LA-LA-LA I Can’t Hear You!!!

Another entry in under a month!  Not that I’m looking for people to pat me on the back, but if you want to I won’t stop you.

I made this blog with the intention of solving retail problems when and where I could.  I try to cure all of life’s ills for those of you who are reading this (probably people with insomnia).

Today’s lesson is a discussion on regression.  As a person who may or may not be somewhere in the age range of 18 to 75 (hey, I have to keep this anonymous, after all), I like to think that I have achieved some measure of maturity.  I say this in the humblest of ways because as someone with said maturity, I see an awful lot of other people who are supposedly considered adults come into my store with zero maturity.  Perhaps I fell into a sort of inverse universe where the older you get, the more immature you are?  Those that are born infants are regarded as wise sages (which, if you look at any random parent’s Facebook page isn’t that far off from the truth)?

The point being, I – at whatever age I may be, should not act like more of an adult than those who are the same age or older than I am.  Those who come in wearing business attire should not seem less mature than the guy wearing a work uniform with their name embroidered on it.  You’re the one who has supposedly gotten farther in life (further?  Hold on, I have to go check… I’ve returned and it appears that it doesn’t matter according to Grammar Girl.  So suck it!) and as someone who has gotten farther in life, you shouldn’t be acting like you’re still in grade school.

“An example, please,” you say?  Okay then.

Just the other day a customer came into the store.  This customer had a product of hers worked on by our company but then called us and accused us of doing something we didn’t.  Trust me when I say that we didn’t do anything.  I’m not someone who blindly follows the company I work for for no reason.  If we fucked up I’d be the first to admit it.

Anyway!

The customer made some ridiculous claim and wanted to speak to the manager that was on duty.  By this point, everyone in the store knew what the manager was walking into on this phone call and everyone had some sort of quip at the ready. Oh, to be a fly on that wall during that conversation!  Wait, that doesn’t work in this context.  Oh, to be the NSA listening in on that conversation!

The phone call did not go the way the customer wanted because the manager, while being pretty restrained at the ridiculous accusations the customer was slinging, didn’t have the answers he was looking for.  With the conversation coming to a close, we figured that that was that.

Fast-forward a short time later in the day when a lady enters the store.  She was probably in her 40s and had the stature of someone who probably got what they wanted in most aspects of her daily life, and when that didn’t happen, she probably demanded she get her way.  I was nearby and caught the vague conversation she was having with our cashier.  She wanted to speak to the actual manager of the store but he was not in for the day.  In the absence of the store manager, I got the only other manager we had at the time – the one that had taken the call earlier (I shall call this person Aaron).

If there is anyone you want to handle your issue if you are a customer that comes into our store, it is Aaron.  He is that one employee that will generally listen to your stupid issues or complaints with the patience of Buddha.  As long as you’re not swearing, being physically violent, or demeaning his workers, Aaron will talk to you until the store closes.  I truly do not know how he does it.  If I didn’t know him any better, I’d swear it was a heavy combination of alcohol and drugs.  Patience of the Buddha.

Aaron came up to the customer and almost immediately the two of them realized who the other person standing in front of them was.  This did not please the customer at all.  Aaron couldn’t even attempt to talk to her or to ask her any questions at all about her interaction with our employees because the woman kept saying that she didn’t want to hear anything he had to say.  To be clear, up to this point, he had barely said anything other than his name and asked what he could do for her.  She refused to talk to him, shook her head, turned around, and repeated something along the lines of, “You’re still talking!”  By now, she had clasped both hands over her ears while shouting the same, “You’re still talking!” line until she was squarely out of the store.

Really?  You don’t like the fact that your issue was ludicrous, and when we tried to politely tell you that the complaint you had had no merit, your solution is to storm off like a child with your ears covered?

Do you see what I mean?  I wish this was a single instance of infantile behavior that our customers have displayed.  This is a reoccurring theme it feels like and while I could go on, I think this is enough for one entry.

Since I am trying to solve the ills of the retail world, this one is probably pretty straightforward.  If you’re a customer, be a little less of an overgrown infant.  It won’t get you what you want and all it will do will embarrass you in the eyes of every single employee in the store.  I hate looking like a fool in front of 1 person let alone a store full of people.  Who knows?  You might just get what you wanted in the first place.  And if you’re an employee, you should do what I sometimes do:  picture the customer’s head superimposed on a baby’s body.  It will make having to listen to their insanity a bit more tolerable.  Good luck!

Does anyone else have a favorite example of customers acting like children?  Please feel free to share!

More soon from the frontlines…

If You Have A Group Of Friends And No One Is An Asshole, Chances Are You’re The Asshole

     Wow.  Over a year since my last post.  For those of you who find my rambling stories amusing, I apologize for the absence, but you know what they say about absences and the heart.  I just have not been feeling very creatively inspired for a very long time and that needs to stop right here and right now.  So, let’s get into it, shall we?
     One topic I wanted to bring up is the amazing ability customers possess to shoot themselves in the foot.  Does this ever happen where you work?  A customer has an issue that needs resolution but before anyone can even attempt to fix it, they erupt into a ball of rage at anyone they feel is to blame for their predicament.  It happens at least once a week where I work.  I don’t know how much of an exaggeration that is, but if it is an exaggeration, it’s not by much.  Thankfully, since I’ve been in the warehouse and haven’t had to deal with many customer issues, I haven’t had to have anyone flip out on me.  I just get the benefit of watching grown adults whine about first world problems like little children.  Good times.

     This scenario usually plays out thusly:

     The customer comes in because of some issue with something they purchased.

     The customer explains said issue to lowly employee (poor sap #1).  This is usually followed by a statement about what they would like to see happen to keep them happy.

     The lowly employee has to explain why the issue happened.  At this point, the lowly employee has to either tell the customer they can’t do anything for them under the rules of their company OR presents a resolution that the customer doesn’t like.

     The customer’s frustration – and the frequency with which they huff and shift their weight from leg to leg and back again – increases.  The customer then repeats the only acceptable resolution to their situation (the one that won’t happen).

     The lowly employee repeats their options.

     The customer requests to speak to their supervisor (poor sap #2).  Really, they want the CEO of the company but barring that, they’ll settle for the store GM.  They really get someone one or two steps below the GM.

     The lowly employee walks off to get their supervisor (probably someone just slightly higher up on the food chain whose work life can be summed up with the equation: “shit I have to deal with > the money I’m paid”).

     The supervisor might have to first explain that they’re either a direct supervisor or “one of the managers” when the customer asks if they are THE manager.  Carrying on, the supervisor repeats the options, backing up what lowly employee #1 said, which only infuriates the customer further.

     The customer gets worked up and now demands the GM so the supervisor pages for a manager (sometimes the actual GM, buuuuuut sometimes not) to come over.

