Angry Cargo Shorts

I’m walking the fitting room, and I see a room with two green cargo shorts. I’m already holding a handful of clothes from yet another room, so I leave it in there to organize what I’m holding. I see a man walk by; he hasn’t been very talkative, nor receptive of help. I walk by his room, and he’s left a pair of green cargo shorts in there. Altogether I now have three cargo shorts, and it’s quite obvious who is trying them on in different rooms. I hang up one size-34 and two size-36 shorts, as he walks in yet again with another pair of green cargo shorts.

As I’m walking out, I hear him yell at me angrily, “Hey you! Where do you think you’re going with that! You keep cleaning out my rooms, and I keep trying on the same pairs of shorts!”
I turn around, glaring at him. “You,” I say, “You keep trying them on and leaving them in different rooms. I’m not the one cleaning them out.”
“No! You are! I came back and my shorts were gone!”
“First, you were in this room,” I point to the room I found two shorts, “Then you were in this room,” I point at the room he just left one short in. “You can have this one again.”
As I turn to close his door, he whirls around staring at me, and slamming his hand into the door keeping it open.
“I’m closing your door!” I tell him sternly, I don’t care how large or how angry he thinks he can be, he’d be sore to find out my limits. I proceed to slam the door behind him. I walk away to tell the manager, and basically all my coworkers about this raging man with low logic skills. Since I’ve been told to stay away from aggressive people, I have someone else watch the fitting rooms for me.

Soon, I see him leaving as he stares at me while walking out; he’s carrying a shopping bag from our store. I tell the cashiers, “Well I guess he bought his shorts.” Then I find the manager in the fitting room, telling her the same thing.
“Oh, that was his shorts? I asked if they fit okay, and he just made a noise and walked out.”

Aww, here I was hoping he’d complain about me, but I guess he realized how much of a dumb munch he was being. I didn’t want to tell him I have a photographic memory about these things, and I could probably redraw all the pimples on his face accurately, even coloring in the bright red ones he has.

Smile, he’s going to live and die in blatant ignorance. If anything is a wasted life, that is.

Customer Type: Big Baby, Capitalist, The Dumb, ESP

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Call me Ishmael, the Stock Checker.

Call me Ishmael. Some hours ago- really, it doesn’t matter how long- having little to no time on my hands, and marking items down and not paying attention to selling, a woman approached me seeking a great white shirt of XL size. Sent me on a journey through and around the store. In the stock room, I hid, driving off my mouth and trying to calm myself. “We are sold out and another store might have one left, so she said, rudely, ‘Just call them, I don’t want to drive all the way over there for nothing!'” Whenever I find myself growling mad all over my face; whenever a fat woman, she’ll be called A-hag, follows me everywhere I go; whenever I keep trying to find a line to call out, but none work, with only the phone in the rear of the store away from her breathing and glares; and especially whenever I am forced to make a call for a fat woman looking for a fat white shirt when I am not even supposed to be on the sales floor doing this sort of thing- then, I really, really need to hide in the stockroom and vent my frustrations about the fat woman in the white jacket, A-hag. This is my substitute for getting fired in rage…

I find the item, placing it on hold. Returning to A-hag, to say I found it, I found the great white XL shirt; it is the only one left of it’s kind, so rare and unique a top. Her companion gasps in surprise, “You called them?”–obviously she knows we don’t call other stores for these sort of things anymore, and I provided quite an profusion of kindness in exchange for her harshness and blatant rudeness. Not even a thank you.

Yet, I find A-hag with another cashier, asking her to call once again, to be assured that I was not lying, that I did not mislead her, that I did truly find that great white XL shirt; obviously with her positive radiance, people often lie to her, so that she may drive to the other store only to find out she was deceived, for there would be no XL white shirt waiting for her; since, she adds to her obesity by not even lifting a finger to call the store herself, even sweating at the thought of going to the other store, walking, gasping, reaching the store on her last breath; oh, the fifty calories she would burn. Of course, they tell her the item is indeed on hold for her, that I did not lie. I doubt she said thank you this time either.

