We're Closing - Get Your Crap And Leave!

     In most retail stores, if it is closing time, you’ll generally hear an all-too-eager person on the PA system announce that the store will be closing so but your shit and get out.  It’s the only announcement every worker in a store waits to hear.  Most customers abide by this because it’s a mix of common sense that closing time means closing time, as well as common decency.  Who wants to be that guy who is holding everyone up from going home?  Okay, who am I kidding, in this day and age, nobody gives a damn if they’re that guy.  I digress.

     However, in a store that may or may not be the one I work at, this message is absent.  I suppose it’s done in an attempt to create a friendly, welcoming environment.  We wouldn’t want anyone to not feel welcomed in our store by asking them to leave in a polite manner at the official close time that is posted on the doors.  Please, come in and browse for as long as you want.  Who cares if all you’re doing is buying a $7 pack of batteries?  It’s totally worth it to make everyone stay behind until you’re done finding the right AA batteries.

     Whenever I have someone ask me what time we close, and it happens to be after that stated time, they always have a half-surprised, half-nervous look about them.  As if we were going to carry them out if they didn’t hurry.  Good.  That’s the look they should have.  But it’s not their fault because it’s not announced.  They’re conditioned to gather their things and make their way to the front lanes when they hear the PA announcement.  They don’t stop shopping at a store because they’re asked to leave.

     Retail managers are just so greedy to make that extra sale they all assume will walk through those doors after we’re supposed to close.  What really happens is that you only get someone buying batteries, a DVD, a CD, or another minor product that will make no difference to the store’s profits for the day.  In retail, keeping the doors open just fifteen, twenty minutes longer doesn’t really serve much of a purpose.  If you’re keeping the doors open because it’s slow and you’re trying to make some cash, it’s doubtful you’ll need all the employees that are there to serve the one or two customers who walk in.  So, while 1 or 2 employees are engaging the customers, you have several others just shooting the shit with coworkers or waiting to finish closing their departments down.  What a total waste of payroll!  And if you’re keeping the doors open because you’re trying to make some extra cash because it’s been slow, that waste of payroll is draining the little money you already made for the day.

     If someone pages for my assistance in my department, and it’s after closing time, I always have the urge to say, “I’m sorry, I could’ve helped them, but we closed 10 minutes ago.  They should’ve showed up during the 10-11 hours we were open during business hours.”  I’m sure one day I’ll get the balls to say that.  Maybe whenever I hit it rich and can afford to quit retail.  Oh, but how I’ll enjoy that moment!

     Trust me, if you could have a PA system in your home, you would certainly use it if you had people over for longer than they’re welcomed.  How amazing would that be if you could just get up from the couch, walk over to their personal broadcast system, and say, “Attention, family members!  It is time to make a final stop at the bathroom, gather your leftovers from dinner, and go home.  We will be closing our front doors in ten minutes.  Thank you for visiting and we’ll see you all again soon.”  I know several of my family members who wouldn’t say no to that idea.

     To recap:  retail companies, don’t be afraid to say goodbye to your customers at the end of the day.  They will return and whatever they wanted to buy that night could probably wait until tomorrow morning.  If their TV is out, maybe this is a sign that they should hold conversations with their families or read books or go out on the town.  If their fridge died, maybe this is a sign they shouldn’t be eating the crap they bought at the grocery store.  Closing the doors could do nothing but bring them positive outcomes!  It’s your duty to close those doors – think of the lives you’d be improving if you did.  (I’m just not sure if I mean that more for the employees or for the customers.)

     More soon from the frontlines…

Cloudy With A Chance Of Pointless Meandering

     Retail sunshine.  For those of you not in the know, that’s what people in retail say the weather’s like if there is no actual sunshine outside.  If it’s just bad enough to not be able to go outside and do fun things but not bad enough where they’re boarding up the windows, it’s weather that usually will drive people into stores.  Personally, it’s not very sunny for me whenever people, who drive through rainstorms or thunderstorms, enter the building by choice when I have to be there by necessity.

     “Boy, it’s raining outside.  I wish I could have spent my time outside riding my bike but instead I’m stuck inside.  I guess I have nothing better to do than to putz around the local electronics store for an hour or two for no reason before leaving without purchasing anything.”