     The manager (whose work life can be summed up with the equation: “shit I have to deal with < the money I’m paid < complaining I’ll do about how the money isn’t THAT much better than the lowly employee #1”) comes over.  NOW, this manager might be open-minded and might be willing to listen to the customer.  Maybe the manager isn’t.  The point is, the customer probably won’t ever find out which way this manager is leaning toward because once the manager walks up and says, “Is there something I can help with?” the customer starts to dig into him/her.

     This explosion will probably include expletives about the other two poor saps that wouldn’t help them.  Insider tip: calling employees that work for that manager “idiots” or “fuckers” or the like probably won’t go over well.  Anyway.

     The manager will then either ask the customer to step off to the side (a mark of a very calm & collected person in the retail world!) or to leave the building (a.k.a.: “get the fuck out of my sight you worthless piece of crap, I don’t have time to deal with you trying to return a remote control from a year ago.”).

     This is where it can diverge into very different outcomes.

     Rarely, the customer will pick the option to go with the manager to calm down long enough for the two parties to come to an understanding and maybe a resolution can be reached or maybe not.

     Generally, the more entertaining of the two options will occur.  The customer will tell the manager that they won’t go anywhere followed by an even more expletive-laced diatribe about everyone they ever had to talk to at the store and how they will never shop their again and why the company is destined to go out of business and go fuck yourselves while you’re at it, thank you very much.  Keep in mind, this all happens before the manager can even decide if they want to override whatever his employees told this customer before he/she even showed up.  The manager can’t even hear the customer’s side of the story and only hears how the customer believes the manager should go fuck himself/herself.

     At this point, they’re either ushered out by security or by the police depending on how long and how loud the expletives lasted.  If you’re lucky, the customer will throw whatever they were trying to return across the building.  One time, I saw a guy punch a stop sign as he stormed out of the store.  True story!  Perhaps he thought the stop sign was telling him to stop being a d-bag?

     Moral of the story?  Don’t be a d-bag because you might just get what you wanted in the first place.  I guess this moral can be applied to nearly anything you do in life if you think about it.  Hey, what do you want from me?  Not all of my stories have profound solutions.  This IS my first entry in over a year, after all.  Give me a break.

     More soon from the frontlines...

Welcome To The Warehouse... Hope You Survive!

Since my last post, I’ve been relocated into our store’s warehouse and I must say that it is FANTASTIC!  I don’t know why I never tried to apply for a spot there sooner.  I have seen the light and it is warehouse, ladies and gentlemen!

It all began when I went into work one day to work in my old department but before I could even punch in to start, I was pulled aside by one of my store’s managers.  He asked if I had picked a department to switch into and after telling him I preferred the warehouse, that department’s supervisor approached me and told me to ignore the following week’s schedule that was already made.  I was quite surprised since this was on a Thursday and the new schedule was to start on Sunday.  Not a whole lot of time to get myself into the mindset that this was the end.  My coworker, Victor, who had been working with me for years in that same department and who had also gotten the assistant supervisor spot, was standing next to me at the time and we both were left somewhat speechless.  We figured we had at least another week to work together.

My new supervisor came back and handed me a new schedule and ran down a list of things I was going to be doing the first week.  It was all becoming real, really quickly.  That Thursday was also the last day Victor and I were going to work together in the same department.  At the end of his shift we said some rushed ‘good luck’s and that was that.  An end of an era in our department.  It was odd.  I’ll still see Victor around the store since he was relocated to a different department, too, but it won’t be the same.

Then, on my last day in my department, I was hit with nearly every possible issue and every possible grumpy customer.  Do you ever have one of those days?  It’s like everyone just waits for that one particular day to bitch and moan.  It’s amazing.  You can go days without running into problems and then BAM – it hits you all at once.  The day when the world says, “Sucks to be you,” and laughs.  When I came in to work that day I had been a bit bummed out that I was going to be leaving for the warehouse but by the end of my shift, I couldn’t have been happier.  I was reminded about all the perks that went along with getting off the sale’s floor, which is, mainly dealing with assholes.

I was a bit disappointed, however, that my last day wasn’t greeted with a bit more fanfare from my coworkers.  I have to admit, I figured that since I had been in the same department for several years and had outlasted most of our employees and managers I would’ve had a free lunch or something.  Not that I deserve one because I’m awesome or anything, but my work rewards people for just showing up and doing their job.  Oh well.

Then Sunday rolls around and it’s my first day in the warehouse.  And holy shit is it a sweet gig.  Granted, nothing in retail is rocket science but warehouse is so laidback and fun thanks to the relative freedom you have back there.  There are no customers to really deal with and most management won’t bother me unless they need something done around the store, so right off the bat it already rocks.  Plus, I was out early that first shift and had the rest of the day to enjoy while most of my coworkers were just showing up.

Since there are more people working in warehouse than my old department, a lot of the work was also divided up a lot more than it would’ve been.  I’m also enjoying the fact that I can now give the salespeople shit just because I can.

For example, if somebody comes into the warehouse for no apparent reason, I now typically say something like, “Hey, who said you could come into my warehouse?”  To which a warehouse associate would normally go, “YOU’RE warehouse?  You’ve been here for less than a week!”

Apparently, being a dick suits me.

I also don’t go into work dreading what possible issues I might have to face.  That was always the worst.  The work isn’t hard but when you have people who complicate it with issues and complaints for no real reason, it’s the pits.  There’s nothing like that – so far – in the warehouse.

Now, I’m sure that the warehouse will have its drawbacks.  It’s retail.  However, all I’m going to do is remind myself of that very last day in my old department and all of the bullshit I had to deal with and I’ll know that I’ll have it so much easier than I ever had.

I’ll go into the changes in-depth in a later entry.  I just thought I’d update on the change and my initial reactions.

More soon from the frontlines...

“If You Could Reapply For A Second Time For The Same Position… That’d Be Grrrreat.”

I know!  Another gap in posting.  But I am back… again!

The past few weeks have been quite the interesting experience at my job.  I’ll have to break this down into two posts perhaps but I’ll just write about what’s affecting me directly in this entry.

It actually began several months ago.  My company has decided to change the layout of my department and because of that, I had to reapply for the same exact position I’ve been in for the previous few years.  Nothing was changing about the position but because they were redoing the structure of that aspect of the business, I had to prove my worthiness to stay on (I guess).  That was kind of insulting, in my opinion, but whatever.  My supervisor was a good guy and his manager had known me for most of my career there so it wasn’t as if I was overly worried about getting hired.

I go for the interview and a short while later, the manager – let’s call this person Lester – contacted me to tell me that I would be staying on in the department but since the reorganization was taking place, there was only one full-time position available.  Doesn’t sound too bad but there were two full-timers vying for the position – a coworker and myself.  We had been under the impression that there were two full-time positions but it turns out we were wrong.  Long story short, my coworker took an assistant supervisor position that was available in the reorganized department and I took the full-time spot.  That was last August.

