I used to have another blog which I stopped using last year. It was just a personal one, and just now, while I was bored, I went looking through it and found this:

Friday, December 09, 2005
I think i might have forgotten to mention I'd finally managed to get a job! A place called **** ***** actually employed me, after months of searching. It's so busy though, just over christmas. Stress. The manager did say I was a wiz on the jewellry though.

Nearly 3 years ago, a 17 year-old me was actually excited about going to work in retail. Well, just to have a job at all really. Too bad that manager turned out to be a psycho.

That same manager was in the store last week and, although I looked ridiculous in my Santa hat, I still smiled and said hello because I was just so happy to see her without having to work under her tyranny.
She's not the boss of me now and she's not so big.

Tags: retail

Here in the UK, every kid in Year 10 (14-15 years old) has to do 2 weeks “work experience”. You can choose to organise your own if you have a particular place in mind, or the school organises it for you, in which case you will end up somewhere completely irrelevant to any career prospects you might have at 15 and it contributes absolutely nothing towards your education.
The only person I know who got anything of value out of it was one of my friends who spent a fortnight working in a veterinary surgery, and now she’s soon to be a qualified vet nurse. For the rest of us it was just a big sit off, and a way for shops to get unpaid labour.

I bring this up because we have a girl on work experience in our store at the moment. She’s so quiet, it’s hard to get a word out of her, and I doubt she’s going get anything useful out of her experience. The only thing I get out of working in our store is: don’t work retail!

My work experience was in a pet shop. It was, well...it could have been worse. It was so close to my house I could see it from my window and I only worked 6 hour days. Plus, there were animals! How could you get bored with animals around?
On the downside: the owner was racist, his friend had no teeth and I ended up inadvertently killing a gerbil. It jumped out my hand, it wasn’t my fault. And you do not leave 15 year old girls in charge of your pet store anyway. Something bad was bound to happen.
Although I refused to answer the phone or clean out the cages, my other tasks were: russian dwarf hamster rehabilitation after they had a traumatic run-in with a rat and the serving of the odd customer. We did not get many, I’m surprised the shops still open today.
Other than that, the only other things I remember is doing a lot of standing around and a customer who got annoyed because I didn’t know where most of the budgie stuff was.
So, counting my lack of knowledge of pet supplies, not answering the phone or cleaning, and gerbil manslaughter, I was about as much use as a chocolate teaspoon. Worse even, I did more harm than good, but I somehow passed.

Thankfully, I didn’t work retail again for another 2 years and by that time had learnt enough to be a worthwhile employee...in a not very worthwhile job.

Tags: companies, retail

This story starts out very bad, but has a very happy ending.

Yesterday, I had to clean up puke. Some little kid decided to throw up on A&C and I got the job of cleaning it because I could handle the sight and smell without throwing up myself. I don’t mind, I’ve cleaned up some kids piss before and it’s not like I have to get down and lick it. I better get used to that kinda stuff anyway, I’ll be no good as a nurse if I’m squeamish. The mother even offered to clean it up but I was like: No! Just get your child home before it pukes on anything else.
So I got to work mopping up what looked like tuna chunks and put up 3 yellow caution signs around the wet floor...but guess what. Only about half a dozen people out of all the customers in A&C over the period of half an hour actually took any notice of the signs.
Customer coming through, make way! A wet floor? Caution? Don’t be so ridiculous! I’m going to walk through here with the same cavalier attitude I always have when I go shopping.

So I stood there and warned people myself. I didn’t have to, our asses were covered with the safety signs so if anyone decided to take a dive, they wouldn’t have a law suit leg to stand on....literally. I just thought it would save a lot of trouble in the long run if I prevented an accident, rather than having to prove a customer wrong after one. We know they don’t like that.
These are a few highlights in the monotony of stupidity:

A 3 year old boy came racing down the aisle and I practically had to catch him to stop him. He then tries to walk back over the wet floor when his dad behind him tells him not to before proceeding to push a trolley over it himself.
You gotta be careful, son. We don’t want you falling and hurting yourself. You wait there. But it’s ok for Daddy to walk over it. Daddy’s older. He’s got further to fall and his bones are brittler.
And I was the one who got the dirty look for having the nerve to speak to his child in the first place! Great example of bad parenting right there. Nice work!

Another man comes up to me and asks “Could you get something down for me from the wall, or go and find someone who can?”.
Do you realise what you just said? How fucking short-sighted can you be? I still have to leave to go and get someone!
So I went to help him, and ended up dropping a plastic box on him from height, scoring 10 points. A hit on the head gets you 50 points.

A little while later, when the floor was nearly dry, I was approached by the little boy from earlier who wanted to know if he could walk that way yet. I said he’d have to walk around the right side of the signs, as that side was dry now. He interrogated me further before being called back by his father again, and when I looked up I saw a woman laughing in the aisle opposite. She comes up to me and says “That was hilarious. ‘Can I go this way? Can I go that way?’. It was so funny”.
At first I didn’t know she was referring to the little boy and I told her I was surprised by how many people ignore the caution signs. We had a bit of a laugh and she said “You could stand there all day and do psychological studies”. I thought: you do not know how close you are.
Later, I saw her again and she said to her mother “This is the girl that had to put up with that boy. You did very well. I don’t think I would have been as nice”.

I would like to thank this woman for being so understanding, and for giving me a laugh at a time when I needed it most. It was a Saturday, I’d just cleaned up sick, and my faith in humanity was reaching an all time low. Her, and her mother, were a joy to serve and they’ve delayed my trip to the psych ward for a little longer.
They deserve the Best Customers of All Time Award.
And they made it look so easy. How come ever other customer finds it so difficult?

Tags: disgusting, funny, customer, nice

I’d probably say around 60% of customers are bad customers. By bad I mean: narky, ungrateful, rude, impatient and just generally unhappy about something. The majority of these customers I can deal with, they just go over my head and they’ll forget about me as soon as they’re out the door. The ones I really can’t stand are the ones that make it personal. It’s your fault somethings gone wrong and you’re a bad person for not living up to their standards and expectations.

Today I had a bitch of a customer. I wasn’t even serving her, but her friend had asked me how she could find out how much a dog bed was. That’s important-she asked “How can I...”, not “Can you...”. So I said she could use the price checker at the end of the aisle or take it to customer service. Had my hands not been full of rubbish I would have done it for her, but I was busy at the time and she hadn’t asked me to anyway. (I know she really meant “Can you...”. When do customers not mean “Can you do my shopping for me?”). But while I’m still standing in front of them, this bitch on steroids turns to her friend and says sarcastically “Oh, I’ll take it to customer service for you” and rolled her eyes.
What! What the hell was her problem?! All they needed to do was ask...properly.

I know I should have just left it, walked away, but I couldn’t let them leave thinking I’d done a bad job. I couldn’t let them walk out thinking I was the ignorant, good-for-nothing high school drop-out they had me labelled as just for working there. I had to redeem myself in what little way I could. I know it’s my job to help people, the customer always comes first, but when I literally can’t pick anything up, what can I do? You just can’t win.
While the Superbitch walked off, I literally dropped what I was doing and said to her friend that if she waited where she was, I’d go and scan it for her. I asked her to wait there because I’d already had one frustrating experience with two old ladies who went walk-about while I checked the price of a “cat house” for them earlier that day.
In the end she wasn’t even grateful anyway. Why did I fucking bother?
I will know if I see them again though. Superbitch was a proper winner-a winner of the fat and ugly game. And why was she fat? Because she refuses to walk anywhere unnecessarily, like the few meters to the price checker.

WARNING: throwing your toys out your pram like a big baby might occasionally get you your own way, but it also makes you look like a tit, a grade A GG tit.

Tags: annoying, dumb, stupid, customers

Last Sunday night I went in after closing time to help tidy up a few departments; basically wiping other peoples asses because they can't do their job properly, including the incompetent manager who messed up A&C last week. We were there until after 10pm cleaning up their shit. It could have been worse though, there could have been customers.
Speaking of that manager, he is still on A&C, and will be for the foreseeable future. He's just going to destroy everything, although I didn't tell him he was flying low one day last week so he was walking around for half the day with a tuft of shirt coming through his fly, lol. A small compensation.