     Which is what often happens at my store.  People will go into a store and just meander around looking at the same stuff they saw the last time they were in and wandering around (which probably occurred less than a week prior to their current visit).  If they do end up buying anything, it’s a CD or a DVD, and it’s probably one they only bought because they wanted to justify their trip out to the store.

     “Well, I didn’t really like Rambo 3 but I did just waste forty-five minutes of my day off here, soooooo… I better make it worth it.”

     God forbid you should’ve spent the time you wasted by doing something productive at home.  People seem to have a real desire to not be at home as much as possible.  They’d rather waste time at a store for no real reason other than not be at home.  Me, I wish I had the time to waste just petering around a store for endless amounts of time.  If it was my day off and the weather was crappy, I’d spend most of my day in bed reading, or writing, or, at the very least, watching DVDs or shows I recorded on my DVR.

     “Man, I have a hundred DVDs and I’ve only watched twenty of them, but none of the rest seem to be appealing to me at this moment.  Guess I should go buy another DVD!”

     But people in this day and age can’t seem to be bothered with reading a book it seems.

     You would think that I’d prefer it to be busy on the rainy days because it might mean less people on sunny days, but that is not the case, friends.  I want it to be busy enough on the sunny days so time goes by faster and I don’t feel so bad for missing out on the beautiful weather.  On the crappy days, people in my store tend to be more laidback and have a better time.  They might be stuck indoors at work but at least they’re not missing much outside.

     The concept of ‘retail sunshine’ is just part of retailing-by-weather-report that take place each day at my store.

     “Oh, it’s sunny and warm outside – it’s going to be a busy day, today!”

     “Hey, it’s raining outside – looks like we’re going to get some good traffic in!”

     Why don’t you just say, “Hey, there’s a 50/50 chance we’ll be busy today,” instead?  There will be those who prefer to shop when it’s raining and those who prefer to shop when it’s sunny outside.  You can’t predict what type of day it’ll be at your retail store based on the weather.  People are INSANE and will shop whenever they want to because they would rather waste their lives away inside a store, looking at products they will probably never buy, than to explore their neighborhoods, read books, etc., etc.

     Or just stay home and keep reading this blog.  See, this is even better than going out to get some DVD you’ll never end up watching more than once.  Just sit back and laugh at the others that I meet.  Besides, look at all that retail sunshine outside.  Do you really want to go out in that?

     More soon from the frontlines…

Hello! ... I Said, HELLO!

     Can someone out there answer this question for me: 

     Who hurt you as a child when you said “hello” to them?

     That’s the only thing that I can think of that could possibly explain why people avoid replying “hello” to a retail worker who comes up to them armed with nothing more than a smile and a friendly greeting.  If I had a dime for every customer that didn’t hear me I wouldn’t need to work in any retail job for a very long time.  As it is, I just get to keep getting people who walk around and pretend they didn’t hear me when I say ‘hello’ from less than 10 feet from them.

     And this isn’t a simple case of me not speaking loud enough, but rather people blatantly ignoring me.  Customers will just keep meandering around the aisle they’re in as if they never heard me.  As if reading the description of 300 needed their full attention to comprehend.  This leaves me standing around looking like an idiot while I wait to see if the person will ever respond.  Sometimes I’ll wait to see if they decide to acknowledge my presence but more times than not, I’ll just quickly turn around and leave.

     Being so obviously ignored is just the tip of the iceberg, however.  What is even better is when I say, “Finding everything okay?” and they respond, “No, thanks.  Just looking.”

     Wait, what?  Did you not hear what I had asked?

     People who don’t listen are even worse.  I suppose I can’t blame the customers on this point for the most part.  As retail stores that have commissioned employees go, they tend to train their employees to be aggressive in going after the sale.  A person could take 2 steps into a department and be barraged by ten people all asking if they need help and not leaving until the customer hoses them down with pepper spray.  So, when a customer is asked a question, they just automatically want to be left alone.  They don’t hear the question but only respond to the situation.  It has been my experience that even if a customer needs help, they might not want to ask for it because they know one question will open the floodgates for the salesperson’s pitch.

