My coworkers and I are helping an interesting couple, they’re European, at least by accent and attire. At one point, the husband comes up to me asking for help. He needs some sweaters, so I am glad to oblige. I search the floor where I’ve seen extra pairs–as sometimes they end up where they aren’t supposed to be. Seeing none, I ask for someone to check the back, as I double-check our inventory at our register.
The man comes up to me, “Well?”
“They’re checking in the back.” I search the computer, and I see him come behind the register to stand behind me looking over my shoulder. “Oh,I’m sorry, I need some space, sir.” I take a few steps away from him walking through the register area to get away. Finally, they find the sweater, well I actually go into the back to get farther away.
Later, he’s in the fitting room trying on the zip jacket, and unzips it, walking to me. I wonder if he’s going to ask for another size.
“You know, where I come from, the zipper is on this side,” he points to the right, while shaking the hanging end, “for men. For women, it is on this side.” He shakes the end of the zipper, where our zipper also ends. I stare at him blankly. “It’s backwards. Your zipper is backwards. The females have it on one side, the men have it on the other.” I stare at him blankly, because I suddenly think he’s crazy. “It’s okay, it fits good. I am just letting you know, it’s backwards.” He walks away, seeming almost proud to have informed me of this great wealth of knowledge.” I leave the fitting room behind, and leave him in the hands of other people.
I examine every single zipper in the entire store. Every single one connects on the left side. There is no ‘male-side’ or ‘female-side’ for these zippers. Sure, I know buttons are on the left for men, right for women. I tell one of my coworkers this ‘revelation’, noting, perhaps, in his country men’s pants and women’s pants must button on different sides. (Go ahead and look, your button should be on the left side.) So I begin to wonder what kind of country he’s from.
I see the couple approach the register as I go back to the fitting room, free of their backward zippers. Then I hear the cashier ask, “How do I do a Tax Exemption? These people are from APEC.” (APEC stands for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, they have conventions–The Greatest Convention in the Pacific; people from around the world take part in it, hammering out trade-agreements and forward visions of future financial status.)
Either way, I am suddenly stunned that my financial future is in the hands of guys like this. (Even though a coworker has pointed out, some people are very knowledgeable about one thing, and absolutely clueless about every thing else.) I don’t know how far they had to travel from Kazakhstan, but I can tell they sent their best delegates from the Kazakh Ministry of Finance this time around.
I go into the back to do a stock check. Soon, I come back out and this horribly rude, old woman comes to me and says, “Hello, can someone HELP ME, there is no one on the floor, obviously customer service is highly over-rated these days, unlike before.”
I try to apologize, because I’m not a superhero, I can’t save the store, but she cuts me off, “I DON’T CARE, let’s save you time and save me time! I’m looking for jeans that actually sit at the waist.” She gestures somewhere just under her breasts, which aren’t pert. I tell her our highest denim sits at the belly-button, and she looks at me, scowls, and says, “DISGUSTING!” With a little bit of spit, flying at me, she turns and walks away. Surely, her spitting was a bit more disgusting than the height of our pants.
Customer Type: Capitalist, The Complainer, Don’t Kill the Messenger, FashioNOTstas, Tailor-Made
I was helping a male customer find some clothes, but he needed his partner to come make decisions for him. Soon, he returned with his girlfriend, and I helped him find good colors and fits for him to try. After this, I needed to go in the back to meet with a manager.
Then, I hear on the walkie-talkie, someone asking for me. I ask what they need, and they reply I was helping a customer, and he only wants my help and my opinion on the clothes he’s trying on. I laugh, as the manager asks what the guy’s problem is. I just tell her, I’m that good.
So I go out, and I help him with his clothes, especially one shirt which was giving him problems. He couldn’t decide between two sizes–one was fitted, and kind of showed his curves a bit too much; the other was a little looser, but still fit well. I told him to go with the larger size. Then, I ran back to my manager to finish my work, since I was on a deadline.
The funnier part, after I came back out, my coworker said he still picked the tighter size. Well, you can’t win them all, but it’s nice to be appreciated once in a while, right?
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.
I’m standing near the restrooms, mainly because I need to pee and I see a woman rush in. Our restrooms have lights which turn-on automatically when you walk in, and turn-off when there is no movement for a long time. This must be something revolutionary for some people, basically a way to save electricity and not kill the planet so quickly–every place should have some. Anyhow, the woman half-opens the door, not seeing light presses the button inside, which basically turns off the auto-switch. Now, the light will not turn on at all. So she enters and there’s darkness, but she closes the door behind her.
I’m standing there in the distance, confused as to what you can actually do in total darkness other than possibly washing your hands–I imagine a very wet toilet-seat. Soon, I see her open the door slightly, using her shopping bags to prop it open. Okay, I have no idea what she wants to do, but our restroom is small–there is only one toilet and one sink. There are no stalls, it is just a room. I’m standing there, my bladder is quite ready to burst, and I realize either she’s doing her make-up in that darkness or taking a rather long poop.
Either way, I can’t take it anymore. I ask one of my co-workers, a girl, to just go over there and you know, pretend she needs to pee, and act all surprised when she opens the door in case there’s too much to see–i.e. legs in the air or panties to the floor. So I back away a little and hide behind a fixture.
I hear knocking. “Oh, is someone in here?”
“SOMEONE IS IN HERE!” I hear a very angry voice, yelling at her.
“But the light is off…”
“YOUR LIGHT DOESN’T WORK!” She screams back. “I’M USING THE BATHROOM!”
