"The Store is Closing"

So we all know the subtle social contracts that we all agree to unceremoniously around the time we start being "Adults." You may not be able to actively list them, but we all get into scenarios in which it kicks in inadvertently and both parties, regardless of fault, are able to save face and move on with their lives.

A great example is how we don't try to go to restaurants when it is nearing closing time. Not only is it rude, since we we know they have cleanup to do, but much like the old "drop the soap" adage, the "messing with your food" is common knowledge, regardless of if it is common practice.

So why..oh why..does this social contract seem to be broken so often with department and/or grocery stores?

There is an enormous checklist of things to be done from the time we lock the doors to the time the staff is able to leave and every second someone spends obliviously trying on clothing is time we cannot do our jobs.

So while you are refusing to listen to the overhead pages, dimming lights, and associates who are "over the top" greeting you every three seconds, my team is trying to get you the hell out. While it is enough that this customer has broken the social contract once, they also seem to be the ones clamoring to be completely oblivious. These same customers, being the only ones in the store, will be fishing for their checkbooks, their coupons, their cards; they will haggle over prices, try to chit chat, or use the age old comment "Sorry, I just really needed this tonight."

A final thought..if you wait until 5 minutes to close to check out...you deserve to wait in line for the one open register. Don't stand their with the debate captain face staring at every associate that is recovering the pile of crap you left everywhere...enjoy queuing and move to the UK, where it is practically a sport.

Try organizing your life a bit better.

Keep smiling and stay safe out there fellow retail comrades,
-Milly

Invented Stereotypes

So in the last three days, I have experienced something I would like to refer to as "Invented Stereotypes." This phenomenon occurs when someone accuses someone else of being racist due to a stereotype that does not exist (or at least in mainstream culture) until the moment it was uttered from their lips.

An associate of mine had taken a phone call about a loss prevention stop that was unwarranted. This is a bad situation in all senses of the word, however the woman said that she believed she was stopped because she was "Asian." 

Now I am not sure about you, but I feel that all the terrible stereotypical assumptions out in the word tend to be pretty well known. Regardless of their validity, they are fairly mainstream and are comically talked about in most circles. Most of which are either so outlandish, or simply accepted that they have never cause a race riot...maybe some tears in a toilet stall somewhere, but nothing that I have to subjected to on the daily news feeds.

Classic!

But unless you have a series of Yakuza tattoos (are those even a thing?), I highly doubt any trained Loss Prevention officer is honing in on asians as a group notorious for stealing. In fact, I will say that nearly all stereotypes (with the exception of those that negatively imply positive things "Asians are good at math"), I have personally witnessed by my own race...decisively more often than others. "Oh, black folks are all using welfare unfairly." Yeah...no...when I worked for Pick n Save, I watched more white folks using their quest card to try and buy high end protein (Crab, Lobster, and Steak) than anyone else...maybe its even worse because they are fulfilling said stereotypes with some unwarranted sense of deserving.

Yesterday, I had an man of clear Indian descent self-complimenting himself by declaring that "I know it seems like I had all sorts of money." Ummm...by a purely scientific standpoint: you are wearing worn denim, a stained t-shirt, you are shopping in a discount retailer, you haggles with me on every price, and you just paid for your entire purchase in coupons...but yes, that is the impression I got. Trust fund child FOR SURE. 

Case in point, if you have a race and/or exist, you don't get to reverse stereotype yourself by thinking that every crappy thing that happens to you is about race. I am sorry if you have not realized it yet, but it's about "people" as a race, one of which you are included...and we are pretty crappy creatures in general.

Um...some of the worst cooks I have ever known are women

To all my retail comrades,

Smile safe out there :)

-Milly

You Had One Job

"Hi, I have this purchase, but I did not bring my percentage off coupon, or my dollar off coupons...and I forgot my charge card...and my driver's license...will that be a problem?"

Your job was to pay for something after picking it up....it was the ONLY thing you had to do in here...and you managed to increase the complexity of said transaction tenfold.