     I don’t care if customers don’t want my help.  In fact, there are days when I’m praying they don’t.  I’d much prefer being able to get work I need to do finished first.  But if I’m asking you if you’re doing okay, just listen first.  If you’re looking at a $5 set of blank DVDs, I don’t think I’m going to go in for the hard sell on you.  Relax!  Even if I was on commission, I would not work that hard.  You’re just not that important to me.

     Not listening to the right question is just as annoying as this:

     “Hi!”

     “Oh, we’re fine.  We’re not looking to buy anything.”

     Good.  I really didn’t care to sell you anything.  When you meet someone for the first time, if you say “hi” to that person, it’s not like you’re enquiring about how much they make, who their high school sweetheart was, and what their favorite band was.  And I, as a salesperson, am not always looking to look for more work than I want.  If I say ‘hi’, it’s just something called manners.  It’s not a big commitment to have a friendship.

     A refusal to engage employees by resorting to screaming at the employees for doing their job is an extreme example of miscommunication.  Customers who flip out on employees who just want to say “hello” or who ask if that customer is finding everything, just come out looking like a big dick.  I won’t say much about this because I’ll reserve it for a separate, special entry all its own.  Just know, that no employee, commissioned or non-, hates being treated like garbage just for saying “hello”.  You don’t scream at people walking by you on the street for saying hello to you, unless, that is, you’re a homeless, crazy person.  You aren’t, are you?

     There is a real breakdown in our society when it comes to conversation.  Nobody is hearing what the other person is saying.  This comes as no real revelation, obviously, but it is still quite surprising just how bad we’ve come.  It’s shocking to me that any 2 people, absent of electronic devices, can become friends nowadays because friendships entail listening to one another.  Nobody seems to do that.  If you can’t even fake a conversation with a salesperson for 2-5 minutes, how are you going to maintain a conversation with someone who you want to be friends with for 30-60 minutes at a time?

     What can we do at the retail level, then?

     Well, retailers should train their commissioned people to not be like the stereotypical sharks that TV portrays them to be.  It’s okay to make money and be a bit aggressive but how about you stop short of shackling your customer’s leg to your register?  I hear from my retail friends that they get lots of customers who have left a commissioned store in disgust and purchased from my friends because they worked at a noncommissioned store.  Yikes, guys.  That doesn’t spell good news for your business.  Word spreads fast.

     Customers, finally, can just relearn those lessons they were taught as a child about the common rules of conversation.  Listen to what’s being said.  If someone says “hello”, just say “hello” back.  If they keep asking you if you need help, just politely say, “I don’t want help… I appreciate it… Thanks for asking but I’m okay,” – anything!  Just remember to be nice.  That’s all.  A little kindness goes a long, long way; this is especially true in the world of retail.  Employees always remember the nice customers who understand that they’re doing their job and trying to be nice.

     This seems to be a decent rant.  I guess I’ll end things here for now.  Good-bye!

     … I said good-bye, people.  Great, didn’t you pay attention to anything I said in this post?  It’s called manners, jeez!  Forget it, you’re hopeless.  I didn’t want to write this blog anyway, so there.

     More soon from the frontlines…

What's My Price?

