Retail Horrors
The crowning moment was when my roommate, who at the time was the manager of the store, paid a woman never to come back
We've all heard the retail horror stories, from a friend who got stuck working at some store in high school, or over break, correct? So this, my first writing, may not be a new experience to many of you. If there is a notable point that sets my experiences apart, it's that I almost made a career of it. I was to be the permanent but transitory employee. I always returned to the same chain, but I would quit at least once a year and work somewhere else for a few months, due to the gradual building of frustration. One can only be polite to a slug with a two-digit IQ so many times over. The face changes, but the fact that a person who has never had a concious thought has wandered in and, by virtue of not working there, is immediately placed in a dominant position over the people who do, is a constant. The belief that the customer is lord of the domain and the employees are lowly slaves is far too common among 1. people who do not work in retail and 2. executives of retail compaines in American society, and I'm astounded that the post office produces more mass murderers than the major chains do. But I digress; this is not a grand social commentary, this is a recounting of the utter freaks I encountered at my various jobs. The one I always returned to, the source of most of these tales, was a major retailer of cheap electronics. To avoid lawsuits I won't name names, but let's just say they haven't picked up on the "giant goddamn warehouse" style of store yet. Theirs are still small. And they like to know your name, address, social security number, etc.
I won't go too much into the ragers. The dude who threatened to jump over the counter until the off-duty cop in line behind him said something (said cop ended up chasing him across the parking lot) isn't that entertaining (next time keep it within thirty days of the purchase date, guy). Let it simply be said that people take themselves too seriously, and we'll move on. I will close this ugly chapter with a favorite conversation between myself and a customer, though:
Customer: "I bought one of your organizers last week and the thing was a piece of shit! I threw it on the floor and smashed it to pieces it was so hard to use!"
Me: "And how's that working out for you?"
I mean, really. I would have taken it back if he had the box and receipt. Christ.
For utter madness, nobody beats Helicopter Lady. I only encountered her once, but that was enough. I was standing outside, enjoying the 5th or 6th cigarette in the two hours I'd been at work that day, and I saw her coming. Lurching across the parking lot from the low-rent highrise across the street, clad in the stirrup pants and sweatshirt that are the uniform of most women over 25 in Delran, NJ; I knew immediately that this cigarette would be ruined. It was a revelation of apocalyptic proportions; the last few had been ruined by customers as well, and I felt deep in my tuberculoid lungs that my base, addictive urges would be denied again. I resisted the compulsion to shout profanities and hurl the butt to the ground, and simply stood there, frozen. It was as if she walked across parted seas; sound stopped and I could almost hear the choirs and horns of the seraphim heralding the Last Judgment. Flabby thighs shuddering with every step, she waddled purposefully toward me. There was no chance she was going to the filthy Chinese restaurant next door (we were infested with roaches from them), nor the gift shop, nor the dollar store. No, she came bearing a prepaid cellphone in her hand, and I knew not only would my cigarette be ruined, I would have to spend at least an hour waiting on hold with the phone company, then reprogramming the thing, because she had not purchased airtime before the old airtime expired and would need to have the wretched device reactivated.
Helicopter Lady: "I have a problem with my phone..."
Me: "okay, what's..." (I was pretty sure, but you have to ask.)
HL: "... but we should go inside. I've been seeing a lot of helicopters lately."
Me: "okay, let's... what?"
HL: "I think it's the FBI. I must have done something really bad." (pause) "or maybe... I did something... REALLY GOOD!"
I swear to God, people, she would have made a good Ren & Stimpy character. John K's lysergide-addled brain could not have fashioned her more perfectly. I got her goddamn cellphone working eventually, and of course she called back later that day because she thought we were defrauding her of airtime somehow. It's not important. I just need to press the point that I was made to act in a servile manner toward a woman who had some serious mental problems. But oh, it gets better.