My supervisor, meanwhile, was told he wouldn’t be staying on when they redid the department and so we got a new supervisor around September of 2013.  Besides the changing of the supervisors, however, nothing changed.  My coworker who got the promotion experienced no change in duties and pay (as far as I know).  It was basically all paperwork.

Fast-forward to around January and we were told that we would have to re-apply AGAIN for our spots.  Our department would be finally making the real reorganized structure they had been laying out since last fall: now there would be different pay structures, different bonuses, different uniforms, etc., etc.  Now our interviews would be with our new supervisor (who we had only known for a few months and who came in with his own way of doing things).  There was nothing wrong with the new supervisor but he had more of a used car salesman mentality and that was different from how we had been trained to interact with our customers, which seemed to be good enough for our department to hit our revenue goals for most of my time in the store.

Our newest part-timer was determined to stay on in the department and began memorizing everything he/she could.  In just a few short weeks, he/she had absorbed as much product knowledge as he/she could.  It was quite impressive and he/she blew me away.  I, however, had more of a blasé attitude about the whole thing.  I had been there for years and if I got the spot, great.  If I didn’t, whatever.  I kind of was looking for an excuse to do something else, I guess.

I mean, I knew my products and I knew how to talk to customers and I knew how to fix most of my own issues.  In my time at this job, I even had managers who didn’t want to deal with my department’s customer issues come to me to resolve problems.  I wasn’t the best but I seemed to be fairly relied upon and looked upon favorably by most of my store’s managers through the years.  So, I was probably the most relaxed person going into these new interviews out of everyone.

(I should point out that I did need a job but I wouldn’t have been devastated if I didn’t get hired on.)

The new interviews were quickly approaching.  Things were getting serious now.  However, even before we were supposed to interview with our supervisor, my newest part-timer was told that he/she was going to have a second interview at another store with other department managers and corporate managers.  He/she was the only one who was told about such a meeting.  The other full-timer and myself were not.  When we went in for our first interview nothing was mentioned about a second interview.  Other than that, my interview went swimmingly.

A week passed with no word on if I got the spot.  I was leaving on a vacation the following week and just before I left the part-timer told me that he/she got a spot on the new team (which was awesome for him/her.  I was totally excited for him/her because he/she deserved it.).  Yet, no word still about my situation, but I wasn’t completely stupid.  I knew as soon as the part-timer got their second interview BEFORE even having their first and the rest of us didn’t receive the same that we didn’t get on the new team.

I wasn’t upset about the situation but I felt more insulted than anything.  For one thing, my supervisor knew I was going on vacation but I still hadn’t heard any word about the application.  Then you schedule a secondary interview with our coworker before their first interview and you don’t think it’d look suspicious to the rest of us?  Plus, like I said, we were doing pretty good as a team month after month.  We were part of the reason the company felt they should reorganize the department structure thanks to how good we were doing.  So we’re good enough to warrant a restructure but not good enough to stay on?

I go on vacation and while I’m on vacation, I hear that the part-timer was the only one who got hired on to stay in the department.  Not that anyone knew if I got a spot but I was 99% sure I hadn’t.  I came back from vacation and even though I had been back for three days and the first day of training for the part-timer was the following day, I still hadn’t heard anything from my supervisor.

Finally, I had to TEXT my supervisor to find out.  He told me to call him and over the phone he told me that there was a lot of talented competition and that I wouldn’t be staying on in the department.  I guess I handled it better than most since, like I’ve said again and again, I knew this was happening for weeks by this point and I’m not stupid.  I had been thinking about what I wanted to say to my supervisor but when the time came to actually receive the news, I thought, “What’s the point?”  The decision had been made and my coworker who hadn’t received a spot had been sticking it to the supervisor enough for the both of us.  It was best to just move on.  And that was that.  It was pretty disappointing that my supervisor couldn’t have the spine to tell me to my face if I got the spot or not but HEY, that’s the kind of new management my company wanted for the reorganization.  Hope that works out for them (since that probably didn’t come across in text – that was supposed to be sarcasm).

Since then I’ve actually never been happier going into work.  There’s a great freedom in knowing I won’t have to deal with the same issues and the same people and the same questions day after day.  I can handle the grumpy customers better and I just go in and do what I can but I don’t stress about stupid bullshit any more.  I do have options other than termination but I’ll get into that in another entry.  I’ll also get more into how I’m feeling as my time in the department is coming to a close in another entry.  I’ll also talk about the fallout from the shake-up in another entry.  This has been long enough.  Suffice it to say, the bumbling rollout of this transition – from last fall to now – is pretty typical of my company’s rollouts.  They seem incapable of doing anything coherently.  It’s truly an amazing feat for such a large company.

More soon from the frontlines...

The Universal Retail Constant

How about a quick observation?
On my last trip to get a haircut, I entered the establishment to find that besides the two workers and one older lady getting her hair done, I was the only other person there.  After being seated, I mentioned how I had been worried I was going to have to wait in a long line since I was coming in after most people were getting out of work.
The lady who was cutting my hair said that even though she would like more people coming in, it did afford her the time to do school work.  And that’s when I stumbled upon it – the one universal constant amongst retail workers (and barbers).  Love of down time!  The greatest thing one in the world of retail can look forward to.  Those brief moments where you find yourself not having to rush around doing three things at once or having to look busy so management leaves you alone.  The time where you can just stand around and shoot the shit with coworkers or skim the internet or glance at your homework or a book that you had stashed away.
Whatever it is, we can all agree that it’s better than what we are actually getting paid to do.  We’d rather be bored or doing other things than having customers come in and bother us – even if it meant giving us their money.
You tend to savor those fleeting moments like you were a parent looking forward to the five minutes your baby decides to nap.  We become inconvenienced even if a customer looks as if they’re approaching our department.
“I have to do my job now?” we all whine and huff, before dragging ourselves over to the customer(s).
You – okay, I – can’t even get through an entire six-hour shift without wistfully daydreaming of when I can get five seconds of down time.
Take this entry, for example.  It should’ve taken me just ten minutes to write but I stopped numerous times to go online or to daydream.  A half hour later and here I am!
[Another two minutes elapse.]
I guess I’ll just end this now.
More soon from the frontlines...

"Do You Work Here?"

