Two-Week-Old Cardigan

A customer enters the store, she has a crumpled up bag with our name on it. You know what that means. Yes, it’s a return and/or exchange. Excitement! Generally, these people ignore my existence when I greet them, as if they were superstars or the ultra-wealthy, as they walk straight to the register.

I greet her, and she looks at me with a blank, careless expression and opens the bag. She pulls out a cardigan. I instantly know it’s sold out, also it’s old, and that it is on such a reduced clearance, I highly doubt anyone in existence has any–I mean, we were selling it for that cheap. I hold my breath waiting for the inevitable.
“I’m looking for a smaller size in this,” she states flatly, a mix of a command, an order, and well, just plain rudeness.
So I tell her, we used to carry it, but we’re absolutely, totally sold out. It has been weeks since I’ve seen it in our store.

“I know,” she replies. Well that’s a relief, right? At least she’s omniscient. “But your other store called here two weeks ago, and they said you have it.”
Really, two weeks ago? Only two weeks? Now she’s a time-traveler, too. Well, two weeks is just seconds ago to a tree, too bad we aren’t trees. Two weeks in a retail store is two sales cycles, thousands of customers, enough time to put out an entirely new line of clothing, and I can tell you, two weeks ago, we had a huge holiday sale–which we sold those cardigans like ice cream cones on a hot and sunny day. I assure her we don’t have it now, but we did have it two weeks ago when they called.

“Just look for it,” she commands, this time more sternly, as if I’m supposed to shudder in her might and grandeur. Let me tell you, she was fat, middle-aged, and roughly a foot shorter than me. She was approximately as scary as a toad after a rainstorm just before it’s run over by in-coming traffic–and I’m the one in the car. I tell her there is none, and suggested maybe she should have come in two weeks ago when the other store called and confirmed we had it–because we actually had it. We are only a few miles away, it doesn’t even take two weeks to walk here. I see no point in coming in two weeks later looking for a super-duper sale item, demanding people find it. So I go with Plan B–the treasure-hunter.

I take her around the store to confirm, with her own beady, little eyes that we are indeed out of this cardigan. I offer her a plethora of different cardigans, many in the same color–which is an odd mint-chocolate ice cream shade. Either way, she’s resolute in the fact she wants the cardigan she has, but in a smaller size. No other cardigan will equal the greatness and beauty of her super-sale cardigan, the one she wants so badly that she was unwilling to come in two weeks earlier to pick it up when she knew we had it. Bravo, little lady, you are an exclamation point in the evolution of reasonable, logical thought. Well, actually more like a period. After a thorough journey through the store, with every cardigan being rejected, I am left to give up and move along–as she said she’ll look for herself now.

Eventually, she asks another coworker to find a sweater for her. She asks if they are on sale, to which my coworker tells her, “No, it’s still new.” They are actually on promotion for half-price, but since the woman ‘asked so rudely’, my coworker declined to inform her of this. Of course, my coworker didn’t yet know this woman annoyed me earlier, we later found out together.

It seems for rude people what goes around comes around. Sadly, I had to see her leave with her two sons carrying large boxes of pizza. At least they shall feast like kings tonight! Even if she won’t get to wear her magical cardigan while doing so.

Customer Types: Micromanagement

Advertisement

The Old, The Blind, and The Hungry

Nearing the end of my shift. My day was going pretty well. It’s the last thirty-minutes you least expect the demanding customers to come and verbally assault you.

The Old.
An older woman comes up to me, with her tall, round husband behind her. “Do you have cut-offs?”
I don’t know about you, but the first thing that comes to my mind is denim cut with those strings hanging off the bottom–something I can’t imagine either of them wearing. So I reply, “We don’t have any denim shorts.”
“What do you have?”
“I have khaki, plain-cotton material shorts.”
She yells at me, with a bitter tone, “Yes! That’s what I’ve been asking for! Cut-offs!” She does a sigh, growl at me.
As I take her to the table, I make time to tell her, “They haven’t called it cut-offs for a long time, they call it shorts these days. It’ll help you find what you’re looking for.”
So we get to the table. “What’s your largest size,” she asks. Oh well, we don’t carry sizes-44 or 46 in the store. I tell her to try department stores, they generally have a larger selection and supply of sizes on hand.

Customer Types: FashioNOTstas, Guessing Game

The Blind.
It’s an Indian couple, from India, and from all I’ve heard about the culture, the wisdom, and wonder, I’ve rarely met respectable people from there who fill me with a sense of awe and enlightenment. This couple kept asking me for discounts, and how much cheaper they can get our new product. Over-and-over again, they ask. By the time the wife comes and pokes a shirt in my face, I’m already disappointed.
“There are no mediums, I want a medium.”
I look around, because I know there is a huge supply of them somewhere. I know I’ve seen them.
“They’re right here!” She’s standing next to our sale wall, and there the shirts are smashed all together in our ‘Small’ section. I blindly grab for a size, pull it out, and obviously, what size is it? Medium. I give it to her. I’m so happy she actually spent one-second trying to find the size, since even a blind man could find it. Of course, she decides she doesn’t want the one that she wanted, and asks someone else for a medium we don’t have–that must give her some form of satisfaction, right? Easier to save money if you keep asking for things we don’t have, and the things we do have, you don’t want.

Customer Types: The Blind, The Riddler

The Hungry.
A woman approaches me, holding a bag of chocolates, the expensive sort–but she’s dressed very slovenly, so it seems like a rare treat for her. Her manners are just as slovenly, so she isn’t some princess in disguise. She has the look of what some call, “White Trash,” but as I’ve only seen it in movies, I can’t tell if it’s entirely accurate.

As she shoves a chocolate into her mouth, she shouts at me, while chewing, “You work here?” I look at my headset and my name-tag, and I suddenly wonder why I even wear these things. When I don’t wear them, people actually don’t ask if I work here, they just ask me for help. She tells me, well more she commands me to follow her. “Come with me.”

So we go to a mannequin, and it’s wearing a sweater, a sale sweater–and again I swear under my breath wondering why they don’t update our mannequins. I tell her it’s on sale, so it’s probably in the sale section. She shoves another chocolate into her mouth, with her daughter and husband in tow. I feel like a duck with babies following me. So they all stand there and watch me looking through the sale section.
“Is it there? Can you find it?”
“Not yet.”
“Is that it?”
“No.” Together you have six-arms, minus two for the chocolate-eater, I’m only so fast by myself. I feel like I’m picking cherries, with three bosses watching me.
“Is it the last one?”
I continue to look, “It might be.”
“Can you get it off the mannequin?”
“Yes, I might have to.”
“Well, go get it!” She shoves a chocolate-covered strawberry in her mouth at the same time.
Seriously, am I here to be demanded of? All I can reply is, “Yes-sir!”
I go to the mannequin, with the ducks in tow, and I take the sweater off and hand it to the daughter.
“Thank you,” the woman’s tone is much kinder now, but a bit too late.

Customer Types: The Dumb, Lowered Expectations, Micromanagement, Modern Slave-Owner