A friend of mine still works at that store. He has a regular customer now who is known throughout the shopping center as "mustard gas lady," because she insists the people at the supermarket customer service counter are trying to poison her with said World War I-vintage chemical weaponry. She can't go to the police because they're tapping her phone, and using it to make calls, thereby driving her bills up. I've met her and she smells strongly of urine; that's not unusual actually. Most people in Delran find it easier to toss their elderly relatives in the cheap apartment building and let them spend their pension on rent and their social security on gin than to set them up in an actual retirement home. This ensures that they spend plenty of time in their own filth.
The crowning moment was when my roommate, who at the time was the manager of the store, paid a woman never to come back, though. This may interest psychologists and anthropologists; it boggles the mind that she could expect as much humility and dish out as much abuse as she did and accept his money only grudgingly! I would seem to be getting ahead of myself, so let us start at the beginning.
On the first day, a sixtysomething woman entered the store with a complaint about her archaic answering machine. She complained of the sound quality; she could no longer discern the words of people who left messages on it. After many probing questions, I found that this beast was so ancient it had dual full-size cassettes, rather than the miniature ones they're phasing out even now in favor of full-digital recording. She verified my suspicions, so, thinking this the problem, I sold her two tapes: one for incoming messages, one for outgoing. Unfortunately, she did not have the machine with her, and as it turned out, one of the tapes was of strange construction, having only one little spoked wheel, with a hole in the plastic with no wheel on the other side. This sort of tape was common 12 to 15 years ago; we were out of it when she came in and I knew it hadn't been that popular, so I sold her the standard model with two rollers. This is where Sean, the roomie-manager guy, took over. She came back. She complained that the tape didn't work. He asked her to bring the tapes and machine in; he found the problem when she did and sold her the correct, unusual tape. She took it home. We thought the problem solved at this point, but oh no. The saga was just beginning.
Phase Two. Now it's WORSE. she comes in, at Sean's behest, bearing this clockwork monstrosity out of the distant past and all the accoutrements. At this point, her complaints begin. Apparently she has chosen to keep the thing inside and underneath her couch, in some unfathomable arrangement of furniture and secret compartments. This does not present any problem for her when playing messages, somehow, but makes it a near-impossible ordeal for her to bring the machine to us. I must now point out that we do not owe her any of the diagnosis Sean does for her at this point; were he to have done things by the book he would have sent it out to the Repair Center at her cost, as the machine was at least ten years past the end of its warranty. But Sean was young and idealistic then, which engendered a foolish sort of altruism in him. He spent an hour cleaning the wretched thing, poking through it, ensuring that she had not broken any heads or rollers when performing her first-ever change of tapes. All was well. He tried it out in the store and it worked. He sent her home.
And it was "broken." His fault, according to her, even though he had shown her that it worked. Back it came, and she got a tutorial in hooking up all the wires correctly.
Back again. Now it worked, but the sound quality was worse than ever. At this point, Sean told her what he should have said a week previously, that it was no longer our responsibility to keep this thing in good working order, and it had not been for many years. She should buy another. But, she insisted, his gracious attempts to fix it had broken something; it was practically unusable now, whereas it had been only inconvenient before.
The arguments continued. Consider the facts; she recieved far more than she was owed. The answerer was well beyond its life expectancy, but of course, in the flawed mind of the holy and superior Customer, the company was responsible for making a "piece of junk," and she deserved compensation.
Poor Sean. He'd had enough. He said, "wait here." A few minutes he returned, from the ATM machine, with $60.00 of his own money, and said, "This is for you. You can buy another answering machine if you want, I don't care. But you can't buy it here. If you take this, I never want to see you or this machine again." She took it and left. Grumpily. GRUMPILY, people! She had spent about five dollars of her money and perhaps two hours of her time, total, and had a goodly sum to show for it, but she was barely satisfied. Now, this is an extreme case, but it's by and far NOT the only instance of a customer expecting more than he or she deserved that I witnessed as a sales associate. I don't know what causes this - a desire in inferior people to command someone was my first thought. Petty viciousness is on the rise. My paranoia later had me thinking that it was demoralization of people who chose to live outside the "go to college, graduate, work in an office" norm, by corporate overlords, who encouraged the buying public to treat people in the retail and service industries so badly. In retrospect I've come to think that's unlikely. I've got a networking job now, so I don't have to care, but I still hang out with my buddies who haven't escaped. It's partly a shared-trauma thing; we've bonded. It's also to help me feel that I can still connect with "real" people now that I've sold out and gotten a mainstream job; just like me wearing jump boots and faded old heavy metal T-shirts to the office because it reminds me of who I am outside work. So I guess I've got my own weird psychology as well.
