No joke man, I saw stuff in that place that made me worry for humanity. I was there for 2 1/2 years, I could go on for hours. The power hungry tyrannical manager of the snack bar, the new hire who thought that because she was 2 years older than me that made her my boss, the little old ladies trying to get into the store on Sunday morning before we opened, the day that a gang tried to steal guns from sporting goods, the screaming lady, etc. Any time I needed a reminder of why I was in college I just thought of that place.
Where were we, numerically?
100 - There will be involuntary overhead music. It will suck.
Back in my retail days, the power went out in the mall one day… since we were in one of the lower levels, the store was essentially pitch-black except for the illumination from the emergency lights. As if that wasn’t interesting enough, within a few minutes smoke started billowing in through our storeroom, which connected to the service corridors for the mall.*
And even so, there were STILL customers in the store who insisted on shopping.
Per company policy, it was only considered a power out situation since the fire alarm had yet to go off, so we had to wait for these fine examples of rabid consumerism to finish making their selections and rung up their sale using a calculator (since the registers were offline) before we could evacuate.
So really, who sucks more? The customers who insist on shopping when there’s clear and imminent danger, or the retailers whose policies allow these people to get their way?
- As we found out later, we weren’t in any danger from the smoke… it was coming from the smokers used by the rib joint down the hall, whose exhaust fans had stopped running when the power cut out.
I have a good one. Last week we had a “Code Adam” for a “child” who was 6’2".
“Attention Walmartians…we currently have a code Adam. Description of the missing child, a boy, 6’2” wearing jeans and a dark sweatshirt."
I figure he was probably out in the car talking on his mobile phone and having a cigarette.
I worked at a clothing store in the mall for about a year in the early 90s. I quit that job when I realized I’d feel better about my customers and working conditions if I were a rent-boy who specialized in submissive S&M watersports.
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People suck.
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“Customers” will try to steal anything and everything, up to and including fixtures and hangers.
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They will use your dressing rooms for the following purposes: restroom, “hourly motel”, as cover to steal stuff, garbage can, and in one case to sleep.
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Upper management will come up with nonsensical rules that alienate customers, make the employees hate them, and make the company lose money faster than a sailor at a titty bar.
Examples:
•We were prohibited from refusing to return or exchange something. They didn’t need a receipt. It didn’t have to be new. If we actually carried the item now, or at any time in the past, we had to do it.
People knew this and would bring in obviously worn jeans (our main item), blouses smelling of smoke and with food stains on them, raveled sweaters, stuff stolen from somewhere else with holes where the security tags had been ripped out, etc.
•Loss prevention was 90% pointed at employees. We were all explicitly told that we were considered potential thieves and that we were supposed to watch all the others all the time.
•Greeters were never, ever allowed to leave a particular area at the front of the store. Not to help a customer. Not to ring up a sale. Not to hand off to another employee. Never. There was no intercom in this zone, so you got stuck up there without being relieved if the others forgot to give you your break or if they were too busy to notice that you’d been “greeting” (really suggested sales and loss prevention) for 4 hours.
I can’t remember how many times customers got pissed off because there was no other employee around and I was not allowed to help them with anything more than pointing them toward an area where there might be someone else to help.
•We weren’t allowed to ask someone to leave the store at closing time. The most we could do was turn off the music. We could not start shutting off lights or close the front gate. This sometimes resulted in a typical closing crew of a manager and two employees running an hour overtime as one late customer turned into two or three who wandered in 10 or 15 minutes past the nominal closing time.
We started skirting the rule by putting the gate down to about normal head height at closing time if someone was still in the store. Some people would still duck under and come in. Aggressive helpfulness sometimes worked, sometimes not. It’s amazing how socially tone-deaf people can be.
- Christmas and other holiday rushes turn people into disgusting slobs. We had a waist-high pile of jeans by the end of Christmas Eve because people started just dropping them on the floor when they didn’t want them, and none of us could keep ahead of the mess. The rest of the store looked like a whirlwind had rearranged it.