One of my favorite questions I get when I work is, “Do you work here?”
I know the question is meant to imply “Do you work here… in this department?” but I always have to resist the urge to look down at my uniform that has the company logo on it and my name tag on it, before looking back up at the customer and asking, “What do you think?”  I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around wearing the work uniforms of places I don’t work at just so I can get stopped and asked ridiculous questions.  Or is that a thing?  Do some of you out there dress up in retail uniforms just to fuck with customers?  Because that would be HILARIOUS!
Maybe, like Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, I’m not wearing enough flair.  I should probably just wear multiple buttons that say, “Yes, I work here!” or “Ask me a question!” or “Hey, I’m not wearing this uniform for shits and giggles!”  That could cut down on the confusion.
Regardless, the obvious question shouldn’t be, “Do you work here?” it should be, “Can you help me?” or “Do you know somebody who can help me here?” or something along those lines.  Ah, the English language and all of its quirks.
There is also a flipside to this scenario & that occurs whenever I wear my work uniform into another company’s store.  Oddly enough, whenever that happens I never get asked if I work there.  It’s always just assumed I do.
“Can you tell me where you keep the cayenne pepper in jars?”
“Uh, I don’t work here.”
At this point the customer looks at your uniform a little closer – a uniform that is unbuttoned & un-tucked, mind you – and has a shocked look on their face.
“Oh, I’M sorry!  I just saw your uniform and thought you worked here.”
Yeah, I already got that part.
First, what if I was just a guy wearing a collared shirt that was unbuttoned and the same color as the store’s employees?  Whenever you go into a store where all the workers wear black shirts, do you ask anyone who wears a black shirt where something is?
Second, you’re too lazy to observe what somebody’s wearing and too rude to avoid asking somebody who would have to be off the clock to wear their uniform unbuttoned and un-tucked.
I’ve always been tempted to tell people the wrong answer if they ask me a question whenever this happens.
“Do you know what aisle the fabric softener is in?”
“Oh, yes!  It’s down aisle 56 on your left,” and then watch them scurry away down fifty-plus aisles to get to the one they’re looking for.  Ah, the laughs I’d have… if I had the knowledge that that same customer would never come into my job and remember what a dick I had been.  I might not have the spine for it but I sure hope someone out there tries this.  HAS anyone tried this?  If so, let me know how that went. 
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find my pieces of flair.
More soon from the frontlines...

The Sound Of Silence

Look at me!  I’m posting on a fairly regular basis!  Onto the entry…
First off, only my humblest respect is meant to Simon & Garfunkel for the title of this entry.  However, it is quite fitting.
The latest installment features another customer interaction that I learned about during my stint in appliances the other day.  This was just too good to pass up.  Do you want to feel better about your life?  Well, then read on!
A customer had recently purchased a refrigerator from our store.  This refrigerator was a floor display that was sold to him at some dirt-cheap price – nearly a thousand dollars off of the original price.  The customer called the department later that day saying he wanted to cancel the refrigerator because he was reading reviews that it was a bit loud.
Okay, I get that.  If you live in a small home and noise is an issue, you don’t want it sounding like a freight train coming through, right?  But there are a few directions you can go with this scenario.
1.  There is a high chance that it was plugged in when he purchased it.  It was a demo unit.  Did he hear noise in the store?
2.  Why cancel it before you even got it into the home?  If you saved over a thousand dollars for a great refrigerator, wouldn’t you want to try to at least see if it sounds fine?  Even if it is loud, you can still either return the item with no restocking fee or you could ask yourself, “Is this noise not worth the hundreds of dollars I saved?”
Whoever took the call was able to talk the guy out of it (mainly because they told the guy that they’d be able to sell a great fridge at dirt-cheap to a less picky customer on that same day.) but that wasn’t the end of it.
The guy called the next day and told the supervisor that he wanted to come into the store and listen to the refrigerator for two hours to see how it runs.  He wanted us to get the refrigerator that somebody had already wrapped up and placed off the floor, bring it back onto the floor, unwrap it, and then plug it in just so he could sit around and listen to it.
I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell wish I could have two hours to kill just sitting around some electronics store doing nothing else other than listening to how a refrigerator sounds.  Even when I’m home, I have things to keep me busy.  I have to give it up to the guy.  He did find the one thing that sounds more boring than actually selling appliances:  listening to them run.
According to the appliance team, the guy came in just the other day, listened to it for less than a half hour, talked with the appliance crew about all the customer reviews he read online (UGH!  That’s a whole other blog post alone.  Wait have I already done one of those?  Shit.  See, this is what happens when you don’t update regularly.), and ended up canceling it anyway.  I went up to the refrigerator that he was sold, stood around the item with another coworker for several minutes, and didn’t hear a damn thing.  I just heard the sounds of his parents weeping at the wasted time their son wasted in our store.
More soon from the frontline...

Can You Read This For Me?

I’ve mentioned before how lazy I think humans have become.  For instance, I don’t even intend to edit this blog.  Then again, why start now, right? (ba-doom-cha)
I think, however, that the next story takes the cake.
I was working in our store’s appliance section for the day and had a customer approach me with a look that was equal parts apprehension and hope.  He proceeds to tell me that he purchased a gas stove about a month ago and had a few questions about how to use it.  I thought, “Oh, great, a product I’m not too familiar with and this guy is going to ask some oddball questions that not even the manufacturer has thought up.”
Once we walked up to the gas stove that he said looked identical to the one he purchased – besides the fact he bought one with five burners instead of the four that were on this one and the fact that the electronic displays were completely different, but other than that they were identical – and I braced myself.  So, it was to my surprise when he told me he wanted to know how to start the oven.  At first, I thought he was kind of fucking with me.  How do you start the oven?  Really?  Even I knew that one!
“Uh, well, let’s say you want to bake something.  You just hit the bake button and hit this button to increase the temperature.”
Holy shit, that was easy!
“That’s it?”
Yeah, genius!  That’s it.  Welcome to ‘Things I Learned When I Was Ten’.
“Yep,” I replied.
“Do I need to hit this ‘Bake Time’ button?”
Okay, a bit harder.  That’s when I stumbled upon an obvious solution.  The owner’s manual!  I knew that most of the appliances the store had on display had their manuals somewhere.  I first opened the oven door but came up empty.  I then opened the broiler drawer and – A-HA! – found what I was looking for.
“I’m not sure but the manual should say what to do.”
I made sure that that sounded as obvious as it should’ve been to anyone who has purchased anything in the past and had to consult an owner’s manual for an answer.  He could’ve saved himself a trip to the store if he just broke open the manual.  What was this guy thinking?
“Ah, yeah, I know we could’ve looked through it but it’s so long and confusing.  You can never figure those things out.”
Sure, if you were looking up how to bring a space shuttle back down to Earth but we’re talking about a stove.  The manual was less than 25 pages long and it’s not like it was in four-point font.  If you cut out the small print at the end that nobody pays attention to, the pertinent information only account for about 20 pages.  And if you cut out all the pictures, then you’re down to about half that of actual instructions.  I found the answer in less than thirty seconds.  But that was too confusing?
See what I mean?
You have to spoon-feed people.  Nobody seems to want to do anything for themselves any more.  I think I’m going to rent myself out for reading services.
“WILL READ FOR MONEY.  WILL READ INSTRUCTION MANUALS, CHILDREN’S BOOKS, NOVELS, NEWSPAPERS, BLOGS, I-TUNES FINE PRINT, STREET SIGNS, ETC., ETC…”
In a world of lazy fucks, I’d be rich!  Rich I tells ya!
Feel free to use this idea for your own monetary pursuits.  However, if I see any advertisement like that in my area, I’m asking for 10% commission.
More soon from the frontlines...

