Coupon Literacy

I’m at the register, the bane of my existence, and we have special coupons, which give a pretty good discount on regular priced merchandise (You can read this as full-priced, non-sale items, etc. Yet, knowing society, people will choose the dumb options on how to interpret clear English. Because you know, they ask, “How long will this be on sale for?” And they could mean marked-down product–which never return to full price–or they could mean promotional items, which return to regular price eventually.) I got side-tracked, where was I? Oh yes.

A woman comes up with a bundle of items on promotion–read this as items on sale, because they aren’t regular priced if they’re not full-priced, right? (I mean today, I had to deal with cheap people who wanted me to mark items back to regular price, since they were on sale, in order to get the coupon savings, which amounted to roughly $1 savings. Congratulations for you! Big saver! Bring out a banner! I just love how special promotions bring out the sale-mongers who decide their I.Q. has dropped twenty points in order to shop.) Either way, I ring up the woman’s items, and I tell her, the register will remove the promotional price–thus the item becomes full-priced/regular priced; this is actually automatic–and then she’ll get the discount off the regular price. (This comes out to about $2 savings, lucky lady!) To which, the woman angrily yells at me, “How can you do that? Where does it say that? I want to read it!” (There really should be a test for people to be allowed to shop in person, with so many people lacking social skills. One question should be repeated twice, “Can you clearly read and understand your native language?” “Are you sure you can read English/native language?”) I point at the coupon, of all things, it isn’t even in the fine print, it says on the very top, ” Regular Priced Merchandise.” To which she complains, mumbling to me saying, “You should have made it clearer! I wouldn’t have even come in if that were the case. I wouldn’t have even bought this!” I love when it’s my fault.

If that is a threat, I don’t know if I care. Does it look like I have a thousand ripples of pleasure having to deal with your stupidity and lack of literacy where you can’t even read English? Do I really care if you’re trying to make me responsible for not only your greed and lack of intelligence, but also you pointing your finger at me as if it’s my fault? I didn’t teach you to read, nor did I teach you to use this lack of logic, nor did I make you come trying to money grub super-discounts and getting items for free. Some people actually do have to pay for their rent and feed themselves in this world, woman.

Of course, all I said was, “Please swipe your card.”

Customer Types: Big Baby, The Blind, Capitalist, The Dumb

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Eighth-of-an-Inch

At the rear entrance of our store, there is a carpet which has been worn away slowly over time. The carpet was built into the floor, so now there is a ridge roughly 1/8″ (an eighth of an inch) at the edge. The ridge is no larger than a normal street crack, but one day I had to find out how terrifying this is.

I hear a lot of commotion on the walkie-talkie. “Oh my, someone just fell!” “There’s an old lady on the ground?” “Where is she?” “At the back door, someone is on the ground?” “Is she okay? Is she moving?” “Do we need to call an ambulance?” I arrived, to find an ancient woman shrunken by time, with a beanie on her head. Her youthful daughter looked to be about sixty-years old, which would make her mother anywhere between seventy-five and one-thousand. Along with our stock supervisor, they helped to get her up, and had a seat placed for her to recover. There the old, old woman sat staring out the back-door entrance–so each customer coming in had to be greeted by that. So she sat, hunched and unmoving, people walking around her like a statue, as the daughter yelled at the supervisor.

“What is wrong with you people? That’s dangerous!” She points at the ridge.
“I am so sorry,” my supervisor states, doing all the things he’s trained ‘not to say’, “It is our fault. I’m so sorry, what can we do to help her? What does she need? Should be call an ambulance?”
“No,” the daughter continues, “That’s not needed, she just needs to rest. You need to get that fixed! Now! She could have died!”

They continue this ridiculous banter, as I chuckle nearby behind a pillar. Seriously, when you’re that old, and you can’t even lift your foot off the ground, you need a wheelchair, or better yet, don’t leave the house to visit the hectic mall. Remember the good old days, when you used to be able to walk miles to school over rock, gravel and shards of glass while hailstones flew at your head? Well those days are long over. I’d hate to watch you tripping over cracks in the ground, because that’s far more dangerous out there. I’m surprised she didn’t explode into a pile of dust when she hit the floor. Seriously? Leave her at home.