     “Is this fridge made in America?”
     “Yes, it is.”
     “Great! I only buy things made in America. Is this the price?”
     “Yep.”
     “Hm… Is there anything you can do on the price?”
     This scenario, or variations of that, have been related back to me by countless friends, former coworkers, and current coworkers. I’ve had to deal with similar situations like that for years now and it always baffles me. Why do you care so much if a product is made in America when you don’t want to pay the price for a product made in America?
     You may not be hurting the manufacturing jobs directly, but you’re hurting the stores you’re shopping at because they now need to recoop the money they lost on the product that they had to reduce to sell. This means they’ll either raise the prices of products in the store or cut back hours of the staff you already claim aren’t around to help you. Or they’ll just stop carrying the products because they can’t make a profit off of them. Raising prices could then, possibly, lead to stores closing down because nobody wants to shop at a store where the prices have gone up. With stores closing, the companies that make products in the US will have fewer and fewer places to sell their goods.
     That’s awfully simplified but much of that tends to be the path retail stores take. If you want to teach a baby to walk, you don’t cut off its left leg first and then train him or her. The baby needs both legs to get the job done.
     Right now many are probably asking, “Why don’t people just shop online for products?” Prices can be lower since there are no stores to maintain and not as many staffers to hire. That would work great if the customers asking for more discounts weren’t the same customers who hated to shop online because they couldn’t see the product in person. I have tons of customers who say they prefer to see the products in the store and wouldn’t shop online for bigger purchases because reading about a product can only go so far for them.
     Buying DVDs or video games online is great, but who wants to buy a $1500 stove online when they’ve never seen it in person? What if there’s a typo and the dimensions for that product are wrong? Maybe that white isn’t white enough and now it clashes with everything else in your kitchen. Well, if stores, such as Circuit City (an electronics store that closed down a few years ago) can’t make it, and more stores join them, your options dwindle, leaving only online sites to buy products from. Is paying the price for the product in the stores worth it now?
     Finally, when all is said and done, and the prices are agreed upon, I will often have that same customer ask me, “So, how’s business been?”
     How the hell do you think it’s been?? You’re the moron who wanted the product for next to nothing and you’re concerned about the economy? Do people not know how to connect the dots in this world?
I suppose not. We’re too busy connecting dots that aren’t even there. We’d rather make accusations about people’s religious or political affiliations and then cite evidence that isn’t true than to focus on the real problems of the world. We’d rather go on and on about 9/11 conspiracies or JFK conspiracies than think about how our personal shopping habits may impact the economy at large.
     You don’t go into a grocery store and ask if you can get the broccoli that’s on sale for less. You generally understand that that’s the price you pay and if you can’t afford it, you don’t get it - or you get frozen instead of fresh broccoli. You don’t go into Petsmart and haggle over the price of dog food. Why do you suddenly go into an electronics store and demand discounts on something with a price tag already on it? I wonder how customers would like it if we went into their places of work and ask for discounts of products they sell.
     “Can I get this unleaded gasoline for less than the price at the pump?”
     Electronics stores are not car dealerships. We are not in the mood to haggle over prices with you and we don’t want you to treat us as car salesmen.
     The state of the US economy shouldn’t be something you haggle about if you truly care about the state it’s in. If you want to support American jobs, that’s terrific, but support ALL American jobs.
     More soon from the frontlines…

"I Can Take The Next Customer On Register 10."

     I’m going to switch gears here and talk about how retail stores can improve the way they do business. This problem is the most frustrating and common issue across the board - spanning grocery retail to electronics retail. It’s probably one of the biggest reasons why shopping online has been so popular of late and has spelled doom for more than 1 retailer:
     Long lines at the checkout stands.
     I hear the groans already so I know I’m right. A store has 10 to 20 registers closed but only 2-3 are open. Then there are lines that back up into the aisles and some indignant comedian makes it up to the registers and cracks a joke about having to wait in line for a few minutes. Here’s a tip: the sarcasm isn’t really appreciated and, most likely, the cashier agrees with you. It sucks to wait in line and that’s especially true when all you want to do is buy 1 item, but nobody wants to hear you be a dick.
     NOW, what the retail stores can do, as I promised. Stores need to stop being so concerned with doing business on the cheap. “Spend a little to make a little,” should be etched into the brains of every CEO in America. I know it isn’t ideal to have 5 cashiers standing around when things get slow, but maybe you should have them go out and do other things in the store. Train them to do more than just scan things, perhaps. But every customer will leave the store a bit happier knowing that they didn’t have to wait for 10 minutes and miss the first five minutes of Dancing With The Stars.
     If you have plenty of staff to do the work, more people will be helped, and you’ll sell more. I’ve seen customers who’ve left their shopping cart behind because they had been waiting in a checkout line for several minutes. Think of all the money you could’ve had, no matter the size of the purchase, had they stayed and purchased the products? Spend a little to make a little.
     I’ve found that many stores try to change the appearance of their stores to combat this growing frustration over their lack of staffing. They change the displays or make it seem like you’re family while in their stores. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really mind people being there to sell products as long as they’re not shoving products into my shopping cart. And if you’ve hired the right people for the job, you don’t need to train them or direct them to try and be my friend while I’m there. Telling your employees to be friendlier to the customers makes it seem even more phony than not. You can make your stores as pretty and welcoming as you want but it will always boil down to being able to get out fast once they find what they’re looking for.
     For those businesses that are some of the top-earning businesses in America, paying for more employees shouldn’t be too difficult. Instead of buying that second corporate jet, how about you hire a few hundred more employees? Instead of opening ten new stores every year, how about you focus on making the stores you do have the best you can? As much as I used to love McDonald’s, I don’t need one opened two blocks down from another one. Have your stores staffed properly and it’ll go a long way with people.
     Solving the cashier issue can be fixed by avoiding the need to hire more if cashiers received more hours. Lots of cashiers are only part-time and need to work more than one job just to get by. If a company just made more of those part-timers full-timers, than there’d be more overlap. You wouldn’t need to hire more - just pay a few dollars more per employee if that’s what you prefer to do.
     What bugs me is when I’m asked to cashier as a back-up when they’re low on help. I have my own job to get done and pulling me away from that task will only frustrate customers in other ways. Shuffling staff around from one department to the front to cashier is not a sustainable practice. This practice of shuffling staff around will most likely be revisited again, but for now, I shall leave it at that. Suffice it to say, staffing properly would just solve so many problems for a retailer who is fighting to keep business at the stores and away from Amazon or other online retailers.
     I’d write more in-depth on this issue but if you’ll excuse me, Dancing With The Stars will be on soon.
     More soon from the frontlines…