With technology increasing and our pace of business increasing just as fast, I am still completely puzzled by how the average person preps themselves for a purchase. The sheer minutes wasted deciding between the lace tank and regular tank is overwhelmed by the complete loss of motor function that people exhibit when panic as it is their turn to check out. Imagine the cluster that occurs when someone gets to the fast-food line without an idea of what they want.

Good news, is that they have a picture and a dollar amount to deal with. In a fashion retail environment where coupon and deal chasing is the name of the game..it becomes incrementally more of a waste of time for both associate and customer. If I had a tumor for every time a customer looked back at those in line and then continued to dig around the disaster that is her purse, I would be yelling "Start the Reactor Quaid" at every opportunity.

#YouHadOneJob

Shopper or Returner?

So I have come to determine that there are two types of people that shop in department stores. Both have their patterns and strategy for shopping. Don't get me wrong...the fact that someone has a "strategy" for shopping literally drives me up a wall every day. The "strategy" for shopping should be as follows:

"I need some pants."

*Buys pants*

End of Strategy.

and don't try to tell me that you need to check the sizes and colors...they are pants...if you don't envision what you need right off the bat, it is not time for new pants. 

Side note: If you don't know your dress shirt size, you aren't going to get a job for the interview anyway...give it up. If you are going to prom and you don't know your dress shirt size, the date you are with probably doesn't understand a button up anyway.

Customer Type #1- The Shopper
The shopper is considered the "Coupon" Lady when she shops at the grocery store. She is in it to win it and will not stop until she finds exactly what she wants at the price she wants it at.  Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but couple the extensive shopper with generally sloppiness and disregard for other people and their surroundings; and you get a one of the most obnoxious people you could meet. This is the person that will stand right next to an associate and open up a package of undershirts, lay them all out, decide on a size, then purchase AN UNOPENED PACKAGE. You can always follow the shopper by looking for broken hang tags, hangars on the floor, and a swath of unrecovered merchandise in their wake.

"I just needed to see how different the patterns were in different sizes"

Customer Type #2- The Returner

Now this customer is in a hurry. She wants about a hundred items from her list, but she will be bothered to know the sizes or styles of any of these items she is purchasing. She will not make a huge mess (at least initially) in her FRENZY to get in and out of the store, normally on her 15 minute break. However, this customer then returns 95% of the items she had purchased. There are distinct and horrendous levels of the disruption that this cases. If someone returns 20 items on hangars within a few days of purchases them with the tags attached...you are awesome...do whatever the hell you want because you are my new favorite person. HOWEVER, this never seems to happen. It is always in a pile, no hangars, tags all mixed up, no receipt, and she will aggressively inform you that she doesn't have time to wait around because she is on her lunch break. Let me explain how long a single item takes to process in this status.

1. We unfurl the item (again, its in a ball) and we check for tags.
2. No tags? Great, we will check inside the shirt for a sewn in tag (about 80% of our brands will have these).
3. If it is a third party national brand (like Levi's) we have to look up the item from another size, another style, or looking on the website to find a SKU.
4. If not, we return it using those numbers.
5. We continue to process other customers when done.
6. If we get a chance to breathe between customers, we pull out your item for processing.
7. The item needs to reticketed using standard attach-it guns and reprinted tickets
8. If the item is clearance, you need to use a separate piece of equipment to mark it as such.
9. If the item was an exclusive online item you are returning in store, it must be ran through an entirely separate program to process the price down and/or defect the item out of the store.
10. The item needs to be hung up, sized on the correct hangars, and sorted by department and grouping to go back to the floor.
11. An associate (that is the same one associate for the entire pad in charge of maintaining the fitting rooms and merchandise standards) has to then put said item away.

Not that big of a deal, right? But then multiply that by the throngs of people pouring through the line with the two associates working (on a good day) back there.

Don't make eye contact with them...they deserve their fate

So next time you want to bring home the medium, large, and extra large because you haven't looked at your children in a few months, think about maybe getting a growth chart...or forcing them to actually try on the clothes.

Your kid hates you...so make them come with you to try on clothes.

