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...

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...

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...

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...

What Do You MEAN The Store’s Closed? It’s Only 6pm And I Need My New I-Pod!

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I’ve recently been abroad to the Old World and I must say that there are some things that America could learn from Europe about work.  It was enough to almost make me not get on that plane back to the States.  So, what was so great about it?  I suppose the major point is the fact that the hours seem to be better.  Now, granted, this is a statement about the places I explored while in Europe.  I know not every country in Europe is the same.  So take this info with a grain of salt.
Nearly every single store seems to close no later than 7pm.  Not only that but a lot of stores (that aren’t bakeries) don’t even open until 9am.  I know a lot of coworkers who wouldn’t mind getting out by 7pm on a Friday night.  I can’t tell you how many family gatherings that would’ve allowed me to catch the last few hours of, at the very least.  And when you think about it, what store – other than pharmacies or convenience stores – need to be open past 7pm, anyway?  If you can’t buy your 50” TV by 7pm then maybe it wasn’t meant to be.  If your washer broke down just take your clothes to a Laundromat.  If your cellphone died on you then enjoy the silence and pick up a book.
And forget about finding anything open on a Sunday.  Good GOD!  Forget the point if you’re religious or not but if God could rest on the 7^th day, why can’t retail workers?
Do you know what people in Europe do on Sundays?  They spend the day relaxing and enjoying the world around them.  Novel concept, I know.  Parks were filled with people.  Cafés were bustling with friends catching up with one another.  Streets were more jam-packed with bicyclists than motorists.  People. Just. Slowed. Down.  If they had a 40” TV, they don’t seem to need to rush right out when the 60” version comes out three months later.
It seems like everyone is in such a rush in the States to go from 1 store to the other and by the end of the day, how many of you actually feel like you’ve accomplished a lot for the time you spent running around?  I’ve said it before but whenever I hear customers say that they’re just shopping around and plan to go to 4-5 other stores on their Sunday, I just think, “Why?”  In the day and age of the Internet, just go home, sit out in the backyard, enjoy a cup of lemonade, and look up what you want to buy online.  Even if you don’t want to buy it online and insist on going into a store, at least you know what’s out there before you go out.  This way, instead of going to five million stores, you can just go to 1-2.  Plus, nowadays, it seems like every store is so desperate for your business that they’ll offer price-match guarantees on their items so even if you don’t think you got the best deal, you can still go in after you buy it and get the difference back if it goes down.
I never want to spend a whole day at stores.  If a store has what I want and I know it’s within what I want to spend, I get it.  I’m not going to spend my time and gasoline on trying to save $10.  Life’s too short for that bullshit.
Another bonus of working in Europe – and I know this has its drawbacks, too – is the amount of vacations one can get at many places of employment.  You hear it in jokes on late night comedy talk shows about how they get 6 months vacation out of the year and how even the slightest hint of taking away 1 day from their vacation times will insight massive riots throughout Europe.  But what I want to know is, when life IS so short and when most people work themselves to death and have to deal with mounds of bullshit in their everyday life, why NOT have 6 weeks – HELL, even 4 weeks – of vacation time?
People need to unwind and 2-3 weeks vacation time and a few personal days spattered throughout the year isn’t always enough.  Especially if you work in retail.  Imagine what you can see and do with 4-6 weeks of vacation time!  However, this goes hand-in-hand with pay.  People in retail jobs in the States need to be paid a living wage and not the bullshit most hourly workers get in order to do something useful with those vacation hours.  I hear a lot of stories from people who just take vacation hours to sit around the house.  But why??  Even if it’s just to go into the city or visit family in the next state, that’s still being able to get out and explore the world.  Or at least do something useful with your time at home (like start a blog! Ha).
There are a lot of things wrong with Europe – as there is with any place on the globe – but recognizing people need time to get away from work isn’t one of them.  And for those who say that despite the fact many jobs pay more than their U.S. counterparts they get taxed more, I say, “So what?”  They might get taxed more but, generally speaking, those taxes go toward universal health coverage in many countries (look out, it’s “socialism”!).  It goes towards better roads and other infrastructure projects (without being labeled wasted government jobs.  Yeah, I hate driving on smooth roads and having bridges not collapse).  It goes towards renewable energy sources (“Oh, look at those UGLY windmills!  I’d rather have those power plants that churn out the billowing smoke in my backyard.” – some random U.S. politician).
Okay, I shall leave it there for now.  I will probably pick back up on this topic when I have more time to delve deeper.  I just needed to get out of my writing slump.  Hey look, I’m up to 1750 page views!  Thanks to everyone reading this rambling mess.  Hope you’ve found it amusing.  Tell your friends and family!
More soon from the frontlines...

Let's Be Friends! ...Or Not!