Why Can’t Your Competitor Match Your Price? Answer Me!

I’ve been in retail long enough to be on the receiving end of my fair share of oddball complaints.  You know the ones.  The people who complain that you won’t give him or her a specific television even though you don’t have any in your store and there’s nothing you can do about it yourself.  The people who complain that the grapefruit your store received is of mediocre quality and want to know why you, personally, brought them in (despite having nothing to do with the shipments).  The people who complain just for the sake of complaining.  Kind of like bloggers!  (Hey, wait a second…)

A few days ago, during the winter storm that nearly three-fourths of the country went through, I was helping a woman with a television.  She was looking for the cheapest product you could find and despite finding a cheap television set, she wanted to “look around” just because we didn’t have that exact one in stock to give her.  I had to prevent myself from giving a dumbfounded glance outside the doors as the falling snow turned everything white outside.  Hey, if she wanted to drive around in THAT, be my guest.  She must’ve REALLY needed to watch TV.
I went back to helping the other people who were also crazy enough to go shopping for non-essentials during a winter storm.  Fast-forward several minutes when we received a phone call on the department phone.  I just happened to be the one nearby and reluctantly answered.  The same woman who was “just looking” was calling from a competitor of ours.  She wanted to know why the price of the television online was different from the price of the television in the store.  It happens.  I went online but noticed that she was wrong about the price being different – she was just looking at a different model.
For some reason, this wasn’t good enough because this competitor of ours had the TV in-stock and was going to match our price for the same model but because the website was supposedly not showing the right price – which it was – they weren’t going to give her the price.  Needless to say, at this point I was confused.  I apologized for the supposed lack of information needed for our competitor to steal our sale away but what else could I do?  Obviously, this apology was not enough for her.  It’s not like it was my responsibility for them to sell her a product at the price she wanted.
In all of my years, I’ve never had anyone complain that another company I didn’t even work for wouldn’t give the customer the price we were offering them.  Is that a thing?  Anyone out there have something similar happen to them?  Has anyone gone to a Ford dealership, asked for a product at a price, then gone to a VW dealership, asked for a product at a price, and then called the Ford dealership because the VW dealership wouldn’t give you the same price as the Ford dealership?  Are people really in need to bitch that much that they have nothing better to do than to complain when it won’t even solve a thing?
If any of the answers to those questions was a “yes”, then in the words of Bill Engvall, “Here’s your sign…”
Does anyone have a particularly amazing complaint that had nothing to do with anything you had control over?  Please, if you could top this, I’d love to hear how hilariously stupid it is.
More soon from the frontlines...

Do You Have More In The Back?

I want to dispel a rampant notion that quite a few people seem to have.  You all might want to sit down and brace yourselves because I don’t want anyone passing out and hurting him or herself.  All set?  Okay.
Individual stores – be they retail or grocery – 99% of the time do not make the products they are selling on their shelves.  This means that if they run out of a product, they have to wait for more quantity of that said product to come in.  Let that sink in.  Feel free to get back up and go for a walk around the block.  I’ll be here when you return.
I state the obvious for the simple reason that nobody seems to comprehend this.  Nothing in the store = you get nada/zilch/nothing (is my point made?).  You might be saying, “But anonymous internet blogger, I’m not an idiot.  I know you don’t have dozens of workers in the back assembling multiple brands of televisions, DVD players, refrigerators, CDs, laptops, gaming systems, and whatever the hell a Roku is.”
Ah, and I say to you that you may THINK you know that, but you must have some sort of Memento-like amnesia because it seems that whenever a product goes out of stock (usually around the holidays), everyone freaks out.  How could a retailer that exists in reality in a finite amount of space, carrying dozens upon dozens of products at any one time, run out of something?  This is America!  The land of plenty!  I demand my Kenny Loggins Christmas CD!
So, I feel it is important to remind you all that if a place runs out of something, they usually don’t have direct and immediate access to more of that thing.  And no matter how many times you repeat the fact that you desperately need this product otherwise your loved one(s) will never love you again, it will not change a thing.  I’m not a wizard disguised as an hourly retail worker.  My usual conversation does NOT go like this:
Customer:  “Do you have the new PS4?”
Me:  “No, I’m sorry, we sold out of them.”
Customer:  “Are you sure?”
Me:  “Yeah, I’m sorry.”
Customer:  “You don’t have any in the back?”
(This, by the way, is my favorite question of all time.  The mysterious backroom that also houses the Ark of the Covenant.)
Me:  “Yes, if we had any, they would be out on the floor.”
Customer:  “Because my son asked for one for Christmas this year and my brother already bought him three games for it.  The only reason we’re getting it is because my wife and I told him we’d get him one if he got straight A’s this semester and he did.”
(Because, obviously, I didn’t want to sell you one before and make revenue but now that I know your entire life history?  I definitely have ten of them waiting for only the ‘special’ customers.)
Me:  “Well, in THAT case!”  I look around and then magically pull a PS4 out of my sleeve and hand it to the customer.
Actually, now that I think about it, everything up until that last part is how it usually goes.  I have to repeat myself no less than 4 times on average whenever somebody doubts our product quantity.  This isn’t some riddle where asking me the right combination of words to see if we have something will solve things and get you what you’re looking for.
And no matter how dire the situation or how persistent or demanding you may be, that will not get you a different result.  If we’re out, we’re out.
The same goes for grocery stores.  They’re not attached to a slaughterhouse that can get you a different cut of lamb.  They don’t have banana trees in the produce backroom.  They aren’t canning their own olives.  They just aren’t.  So stop repeating your question because unless you want to drive to a different store or wait, you’re not going to get what you’re looking for.  Just deal with it.
I think it’s part of that culture where everyone is expecting to be able to get whatever they want just because they get their way in every other aspect of life by just bitching a little louder than the other person.  The entitlement class isn’t just some bullshit label that some people throw around for one portion of the population.  It’s a label that can apply to anyone be they poor, rich, black, white, young, old – whatever.  If you were raised spoiled or raised to feel overly special when you just aren’t – if you were raised to believe you were owed something, then naturally you’re going to feel like if you just talked louder or pleaded your case harder, you’ll get your way.
The reality – again – is:  you just won’t.  Get over yourself.  Most likely there are hundreds of people who are looking for the same thing you are.  Most likely there are not hundreds of that product available for immediate purchase.  Deal with it.
Shit, now I’M repeating myself.  See what happens when you have to deal with ridiculousness each day?
At least I feel better.  So, just remember – no means no.  Actually, remember that even if you’re not trying to ask for something that’s not in stock.  It’s a pretty good tip to know for everyday life.  Free tips are always in stock here.  You’re welcome.  Please, come again.
More soon from the frontlines...

