Customers need service? I had no idea…

Alright, so I’m a little late with this update, and completely missed last week. Forgive me, but my water heater decided to blow up, and having to deal with a shit-ton of water takes priority over typing.

Anyway, on to this week.

Why is it that customers never take customer service? Honestly.

In my fair share of shopping experiences, I have always enjoyed the help of an employee. Even if I don’t require, want, or request their assistance, the fact that they acknowledge me being there means I’m on their radar, they have seen me, and that they know what I look like so they can easily identify me in the store. It makes me feel like I’m being treated to something special, I suppose, with that reassuring attitude.

On some occasions, I will agree, it is quite annoying to have to endure the constant cheerful “HELLO!” over my shoulder, along with an earful about special sales, credit cards, and what items I’m looking at they personally own. Sometimes, it’s nice. Sometimes it’s annoying.

But where in the hell do they get the idea that they’re SUPPOSED to just do things on their own?

Let me put it this way: all companies are technically “privately” owned, meaning that they don’t HAVE to sell anything to you. In fact, they can legally escort you from the store without allowing you to buy a damn thing. Of course, they’ll have a fuckload of complaints from women who are clearly overweight and can’t pick up their 4x shirts for less than five bucks in our store, but just the same, they have that ability. The only conditions are that we can’t discriminate due to race, color, or religion.

That being said, don’t fucking waltz into the store and act like you own it and the merchandise within. Because you don’t, ya fuckin’ retards.

Now, I like to think we’re courteous people in our store. We fold things nicely. We try to place sizes from biggest to smallest. But there’s sometimes where too much is just too much.

Take, for example, the fact that I was out of the fitting room (shocking, I know!) and working out in the general public. I was actually rearranging women’s bathing suits. Shocking, I know. I was carefully arranging them according to size, color, and styling in a neat order…I had to, as it was my job that day. It literally took me around 4 hours to finally complete. Needless to say, my patience was wearing thin as the day went on, and I made it a point to help customers more and more quickly.

However, there are some people who are just jackasses.

My dad has a theory that the worst people are those who are ALMOST attractive. I firmly follow that belief. They are extremely bitchy because they try to compensate for one of their flaws…like a nose that’s too round or bad skin.

So an almost pretty woman (or should I say ‘girl’…couldn’t have been older than early 20s) comes over and stalks the bathing suits. I could tell she wanted to shop through my neatly displayed bathing suits, but time and time again, she refused my assistance.

Finally, after walking but 10 feet away, the girl picks up two handfuls of bathing suits and runs to the fitting room. She dropped at least 10 suit separates and mixed up the order of all the rest.

While I tried to sort out this mess, another woman was searching through the clothing rack I had placed separately from the rest of the suits (to keep myself organized). She kept picking them up, and merely placing them without any regard to the clear and distinct order. Again, I was refused for my service.

So I ask you: what is the point of us being there?

Nothing, it would seem.

Sorry this one is more of a mere “thought process”, but I have an interesting post for next week that I’ve had circling my head for quite a while.

Stay tuned!

Update later

Currently busy…but I promise an explanation of why I missed last week, and an interesting story for this week.

Count on seeing it very late tonight or early tomorrow morning (and by early, I mean like 3 AM. Haha)

Alright, alright.

Enough of you have bitched at me to update this thing, and let’s face it…more than 6 months between updates is hardly what I call “regular”.

So it is from this day forth that I’m going to try to make an update once every week. Every Sunday. No, I’m not going to designate a time you picky bastards. If you’re going to read it, you’re going to check it. Frequently. And tell all your friends about it.

Anyway, on to stories.

There must be some sort of chip implanted in certain people’s brains that makes them vomit sentence upon sentence of meaningless drivel. And I catch all of it. Yes, I am the proverbial sewer of the English language. Yay me.

Case in point, we’re going to examine some people’s insistence of what merchandise we do and do not have.

One woman came up to me, and I gave her the usual “if you need anything” statements. Before I closed her door, however, she did have a question.

Woman: Yes, I was wondering if these capris were on sale. They said they were $20 online, but you have them as $30 in store. I was just wondering if you could check on that.

Me: Certainly. (I radio for help checking the price, and sure enough, ours is $30 and is meant to be $30).

Me: I’m sorry ma’am, but the price is supposed to be $30.