We spent three hours cleaning up and still had to just resort to the expedient of gathering the rest of the items up and piling them in the middle of the sorting room in the back so that they were at least off the sales floor.
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I could survive two Christmases in retail without going postal, so I have enough patience to deal with just about anything if I want to.
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People still suck even though I can deal with some of the worst shit they can dish out.
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I will never, ever work retail again. I’d rather starve, sell my ass on the street, or commit murder.
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Corporate managers who make up retail store policies should be taken out behind the store, shot in the back of the head, and their corpses impaled on stakes in front of the main office and left for the crows as an object lesson for the remaining suits. It would probably save the company money in the long run. Only managers with store experience should ever be allowed to implement new policies after the revolution.
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There is no point ten.
Aww, you guys sounds like you need sweet, cold revenge.
Just out of curiosity-has anyone ever seen a case of people having sex in store isles, during business hours?
A note from the graduate archipelago: aisles. Only Dubai has store isles.
Aisles? Not in the three years I spent as a retail wage-slave. Caught 'em at it plenty of times in the changerooms, though.
Thank you, thank you! That was exactly what I needed. I am working what I believe will be my last day at Walmart tonight from 5-11 (if I make it through my shift without getting disgusted and leaving in a huff). I’m not sure “apparel revenge” can be anywhere near as sweet as “electronics reveng” but you can be assured I will be thinking about it all evening.
A number of times. Not sure why a big-box discounter makes folks horny, but there it happens. (Oh, it happens. It happens in dressing rooms, in tent displays, backed up against a pallet of furniture, on the floor in lawn and garden, in the middle of the toy department, on the pharmacy benches, in the automotive waiting room, in the restrooms…)
I’m generally in favor of the notion, but as stated, this is overkill. No sense making the entry-level accounts-payable grunt put on a badge and describe iPods to half-deaf grandmothers. The principle is sound, though, so I would further amend the proposal as follows: “If in your job you are remotely connected to the making of customer-facing rules and/or policies, you will be required to test any such proposed rules and/or policies yourself, personally, with actual live customers, before those rules and/or policies can be put into effect. And you cannot delegate this responsibility. You want to make a rule, you’re putting on a blue shirt and trying it out to see how it works.”
#367. All rules, policies, and training procedures for the store are explicitly aimed at either loss prevention and/or keeping the store from getting sued. All training revolves around when to take mandatory breaks to satisfy labor laws and how to avoid accidents. There are actually zero policies and procedures designed to make customers or employees satisfied. This is not a customer service industry, it’s an “anti-lawsuit industry.”
KnitWit, congratulations on leaving that job! I felt so free when I left it. 
I still compusively start folding shirts or pants or whatever on tables if I’m in a store. And it’s been a couple of years.
EPIC. WIN.
The scars of retail run long and deep. Every once in a while I’ll catch myself at a store idly facing product or moving it over into its designated column where it had been shoved over to an adjacent one. I’m getting better with time though.
Oh good, I’m not the only one. I do make an effort to put things back where they belong, and I fold clothes I looked at if they need folding, but it’s hard to stop!
Indeed. It becomes so ingrained you just kind of fall back into the habit once in a while. There should be an entry in the DSM-IV about this. PTRD (pronounced “Petard”): Post Traumatic Retail Disorder, characterized by a compulsion to carry out your former duties regardless of whether or not you work there, or ever worked there. Sufferers of PTRD are also marked by an almost absent faith in humanity and the overwhelming desire, when witnessing someone making a mess in the store or letting their rugrats tear ass unsupervised all over the place, to punch them squarely in the cock. (Or any similarly sensitive bit.)
And you’ll have to, 'cause there ain’t nothing in between. The mid-market went out with all those regional department store chains that are now Macy*s, selling slightly-better-than cheap goods at mid-market prices.