Huh. And here I thought there was nothing that could get me into retail. 
Peeing in the dressing room is bad. Very bad. And it’s happened in my job. (cashier at Sears) Occasionally we’ll help the floor associates clean out the fitting rooms if nobody’s at the register and things are relatively slow. I have found urine, a used feminine napkin and, as I said in a thread I posted here, a prosthetic leg. But nothing can compare to the time someone took a giant shit in the middle of the center aisle.
It was August of two years ago, and I was working the register in the Men’s department. I noticed a rather nasty smell, but in looking around, couldn’t identify it. That’s when a customer informed me that someone had left a dump in the middle of the aisle. Well, several dumps, actually. It appeared that someone had dropped their pants, taken a dump, crab-walked a few feet, taken another dump, and so on for several feet all the way from the Fragrance department to the main center aisle.
AP (Asset Protection) was called in, but it took a while for someone to clean it up. Meanwhile, the smell intensified, as even in the air-conditioning of the building, it was still rather warm inside. Yellow cones were placed around the several dump sites, and two managers stood by to warn customers away from them.
What is perplexing is why, in the middle of a relatively crowded store, did no one see this happening? It couldn’t have been a dog, as I didn’t remember any dogs coming in through the nearby main entrance. The security camera for that section was broken, so that was no help.
Anyway, I agree totally with the OP. Working with the public sucks. Most people are fine, but there is a section of the population with absolutely NO repsect for store property or the safety and well-being of others.
SanguineSpider’s story reminded my of my time spent working in a costume/novelty/adult store. My story is far tamer though. Two of us were working one evening. There was no one in the store except one guy in the adult section. We were watching him on our security camera monitor, and decided that things looked a little suspicious. I went back to have a look just as he was coming up to the register. While I was back there I found an opened vibrator package, of course lacking said vibrator. My co-worker said that when the guy saw me on the monitor in the section that he had just been in, he bolted out of the store. I wasn’t there, but apparently the next day the guy’s wife came in to pay for the stolen sex toys because he was far too embarrassed to come in himself.
We also had to deal with the wretched masses at Halloween. There would be piles of costumes, wigs, masks, and other crap all over the floor in the dressing rooms. People would rip bags open and “mix and match” costume accessories. Long-haired wigs would be terribly tangled from having been tossed about. The icing on the cake was the idiots who would show up at 9:30 Halloween night and bitch because we were out of something. Go figure!
I’ve done fast food, sold shoes, worked in large and small retail stores, bill collections, and phone sales…all of it. Nothing is worse than dealing with the public in that fashion and in all honesty I’d rather shovel shit.
It’s amazing the waste of human society you see when you work retail. It’s good to know there are alot of us out there! 
I always said if I ever get out of retail I’d never go back, but desperate times call for desperate measures…and here I am, back in retail. For now. Someday I will get out.
Servitude
I got an older man at work (a grocery store).
He said I worked too slow.
I told him kindly
That I had been working
For only two weeks.
This did not placate his desire
To belittle me,
And I became the common road
Upon which he dumped his shit.
What will you do
When they find out you’re no good? he said.
What will you do
When they know you are worthless?
He looked at me with his small black eyes,
Grabbed his items with grubby fingers
And walked away.
I’m not known for being a violent person,
But I wanted to punch
That grease-covered, antique,
Fat raggedy-ass son of a motherless fuck
Square in the mouth!
I wanted to take a can of lintel beans
And crush his skull beneath its reassuring solidity.
I wanted the electric doors to be
The swinging kind in westerns
So I could throw him out into
The dusty tumbleweeds
And yell at the top of my lungs
And don’t you come back until you learn
To treat another human being
With some God damned respect!..
…but all I said was Have a nice day…
…And I kept on working.
A poem I wrote in college…it sums up my personal feelings about having been in customer service.
I am also a member of the Poo Collection Club, unfortunately. I have also fished out a dead bird from the bottom of a garbage tin as a houseman at a hotel in Vermont…after it had been festering in rainwater…in the sun. Ick
Sanscour
I don’t know about you but personally, I’d never do anything remotely close to anything mentioned in the above posts in any store, anywhere! Or at home!
I poo in my toilet, I don’t open packaging in the store, I don’t stick items up my bum and walk out of the store, I don’t STEAL in general, I don’t make nasty/perverted/upsetting comments to staff members, I don’t cuss clerks out, I don’t rub/expose my tinglies in public!!! AND SO ON!
Are we posters the only civilized humans to be found?! GOOD GOD!
I say, WTF…
“Why did the man shit in the fitting room?”
“Because it was there… ?”
“NO! Because he was a goddamn pervert, pig, sicko-freak, goatboy!!”
(The opinions expressed by SanguineSpider in the above post are not necessarily the opinions of the SDMB message board… but they should be.)
