Rant About Retail

This is pretty self-explanatory. It's a blog for ranting about working in retail.

[rantaboutretail]

It’s called “cash back” for a reason

Today I had a lady put in for $20 cash back and she asked me if I could give her two rolls of quarters. Um, no.

[rantaboutretail]

Where’s your clock?

The other day I had a customer come up to me and ask, “Where’s your clock?” I was so thrown off, I just said, “It’s ten to nine.” 

He said, “You don’t have a clock anywhere?”

I said, “No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t design the layout of the store.”

Like this is a major department store not a privately owned small business, I’m a cashier, I’m not in charge of anything, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually been in a store that had a clock, like wtf?

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Take your attitude elsewhere

So tonight I was on my way to the back room for my break. I tend to walk fairly quickly, it’s just how my gait is. I hear a lady say, “Excuse me” so I stop, turn around and say, “Yes?”

There’s an awkward second where she just doesn’t say anything, and then she says, “Yeah, you won’t get away from me so easily.” I didn’t respond because I don’t bother with those kinds of snide comments. But for the record, bitch, I WAS NOT trying to get away from you, I was just on my way to another area of the store. I wasn’t even aware you existed until five seconds ago. But I’ll definitely be trying to get away from you NOW. 

Anyway she asks me what department I work in. “I’m a cashier,” I say. “A cashier?” she repeats as if she doesn’t believe me. “Ok, can you tell me why there’s no one down here in shoes to help anyone?”

“I’m pretty sure the lady in shoes is up on cash right now,” I said. “Pardon me?” she says, but with a tone, like a “WHAT THE FUCK YOU JUST SAY” kind of tone. “She’s cash-trained,” I said, “and the line-ups are crazy right now, so what they do is they take cash-trained employees off the floor and put them on cash.”

“So that’s why there’s been no one down here in shoes for the past hour?” she asks. 

“Possibly,” I reply, and then another cashier comes along from the opposite direction (probably coming back from her break) and the woman asks her what her department is and she says, “I’m on cash.” “You’re on cash too,” she says “OK.” Then she starts to walk away, after giving my name tag a close and obvious look.

I don’t know if she complained about me or not (I didn’t have any supervisors or managers talk to me afterward) but I don’t care. Of course it’s ridiculous that they don’t schedule enough cashiers and instead take employees off the floor, but that’s nothing to do with me. She doesn’t have to have an attitude with some random employee who doesn’t even work in shoes. Save it for the people who actually run the place, lady. Not that they’re going to care.

If she had actually been polite I probably would have tried to see if there was anyone else around who might be able to help her, or even see if I could help her with what she needed (though I probably couldn’t, I’ve never worked on the floor) but when someone is rude like that, I get rattled and just want to get away from them.

[rantaboutretail]

Needy customers

So as anyone else working retail does not need to be told, this is the time of year when customers are the most needy. Tonight I got to work express which was a Godsend. Last night I was on a belt and I was ready to put a bag over my head and smother myself with it.

I had this lady with a huge thing of detergent that was leaking. She was completely unaware of this but I noticed when I grabbed it as I got detergent on my hand. So I point out that it’s leaking, and she’s like, “Oh, only a little bit, though, isn’t it?” And I’m like, “well, not really, it’s all over the bottle.” Then she says, “Can someone go down and get me another one?” I said, “I can go get you one.” (I have a massive line-up, but either I stop in the middle of what I’m doing to get this for her or I ask another employee to stop in the middle of what they’re doing to get it, so it’s all the same.) So I go down and do that and thank  God a manager was down there doing something with stock because I couldn’t even find the same detergent she had even though I was in the right section, but the manager was able to get me one.

I’m also sick of customers thinking I have a host of office supplies and other things available at my register. No, I do not have scissors to cut these shoes apart or cut off the tag or whatever it is you want me to do. No, I do not have tape to fix this hole you only just noticed is in your package. No, I do not have an elastic band for tying up your poster board. Yes, this is the biggest bag we have, and no, that item is not going to fit in it. No, I do not have wrapping paper for your delicate items, but I can wrap them with extra plastic bags which works fine. On this note, I rang in a man with a box of earrings who wanted me to tape the box shut.