I won't go too much into the ragers. The dude who threatened to jump over the counter until the off-duty cop in line behind him said something (said cop ended up chasing him across the parking lot) isn't that entertaining (next time keep it within thirty days of the purchase date, guy). Let it simply be said that people take themselves too seriously, and we'll move on. I will close this ugly chapter with a favorite conversation between myself and a customer, though:
Customer: "I bought one of your organizers last week and the thing was a piece of shit! I threw it on the floor and smashed it to pieces it was so hard to use!"
Me: "And how's that working out for you?"
I mean, really. I would have taken it back if he had the box and receipt. Christ.
For utter madness, nobody beats Helicopter Lady. I only encountered her once, but that was enough. I was standing outside, enjoying the 5th or 6th cigarette in the two hours I'd been at work that day, and I saw her coming. Lurching across the parking lot from the low-rent highrise across the street, clad in the stirrup pants and sweatshirt that are the uniform of most women over 25 in Delran, NJ; I knew immediately that this cigarette would be ruined. It was a revelation of apocalyptic proportions; the last few had been ruined by customers as well, and I felt deep in my tuberculoid lungs that my base, addictive urges would be denied again. I resisted the compulsion to shout profanities and hurl the butt to the ground, and simply stood there, frozen. It was as if she walked across parted seas; sound stopped and I could almost hear the choirs and horns of the seraphim heralding the Last Judgment. Flabby thighs shuddering with every step, she waddled purposefully toward me. There was no chance she was going to the filthy Chinese restaurant next door (we were infested with roaches from them), nor the gift shop, nor the dollar store. No, she came bearing a prepaid cellphone in her hand, and I knew not only would my cigarette be ruined, I would have to spend at least an hour waiting on hold with the phone company, then reprogramming the thing, because she had not purchased airtime before the old airtime expired and would need to have the wretched device reactivated.
Helicopter Lady: "I have a problem with my phone..."
Me: "okay, what's..." (I was pretty sure, but you have to ask.)
HL: "... but we should go inside. I've been seeing a lot of helicopters lately."
Me: "okay, let's... what?"
HL: "I think it's the FBI. I must have done something really bad." (pause) "or maybe... I did something... REALLY GOOD!"
I swear to God, people, she would have made a good Ren & Stimpy character. John K's lysergide-addled brain could not have fashioned her more perfectly. I got her goddamn cellphone working eventually, and of course she called back later that day because she thought we were defrauding her of airtime somehow. It's not important. I just need to press the point that I was made to act in a servile manner toward a woman who had some serious mental problems. But oh, it gets better.
A friend of mine still works at that store. He has a regular customer now who is known throughout the shopping center as "mustard gas lady," because she insists the people at the supermarket customer service counter are trying to poison her with said World War I-vintage chemical weaponry. She can't go to the police because they're tapping her phone, and using it to make calls, thereby driving her bills up. I've met her and she smells strongly of urine; that's not unusual actually. Most people in Delran find it easier to toss their elderly relatives in the cheap apartment building and let them spend their pension on rent and their social security on gin than to set them up in an actual retirement home. This ensures that they spend plenty of time in their own filth.
The crowning moment was when my roommate, who at the time was the manager of the store, paid a woman never to come back, though. This may interest psychologists and anthropologists; it boggles the mind that she could expect as much humility and dish out as much abuse as she did and accept his money only grudgingly! I would seem to be getting ahead of myself, so let us start at the beginning.