Anyway, on Sunday night, totally unprovoked by me, the store manager started talking about shitty customers. Not too long ago he'd had a woman shouting in his face about the state of the customer toilets, complaining they hadn't been cleaned and should be closed to the public. He inspected the lady's toilets and found someone had missed the toilet while taking a shit, then decided to try and scrape it off the seat with their fingers, leaving a right royal smeary mess.
He had a picture on his phone, I'll try and get hold of it but seeing as my phone doesn't accept picture messages, that might be kinda hard. For now, here’s my artistic representation>>
In the end he told the woman that she was shouting at the wrong gender and should look to her own kind to blame; and to be completely honest, it does seem to be women who leave the dirtiest messes.
For instance, as well as one woman sticking her used sanitary towel to one of the toilet pipes, another woman decided to flick her used tampon onto the wall, where it dried up and stayed until the cleaner came and scraped it off with a spatular.
That's an image that's even making me feel sick. I’ll leave you with that.

Tags: shitty, customers

I don’t know if some customers like to get their kicks by frightening me, of if they just can’t find any other way to be dangerous.

Even though we have a customer lift (a weird one at that), some customers still choose to take their kids up and down the escalators in prams. On Sunday I saw one daddy take his daughter down, pram first, without even strapping her in!
Maybe people don’t think about consequences, or maybe I worry too much, but when I see people taking their kids down the escalator, sometimes not even in prams but just not holding their hand, I can’t help thinking they’re going to fall. I tell every customer I see that looks like they’re going to attempt taking a pram on the escalator that there’s a customer lift. Thankfully most people say “Oh right, thankyou”, but others have said stuff like “Oh no, we don’t like the lift” and take the escalator anyway, and one woman said “Oh, it’s ok, I wasn’t going to anyway. People who do that are just lazy”. Lazy? Don’t you mean dangerous?
People are so protective over their kids when it comes to other people, but it’s ok for them to risk their lives. Like that woman in Boots who tried to buy medicine for her baby, even after she was told that it had recently been deemed potentially harmful, it didn’t matter, it was her baby so she could do what she wanted.

Another thing, quite a while ago now, we used to have a bead stand that held little plastic cylinders of beads and the ones at the back would always get stuck. One woman was after a particular type of bead that just so happened to be stuck and were the last ones we had of that type. I tried to get it out using my safety knife and a knitting needle but that wasn’t enough for her. She disappeared for a while and then I saw her walking back with a kitchen knife in her hand. I don’t know how she got a knife on it’s own, she must have had to open a set to get just the one and it had no cover on it or anything. That was pretty scary, having a customer hell bent on getting beads walk straight towards you with a knife. She didn’t seem to realise what she looked like, or that she was lucky not to injure someone.
In the end, I think the beads stayed stuck and she left. I tried to take the knife off her but she said she’d return it herself.
Some people really do lose all rational thought when they enter shops, but that’s a different kind of stupid.

Tags: dumb, dangerous, customers

I haven’t been able to take pictures of piggy customer hell recently (because I got a new phone with a crappy camera), but I have found more in the past week alone than I have since Christmas. I had half a mind to keep hold of everything I found then take a picture of all of it together, just to illustrate how much shit gets left on our shelves, but then I realised how disgusting that would be.
So, in the past week I’ve found:
1x Capri-sun carton
1x Powerade bottle
1x Mars Delight wrapper
1x Dairy Milk wrapper
1x lipsticky tissue
1x half-eaten sandwich crust
1x empty coffee cup
1x Ribena carton

I think that’s it. People are so dirty, yeuk!

Also last week, I watched a woman leave the shop with one of our baskets inside one of our trollies. Why have a basket in a trolly? I kept an eye on her through the window, wondering what she was going to do with the basket. It was only when she got to the trolley park that she seemed to realise she still had the basket and proceeded to leave it haphazardly on top of the rest of the trollies. So I went outside, walked straight up to her, wrenched the basket off the trollies and said “I’ll take that back for you!”. That seemed to give her a fright and she kept saying “Oh, sorry love, sorry”.
Satisfaction!

Tags: disgusting, revenge, customers

When food we’re selling goes out of date, we demic it and usually eat it ourselves. We only sell chocolate and sweets like Haribo so it’s not going to do us any harm, but recently the warehouse staff have been hoarding all the demic chocolate for themselves. A few weeks ago about 5 bags of those little Smartie boxes were written off and the warehouse managed to work their way through 3 bags before we got to them.
But instead of just eating them, we took the opportunity to mess with the warehouse staff for being so greedy. A colleague and I emptied all the Smarties into a lunchbox, folded all the boxes back up again and put them back like nothing had happened. Then I went and hid the Smarties somewhere so we could eat them at our leisure. The warehouse staff didn’t say anything about it to us but they eventually tracked down the lunchbox and scoffed the lot!
Not funny.
So, today we found two carrier bags of Mint Aero Bubbles and chocolate bars hidden in their desk. We (the same colleague and I) ate a packet of Bubbles, taped it to a piece of paper and wrote “Thanks! They were delicious. Bye losers!” and pinned it to their desk. We were planning to hide the bags in a much better hiding place than last time but before we could, the manager caught us.
“What you doin’?!”
“Just hiding something.”
“What it is?”
“Chocolate.”
“Whose is it?”
“It’s from the warehouse.”
“Give it here.”
And then he stamps on it...a lot.
“Here, give it to them now.”
I was wetting myself. I don’t really like mint chocolate so I wasn’t sorry to see it get crushed. We went back and hid it on the seat of their fork lift so they might even end up sitting on it as well, lol.
Ahhh, I had fun today.

Tags: funny, colleagues, prank

On Wednesday night a young couple came in looking to buy a fish tank and had seen one they liked but the price label below it said £12.99. They were really nice and polite and genuinely thought that was the price but I offered to check it for them because I knew it wasn’t. The actual price was £59.99! They didn’t get angry, they just seemed really disappointed. Y’know when your parents say that to you “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” like it’s so much worse? Well, I did feel kinda bad.
However, it turned out the girlfriend is the deputy manager of a jewelers and is a stickler for pricing; get the price of a ring wrong and you could end up losing thousands. So she asked for the address of head office, which I said they could get from customer service, and I also suggested they talk to the manager before they left.
Unlike the guy who was complaining about the price of the canvases, I totally understand where this couple were coming from. The price was wrong, full stop, and although the description on the label didn’t fit the tank, it was above head height so it was hard to read anyway. I was really fortunate that they were so laid back otherwise I would have been on the front line facing a full on customer bitch attack.
So, while the girl went off to customer service I stayed behind with the guy and tried to work out some order with the remaining prices. Over half the fish tanks were incorrectly priced! And I dread to think what the rest of the department was like. I tried not to make excuses and blatantly said that the guy who ran that department was incompetent. I know I shouldn’t say things like that to customers but they both worked in retail so they know what it’s like anyway. It was ages before she returned from customer service and the first thing she said was the behaviour she’d seen from the staff over there was disgusting. Way to rub salt in a wound!
Apparently Scary Mary had been eating behind the desk and swearing loudly and someone else had been drinking a bottle of pop. We were just waiting for the manager to come over when she said to me “Don’t worry, I said you were exceptional” which made me feel slightly better but I still felt ashamed on behalf of the people on customer service.
In the end the manager gave them 20% off the tank and assured them that the guy on that department would be fired, blah blah blah. I was like yeah right, but I’d thought he’d at least get written up for it. All that’s happened is he’s got a bollocking and been told to get the department in order. Big deal, that happens every few months or so and guess who was one of the people who had to pick up the pieces last time. Yeah-me.
a) It shouldn’t be left to get like that, and b) it shouldn’t be other people that have to sort out that department while the guy gets nothing but a slap on the wrist. Discipline is a really big problem in our store. No one is afraid of the consequences if they don’t do any work because there won’t be any.
I really hope that couple do write to head office because the company won’t listen to anyone else.
Something I found funny though was how the people on customer service couldn’t stop going on about how much of a bitch the girl was when I thought they were some of the nicest, understanding customers I’ve ever had. It just shows how some customers can be ordinary nice people in other circumstances but shops seem to bring out the worst in them, it just depends what side you find yourself on.