All of it’s true man. There’s nothing like retail to put things in perspective.
I worked at retail store doing computer repair for a while, and had two people threaten to wait for me in the parking lot after work, people threatening to call the president of the company and fire me, all for charging them for fixing something they screwed up. (Yes, if you delete the kernel32.dll file, you may get error messages).
It was funny when we’d transfer data from one hard drive to a new one, we’d occasionally look up while the files were copying and see tons of porn being copied over. They hid it about two folders deep, which may have fooled their wives, but I’m a tech dude. We can see these types of things.
And of the course a lot of people flip out right in the middle of the store and start screaming and make themselves look like complete morons. It’s funny what people do when they’re angry.
I’ve come across another retail pain in the ass…people think you must be directory assisstance. This lady calls me and asks if we have this specific name of perfume. I tell her we don’t sell perfume and has she tried Stage (a store across from us). She said she already tried them, they don’t have it, and do I know where she can find it. I tell her I’m sorry, I have no idea who would sell that specific perfume. “FINE BYE!!” Damn lady! Unless I’ve been drunk the whole time I’ve been working here, since when was our phone number 411? I mean shit…
I need to find out where these people work, and harrass them at their jobs. Just because I’m a clerk, doesn’t mean I’m a human punching bag. Just because I have to follow store procedures, doesn’t mean you can treat me like poop on the bottom of your shoes.
Of course though, one good thing about retail is when a shop lifter is caught. we have had some funny times.
I just got off work…retail pharmacy. I can’t go one day without being cussed out at work. Do they really think it is my fault their insurance refuses their diet pills? Did I make viagra $10+? Or, is it my fault your co-pay went up? I promise, the pharmacy tech can’t control the price of your meds. I could go on and on and on and…
jesleigh, jesleigh… I know all about that. I did a stint at Walgreen’s, in the pharmacy, and it’s pretty evil there too. I swear, in the nine years of retail slavery I endured, I think I’ve done the spectrum of the retail rainbow.
Working in a pharmacy is summarized this way:
“Shoot the messenger.”
Simple yet oh, so true. Like we personally priced the meds and denied this lady the refill, and we denied that man the insurance coverage on his heart medication. Please… if I could be God, I’d do more than mess with the inner workings of a damned pharmacy! One lady complained about her insurance “playing God” with their customers and why couldn’t I help her??
I will never go back to retail… never, EVER. Nine years of being dumped upon and looked down at, of being the bad guy in every situation, of seeing things most people fear… no way. Not EVER again!
More “Is it my fault…?”
Is it my fault that Kinko’s changed the way the self-serve takes your money?
Is it my fault the above happened before I was even in this state, much less hired by this particular store, so I don’t know what the other system was and can’t make the old system work for you?
Is it my fault the government has copyright laws in place?
Is it my fault our parking lot is laid out funny?
Is it my fault we’re on the north side of the street, and you live west of us, so you have to make a left turn across busy traffic every time you come here?
Is it my fault the copier can’t get a clean reading of your letter written in sky-blue highlighter on stationery featuring a background printed with clouds and a rainbow?
Is it my fault Arlington is long-distance even though it’s in the same area code?
Is it my fault you waited until ten minutes before your class to get a huge stack of prints made from a disc, and moreover is it my fault our computer doesn’t have whatever dinky-ass little program you used to create those proprietary files you need printed so we can’t open them and print them for you right now?
Is it my fault you can’t control your kid well enough to keep him from emptying our water cooler onto the floor or pouring coffee in your purse?
Is it my fault my parents lived in New York, raised me in New York and taught me everything I know in New York, and my accent and mannerisms therefore differ from yours in subtle, non-essential ways?
Of course, racinchikki, you know the answer to all of the above questions:
Yes, it IS your fault. Now go back to work.
I used to work in a motel here in Canada and it was horrible, the tourist questions. Not to stereotype, but we dreaded, DREADED, the American tourists. Some of the questions I was asked by Americans include:
a) Does New Brunswick still take Canadian money?
What? WHAT? What the hell else would they take?!? Did you NOT see the border when your crossed over? My God, what was she thinking? Anyway, I told her they switched to the peso and to find a Bank of New Brunswick (which does not exist) and not to give up till she found it as this was the only place that exchanged it.
b) Was Halifax (the capital of Nova Scotia) built for the civil war?
This was asked after they had completed a historic tour of the city. How do you tour something and learn NOTHING? I stared at her for a long moment and said “Well, since we didn’t fight in your CIVIL war, the answer would be no.” I should have told her we fought for the south.
c) During the worst heatwave in 50 years, where parks and fields and playgrounds were closed and it had not rained a drop in 2 months, a woman informed me that this was nothing (she said it as she was dripping sweat) and it was a lot hotter where she came from. I said “And where was that ma’am? The surface of the sun”?