All the while she insulted and disgraced our stock procedures, “That’s so cheap, that’s so cheap,” that our machines said we did have one left, which sold this same day, but our computers only update this information at the end of the night to say we have zero, “That’s so cheap.”

You, A-hag, make us cheap, wasting our time and energy for your XL white shirt. If you are so ardently searching for this item, this quest and journey of utter importance, it is your own, alone. “I give you the benefit of the doubt.” Go, find your great white XL shirt, I’m sure it will look smashing upon your spherical body, shamed only by your shimmering nay-say attitude. I give you the benefit of the doubt.

Customer Types: Capitalist, Don’t Kill the Messenger, Micromanagement, Modern-Day Slave-Owner, The Riddler

That’s Nice to Know, You Must Be Very Proud of Yourself.

I must try to contain myself as I write this, since today was one of those customers that make me question why I’m still in retail and why I put up with people, who in all truth, I would go up to and tell them what’s what. I’m not someone who would whisper to a friend, “Wow, she’s being awfully rude, don’t you think?” I point, and exclaim so others can see, since that’s what rude people want, right? An audience? I say, “You are being really rude.” There are people, like today, that make me want to be able to just quit, and do what I really need to do–put them in their place.

So this old, white woman asks me for capri-pants, the kind that go to your knee. As a fashion person, that description is… Do you know? Bermuda shorts. Those are longer shorts, that usually end around the knee. So I showed them to her, and she glared at me, “No, that’s not it!” As I try to explain what she asked for, she moves me aside saying, “Nevermind, I’ll ask her.” One, I hate gender discrimination, I don’t care how old you are, you learn to live with the times. The fact society moves in such slow periods is the fault of people like this, those people who ‘liked the old days better’. They have villages for you people who want to live your own way, capturing moments in time, but then, there sometimes they smother you with a pillow. Second, as I turned, I prayed, I prayed on Easter Sunday, that this woman wasn’t heading towards the only white female working on the sales-floor–because we have a diverse and multi-ethnic staff, and we live in a culture that is equally diverse and complex. Of course it was the white girl, and that makes it gender and racial discrimination.

So she walks to the girl, who is obviously busy helping other customers, and doing stock checks. I tell her, this girl knows panties and bras–without her turning to look at me, I get the response, “That’s nice.” I tell her, “I am the person that puts out the merchandise here.” And she turns to me, and says in the most sarcastic, sardonic, and rude tone, “That’s NICE to know, you must be VERY PROUD of yourself.” Then turns away again. Anything I say from that point is met with a, “That’s nice.” I hear her telling the girl as I walked away, “I used to shop at the old store before it closed…” With customers like you, it’s quite obvious why it shut down.

I have been dismissed. So I tell the girl, and everyone on the walkie-talkie, “If that woman needs any help, I have suddenly forgotten everything I know.” I was also so irritated, I was shaking, so I went into the back to breathe. But it didn’t help. I couldn’t work in that part of the store, so they switched me for over an hour. After which, the girl comes to me saying, “What was up with that woman? She was crazy, and she was a real b—-.” She went on to explain how the woman kept asking for things that don’t exist, like shorts that are tight at the top and wide at the bottom, know the name? I’m done handing out clothing titles for today.

This is the sort of person, I see as holding society back–making it backwards. The fact she has lived this long without someone correcting her–if I did not work there and I witnessed that, you can be sure I would have corrected her–this is more than the fault of her parents raising her incorrectly, unintelligibly, and narrow-minded, but also society for allowing her to grow and mature and be a ‘human being’.