On the first day, a sixtysomething woman entered the store with a complaint about her archaic answering machine. She complained of the sound quality; she could no longer discern the words of people who left messages on it. After many probing questions, I found that this beast was so ancient it had dual full-size cassettes, rather than the miniature ones they're phasing out even now in favor of full-digital recording. She verified my suspicions, so, thinking this the problem, I sold her two tapes: one for incoming messages, one for outgoing. Unfortunately, she did not have the machine with her, and as it turned out, one of the tapes was of strange construction, having only one little spoked wheel, with a hole in the plastic with no wheel on the other side. This sort of tape was common 12 to 15 years ago; we were out of it when she came in and I knew it hadn't been that popular, so I sold her the standard model with two rollers. This is where Sean, the roomie-manager guy, took over. She came back. She complained that the tape didn't work. He asked her to bring the tapes and machine in; he found the problem when she did and sold her the correct, unusual tape. She took it home. We thought the problem solved at this point, but oh no. The saga was just beginning.
Phase Two. Now it's WORSE. she comes in, at Sean's behest, bearing this clockwork monstrosity out of the distant past and all the accoutrements. At this point, her complaints begin. Apparently she has chosen to keep the thing inside and underneath her couch, in some unfathomable arrangement of furniture and secret compartments. This does not present any problem for her when playing messages, somehow, but makes it a near-impossible ordeal for her to bring the machine to us. I must now point out that we do not owe her any of the diagnosis Sean does for her at this point; were he to have done things by the book he would have sent it out to the Repair Center at her cost, as the machine was at least ten years past the end of its warranty. But Sean was young and idealistic then, which engendered a foolish sort of altruism in him. He spent an hour cleaning the wretched thing, poking through it, ensuring that she had not broken any heads or rollers when performing her first-ever change of tapes. All was well. He tried it out in the store and it worked. He sent her home.
And it was "broken." His fault, according to her, even though he had shown her that it worked. Back it came, and she got a tutorial in hooking up all the wires correctly.
Back again. Now it worked, but the sound quality was worse than ever. At this point, Sean told her what he should have said a week previously, that it was no longer our responsibility to keep this thing in good working order, and it had not been for many years. She should buy another. But, she insisted, his gracious attempts to fix it had broken something; it was practically unusable now, whereas it had been only inconvenient before.
The arguments continued. Consider the facts; she recieved far more than she was owed. The answerer was well beyond its life expectancy, but of course, in the flawed mind of the holy and superior Customer, the company was responsible for making a "piece of junk," and she deserved compensation.
Poor Sean. He'd had enough. He said, "wait here." A few minutes he returned, from the ATM machine, with $60.00 of his own money, and said, "This is for you. You can buy another answering machine if you want, I don't care. But you can't buy it here. If you take this, I never want to see you or this machine again." She took it and left. Grumpily. GRUMPILY, people! She had spent about five dollars of her money and perhaps two hours of her time, total, and had a goodly sum to show for it, but she was barely satisfied. Now, this is an extreme case, but it's by and far NOT the only instance of a customer expecting more than he or she deserved that I witnessed as a sales associate. I don't know what causes this - a desire in inferior people to command someone was my first thought. Petty viciousness is on the rise. My paranoia later had me thinking that it was demoralization of people who chose to live outside the "go to college, graduate, work in an office" norm, by corporate overlords, who encouraged the buying public to treat people in the retail and service industries so badly. In retrospect I've come to think that's unlikely. I've got a networking job now, so I don't have to care, but I still hang out with my buddies who haven't escaped. It's partly a shared-trauma thing; we've bonded. It's also to help me feel that I can still connect with "real" people now that I've sold out and gotten a mainstream job; just like me wearing jump boots and faded old heavy metal T-shirts to the office because it reminds me of who I am outside work. So I guess I've got my own weird psychology as well.