I rang in a toy for a woman that came up for $25.00 and she told me that it was $20.00 at another store in our chain. “Then why aren’t you at the other one buying it there?” I refrained from saying. She didn’t have a flyer or anything to prove it was priced differently there either. I page a supervisor who tells her she can phone the other store and confirm the price but then the woman decides it’s not worth it for five dollars. Good job, lady.

I also rang in a highly disorganized woman who managed to leave her phone and things that fell out of her wallet at my cash before she lined up at the lotto booth, which I notice as I’m starting to ring in the next customer. So I have to stop and bring her those things.

I rang in an older lady buying a toy cash register and there was a Mickey Mouse doll in the box (the design of the box is that it’s partially open) and the Mickey Mouse doll didn’t have a tag so I asked her if she got it in Infants and she said, “I thought it came with the register since it was in with it.” Yes, a non-Disney brand toy that has nothing to do with Mickey Mouse comes with a Mickey Mouse doll. Jesus.

And everybody just has tons of large items and they need them all bagged because it’s raining outside and/or because they’re trying to “hide” the item from someone. People are getting me to ring things in and double bag them on the sly because it’s for their kid who’s at the store with them. STOP CHRISTMAS SHOPPING FOR PEOPLE WHILE THEY’RE AT THE STORE WITH YOU. GET SOMEONE ELSE TO LOOK AFTER YOUR KID SO THEY CAN STAY HOME. 

[rantaboutretail]

Can I have that, in like, 20 bags?

So at my store we sell these large heavy cardboard cases of pop, that have a perforated slot that you can easily punch in with your fingers, forming a handle. The handle makes it pretty easy to carry. I have practically no upper body strength and even I can easily lift and move these cases. I never bag these items because it isn’t necessary and because they’re too heavy for our thin plastic bags anyway.

One day I ring in this family and the relatively young dad asks for a bag for one of these cases. I say sure and give him one, even though I know it’s pointless, because I’m not in the mood to possibly debate him over whether or not this item can go in a bag. I would have pointed out to him the case has a handle, but given that I’d punched in the handle myself, lifted it with the handle as I rang it in and then put it down, I assumed he must have known and for some stupid reason still wanted a bag.

Two minutes later he says, “Can I have another bag for this please? This one broke.” So I give him another bag and then keep ringing in his items. He ended up going to the nearest register which wasn’t open at the time and grabbing a fistful of bags for his stupid case of pop. I just stood there and tried not to laugh.

Like, dude, why are you wasting all these plastic bags on an item that every other customer in the store just carries by the handle in their hands like a normal person? Later the cashier who was on the other register came back from his break and I told him about it and he said, “Oh, I was wondering where half my bags had gone.”

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The “wrong” price

Now that I’ve been working retail for a little over a year, I’ve finally reached the point where I have zero patience for customers being mixed up about prices. Every time someone tells me, “Oh, no, that’s $X.XX,” I have to resist the temptation to say, “No, it’s not. It’s whatever it’s ringing in for.” Because nine chances out of ten, the customer didn’t read a label properly or they found an item that another customer put back in the wrong spot. I’m sick of paging the departments to be told what I already know, that it’s already ringing in for the right price. 

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The Battle of the Bags

The other day I rang in a woman who I swear to God was buying the entire Home and Decor sections of the store. She had never-ending appliances, towels, bedding, pillows, etc. She had somehow managed to fit it all in one cart which would have taken some serious skill.

I’ve been at my job for about a year now but I honestly have never rung in that amount of large items. I wasn’t used to it. Her total actually came to a little over $1300. 

The thing that pissed me off about was it she wanted every single thing she had in a large bag. This is a major time waster and greatly takes away from my scans per hour. Typically customers only have a couple of large items and either they say they don’t need them in bags, or they’re able to wait until I finish ringing all their items in before I bag the large items for them. Also she didn’t offer to help me with any of the bagging.

Towards the end of the transaction she had a huge case of bedding (like comforter, sheets, etc. all in one case). I knew it wouldn’t fit in our large bags but I had some garbage bags in my drawer so I said, “Would you like this in a garbage bag?”  “It should fit in one of those,” she said, indicating our large bags.

