Retail-Sucks

Awkward Encounters

People who have never worked in retail sometimes forget that the people behind the counter exist outside the store. Unfortunately for them (and sometimes us), we are not fixtures of our particular places of employment. I sell fine jewelry, which is usually representative of significant and intimate events in people's lives. People will readily admit that the item they are purchasing is for a mistress/love child/co-worker/stranger they are stalking/whatever. It's really awkward to run into customers in different social circumstances, because they NEVER remember me from the store. Like the douchebag who bought an engagement ring for his mistress, and then I saw him at church with his wife and children the next week. I knew he was going to abandon his family and couldn't say anything. Or the chick who threw her ring at me because "the stone shouldn't be crooked." (BTW, diamonds are hand-cut, and a square shaped stone is almost NEVER perfectly square). I "met" her at a party several years after that. Un-shockingly, she was recently divorced.
Anyway, this post is actually based on something really funny that happened a few days ago. My sister has a scumbag boyfriend that my entire family hates. I was happily cleaning glass in the store when, lo and behold, who walks in arm-in-arm with another girl and her parents? Scumbag himself. BUSTED! I didn't confront him in the store, but I had a hell of a great time staring him down the entire time his girlie's mother was trying on some cheap promo piece.
I can't wait to see him again now that I have proof.

The Incredible Disappearing Dollar Sign

Sometimes it is obvious that people see (or don't see) what they want to see (or not).

Periodically we put out a display of bargain audio books on a table with a sign that lists the price as "$3-$10." If you looks closely, you will see two dollar signs -- one before the 3 and one before the 10. Also, there is a hyphen between the two prices. Thus, if we were to write this out in longhand, it would say, "Items on this table are priced from three dollars to ten dollars." Yet, invariably someone will come to the register with three of these items, then say the cashier rang it up wrong -- "the sign said three for ten dollars!" Of course, if they had three of the $3 audios, $10 would be a bad deal. RTFS!

Now, it would be easy to say that some people just don't see the dollar sign in front of the 3, but....

We also sometimes have specials on paperbacks. If they are on the special, they will bear stickers that read "5 for 4." In the smaller print, it says that if you buy four, you get a fifth one free. Now, however, the phantom dollar sign magically appears, because when the customer brings five of these books to the register, they expect to pay $4 total. (We also sometimes do 3 for 2, but oddly this doesn't seem to confuse people as much.) Usually the customers then decide they don't want any of the books, so a manager has to be paged to void the whole transaction.

RTFL!

But I want it for free!!!

This story still makes me laugh...

So I don't technically work retail, I work in a "quick-service restaurant" but I figure we both deal with crappy customers who buy stuff from us. Anyways. I'm in drive-thru, the lady who takes your money after you've ordered. There is nobody in line and my co-workers and I are just chatting while cleaning up after the madness that is lunch. The headset beeps and my co-worker answers to take our customers order.
So the lady says, and I quote, "I want 3 eight nuggets and three cookie and cream shakes and I have a coupon." She pulls away after that, doesn't wait to hear her total, doesn't wait to even see if we got her order right.
Whatever.
When she gets to the window I ask her, "Ma'am, how many coupons do you have?"
"One." she says.
So I discount the price of 1 milkshake, which is what the coupon is for. But when I read her the total she was NOT happy.
"What! I have a coupon!"

While supplies last

Years ago, I used to work at a small, cutesy gift shop. They had a big promotion about once a year to show off their new products for the fall/winter season, and this promotion included a bag full of free stuff valued at $50. All the fliers sent out were clearly marked with "while supplies last".

On the big day, we opened at 9 a.m. sharp, and within two hours every last bag of freebies had been given away. Although we technically weren't supposed to, the managers had us put together some other freebie bags to pacify the crowd. These were worth around $15, but most people were just happy to get something for free, so they didn't complain.

A few hours later, the crowd had thinned, and I was catching my breath when the phone rang. I picked it up and said, "(Name of store), how can I help you?" Immediately the woman on the other end of the line began screaming so loudly that I held the receiver at arm's length but could still hear every word. She had come to the sale late, received a $15 bag, gone home, and seen "worth $50" on the flier. She thought we'd cheated her out of $35 worth of overpriced crap, and she was pissed. The conversation went like this:

Bathroom Reading

This isn't exactly about sucky customers, but it is customers who suck that made the situation humorous.

First a bit of background: As you may know one of the problems of bookstores is that product tends to find its way into the restrooms. Usually this is a particular category of magazine, but not always -- I once found a $40 cookbook in the men's room. (To set you at ease, I damaged that one -- magazines we usually place in the trash can. Carefully.)