Equality Among All

     I suppose my first real entry should be about equality. Young or old, fat or skinny, black or white - entering into a retail store makes everyone equals in my eyes. I’m not talking about equal rights or the like, either. I’m talking about everyone is equally stupid. In all my years working in various retail jobs, I have noticed that no matter how intelligent the person is supposed to be, walking through those doors drains a person of basic comprehension skills.
     It is the most amazing thing to witness. I’ve come to the conclusion that a very long time ago, retail CEOs made some sort of pact with the devil to create a magical entryway that would drain people of their intelligence. How else can you explain people entering a store and buying every single “As Seen On TV” product known to man? Shake weights? Really?
     Let’s take a grocery store, for instance. Every aisle is labeled with a general list of what you can find in each one. That’s not even including the big giant departments: produce, meat, bakery, etc. Yet, a person will take two steps into the produce department and ask the first employee, “Where are your tomatoes?”
     “Uh, turn your head to the right. See that table two feet from you?”
     People enter a store and lose all sense of self-reliance. Laziness and stupidity go hand-in-hand in the retail world. They cannot, for whatever reason, find even the most generic item on their own. They’d rather be told where the item is. If someone could program a GPS unit to tell people where items are located in a particular store, they would make a killing. A store could post ten million signs telling people where products are and they still wouldn’t be able to find the item they’re looking for.
     The worse is when I notice people pick up a product, walk ten feet, and then put the product down because they don’t feel the need to return the product to the right location. Does that printer ink look like it belongs with the candy bars at the register? I don’t think so, super genius. No matter how far a product may be located, if I decide to change my mind on a product, I return the product to the location. The poorly paid workers at the stores have more to get done in a day than return your can of peas because you left it in the paper towel aisle.
     I also find myself dumbing down a lot of explanations to customers just so I am sure they comprehend everything I’m telling them. I’ll even talk slower at times to make sure what I’m saying is sinking in for them. It’s not that I’m trying to insult them but when I see only a dim awareness of what I’m saying, I grow discouraged and realize I have to explain things like I‘m talking to a ten year old. I’m even more discouraged when I hear, “I don’t understand,” to the simplest of explanations. How do you dumb down a statement that’s dumbed down as far as it’ll go?
     If you think I’m exempting myself from all of this, you’re wrong. But I try to change my ways as much as possible. Not only that, but I’ll pick up the slack for others. If I see product in the wrong location, depending on how close I am to where it really belongs, I’ll return it. If I see garbage on the ground, I’ll sometimes pick it up. It drives me nuts when I have to pick it up at my job, so I feel it’s good karma to do it for my brethren in arms who work at these stores. This does not always work when I’m on the job, however. There are plenty of times that I see a piece of paper or tissue paper on the ground and think, “Do I really want to bend down to get that?”
     Laziness. I’m telling you, those swinging, rotating, or sliding front doors are hexed with some sort of curse put on them. I just came up with the plot for Ghostbusters 3. You’re welcome Dan Akroyd.
     Thankfully, this first major hurdle is easy to combat. If you have a question about location of a product, just look up. There most likely will be a sign hanging down that states where the product is. Self-reliance is a good thing. By all means, don’t hesitate to ask questions, obviously, since answering questions is part of the workers’ job code. But don’t ask stupid questions you can clearly find out on your own. You’ll gain the respect of those who work there and they might even be more willing to help you out if you make an effort to find something first.
     If you don’t want a product, just walk a few steps back to where you got it. Trust me, America, we’ve all seen the news about how we’re the fattest nation on the planet. You can use those extra steps. Or at least just tell an employee you didn’t want a product and, generally, they’ll return it. Better to return it during the day than having to discover it a minute before they punch out for the day. Just think of it this way if you work in an office: would you like it if your boss brings you a stack of papers that need to be filed five minutes before you’re supposed to leave for the night?
     Laziness and stupidity will be recurring themes here, but this is a good start, no?
     More soon from the frontlines…

