"You Have An Idiot On Line One... Idiot, Line One."

My apologies for the delay, everyone, but life has been busy.  This will be a brief one but I figured it was amusing enough to share with the rest of you and hopefully it’ll tide you all over until a real entry can be written. The other day I had the opening shift in my department and received a call practically first thing in the morning.  Usually, whenever that happens, it’s a pretty big issue that is waiting to be resolved.  I generally prefer not opening right away for that exact reason.  By the time the 2^nd person comes in, or the closing person comes in, all of the issues are resolved.  So, I approached the phone with a bit of trepidation.
I picked up the phone and here is how the conversation went (with a few modifications, of course):
“Hello, Home Electronics, Parker speaking.”
“Hi, I need to talk to somebody in Home Electronics.”
D’uh, way to pay attention.
“Okay.  That’s me.”
“Oh, okay, well I had a special order TV that was supposed to be delivered today and I never received a call telling me when it was going to be here.”
“Ah, they didn’t call you last night?”
“No.  Today is the 29^th, isn’t it?”
He said this last part with a bit of condescension in his voice.
I looked at my watch.
“No, actually, it’s the 28^th.”
A brief pause, presumably to insert his foot into his mouth.
“Oh, well, no wonder they haven’t called!” he laughed.
“Yep.”
That was basically it.  So, just remember, when you think you have an issue with a retail store and are getting yourself jazzed up to pick a fight with them, always make sure you have your facts straight.  Otherwise, you’re going to look like a moron like the guy who decided to call without looking at his phone or a calendar or a watch or a newspaper for the date.  That’s just a little piece of advice from your friendly retail associate.  Needless to say, after a brief laugh after I hung up, it helped to make the day start off on the right foot.  Good times!
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...

The Idle Hours

     Now, for something completely different!  During this crazy holiday season I needed a look back at fonder moments I had in the grocery retail world.  I haven’t talked much about my time at a grocery store since I have so much to work with from my current job.  I spent quite a long time, off and on, working at grocery stores and in some aspects, that world is a lot crazier than electronics.
     Working in the grocery world was my first real experience working at a real job.  I met a lot of fun people and a lot of assholes (like any job).  The customers were idiots but different from the kind I have to deal with now.  It showed me that some people take the ridiculous a bit too seriously.  I look back on my time there with warm thoughts, generally, but I know that if I worked at a grocery store again, I would wonder why I ever wanted to go back.  That said, I did have some good times there and these are a few of them from one of those grocery jobs…
     In the department I worked in, we had a crew of 5-6 main workers (not including our supervisor) that got the work done and did it well.  They were mostly 20-30 year olds who got along with one another – a remarkable feat in the retail world.  We worked quickly enough to have the luxury to goof off when time allowed during the lulls of the day.  And goof off we did!
     There would be a few occasions when we would have 2-3 guys in the department at the same time with zero customers and no pressing work to do.  When this would happen we would head to our backroom past giant swinging doors and find ways to pass the time.  We worked in a department where most of our managers never seemed to go.  It was as if someone had done a magic spell on our department to make us invisible from those in charge.  Not that we minded that, of course.
     Sometimes we just stood around and talked about sports, music, or movies.  Other times, 1 of us would roll up a big ball of shrink-wrap while another coworker would break a piece off of a long cardboard stick and we would play a little baseball.  A few customers probably overheard the crack of the bat or our shouts and cheers whenever someone hit the ball across the room.  Surprisingly, we never were caught, and that was even after one of our coworkers broke part of the light fixture covering when he hit the ball at the ceiling.  The covering ended up having a small round hole in it for as long as I worked there (which ended up being another year or so) without much acknowledgement from anyone about it.
     When the covering was broken after that, we used the fixture as another source of entertainment during our down time.  We took giant rubberbands that we had laying around and tried to launch them at the broken fixture.  Whoever could successfully land their rubberband into the actual light and have it stuck up there would win.  I’m not sure who won, exactly, but there eventually was a winner.
     Other times, we would sneak out onto our receiving dock that was separate from the main receiving dock of our store, close the sliding dock door behind us, and chill on the little edge for several minutes just enjoying the warm summer days.  There was one or two customers, sometimes elderly people who couldn’t find a product on our tables, who would peak their head into our backroom to find someone but they would walk back out empty-handed.  Through the main backroom, which was separated from the receiving dock by a large cooler, we could see a few people through the sliding dock door’s small window as they looked around the backroom for help.  One of our managers even said he had tried to find us but we just told him we were off doing something in another part of the store and we got off with a shrug of the shoulders and a laugh.  I honestly have no idea how nobody ever caught us once.
     The best part, however, came when we had 4 workers scheduled at the same time and we were all able to go on lunch at the same time to Taco Bell for over a half-hour without anyone asking us many questions when we returned (like, “Why was your department empty of employees for a half-hour when we had customers coming in?”).  Our department had more freedom in that store than anyone probably ever guessed.  And nobody seemed to question us because we all worked hard when we were there.  Or maybe we were just that good at bullshitting everyone and they never bothered to delve deeper.
     Either way, the group of guys I worked with in that department for a year or so helped to make my time there one that I’ll never forget.  There was a lot of crap I had to deal with while working there but those coworkers were some of the coolest people I had the fortune of working with.  Anyone who can make a crappy job more tolerable is someone you should thank every day you see him/her because they are rare.
     That goes for my current job and any other job I’ve ever had.  These memories of mine might not seem all that crazy or insane but the breaks from the otherwise monotonous routines at these jobs and the crabby customers were welcomed breaks, indeed.  It’s so hard to find joy in the everyday routine and it’s those who are around us that either make or break a day.  So next time you’re at your job and someone makes you laugh that always makes you laugh or someone suggests you all sneak out for an extra break, make sure you thank them for making a stressful or a depressing job more tolerable.
     Hmmm… Maybe I should send in an application to a few grocery stores?  This trip down memory lane is making me miss the grocery world!
     More soon from the frontlines...