One day we had a semi-retired model in the store for a signing. She was on the cover of a magazine, and since her own business had an ad in the issue, she bought a lot of copies, signed them, and gave them away. I should point out that she was a very nice woman. We set up a table for her near the front door, and since it was a busy weekend we were supposed to have a greeter handing out fliers and directing customers who were looking for a particular section. Whenever the greeter would go off to help a customer, the model would just fill in, handing out fliers and telling the customers what the specials were that weekend. Not her job, but she's just that kind of person.

I was restocking the bestsellers, which were right next to the signing table, so I chatted with her a bit (dammit, she was married) and I heard some of her conversation with the customers. At one point, I heard her say to one of the customers (about the magazine), "Oh, it's just some bathroom reading."

Thankfully, I was able to hold in my laughter until I ran to the stockroom.

Why Would You DO THAT?!

Bear in mind that this story has been edited and censored quite a bit from the true events that happened.

I started work for a video game store not even a month ago, but this is likely the worst example of a customer that we will ever get (or never again get). This 40-some-year-old, tall, Ukrainian woman came out Friday to buy a PSP for her son's birthday, a couple of games-- hey, what the hell? The kid was pretty good, he deserved it. That was before I figured out what the family of that woman was like.

The broad came back today. She came back with her sons and her husband. They put that poor, poor gaming system through hell and back. They:

slaughtered the packaging for the PSP;
scratched the games beyond recognition;
destroyed the cases and tore the instruction manuals for the game; and
had the gall to ask for a full cash refund. YEAH... F***ING... RIGHT.

Take the short bus to Target

So one day at Target I had a woman who was off to the side looking at the menu, not in line but just kind of pensive at the side lines. Another guest then comes and grabs a pizza so I can ring her up, which I do in about ten seconds. Then all hell breaks loose:

Lady: Excuse me, didn't you see I was waiting in line?
Me: I'm so sorry maam, I thought you were still trying to decide what you wanted to order and didn't want to disturb you. How can I help you today?
Lady: I don't like your attitude. If you don't know how to deal with people you shouldn't be working here.
Me: Maam, I've been working here almost two years and I assure you I know how to work with people.
Lady: Don't talk back to me, let me speak to you manager.

What's this size?

First post, here it goes.
I work at Disneyland, which I love most of the time. One day, I had a guest who held up a shirt to me and asked what sizes they were. I was a bit confused as to what she meant because the sizes are right there on the tag. So I responded that they were small, medium, and so on. She then elaborated and asked for the age that coresponded with each size. I said I didn't know, that it just depended on the size on the child. I asked her how old the child was so that I could get a better feel for the possible size. She responded that she really wanted to know the correct correlation of sizes to age because she didn't want to get the wrong size. I thought it was kind of stupid because even if I knew the ages for each size, it doesn't really matter because if your kid is a fatty at age 4, he's not going to fit into a small. I asked a couple of fellow castmembers who also didn't know and then decided to look in this folder we have with info on just about everything. All the while I was trying to rationalize thinking maybe she was shopping for a child who she hadn't seen in a while maybe. I found what she was looking for and showed it to her. She told me that they had gotten tired of waiting and just started trying them on. So there were a shitload of shirts everywhere. So, this lady is basically telling me that she's fucking stupid because with your child right there she can't figure out what size to get them. What mother doesn't know their child's size? Dad's maybe get a bit of lee-way, but mom's? I was really irritated as I waited around for ten minutes for her to leave so I couuld fix everything that she had messed up. Stupid fucking lady

Customers need to learn to read the signs

There is a regular customer that comes into the store I work at. She comes in at least once a week and always complains. She comes up to the register with a cart full of merchandise and wants the cashiers to verify price every item then sits there for 10 minutes deciding what she wants and then has the cashiers actually ring her up. And of course, after being rang up, there is some sort of complaint. Well today she took the cake with her annoyingness.

I noticed her walk in the back of the store talking to one of our newest employees who had a price gun out pricing every beloved item for her. She then put it in her cart and went to the next aisle. As she went to check out she started off by telling the cashier how the last time she was in the store she was over charged by $25 and that she had called corporate on us and that this cashier better not mess anything up. So the cashier started to ring her up and "redheaded white trash" (rwt from here on..) told her "that's not right."

599 Missing Puzzle Pieces

The blog of my book:Surviving Retail
For as much as I have bitched about working in the toy store in my book and on my blog, the customers there were great people-for the most part. But many were deeply afflicted by that disease that retail workers dread: Entitle-itis. They feel "entitled" to ask for the impossible of people they willfully treat like shit. There are dozens of such stories from the toy store, it makes up about a third of the book.

Once a squat elderly lady came in with a puzzle to return.
“This is missing a piece,” she said, handing me the box. I notice immediately that the box was unusually light; the puzzle was actually missing all the pieces, the box was completely empty. I asked her where the rest of the puzzle was, and she answered like that question was a lot stupider than it sounded to me.
“It’s at home, it's all put together, where did you think it was?”