I knew it wouldn’t. I was ready to say, “Well you can certainly feel free to try putting it in there yourself.” But no, I just let her watch me struggle with it for a few minutes before I said, “I don’t think it will,” and then I put it in a garbage bag.

She had kept saying how having everything in bags made it easier to carry into the house, but I really don't see how it makes any difference with a huge case of bedding. You’re not going to be able to carry anything else with it at the same time anyway.

[rantaboutretail]

“And I’m a senior citizen!”

This is actually a story about when I used to volunteer at a thrift store. Everyone who worked at this store was a volunteer, there were no actual “employees” who worked there. All the money we made at that store went directly to a charitable organization. I’m not going to specify what one since this is a complaint about a customer and I don’t want it to come back on the organization. However, I will say that I also volunteered somewhat directly with this organization and completely believed in the work they did and knew they put all donations to good use.

So basically at this thrift store people would donate items, we’d sort it, price it and put it out on the shelves. We priced everything exceptionally low because we used to get a lot of stuff and it was a small space so we needed to get things moving off the shelves. Also we felt that the low prices would encourage customers to come back and spend more money with us. A lot of customers used to say we priced things lower than any other thrift stores in the area, so we kind of prided ourselves on that. Also, there was no tax on any of the items since the items were all secondhand and any purchases made were technically donations.

But there are always people for whom nothing is ever good enough and if they can find any way to get something for less or something for nothing they will. And it’s one thing at an actual retail business or even at a yard sale or something, but when people have that attitude toward a place where all the money earned is actually a donation to a cause that needs it, it pisses me off.

So we had this semi-regular customer, an older man, who initially was not in any way a problem to wait on. Then I guess he started getting cocky because one day he came up to the counter with an old filing cabinet that was priced at $2.00. He pointed out to us that the lock on the filing cabinet was broken.

Now given that it was only priced at $2.00, whoever priced it had probably taken into account that the lock was broken. However, any time a customer would point out a damaged item to me, if the price sticker didn’t acknowledge that the item was damaged, I would offer a lower price.

“You can have that for 75 cents if you like, sir,” I said. He just looked me for a long moment and then started laughing. Then he said, “OK,” as if it was completely ridiculous, and handed the girl on cash the 75 cents. 

I don’t know what he expected. He seemed to think we would give the item to him for free. If the item is good enough that you want it, you can certainly pay us something for it. If it’s not worth anything, then why do you even want it?

The next time I waited on this man, his items came to a total of $7.00 As I was finishing ringing him up he said brightly, “And I’m a senior citizen.” I knew where he was going with this, but I decided not to play the game. I just told him his total.

“I thought there was a discount here for seniors,” he said.

“Not that I’m aware of,” I replied.

This was especially ridiculous because I used to work several shifts a week at that store so most regular customers were familiar with me and would have known I knew the policies. And I had waited on him a number of times previously, so I knew he knew there wasn’t a senior’s discount. Like why are you even trying this shit with me, buddy?

And for the record, I am totally in favour of retail businesses offering senior discounts because I know a lot of seniors don’t have great pensions and need to save money where they can. Part of what I liked about volunteering at that store was I felt that not only did it help a charity but it also provided pretty decent products to seniors and low-income individuals for very affordable prices. And that’s the thing: we didn’t need to offer any special discounts because everything was already dirt cheap. I just thought this man was so shameless. Did he realize how much he looked like a selfish prick?

Anyway, I thought of him again recently because a few weeks ago I rang him in at work. He didn’t cause me any hassle there but it brought back memories.

[rantaboutretail]

It’s all the way at the back of the store!

So I was ringing in these two women who were together and the second woman had a toilet seat with no barcode. I paged for someone in that department, but no one called back. I explained that there probably wasn’t anyone down there and asked the woman if she would like to show me where she got this toilet seat. “It’s all the way at the back of the store,” she moaned, like a lazy, whiny child. I said, “All right I can go down there, but it might take me a while to find it, because I don’t know exactly where these are.”