The Only Way Out Of Retail

That line, “The only way out of here is in a box,” – or some variation of it – is used in movies all the time but I think that it could easily be placed at the top of every application for every retail job.  And that’s because, for an alarming amount of people, that seems to be the only way out of retail.  I know that sounds like a joke but I don’t mean it to be.
In the last year alone I’ve heard about somebody who worked at several of our stores dying from a heart attack either while on the clock or as he was leaving from work.  I’m not 100% sure on the particulars surrounding the event.  Everyone in the store who knew about it kept talking about that.  It was our greatest fear – to die wearing a shirt with a nametag on it.  A few of us even joked about how we would rip our shirts off if we ever felt a heart attack coming while on the job.  We didn’t want the last minutes of our lives to be with our job’s invisible collar around our neck.
Then just recently, our own store had a near scare.  One of our own employees suffered a heart attack outside of work.  Thankfully, the guy is doing okay so far.  Tough bastard.  But to think that this guy had a family and suffered a heart attack during the holidays really gives you the willies.  This is somebody I’ve seen on a near daily basis and have spent countless hours shooting the shit and griping about the stresses of work with.  I couldn’t comprehend it.  My brain could not wrap itself around the idea of somebody around my own age lying in a hospital bed from a heart attack.  I don’t believe in Christmas miracles but I’m damn glad he’s recovering because not everyone is as lucky.
This all seems like a running theme in the world of retail.  I know that’s just life and everyone dies – don’t get me wrong, but it just seems like something about working in retail is conducive to heart attacks.  Stress is a natural part of the retail world and everyone feels it.  From the customers complaining just for the sake of complaining to the customers who are too lazy to read the print on the tags so they come to interrupt your work so you can read it for them.  Maybe it’s the irregular schedules for most of the hourly employees, who are thus unable to plan anything else in their lives.  Or the schedules that change at the last minute without any notification – plans be damned.  Perhaps, it’s the long and demanding hours during the holidays that simultaneously put even more stress on employees who have to miss out on family time.  The seemingly increasing amount of work placed on a smaller and smaller workforce as companies try to squeak by without having to increase their payroll.  Or how about having the smarter employees having to pick up the slack from the idiot employees that the management deemed worthy of hiring?  That one is my personal favorite.
This doesn’t even take into account the poor eating and drinking habits most of the workforce partakes in.  Energy drink companies should give each employee a free case of their products at the holidays for all the business we generate for their companies.  How else are most employees supposed to stay awake on Thanksgiving night when they have to work from ten o’clock to six o’clock the next morning, only to return at noon to start another eight hour shift?  Then there are the late night inventory shifts that end at two in the morning but see some employees return seven hours later to open the store.  The needle full of adrenaline to the heart in Pulp Fiction likely got its inspiration from retail workers.
Then there are the endless amounts of fast food joints conveniently located around my job that almost everyone goes to for lunch breaks.  I feel like I’m one of the few who brings their own food from home as much as I can.  I see what all that fast food is doing to the bodies of many coworkers and I want to avoid health issues as much as possible.  But convenience is typically the way most people lean and when you only get a half hour lunch break – if you’re lucky – then fast food it is!  All that fatty food clogging your arteries while the stresses of your job slowly build and build and build cannot be good for the body.
Sure, I know we don’t perform brain surgery at our jobs, but when you’re getting paid the amount of money we get while doing all the work expected of you by no fewer than five different people on a daily basis, it can feel like it.  Okay, I’m still being a bit hyperbolic, but you catch my drift.
So, in my ever-constant attempt to come up with solutions to my daily rants, where do we go from here?  I doubt companies are going to hire enough staff to do the work that they think we can accomplish.  I doubt our pay will all magically increase and I doubt the hours will change.  I also highly doubt customers will start thinking for themselves and solve their easy questions on their own or keep their petty complaints to themselves without raising a ruckus.
So, I ask again, where do we go from here?
No, seriously, where do we go from here?  Because I’m actually at a loss for ideas.  I just hope we can all make it out of here alive and not in a box.  Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with something by the next post.  If you’ll excuse me, I have to go make a cup of coffee before work.
More soon from the frontlines...

Black Thursday, A.K.A. Thanksgiving

It has been way too long since my last update but I’ve no excuse other than my own lack of motivation to write.  So, after cleaning up the place, let’s begin, shall we?

One thing I’ve come to notice about holiday shoppers is the fact that they always think a better sale is somewhere off in the distance.  It’s like they’re Dorothy wishing upon a rainbow for some giant tornado to come and take them to Oz.  Oz, obviously, is the local electronics store.  Hey, sometimes you have to take what you can get.  This last Black Friday – which, thanks to greedy corporations, was more like Black Thursday – saw some really good deals.  Deals on nothing I really would care about but deals, nonetheless.  So that was a few weeks ago.  Yet, I still get customers coming in who are confused about why the prices have gone back up since then.  As if everything is supposed to remain constant through the passage of time.  That’s why I’m still a young 20-year-old whippersnapper instead of the old, dilapidated age that I am.
Me: “Well… they were on sale for Black Friday.  Those were really good prices.”
Super Genius Customer: “Oh… so they’re no longer on sale?”
Me: ”No, they are, but Black Friday had some REALLY good sales.  Better than what they are now.”
I tend to repeat myself when I’m talking to customers because most customers are like five-year-olds with ADHD.  They never pay attention.
Then the inevitable question follows:
“Do you see them going back down that low?”
“Uh…”
Some times I’m not a hundred percent sure they’re not joking.  I mean, people spent the previous two to three months just waiting to buy that big purchase because of the possibility of a Black Friday deal.  Not even the guarantee – just the possibility!  Then, when Black Friday comes and goes, but while the customer is still under the impression that Black Friday means every day until New Year’s Day, they finally decide to stroll in and check things out.  When they see the prices have changed, they want to know when the next Black Friday-type sale will be.
Uh, next Black Friday would be my guess, but what do I know?  I just work here.
They then ask when the next holiday sale might take place.
When I shrug my shoulders and shake my head in dumbfounded confusion, they throw out possible options.
Labor Day?  President’s Day?  Martin Luther King Jr. Day?  Christmas?
MLK Jr. Day threw me for another loop because I usually associate it with solemn reflection, but I suppose we should thank corporations for ruining that for us.  Christmas, however, knocked me back out of my haze.
“Black Friday kind of was our Christmas,” is finally my response.
The sad look of disappointment when they hear that is then followed by, “Well, I guess I’ll just wait and hope for the best!”
Ah, there’s that American spirit!  That can-do I-can-wait-for-better attitude!  HOO-RAH!
Wait for another holiday to roll around just in the nick of time as your fridge finally gives up the ghost and dies?  That’s Russian Roulette that I wouldn’t want to play.  Yikes!  Those are the same people who come in and are upset that they can’t get next-day delivery because all their food is spoiling because they waited until the last minute to buy something.
But, I suppose that is the American spirit.  You just keep waiting and hoping for a better tomorrow that may or may not come in the hopes of saving an extra ten dollars.  Never lose out hope, shoppers!  There’s always 300 odd days left until next Black Friday!  Perhaps that 25-year-old stove that won’t heat on two of the four burners will make it.  Or you could just suck it up and buy something and be done with it.
…Nah!
More soon from the frontlines...