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas... In July

     One of the most common anecdotal stories you hear in the retail world is the slow creep into November that Christmas has made.  If you’ve ever seen all the commercials that air for Christmas in the first week of November, you understand what I mean by this.  It seems like hyperbole to suggest that at some point, retail giants will force us to start watching Christmas commercials in January, but at the rate things are going, we may be at that point in another 10 to 12 years.  This year seems to be one of the worst ones out there for retail life – and I’ve seen several.

     For the most part, I’m spared some of the early Christmas displays for awhile but why do places like Macy’s feel the need to put up their Christmas trees no later than September?  It is just plain sickening.  My job usually waits until at least November to roll out holiday-themed gift cards but this year was the first time they brought them out before Halloween. Halloween!  As in October 31^st!  It should’ve been at that point that I realized this year wasn’t going to be like the others.  I love Christmas and all, but let’s leave Christmas for December.

     Then came word that there were a few retailers who were going to open on midnight on Thanksgiving.  One or two others were going to be opening up even before that.  For some, this would be the first time they’d have to work on Thanksgiving at their jobs.  For those of you outside of the U.S., this caused quite a commotion among employees and shoppers.

     Shoppers were upset because they’d have to get up even earlier or leave Thanksgiving earlier to get the good “doorbuster” deals.  Let me start out by saying that if you’re standing in line for a $5 coffeemaker, it’s probably a shitty coffeemaker and not worth missing time with your family.  If your family members are upset because they can’t receive every single gift on their list or they don’t get a certain amount of gifts, just tell them to be one of the millions of homeless people who don’t get a proper Christmas at all.  That’ll shut their ungrateful mouths up, huh?  And if you’re complaining about getting up even earlier to get the deals, well, you’re already up at 12-1am to get to the stores and in line anyway, is getting there earlier going to kill you?  In a few articles, some shoppers that were interviewed said they felt bad for the employees that would have to miss their holiday meals.  I bet you that they were still waiting at midnight to be let in for their special sales despite their sympathy.

     Some employers said they felt really bad about changing the hours and making their employees work these crappy hours but that the ‘demand’ for earlier hours was there and that to remain competitive with others, they had no choice but to open earlier.  Like the old saying goes, “If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?”  I bet these CEOs are really bummed their employees will have to cut into their family time but somehow they’ll be able to overcome that grief – perhaps on their yacht or their vacation home in the Bahamas.  Any way you cut it, it is just simply greed.  I’m all for making a profit and I hope people spend tons of money at my job because that means I keep making money but there has to be a line drawn somewhere.

     In retail, most of us only get 3 holidays off:  Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  It’s something in exchange for the crappy wages and the generally crappy conditions we have to put up with.  With the insanity of holiday shopping and the demands of working at stores, we already get family time cut into as it is.  What if someone has more than 1 family they celebrate a holiday with and they spread their time out over 2 days?  They’re already missing that 2^nd family celebration and now you’re asking them to miss the other?

     I’d like to experience a Christmas season overseas just to see how they act.  Do they trample over each other to get a pair of $5 jeans before Christmas?  Is blind, hungry consumerism as rampant overseas as it is here?  Something tells me it’s not.  I wonder why that is?

