#retail is the worst

There’s a fine balance when greeting customers at our store. Management tells us we must greet everyone who walks through the door and ask them if we can help them find anything. However, we don’t always know who’s been greeted yet or not by another associate, so we just cover our bases and greet any customer we personally haven’t already greeted (I’m a fan of the “Are you still finding everything alright?” question since it both assumes the person has already been greeted yet leaves room for the customer to ask me for help if they now need it).

What annoys me more than the mandatory greeting is how some customers react to the constant greetings. Most people will kind of giggle or smile pointing out they’ve already been helped. Then there’s those cranky old ladies who freaking lose their minds and flip out on us.

I once approached this woman while she was browsing our slipper selection, kindly asked if she was still finding everything alright; and she snaps at me:

“YOU ALL NEED TO CONVERSE OR GET ON THE SAME PAGE or SOMETHING!”

Apparently she’d already been greeted by several of my coworkers. I just turned around, walked away, and pointed her out to everyone working that day saying, “Don’t talk to that woman. She does not want help…”

The double edged sword to this scenario? We also have those people who may be missed in the commotion of a normal work day, and we’ve gotten hate mail from those cranky old ladies. Yes, there are bitter old people who are so offended that they didn’t get greeted or offered help at a retail store (and they didn’t bother to ASK for help because they don’t think that’s something they should have to do) that they write the company hate mail…

Do people like this really have nothing better to waste their energy on? Really, we either greet them too much or not enough… no happy medium with this. It really just depends on the customer’s ability to handle the attention or be able to ask for it if they need it.

Customer walks up to my register holding a white napkin. She abruptly starts in, “Hi. I bought these jeans here a few months ago, and look!” She begins vigorously rubbing the napkin on the dark wash jeans she’s wearing, lifts the napkin and shows me that some of the dye has worn off onto the napkin. “IT’S BLUE!”

“Yes, I see that.”

“The dye is rubbing right off!”

“It does appear to be doing so.”

“I’ve washed these jeans several times since I bought them and they’re STILL rubbing color off onto things!”

“That particular brand did come with labels warning that the dye is very highly pigmented (as they are a high quality name brand) and that the dye may continue to transfer with initial washes.”

“This pair didn’t have that tag whenI bought them.”

“Are you looking to return the jeans?”

“Iruined my friend’s white couch because I wore these jeans when I went to her house! I was SO embarrassed! I was mortified!”

“Ma’am, are you looking to return the jeans? Do you want a new pair? Do you want a credit?”

“I washed them several times since I bought them and they’re still rubbing color off on everything! My LEGSareblueevery time I take them off! I would have expected this from cheap Target jeans but not from here. Not for how much I paid for these jeans.”

“Ma’am,what do you want me to do about this?”

…apparently nothing. Apparently she just wanted to complain about how the jeans were still turning everything blue… complain in front of eight other customers who were waiting in line to ring up their purchases.

Customer walks up to the register holding a novelty coin purse (clearance item), two kitchen towels and a matching oven mitt (full priced items); she’s an older woman - probably in her 70s, short white hair, maybe only 5′2″ in height. I ask her if she found everything she was looking for; she replies that she did. I ring up her order, give her the total, she hands me her credit card, I charge her for the purchase, print out and hand her the receipt to sign along with her copy.

The woman then looks at me and asks, “Were those items 20% off?”

“No, Ma’am. They are full priced items.“

“But the sign says they’re 20% off.”

I realize that my associates had missed one of the Memorial Day weekend sale signs and explain, “I’m sorry, Ma’am. That sale ended yesterday. Someone must have missed taking down that sign.”

She immediately snaps at me, “You have to give me that sale price! The sign says the items are 20% off!”

I snap back, “The sign says the sale price applies through Friday the 22nd through Monday the 25th. It’s Tuesday; the sale no longer applies.”

“Thesign says…”

“The sign says the sale only applies through yesterday.”

“Thelawsays you have to give me the sale price because the sign is still there.”

I know there’s nothing in our state law that says I have to give you this sale price because we left up a sign. This isn’t false advertising because the sign says the dates the sales are applicable through… in size 20 font directly under the “Memorial Day Sale” header. It’s not my fault you didn’t read the sign. I just stand there for a second looking at her like, really? You’re really doing this? I already charged you for the sale. You just paid me $30 and change. You’re really arguing with me over six dollars?

