weekly highlights

-Sometimes customers come in looking for a very specific item that they are going to use in a different application other than cooking or baking. I drag this info from them with the question "what are you using it for?" When they tell me and I have a good suggestion of another place they might look for the tool they are describing, they often like to dismiss it as though I am incapable of having good ideas. And I say "thank you!"

-Yesterday I greeted a woman, but she must not have realized I worked at the store. She walked up to the counter and, peering around behind it, said "Ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling!". (impersonating a bell to get a clerk's attention). Then she asked me a weird, crazy question that is not important and has no real answer.

-A customer returned flatware because she had problems with the stickers. I empathized with her sticker problem and then attempted to offer solutions. After working all day with the damn stickers, I know a trick or two. Before I could finish that sentence, she cut me off and told me this laborious process that she tried and that she is right and she hates stickers.

First world problems!

the secret life of ants

I don't know what it was about yesterday, but many customers seemed to not hear me when I greeted them with my friendly and non-pressuring "Hello!". Perhaps it was my pitch or volume or all the mesmerizing merchandise around them.

When I think that someone hasn't heard me, I usually wait a few more seconds for them to adjust to their surroundings and then try again. Sometimes it seems like they might be purposely ignoring because they don't want to be "sold" anything, and in those cases, I usually leave them alone until they are near desperate for help. I'm busy too you know.

so we meet again. not that you'd remember because you are too important. oh and you suck.

On Friday, I was walking past one of the counters when I intercepted a problematic transaction between one of my young co-workers and a customer. I came in closer to observe, all the while looking busy. After listening for about 5 seconds, a wave of adrenaline came over me. Like a crime victim, I immediately remembered the customer from one of her other transactions 2 years ago.

Here she was again, this time trying to return an item that we have NEVER CARRIED at our store. She was so horrible and insistent that she bought it from us that the owner/buyer went through her records just to double check, even though there was no such item in inventory, no employee remembered the item, and she had no receipt.

My co-worker was amazing. So cheerful and helpful, offering solutions for repair after we said, in the nicest way, that we would not take back the item. The customer, dead set on being right, asked when the store came under new ownership. With extreme pleasure, I told her that it was the same owner, just as it has been for the past 4 decades. In other words, bitch you're wrong and we all know what you're up to.

This time, we found out her name. I made a note in the system that she was a problem returner and should only be handled by management. I googled her. I allowed myself some revenge fantasies (a subscription to International Male; army recruitment applications, plastic surgery brochures). Of course, I would never DO anything because I am not only a good person, but I am professional.

Basically, I was just glad that someone else experienced her horribleness so that I don't feel like I was exaggerating or fabricating. Next time she comes in, with what I'm sure will be a complicated, questionable return, we will be ready.

i have but one back, and i don't want to break it for you.

It's probably my own fault. I work/have worked demeaning retail jobs for my whole life. Why would I do that? I'm probably stupid. Since I'm probably stupid, I probably compensate by having super human strength, despite the fact that I appear to be an average size.

So of course customers would not hesitate to ask me to carry insanely heavy things to their cars for them. And if not me, then one of my co-workers: equally (if not more) fragile ladies, hired for their ability to merchandise, count back change, and give advice on napkin choice, NOT lifting hide-a-beds.

Oh, we have a system for helping those people that are too stingy to pay our delivery fee, which is less than $50, by the way. But customers don't listen and just SHOW UP and then we have no choice but to find a way to throw a console table into their truck. I cringe when one of my co-workers that should not be lifting heavy things does just once in order to help a customer.

Sure. It's just a credenza. A solid wood table. Six feet long. With a shelf and two unremovable drawers. When was the last time you picked a fucking tree up off the ground and gently placed it in the back of a Volvo?

You don't know what I don't know

I had some Canadian customers use a Canadian two dollar coin to pay for some candy. She started to hand me the coin, then paused and said "You probably don't know what this is, do you?"

Are you fucking kidding me. I work in a retail store close to Canada. Of course I know about the damn Canadian Toonie.

There is a presumption with many customers that because they control a situation by making decisions about shopping, they are also omniscient. Few seem to realize that, in fact, I might know about the world. I also know alot about them (name, address, phone number, credit card number, purchase and return history, birthday, names of spouse and offspring, home color schemes, favorite food, food allergies, pet's name and breed, car make and model, location of vacation homes) while they often don't know anything about me other than my physical description, and maybe not even that.

Creepy but true.

squeeze and thank-yous

Yesterday my co-worker told me how she finished ringing up a customer and then handed them the receipt and said, "there you go! You're all set!" and the woman stood staring at her. My co-worker was a little weirded out and tried some other cheerful phrases to indicate that the transaction was over and the woman could step away from the counter. But she kept standing there, staring.

"Was she drunk?" I asked my co-worker.

Then the customer said "I'm waiting for my thank-you" at which point my co-worker said "oh yes, thank you."

This particular co-worker is one of the sweetest, most pleasant and gracious co-workers ever. She exudes cheerfulness and genuine care. So to have some grump force a thank you that she didn't purposefully with hold is pretty insulting. Sure, a thank you was in order, but by being a jerk about it, the meaning was lost.

Take your fucking thank you, collect them like bazooka joe bubblegum wrappers, send in for the prize, and be disappointed when you realize it was all an illusion of hope and delayed pleasure.

stingy with the hatchback

I have said before how weird it is that so many customers don't think their furniture purchases will fit in their huge cars/vehicles/SUVS. The weirdness turns to annoyance when

1) they won't measure items. Somehow they think eyeballing it will do, even as they express doubt that it will fit.

"I think this will fit in the back of my car. Can you carry it out for me?" [I find people to carry it out. They gird themselves for the lift. The customer returns.] "You know what, I don't know if it's going to fit!" And then we don't even get to try.

2) they don't even begin to trust me when I suggest that it probably will fit in their car, regardless of my relatively good spatial skills (which, to be fair, they probably don't know I have) and the fact that I am at the store all day, measuring shit and helping people with the exact same scenario.

I don't know about other clerks, but I'm not even going to suggest shoving something in your car unless I'm pretty damn sure it will fit.