Until next time,

-Milly

The "Sale" Weekend

The "Sale" Weekend

Nothing brings out the small idiots in every human than shopping on a weekend during a big sale. By default, my demeanor is calm, reasurring, and helpful...but apparently that is interpretted as hostile, argumentative, and negative...which seems absurd to me.

I had a situation yesterday in which a customer had purchased 4 rugs and was returning three of them. After returning the three, she then went on to say this.

Lady- "Well what is this rug for 49.99?"
Milly- "You know, I am not sure...without actually having the item with us, it's hard to tell. Let me punch it into the computer and see what the description is." 
*spends a few minutes purusing the mainframe.
Milly- "It looks like is a 36x48 bath rug that is gray which rang up at the original price of 49.99 before your coupons."
Lady- "Well that should have been on sale."
Milly- "OK, when I punch that UPC in, it actually shows that it was not on sale yesterday when you bought it." 
Lady- "Well that's not right."
Milly- "Not a problem, do you have the item with you so I can see if maybe it was scanned wrong or was mis-tagged?"
Lady- "No, but I have the other three, can't you just use the number from the one I did not return?
Milly- "Yes, I definitely can, but you are telling me that it is the wrong number, so I have no means to check if the item you have at home matches the item."
Lady- "I don't understand..it should just be the same price."
Milly- "According to the UPC that was rung up, it was a different brand, size, and style than the ones you purchased so I can't adjust it or return/repurchase the item without being able to verify the item.
Lady- "This is so stupid, I live 90 minutes away and I did not come here for an argument."
Milly- "Miss, I am not and have no intetion of arguing with you, I am telling you that without seeing the item, I can't adjust it for you because I have nothing to check to see if something was wrong outside of you just telling me.."it is wrong.""
Lady- *storms off* while muttering "I cannot believe how difficult this is."

Really..you can't believe how difficult it is to return an imaginary item at an imaginary price based on your imaginary whim? If a tax auditor came to your house and you just ballparked your income..you would be in a federal prison. But if you come to my store and act like an unintelligent oaf, I get to feel like a dick the rest of the day...

I would also like to point out that 90 minutes, was actually 13 minutes since her address was on the bill she was paying at the time as well...nice work.

The Fitting Room Lady

February 22, 2015

The Fitting Room Lady

Hatred comes in many forms...there is a very real place in hell for those who frequent retail establishments in the same way they frequent their drug dealer's post graduation party. 

It's funny that people see driving and shopping as rights, until they get taken away. I got to finally kick someone out of my store that pissed me off so bad that I was literally shaking. Luckily, I kept my hands off them and only used sly insults that they wont understand until they get home.

"Miss, unfortunately I am going to need to ask you to leave."
"What the f*** did I do?"
"Well, you screamed at a little girl and then threw your pile of clothes at one of my associates."
"So, thats their problem."
"Yeah, if you don't leave in the next 2 minutes, I am calling the police."
"What are they going to do?"
"Keep asking stupid questions and you will find out what they will do."
"This is f***ing bulls***, I want to speak to your manager."
"Yeah...that's me..so...you are leaving. Now."
"This isn't the last you have heard of me."
"You aren't a supervillian. You are just a person acting rude and disrespectful. Out."

Good luck out there comrades. With Love,
-Milly

The Beginning

So I will start this by stating that I find blogs to be an utterly self serving waste of time. They create mindless excess garbage that floods the internet and prevents my Google from allowing me to search for "Cable Bill Payment" without seeing a thousand stories about how some girl was mad that her cable didnt work because she didn't pay her bill....I do not care.

However, I seem to come across a an absolutely insane amount of what I like to call "Raw Humanity" in my line of work that dominates dinner and drink conversation with my friends. I have been known to go onto 30-45 minute rants in relation to some of my customers, co-workers, and bosses with such fervor as to make people choke on their drinks and ruin their new shag carpeting (because for this example, its 1972).

So that is what this blog will be dedicated to: those brave souls who work retail day in and day out and even more so for those who actually kind of enjoy it. The same way someone who cuts themselves gets a sick pleasure out of it...However, do not assume this will be purely about retail, it will be about whatever bizarre and hilarious events occur during the course of the week.

Let's see what becomes of it, shall we.