Retail Hell

100% of my job experience thus far has come in the form of customer service. Why that is I'm not entirely sure but there you have it. I only started working once I was 17 (being the lazy bugger that I am) so it's not like I have oodles of noodles of experience, but I do have a few stories that are good to tell around the campfire. The same campfire that Jason will always look out for to get his next serial killer fix, by the way. I'm a survivor. Don't forget it.


My survival skills don't just revolve around dodging machete-wielding maniacs, however. Retail is the sort of job where you need that survival instinct. If you don't have it, you're going to get eaten alive by not only bitchy customers but pent up bosses, disgruntled co-workers, power-tripping management, and the ever present sales goal that can never be achieved. Once you sign up for the job, your soul is now the property of whatever company you work for. Once upon a time I had a soul. Now it's replaced by memorized sales every week, what's "in" concerning the fashion world, and elastic-waist pants that older women seem to love so much. Yea, I can find those with my eyes closed. I'm all set for my elder years (if I live long enough to see them years).


Most of the grief, mind you, comes from you guys. Society. The customers. The majority of my stories come from dealing with the lot of you and my main question to you is this; do you not remember what a hanger is or how to use it? Too many times have I and my co-workers cleaned up an area perfectly, made it shine and sparkle like gold, only to turn our backs for 5 minutes and return to the remains of Hurricane Katrina in our store. Clothes won't even just be on the floor. They'll be flung over racks, stuffed into crevices we didn't even know existed (Narnia is now in the dress section), and pretty much treated like the rags you wash your car with. I understand that when you're shopping that you want easy access to everything. That and you do enough cleaning at home. Why be conscious about it in a store where there's people to do it for you? Well, because we clean at home too and there's only so much of us versus you guys. If you're going to trash our store, don't come back later to bitch about how trashy our store looks. 


That's just a small thing for me, though. I'm mostly at the cash register, taking people's money for my company. As such I get to meet quite a variety of different people. Some are really nice, like this old man who periodically comes in to share chocolate with all of us. It may sound sketchy but none of us have blacked out to only wake up in an unknown place with our pants missing yet. He just likes to come in, share some chocolate, and tell us stories about his granddaughters of whom he is so proud. My family has never been that proud of me so it's quite interesting to see that sort of emotion up close. Almost like watching a movie but you get free snacks!


All that being said it should be noted that for every nice person there's about 4 jackasses to make up for it. Jackasses or people who you can't help but wonder how they remember to breathe. No word of a lie, a woman asked me if I could change her limit on her bank account with RBC. Last time I checked, I'm not the bank. I even told her so. However, her disappointment was genuine that I didn't have the power to hack into RBC's banking system to increase the limit she had on her account so she could buy a few shirts. Shirts that would be on sale for the entire week, nonetheless. It could be argued that she was confused for she was elderly and also not from this country. It could also be argued, however, that I don't look like a goddamn bank teller.


There are also those who seem to think they know how to do my job better than me. Recently a Russian man tried to tell me how to calculate the percentage being taken off of a sale item. I'll be the first to admit that math is not my cuppa. If someone gave me an algebra equation, put a gun to my head, and told me to solve it I would just tell the person he might as well shoot me. Math and I don't get along. That's where the calculator in my cash register comes in handy! I don't care how Russian you are. You could ride a bear into my store and threaten to have it bite my head off. You could send Russian Spetsnaz babies in to destroy me in the most gruesome way possible. I'm still taking a computer's word over yours, especially if you're being a dick and especially if I have all the prices memorized after dealing with the sales all day. After telling him so in a diplomatic fashion (as diplomatic as I can be, mind you) he tried telling me about his years in sales working for such and such, owning such and such company for such and such years. Ok, I get it. You're a Russian mogul. The fashion world's answer to Putin. Get over it.


My ultimate favourite thing is when dealing with someone who is bitchy, uppity, snobbish, and watching them then struggle to use their debit/credit cards. There's just something so satisfying to have an individual treat you like you don't know what you're doing only to have them humiliate themselves by having no idea about what they're doing. At that point, I'll walk them through the steps just to add insult to injury. It usually goes something like this:


Bitchy Customer: "So, it's a swipe?"
Me: "No, you use your chip."
Bitchy Customer: *Swipes the card*
Me: "No, insert the chip at the bottom"
Bitchy Customer: "Oh..." -attempts to do so- "It doesn't go in"
Me: *Easily inserts the card for them*
Bitchy Customer: "Oh...ok, so what do I do now?"
Me: "Follow the prompts on the screen."
Bitchy Customer: *Puts in pin number*
Me: "No, you have to accept the transaction, choose your account, then put your pin number in"
Bitchy Customer: *Spontaneously combusts from the effort*


If the customer survives the eternal hellfire they've brought upon themselves from the vast amounts of concentration this takes, they're so frustrated and embarrassed that they shut right up about anything they might have been saying to me before. For the cherry on the cake, I then act very sweet and hope that they have an honest-to-goodness great day! 


These are just a few examples of not what only I put up with but what anyone in the retail business lives on a day-to-day basis. We've all had our intelligence questioned, our integrity put on the line, our patience tested, our lives threatened (no joke), and our faith in humanity broken down. Which brings us to the question of why do it? Well, someone has to. We can't all just walk out on retail and leave all you dumbasses to do it yourselves! You can't use your debit cards, you can't find change rooms that are right there, you don't know what size you are, you don't even know what you're looking for half the time! In a way, retail workers are the superheroes of the everyday world! We save you from not only looking like shit but from getting yourselves killed between women's wear and shoes!


Actually, I just do it for the large sums of money that I obviously make in a part-time position at the minimum wage rate.