     In my time in retail I’ve had a number of managers that I’ve had to deal with.  I’m not talking about my direct supervisors, but instead, I’m talking about those who run the store.  At my first job I didn’t really have much direct contact with them and that’s the way I liked it.  They were just these generic (usually male) figures in suits that could’ve been replaced with anyone else and I really wouldn’t have noticed.  That’s not to say some of them weren’t nice but I was a teenager and they were typically older with little in common with myself.  They – probably – only saw me as one in a long line of faceless workers that might not be at that job longer than a year.      As I worked at that same job longer and I grew out of my teenager’s shell, I made more and more friends with most of the workers there.  The supervisors that came and went were usually easy to get along with but I also came into more contact with the store managers since I had been there so long.
     Relationships with managers in retail always swing from one extreme to the other.  They either are complete tightwads who think about nothing other than the job or they are really laidback and relatable.  You get the ones who are only focused on moving up in the business or those who are just cashing in the nice paychecks until something better comes along.

     In the grocery world, I’ve had more of the former than the latter, but that only really affected me when I was a cashier and nearly constantly surrounded by them as they went into and out of their office.  When I was off in other departments, however, I could find ways to avoid them bothering me.  Then again, you would get one or two managers who couldn’t leave you alone because they always had something extra for you to do (you know, besides the 4-5 other things you were trying to get accomplished).  I typically didn’t have many personal conversations with my managers and I preferred that.  I don’t care if a manager tries to be my best friend as long as they let me do my job.  In my years in the grocery retail world, I think I knew 1-2 facts in total about the several store managers I’ve had.

     In the electronics world, I’ve had more direct contact with the managers since the staff and the store are both smaller.  You not only have your supervisor to watch over you but you have several other supervisors who patrol the stores and then there are 3-4 managers who are in charge of everything.  I’ve had one of the best store managers in electronics retail but also the worst store manager.

     The best – let’s just call him Alex – was laidback but also knew how to talk to people as if they were people instead of five-year-olds.  Alex talked to you and seemed to enjoy talking to you.  It wasn’t one of those things where it was forced or awkward.  He could joke around with people but could also put customers in their place when they were being overly obnoxious.  One time, with another manager and a coworker of mine, we had a mini snowball fight toward the end of the night.  How often does one have a snowball fight with their management?  Alex seemed like a pretty straightforward type of guy who, at the very least, presented the image of a person you could talk to about things and felt like he was taking your concerns to heart.

     Sadly, like all the good management people, they don’t last.  They get transferred or a promotion or a better offer from a competitor.  What’s worse is that anyone after that person will pale in comparison.  What’s even worse than that is when that next person isn’t just a letdown but is also truly the worst manager you’ve ever had.  When you go from a nice environment as that to an environment where you dread coming into work each and everyday, things seem truly depressing.

     The worst manager – let’s just call her Karen – was the opposite of Alex.  It was either her way or the highway on a lot of issues.  If she didn’t like you, she really didn’t like you.  When it came to rallying the troops to have “fun”, every word she said felt so forced, as if she was a robot created in a lab with no contact with humans.  Her tone was almost always set to “condescension”.  She treated longtime employees like they were suspected criminals.  Our store lost quite a few good people under her reign than under any of the other managers at that job.

     I hate to say this but I’ve noticed a lot of women managers who seem to take their authority to their heads and act like dictators.  And I feel this is a comment more on the American work environment than anything else.  It’s as if they feel like they have to be harder, stricter, and ruder than their male counterparts just so they can prove themselves capable managers.  Which is ridiculous because I’ve had a number of male managers who were complete buffoons.  And the higher up you found men in management roles, the more idiotic they seemed to me.  If the pay scale was better in women’s favor and more roles of management were opened up to them – not to mention a whole host of different social/economic changes that could take place – I think they wouldn’t feel the need to go mad with power.

     But as it was, whenever Karen tried to have a friendly chat with me about my family or my schooling, I felt like she was mentally ticking off the seconds that the conversation lasted so she would know when she could end it.  This is the mental conversation I pictured Karen having as she talked with me:

     “Okay… now smile as he talks… thirty seconds… nod… forty seconds… say something as a follow-up… okay, now raise your eyebrows in surprise… good, good… almost there… say ‘that sounds nice’… perrrrfect… laugh and then thank him for all his hard work today… and now walk away.  Great!  That’s one conversation down for the day.”

     The only thing I hate more than the fake attempts at being friendly is the fact a lot of managers talk down to their employees like they were all children.  This fact is especially amusing since most of the managers I’ve had in retail were either around my age or younger than I am.  I understand that most electronics stores hire younger people but that doesn’t mean they’re babies.  So stop treating them as such!  Most of my coworkers, while young, are still smart enough to do their jobs, and if you’re hiring them, why don’t you trust them to know what to do?  When you talk down to someone who either doesn’t deserve it or is older than you, you come across as a total douchebag.  Then nobody likes you and everyone looks forward to you being fired or transferred.

