No, this definitely is not a restaurant story. Yet, this is a short story. I was standing folding, right next to the register, and from behind me, I hear a woman yell rudely and angrily, “I’m waiting!”
I turn. I feel as if I’ve made someone wait needlessly, since five seconds ago, I didn’t even see a customer. Now, I see a very. very heavy-set woman, she looks disheveled (read this as her hair as a mess, her make-up bad, and her outfit looking very, very last-minute), and she has a disappointed face. She’s walking near the registers. In actuality, she hasn’t even reached the register, and she’s still carrying a huge pile of clothes, all jumbled together in a disastrous ball. I assume she was there for about 2 seconds before she screamed oh-so-loudly. By the time I reach the register, she’s just putting her clothes down.
All I can say is, “Wow, you didn’t wait very long before you yelled, did you?” She just looks at me.
Of course, to make this bittersweet, she decides one item is two-dollars ($2) too expensive, so she wants to put it back and get another of a cheaper top. Thus I say to her friend, as she walks away, “Now, she’s making other people wait.” I roll my eyes, watching her walk very, very slowly away.
I’m walking through the store, and it’s a bit crowded. I see three children examining our fire alarm. The settings are in reach and public view in case of an emergency. They see me approach them and they scatter. So I walk around, and within ten seconds, we all know what they’ve done. I can hear the alarm signal, it sounds like a bio-hazard siren. My manager looks up, saying, “Is that what I think it is?” Yes, it’s the fire alarm.
I go right back to the children, finding them standing there lost and confused. I know their parents are nearby, but hiding for some reason. Some parents would smack their children–which is generally not advised, but in this situation, something would have been beneficial. I’ve run into this problem before, with curious children, doing what they are not supposed to. I quickly press the silence button, but I warn the manager, “Mall security will be here in a minute.”
My manager approaches the terminal, and asks the children, “Did you push the button?” At the same time, I say, “Those kids pushed the button,” on the walkie-talkie. My manager replies, “You mean the same children that just told me they didn’t push it?” I roll my eyes and sigh, looking at the little liars. This is a time, I wish they had parents who taught them to say the dreaded social crutch, “Sorry!” Instead, I’m forced to utter, “Wow, that’s really bad parenting.” To which my manager tells me to hush and shakes her head.
As my manager walks away, the parents, hidden in plain view, tell their kids to be quiet and quickly ushers them out of the store, as if they were invisible burdens scurrying into the night like rats.
There was a couple with beautiful children. The man had a Mediterranean look to him, his wife was white, short, and round. I’d explain her in more elegant detail, but she wasn’t that nice, nor was her husband.
She started with a few outfits, and her daughter kept taking out bad stuff and bringing in new stuff. Every time the wife would come out of the fitting room, her husband would look at her with disappointment and shake his head. “No, not flattering. Too long. Look how it’s cut at your waist. No, that won’t work. ” She came out several times with totally different looks and outfits, always with a stern, “No.” I mean, her basic outfit she wore when she came in wasn’t even that great–just a t-shirt and jeans that didn’t fit correctly. But, wow, what a husband! Somehow he let her leave the house dressed like that.
If everything looks bad on her, and if nothing makes her look cute or fit right, basically you’re saying she looks ugly to you or you’re implying she’s hopelessly ugly in all the different looks she tries. So why did you marry her? I just stood there, saying nothing, wondering if they wanted cute kids? Because he definitely got that, he could just divorce his tragically style-less wife who can’t look hot even if she tried. Seriously, everything she wore, he just shook his head and criticized it. She looked far better in those outfits than the one she walked in with, truth be told. I thought someone you marry is someone who looks beautiful to you, no matter what. I thought he’d help her out, find something sexy for her, but he was full-on, flat-out, “No, that won’t work either.” Just standing with his arms crossed, looking bored. Of course she got nothing, since none of the looks she tried could pass his inspection.
Still, I kept asking myself, “Why did you marry her?”
I’m not involved in this, but I was just standing nearby–as usual–watching the story unfold. On the walkie-talkie, I hear a co-worker say a customer has some panties with no tags, she wants to return and find out how much they are worth.
The story, as I was told, is this:
The woman comes to the register and hands the cashier several pairs of underwear. She says she doesn’t want them.
The cashier checks the price of these unknown panties, and they are over two years old. The cashier tells her this, and says they’re worth a dollar.
The woman replies, “But I can’t keep these, I don’t want them. I didn’t wear them.”
The manager is also there asking why she waited so long, why she decided now that the doesn’t want them.
It turns out, she visited her psychic. Yes, her psychic. And her psychic told her those colors were bad luck for her, so she had to return them, she couldn’t keep them. Who could refuse an explanation like that, right?
But my manager is resolute, telling her the panties are worth one-dollar.
So the customer says, “But I’m Korean. I’m from Korea.”
And my manager told me, she wanted to reply, “Oh… Okay! In that cast, they’re worth fifty-cents.” We had to stop and laugh at that one. But my manager continues, “Really, who cares where you’re from or who you are? They’re two years old!” But she didn’t say any of this to the customer. She only told the woman there was nothing she could do.
The woman explained that she could only return her panties now, on her trip. In the end, the woman just takes her dollars, since she can’t keep the panties. They are bad-luck, you know. (I decide this will be my reason to return something, if I ever do have to return something, “My psychic said so.”)
Now, I’m just wondering, did she go to her psychic, pull out her panties and say, “Hey, I bought these. Do you like them?”
So a woman is standing there looking at an item which comes in a variety of colors. I greet her, and show her some benefits of the product. Then she asks me of I have more of a certain color. So I go and bring back a gray shade. She’s holding a pink and a blue. She asks me what color I’d buy. And I tell her the gray will have the most versatility of the three colors. And she keeps asking me, if I’m sure. And I tell her, basically, it’s whatever she wants. Then she looks at me and she says, “I need a woman to help me. Isn’t there a woman who can help me? Get me a woman.” Incredulous, I ask the only female coworker nearby to assist this woman.
Later, I asked her how it went. My coworker said she liked the blue color, but the customer kept asking if she was sure. That customer ended up purchasing the pink color.
Memoirs of a Retail Salesperson 