Welcome To The Party, Everyone!

     Welcome to my blog, everyone. Wow, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever utter in a million years. But c’est la vie! I guess I should begin with what my purpose of this blog is and is not.
     First, it will mostly be about my observations about life in the retail world. Normally, that might not sound too interesting, but you’d be surprised as to what goes on at your favorite stores. With a major portion of the U.S. having at one point worked in the retail world, a lot of my observations may sound familiar to you. I hope that even those who don’t work in the retail industry will be able to relate what I say here to your personal work environment. After all, frustration with one’s current work situation is a universal feeling.
     Who knows, I might even make a pretty insightful comment about those who work in retail stores or those who shop in retail stores. I’d love for this to be a therapeutic exercise for not only myself, but for others who read this. Something to laugh at, to shake your head at, or to open your eyes to - anything that makes this worthwhile for all parties involved.
     I’ll often relate stories from past or present jobs that I’ve had or from others whom I’ve worked with. Throughout the stories, the names will be changed to protect the innocent and the not-innocent-at-all. If you’re a customer who recognizes some of the behaviors I describe in here as your own, then hopefully you’ll keep this blog and the critiques of annoying behaviors in mind the next time you go shopping.
     Just don’t assume I’m talking about you.
     (Unless you’re Larry, then I’m totally talking about you. Yeah, Larry, your friends are talking about you behind your back. Shape up or ship out, buddy! Do you think we don’t know you punch out fifteen minutes early every damn day?)
     What this isn’t is a place just to bitch for bitching’s sake. Most people don’t like their jobs or complain endlessly about it. Most people have jobs worse than mine and I in no way take for granted the fact that I have a paycheck that can help me scrape by in this crappy economy. Whenever I complain about a situation, I hope to be able to grow or find answers from them. If I can’t find something useful in a crappy situation, then this just becomes a blog about a grown man crying about a mediocre job. At which point, you all would promptly leave.
     I don’t hate my job or any job I’ve held. I just have had to deal with a lot of stupid bullshit and need a place to let my thoughts go free. I hope you all will learn to sympathize with that.
     As my first blog, this will be quite a “work in progress” for a long time. I hope everyone can stick it out and enjoy the few amusing things I say. As you read my blog entries, please take note: I am very sarcastic. I’ll refrain from “lol” or “haha” and just trust in the fact that you can pick-up on my humor. In retail, if you can’t laugh about a situation, you’ve already lost the game.
     And as far as that whole agreement the website asks you to agree to before reading my blog with “adult content”? Nothing I say will get crazy, I don’t think, but the first rule of retail is CYA. I don’t want anyone complaining that I swore on my own blog. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t have said that b/c now I’ve lost that sense of danger and excitement. Damn!
     So sit back & enjoy! I love feedback & your comments are always welcome. Spread the word to everyone if you enjoy the stories I tell, too! The more, the merrier. Just respect others & myself while you’re here. And thanks for deciding that reading this was more entertaining than spending time online to masturbate. I feel honored!
     More soon from the frontlines…