They’re black. I need a lighter color.” They went back to the piles, found a pair of khakis in the desired size. “Those are $35…don’t you have anything on clearance ?” Eventually he moved on to torture another employee, and Sara took the opportunity to hide out back. As she snuck away, she heard him asking the new assosciate, “So, what would motivate me to buy a sweatshirt?”
She found out later the guy wanted a list of possible reasons for purchasing a sweatshirt. An hour and a half later,he left, empty-handed.

Better them than me…

17

Three + years as a sales clerk in a petstore. Oh, the troubles I have seen. Then I was stupid enough to go and be Above and Beyond Employee, so I had to deal with attempting to train the other employees, who tended to be stupider than the average customer. One woman, about 30, did not understand the concept of a siphon when I showed her how to clean the fish tanks. :eek: She later became the manager.

I apparently sold some Advantage flea drops to a woman for her multiple ankle-biter dogs. For those playing along at home, these are small single-dose tubes that hold maybe .5 cc or less, and are packaged according to the size of the animal they are to be applied to. I sold her three tubes of the appropriate size for her dog. She then comes in a few days later screaming at the manager about how she wanted me fired because I should have sold her ONE dose for a 45 pound dog, rather than 3 for 15 pound dogs. I have no idea how she planned on splitting up one dose into three even-size doses. Luckily, the manager agreed that we were not vets, and not at liberty to go against manufacturers recommendations for application of veterinary products.

Another woman, about 60, came running up with a mouse in her hands and a wild look on her face. “Quick, get a box!” she said. Apparently this was going to be a great surprise for her friend who was next door shopping in Radio Shack. Yeah, I’m sure s/he was surprised. She then started going off about somethign so incomprehensible that I have no idea how to relate it here.

Then there were the “regulars” who’d come in and hang out for an hour or so at a stretch…

18

Ooh, zweissy, I think I lurrrve you.

I understand that people want to get a good look at the fabrics, but first of all, there’s a huge rack with a two meter length of almost all our curtain fabrics hanging there to browse. There are clerks to help you find the fabric you wanted to see. And second, it doesn’t take much to roll the stuff back onto the bolt again, does it?

I was going to say “you can’t miss the rack”, but almost every day someone managed to miss the big sign indicating where the ready-made curtains were, so I’m not so sure any more :rolleyes:

jinwicked, you guys had a short deadline. The dressmaking shop that does the custom-made curtains for this store wanted everything by December 6 this year if it was to be done by Christmas. After that, unless there was a special reason to give a particular customer special priority (like if she had been waiting for fabric that was on back-order), all we could do was give them business cards from other dressmakers in the area.

19

I spent four years working summers and holidays for what was probably the top department store in town. I still remember the guy who came in a few hours before closing on Christmas Eve and asked if those were all the Christmas cards we had left. :eek:

The most important lesson I learned? That an extra-nice customer will make up for all of the ordinary customers and a couple of the nasty ones. That and the people who say they’re “never setting foot in this store again!” will be back tomorrow. :rolleyes:

CJ

20

Oh yes, I love working in retail myself. :rolleyes:

This past Christmas holidays I had the wonderful experience of working in a card shop (actually it was wonderful. I loved the job, then they fired me because “I need to get my life together” but that’s a whole other story) One lady came in and wanted to buy some Boyd’s Bears (buy one get the second half off) and insisted after I had found the boxes, wrapped up the bears, taken the price tags off and rung them up that the more expensive one was 50% off! Uhm Hellooooooo It said very distinctly on the shelf that it was of equal or lesser value that was off. There were several signs on each shelf in bright red. Kinda hard to miss. Plus I had helped her get them from the cabinet and stated this before I brought her to the cash to finish up the sale. She finally walked away muttering under her breath at me and I was just glad she was gone.

One other instance comes to mind, I was working at a discount store at the time. It was going out of business so all the clothes were 75% off of already ridiculously low prices. You could buy a bra for a couple bucks etc. This lady came in and bought a shirt then after looking at her reciept started shrieking we had gypped her. The shirt she had bought was one of the styles we had bought from several stores. There were faint differences in price of the shirts because we bought one colour at one store for more than the other colours at the other store. The blue was about $1 more than the other colours before taking off the 75%. She had bought the blue. Now this store had a policy of no returns, we were going out of business but even before then we had this policy. There were signs everywhere around the store and especially near the cash, in the brightest colors imaginable! Not even Hans Moleman without his glasses could have missed them! She talked to every associate on the floor (3 times to me as I was the clothes associate of the day), harangued the poor cash girl who was already insane from so many customers and sent her to tears, talked to the assistant manager AND manager and finally had to be escorted out by security over a matter of around 25 cents or so! 25 cents!!! Please! If it was 25 dollars I could understand but 25 cents?

whimpers at the memory I think I’ll go hide now.