Japan Relief Shirts

Well, it’s been a long day. I mean, there are rude, demanding, and honestly, stupid customers assaulting us with demands and threats. So to end my day, my store has for sale Japan Relief shirts. (If you live in a cave and/or without access to news and/or information of the outside world, Japan had a massive earthquake, which caused a giant tsunami knocking against their eastern coast, and also damaging nuclear reactors. We shall say it’s not going well over there. So countries as well as companies have united to try to raise money to help Japan with their rebuilding efforts.) Okay, with that said, we have a display with these shirts and a mannequin wearing one of the shirts.

A large Caucasian man, of shaved yellow hair, standing about 6’3″ and maybe 180 lbs. walks up to this mannequin, points at it and states, “Look Japan!” And starts to laugh, not a little chuckle, but a full-on heavy laughter that continues for several seconds.

Of this, I just go on the walkie-talkie and restate what I just saw, then I say, “Okay, it’s time for me to clock out and go home.”

Customer Types: The Dumb, The Racist

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I Wear It While Fishing

I’m minding my own business, meaning I’m doing something, and a couple comes up to me asking if I work here.

“Yes, can I help you?”
“We are looking for a cap.”
Obviously, my first consideration is a baseball cap, as it is the most general.
“No, we are looking for a fisherman’s cap.”
I obviously know what a fisherman’s cap looks like, as I work in the fashion industry. “I’m sorry, we don’t carry hats like that.”
“You do!” She yells at me suddenly.
“Yes, we used to, like two years ago.”
“You have them now! They bought one yesterday from your store!”
“We don’t carry anything like that. Are you sure it was our store?” Just great, I’m working with hearsay from people who may or may not know what a fisherman’s cap is.
“You have them! It is a wide-brimmed cap…”
“I know what a fisherman’s cap is.” I also know I don’t like being yelled at for no particular reason. I consider, perhaps they don’t know what such a hat is. So I show them fedoras, and no, they yell, a fisherman’s cap, glaring at me as if I don’t know what it is. Seriously? This issue of customers thinking they know more about fashion than people who work with it every day is getting a little taxing. Also, customers who suddenly know more about the product we carry than the people who work there is a little daunting, and excessive. I just tell them that no we don’t carry it.

So to prove me wrong, obviously, they get their cell phones and call their friends. By now I am left to assume they didn’t go to this store, but another one of our stores. After getting off the phone, they instead decide to ask for the same hat from another, much newer coworker. At the same time, I ask our merchandising people if they know of any ‘fisherman’s hats’ that are supposed to be here or coming in soon. No one has any idea what they are talking about. And for some reason it turns back upon me to call another store to see if they carry this elusive hat. As the couple is standing there staring at us, I decide to go into the back of the store to make my phone call.

So I dial the number.
“Hello, thank you for calling, how can I help you?”
“Hello, I’m calling from another store. I was wondering if you could find an item for me.”
“Okay, what are you looking for?”
“A fisherman’s cap.”
“Excuse me?”
“A fisherman’s cap. It has a wide-brim.”
“We don’t carry that.”
“I know. This couple is here saying they bought one from your store yesterday. They said it was wide-brimmed. I showed them everything we have, like fedoras, baseball caps, military caps…”
“That’s the same things we have. We don’t carry anything like that. I’m sorry.” We both laugh a little, awkwardly.
I thank her for her time, saying I kind of expected this. She says to try the children’s department, which is where we have wide-brimmed hats for kids.

I find the merchandising person again, and we locate the children’s version of a safari hat, which is as close as you can get to a fisherman’s cap in our store. I try to tell the woman this is the only hat we have, but she only looks at me and walks away. So I have the merchandising person find her and show her the hat, since she’s obviously ignoring me now. So they talk, and the merchandiser comes to me.
“You know what she said?”
“What?”
“She said she’s looking for a beanie.”
Okay, sure. Because obviously, whenever I go fishing, I wear my fishing beanie–the wide-brimmed style. You know it’s all the rage among sports fishermen. I’m sure it was featured in a fashion magazine recently. Thank you very much. Shall we top it all off? Yes? She also signed up for a credit card! I swear to you, we promote the most irritating of customers to keep coming back to our stores.

Customer Types: Don’t Kill the Messenger, The Dumb, FashioNOTstas, Guessing Game, Lowered Expectations, The Riddler, Unapologetic

Wrong Color… Nevermind.

I do so love customers who will shout and yell at you like you’re dumb, but when they realize they’re totally wrong, they don’t even apologize, but continue to somehow act like it’s still your fault.

I’m helping customers with denim, and a girl says she wants this certain pair, but she can’t find it on the floor. I walk up to look at it, and it’s a gray denim–right next to it, folded are a pile of the same pants. This is an example of the miracle of merchandising, because wouldn’t you expect to find clothes from an outfit within viewing or grabbing distance of a mannequin or display? Of course, if you come from a world where everything seems to go wrong, and nothing works your way, then sure, you’d think the denim is somewhere else, taunting you, hiding from your grubby fingers, laughing mightily at your dismay; but this ain’t crazy-land.

I point at the stack, and say, “This is the denim you’re looking for.”
“No, it’s not.” She pauses, and I don’t say anything to refute her–I just have a face that says, ‘Oh really? Sure, whatever you say, I totally believe you.’ She makes a perturbed face, “It’s not! It’s a different color. It’s not the same color. Look!” She lifts it, shoving it next to the mannequin, with all the fury of a child. There are several moments of silence, as if we were remembering the departing of a loved one, or watching her pride shrivel up and dry like a tomato trapped in equatorial, noonday sunshine–but in that case, sun-dried tomato might actually taste much better.

“Nevermind,” is all that escapes her bitter lips, as she holds onto the denim and walks away, as if she were triumphant in some sort of one-sided gladiatorial match between herself and her shadow.

Anyway, I move on to something else, like instantly reciting the story to the closest co-worker for them to laugh and roll their eyes, to say, “Wow, the nerve of some people!”

Customer Type: The Blind, Unapologetic

The Lighting Lies!

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

Manual Labor

A woman and her husband have a credit card strip which doesn’t work–its been de-magnetized–so I have to input it manually and then slide it through a machine which makes a physical copy of the credit card number. (It basically rubs a receipt against the credit card.) I tell them I’m doing this.

The guy laughs, replying, “Manual labor?! Ha-ha! How terrible for you!”

I just replied, “Yeah… Ha-ha… Thanks a lot…” I wanted to slap him in the face with the credit swipe machine.

You know what’s manual labor? Turning over that card and calling the number on the back to request a card that actually works! Compare that to the amount of time each cashier has to take manually entering your number and verifying it, times by each time you use that card–and you see how many people’s lives you’re wasting in addition to your own, because of your blatant, haughty laziness. This is the difference between members of society whom are progressive, and those who are backward-moving donkeys that ensure our social evolution is slow and tedious. Manual labor is obviously lost on you, but capitalism is not.

Customer Types: Capitalist