So I take the toilet seat and go down to the general area I expect them to be, ask a couple of other employees for help, and find the correct aisle with the toilet seats. Then of course, a number of them look exactly the same but have different barcodes and are in different places. The woman did tell me the toilet seat was $9.96 so I wanted to make sure I had the one she wanted and that it was that price, and if it was a different one that was that price, I’d bring them both back down and ask her which one she wanted. Anyway, it took me several minutes to get it straightened out. Then I come back with the right toilet seat with a barcode, and both women are gone. They didn’t have the patience to wait, apparently. OK, whatever, I’m not the one who needs a toilet seat.

Of course, had the woman gone down with me as I’d asked, it would have taken far less time, because not only would I have gone to the right aisle right away, but she also could have shown me which rack she’d taken it from, so I would have figured out which toilet seat she needed much more quickly. I know it’s not the customer’s fault that the item didn’t have a barcode or that no one was in that department to help, but it’s not my fault either. I’m also aware that some people have invisible physical disabilities, but she had presumably managed to get the toilet seat and bring it to my cash in the first place, and if she didn’t have the willingness or the ability to go back down there, she could at least have had the patience to wait.

[rantaboutretail]

Don’t ask me, I just work here

A couple nights ago I needed a price check for an item in sports but there was no one in that department so I had to go down myself and check it out. I’m wandering around, trying to find this item and. . .

Customer 1: Do you work on the paint counter?

Me: Goodness, no, I’m sorry. I’m looking for something for another customer.

Customer 2: Do you know if there’s a price scanner nearby that I can use?

Me: I’m sorry, I don’t work on the floor, I’m on cash. I’m just looking for something for another customer. I’m not sure where the nearest price scanner is.

Customer 3: Oh, are you here to help me with binoculars?

Me: No? I’m sorry, were you waiting for someone to help you with binoculars?

Customer 3: Yes, someone was paged.

Customer 4: Excuse me, can you get me ammunition?

I know it’s not their fault they need help and no one is around, but sometimes I wish I could wear a sign saying, “PLEASE DON’T ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS. I ONLY WORK HERE, I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON IN THIS PLACE.”

Anyway, I then paged for an associate covering sports to come to the sports counter, hoping such an associate existed, a couple seconds later this woman who normally works in seasonal but I guess was covering sports appears and says, “Where are the keys?”

I’m thinking, I hope that’s a rhetorical question because I sure as hell don’t know, and then I high-tailed it out of there (having managed, amidst these various requests to find what I needed).

[rantaboutretail]

A bra of any other colour. . .

OK, so I have a new favourite customer story courtesy of this ridiculous lady I rang in last week. I apologize if this post is a little incoherent because this woman was all over the place, so it’s hard to pinpoint our interaction into sequential events.

So this middle-aged woman comes to my checkout with a cart full of stuff at about 10:00. This is no big deal, I’m scheduled ‘til 10:30 anyway (to help tidy up the store) so I’ll just ring her shit through and that will be it (I’m thinking). Oh no. Serving this lady was an ongoing relationship.

First she had two different grills that she had me price check. Then she was trying to figure out what size of some thing was supposed to accompany the one she had chosen (I don’t remember what the hell the thing was. I eat very little meat and don’t barbecue.) But she couldn’t see it all that well, she claimed, and wanted me to read it for her. So I just start reading stuff off the box quickly because I don’t know where this information is going to be and she just keeps talking, not even listening to me. Then she finds the information she was looking for in tiny print at the bottom of the box, so I think her eyesight was probably fine, but whatever.

She then tells me she’s had back surgery and will need help bringing her items out to her car (she ended up telling me she had back surgery at least ten times over the course of me ringing her in). I paged store standards but no one showed up (which frankly, is just as well, because if anyone hadn’t punched out yet and had come up they would have been stuck there at my cash for the rest of eternity). But she didn’t actually have anything that was that heavy so I figured I would just help her with her stuff.

