At the Not Always Right site there was a store that was being renovated but the front doors were unlocked for the worker’s convenience. A “customer” ignored all the signs in the windows and doors, stepped over the yellow tape on cones just inside, and was wandering around complaining – to the guys in hardhats – about it being so dusty and why there was no stocks on the few shelves that hadn’t been pulled down.
She was escorted out and the door locked behind her, convenience be damned. One comment was wondering how long before somebody drove around back and came in the loading dock. Another said at least they’d get to tour that infinite-sized Back Room all businesses have.
This happened yesterday: I ring up the customer’s purchases. Her credit card does not go through. She tries again. It does not go through. She says “That happened with the young guy on register #1. There was something wrong with the machine.” I ask “What did he do about it?” She says “Nothing. He did not want to call anyone.”
I just look at her. There is nothing wrong with the credit card function. Furthermore, if a customer doesn’t make payment, you do not “do nothing.” You call the manager and get the order suspended or cancelled.
I call the manager. She says she suspended the order, and gets the slip. I recall it, and the customer gives me her credit card. It does not go through three times. I tell her. She says “Oh, I’ll write you a check.” We don’t take checks, and furthermore, the whole credit thing and lying to me is so ridiculous I would not take your check. I tell her no checks. She asks me to hold the order and leaves, saying she’ll be back in about 10 minutes.
Of course, you know the punchline. She never returns.
Even tho I qualify for AARP mailings, I have no issue at all with anyone checking my ID. If thems the rules, thems the rules.
But I dont want anyone scanning my ID. Unless you work for the government, i suppose. If you want to scan, I will ask for a manager and if the manager insists, I will walk out.
Every year I swear I will not suffer through it again. I used to love Christmas as a kid. But whatever Christmas is supposed to be about, I am afraid what happens in retail in December is now what Christmas is really all about and that makes me terribly sad.
But that isn’t what Christmas is all about, the shopping I mean. I have seen the shopping frenzies, but I still love the season, and I still remember that it’s about the birth of Jesus.
It is not just the shopping frenzies. It’s the whole culture of buying and gift cards and cheap imported decorations. It’s people cursing because the lines are long or because the store is closing early on Christmas Eve. It’s Christmas themed lottery tickets and the mad pressure to family. It’s guilt over presents or not visiting this or that relative for the proper amount of time. Fighting over spaces in the parking lot. It is people pressured to spend much more money than they can afford. The massive e-mails trying to get you to buy yet more because THERE IS STILL TIME.
If this was about the birth of Jesus and not the money being made there would be no massive cacophony of Christmas tinsel. I never understood folks getting upset about “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” when Christ has been so well removed from the spirit of the season and replaced by the selling, rushing, and noise that a greeting verbal change is obviously of no comparable consequence.
I miss my little dog Odie who I had to put to sleep last summer. How many people have had it rough one way or the other the past year? What does it matter? Buy. Buy. Buy.
I should volunteer to help the homeless. I should donate to the poor. I should try to make this terrible violent unhappy world a better place. But I don’t do any of that. I go home exhausted every night, losing faith in people and religion and myself every day. My wife who also works retail has come home so angry at the Christmas madness she can barely speak.
There was this news story the other day about a child finding a desperate plea from slave laborers in a Christmas card. Christmas has become a distraction from the evils in the world. It does not combat them anymore, if it ever did at all. We don’t want to see what’s behind the Christmas card.
I have a coworker whose adult son was murdered this past summer and she is struggling to get through the holidays. And I have to watch while someone rants red-faced at her because the Christmas cake they ordered wasn’t exactly right. And she has to take it.
There is nothing ever at a retail store to get angry over, whether customer or employee. None of it really matters. It’s just buying and selling stuff. But that’s not the way humans seem to think, and Christmas does nothing to improve the situation. It only makes it a hundred times worse.
Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Perhaps, just perhaps it means something more. If it still means more to you I don’t want to take it away. I don’t want to rain on your parade. But I don’t believe in it any more myself. If there are holiday retail workers who feel differently I’d like to hear from you.
My employer allows and even slightly encourages employees dress for the holidays (Not just Christmas - we do Halloween, too, for instance) For the first day of Hanukkah I had a head band that say “Oi Vey” in rhinestones. Aside from the Jewish customers loving it (and exchanges of Happy Hanukkahs) when some of my co-workers asked what it meant I said it was Yiddish for “Wow, these Christians sure do go crazy with the buying stuff this time of year”.