“You just press the button,” and my co-worker blindly tries to find the button. I see her covering her face, looking away. When she does press it, the lights turn on, and my co-worker runs away. Thankfully, I can’t see anything from my angle.
A few moments later, the bags disappear and the door slams (yes, angrily), then the lock turns with equal aggression.
My co-worker comes up to me saying, “She was taking number two! It smelled so bad! It smelled so bad! I can’t believe she was on the toilet in the dark!” My co-worker starts to laugh, walking away.
I, on the other hand, still have to pee, and definitely do not enjoy peeing right after someone else drops the bomb. I’m forced to go elsewhere, mildly amused with the situation.
Today, I had a customer come to the register with a pile of panties. I tell her a sale started this morning, which she’s utterly happy about. We get along just fine, until I scan all of her panties. There are promotions: buy ‘X of full-priced panties’ for Y dollars (3 for $25, 4 for $30, etc.), and she only needed one more for that promotional price. I tell her this.
“But they’re all on the same table,” she states.
“Oh, I guess we marked some on sale, but they didn’t remove the sale from the table. Did you want to get one more of the full-priced panties to get the discount?”
“But they’re on the same table, it says I get them for that price! They’re all on sale, right?”
I’m looking at the sale panties which are cheaper than the promotional price. I push the button on my walkie-talkie headset, and I speak into it, “Can the person in the panty section make sure to remove the sale items from the promotional table immediately?”
“I don’t know why there are sale panties on that table.”
“Don’t worry miss, I just told them to remove the sale panties, it’s all being handled. Do you want to get one more of the regular priced panties for the discount?”
She agrees and heads back there. I tell the person back there to help to woman with the panties. Sadly, this was only partly effective considering my coworker didn’t hear me, nor understood what was going on. I only hear a faint, “What did you say?” on the walkie-talkie.
So the woman returns with another pair of sale panties, which doesn’t activate the promotion. (You need four panties for promotion, or the register won’t accept it.)
“Oh, you grabbed another sale panty, I’m sorry–”
“What? What are you talking about? She said they are all on sale! You aren’t making any sense at all!”
And my coworker from the panty section says, “No, these are on sale,” she points first at the sale panties, then at the regular priced panties, “But these are full-priced, but also on sale.”
I gasp inside my head, because now I’m trapped between a confused customer, and a co-worker that is just as confusing. I try to tell the woman she’s picked several sale panties, and a few full-priced panties. For the discount, she needs one more full-priced panty.
She starts to yell, saying I’m not making any sense.
Another cashier comes up to me saying, “What’s going on here?!?”
I’m already over it, and I say, “Okay. Fine. I will give them all for the discount price.”
And the customer says, “Good.”
“So I’ll mark them all up to the discount price, because the sale panties are cheaper. Okay?”
That seemed clearer than anything else I said, because the woman suddenly didn’t want me to give her the discount, nor was I willing to bend at this point since I don’t like being yelled at.
“Wait, these sale panties are cheaper than the promotion price? Oh! So you’re saying I just need one more full-priced panty and those will be cheaper?”
“Yes.” I think to myself, “It says four for X dollars.”
“Oh, I get it now.”
I ask her if she just wants one more black, since those colors don’t generally go on sale. I decide to run and get the full-priced panty myself. The woman leaves happily saying she’s sorry about the confusion and wishes me happy holidays.
Epilogue: So another cashier comes up to me after the transaction and says, “So when you were talking on the walkie-talkie saying you’re handling the problem, I didn’t hear anything. You weren’t even pressing the button.”
I smirk a little.
“That’s a veteran move,” he says.
I nod, and quickly run to take all the sale panties away from the promotional panties.
Customer Type: Agreeing to Disagree, Big Baby, The Deaf
So a snotty looking woman comes in asking for a button-down sweater with long sleeves. “A cardigan”, I ask. She doesn’t know what they’re called, she just wants a button-down sweater with long sleeves, preferably black. So I take her to the very first item, right behind her, and I show her a black cardigan. A cardigan, by definition is a button-down sweater.
“No, this isn’t want I want! You don’t understand. What else do you have.”
So we move on, and I show her other options. Button-down hoodie…
“No, this isn’t right!” She shakes her head at me.
Basic pull-over sweater…
“Something like this, but with buttons going down.” She shakes her head again.
Henley…
“No, you aren’t even helping me find anything! Do you even know what I’m asking for? I’ll look around myself!” She yells at me, and stomps away. I greatly detest idiots.
Rushing, very angrily, to the front of the store, I grab the first item–the cardigan–and stop her, standing in her way. I’m shaking it in her face, “Black, sweater, button-down cardigan.”
She looks at the cardigan, and takes it out of my hand. She does not thank me as she walks away. Instead, she goes to try it on, and ends up buying it. Now this is a classic idiot, who most likely walked in, looked at me, and decided I didn’t know anything.
Customer types: Blind, Thankless, Agreeing to Disagree
P.S.
These are the kinds of customers that show how dumb people can be. I’ve had people ask me for a t-shirt with a collar–“A polo?” “I don’t know, show me what that is.” But more irritating, is being yelled at when I did nothing wrong just because they don’t even know the names of basic clothing; it is entirely the customer’s fault for being ignorant, but they feel the right to blame me for this ignorance. I didn’t even get a thank you for being put through this, being yelled at and treated like an idiot because of her stupidity, especially considering it was her fault she didn’t look at the item when I first showed it to her.
Memoirs of a Retail Salesperson 