She had a few groceries and she had tons and tons of shirts and bras. And she wanted me to price check basically ever single item she had. In her defence, not all these items had prices on them. Not in her defence, she could have been better organized and not waited ‘til the store was closed to sort it all out. And she was constantly babbling about what she was buying and what she needed it for, would use it for, etc. and of course I didn’t give a fuck. She would ask me to price check an item, I’d tell her the price and then she’d keep chattering instead of telling me whether she was taking the item or not. I had to prompt her practically every step of the way. She also didn’t really understand how the multi discounts work even when I explained it to her. Basically she was very convoluted, constantly asking questions, and constantly changing her mind. When she was being indecisive, I would remind her of the return policy so she’d know she could easily return anything if it didn’t work out. But she didn’t want to have to return anything, she said. Her back surgery meant she couldn’t go out all that often. Also she had tons of bras in her cart (why, I have no idea. Bras are not something you need a ton of) and she was asking me what colours I preferred. Of course, I don’t care what colour her underwear is. But I’m trying to be nice and humour her and give opinions hoping it will move her along. But I don’t think she really cared about my opinion, I think she just wanted an excuse to chat with someone.

All this time my supervisor is lurking over us, anxious for this woman to get out of the store so she can open my drawer so my cash can be closed. At one point this lady ropes her into the discussion too. She literally wanted to know which shade of pink my supervisor preferred out of three different pink bras. 

It literally took me half an hour to ring this lady in. She came to my cash at about ten and it was ten-thirty by the time she was finished. By this time there wasn’t a single customer left in the store and the only day staff left was me and my supervisor. As soon as this lady’s receipt printed, my supervisor opened my drawer and told me I had to close my cash (recently they’ve changed the float amount and there’s a new rule that supervisors have to close all the cashes, not the cashiers). My supervisor (whether intentional or not) acted like it was my fault that this customer would not leave the store. (Like what do you want me to do, tell this woman to leave?) At this point the lady is asking her if there’s anyone available to help her to her car with her items. My supervisor says she doubts it, everyone is off. The lady says she’s spent over $500 (she has) and my supervisor basically said, “Yes, but the store is closed.” Then she walks away.

Then this lady starts telling me (not in a rude way, she was actually quite polite, just irritating and oblivious) that there should still be store standards scheduled ‘til twenty after ten (even though it’s 10:30 at this point anyway, so what she’s saying doesn’t even make any sense) and that it’s poor customer service. I say, “Well to be honest, it’s very rare for there to still be any customers in the store at 10:30.” “I doubt that,” she said. Like WTF, I work here? I think I would know. I don’t lie to customers. “I mean there could be elderly people who need help,” she said. Um, no, the elderly people are all at home in bed by now. “I work a lot of closing shifts,” I said, “and it’s rare for there to still be any customers here at 10:30, so I think that’s why they don’t have anyone scheduled.” (And by it’s “rare”, I mean I’ve been working there for a year, done several closing shifts, and never had a customer still here half an hour after the store closed ‘til now. Like, look around, lady, you’re the only one here.)

Anyway, I apologized and told her I would help her to the car with her stuff (as I had originally planned) but that my drawer was open now and I had to close my cash and couldn’t leave it. She said that was fine and it wasn’t my fault. And finally went on her merry way and presumably will never need another brassiere ever again, not in this life or the next. She was so convoluted about everything, that to be honest, there could be stuff on her receipt that she didn’t take home and stuff she took home that’s not on her receipt. There was too much confusion for me to keep track of it properly, and I didn’t care. I couldn’t take it on. 

Then I’m closing my cash and my supervisor stops on her way out the door and she’s like, “do you have it counted?” And I said, “I have the float done, yes.” I’m ready to say, if you care so much about whether I’m having trouble with this or whether it’s done properly you should have stayed and done it yourself like you’re supposed to. Like just go home and leave me alone.

Then I bring up my bag with the deposit and one of the managers starts talking to me, telling me that the lady had been there since 6:30 that evening telling anyone who would listen about her back surgery, and of course this manager is wondering how she can spend four hours in our store if her back surgery is crippling her so much. I then told her about how annoyed the supervisor was and her making me close my cash and the manager said, “Yeah, she’s not supposed to do that, she’s supposed to be here ‘til 10:30 anyway, and it’s not your fault, you have to give good customer service.”

Anyway, thankfully for me, my shift that night was only a short one and until that woman it had all gone pretty smoothly, so I actually had a lot of patience and I think I handled it well, and I just find the whole thing hilarious. Like I am going to be telling stories about this lady for years to come. 