Well, for you. For those of us who aren’t Christian it’s being surrounded by hordes of stressed out, frantic people. I can’t even do routine grocery shopping without getting hammered by the music, accouterments, and existence of a holiday for a religion that has never been mine. I’m not anti-Christmas but my god, can’t people just calm the fuck down? I suspect I enjoy Christmas far more than many Christians I know because my decorations are minimal, I don’t spend myself into debt, and concentrate more on spending time with people than swapping ever more stuff.
That said - people were surprisingly patient and pleasant yesterday when I was at work. The store I work for, of course, made money. This stretch between November and January is when we make our biggest profits, which is what keeps the lights on and the paychecks coming the rest of the year.
I’m getting together with friends later in the day, folks who having comforted me when I was grieving, saw that I was warm and fed when I was cold and hungry, and who have helped me in dozens of little ways like giving me a ride to a mechanic shop to pick up a repaired car, have far more exemplified the core tenets of Christianity than the over-stressed, over-buying materialistic nutballs scrabbling for yet more stuff the day before Christmas. We’re having a modest gift exchange and a meal together.
So - a very Merry Christmas to all of you who are Christians, and a pleasant day to those of you who are not. Happy Hanukkah (still) to those of you who are Jewish, and best wishes and happy holidays regardless of what you may or may not be celebrating this week.
So I worked yesterday, Xmas eve. The store’s posted hours were 10-4, stated in large signs, on the company FB page, on the local store’s FB and Instagram, and in emails. It was a good day, busy but not insane. At about 2pm there was nothing going on, and we started some cleaning, some sale-sign-swapping, etc. At 3:30 several people came in for gift cards, all asking when we closed. At 3:55 a mother and daughter came in and asked when we closed, and I said “At 4, in 5 minutes.” She said, “Oh good, I just need 2 minutes.” I was thinking another GC.
Nope. Buying breeches (pants for riding horses) for the daughter. They didn’t know size or style they wanted, had to try several things on. Then tried on gloves. Then chatted about trainers in the area. Sigh …
Company policy is that we do not do anything other than tell people the closing time, and then still provide the best customer service possible. I will say that given the holiday, if they had just been browsing I would have gently suggested they could come back tomorrow so we could get home, but they were actually buying, so we had to suck it up until 4:35. Of course no acknowledgement from them that they’d kept us way late.
I was at a Joann’s outlet Monday buying replacement eyeballs for my garden hedgehog.
There wasn’t an extremely long line at the cash registers (three of which were open) but that goddamn line moved like molasses in January. What the hell was going on up there, credit checks to avert massive craft fraud???!?
I’ve posted it before and will again: Why can’t people grasp the simple concept of shopping. Bring the items you want to buy to the register, let the nice cashier ring them up and be prepared to pay for them.
Line move slowly because:
People don’t know what they want to buy. They bring a cart load full of items to the register and then have to look at each item, discuss it with the person they are with, and decide if they want to buy it or not. Anything they don’t buy has to be put with the returns (items that have to be returned to the shelves).
People want different items in different bags. "Oh, this has to go in that bag, and put this in the second bag with the plates, and…This is sheer laziness. Why don’t you let me just pack the bags as I ring them up and you can sort them yourself, dammit.
People are not prepared to pay. You ring them up and tell them the total, and they cat like it’s a real shock that we demand payment. They have to count their money, do the credit card shuffle until they find the right card, and if it’s AmEx or it gets rejected, do it all again.
All this while cashier and customers wait in frustration.
Sorry, call me persnickety, but I don’t want my loaf of italian bread – which is wrapped in a paper bag – stuffed into the same bag with the raw chicken.
Fortunately my regular grocery store lets me scan and pack as I shop, so that problem has pretty much gone away.
I’m old enough to remember when the baggers were trained to pack the bags properly and not just shove stuff in as it was rung up. I had a friend or two in high school who got fired from grocery store jobs for things like putting bread in the same bag with raw chicken or putting heavy items on top of produce.
Well since Christmas is over and people are returning everything. Maybe, just maybe I’ll look for a few presents. Yep I haven’t bought not one ‘gift’ at a retail store for anyone yet. The gifts I did purchase were bought in September and October and they are wrapped still sitting under the tree…
Why? Because of all the madness. I’ll be celebrating Christmas with each person later in January when the hoopla has died down.
I feel sorry for all service industry workers, and hospitality workers. I used to be one.