“Since you are always sharing the ridiculousness of customers, let me share something you missed today:
About an hour into my shift, a woman called and started with the standard; she said her name, the fact that she was in the store yesterday, and she had purchased a shirt (the one that is marked down to $25, and has all those jewels where the buttons are.) I thought she wanted to return it. But no, she was upset because she realized hers didn’t come with the extra ‘bling’ as she called it, and wanted us to take one off of one of the shirts still on the rack and give it to her. Not only that, but she wanted us to mail it to her, because gas would ‘cost more than the shirt is worth.’”
This “extra bling” is a little bag of spare plastic jewels and buttons that come with the shirt that the customer can use in the event a jewel or button pops off the shirt. The customer thought the cost of gas to drive back to the store to retrieve that little bag of bling was more costly than the $25 she paid for the shirt. The cost of us mailing the bag of bling to her is more than the bag of bling was worth… but the customer doesn’t care about that. We’re a business. We can afford to take that hit.
When customers would take a bedding article (pillowcases, king fitted sheet, etc…) out of its package so they can see what the pattern looks like overall, then balls up said bedding items and shoves the wad back into the package… or doesn’t shove it into the package but just shoves it between some items on a nearby shelf… or just tosses the item onto the floor. Found an entire silk sheet set strewn across some clearance boxes on several occasions… solid color sheet set. Not like the person needed to see what the pattern looked like. Oh, no. They probably just wanted to roll in the fabric for a moment.
…and the courteous customers who actually bring up the unpackaged items saying, “Hey, I took this out of the package and can’t refold it nicely. Do you mind doing it?” are shocked when we smile and thank them for bringing the items and packages to us. It’s just so much nicer than stumbling upon the messes while wandering the store.
One of the best explanations I’ve been able to come up with for why autism messes with your sleep schedule is that your brain prefers you to be awake when it is darker and more quieter out. A more nocturnal schedule has a lot of sensory benefits for autistic people:
Fewer people around, less noise
Less bright/glaring light
Generally a calmer environment
Which would work fine if we were living in a world where capitalism hadn’t made alternate sleep schedules so untenable because of “profit.” In a different society this sort of quality could be valued (“no I don’t mind tending the herd at night, you find it hard to stay awake but I find it peaceful,” and so on). But not in this one. And that’s not a failing of biology, or neurology. That’s a failure of society. The fact that so many neurodivergent people struggle with keeping an 8 to 5 schedule is another symptom of intrusive capitalism microcontrolling our lives, not a personal “weakness” or shortcoming.
Give people more control over their lives and schedules.
There’s a regular customer that is like this, and every time he opens his mouth, I swear I wanna punch him in the dick.
This dude literally defended one of my old coworkers who was fired for sexual harassment towards a minor, and tried to hit on me after thinking I was a minor (I’m not, but it’s still gross) IN THE SAME FUCKING CONVERSATION.