My recent visit to New York showed me that I have been slightly naive in dealing with rude people. Some people are smart enough to know they’re rude. I consciously know when I am being rude, so don’t think it’s a mistake when I am. Nor am I that much of a buffoon to try ‘acting’ like it was a mistake when it wasn’t. Yet, it is a conscious choice. We make a choice, like in those awful Armageddon movies where the world is ending so we ‘unite together’. We know we can. We could do it this very day, this very moment, uniting as a civilization, but we don’t. We don’t see a reason to. And as much as we can act ignorant to this fact, we know we make that choice to be rude, stubborn, irresponsible, ignorant, and ungrateful as human beings. Each time we do it, we know we are in effect creating, prolonging, and nurturing the unevolved world and society that we live in. Each person we allow, each friend and family we allow to continue being this malevolent human being, is another candle that needs to me smothered so that one day, we can be a true and real world of human beings.

Customer Types: The Deaf, The Dumb, FashioNOTsta, Guessing Game, Lowered Expectations, Micromanagement, Modern Slave-Owner, The Racist, Sexual Discriminator, Tailor-Made

A Last Straw…

Last night, a woman comes up to the register with a pile of clothes and a previous purchase in a crushed, wrinkled bag–obviously a return or exchange. The state of one’s shopping bag says a great deal about the shopper, mind you. Which she let me know, was an exchange because she got wrong sizes. She also pulled out a tiny bottle of what amounts to a sample sized bottle of perfume, saying that she was surprised there was no sprayer–thus she opened it (violently?) and it has spilled all over the place, so she doesn’t want it–handing me vial with 1/4th its contents missing.I could already tell I’d be dealing with a neanderthal.

After I entered all her items, she decides to check if she got all the right sizes. Lo and behold, she got an XL instead of a L. (Who didn’t see that coming the moment she stepped to the register with eight shirts in her hand?) So I went to get the shirt from the children’s section. The piles here are neatly folded except for her meanderings–which equals everything above XL thrown asunder, and if you know clothing, XL is on the bottom of each pile, so everywhere I could see explosions of turned over piles. There at the top of one of her disasters was the Large-size she missed.

We have a promotion in which we must manually spread discounts between two items (50% and 50%), which she allowed me to complete before saying, “Wait, I want to see what I actually need.” Lo and behold, yet again, she chooses each item that was part of a ‘two item’ combination, thus leaving the single items with a full discount amounting to 100% off.

This left me with the task of starting the transaction over once again. Which is when I find out another coworker gave her an accidental discount far beyond 50%, closer to 75%-off for each item–which the customer reminded me, I needed to honor. I note, she did not remind me politely. Thus I had to price override every single item, and reapply the discount to 75%-off. Along with the scent she returned, and a hat and slippers she added to the transaction, she had a balance of about $15

She was incredulous with paying $15 (after getting 75%-off everything else). Thus she requested I recheck everything to make sure that it was done correctly, to the point  she didn’t believe the cash register. I mean seriously, who trusts the calculations of a computer, right? Seriously? So I needed to use a calculator to verify the transaction.

(Amusingly, she returned 4 shirts, and bought 4 shirts thus canceling out each other to $0.  She was also dealing with $23 from buying the hat and slippers which is more than the $8 for the returned scent which she exploded elsewhere. What is $23 minus $8? Is it $15? Congratulations if you know this, it’s math they usually teach you in first-grade. The fact she could not do the math on her own, did not trust the computer, and required me to calculate it, made me stop and breathe for ten seconds, because I was so furious I couldn’t even press calculator buttons correctly at this point.)

When my hands shake, that’s a very frustrating time.

After finishing the transaction, I was reminded by a manager this is something we always deal with. Which brings the good point that maybe I shouldn’t work in retail anymore, because the fact of demoralization as a part of work and life is not satisfactory nor does it make any actual sense. I don’t recall the job saying, “You shall be insulted, demoralized, and your self-esteem shaken by working in retail.” In a sense, it was like saying my friends were right five years ago when I retired from the world, retail is not a place for me, and I have too much self-respect and dignity to stand there and be spoken to unintelligably.
Confucius would say, you control the words you speak, you do not control what these words mean.

Customer Terms: Micromanagement