That Makes Scents.

I answer the phone, and a male voice asks about our fragrances we have available.
“Yes, we do have that scent in stock,” I tell the customer.
“Well, how much do you have?” Their tone is already coming our rude and unkind.
“We currently have a lot in…” I’m cut off.
The customer yells at  me, with a cocky tone, “No. I want to know exactly how many you have!”
“Okay, hold on, I’ll go count.”
“Yes, you do that.”
I wonder why people feel the need to be so rude. I understand the status of anonymity, and the whole trolling around the internet and being jerks thing, but it seems logical that people should learn manners sometimes in their life, right? Anyway, I go and count the mini-size and the full-size bottles we carry, writing everything down just in case I get questioned about fluid ounces, and packaging. As I’m about the lift the phone, the line dies. I know from the tone of the customer, I’m already going to have a call-back.
So I wait patiently by the phone.
No need to be patient. The phone rings within ten seconds.
I answer, and the same rude voice starts to say, “Excuse me, I was cut off!”
I cut the person off, yet again, “We have exactly six of the mini, and twenty-two of the full-sized scent.”
“Good! I’m going to clean you out!” And he hangs up on me. I’m not even slightly bemused by this, as I recite the story, guessing the person will be about 5’7″ and weigh about 180 to 220 pounds from the sound of his voice and the way he talked. We all wait, holding our breath, “Did the scent customer come yet?”

So we wait. We wait for a long time, and I end up at the register and see someone packing the scents on top of the display. I’m in disbelief, it’s an older woman, but otherwise my calculations were correct. Roughly 5’8″ and over 200 pounds. She speaks, and she sounds like a man. “I spoke to you on the phone.” Her tone is no less rude and insulting in person. She asks if the scents are on sale.
My manager is nearby and says, “No, they don’t ever go on sale.”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit! I know they go on sale, with that bogo (buy-one-get-one). I’ve bought them for ten years from you guys! Don’t you lie to me, and tell me they don’t go on sale!” She goes on to recite how the other store would always call her and tell her when they were on sale and she’d buy all of their scents.

Later, the manager comes and tells me, “That’s promotion, that’s not sale, they don’t go on sale,” to justify herself.

Customer Types: The Capitalist, Micromanagement

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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