Last week I had a customer with her child. Mom was pushing the two level mini-cart up to the register. The customer told me not to ring up the stuff on the bottom, because that section was just pretend shopping her child was doing. The two dozen or so items on the bottom were at least half perishables. We were just supposed to put them back.
I have long ago gotten used to finding the warm $15.00 steak left on the cleaning supply shelf, the empty container of hot bar food discarded on the cereal aisle, the broken jar and glass on the floor where no one claims responsibility.
I have been screamed at over the quality of carrots.
I have also seen customers buy food for strangers. I have seem them randomly help others when they could just walk by. I have seen parents patiently teaching their children manners, or bringing an elderly parent through to help them still interact a little with the outside world. I have been invited to dinner by customers and made many friends through retail interaction.
I sometimes think if you want to understand a person’s character, you can learn a lot by watching how they handle themselves in a retail environment.
There are at least three different chains with “Dollar Something” or “Something Dollar” in their names. At least one of them sells items at varying prices. I don’t go into any of them often enough to keep them all straight. And, as somebody who grew up with “five and dime” stores that had for years despite their names sold most of their items at prices other than 5¢ or 10¢, I certainly wouldn’t leap to assumptions from the name.
IME they also all have wildly shifting inventories, and may or may not have nearly anything at any given moment. I wouldn’t even be particularly surprised to find someplace selling junky remaindered tennis shoes for $1; certainly not for within the price range of some stores with “dollar” in their names.
I feel for people who are so lonely they are easily scammed. Our store has Western Union and gift card services and there have been dozens of times we have stopped scams from going through because we know the questions to ask. It’s not just Kroger checkers who are lonely and easily deceived. It is often the elderly. It is often people who have limited social skills. Sometimes it is just a regular person who has been somehow tricked. These people are victims and those that take advantage of them are Scum.
I am sure you were exaggerating for effect, but trying to help others not be scammed is to my way of thinking the decent thing to do. Just because someone is stupid does not mean they deserve what they get. Both sides on the retail exchange are people just trying to get by in the world. That’s good to remember.
For me one of the most confusing things about dates with some guys who had apparently been taught that “you open doors and pull chairs for your lady” was that they would let go of the door in such a way that it almost slammed in the next person’s face, or do the second while barking at the waiter. Apparently, they had some sort of dating checklist; conclusively, they had no actual manners.
Having been a receptionist, I always make sure to treat them well (hey, I know who holds the keys to the office supplies cabinet!). I’ve heard absolute horror stories from receptionists and cleaning people in hotels. Anybody can be having a bad day, but some stuff goes beyond that and into some sort of sadistic pleasure from screwing up this person who can’t do anything about it.
Quiet, you. With heresy like that, you’re just trying to deprive the corporate drones of the reason for their existence, You know – candidates for the B Ark.
If you’re a store cashier, you’re supposed to be able to scan the UPC on the thing I don’t know the price of and tell me what price comes up. (Target stores have those self-service scanner things throughout the store, so I can check prices for myself, but the supermarket does not.)
Yes, and I do if you hand me the item. But I get people twenty feet away asking for the price. “Come on down so I can scan it” is my standard response.
And anyone who asks me anything when I’m handling cash money should be punched out.
While the “we don’t take American Express” argument happens a few times each shift, the other day I had a customer get upset because I couldn’t take her CostCo cash card. “It’s just the same as money.” Not here it ain’t.
A customer complained because I called her to the register while she was texting. “You should have waited till I finished.” She then spoke to the night manager, who didn’t even write up the incidence.
The next morning, she called the store and get the day manager, who had no clue what she was talking about. And didn’t believe her story until she checked with me and the other manager.
I always try and have fun with those. Put my name in as “Harold Potter”, and my email address as “Harry.Potter@cupboardunderthestairs.wiz”, and stuff like that.
Or even more offensive; I’ve done Jeffrey Dahmer, Idi Amin, etc… as well.
That way, some poor IT guy will get a chuckle out of it, and it’s equally useless to the company.