Tags: rude, anger!, worst, customer, disgusting

I didn’t buy anything from that Amazon seller in the end, not because I was pissed at them, but because I found one of the books I wanted in a store today. It was one of the PostSecret books by Frank Warren and, had I bought it off the internet, I would never have found the gems hidden inside this copy, which is now sitting on my desk.

This has nothing to do with retail anymore but I thought I’d tell you anyway, partly because I felt so weirded out and surprised, and even privelidged, that I felt obliged to buy the book (even though it was almost twice as expensive as on Amazon) and partly to let you know that I’ve added PostSecrets to my blogroll.

But back to the mystery. Hidden inside the book were two PostSecrets that someone, obviously being familiar with the website, had hidden there for someone else to find, instead of posting them off to Frank. Maybe someone just put them there for a laugh but one of them seems a little too sincere. I haven’t decided whether to send them to Frank or not yet. I have emailed him but I didn’t even tell him what they said so they’re still a very well kept secret. Well, almost. Best kept secrets aren’t found lying around in a book shop, are they.
I didn’t take them without giving something back though. I wrote my own little secret on whatever I had to hand (half of a train route map) and left it in one of the other PostSecret books on the shelf. One day someone with find it and think WTF?, just like I did.

One of the secrets from the book that is relevant though is this one, written on half of a torn up Starbucks cup: “I give decaf to customers who are RUDE to me!”. I don’t drink coffee so I’ll assume that depriving a coffee drinker of caffeine is one of the worst things a barista could do, lol.

Tags: weird

Here’s a real life, bona fide poo story from my previously mentioned friend who went to work for anonymous big-ass company. Retail Heaven just got shittier:

It happened on Wednesday morning when the cleaner started freaking out after she’d gone to clean the toilets. She’d started emptying the bin, something you have to do with your hands as there’s no bag, when she realised just what she’d picked up. Shit! That’s not an exclamation, someone had actually taken a dump in the bin! I only hope she was wearing gloves at the time.
The design of the bathroom incorporates the bin into the wall directly under the paper towl dispenser so it’s only meant for the paper towls, hense why you can’t get a bin bag inside it and why it’s assumed safe to empty with your hands. It also means that the culprit would have had a pretty hard time trying to get their ass in there.
But what makes it even harder to accept is that there are no customer toilets in the store, only staff toilets.
The perpetrator is still among them.

Tags: poo, disgusting

Sorry I haven’t been posting much. I had promised to bombard you with posts at the end of the 2 week break, but during that time I couldn’t just write a post on a whim so I forgot all the little shit I moan about and just remembered the good stuff. It was pretty good stuff though.
Plus, I’ve had 3 days off in a row this week so I haven’t had much to write about. I almost forget retail, lol. Bliss. Well, bittersweet. I spent most of Monday afternoon either sedated or recovering after a trip to the dentist. I wasn’t having teeth pulled or anything, I’m just a big wuss. So Monday was a bit of a blur, I wouldn’t have made much sense even if I had tried to write something.

Anyway, I was back in work on Wednesday and another mystery was revealed. For the past few months I’d occasionally seen a guy walking around upstairs and he’d even come into the staff cantine to ask which manager was on that night, but no matter who I asked, no one could tell me who he was. He’s pretty old....and very ugly. Imagine a surfer dude at 50 - too much sun, cigs, and still dying his hair blonde - that’s what he looks like to me. Well, I saw him again yesterday and it turns out he’s the “blind guy”. He’s not actually blind, he just comes in to sort out the blinds, as in Venetian and vertical. We think he fancies the A&C Supervisor. The only reason I found out who he was was because he came over to give her a packet of cigarettes after she’d bought him some jelly beans earlier. How romantic.

That’s really the most interesting thing that’s happened. It’s been very uneventful in the store recently. The most irate customer I’ve seen was a guy who started kicking off because he’d driven to the store twice to pick something up and was moaning about the amount of petrol he’d used. It’s not like he couldn’t have rung ahead to check if we even had it in stock first, so obviously it’s all our fault he wasted petrol. I don’t know if we gave in to him or not.
I also had to deal with a guy who claimed he’d bought a fish tank from us about a year ago and the flouresent bulb had gone and he couldn’t find a replacement anywhere. He said we still sold the product so I think he was hinting at me to give him a bulb from another tank. Before I could laugh in his face I passed him over to a duty manager so I don’t know what happened with him either.
There’s some anti-climaxes for ya.

Tags: explanation

This morning the duty manager came into work still drunk. No surprise, it happenes every weekend.
He was going round asking people if they would iron his shirt for him. I said no, but half an hour later he was still asking so I took pity on him and ironed his shirt. Nothing says “slave” more than working in a shop and ironing your manager's shirt.
I feel, not downtrodden, but like I shouldn't have done it. But the fact is I offered to and I really didn't mind, and now I don't owe him that drink. He appreciated it anyway...or maybe that was just last nights alcohol.
But really it was just an opportunity to get out of doing the same monotonous jobs I do every day I'm in work. I just swapped one chore for another, only this one I hadn't done 50 million times before and it was a bit of a relief.
That really sums up retail. I chose ironing over people. Analyze that!

Tags: funny, sad

Last night a guy came in under strict orders from his wife to buy a particular coffee table. While the manager was looking in the back to see if we had any in stock, he asked me if he could take the one on display. I told him no, because we only sell the display one once we know we’re not getting any more in stock and that even if we didn’t have any in the back at the moment we could easily order one in for him. But then he says the only reason he wants the display one is so that he doesn’t have to build it himself when he gets home.
Lazy. Fuck.
The manager also made the mistake of telling him that we take 20% off the display models, this being the same manager who gave in to that stupid woman with the dog bed, so I know damn well why he really wants the one on display.
And in the end he got it! *anger*
That manager just gives into everyone. People like him are the reason why customers think they can get away with anything.
Now someone will have to rebuild another coffee table, and we’ll lose another 20% off it.
Nice going!

Tags: annoying, customer, manager

Saturday 2nd August

Today I had not so much a sleazy ass customer but, well, I don’t know what to call him. He’d come in to ask if we had a certain size canvas and then he started telling me all about his art. I’ve seen him a few times before, he used to come in and have a chat with the former department manager, who was also an artist of sorts.
He’s originally from Africa and mustn’t be a bad artist as he’s had a few exhibitions and the odd elite customer, but he’s currently studying at uni here - a non-art related subject, which you could tell was depriving him of time to indulge in his artistic expression. He seemed to think that because I worked on Arts & Crafts, and because I was showing an interest, he’d found a kindred spirit.
I hinted that I really should get back to work so he had to take his chance.

“Do you mind if I, how do you say....ask you out?”
(I though okay, this is totally innocent but I’ll feign ignorance anyway.)
“Um...sure.”
“On a date?”
(Crap!)
“Not so much on a date. As friends.”
“Oh...okay. Can I give you my number?”
“Okay.”
(He writes down his number but I do not reciprocate.)
“So next time I’m in ******** I’ll let you know. But right now I’d better get back to work.”
“Okay. Bye.”

Phew! Poor guy. I bet the eavesdropping customers had a right laugh. As nice as the guy is to talk to, he has to go down on the list of customers to avoid now.

Tags: funny, customer

Last Friday night I sat off and made glow stick jewelry with another member of staff, and wore a flat cap for some time, as well as opening a poker game, and a bingo roller, and a make your own farm animals kit...ok, we did a lot of stuff we shouldn’t have been doing.
But while we were pretending to work we were approached by a foreign guy who wanted to know the specifications of some wind up head torch, something we knew nothing about. He wanted to open it but it was in heat sealed plastic packaging so we said he couldn’t if he wasn’t going to buy it. My colleague also said to him that if we let every customer open anything they wanted, we wouldn’t make any money, lose our jobs and end up poor, to which he replied: “Yeah, show me a poor person in England.”
I nearly wet myself. He was cool though, he wasn’t uptight or anything, and he didn’t buy the torch. I’m still laughing now.

