Crazy Old Lady

So I’m at the cash register, and these large-sized, angry-faced women (read this as their normal face is a frown, so when they do frown, they double-frown) are asking for a manager. They are complaining about some discount coupon.

“That crazy, old lady on the other side (the other register), said we can’t use this coupon for this discount!”
“I’m sorry,” the manager says, “Let me look at the coupon.”
“I went to your other store, and they let me do it!” (It reminds me of when a baby says, ‘Well daddy said I could!’, after the mother says no. Sometimes, companies need to be on the same page.) “That crazy old lady is always mean to us! She never gives us good deals. She always says no!”
“I’m sorry,” the manager says again, “That’s what happens with the employees who have been here for a long time, they go by the rules.”
“Well, your other store let us to it. She’s always mean to us, she’s never nice about anything!”
So the manager goes through the transaction and shows them the screen, “I’m sorry, even our computer won’t let us do this, it isn’t just her.”
“No, your other store let us do it! Can I speak to someone else? Isn’t there someone else who can do this?”
The manager sighs. She goes through the one process where you can ‘override’ the computer, but it is a line-by-line process where she needs to reduce the items individually, after returning them all.
All the while, the women keep going on about the crazy old lady who is always mean to them. I’m standing there rolling my eyes, since they are talking about a Kids section employee, who is rather one of the nicest people working in the store, and has been with the company nearly 20-years–this complainer would have been a baby when my coworker first started. Yet, most likely, she’d also be whining, “But daddy said I could! I hate you mommy!”

What people do to get their way. I’ve since helped this woman again, wondering why she’s so rude and mean, even when I”m as nice as I can be–and yes, breaking rules to give her the discount just to get rid of her–but she never says thank you, or anything, she’s just demanding and angry. People, it’s called ‘Self-fulfilling prophesy’–why are people mean to you? Because you act like an asshole. Why do people make your life hard? Because you’re hard to deal with. Get over it, grow up, and start acting like you’re an adult. You can’t be an unhappy bitch your entire life.

Customer Type: Big Baby, Capitalist, The Complainer, Don’t Kill the Messanger, The Liar

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Sizes to Diet For

There is this older woman, who comes in, she doesn’t really say hello, but she comes in the same time, the same day of every week, trying on the same pants. Whenever I knock on her door and ask how she’s doing, she doesn’t say much more than, “I’m okay.” Week after week, she tries on a denim sized 26-inches.  Every time, she says she’s okay, she puts it back and then she leaves. I wonder if she’s waiting for it to go on sale, or waiting to find the perfect fit–even though she’s only trying on one size. It never makes sense. I think it would be weird to walk up to her and say, “Hey, I watch you every week trying on the same pant, in the same size, why are you doing this?” I’m bold, but even that seems weird and creepy.

So I ask a co-worker about this woman, telling her the story. And my co-worker says, “Maybe she’s trying to lose weight, and she keeps trying to fit into that smaller size.”

Amazingly enough, I had a good reply, since I tried to help that woman recently. “Oh, her diet isn’t working out, because she’s trying size 28-inches now.” We both laugh, yet I have yet to solve her curious, curious fitting room ritual.

Flare is So Wide!

I’m helping an older woman who asks for a mid-rise denim with straight legs. I tell her we have skinny jeans that are mid-rise, but all of our straight legs are lower rise. (I mean, have you seen high-rise straight leg denim? It’s like a long tube.) She doesn’t want skinny. She doesn’t want low-rise. I offer her the next option, which are boot cut. Instead, she goes back to looking at the denim when I first approached her–a mid-rise flared denim. I tell her it’s flare, which is three-inches wider than boot and six-inches wider than straight. I tell her it like a bell-bottom. I tell her it’s the widest we have.

She stares at me blankly. “Well I just want to see it,” she tells me as she opens it. Then she gasps, “It’s so wide!”

Customer Types: The Deaf, The Dumb

Estrogen Overload at Starbucks

I’m sitting there, typing on my laptop, and a woman comes in with that smell. I call it the estrogen smell, but concentrated–I assume some people like this smell, since many women go all out to overwhelm us with it. Some have said that I say lesbians have this smell, but so do women who have just worked out. It’s an odd, female scent. I just call it Estrogen Overload.

Anyhow, I’m at a far end of the Starbucks, and I notice this woman talking loudly and aggressively, with her female partner/friend standing next to her. It turns out, she used to work here. I guess she wants to act like rude customers since she is one now–don’t become this person; don’t go around dreaming of acting like the people you once hated, it is another act of backwards moving, when we need more progressive human beings. Either way, she’s standing in front of the counter saying how long it’s been and what’s been up with her and her women, all the while she’s talking at the volume of yelling, swearing, and all sorts of customer liberties.

I soon notice the distinct aroma of estrogen flowing over me, and around me, and probably through me. It didn’t take much guessing to find out where it was coming from. At this point, she was still at the counter–she hasn’t moved for over fifteen minutes, nor has she stopped talking. Other customers have to order about five feet away from the register, giving their money over the little trinkets, cards, and gifts they have lined up, over the barrier that some registers have, since the woman refuses to move while musing loudly about her life. Again, another rude customer benefit she partakes in–not moving for other people as she stands dead-center in front of the registers. Either her old coworkers don’t want to move her or are afraid of her gigantic raging. Half the time it sounds like she’s going to fight with them, but she’s just retelling stories about people that were going to fight with her, ironically enough.

Of course, it amazes me that her vision is so obscured in terms of her surroundings, but also did she really have to have the estrogen smell? Whenever I see manly women walk by, I don’t want it, but I anticipate it. I’m rarely, if ever, disappointed–if being disappointed by such a revelation will just lead me to be disappointed regardless overwhelmed by smells, since this aroma is unappealing to me. This is probably why I associate the smell with lesbians, but more towards angry, raging, or overtly active women whom seem to sweat too much or not shower enough, thus creating that abundant scent. (On a side-note, a co-worker said she lived with a single lesbian who didn’t have the smell, but when that girl starting having a relationship with another woman, the smell suddenly appeared. So it’s the smell of happiness, too?) Either way, once you smell it, you know to avoid it or be drawn to it, depending if that’s your flavor or not.