I worked there nine years and finally had to quit. The secret was to occasionally pull something outlandish every once in a while and then be a model employee so the higher ups didn’t believe you said those things. That’s the only thing I miss about the job.
[hijack]
…is that you Dragon!
…welcome aboard, old buddy…
[/hijack]
Sorry if I implied anything about banning SanguineSpider. The poster banned in that linked thread was banned because he was a formerly banned poster returning under a new screen name, a strict no-no on this board.
I worked retail in a candy store at the mall when I was in college. We sold a lot of stuff by the pound from bins. The older adults were not bad, the worst thing was the occassional person who just wanted to sample everything and not buy squat (not so much an annoyance to me as it was to the owner, who in turn bitched at me over it). The little kids drove me batshit. Their parents were often worse.
Every weekend there would be a different bunch of kids who’d come running into the store, putting loads of candy in their bags (Especially those godawful giant jawbreakers). I’d try to put the brakes on kids before they got crazy with getting too much candy, but on busy weekends that’s too hard to do sometimes. Then “mom” would come in and start to pay with her five dollar bill in hand, and then she would be on my case because I’d weigh the candy and ring it up to $28.49 or something because these kids would have pounds of candy. I’d end up having to put most of it back, with a bunch of kids crying and whining at me and their parents grumbling to me about how a sack of candy would cost 3.99 at Wallgreens.
Well why didn’t your cheap polyester-wrapped ass go to Wallgreens with them! Is it breaking fucking news that malls tend to be overpriced? At least I am not selling five-dollar pretzels with three-dollar pisswater lemonades you dumpy bitch. Keep your kids at home or put them on leashes. I still dread shopping with my mom (even when I’m doing all the buying) because of my mom would actually spank my five-year-old bare hiney right then and there when I pulled any shit in a store. Even as a customer its annoying to be around these people and their kids in a store.
At least I never had to deal with kids at the porn stores…
YEAH RIGHT!
Mr. and Mrs “I’m-a-complete-idiot”, would try to bring in baby. A BABY! Into an adult store… where the hell are the brains? I loved the look on their faces when I announced that they would have to leave the store because anyone under 18 was not allowed inside.
“But… but she’s a baby!”
Duh, really? I couldn’t tell that.
“A baby can’t understand.”
I’m well aware of such but I’m not going to be fined $1500.00 bucks just because your horny ass can’t find a babysitter for an hour. Yes… $1500.00 dollars.
If a cop came in and trust me, they did, if he wanted to be an asshole, he could fine me and the parents. Now, how happy would I be, how happy would my boss be, how happy would upper management be not to mention the parent, if we got fined!? I’d kick some serious porn-addict ass!!
A baby is usually considered under 18 and so I enforced that nice law to the dismay of many a foolish, horny parent. So the fuck what, sue me perv!!
It was one of the biggest of my pet peeves and yet, I would almost laugh my butt off at these parents who would sometimes rant loudly about it to other customers.
Guess what fool? The other customers agree with me, they think you are a dumbass, too.
In summary: baby = no porn for YOU! Get grandma to watch the kid by explaining your real errand. What loving grandmother could say no to this:
“Ma… hey ma! Kin ya watch Billie Bob here for an hour or so while me and Billie Jean go to the sex store to get some lube and 13- inch vibrators?”
GET A DAMN CLUE!!
I think you have a point here.
I worked in a bagel/espresso place for a year while I was in college. The customers I hated (OK, OK, I hated them all) were the ones who came in, looked at the menu, and would then start to complain about the various “non-traditional” bagels and cream cheeses we carried.
"Wow. Blueberry bagels. You know, in New York …yadda …yadda …yadda…
Then I had to stand there while these ass-munchers regaled me with stories of “real” bagels and “how you just can’t find them in California” and “if the guys back home could see this” while there was a huge line behind them of people who didn’t give two flying monkey shits about tradition.
I can only imagine the hell of food service for I have never done it. I don’t doubt it’s got a cancerous, cankerous charm all its very own.
I had friends go to work for Domino’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Luby’s, and from the tales they told, I thank my lucky stars that one end of my retail rainbow did not include such slavery.
And they spoke of revenge sought (not something they themselves did, just related co-workers doing disgusting things to rude customers) that makes me wonder why I put my life in my hands everytime I eat out.
Now, I’m NOT a bad customer in any way, shape, or form. I know exactly what NOT to do. I’m patient, caring, compassionate when dealing with clerks and servers but there are some people out there that do bad things to food regardless if you’re nice to them or not so… I might have been a victim somewhere, somehow, which FREAKS ME OUT if I stop to think about it so I won’t, thank you very much.
Hmmm…
Gonna stay home and fix a salad, yup, not gonna risk it tonight, no no.
“Why does it hurt when I pee?”
“Because your penis is in the soup.”