Tags: funny, customer

Sunday 27th July

Something that I really hate doing in work is using the phone. Fortunately, I don’t have to do it that often, but occasionally I’ll get called over to customer service to answer a customers query over the phone and I really, really hate it.
There was also the time when I asked for the store manager to be called to customer service over the tannoy but he rang down on the phone instead. Whoever was on CS just handed me the phone with no explanation and I didn’t expect it to be the manager so I just said hello, and all the manager said was hello, so we went back and forth like that for a while. I really didn’t recognise his voice, which is fucking stupid because he’s Canadian, and eventually he says “Yeah! Whats up?!”, and I’m like..shit! Lol. Rarely have I ever been more embarrassed. I blame my phobia of the work phone for temporarily losing my wits and making a fool of myself. I’d also like to blame the person on CS for not telling me who was on the other end, and because I don’t like him.
But what I hate most is when customers ask me to ring another store to see if they have a certain item in stock. It’s so lazy! I have to stand there while they glare at me because I’m on hold, like because I work there everything should happen faster and it’s my fault when it doesn’t.
This happened quite recently when a couple came in looking for these certain stickers and asked me to ring such and such a store. I said sure, but I could also give them the number so they could do it themselves in their own time, and had they tried the website. This was 2pm on a Sunday and I had just been about to go for my (late) lunch, but they said no, they wanted me to ring the store.
While I was on hold the guy asked me to ask them for directions to the store for him, so I asked if they had the internet, which they did, so I said I’d give them the store’s postcode and they could look it up themselves on google maps when they got home. They didn’t argue with that.
It took another 15 minutes to finally find out that the other store didn’t have any stickers either. The guy then asked for all the details about the store and item that I’d jotted down just as a quick reference, including the SKU number, like he had a clue what that was. I gave it to him anyway, explaining that only the first 4 numbers were relevant because the last 2 referred to the same stickers but in a different colour. I knew he wasn’t listening.
It really pissed me off. I’d asked him if he was able to pick the stickers up that day if they had any, and he said no, so I don’t understand what the rush was. They could have just rung the store when they got home, and seeing as our stores are open till 8pm they could have rung after 6 when calls are cheaper, if not free. Why do customers expect more if they get a staff member to do stuff for them? It’s actually likely to make things worse, because as soon as the other store heard I wasn’t the customer there was no pressure on them to please.
We’re retail slaves, not miracle workers.

Tags: annoying, lazy, customers

Helloooo! I’m a day late, sorry, but I have got some really good stories. I’ll post them in the order that they happened rather than saving the best till last, and I think this one is probably the best.

Friday 25th July

I think today was the day for customers threatening us with trading standards.
First off, one woman complained that a dog bed was wrongly priced. She’d assumed the size that was advertised was the largest one, then kicked off when she got to the till and found that it was more expensive. It clearly said on the price sign that the 15L dog bed was £14.99, or something like that, and it says on the tag attached to each dog bed the size of the bed, she just hadn’t bothered to check. Lazy, stupid and....wrong! Infuriatingly, the manager let her have it for the lower price.

But later on that day a guy asked me about the prices of the canvases. At first I was a bit confused too, but it’s easy enough to understand once you read the prices carefully.

Customer: “Excuse me, am I right in thinking this canvas is £2.99?”
(I go to check the price on the till)
Me: “No, that’s £7.99.”
Customer: “Well it says here it’s £2.99.”
Me: “That’s the deep edge canvases.”
(That’s where I got a bit confused. 30x24 staple back canvas - £7.99, 30x24 deep edge canvas - £2.99. Then I read the measurements, the staple backs were priced in inches, and the deep edge in cm.)
Customer: “But look! It says here ’30x24 - £2.99’.”
Me: “Yes, but that’s in cm so it’s for a much smaller canvas. The canvas you want is 30x24 inches.”
Customer: “Well, can I have it for £2.99?”
Me: “No, because even if the sizes had been the same, you were still looking at the prices for the wrong type of canvas.”
(I stand there while he thinks about this.)
Me: “Is everything alright now?”
Customer: “Well no, because I’m a bit disappointed this canvas isn’t £2.99. I’m not trying to be funny or anything, I work in a shop too, y’know. Can you go and speak to your manager and see what he can do?”

What a dickhead! What makes it so much worse is that he also works in a shop. And why mention it? Any empathy I might have had evaporated 10 minutes ago. He wants money off because he was “diappointed” with the price? Big fucking deal.
I go and speak to the manager, wary that he’d given in to a similar customer earlier that day, but I didn’t care what he’d said, that guy was not getting money off that canvas. Luckily the manager thought along exactly the same lines as I did - “That guys just taking the piss!”. So I go down and give this retail slave gone bad the news, which he takes very badly....

Customer: “Well, I want it in writing, please. I want a copy of these prices and I’m going to trading standards on Monday! And can you tell the manager that as well.”

I go and scan both the deep edge and staple back prices and patronise him by asking if he’d like me to highlight the ones in question (“No! I know which ones there are, thankyou!”). I don’t know what he was playing at. Obviously he was desperately trying to get money off this canvas, knowing full well he was in the wrong, and thought he knew all the tricks in the book because he worked in a shop. Must have slipped his mind that I do too. *Sigh*, what a dumbass! I also think he was trying to get a rise out of me by being so difficult so that he could use poor customer service against me as well because he was a bit put out that I was being so nice about everything.
He bought the canvas anyway at £7.99, and we never heard anything from trading standards.
Me: 10092 - Dumbass customers: 0

Tags: annoying, retail slave

Today, I overheard 2 of the cashiers talking:

Cashier #1: “Y’know Isaac Newton?”
Cashier #2: “Isn’t he a singer?”
Cashier #1: “No, as in the grandfather of science.”

*headdesk*

Tags: dumb, colleagues

Today, I went to Chiquito’s, but I only realised after I’d gone in and sat down that they were one of those nasty places that steals tips. I debated with myself all through the meal whether or not to ask how they got their tips from credit card payments. I didn’t really have much choice but to pay by card but fortunately, the machine asks if you want to add the gratuity on before you put in your PIN. So I asked her “How do you get your tips if they go on credit cards?” and she said they get added to their wages every two weeks and that it was totally up to me whether I wanted to decline the gratuity option on the machine. I chose not to add the tip on my card and gave her a cash tip instead, just to be sure. Maybe they prefer getting their tips in a lump sum every 2 weeks, or maybe they just get told to say that. Who knows....

Tags: wages, money

This must be the month for unfair disciplinary and dismissal.

I read today that someone got the sack from Old Navy for a completely trivial reason. Read the whole thing here.
Then I go into work on Sunday and we all get two warnings:

1) There’s a new rota up for cleaning the cantine, and above the rota is a little note saying that anyone who doesn’t do their cleaning duties will face disciplinary action. LOL! I’d like to see them try that. Yeah, let me just check if that’s in my contract....um, no!
The rote is divided between departments and arts & crafts conveniently falls on a Friday night....when I’m in. To be honest, I don’t even mind because it keeps me off the shop floor and I can just pretend to clean while actually reading a weeks worth of agony aunt pages. I previously spent over 2 hours cleaning it one night, when it wasn’t even my turn, and I did the inside of the cupboards and everything. It was so disgusting, I can’t even describe it.
The most annoying thing is that I hardly use the cantine and I’m cleaning it, whereas the people who are making all the mess won’t touch a mop and bucket with a 10 foot barge pole.

2) Everyone was reminded that when they started, they signed a form stating that any losses from the tills will be recovered from the member of staff using the till at that time. Whats been happening is people have been refunding customers parking by just giving them money out the till instead of taking the parking coupon off the end of the bill. So the tills have been so many quid down with loads of random parking coupons everywhere but nothing on the system to say they’ve been refunded.
Fortunately, I’v never known how to open the till without putting a transaction through so I’v always taken the parking off the end of the bill, but I know at least one person is having a disciplinary because they’d already been warned once to refund the parking properly.
Basically, the company sees it as theft. If the till is opened without putting through a transaction and then the till turns out to be down at the end of the day, you’re going to lose your job. And we’ve been told that if we see anybody else doing it we have to tell the management. “You’re not being a grass, you’re just protecting your job”.
I can undertsand it though really. I don’t think any of the till staff would steal from the till, but it’s not the same case for the rest of the staff, and the rest of the company.

Tags: procedure, disciplinary, dismissal, unfair

I’v had 2 people in the last 3 days say I haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about.