"Training - HUH! What Is It Good For? Absolutely NOTHING, Say It Again!"

My apologies to Edwin Starr for that terrible rip-off of ‘War’ in the subject line.  Now that that’s out of the way, onto the entry!
It is always nice when your job can manage to surprise you.  It’s very easy to become skeptical when you’ve been with the same company for several years or so, and sometimes this leads you to think that you’ve seen and heard it all when it comes to your company or, at the very least, your position within the company.  This is especially true for me when it comes to all the trainings I have been apart of with my current job.
Let me begin by saying that I appreciate a job that’ll train their employees so they know what they’re talking about.  There are places where you go in and you feel like you might as well just look up the info on your smartphone instead of ask the employees for help.  That’s not the fault of the employees, but the employers.  So, it is cool that my job decides to actually try to train us in the stuff we’re selling.
However, there’s a fine line between being well trained and training harder than a surgeon would be trained.  Sometimes my job goes a bit overboard with all the trainings.  Between the computer-based training, the one-on-one trainings with managers, the department trainings every other month, the larger corporate trainings we get sent to, and the one-on-one vendor trainings, it’s all a bit much and it often feels like everyone’s tripping over each other’s feet.  You get all the information drilled into your head again and again and it’s hard to resist the urge to just tell the trainer, “I GOT IT THE FIRST TEN TIMES I WAS TAUGHT THIS!”
I mean, really, it’s not like we’re training to go deep undercover to infiltrate the mafia.
Everything becomes very repetitive and it’s amazing how certain trainings might change ever so slightly, but the managers – who must be used to working with some truly dumb as hell people – feel the need to go over the same things again and again in excruciating detail.  They always have this worried look on their face like, “Oh, dear lord, I hope this is sinking in for him.  He looks so lost as I’m explaining this to him!”  When, in reality, I’m not lost – just amused at their ridiculous repetition.  I’m not the world’s smartest guy but I can grasp simple facts and instructions.  If I don’t have a sarcastic smile on my face when somebody tries to ‘train’ me on something, then in my mind I’m going into autopilot and I only hear a “wah-wah-wah-wah” sound.
That’s why, when I get sent to a training and I’m not bored and the trainer is cool, funny, and laidback, I’m genuinely pleasantly surprised.  This was the case earlier in the year when I was sent to one such training for a week.  I’ve been to one or two similar trainings and it’s always torture.  The only bright spot is that I get away from customers for a few days.  This training, however, was fast-paced and totally laidback.  The trainer still seemed to spout the company line and praised everything our company did, which I somehow refrained from rolling my eyes, but she was easy-going and funny.  Sure, I didn’t learn anything new, per say, during the entire week that I hadn’t already known, but it was still enjoyable.
Not since when I was first hired was I as impressed with anything this company had to show me in the way of training.  I just hope we don’t go backward and revert to the old style of training within a year.
So, nameless trainer, thank you!  You’ll never know how much you alleviated my apprehension about that week.  If I had to be stuck relearning everything I already knew, I’m glad it was with your class.
More soon from the frontlines...

Time Off For Good Behavior

There’s nothing quite like having two days off in a row from your job, is there?  Sure, most normal jobs might always give you two days off in a row, especially if you’re working a Monday to Friday job, but in retail, finding yourself with two days off in a row is an exciting event.
So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself with three days off in a row.  It was almost as good as hitting the lottery.  It’s an amazing feeling to walk out of your job’s front doors and know that you won’t have to be back until the fourth days.  At that moment, you have the greatest amount of free time you’ll ever have for the next three days before you have to walk back through those same doors.  The possibilities for your future are wide open!  You could do anything you want!  The sky is the limit (or at least, so you tell yourself)!
Need to clean the entire house (or, if you are a lowly hourly drone, an apartment)?
Have to finish editing all seven hundred pictures from that vacation you took a year ago - the one that everyone is still hounding you about putting up pictures for?
Have to make several shopping trips to buy things you hate wasting your time shopping for?
Want to go to the movies and watch six new releases??
Want to finally do a real nice detailing of your car?
Well, now you can!  And if you can’t get to something the first day, YOU STILL HAVE TWO DAYS LEFT!
That’s how the thinking goes when you first leave the office, or the store, or whatever jail happens to be your workspace.  You’re going to work on that story you’ve wanted to do justice in those three days instead of churn out one mediocre blog entry.  Hell YEAH, you are!
But, oh, how quickly that feeling of invincibility fades!
That first day might feel pretty damn good, no doubt about it!  You’re still getting lots done.  You’re relaxing, not even thinking about work.  And hey, the weather is perfect!  It was as if Mother Nature was giving you this perfect day to go out and get things done.  It’s okay if you haven’t started that story.  You still have two days left!!!
That second day is still enjoyable because you still have that last day off.  This is still a day where anything can happen!  Perhaps you’ll mix some real housework during the day with a quiet stroll around the neighborhood with your spouse and dog(s).  Besides, it’s still okay if you haven’t started that story.  You still have that last day to stay up all night working on!  You don’t need sleep that first day back.  It’s a short shift, anyway!
Then that last day hits.  You wake up, and despite not drinking the previous night, you have a heavy feeling in your gut.  It’s that, “Oh, god, why did I do what I did last night?” feeling.  That feeling of completely wasting your previous two days and realizing you don’t have enough time to do all the things you wanted to do in the remaining time you have left.  That dread of having to deal with customers whose life stories you have long stopped caring about.  That dread of having to fix issues your superiors hand to you because shit rolls downhill and they put it all off for three days.  Soon, it becomes all you can think about and now, instead of enjoying that beautiful day Mother Nature is giving you on your last day off, you silently curse her because it’s as if Mother Nature’s mocking you.
“Have to go back to work?  What a bummer!  I plan on giving everyone else sunshine and 75 degrees for another day.  And then when you have your next day off, I’m planning on unleashing a typhoon all day long, SUCKER!!”
So, instead of writing that story and getting something done (and feeling pretty good about it until you start to question the writing quality of it), you just churn out that mediocre blog entry.
I hope this has been more than mediocre for you all.  I really need to focus and push myself to write.  I’ve been slacking way too long on this shit.
I seriously don’t know where the three days went.  I just know that it doesn’t make going back to work any easier knowing I had three days away.  Here’s hoping my next day off arrives quickly!
More soon from the frontlines...

