So I’m in the clothing department of Costco, looking for a pair of jeans in my size. Because my preferred size appears to be rare, I have to sort through the stacks.
Enter the clerk. First, she eyes me from afar. Then, as I continue digging around, she walks over and, in an annoyed voice, asks if she can help me. Having experienced the assistance of such salespeople, I politely decline.
Hardly a minute passes before she once again requests, insistingly, to find my size and then begins to straighten the piles. I acquiesce and step back, but she continues folding and ordering.
I ask her if there is a 32x34 somewhere and she pauses for only a moment before saying “No.”
Wow. Thanks a lot. You’re really earning your keep there.
I’m not even that mad at the clerk, since I’m sure management told her that keeping the piles neat was her priority, but having someone watch over me like that is more than I can stand.
So fuck you, Costco management. You should’ve stopped needling me before, because I’m never shopping for clothes there again.
You might have complained to the manager about the employee being bitchy rather than assuming the bitchiness is in the employee manual. I’ve rooted through stacks of clothes often at Costco and never been bothered by an employee. In fact, I think the only employees I’ve ever spoken to are the cashiers and the little old ladies running the demo stations.
Unless you were rooting around the stacks 10 minutes after the store closing announcement, I can’t imagine what her problem was. Store employees, of all people, know exactly how much stacks can be disordered.
I’ve found my size pants in stacks with labels of as much as 8 inches off.
(I’ll second that this was a time to talk to the manager, unless, of course, it was 20 minutes after store closing. )
It’s not even the attitude so much as their need to rearrange the clothes the very second I stop sorting through a pile. It just makes me uncomfortable. I’d much rather fold them myself than have someone hovering over me.
It used to be my wife’s job to fold all those stacks of clothes so neatly from 6 a.m. until the store opened. On those days where we went to Costco after she came home from work, I had to physically restrain her from assaulting the people rifling through the clothing stacks.
And she probably knew whether or not there were any 32x34 pants in the stack because she was the one who carefully stacked the pile of pants that morning. What she was trying to tell you in her passive, bitchy manner was “stop fucking up the pile of folded clothes that took me an hour to make and just tell me what you’re looking for, already, before you make my job even more hellish than it already is.”
ETA: She probably assumes that, like 99 percent of the public, you can’t fold clothes the way they’re supposed to be folded for in-store presentation and just wanted you to let her fold them already before you did any more damage.
Making her job more hellish? If it weren’t for the pile-rooters, she wouldn’t have a job! They were your wife’s job security, she should be handing out coupons to those who make the biggest mess.
You sound like an asshole, Costco isn’t going to hurt for your lack of patronage because there’s no shortage of cheap fucks who buy their clothing at discount warehouses, and the next time you rifle through clothing stacks looking for sweatshop jeans that fit your freakish proportions, don’t toss the “normal person” discards over your shoulder if you don’t want employees to conclude that you’re a crazed homeless person having an antisocial episode.
I don’t go to Costco often, but I’ve never, ever seen an employee who wasn’t carrying a food sample tray or working at the registers.
Also, when I worked in retail, it would take all my willpower not to explode at people who would come by and disorganize everything like a hurricane not ten minutes after I’d alphabetized it. I don’t know how much of a bitch she was, because I wasn’t there, but I’m biased in the favor of retail workers because I was one.
This was completely unnecessary. But it still made me laugh.
Believe me, I understand the impulse. That’s why I was more focused on the presumed orders of management than her conduct.
Yes, I thought about it that way, too. But, you wouldn’t excuse throwing something on the floor because it justifies the janitor’s salary, would you? Again, that’s why I’m more concerned with what the management told her, because I suspect it was something like, “The moment the customer’s hand leaves a pile, you must straighten it.” Whereas “Wait for the customer to leave the area before straightening it” would be far more reasonable.
Unnecessarily harsh, VT, but far more appropriate for the Pit than my OP.
First of all, I said I would not buy *clothes *there, not other products. I generally like Costco, both for its organization and cleanliness, and for what I’ve heard about its policies w.r.t. employees benefits and pay.
I do find it amusing that you chose to paint me as an “ugly American.” I actually look for non-sweat shop produced clothes when I can, but I don’t always have the time or money. Nor is 32x34 a “freakish” size last I checked. And I’m pretty nice to strangers. But, I have my peeves.
I’ll assume that your post was merely hyperbolic for effect.