A woman on Friday asked me for a paper trimmer. She didn’t know what make it was (another case where those mind reading skills would come in handy), but I managed to find her the right one on the 3rd try. Then as she was walking away she starts talking to me about a sticker holder, but then she says “Oh, I bet you don’t know what any of the stuff is, do you?”. I was going to argue but decided to just say “No, sorry”. She didn’t say it in a horrible manner so I don’t think she was being intentionally insulting, she just didn’t realise what she was saying. I was still a tad annoyed though.

But another old woman came in today asking for “wax paper”. Just to be sure I know what she’s talking about, I asked what it’s used for. I usually do this when I’m not entirely sure because a lot of things in arts & crafts can go by several names, like some people call a putty rubber a “kneadable eraser”, blending stumps go by another name I can’t remember, and get this, a tool that folds paper can also be called a “boning tool”.
So, apparently, wax paper helps protect surfaces when you’re glueing etc. and I know we don’t have anything like that so I tell her we don’t stock it. But as she’s walking away, I hear her tell her husband “I don’t think that girl knows anything!”. Hello! I can still hear you! Later on another member of staff comes up to ask me if we have any wax paper. FFS! I say “I’v already told her - NO!”

It really pisses me off. If you’re not going to believe me or think I’m too stupid to know, then why do you ask me in the first place? You could just use your eyes and look for yourself. Usually it just goes over my head, but I hate being called stupid. If you just don’t believe me, that’s fine, you’re wasting your own time as well as mine, and I can laugh at you later. But don’t fucking say I’m stupid! And even if I’m not Einstein, it doesn’t mean I’m not self-aware. I know when you’re talking about me 2 feet away. I’m not some impervious, apathetic robot and sometimes insults hurt.

Tags: annoying, stupid, customers

On Wednesday night I was tidying and I see a boy, about 11, messing with something by the birthday stuff. I’d have thought nothing of it but as soon as he sees me, he runs, full pelt in the opposite direction with something in his hand. I go over to where he was and find an empty Fimo wrapper so I track him down and find him with his mum in DIY. I’v told kids off before, but never in front of their parents, so I thought this woman was going to go ape if I started accusing her son of damaging/stealing stock. I asked him if he had any Fimo on him but he denied it point blank, but looked guilty as hell, so I said “I’m not bothered if you’ve opened it or just found it lying around but I can’t really let you leave the store without paying for it if you’ve still got it”. He turned out his pockets and showed he didn’t have it, but even his mum knew something was up. He must have been in trouble before; she didn’t go ape at me but ordered her son not to leave her side again. Hahaha.
I’ll probably find the Fimo dumped at the back of a shelf somewhere weeks from now, little bastard.

Tags: annoying, kids

There’s been a lot of talk in the UK recently about this loophole in the law that allows companies to pay employees below the minimum wage (£5.52 per hour) and use credit card tips to top up salaries.
Staff who work for the Restaurant Group, owner of Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito, Garfunkel's and Blubeckers, are even being threatened with the sack if they don’t encourage customers to pay by credit card. Managers may also face disciplinary action if they don’t enforce this company policy. They have also been told that under no circumstances must they reveal to customers that tips go towards topping up wages.
Staff at Georgetown, a chain of "colonial Malaysian restaurants", have been told that if a customer asks about tips they must say “Yes, we get the tips”, but one waiter said anonymously that all cash and credit card tips are taken by the management, not a single penny goes to floor staff. Owners of Georgetown, Pearl Hotels and Restaurants Ltd, also own The Coconut Lagoon restaurant chain and is run by Kumar Muthalagappan. Shame on you Mr Muthalagappan (I was so tempted to call him something else then).
Pizza Express takes an 8% cut of credit card tips, claiming it as an admin fee, but insist they’re not as bad as other chains who pay below the adult minimum wage. Chains like Zizzi for instance. A former manager for Zizzi said "They pay £4.25 per hour and all credit card tips are used to boost staff up to the minimum wage. I left because I found it disgusting”. Round of applause for that guy/girl! But the Pizza Express employee who revealed that the chain takes 8% of credit card tips as an admin fee has since been sacked.
Coincidentally, Zizzi and Pizza Express are both owned by Gondola Holdings. Hmmmm......
La Tasca is also another culprit, paying their staff £5.05 an hour then using credit card and cheque tips to top up their wages.
And the Nobu Group, part-owned by Robert De Niro, doesn’t give the floor staff a penny of their credit card tips. One bill was for over £1000 with a £150 service charge and an extra £100 tip on top of that, but the waiter recieved nothing.

So to sum that up, avoid paying by credit card in:
Pizza Express
Tootsies
Frankie & Benny’s
Chiquito
Garfunkel’s
Blubeckers
Carluccio's
Cafe Rouge
Zizzi
Georgetown
La Tasca
Nobu
and The Coconut Lagoon.

There are some good guys though:
Pizza Hut
Harvester
All Bar One
Toby Carvery
Blackhouse
Gusto
Rick Stein
Fifteen.

I’m not sure what the situation is in the rest of Europe and the world. Someone enlighten me. I seem to remember hearing that Starbucks in America had to pay some ridiculous amount of money to compensate employees for tips they hadn’t recieved. It’s not really a tip if it isn’t on top of your wages, it it? lol.
Does anyone work for any of these companies? Is it really that bad?
Some companies pay almost as little as £3 before tips. It’s immoral to say the least. Hopefully the law will get changed so restaurant slaves aren’t literally earning a slaves wage.

Minimum wage - Investigations

Tags: pay, wages, companies

If you ask me to go and get something or find something out for you, stay where you are!
How do you expect me to find you when you wander off to the opposite side of the store?

A woman on Wednesday night asked me if a certain table was in stock so I go and try and find it but can’t, so I have to fetch someone who actually works on Furniture. I go back on the shop floor to let the woman know I’m just going to find someone from that department and she asks me where the napkins are. I tell her Housewares but she says “Oh, so they’re not over there then?”, pointing at textiles. I thought “What?! Not likely!” but then I remembered I had actually seen table runners over there at Christmas so I lead her over to have a look anyway and there were actually some fabric napkins...and placemats....on Textiles. WTF? No wonder no one can ever find anything. It makes no sense whatsoever. And if she knew they were over there, why the hell did she ask me in the first place?!
Anyway, I leave her to look at the napkins and I track someone down to find the table but when I go back to tell her we have the table in stock, she’s neither at the napkins or by the display table! I eventually find her, give her the good news and she isn’t even grateful in the slightest. I’ve just chased around, doing everything her purse desired, then had to search half the store looking for her fat ass and she looks bored as hell, completely oblivious to my efforts, and has to force a thankyou out. I don’t care if it makes you gag, you’ll be grateful and say thankyou!

What also happens quite a lot is when I’m not on my department and a customer needs help, I either get called to customer service or back to A&C. I really wish I didn’t get called back to A&C for a customer because it takes me about 5 minutes to find them. They don’t stay in one place. How can they moan about slow customer service if they make it nearly impossible to find them?! It’s not rocket science!

Tags: annoying, customers

You know those customers that come in and just expect you to know what they’re looking for?

Me: “Are you okay there?”
Customer: “Erm, yeah, I’m looking for this thing, I saw it in a magazine and it’s blue.”
Me: “Okay, do you have the magazine with you?”
Customer “No, I didn’t think I’d need it.”
And so on.....

I’v even had customers who have come in on someone elses behalf, with no idea about what they’re really looking for, and end up ringing the other person and then hand the phone over to me.
That never, ever works! I will never find whatever it is you’re poorly describing. And no-matter how hard you try, the mental image you’re sending will never reach me.
For example, I had to speak to one woman over the phone who was looking for sequins and I felt like saying “Seriously, do you know how many things with sequins we sell?! Get off your lazy ass and come and look for yourself!”
And another guy came in looking for an easel so I showed him most of the easels we have. Some are on the back wall which you can’t get to unless you get the ladders, which I was willing to do once I’d asked a few questions to find out what type of easel he was after. Then he said “I was looking for something a bit more, y’know, fab”. I just said to him “Easels don’t really get that glamorous”. He decided he’d just have a look round on his own for a while and about 10 minutes later he came back to me with a big red box and said “This was the kind of thing I was looking for”.
Oh, so you wanted a box easel? Why didn’t you just fucking say so?!

Half the time it’s customers expecting you to be a walking encyclopedia. Like, they can’t even be bothered to remember the name of what they’re looking for. Just the freakin’ name! So they expect you to know every single product and to do their thinking for them.
And the other half are customers who don’t really know what they’re looking for. They haven’t done their research and just come in with a vague description.