[rantaboutretail]

Take your shit and go home

So yesterday I worked an eight hour shift and I was there until close. I’m used to working eight hour shifts on the weekend, but some eight hour shifts pass slower than others. This was one where I was desperate to get out of the place by the end of the night.

I was on express for most of my shift, but as we neared closing time I was asked to go on a belt because there weren’t enough belts open. I do this. The lineups of people with carts full of stuff is never ending and I don’t finish ringing people in until 10 after 10. (We close at ten.) 

What really gets me about people who don’t bother to go to a register until 10 and people who just sally up after 10 is that we do several announcements at my store. Whenever I’m on I do an announcement at nine reminding customers we close in an hour, 9:30 to remind them in half an hour, and then from 9:45 onward announcements are done every five minutes telling customers we’re about to close and to get their ass to the checkouts. It should not be so complicated for people to get out of the store.

This one lady had two separate orders. That’s fine. But she had the oddest way of trying to communicate to me what she wanted me to do. Her first order was two tops, a pack of Pokemon cards, a Reese bar, a gift bag and a birthday card. Her other was one was some chips and stuff. She has not used a divider belt to indicate that it’s separate.

So she tells me she needs a gift receipt and that I can “ring it all in on one.” Now the way it works at my store is I cannot give you one gift receipt for multiple items. Every item that’s going in for a gift receipt will get it’s own receipt. I didn’t end up explaining this because I was tired and cranky and didn’t think it was pertinent information, though looking back it might have been partly why we had a misunderstanding.

“Ok, sorry, what do you mean, ‘ring it all in on one?”

“Like ring this in together [indicating items on her first order] and ring that in separate,” [indicating other items) as though it were obvious.

“All right,” I said. “So it’s the shirts and the Pokemon cards that need a gift receipt?”

“Just ring it all in on one,” she says.

OK, sure, whatever. So I ring it all in and assume gift receipts are only needed for the three items I asked her about. The birthday card she has rings in for $2.00.

“That’s supposed to be a dollar,” she said. “That’s what it said on the sign.”

“Well, a customer probably put it back in the wrong place or something,” I said. “I know some of the cards down there are marked for a dollar, but I’ve had it happen a number of times that a customer has taken one that’s not part of the deal.”

“Well, there’s a number of them down there and that’s what it says on the sign,” she says.

Really, lady? Really? We’ve been closed for at least five minutes at this point and you’re giving me grief about a fucking dollar? I just picked up the phone and paged stationary. “There might not be anyone down there,” I said.

“Oh, that’s fine then, I’ll just take it,” she says. As it turns out someone was down there and she came up and took a look but it didn’t matter because this woman was paying. “And I need a gift receipt,” she said before she put her card in. Yeah, I got that memo, thanks. Already did that. Finally she’s done, I hand her her regular receipt and the three gift receipts and thankfully she goes and doesn’t say anything else. Then the employee in stationary came back up and told me there’s a sign in the card area saying “$0.99 and up” and that’s probably the sign the lady was talking about, just so I’d know if it happens again.

“Thanks,” I said. “I mean it was a dollar more than she thought it was and we’ve been closed for ten minutes.” I said this as I was ringing through my last customers. I didn’t even fucking care anymore.

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Actual conversation I had at work today

So I had a customer who wanted to use his prepaid Visa gift card toward his purchase today. He asked me if I could check how much money was on it. I explain that I have no way of checking the amount on a prepaid gift card. He didn’t really seem to believe me or understand me, and still wanted to use the card toward his purchase. His total was $58.75 or something.

So I just typed in 5875 debit and got him to swipe the card. It was denied.

“It didn’t accept it,” I said. “So I’m guessing you have less than $58.75 on it.”

“Well, it’s a $50.00 gift certificate,” he said.

So I punched it in as 50 and it worked.

But seriously, WTF? Why are you asking me to check how much money is on your card when you already know the answer? Normally when people ask if I can check that for them, it means they’ve already used the card before and don’t know how much is left on it. Even if he’d said, “Can you please check and make sure there’s $50.00 on this?” It would have made a lot more sense and would have been resolved quicker. I still wouldn’t be able to “check” that without actually ringing it through, but it would have saved both of us some mild aggravation.

