There was a time I was an excellent salesperson. There was a time when managers and coworkers asked what my secret was, how did I make sales so easily? As time moved on, as more horrible customers appeared and ripped pieces of my soul apart, I became more rigid and I wasn’t willing to be open, helpful, or caring. Why be an evolved salesperson if your customers don’t care?
Recently, we watched a training video with sales scenarios which made everyone laugh. Yet, watching it, I often thought how much each of my coworkers do this, every single day they work. My philosophy is clear with sales, I believe I need to sell so we each get hours to work–no sales, no hours, no coworkers. The greater influence I am in making people buy things, the more my coworkers get to work–and basically do the bad things presented in the video.
Yet, after the video, I was willing to try. I helped a couple, they were both heavy-set, and the woman wasn’t really open to help at first. So I helped her boyfriend first. We slowly took time finding denim for him, a cut that would work, then a wash that would be cool enough for him, and make her happy. We went on to find matching shirts for several different outfits. Along the way, I also got her back into the fitting rooms to try on several more pants, because her first attempts were failures. I was actually excited, thinking, this is selling again, reborn. They both found stuff they wanted.
I left the fitting room helping another customer, and I walked back in seeing them turning a corner. So I decided to check their rooms, and I found everything still there. They bought nothing. I was disappointed. Then, I hear the manager ask for me. She comes to tell me the couple I just helped, they felt so bad, so sorry they didn’t find anything; they might come back, but they wanted to tell her how I went above and beyond trying to help them find the perfect outfits, how patient I was and how helpful I was. My manager gave them a survey to fill out. I guess that counts for something, right?
As a personal preference, I generally avoid weird people who aren’t shoplifters. One such weirdo used to be known as the ‘hat guy’, wearing a certain baseball hat, walking to the back by the bras and panties, generally just standing, staring at our coworkers there. To which, we receive a call for help, “There is a creepy guy back here staring at me!” “Is he wearing a baseball cap?” “Yes!”
Recently, he’s lost his baseball cap, but I still don’t bother with him. Although I have been around during his visits, pointing him out to managers, I generally keep my distance, since he doesn’t ever steal anything. I have three stories from his recent visits.
Once, I pointed him out to a manager, and a few moments after, I hear my manager said, “Hey, did you just see that?” Apparently, when my back was turned, my manager approached the guy, greeting him, asking if he’s okay, and he turned, and did a moonwalk dance, backing away from my manager across the sales floor, then left. No, I did not see it. These occurrences seem to be like UFO sightings.
Next, I show him to my store manager, who loses sight of him. She comes back saying, “I swear, I just witnessed something totally inappropriate and dirty!” She found him coming out of a fitting room, literally tugging on his wiener (sausage) through his pants as he exited the room. She’s utterly grossed out and stunned by this. We are quite thankful the fitting rooms are not near any children sections.
Finally, I point him out to yet another manager. My manager follows the guy into the bras and panties section, and they are separated by a wall. As he turns behind a wall, my manager sees him put his hand into his pants. As they meet again on the other side of the wall, the guy still has his hand in the front of his pants, and seeing my manager, quickly pulls his hand out, and walks away.
I am quite perplexed by this weirdo, but as I said, I don’t bother with him. He’s younger, and not ugly, though I’ve seen him dancing a little when he walks around. He often comes in, staring at his face up-close in our large mirrors. I think soon, I’ll want a story of my own to tell, about this strange, perverted, dancing weirdo.
There are customer comments that irk me to no end. They seem like a social norm, as so many people say it to me so often from so many different cultures. They walk into the fitting room, walking by me as if I don’t exist, then they turn around and ask, “Do I just go into any room?” Well, you just walked by me like a wall, why stop now? What am I doing in here, being paid to be a statue? Of course, I enjoy standing around and all I do is clean after you people, like you’re grown children who have to return things inside out, with deodorant stains and lipstick marks.
You know, people in fitting rooms have different duties, and depending on how you actually treat them, you might find out what they are. Many fitting rooms with attendants aren’t just there like a restroom attendant handing out towels waiting for a tip, while thinking about topics for the next American novel. Workers in the fitting room can actually help you find sizes, help you build an outfit, offer you suggestions, and a multitude of other things. If the first thing you do when you walk into their work-area is ignore them, then ask, “Do I just go into any room?” you’re already losing many opportunities for real and actual help. Many times you create the world you live in–if you act like a jackass, people treat you like a jackass. Think about it. In the end, so many of my coworkers seem used to these “Do I just go into any room?” customers, that they stand there and waves vaguely at a wall of doors, while saying, “You can take any room.” In actuality, they should be helping you to a room, saying they’ll help you, already offering suggestions, and trying to help the store make money.
Maybe the next time you walk into a fitting room, you can ask to try the clothes on. It’s not like retail workers are already demeaned in so many other ways.
In my ears, I hear young people, teenagers, they are laughing. One of them audibly shouts, “You don’t work here!” They start laughing. I turn a corner to find them at a table of clothes, turning it upside down, and literally tossing it and flipping them around, while laughing. “It doesn’t matter, you don’t work here! You don’t need to clean it up.” All three of them are laughing. One of them, the one without his back turned towards me, looks at me and sees my gaze; it was more of a glare I use to melt ice in the winter. It is enough to stop his laughter and make him turn away suddenly. I walk away, and the laughter has ended by the time I walk by a second time.