I was just reading a few stories on Facebook about these mind reading skills some customers think we possess. Say, a customer orders a coffee but doesn’t specify what kind then kicks off when it isn’t decaf. Is telepathy more common than I thought? We work in a shop which obviously means we’re all as thick as pig shit but we’re supposed to be able to read minds?
This must be about #127on my list of “Things I don’t get” about retail. I wish #1 was customers, but alas, I get lots of them.

Tags: annoying, customers

These Fitting Room Nightmares make me soooo glad I don’t work in a clothes store.

I’v seen Primark left in a pretty bad way, but that’s not even the half of it. Not only do people rip clothes because they’re too fat, but they leave their litter and even take a dump in there. Obviously toilets are too good for some people.

I’v heard some disgusting things about our customer toilets from our store cleaner. For instance, one woman decided she didn’t want to put her used sanitary towel in the appropriate bin and stuck it to the toilet instead. Sick!
And another woman needed to change her baby but didn’t have anything to clean it with, so she went and got a towel from the shelf, wiped her shitty baby with it and just left it in the toilets. Classy! I bet she wasn’t a day over 18.
And then other customers have the nerve to complain about the state of the toilets! “Don’t they get cleaned?!” they say. Yes, but then your fellow revolting customers come along and dirty them up again.

But they’re toilets. At least that’s where shit belongs, not in fitting rooms. Okay, so maybe you have a bowel problem, but if thats the case, shouldn’t you stay at home, or at least overdose on Imodium before you leave the house.
I just don’t get some people. Angry customers making your life hell is one thing, but people who make your life HELL at risk of personal embarrassment to themselves is something else!
I’m still struggling to comprehend it.

Tags: disgusting, customers

If you’ve ever visited the Facebook group: “Fuck the customers”, then you’ll recognise this-



I had such a bad week a while back that I thought “Right, I’m getting myself one of those badges!”, with the intention of wearing it under my jumper so that I could look at it whenever I got frustrated with a customer. It would serve to reaffirm my belief that most customers are dumb, unthinking and nearly always in the wrong. And it worked!

So, how did I go about getting hold of one of these badges?
First stop - Etsy.
Etsy is like eBay but exclusively for stuff thats been handmade, and most sellers will do custom orders so it was simply a case of finding someone who offered to make custom badges.
I found BarrelOfMonkeys.
They also sell badges that say “I will start being nicer if you start being smarter” and “WTF?”, which thinking about now, I should have also bought because they’re both just as relevant.
So I messaged them my request and the next week I was smugly, secretly, wearing this little morale-saver.
Now that its summer though, I’v not been wearing my jumper so haven’t been able to wear the badge. Fortunately, I’v not had too many bad customers.
They’re still around, I’v just done a good job of avoiding them.

Tags: funny, revenge

I was messaging a school/college friend yesterday and I let him know about my little blog, to which he said “You sound very angry, I suggest therapy”.
But he did send me this little conversation he had with a customer:

Customer: “Do you sell any flip knives”
Me: “Yes, we've got a couple. Here...”
Customer: (Looks at them, then looks at me) “Will these cut through seatbelts?”
Me: “Erm, I guess so. You can always buy one, try it and if it doesn't cut through a seatbelt, then you can bring it back.”
Customer: “Right, ok. I'll try it, it's just that I really need it for tonight”

What the hell? Why would you need to cut through a seatbelt? That’s one weird stag do.

He (school/college friend) also said “You can’t blame crappy customers if you have signs like these-”







Good point, but there’s no excuse for the crappy customers I get, seeing as I don’t work in a Chinese Restaurant.

Lol, thanks x

www.engrish.com

Tags: funny, customer, pictures

I spend so much time complaining and seething over stupid customers that I’d forgotten that there really are some lovely people out there, and if I reminded myself of that fact a bit more often, I’d be a bit less bitter.

There is one lady in particular who comes in about once a fortnight to top up her dress making supplies, and as soon as we get talking, we could be there for nearly an hour. She’s nearly 70 but young at heart and a really good laugh.
She even made me a necklace (which is really, really nice) when we were just getting to know each other because she liked my customer service. So that just shows I’m not one of those lazy, unhelpful, nonchalant sales assistants some of you might think I am.
So I’m going to award Lynda the Best Customer (of undetermined time period) Award!

I also had a customer today who was extremely nice, like too nice. I thought he was either gay or flirting but no, it just turns out he was a very, very, very, very happy person. He asked me for fabric scissors and sewing needles so I sent him upstairs to Textiles, but halfway up the escalator he shouted back down to me “They’re not for me by the way!”. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling I’d probably be seeing him again before he left the store and lo and behold, 15 minutes later, he’s back asking me where else he can buy sewing needles. I found it a really nice gesture that he came back to ask me, and he was happy no-matter what I said. Maybe I should find it creepy, but I don’t. It was like he could have got hit by a car and he’d still be smiling.

So I need more nice customers, and it doesn’t take much to be nice. Just an “excuse me”, “please” and a “thank you very much” with a smile, and all previous grievances are forgotten.

Tags: nice, customers

I heard on the radio today that a farmer has had to close his strawberry fields to people wanting to pick their own strawberries because too many people were leaving without paying.
The farm had been running since 1923 but they lost so much of the crop last year due to people not paying (and poor weather conditions) that they can’t afford to open it to the public anymore. I’m not sure if they’ve closed the farm completely or just to the public.
One family he saw walking round had a bowl of water and some cream and were eating the strawberries as they went. When they got back to the exit they claimed they hadn’t found any and left.
Another woman used her skirt to carry a load of strawberries to the car while her husband went to the counter, claimed they could hardly find any and paid for about 3 strawberries.
There were also countless people who would turn up at the counter with their face and clothes covered in juice and only pay for the couple of strawberries they’d have in their basket.
What is wrong with these people? This man is trying to run a business, and farmers are struggling enough as it is. How is not paying for the strawberries you stuffed your face with while going round the field any different than scoffing an ice bun in the supermarket and not telling the cashier?
Children were also responsible for destroying a lot of the crop because they’d run around, knock the fruit off then either stand on them or throw them, and the parents would do nothing. Another case of bad parenting. Why aren’t these people sterilised?
One person rang in to the radio station and said “This is just farmers being greedy. They should employ people to pick them and not exploit people by getting them to pick them for free.”
What? Exploitation? It’s not the farmer doing the exploiting! It’s the greedy fucking customers again! Just because he’s not paying anyone to pick them, doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all. He still has to sell the strawberries to make a living.
This has pissed me off no end. I know it’s only a strawberry field. Hell, I won’t miss it. But the fucking cheek of some of these people. Taking cream with them for crying out loud!
“It’s ok, it’s only a few strawberries”. How about I feed your kids to a pack of wolves, then you wouldn’t have as many mouths to feed.
Sorted!

Tags: disgusting, customers, worst, anger!

To those who work at a fast food place - has this ever happened to you?



I wouldn’t mind one bit if I was stuck on the drive-thru all day if Ehren McGeyhey came along and did that. The girl at the window doesn’t really know what to do, lol. She kinda just forgets about the customers, and any other cars that might be waiting, but what would you do? Offer them another meal even though it wasn’t your fault?

Random fast-food story:
When I went through the drive-thru with my friend ages ago, we asked for a 9 chicken nugget meal and the girl looked realy confused and went away for a bit. When she came back she said “You want 9 chicken nugget meals?”. She was Polish or something and we frantically tried to explain that we did not want 9 chicken nugget meals. We thought we’d got through but then she asked what drinks would we like and we said coke, and she asked “9 cokes?”.
In the end we had to be really patronising and practically spell it out for her while counting on our fingers. When the penny finally dropped she was so embarrassed and I think half the kitchen staff ended up gathered round the order window laughing. They must have been just out of sight listening to the whole thing.
It was hilarious, but I can imagine so many customers not seeing the funny side. Any excuse to get angry.

Anyway, if you would like to see more unseen, not on dvd Jackass footage then go to jackassworld.com.
(Yes, I’m shamelessly promoting their website because they’re going to get shut down if they don’t get more visitors. Jackass makes me laugh no-matter what kind of day I’ve had.)