I worked retail when I couldn’t find other jobs. First time was in an independent computer store owned by one of my brothers and another guy; it was just the three of us in the attic of a converted house. “PC Attic”, they called it. A friend of theirs would stop in from time to time, this friend did computer repairs so we referred to him as our repair department. Yeah, any time we got calls asking for the repair department and he was in the store, we gave the phone to him.
I was demonstrating a VGA monitor for a guy and his GF; I pulled up a picture that I knew was relatively safe. My brother later pointed out that the picture of the pretty girl I had pulled up made the GF uncomfortable; I bet everyone would have been really uncomfortable if I had pulled up some of Bro’s porn instead!
Later, I worked at a grocery store, helping customers load their cars. One passerby tried to pick a fight with me for accidentally elbowing him when pulling bags out of a cart. Another passerby complained that I was making too much noise when corralling the carts. Then there was the time it was raining and I was in a store-issue yellow slicker; a passerby thought I was a cop and tried to report a nearby purse-snatching.
Yeah, it’s not a stupid question, because I’ve also asked and had things brought out “from the back” for me. My sister also learned to ask the produce guy to cut the whole spaghetti squashes in two for her. They’re dangerous to cut on your own!
Pretty much. Our shelves are very long and tall, with storage space on the top. The aisle workers are constantly putting out items, and the cashiers help out if the registers are slow. We do have storage shelves “in the back” but it’s mostly for larger items and our boxes of aluminum tins, which are the most requested items to buy in bulk.
About 25 years ago, my mother and brother went through a phase during which they were obsessed with eating lychee. My mother bought up all she could find in the local Stop & Shop and then she asked the produce clerk if they had more in the back, which she also bought. After a couple of weeks of this, she was getting calls directly from the regional distribution center to let her know which stores were scheduled to receive shipments. A couple of times, she was instructed to go to the back of the supermarket and ask the stockers to get them for her. (Once as she was clearing the produce aisle out of all of the lychee, another customer looked sadly at the empty bin where they had been. So she left some behind for her to buy.)
At my store everything came in on one truck on multiple pallets during the day, and the majority of stockers came in at night, so there were definitely times when something could have been “in the back” in huge quantities, with none on shelves. Finding someone good enough to look through tons of different items for the one you want, and being able to find and access it quickly, different story.
I doubt there are many stores with enough workers to have everything stocked within minutes of its arrival on the truck, yours apparently is a wonderful exception!
I put coupons on the belt because I need to go to the credit card machine and start bagging groceries after unloading on the belt. If I lose a coupon, no biggie. If I didn’t put the coupon the belt, chances are I would forget or be too busy to apply it at the end.
Here’s an idea that would solve that problem: Make the customer dividers be trays instead of thin strips. You know how they have those strips you can put between your groceries and another customer? If that was a wide tray instead of thin strip, people could put bills, coupons, and coins in it without risk of it going under the lip at the end of the conveyor belt.
I once had a customer who came back to the store complaining that I did not give her her $10 change and receipt. The manager checked the videotape, which clearly showed me giving her the items, which she dropped on her way out of the store. The man behind her picked up the $10 bill but left the receipt, which was still on the floor.
In college, I would spend winter break working at whatever retail place was hiring. One year, I was working at JCPenney’s. On New years weekend a woman came up to return some Levi jeans. (Side note, everyone assumes the worst time working is the weeks leading up to Christmas. Nope, it’s the weeks just after christmas that are the worst. Nothing but returns all day long). She didn’t have a receipt, but they still had the tags, so I could give her store credit.
Went to scan them. Nothing.
Typed in the UPC. Nothing.
Looked them up in our store catalog. Nothing.
I told her I couldn’t return them without a receipt, so she proceeded to dig around her purse for five minutes until she found it. It was from Kohls. Now this happens pretty often, and usually results in the customer sheepishly realizing their mistake and walking away. Not this one.
“You bought these at Kohls.”
“Yep.”
“This is a JCPenney’s”
“And?”
“You can’t return items to a completely different company than the one you bought them from.”
“Why not?”
Macy’s is the same way. Whenever someone asked if something was in the back, I wandered to the empty stockroom, took a five minute break, and then told them we were all out.
