Denim Complimentary

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?

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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