Tags: video

Carolanne, of Retail Hell Underground, posted about something which I, fortunately, haven’t have much experience of: Sleazy-ass dirty customers! Although I haven’t had any really bad, pervy customers, I do have to work with a couple of sleazy-ass dirty male colleagues.
One is just plain creepy. I think everyone finds him creepy, male or female. I just don’t think he’s very “socially well-adjusted”, rather than sleazy. He doesn’t know the right things to say to people, or maybe he just has the weirdest sense of humour of anyone I’ve ever come across. He says the strangest things sometimes. But there’s quite a few disturbing rumours floating round about him, which I don’t thoroughly believe, and everyone jokes about going round to his house. I do my best to avoid him, because he does freak me out a bit, and just incase he is some sex predator. Not that I’m suggesting he is, but just in case.
The other sleazy colleague always tries to joke about going out for a drink.....constantly. There’s stuff floating round about him too but he’s not half as creepy as the other guy.

As for pervy customers, the only one I can remember is an old man who told me I had a dusty arse, but that was it. Hardly a sleazy-ass dirty stalker shopper.
The fact is I always have a dusty arse because I find excuses to sit on the floor so I'm not on my feet all day. Half the staff have told me and I'm past the point of caring.
There is a much worse example of a pervy customer in Carolanne’s post. Yuk!
Y’know that game: Fuck, Marry, Kill? There should be one to categorise the disgustingness of sleazy-ass dirty customers, ie. Shiver, Puke, Die.
Shiver - I wish I hadn’t heard that; Puke - nauseas and possibly mentally scarred; Die - kill me now!.
Mine only reach Shiver, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Tags: customers, worst, rude, disgusting

This is in no way meant to be offensive or insulting but why do people bring mentally disabled people shopping?
That sounds awful doesn’t it?
The only reason I say it is because some of the carers seem to think it’s ok to off-load them on me for a while.
It’s NOT okay! It freaks me the hell out!
I know a few people who have looked after people with mental and learning disabilities so I know most of them are the nicest, well-meaning people in the world, but I’m niether trained or paid to look after them in my work. I just don’t know how to deal with them, how to respond to them. Like kids, I’ve no idea how to talk to children.
A woman pushing an old man in a wheelchair came up to me yesterday and said “Go on, ask the lady,” and all the old man did was go “Nah nah nah nah nah!”. WTF? What am I supposed to say to that? I was just like “Umm....”, then the woman said “Okay, I’ll ask her then”. That’s fair enough.
But another woman, quite a few months ago now, came in with a girl who must have had Down’s Syndrome or something, and the woman stood by while the girl asked me if we had such and such a thing. When I said no she kept on asking the same thing over and over again, and the longer it went on for, the more amused her carer seemed to get but didn’t do anything about it. I just kept thinking “Why isn’t she doing anything?” and “Can you go now please?”, and finally when the carer had had her fun she said “C’mon, lets go, they don’t have any”. The girl was really sweet, but the carer should have intervened a bit sooner.
Our store is quite close to a school for people with learning difficulties so they’re in the store quite a lot, and I don’t mind that, and I don’t mind serving them either. It’s just when the carers expect me to handle them on my own and don’t step in when they go a bit “off track” or they start dribbling or something. I try and treat them like normal people but how am I supposed to do that when they start talking jibberish?
And whats the point in having a carer if they don’t do anything?


18/6/08: I know this will inevitably cause offence, but please read this post before you get angry/upset/wish death upon me. There’s no good way I can make my point without making myself look shallow, judgemental and prejudiced, I’m just not articulate enough, but I will explain as best as I can.

Tags: customers, disabled

Walking into a shop not only makes you illiterate, but almost completely blind as well. Customers can’t see for looking. Like a few days ago, while I was standing directly opposite a dump bin of string, a customer asked me “Have you got any string?”. If I had a penny for every time someone asked me for something that was staring them in the face, I wouldn’t have to work in retail anymore.
Someone else asked me “Do you have any lunchboxes?”. Lunchboxes?! This is arts & crafts mate, are we really going to have any friggin’ lunchboxes?! Try housewares!
A lot of people seem to confuse arts & crafts with housewares:

“Do you sell storage boxes?”
Housewares!

“Where are your napkins”?
Housewares!

“Have you got any straws?”
Housewares!

“Do you have any more white felt?”
House...No, sorry, we’ve sold out!

Can they not see the huge “Arts And Crafts” sign above my department?! Do they not realise how big the store is and how I can’t possibly know the exact location of every single thing but if they just used their brain they’d figure out that the only department that would make sense to have straws and napkins on is housewares?!
So many people ask me if we sell picture frames when all they need to do is read the sign above the escalator that reads “Gallery” with a picture of a frame! Well they’re not going to be on fucking “Bathrooms” are they! Could I make it any more obvious by smacking them across the face with one?
Once I’ve shown the customer to whatever they wanted in the glaringly obvious place, most come out with something like “Oh, d’y’know, I’m walking round with my eyes closed.” Yeah, no shit!
I don’t know whats worse though: the customers who try looking for something then ask, or the customers who don’t bother looking at all and just come straight to you. That’s just plain lazy - something they don’t hesitate in telling us off for being.
I hate customers so much that even though I’ve had a cold this past week, I still went into work so that I might spread it to as many time-wasting, morale-sapping little c**ts as I could. Thats dedication, if also a little obsessive.

Tags: stupid, dumb, customer

I wasn’t even at work today and I had to put up with another angry customer. I was stood behind this woman in a queue while she was trying to buy some medicine for her baby but she was told the laws had changed and even though it said “suitable for 3 months+” on the bottle, it was only suitable for children over 2 years. But she just wouldn’t let it drop. She was basically being told it was unsafe to give to her baby but she was still trying to buy it! She’d been giving it to her baby already but had run out and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t buy more. It’s one thing arguing with a cashier, but it was the law. Give it up, lady!
I would have really liked to have told her to get lost but she had Stressed Out Mum Syndrome and I would have only made things 10 times worse. Why do kids bring out the worst in people?

Tags: worst, customer

Does your store have any notorious shoplifters? The first place I ever worked had one who would come in, usually on a Sunday, always wearing exactly the same clothes and carrying a folded newspaper. He'd come in on a Sunday because that was when the manager wasn't in. I only ever worked on a Sunday because I was still at college and I also didn't want to see the manager. She was a psycho-bitch and can have her own post she was that insane. So Mr. Shoplifter would come in and we'd be on to him straight away, and he knew we knew who he was. Usually someone would ask him to leave and he'd walk out shouting abuse etc, only to try his luck again later that day in different clothes, and sometimes he did get away with some cheap jewelry or something. One time when it was quite busy, a man came up to the checkout to tell me he'd just seen this guy take some boxes off the shelf and walk out. I had to feign interest but seriously, what good did he think he was doing telling me after he'd seen the guy leave? Couldn't really give a shit what he took anyway to be honest, but what did he expect me to do?!
I did have to be a female witness once at where I work now while my manager dealt with this fugly opportunistic chav thief....and it was my second scariest experience in retail ever, second only to when I knocked the DIY sign down. She’d been caught on CCTV and I was just plucked at random to escort her to the managers office and wait with her till the manager turned up. He came in, closed the door, sat down quietly and asked "You understand why you're here?", then all of a sudden he just exploded- "IF I EVER SEE YOU IN MY FUCKING STORE AGAIN, I WILL KICK YOU ALL THE WAY ROUND THIS STORE AND OUT THE FUCKING DOOR. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU OR YOUR FRIENDS AGAIN! YOU GOT THAT?! NOW GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!". So that's one way to deal with them, and it proved to be quite effective.
Another way is to hunt them down and confront them there and then, even if it’s in the street. I have a friend who works at a video games store and a few weeks ago someone left with Guitar Hero without paying. The assistant manager ran out after him and when he caught up the guy just said "Sorry, didn't realise I had it." LOL, what a comeback! Could have been worse though, could have had a broken bottle on him or something.
I would never confront any thief, and thankfully I'm not expected to. I'v heard some real horror stories of shoplifters involving razor blades and needles.
No effin' way!