One of them ends up in the fitting room, and I make sure to recite the story loudly in front of her room. My coworker gasps, insulted and hurt, saying who would say such a thing? What kind of people are like this? I tell her that’s just how society is raised, to insult and degrade each other whenever they can. People have no respect for each other and treat each other like dirt whenever they can. A vast majority are unevolved, and perpetuate this form of society, degrading people whenever they can.
Soon after, the girl came out of the fitting room, and bought everything she tried on. I made sure to pass the register and give her friend the same look he saw earlier.
Customer Types: Capitalist, The Dumb, Modern-Slave Owner, Unapologetic
The first rule I tell anyone I train, “Treat everyone like a shoplifter.” Before you back away and gasp in surprise, you need to understand how we treat a shoplifter. We pay attention to them, we notice what they’re looking at, offering suggestions so they know we’re there, we’re available. No matter where they look, they can always see us. How is that not great customer service?
I don’t just say hello to customers that come in, I watch what they look at, this way I get an idea of what they want, what they are shopping for. I generally ask if they need another size, but I also offer other alternatives, too. Whenever they hold something, I ask if I can put it aside in a fitting room or at the registers for them.
Some customers are utterly amazed when they walk into the fitting room and I ask, “I saw you looking through the pants at the front of the store, I see you didn’t find your size, did you want me to check if we have it?”
“How did you even see from here?”
I laugh, “I see everything, it’s okay.”
This is how you should treat every customer, because anyone could be a shoplifter. This is how you should treat every shoplifter, because anyone could just be a customer.
Today, another one of ‘those’ customers came–the kind that are snotty, rude, arrogant, and ironically, they think they’re smart. (I’m not an astrophysicist, but I have an IQ of 150, so I’m not dumb by any account.) I don’t understand how and why a customer can walk into a retail store, thinking they suddenly know more about the product, the availability, and the details of clothing than the people actually working there. I laugh, I laugh loudly; even though I am prone to act like I know nothing when I deal with these rude people. The customer is always right, right? I don’t want to prove them wrong, even when they are wrong, right? Right. I mean, they walk into stores hoping the people working there are more stupid than they are, right?
A man finds me in the fitting room, in the back of the store, because obviously all my co-workers are at the cash-registers, so he’s already moody and rude, “I couldn’t find anyone on the sales floor! Come with me.” And as usual, I am also to blame for this. Thanks a lot co-workers.
So we go to the front, and first, he asks if the shorts are on sale–because, you know, there are signs on all of the shorts saying that all shorts are on sale. I tell him they are all on sale. When a sign says, “All shorts,” it’s generally all shorts.
Then, he shows me cargo-shorts, saying, “I can’t find that color!”–as he points all the way up to khaki shorts near the track-lighting.
“Oh,” I tell him, “The light is just tinted yellow, it is this color here. The lighting makes it look different.” I show him the khaki shorts, near the green, the blue, the gray–you know, all the colors here are totally different.
“It doesn’t look like that color. It’s not the same.”
“Trust me, the light is tinted, we only have these colors,” and I show him double-exposures–where we place the same color twice, “Because we have so many. It is this khaki one here.” Again I show him the khaki that’s hanging up on the wall.
“No, it isn’t!”
I try to get on my tippy-toes, and reach up, placing the short next to it–and even I can see it changes to that color.
“No, it isn’t the same!” So he’s down to yelling at me, because obviously, he knows what colors we have available, and I don’t know anything; because as a customer, you suddenly have a far vaster and knowledgeable pool of wisdom and experience. Just because people work retail, they aren’t idiots–even if some of my coworkers go to college and have advanced Biochemistry classes, but act like they they’re totally brainless children at work, that doesn’t mean they don’t know anything. It just means they don’t care, which is just as bad.
His wife cuts in, “Yes, I can see, it’s the same short. It’s the same color.” Finally, some sanity in a world of stubborn, idiotic jerks.
So I shrug and say, “Well, you don’t need to believe me if you don’t want to.” Placing the khaki back, I turn to walk away.
He yells at the back of my head, “So they are on sale, right?”
“Yes.” I hiss, but continue to walk, not turning around.
Customer Types: The Blind, Don’t Kill the Messanger, the Dumb, Guessing Game
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?”
A woman opens her fitting room door slightly, holding a balls up gray, cotton thing. She’s holding it inside the fitting room, and waving it in her fist. “Can you get me a Medium in this? They are right over there.” She points vaguely in the direction of our shirt collection, which has tank-tops, camisoles, t-shirts, and long-sleeved shirts all in that gray color. I try to grab it so I can get the right one, and she pulls her hand away saying she wants to keep this one. We play an odd game of dodge for a few seconds. Eventually, I have to pry it out of her fingers, telling her I can’t even tell what she’s holding because all I see is a gray mass. It turns out to be the gray tank top.
My recent journey to New York has given me a broader understanding on just how much people choose to be rude or respectful, but dumbness and ignorance is still irritating. I just had to share. I might need to blog about that later.
This move I call, “The Sasquatch” is repeated so many times, every day, every week, that anyone working in a fitting room would know it. After trying on clothes, the customer sees you, walking by, holding clothes they don’t want. And they turn, ever so slightly, acknowledging your presence inadvertently, knowing they should hand you the clothes–even if your hands are lifted towards them like a homeless street urchin begging for pennies–then they walk by you and toss the clothes anywhere they damn well please (kind of like how they’d pass a homeless street urchin and throw their money somewhere wasteful, the irony!). But they always have to do that turn, that look which says they know what they should do, the know what the right thing to do is, then they just do something else. I’m not a fan of The Sasquatch.
Memoirs of a Retail Salesperson 