Woman: Why? (The fuck should I know why?)

Me: It’s just the in-store pricing, ma’am. That’s how it works. We receive pricing information weekly and then update accordingly. The capris are supposed to be $30.

Woman: But they’re $20 online. They should be $20 here.

Me: Sometimes online lowers their prices if they have a surplus of particular items. It’s to reduce their quantities. While we are the same company, our online division runs differently than our stores do. If you want the $20 capris, you will unfortunately have to order them online.

Woman: It’s the lowest price I’ve seen. Don’t you have to price match it?

At this point, there’s a pretty sizable line building up to get into rooms. This woman is clearly wasting my time because she won’t register the $5 difference between getting them online and getting them in store (with shipping calculated in). I’m starting to get visibly flustered.

Me: No ma’am. That’s in electronics stores such as Best Buy (DON’T SUE ME, YOU BASTARDS!). We don’t do that here. What’s in the store is in the store. That’s all there is to it.

Woman: You have to honor the sale. They’ve done it here before.

Me: How long ago?

Woman: 3 years ago.

Me: Our policies have changed since then, ma’am. I apologize, but there is nothing we can do.

Woman: Yes there is. You could give me the GODDAMN $20 PRICE I DESERVE!

She slams the door in my face.

I’m taken aback. Probably by stupidity. I could feel it seeping into my brain.

One thing customers need to understand is that NOT ALL STORES ARE CREATED EQUAL. Therefore, because store A does something, do NOT expect store B to do the same thing. This is what I call Substitute Syndrome, and it’s contracted only when you are severely self-depreciating and/or think you’re smarter than the stores you shop in.

Also bear in mind that this incident happened BEFORE THE WOMAN TRIED ON THE CAPRIS. So this woman had a hissy fit because she was going to have to potentially purchase capris she could hate for $30 instead of $20.

Right. This is clearly intelligent.

Other customers try to give me vague descriptions of what items they want and expect me to know exactly what they were talking about. Trust me, I’m not exactly precise with my descriptions of our merchandise, but at least I’m relatively close. Today, a woman was trying to get a hoody for her son. We had a conversation similar to (but not exactly) the following:

Woman: Hey, my girlfriend was in here the other day, and she got this ADORABLE hoody for her son. It was white. And was a rough material. Do you think you could find me one?

Me: Uhh…sure? (I ask for help over the walkie, and I receive several hoodies in return)

Woman: Oh, no, not these. This one was hemp. With stripes.

Me: Okay, one moment please. (again, receive exactly what she’s asking for, based on her vague description)

Woman: Oh, no, these are HORIZONTAL stripes. We wanted VERTICAL.

Me: … (ask again to look around, and turn up nothing, but receive something similar in return)

Woman: Oh no, this isn’t V-neck. The hoody she got was a V-neck.

It is at this point I give to her the only hoody that even remotely fits her description. I wasn’t even sure if it was what she was looking for. It was at this point I left for the day, but the point is COULDN’T SHE HAVE CONDENSED THIS ENTIRE DRAWN OUT SONG-AND-DANCE THAT TOOK 10 MINUTES INTO A ONE MINUTE STATEMENT THAT COULD HAVE BEEN RESPONDED WITH YES OR NO?!

Look, all I’m trying to say here is that a lot of the time, people think they’re smarter than they actually are. They think that a system that has been established for years will be completely upended by their one incident of proving a sweater should be cheaper than we have it marked.

Winning at this game is like winning the special olympics. In the end, you’re still “special”.

These are the type of people who go on the internet to look up disease symptoms for their child, and confuse the common cold with AIDS.

Do the world a favor: ask for help instead of providing for yourself.

Assfaces.

Update next week!

Tact: An Unknown Art

Sorry as always. 20 credits this semester. I don’t think I need much more of an explanation than that.Anyway, on to today’s topic.

Tact is merely a word that means one’s ability to smoothly handle a situation. Usually this situation is a pressured one or unexpected. One who is tactful can easily think their way out of a situation while keeping their cool and making themselves seem confident.

Sadly, our customers must have missed Tact 101 in school.

As in most places, we’ve adopted the policy of taking people’s clothes from them and hanging them in the rooms now to prevent theft. It’s a clever measure; I have seen a dramatic lessening of found price tags scattered about the floor since I started to try and do it for every customer. Some people actually thank me for doing it. They believe it is a luxury, and in truth, it is. How many places will they take the time to dig through their shopping bag or massive cartload of stuff and offer to hang up their clothes in a neat and organized manner?