We’re bickering back and forth for a couple more seconds with the “the sign says…,” and the “the sign says you need to stfu because you’re just making shit up now” when she simultaneously blurts out, “Just cancel the entire order,” waving angrily at me adding, “Is your manager here? I want to speak to your manager.” Manager’s not in, and I’m not about to bother my good supervisor with this foolishness (and our lazy supervisor who’s straightening the sleepwear section won’t do jack shit for the situation anyway), so I inform the customer, “I have to fully return your order at the price I charged you and then conduct the price adjustment by charging you again. Do you agree to these terms?”

The woman again stupidly looks at me demanding to speak to my manager, to which I retaliate with, “I’m giving you the price adjustment. Do you still want the items or not?!” She says yes, I finalize the transaction, explain to her that I need her to sign “this receipt for the original purchase, this receipt for the return, and then this receipt for the price adjustment order to show that you authorized these transactions.” I staple the stack of customer receipts, hand them off to her and bid her a nice afternoon.

I turn around to see my coworker standing behind me like, “What was that all about?”

“Lady was a bitch. We left up a sale sign from yesterday. She thinks the law was on her side with this one.”

Coworker says I probably could have gotten away with not giving the customer the price adjustment… because really, what’s she gonna do? I’m starting my new job in a week, so what’s she gonna do? Have me fired? Hahahaha… oh… I hate retail.

We recently had to do price changes on a bunch of our core products, during which we check inventory levels to make sure the counts are correct. Process took a couple days between four or five associates.

A couple of us longer standing employees had to recount everything that had discrepancies, which was made more annoying by the fact that most of the issues stemmed from incomplete paperwork. A couple people who worked on these markdowns didn’t circle their found quantities, and we can’t assume the physical quantities match what inventory says we have.

Nothing like having to spend your time doing someone else’s job over so it’s done correctly. Work stress over stupid shit that could be avoided combined with monthly hormonal imbalances, and pretty much…

Because comfort eating solves life problems, right?

Contact at my new employer called to ask if I could start two weeks sooner than I was scheduled. I’m cool with this. Of the three start dates I was given, the first two intersected with a vacation I’d had planned for months (and not having taken a real vacation in years, I was determined to not give that up), so only the latter date would work. This date gave my current employer a month an a half to find a replacement although this was longer than I actually wanted to stay with the company. I kept thinking, “If only there was another start date in between the second start date and the later date. That would be perfect.”

Come back from my vacation and BOOM. Contact calls me with this new date that wasn’t offered before. It happened like one of those cheesy motivational quotes…

Did I somehow will this into being?

Nearly gave up hope in finding a job in our area that wasn’t retail or food service (because we’re only in the second worst state in regards to economic rebound after the recession), and then I get a response from one of my applications. It’s it’s long-term seasonal work, but it’s a foot in the door for the largest local employer in our state. Everything falls together within a week. Get an interview, get offered the job, give my notice… I’ve pretty much checked out in my mind. I’ve handed over my duties to a coworker, and she already has a good grasp of the responsibilities. I’m pretty much demoted to regular customer service until I leave. I don’t want to deal with that for another month.

“I wish there had been another date sooner than the one I scheduled. This next month is going to be torture.”

And then I get the call that a new, sooner date has opened. I now have a week and a half before my new start date. I’m like magic…

New employer is excited that I can start sooner; thanks me for my flexibility. (I’m really just excited to move onto my next step.) Current boss is not happy especially since one of our other top performing associates also just gave her two weeks notice, so we’ll both be leaving the same time now.

I feel a little bad that the rest of the team is going to be short two key-holders, and I feel a little bad that since the schedule has already been printed through June that the team will be short staffed on days us two associates were scheduled for. We’re also going into our busy season, so the store will potentially have three associates (out of nine total staff) still in training for peak tourist season. Ooops…

At least I won’t have to deal with our annual liquidation sale when all the crazy customers come out to shop.

…the response I would get from Massachusetts customers who travel to our state to shop. This response usually comes after I’ve given the customer their order total, and they get upset by how much their already discounted merchandise costs.

“No, that can’t be right. That’s so expensive.”

I break down their order by item, give them the purchase total and provide the sales tax amount applied to the order to give them the total I originally told them.

“Well, we have tax free weekends in Massachusetts,” the woman will usually snark (because it’s usually the wives who point this out).

“Yeah… we don’t have tax free weekends in this state,” I’ll respond. What’s that got to do with the customer’s situation right now? Do they actually think I can waive the tax because their home state offers tax-free shopping opportunities? No. I can’t control the fact that we have to charge sales tax. You shop here, you pay tax, end of story. Stop looking at me like I’m supposed to give you extra discounts. You saw the prices, you have no coupons, you still decided you wanted the stuff, so pay up…