Making a Boner

Each Christmas season I’ve worked at my store, I’ve seen some rather interesting characters pop-up out of the shadows of the retail dungeon. From guys with their butt-cracks showing to turtle-turtle boys, but there was one guy who comes to mind recently, because  of all the language barriers I’ve seen.

Mind you, he was recommended by a coworker who probably rues the day he did any such thing as bring this guy to work with us. He was a very strange man. When standing in the fitting room, and people would enter with a handful of clothes, he’d welcome them saying, “Can I help you with anything?” Not, “Do you need a room,” or “I have a perfect room for you.” He’d often get the reply, “Um, I need a room?”

He had a particular smell about him, like unwashed body odor. One moment I remember best is when he was sweaty, very sweaty, and he was also holding a pile of clothes. Do you think he put the clothes down to wipe his face? Oh, no, no, perish forbid the thought! He just plopped his face down into the shirts and rubbed his face in them. Refreshed, he was able to continue putting out his clothes. Wonderful!

Of all the weird, absentminded things he did, not including having a loud, verbal political argument about our current President in the middle of the sales floor with customers; there was a time customers from Tahiti came in. Yes, they are known as a part of French Polynesia, where French colonizers washed over and left many of them with the national language of French. They entered the store, greeted by him, and he asks where they are visiting from, “Tahiti.” Oh, they would also rue the day they revealed that fact. “Ah, bon jour, bon jour,” he started to pull out his French vocabulary, which sounded mostly like things you pick up watching French movies and listening to a certain song including, “Couche avec moi?”

As he followed them around, mostly unwillingly on the customers part, he kept speaking in this version of French, and they would routinely yell at him, “We don’t speak French! Leave us alone!” This continued, until the women said, “Okay, this is enough, let’s just leave.” As they left, he went right up to the doors, waving and yelling at them, “Au revoir! Au revoir!” And I could hear the women screaming at him, “You asshole, we don’t speak French!”

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A Model Mustard

I was standing in the Men’s department when a ‘beautiful’ man came up to me asking about tank tops; he was one of those 6’2″, 190 pound, long, wavy blond haired, type men with blue eyes, etc. He then went on to explain he was here for a photo shoot, because he would be modeling in the new Neutrogena ad campaign. I didn’t ask about any of this information, but he seemed happy enough to tell me–and honestly, people who look like this rarely walk into the store, so it made perfect sense.

He just needed something that fit nicely, since Hawaii is so hot and he gets sweaty. So I help him find a good ‘wife beater’ (I never understood that term), and he tried it on, and it fit good, since he was obviously in shape, right? Then he does one of my least favorite things, he asks for a new one that he didn’t try on–why, is it filthy now? Because it was pretty clean until you tried it on. Anyhow, these tank tops are in packages, so I had to get him several new packages, and he gave me back the tried-on pair. I take him to the front and hand him to one of my all-too-happy-to-help gay cashiers, whom thanked me later.

I go back to fold the tank top and try to get it to fit back into the package, but they never fit the same again; always ending up rumpled and stuffed looking. Then I realize there is a smell. It’s on my hands! It’s also on the tank top–the distinct smell of mustard. Just great, the model sweat all over the tank top. Either he doesn’t have great hygiene or any good cologne. Needless to say, I had to damage it out, and I suddenly understood why he would need so many new ones–I’d probably throw them out after one use, too.

 

Customer Types: Lowered Expectations

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.

Stinky Jeans

There was so much stuff in one fitting room, so I was placing some on my shoulder and my arms to put away. As I’m going back to fold them, a customer emerges from a fitting room asking me for a size. So I gladly go and get a size, and while I’m walking, I wonder why the store smells like a mix of urine, sweat, and body-odor. I wonder if it’s me, but my armpits smell fine. You always need to do the armpit check.

So I go and find the item, bending over and again, I smell the stink. I start to wonder if the store is having some ventilation problems, because there are times I smell fart when no one else is around–and it definitely isn’t me. I decide I must be smelling the vents. I return to the customer and hand them their shirt. Standing there, yet again, I smell it. Finally, I realize, I still have a pair of denim on my shoulder. A quick sniff reveals nothing. Yet, as I’m used to sniffing some clothes to check if they’re washed and worn, I know it isn’t always the ‘entire’ pant that smells. Suffice it to say, there was a certain ‘spot’ that smelled rancid compared to the rest of it. This was not a good spot to even sniff, mind you. Definitely some form of sweaty moisture from someone hard at work trying on clothes, enough to seep through their clothes onto the denim.

After washing my hands and smelling my clothes, spraying some cologne where the smell was noticeable, because it was on my clothes already, I return with a plastic trash bag–this is definitely going into the damaged product bins.

I return later, forgetting all about the denim–as would anyone else in my situation want to forget such a thing-and I find my co-worker spraying some aerosol all over the bag. She looks at me saying, “OMG, this stinks so bad! Did they pee in it? I can smell it through the bag!” At least she wasn’t carrying it on her shoulder for several minutes. My coworker properly disposed of the item, calling it, “Toxic waste.”

*Sweats* I’m tired.

So I have two very large tourists come in, trying on a ton of clothes–maybe thirty to forty pieces between the two of them–for over an hour. They keep trying on different colors of the same style, and definitely keep trying on different sizes. This is a busy day, and I’m surrounded by customers in the fitting room. They keep requesting handfuls of items, which makes me focus more on them for over an hour, and ignore many of the other customers that also need help (perhaps thirty to forty customers). Although they are nice and cheery about it, they also get more snippy as they try on more clothes.

For one thing, the bigger sister (as they are two large sisters) is the fashionable one (?) and critiques everything her sister tries on–to the point that the smaller sister has to wait for her sister to reappear to ask, “How is this?” To my amazement, since this woman is a size 32, her sister keeps saying, ‘That makes you look fat. That makes you look stumpy. That shows your rolls.” I’m thinking how she won’t look fat when she is short, stumpy and fat trying on all sorts of spandex and skinny, slim pants. It is inevitable. At least some of the styles pulled in a little, yet her sister persisted on criticizing everything as just okay, or worse.

As the hour progressed, I was unaware–because I breathe through my mouth in the fitting room for good reason–that they were starting to sweat on everything, handing it back inside-out. One coworker noted, “Ugh, this stinks,” which grossed me out as I was trying to turn it right-side out. From that point, I left the clothes to sit on the side for a while, so another coworker could come by and innocently fold the sweaty clothes. Perhaps the smell will go away?

Yet, the clincher, after I was facing giant piles of clothes, and all the hordes of customers disappeared–myself tired, exhausted from running back and forth and helping dozens of customers–the smaller sister comes out, breathing hard, “Boy, I sure am tired from trying on all that clothes.” I can just stand and blink, it sure wasn’t a field-day for me.

Customer type: Micromanagement, Sweaty.