Well, if you thought of one, go screw yourself because you shop too much. I can only think of one other place offhand.

As you well imagine, this also weeds out of would-be criminals in our store. Now some people can fake it very well, and make it seem like they’re happy or alright with our hanging the clothes in the rooms for them, regardless of whether they are or not.

Others are much more simple than that. In the head.

One woman had three items. It was two sweaters and another shirt, a men’s polo shirt. She had the “other shirt” tucked underneath hers and tried to say “I have two items.” I merely said “Here, let me take those for you, and I’ll get you set up with a room.”Immediately, this woman’s face drops. You can tell she’s panicking but doesn’t want to show it. I lead her down to the next available room. I open the door, lay down her THREE items, and have a conversation similar to the following:

• Me: Here you are ma’am…you had three items, by the way.
• Lady: Three? No, I had two.
• Me: (I picked up the three items again and shook them) No ma’am…there are three.
• Lady: Oh goodness, who put that in there? (She asked this as a rhetorical question. Did she think I did it?)
• Me: I’m not sure ma’am.

At this point, you can tell she’s still trying to think of an excuse to get the shirt away from herself so she doesn’t get “caught.” She already was…just didn’t realize it, I guess.

• Lady: Ohhhhhhhhh (this is one of those “Oh fuck, I flushed my cell phone down the toilet” type of Ohs.)! I remember now! I picked this up for my husband! (She had no wedding ring, by the way). But y’know what…y’know…wha–I don’t want this anymore. Yeah. No, I don’t want it…it’s too expensive (the shirt was on clearance for $2.97). I’ll just get it some other time. Would you mind taking it for me? Thanks!

She throws the shirt at me, throws on a fake ass smile that seems genuine but isn’t, and slams the door.Yeah, tact…reallllly smooth. She didn’t even let me get two words out!

Another woman was even more of an idiot than the first one. She has ONE exceptionally bulky t-shirt and just says “One” when she walks in the room. She’s already nervous and twitchy…like your dog when he knows it’s medication time. I say “Here, let me take that for you and get you a room.”

Now, before I say what happened, let me first say…SHE HANDED THE “SHIRT” RIGHT TO ME. I REACHED OUT MY HANDS, AND SHE HANDED IT TO ME.

Anyway, she obviously had more items in the shirt. Any idiot could see that. I went to put the shirt down on the bench in the room, and 9 pairs of leggings falls out of it.No exaggeration. Nine pairs. All the same size. All the same color.

I recovered quickly by saying “Goodness, getting that fall shopping out of the way early, huh?”She looked horrified…almost as if I had killed her mother. Seriously. This is how freaked out the woman was.

I asked “Are you trying some on? I’ll just put the others on the bench here and you can take them when you leave.”

Again, no verbal response. She gave a quick jerk of the head to confirm it, went in and closed the door.

The best part? She was in there 20 minutes. TWENTY. FUCKING. MINUTES. Reason? I went to the bathroom 20 minutes later, and she sneaked out of the room. Left the “shirt”, the leggings she had and the eight others on the bench.

Smooth…really smooth.

Last customer was even more fun. She comes in with a stroller…her little boy is sitting inside, and she has 3 of our kid’s Halloween costumes in her hand. She seemed to imply that they were three different sizes, so I took them for her, and put her in the handicapped stall. I laid the costumes on the bench, and she smiled at me.

As a form of my own tact, though, I decided to go unorthodox. I opened the costumes for her so she could more easily get her kid into them.

The look on her face was priceless.

Laying in each of the three costumes are 4 different outfits (some consisting of some pricey elements) stacked in such a way that it was as if the clothing was wearing the costume. I reared back and gave a little “Oh!” and looked to the mother for an explanation. She kinda laughed nervously, then put on a serious face. The woman was on the verge of a breakdown.

I merely stated “Oh, I see you’ve got a few extras here. That’s alright, I’ll just put them out for you, as well.”I did so in about a minute. I turned around, and the woman was gone. Entirely from the store.

Tact…goes down smooth.

Post again soon. Sorry it was short, but I’m burning myself out here…just a smidge tired, you see. Haha.