Now I think those prepaid cards do say the original amount on the card but I didn’t actually look at the card because the customer needs to swipe it anyway, and I assumed it wasn’t going to be the original amount because then why would he be asking? But it’s just as well I didn’t see the amount because I would have assumed it was less than fifty, picked an amount less than that and tried putting it through, and it would have worked, but the full amount on the card would not have gone through. 

[rantaboutretail]

Time change

As I’ve mentioned before, the store I work at used to close at 11 p..m . every night but for about two months now we’ve been closing at 10. One night, at about quarter or twenty after ten, a coworker and I were exiting the building when a couple came up. Coworker tells them we close at 10.

“Your website says you’re open ‘til 11.”

“Well we’ve been closing at 10 for at least a month.”

“Well, you need to fix your website.”

“Contact Head Office,” my coworker said.

Obviously we don’t control the website, but that’s not even the point of my story. The point is that I thought what he said was quite odd because I had checked the website a number of weeks ago to see if it had been updated with our hours and it was. When I got home I checked it again, and sure enough, our store location had its hours listed as closing at ten every night.

So I have no idea what the hell website he was looking at. Unless he was looking at another store location because he was too stupid to know where he was.

[rantaboutretail]

Lying to the cashier

Every now and then you get customers who try to lie to you about what the price sticker on the shelf said, and it’s kind of hilarious because I don’t know what the hell they think they’re going to accomplish.

The other night I rang in these two women who had a lamp with no tag and no UPC anywhere. They said it was the only one left down there and that it was $11.97. I page the appropriate department but no one gets back to me.

Now this is the thing about me: I believe most people are honest and I’m not generally a suspicious person. Maybe that’s naive of me, but whatever. So at this point I’m assuming that what they said is correct and that this is the only lamp of its kind left on the shelf and I’m trying to figure out how I can get a UPC for this item so they can still get it. I go up to the customer service desk because they have a “gun” up there that they can use to look up items and find the UPC. But another employee had taken it (of course. It’s too much to ask that our store be half-decently organized).

So at this point the only choice I have is to go down to the department and see if by some chance there are any other lamps. I do this. I find a row of these lamps and the price sticker says $30.98. So I bring one of them back, explain I found the lamps, but that the price on the shelf is $30.98, and then I do an item inquiry to make sure, and yep that’s the price it’s in the system for. So of course they don’t take the lamp and one of them says they found it by a price sticker that said $11.97. They pay for their stuff and then dash off.

Now it’s possible that some other customer ripped the tag off that lamp and put it back in the wrong spot, but it doesn’t seem overly likely to me. The thing is, had it actually been the last one on the shelf I wouldn’t have been able to sell it to them if I couldn’t get someone in the department or someone on the desk to get me a UPC. Which would have been poor customer service (though not my fault) but I can’t just ring an item through for the price that the customer thinks it is or claims it is. Why bother wasting your time and the cashier’s time to try to scam the store out of money when it’s not even going to work? There are rules and procedures that need to be followed that aren’t going to be bent or broken just because you’ve told a lie, even if the cashier believes that lie.

Last weekend I rang in a lady who started off the transaction by complaining to me about the employee (J) working in cosmetics. She was polite about this but it made me uncomfortable. At this point I didn’t know who was in cosmetics, but regardless it’s going to be someone I’ve chatted with on breaks and stuff, it’s a coworker. I don’t want to hear complaints about people I work with, it’s not my job to handle those kinds of complaints. I told her that there wasn’t really anything I could do, but she could go up to customer service and express her concerns there. Even that made me uncomfortable because I feel like I’m encouraging a customer to go report a coworker to management, but I didn't have any other options. She said that was fine, she was just letting me know in case I heard any other complaints about this employee. OK. Whatever.

One of the items she had was a hockey net and it rang in for $29.96 or something. “That’s supposed to be $19.97,” she said. “That’s what it says on the shelf.”

So I page sports. R is down in sports and tells me that yes, it’s $29.96, the item above it on the shelf is $19.97. “Is that also a hockey item?” I ask. I asked this because sometimes when a customer reads the wrong price sticker I offer to go get them the other item in case it’s similar enough to what they wanted that they might decide to buy that instead. R says yes but that he’s already dealt with this lady, so I know he means that he’s already told her how much the hockey net is, and that she’s now lying.