     Another awkward development of the Internet age is friend requests on Facebook.  Now, I’m not talking about every person you’ve ever worked with requesting to be your friend despite only saying 3 words to you in over a year of working together.  No, I’m talking about managers who request to be your friend.  I get the fact that some just want to spy on their workers to see what they say about their jobs (and if that’s the case, do they really think we don’t know what they’re trying to do?) but others just either want to keep an eye on people’s behaviors outside of work or truly want to be their friend.  Either way, there’s danger ahead.  I’ve friended a few managers on Facebook but I try to keep that number low – only those who I think are genuine in their request – or I wait for them to have left the store before doing so.

     But what do you do when they request your friendship?  Do you accept it and patrol what you say?  Do you ignore it and then constantly wonder if that manager is going to bring up the fact you haven’t added them on Facebook yet?  Don’t you just hate that?  I don’t do a very good job of patrolling my own thoughts but I’ve learned to deal with the fact that if managers want to judge me on what I say on some stupid social site then that’s their prerogative and I can always find another job doing something else.

     If managers are going to go the route of acting like our friends then don’t act like our warden the next minute.  That will just breed resentment and hostility in your workers.  Nobody likes a two-faced manager.

     I just wish that if all of these managers are forced to attend the same brainwashing training seminar, the seminar instructors teach them how to fake being relatable better.  Because most of them are doing a horrendous job of it.  Again, I don’t think managers have to be our best friends but if they’re going to try and be friendly then look up what the word “friendly” means in the dictionary.  Otherwise, just go about doing your business and I’ll do mine.  Hey, I’m just here to try and help you managers become better people, is all.  You’re welcome.

More soon from the frontlines...

"I'm Going To Repeat Myself Only Louder In The Vain Attempt You'll Change Your Mind!"

     A fun common thread that all retail work includes is the amount of yelling customers tend to do.  Fortunately, it’s not a common thread, but it’s a thread none-the-less.  It is an issue that generally occurs at the customer service desk at each store.  In all of my time, I would calculate that the amount of issues that got resolved to the customer’s satisfaction because they resorted to yelling stands at about a 30% success rate.  The other 70%, the customer’s acting like a complete asshole for no reason and get tossed out of the store once they begin to attract attention.  Well, other than they were too stupid to comprehend what they were buying, that is.

     First, the 30%.  The only reason managers or employees cave-in to a customer’s yelling and ranting is because they are tired of dealing with clearly insane people and have ten other things to get to more important.  Sorry to hear you left your new I-Pod in your car in 100 degree weather and now it won’t play, but you want us to take the product back, because…?  “WELL, BECAUSE YOU GUARANTEE YOUR PRODUCTS TO WORK FOR THE FIRST x-amount OF DAYS!  IT’S NOT MY FAULT!”  Riiiiight.  Customers who fuck up don’t ever want to admit they fucked up and will always claim an issue isn’t “their fault”.  They get pissed at stores for not taking responsibility but when there’s an issue that’s clearly their fault, they will not own up to it.

     If customers want to be treated like children, don’t be surprised when you are.

     So, the 30% shouldn’t feel like they won the Indy 500 just because they got their way over some small issue that probably wasn’t the store’s fault.  Calm down – you threw a tantrum and got your way.  The same thing works for 3 year olds.

     Now, the 70%.  Personally, I wish more people would resort to yelling, because I love watching people get escorted out of stores because they were screaming.  Who let’s an issue escalate to the point where they start yelling?  I don’t know 1 time when I’ve yelled at someone because of an issue at a restaurant or retail store.  Plus, like I mentioned, it’s the 70% that never get their way by yelling.  So, what does it accomplish?  Does it make you feel big that you screamed at, most likely, an 18-24 year old behind a customer service desk who did nothing other than repeat business procedure to you about a return or a defective product?

     People DO realize that the people working at the retail stores don’t actually MAKE the products they’re buying, right?

     “Your store shouldn’t sell crap that just breaks down on someone five months later.”

     Well, imagine how many people are out there who probably purchased your product and didn’t have an issue.  There’s always a lemon, remember.  A farmer’s yearly yield of oranges sometimes produces a few individual oranges that go bad by the time they reach the grocery stores.  Should grocery stores stop carrying produce from that farmer because they can’t guarantee every single item put on display will remain fresh by the time you get it to your table?

     If you really want to get your way, go in with a level head and a pleasant attitude.  A cheerful, understanding customer who politely asks if there’s anything the employees can do to help you works a million times better than a screaming, idiotic, customer.  I will go 10 times beyond what’s asked of me for a customer who is polite and friendly than I would for a dick who demands or rushes me when I’m trying to help them.  I know we all have bad experiences with retail but there’s no need to let it affect how you act now.  Again, the only people I know of that can get away with acting petulant are 2-4 year olds.  Everyone else should grow up.  Got it?

     There are plenty of issues that arise in the store where customers yell, or snap, and I’ll be getting into specific stories later.  But for now, just remember, if you get a product you’re not 100% satisfied with, it’s not going to do you any good to go into the store and yell and attract attention to yourself.  Unless you want to make the employees working at the store laugh at you after you storm out of the store.  Then, by all means, feel free to act like a jackass!  I work in retail – I need the laugh.  Breathe and calm down, everyone.

     More soon from the frontlines…