Thirty-minutes later, the old woman gets up with her obviously useful cane, and begins to walk away. Her feet don’t even leave the ground, they just slide across the floor. She must be very good at cleaning dust off the floors, like that video I’ve seen of a dog used as a mop. I actually don’t know how she even walks on the sidewalk. It takes a while for her to leave the store, as she slides one foot six-inches, then the other six-inches more. Yes, definitely, leave her at home next time.

Customer Type: Big Baby, The Complainer, Don’t Kill the Messenger, Lowered Expectations

It’s All Your Fault, Mommy!

I am on the sales floor and there is a mother with a stroller and her daughter is walking nearby. Inside the stroller, the woman has her large son sitting up–and he’s far too large to even be in a stroller at this point, so I assume she’s training him for a life of laziness. Her large son decides to lay back–I guess she had too many bags (probably five or six) hanging from the handles–he shifted all the weight to the back, so the stroller fell backwards. He hits the floor and a lot of screaming and crying ensues. The mother struggles to lift the stroller while trying to get her son to stop crying. As all of this is happening, the woman’s daughter (3-4 years old) points and screams at her mother, “It’s your fault, mommy! It’s all your fault!!!” This continues for several minutes. Screaming, crying, and “It’s all your fault mommy!”

Now this is a moment to remember.

Dead Fish

So there was a short, wide woman with a cast on her foot. She asked a coworker for a style of pant we no longer carry–which was a flared-style of trouser denim–so my coworker asked me what the most similar style was. So I told her, since I was in a rush and needed to help another customer.

About twenty minutes later, I see the woman, “Hello again,” I say to her. She asks me for the style of pant, once again, and I tell her we no longer make it, but I had told my coworker the alternative–to which she said she was never told, later I found out the woman lied to me. Well, the alternate style was in front of us, and I showed it to her. She started by complaining it was distressed. I told her these wide styles of pant are more casual and thus come looking like this–all of those similar styles do–some people call them Boyfriend pants or jeans because they are symbolized by the fact they are made to look like men’s jeans, and worn-in like men’s jeans, “It’s like slipping into your boyfriend’s jeans.”

She remained resolute, not wanting anything that looks like that, and I told her we don’t have other options. This is where she started, “Why did you stop making that style? Why don’t you carry it anymore? I liked that style. A lot of women are built like me and it works for us. I can’t understand why you’d do this to us!”

Firstly, I have no patience for customers that blame me and speak to me as if I am the fault and the reason, that I chose that style to kill off or alter so she can’t wear it anymore. Secondly, there is a truth to the fact–when a style dies off, there is a reason. At this point, I had nothing left to say, because such customers are only here to complain. Don’t kill the messenger, lady.

Twenty minutes later, a coworker asked what I did to that woman, because she’s asking to speak to a manager. During this conversation, she complained that I wasn’t ‘energetic’ and ‘enthusiastic’ when I was helping her–that I didn’t even try to help her find anything. (Lie #2). Thus, she compared me to a dead fish. How can one be enthusiastic with a woman that only complains and blames me for company choices? A woman whose narrow-minded views remind me of a one-lane road built for four-lanes of traffic. A woman who most likely lives in a world where nothing goes her way, mostly because she helps to create the situations where nothing goes right. She wants to always be seen as the ‘help-me’ person and the ‘I really did try’, even though she didn’t try at all. Then she complained about our cashiers, using pantomime and acting to portray them as ‘robotic’–acting out like our cashiers, for the manager to see.

Truthfully, upon hearing this, I wanted to find this woman and tell her, “I know you don’t have any sense to listen to what I have to say, but I’m going to say it, so shut up. That style that you liked, I know it was popular, it was one of our better sellers. I even urged the company to keep it, having contact with one of the executives I told him it was popular, and I even took part in panels and online discussions. I don’t appreciate you blaming me or speaking to me as if it is my fault they stopped making it. I supported it, and it is a true insult that you stand there and speak to me as if I did something wrong. You need to think a little and have a little more respect for things you don’t know or understand.”

Customer Types: Complainer, Don’t Kill the Messenger, Tailor-Made, Liar
(These refer to and will link to a glossary of customer terms, which I’m currently compiling and will update as more customer types emerge.)

P.S.
The fact she has a cast on her leg says a great deal–accidents are either done by you or to you. In her case, I’d say it was done to her.

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