I work an office job, but I know *exactly *how these people feel. It’s not just about pay, it’s a feeling that your work isn’t valued–it’s a social effect. Again, that’s why my pitting was primarily directed toward those charge.
I worked retail for years, and I also got annoyed when people came by and disorganized everything, but I still recognized that that was the nature of the job. I also feel a little annoyed when my roommate pees in the toilet just after I’ve carefully cleaned it. It’s human nature to get annoyed sometimes, but it should also be human nature to realize that some things are dumb things to be annoyed by.
The clerk probably DID know whether or not that size was in stock, because she’d already helped half a dozen people look for it. Today. And she knows that they didn’t get a new shipment in with that size in stock, because she processed the shipment and put the new stock out. Today.
And if ONE MORE PERSON goes through every single stack, and dumps the clothes on the floor, she’s gonna go ballistic. Seriously. If the OP had told her what he was looking for in the first place, she could have told him that that size is out of stock, and it’s been out of stock since <whenever>, and she’s waiting for the next shipment to come in. Instead, he has to root around in every stack and mess up the whole jeans section. Probably the OP wasn’t as rude as to dump the jeans on the floor, but folding up clothes and putting them in orderly stacks gets very tiresome. The job probably isn’t hellish so much as it is extremely boring and repetitive.
As for those who say that folding up clothes is what the clerk is there for, actually, no, it’s not. That clerk is there mainly to prevent shoplifting. Yes, she’s expected to keep the section tidy, too, but loss prevention is her main concern.
Ummm, not anywhere I’ve ever worked retail. Large box stores generally have security people. The job of the clerks is customer service.
And I very much doubt that a clerk would know off the top of their head that they were out of a given size without looking. What, did they memorize the whole stock for every style and colour of pants they own? Even if she knew for sure that there were no 32x34s (a completely non-freakish size, BTW), she could have said something a lot nicer, like “perhaps you’d like to try this other style”, or “sorry, we’re out right now, try back on Tuesday”.
Think about it this way: If she doesn’t vigilantly keep the clothing piles neat, even to the degree where she’s doing it on your heels, you will leave in your wake a trainwreck of textiles. Costco’s are generally busy, so there’s a good chance that very soon after you’re done, someone else will want to take a look. Those people shouldn’t have to suffer the burden of messy piles because you feel a little bit anxious that she’s immediately picking up after you.
And I’m still not even sure what the fuck this means…
like, huh? Having experienced the assistance of a clothing store employee finding the requested size, I politely decline?
I would’ve said… “32x34, please” and appreciated the convenience.
What response did you expect? “I am most abjectly sorry, your majesty, but other customers far less worthy than yourself have purchased our entire stock and I must regretfully inform you that we have no more available”?
Sure, “No” is a bit curt, but it’s not like you’re shopping in Harrods. I’ve had less polite responses from employees at “big box” type places for more mundane requests, so I don’t see the outrage here.
Also- speaking as someone who works in retail and has done for many years- employees generally have a pretty good idea what’s in stock in their department. They don’t need to go and look to know they don’t have any 32x34 jeans and haven’t for some time. Sure, as a customer you might prefer that they at least pretend to go and have a look, but eventually the staff realise they do have other things to do (that stock doesn’t put itself out, after all) and don’t have the time to maintain the charade for a $20 pair of jeans.
Right. CostCo is a warehouse store. Everything they have is on the floor. There is no “back” to go to. The person who put it out on the floor knows what is on the floor, because they may have just inventoried the jeans in the course of sorting all the jeans into sizes.
Not at CostCo. There are no changing rooms. Loss prevention there is the responsibility of the people at the door and having the highest priced/most easily concealable items in in a cage at the front of the store.
Loss prevention on jeans? Not a consideration.
CostCo is discounted clothes, but on over-priced major brands. I don’t buy any clothes at CostCo because I don’t give a shit about brands. Their computers are the same way - they have good discounts on over-priced, top of the line laptops and desktops from heavily advertised brands. But you can get a lot better deal looking for the same hardware from a different manufacturer.
Really? I buy my Kirkland jeans there, and these people are responsible for my understanding the thirteen bucks is how much jeans are supposed to cost.
FYI, the signs at my Costco helpfully indicate which sizes are available. And once they’re out of that size, the clerk will cross out that size, so that you know whether rooting around is going to get you results. They also group them by waist size…unless, of course, some customer roots through them and disrupts the very clear pattern.
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