"This is Evie's first retail experience. They have her managing lingerie.
"Yesterday, they had a corporate head guy come through at 10 am. The store manager told her at 8am there was to be this surprise inspection at 10 and unfortunately the night crew had left 5 full carts of merchandise in her department to be tagged and shelved. He knew it was not fair, but he needed it done.
"She got it done, but just as the head guy was coming to her department here comes a woman with 5 unruly kids. Knocking over the racks, grabbing the bras and screaming "look mom I have boobs". Horrified store manager got the bigwigs to move on while kids continued to destroy department. Mom of the kids went into melt down and started beating them all with both her purse and one she grabbed off a rack.
"An hour later, while trying to help an elderly woman on a cane, who could not find the type of bras from her day... Evie innocently asked 'well could you try and describe it to me so I can help you find something like it'. The woman lifted up her shirt to show her the bra she wanted.
"Welcome to retail."
16 comments:
That sounds about right. Except, when I worked at Lowe's, the kids would stick a 2x4 between their legs and walk around saying, "Look at my big wood!"
Ha ha!! Poor girl! It reminds me of the time I worked in a maternity store... women running into the bathroom to puke, husbands in dressing rooms yelling "Your boobs have gotten HUGE!!!", and the woman in her last trimester pregnant with twins who's starting to cry because literally nothing fits her.
I hope she finds something else soon.
By the way, I love your blog!
So TRUE! That's why I went from a life of retail to a nice, comfy, stay-at-home job as a medical transcriptionist. Thanks, Dr. Grumpy, for reminding me why I left that life. I'd much rather live vicariously through the medical blogs from my desk and chair!
Shortly after my wife and I were married, we were stopping by a shopping mall near our apartment.
On the external door of one of the department stores anchoring the mall, someone had taped up a neatly printed sign, which informed customers
"Maternity has now been moved to between lingerie and infants"
Made perfect sense to us.
Evie might enjoy the site notalwaysright.com if you don't mind passing on a link. It's all crazy stories from retail hell. :)
The store manager and the district manager have to each grow a pair. Five kids are destroying displays and possibly merchandise. Anywhere else, and we call that vandalism. The mother is being a child abuser. The best the store manager can do is to lead the district manager elsewhere? I'd be calling whomever is on the store security team and possibly the cops.
I will say that is the one thing I like about my retail pharmacy store - the managers each have a spine, and the district managers will back them up.
It's fine to beat the children with your own purse but when you take a purse off the rack for child beating purposes, that's just wrong :P
Kudos to grandma for not being afraid to flash herself! Some days I still think I work retail, but with IVs and percocet!
I just found your blog and I love it!
And for this she makes minimum wage. Great.
This is the average life of a retail associate. Wait until she finds poop in the dressing room!
My daughter is working retail while going to college for her batchelor's in psych! Her latest assignment is a gender research and she's doing her study where she works! Plenty of loonies between staff, management and customers.
If you think that Crownedwithvictory is joking, think again! I once did overnight stocking at a large department store chain, and we routinely found piles of excrement in out-of-the-way places in the store. I always assumed (hoped!) that it was little kids dropping trow when their moms weren't looking, but who knows? Lucky for us, it was the manager's job to clean it up because he had taken training in bio-hazard containment!
At first I thought that sounded like a pretty good gig, but after all that, I'm rethinking my stance.
My friend who worked retail would tell me that customers would pee on clothes in the dressing room when they have to go real bad. that's freaking sick. make sure you wash all clothes before wearing!!!
My excitement was finding unwrap condoms when trying to straighten the shelves :-\ yuck!
There's a comic strip called Retail available at http://www.seattlepi.com/fun/retail.asp if you feel like passing along another link. Like most, it has some days way better than others, but I enjoy it (and my own days of customer service are long gone).
The most amazing tale I have heard from retail land: Orange Clean Lady! http://community.livejournal.com/parent_failures/1424.html has links to all three posts of this saga.
In short - arcade worker cleans machines with an Orange clean solution; when her back is turned, a toddler grabs the rag out of the bucket and starts chewing on it. Mother and toddler both get very irrate when the clerk takes it away, because it smells like oranges so it must be good to eat.
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