Take This Survey And Win A Supermodel Wife And Ten Million Dollars!! PLEASE!!

Recently, my job has been focusing heavily on trying to get customers to take the survey on the bottom of the receipts they get from us.  You see them all the time – it’s that thing located way at the bottom of the receipt you don’t even think twice about.  But really, who could blame you?
Past the list of products, the money you spent, and the information about how long you can return something, who cares about a survey?  Our time is already filled to the brim with other time-wasters as it is.  We can’t afford to sit in front of our computer to rate how we enjoyed our visit into Flo’s House Of Doilies for our three dollar purchase!  We have to get home so we can see the newest American Idol!  It’s trials week and everybody knows how those are the best part!  Then after that, it’s Facebook time to look at all the links our coworkers post and to creep every single photograph that someone special we’ve had our eye on for some time.  SURVEY? Pfft!!
And it doesn’t matter if the person who helped you out at the store – even if all they did was ring out your three dollar purchase – was the most amazing person in the world.  I’m not just talking about somebody who smiled as he or she thanked you for coming in today.  I’m talking about somebody who somehow resisted the urge to spit in your face despite the maniacal ranting you did when you couldn’t find that doily you were looking for (he/she found it five feet from where you were looking).  We just forget to take it or we just don’t want to fill out a ten minute survey about every tiny detail about your trip into Flo’s store.  Forget the fact that it’d probably take closer to three minutes to complete and not ten.
I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they’d fill out the survey because I was, “so helpful, and not like any other salesperson I’ve talked to at other places,” or some similar platitude.  Then, days or weeks later when I decide to look at our store’s comments that people leave on those surveys, I don’t see anything with my name in it or even the department I work in.
I’m guilty of it, too.  I even tell the person who mentions the survey to me that I’ll take the survey because they were so nice.  But I never do.  I feel bad – it’s certainly not something I mean to lie about, but it just happens.  So, I guess I can’t get too mad at my customers that do the exact same thing.
The fact that so many companies try to entice you with hopes of winning gift cards or other cash prizes if you would just take their surveys seems to not even matter.  You could promise them a chance at winning a million dollars (and since the odds are better of winning that than winning a million dollars if you played the Lotto, those odds are pretty favorable) and you still won’t get people to fill out a ten question survey.  It makes me wonder who exactly wins these prizes.  I’ve certainly never heard of anyone winning these amazing shopping sprees or gift cards at any store other than one time.  When I was first hired by my company, I saw a video proving somebody supposedly won, but other than that ONE time, nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  What’s up with that?
Well, how about the two of us – you and me – change all of that?  From here on out, I promise to try really hard to fill out every single goddamn survey I get on every single goddamn receipt, no matter how small my purchase was.  How about you all do the same?  Up for the challenge?
Let’s leave a little positive feedback for people who are in the shittiest of shitty jobs, because maybe something nice will happen for them.  Maybe they’ll see the comments and it’ll cheer them up from an otherwise dismal day at work.  Perhaps they’ll win something nice for impacting their customers’ experiences.  Perhaps karma will even be kind to us and we’ll get something nice for our troubles like, say, a shopping spree for hundreds of dollars???
What say you?  Let’s put out the challenge to everyone we know.  Let’s go forth and do something wonderfully small acts of kindness for the sake of our fellow man or woman.
Right after I catch up on my Facebooking.
More soon from the frontlines...

What’s A Little Hypothermia If I Can Save Eight Dollars?

Today, a mini-story that shows the mindset I have about retail employment and how I want to save you the same erroneous train-of-thought.
I’ve been employed at my current job for over five years now and each winter, it is almost assured that the store will only be about ten degrees warmer than what it is outside.  Since I live in an area where winters can get pretty damn cold, that is not a good thing.
There are a number of reasons why this might occur, but the simplest one is because of the giant sliding doors that never seem to remain shut.  With each customer that comes stumbling through our front doors – braving howling winds, torrential downpours, or blinding snowfalls for a TV on sale for 10% – allows all the accumulated heat to be zapped from the air.
Another common reason why the temperatures indoors are so wacky is the fact that the thermostat isn’t accurately adjusted from day-to-day.  If there’s an unusually cold spring day, the A/C might still be on, and there’s not much the store workers can do about it.  By the time anything is fixed and you notice the difference, most of the day is already done with.  The reverse is true in the winter.  A working A/C and heating unit is almost useless in a large retail building that is as open as most electronics stores.
This, finally, gets to my mini-story.  Each year, most employees, knowing how cold the store can be during winter, start to wear long-sleeved undershirts below their work uniforms.  Smart, huh?  Yeah, I thought so, too.
However, the first year I worked at my job, I had only short-sleeved shirts.  Outside of work I never really needed long-sleeved undershirts.  I mean, if I was cold outside of work, I always had hoodies or jackets or I just wrapped myself up in blankets.  The first time I experienced how cold it could get in my store during the winter, I suppose I should’ve gone right out and purchased a pack of undershirts.  Ah, but that’s when my superior intellect kicked in.

I started thinking to myself, “Hey, you don’t plan on working here for more than a year.  Why waste your money on shirts you’ll never wear again?  Just tough it out!  It’s not that bad, after all.”

That’s how I spent my first winter there.

Then there was a second.

Then a third.

Then a fourth.

And so on and so on.

You would think that by the second year, I would have just decided to say, “fuck it!” and by myself a pack of long-sleeved shirts.  Well, let me tell you, my friend, you are completely mistaken.

Each year I kept thinking, “Well, this is my last year here.  I’m definitely not working here for another year.  I made it this far, after all, I might as well just stick it out until warm weather returns.”

So, yes, super genius that I am, I have been freezing myself out on an annual basis on the misguided and self-delusional belief that I’ll finally be out of my job.  I guess the moral of this story is, if keeping yourself warm or dry or safe is ever a matter of a few dollars – even if you think you’re not going to be there for very long – just spend the damn money.  Or risk being as foolish as a man who decides to freeze himself to death for a one-year-only job that turns into a 5-year-plus job.  Just a little piece of free advice.

More soon from the frontlines...