Tags: dumb, robber, dangerous

I’v only ever been in the cash office once and I asked my colleague “Do you not find it weird that you’re handling 1000s of pounds, probably the most money you’ll ever hold in your hand at one time in your entire life?” and he said no. He handed me a load of twenties and was like “Here, this wad is £1000, here’s another, that’s £2000….” and I’m holding all this money and he’s right, you just think of it as bits of paper. Then I realise how much I could do with it but I’d probably end up in jail. And then I get angry because I realise here we are, Retail Slaves, making money for the fat cats who give nothing back. It’s not like I’m expecting a pay rise or anything, I know no qualifications = low pay but we at least deserve a safer working environment. I’ve lost count of how many health and safety laws we’re breaking and no one will pay to fix them. We’re not even allowed the fucking heating on in winter because it “costs too much” and the temperature up stairs can reach over 100° in the summer because no one will pay to fix the air-con. But it could be worse…
I know someone who used to work for Jessops (a photographic retailer) and they even had asbestos in their stock room, but not enough to mean the council would repair it for free. Now, Jessops has had to liquidate a lot of it’s stores and stock already to stop it from going under but earlier this year they paid their chairman £500,000 in bonuses….and yet they won’t fork out to repair some fucking asbestos! I’m sure Mr. Chairman would love some in his office. Meanwhile the employees of at least one Jessops store have had to cover it over with tape and just hope they don’t get lung cancer. Nice! That was really worth a 6 figure bonus.

Tags: money, worst

To tie in with the entry about customers who don’t believe a word you say, I’ll tell you about this awful woman I had a few months ago. I don’t think it would have mattered what I said to her, she was angry and I just happened to be the first person she spoke to.
She’d come in looking for A4 wiro sketchbooks saying we hadn’t had any in for weeks. I explained to her that it was exam time and all the kids needed them so they were selling out probably within the day. I didn’t get a chance to say anything else to her because she lauched into this tirade about how I was fobbing her off with excuses, that I didn’t know anything and I was being dishonest. Even as she walked away she continued to shout abuse over her shoulder. There was no “Can I speak to your manager?” or “Can you have a look if there’s any in the back for me?”, she was just another hillbilly with knife skills who wanted any excuse to shout at someone to make her feel better. I was completely dumbstruck. I know the sketchbooks were getting restocked regularly because we have a delivery of them every week, but she’d obviously been unlucky and just come in at the wrong time….every time. I went to look for her later, only to tell her she’d never get a sketchbook from this store again, but she’d already gone. I’d never seen her before and I’v never seen her since, which is a little bittersweet because I was so disappointed in myself for not speaking up the first time that I looked out for her for a few weeks after just so I could make her grovel for a sketchbook. I’v never got my revenge >:o(

Tags: customer, rude, revenge

…to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And you, stupid, conceited little customer better believe me or so help your sorry fucking ass!
Why is it that some customers just don’t believe a word you say? Like if they don’t like your answer, they go off to find someone that will tell them what they want to hear. One snobby old woman was so persistent I wish she’d pop her hip out or something. Alas, then she wouldn’t have been able to walk out the store.
Conversation goes something like so:

Woman: “Excuse me, do you have any place cards”? (i.e. seating cards for weddings etc.)
Me: “No, sorry, we don’t.”
Woman: “Is there anyone else who might know?”
Me: “No, I work on that department and I know we don’t have them.”
Woman: “Oh, I’l go and ask at customer services then. Maybe they’ll know.”
Me: “No, seriously! If you go and ask at customer services, they’re only going to call me on the tannoy and I’l have to walk all the way over there to tell you we don’t have them. We don’t sell place cards!”

And after all that, she still went over and asked at customer services and I had to walk all the way over there just to say “No!”. Then she left, albeit not in a wheelchair.

Tags: annoying, dumb, stupid

It’s not something I do on purpose, but it is funny when it does happen. Like last summer we had some of the patio furniture on display outside and on a really windy day one of the garden swings blew over and hit a woman. I might have had an ounce of compassion had she not made such a poor attempt at being injured. I might have actually believed her had the swing been made out of something more substantial and with a little bit more weight behind it than aluminium! It would also have helped her act if she knew where the pain was coming from. I know she got hit on the upper arm because I saw it, and yet she limped around clutching her wrist! Her husband came in demanding to see the manager, claiming he was going to have to take her to hospital. All that happened was we filled out an accident report and then they walked off absolutely fine. I don’t think we even gave them vouchers. They were after something though.
Another time was when I elbowed a woman in the shoulder as I turned round (I’d had my arm raised, she wasn’t just 4ft tall). She started wincing and sighing and rubbing her shoulder. I had apologized straight away but she didn’t even acknowledge me. Unless her fleece was lined with drawing pins or something, there was no way she had felt any pain, ’cause I’l be honest with you, getting hit by me is like having a fly bump into you. I weigh like 110lbs and she was built like a brick shit house, so all pretense of pain only made me want to retract my apology more or wish I’d turned round with a bit more urgency. I just walked off. If she’d wanted any help, she wasn’t getting it.
There’s also been more than one incident where small children have come along, decided that they like the look of the escalators and shoved their little fingers into that small hole around where the black hand rail disappears into the inner workings of the escalator. Some got lucky and escaped with just dirty fingers and blisters but I think one boy might have even broken his finger. I say might have because I wasn’t there to see but I was told it came out at a very odd angle. That’ll learn him! And his stupid parents!
I think there was another incident where a woman managed to cut herself on something. It bled quite a lot but she was totally fine about it, didn’t try to blame it on anything or anyone. We looked after her and everything. The one customer who actually had a right to cause a fuss was the only one who didn’t. It’s stuff like this that keeps me from losing faith in humanity completely.

Tags: funny, dumb

I try to avoid going anywhere near the tills or customer service if possible because I know I’m going to get cornered by someone. I had to do a price check for a customer last week so I had no choice but to use one of the tills and low and behold, some shifty looking guy who had been hanging around the tills pretending to look at sweets comes up to me.
Guy: “Um, excuse me. I want to come in and buy something but I don’t have any change for the car park. Do you think you could swap my pound for some change?”
Do I give a fuck about whether you want to buy something or not? I get paid the same no matter what you do and if the store closes down because we don’t make enough money, well good riddance! I’m serving another customer right now so I’m afraid you’ll have to go and get ripped off by the ticket machine!
This brings me back to the haggling issue: people who think they deserve something for free because they think they’re spending a lot of money. Spending less than £100 on a digital camera is cheap and nasty and definitely not worth giving you anything for free. And even if you do spend lots of money in our store and drive a flashy car, that doesn’t mean we’re going to pay for the damage you just did to your upholstery by lying a tin of paint on it’s side!
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is: obviously the whole point of shops is to make money and provide you with the shit you want, but the only people that care about your money are the people at the top who are actually getting the profit. Do you think I’m going to make an exception for you just because you say you’re going to spend money? And why would we give you special treatment because you say you’re a loyal customer? Well, first of all, you need to come in more than twice a year to be a loyal customer. Secondly, your custom ain’t worth jack to me! The more of you that go elsewhere, the happier I’l be. Don’t like my attitude? Suck it!

Tags: money

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a customer? Did you get fired? Was it worth it?

I’v not really done anything really rude or bad. The worst I did was when I worked in a small shop that sold replica antiques (whats the point, I know) and other olde worlde things, so 99% of our customers were old to very old women. A very old women came in with her daughter and asked about some unicorn statue, for her granddaughter, and then started complaining about a chip in it’s horn. I checked with the highest ranking member of staff in on that day who confirmed it was supposed to be a have a chip (us being a shop that sold olde worlde things that were supposed to look rustic an’ all, plus there wasn’t even a fucking chip, she was just imagining it) but when I told the woman she said “I don’t think so!”. I’d only been working in retail for about a month or so and I’d already run out of patience so I said “Well, it’s the only one we have in stock. Do you want to buy it or not?” and when she said no, I just said “Fine!” and walked off. It doesn’t sound too bad, but she was in a wheelchair so I left her sitting in the middle of the shop until her daughter came and wheeled her away. They didn’t make a complaint or anything and it still makes me smile when I remember how I left that stupid, ol’ senile bitch sitting helpless with no one to moan at for once in her life. I’m supposed to like old people, and I generally do, but some seem to just cling onto life for no reason other than to make yours a living hell. Oh wait, that’s just retail. *facepalm*

Tags: worst