Anyway I get off the phone with R and explain to the lady that it is $29.96. Then she says she doesn’t have time for this, she’s in a hurry (funny, she had all kinds of time to complain to me at length about J in cosmetics), and that she’ll take the net anyway. So finally I ring her through and she’s out of my life. Then J comes up to me and tells me that she started to ring this lady in at cosmetics and the woman tried the same shit with her, tried to say the net was $19.97 and when J explained she would have to page the department the woman got mad and said, “Oh, I’ll just take it up front. They’ll give it to me there.” Hahaha, NO. J wanted to know what shit the customer said about her, so I told her, and J was livid. She said it was all lies. I mean, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure, but this woman clearly lied about the price of the net, so I’m more inclined to believe J. Not only did this customer make it her make-work project to try to get that item for less than what it was, she handled not getting what she wanted by telling a bunch of malicious lies about the first person who wouldn’t give in to her. I’m surprised she didn’t get mad at me too, but maybe she realized I had figured out she was lying and that made her nervous. This type of would-be scammer is a lot more nerve-wracking, because you don’t know what they’re capable of when they don’t get what they want. But fortunately the managers at my work know what we employees are like and have enough experience with customers to gauge when they’re talking out of their asses, so it’s not likely any of us would get in trouble if a customer decides to lie about us.

[rantaboutretail]

“Look down, look down, don’t look him in the eye...”

So I wasn’t at work when this happened but apparently one Friday night when the store was insane busy a customer made a complaint to management about a cashier because she didn’t “look him in the eye” when she said hello to him. This cashier, H, is always friendly with customers and coworkers, but I guess the fact that she didn’t make sure to deliberately look this man right in the eye wasn’t good enough for him.

The entitlement here is ridiculous. Personally I find eye contact with strangers kind of awkward, so I usually just say hi and start ringing them in.But I’m polite,  I care about how I bag the stuff, I make sure sales items ring in for the right price, etc. If the customer wants to chat, make friendly jokes, I reciprocate. 

Many people are friendly, but I’ve rung in countless people who barely say a word to me. I’ll say hi, the person says nothing or keeps talking to whoever they’re with. Or people come up and load their stuff on the belt while they’re on the phone. Some people don’t speak until the end of the transaction, when they say, “thank you” and some people don’t even bother to say that to me.

And you know what? It’s not a big deal. It’s rude on their part, and I would prefer they at least acknowledge me and not act like I’m just a machine, but as long as they’re not getting mad at me or mistreating me or causing me major hassle, it’s small potatoes. I’m an adult, I can handle it if someone doesn’t say hi to me or if apparently they’ve never heard the words “please” and “thank you” in their lives. But for this particular customer, someone rang him in, said hi, was perfectly friendly, but because they didn’t look him in the eye that’s not good enough. And what I really have to wonder is, what kind of person takes time out of their day to get in a customer service lineup and make a complaint to a manager because of something like eye contact? Like take your shopping, go home, and get a life.

[rantaboutretail]

Sorry I’m doing my job

This is probably my favourite customer story, something that happened quite a while ago now but I didn’t talk about yet on this blog.

So I don’t know if this is policy at other department stores as well, or if this is the commonly used term for it, but at my store, if it’s not busy and you have no customers at your register you are supposed to “white line.’ This means you stand at the end of your lane way and let any approaching customers know that you are available to ring them in.

One slow Sunday morning I am on number 8, the belt closest to the front of the store. This old lady comes along with her cart.

“Are you ready to be checked in?” I ask.

“What?”

“I said, are you ready to be checked in?”

“What’s the difference?” she asked, annoyed. “I can just go here.”

“Well, I was just going to tell you I can ring you in on number 8, but you’re right, you’re certainly free to go to whatever cash you wish.”

This lady then proceeds to walk past to me to go to register 10.

So, to clarify, I spoke to her as she was getting near my register. She got annoyed and basically deliberately walked past me to go to the next one. Which is fine, but I don’t know what her problem was. I already hated white lining before that, it’s often pointless, but after that I just thought, screw it, and I haven’t done it since.