     Again, I’m all for making a profit, and I knew what I was getting into as far as working long holiday hours, but there has to be a line drawn.  I don’t think as retail workers some common courtesy is too much to ask for.  You should have major holidays off.  You should be able to request a day off of work during the holiday months if you need to spend it with family.  You shouldn’t be made to feel like a criminal if you come down with the flu and have to call off of work.  These things happen quite often at my job and others that I’ve heard about.

     I figured with all the Occupy Wall Street and the ninety-nine-percenters out there that the midnight open that some companies did would create a bigger backlash but I was sorely disappointed.  From the looks of it, idiots, instead of staying inside and just going on Amazon like sane people, ended up showing up at midnight.  It’s called the internet, people!  Use it for more than porn, okay?  It’s not just Wall Street and the government that needs to be taught a lesson about capitalism run amok.  It’s also the retail giants that treat their workers only slightly better than slave labor and their customers like cattle that can be manipulated into buying anything as long as they call it a “holiday sale”.

     I’ll have more to say on another post about holidays but this rant is long enough.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to hurry out the door – there’s a great sale going on at JCPenny!  If I buy 4 sweaters, I get 5% off the fifth one! Sweet!

More soon from the frontlines...

Let's Go Back In Time

     One of the first things you’re taught when you enter the retail world is that you have to learn to work with all different types of human beings.  That goes for coworkers, supervisors, and customers.  We’re taught to appreciate everyone’s background and to respect the differences we may hold.  Whether that person is a snobby trophy wife with bleach blonde hair or someone who thinks going to the dentist once every ten years is asking too much, we have to treat everyone the same.

The hardest thing I have to overlook, however, is the fact that some people still use, let us say, outdated terminology when discussing other groups of people.  For instance, just a week ago, I was assisting a white, (probably) lower-middle class family look for a new TV.  Everything seemed to be going pleasantly enough when the husband, in his 40s or so, points to the TV and asks, “Who made this?  The Japs?”

     He went on to repeat the word 3-4 times within a five-minute conversation.  At first I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  I don’t really recall hearing anyone who wasn’t in a TV show or movie use the word “Japs” before.  It’s the kind of thing you would hear in a John Wayne movie from the Forties.  Even when I corrected the guy and said it was made by a company based in South Korea, he just shrugged and said, “Yeah, right, same thing.”  Right, because Canada and the U.S. are the same, too.  To just use such an antiquated, offensive word like that was kind of surprising to me.  Not that I haven’t heard people I’ve worked with or been friends with sling words that most wouldn’t deem politically correct, but to hear someone who I didn’t know just feel so casual as to use it caught me off guard.

     Then, on the same day, an older middle-class white woman (who probably never met a Crate & Barrel she didn’t like) was looking at our store’s laptops.  After assisting her for a few minutes, she noticed another woman with a few kids struggling to find help.  She nodded at the woman and said to me, “I’m still just looking so if you want, you can go help that… dark-colored woman – she’s been waiting for awhile.”

     Now that was more surprising than the Japanese comment from earlier but I’m not quite sure why that is, even now.  I’m used to white people, especially those living in the suburbs or places with low numbers of black people, in the States feeling awkward when having to describe someone they don’t know who happens to be of a different skin color, but to use “dark-colored”? Wow.  I didn’t know it was 1950s day at my work!

     It’s not like she couldn’t have just said, “that other woman” and I wouldn’t have known who she meant.  It was slowing down at that point and there weren’t that many women in the electronics store at that point.  She also seemed to know what she was saying might’ve been inappropriate because she talked quieter when she said the words “dark-colored woman”.  If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything.  Just say, “that other woman” and be done with it.

     I remember 1 time when I was working in a grocery store and a customer asked where a certain melon was brought in from.  I looked on the box that the product was shipped in and it said “Mexico”.  I told the elderly woman and she just shook her head and scoffed.  She told me that she didn’t buy anything from Mexico because she didn’t trust the food coming in.  She believed that the food might not be cleaned properly and that she might get sick.  How a person might’ve gotten sick from a melon not being properly washed is beyond me, since you don’t even eat the skin of melons to begin with, but I digress.  I never really thought about it until after the conversation, but that woman was probably complaining about Mexico’s food when who knows what’s been done to the food made right here in America.  With the amount of chemicals and genetic-modification that’s been done to the food supply and the unclean and unsafe conditions at farms, to name a few, we don’t need to worry about Mexico killing us with dirty produce.  Now, she didn’t use any offensive terminology when talking about Mexicans but the topic was still quite odd.  Besides, with the globalization of most industries, I doubt most of what she owned was truly made in America, anyway.  Why worry about origins of melons?

     All this brings me back to having to treat everyone the same.  What do I do when I have to deal with people who make me feel awkward – not for myself but for them?  Do I ignore the phrasing people use and let them carry on using antiquated terminology in an increasingly global world?  Ignorance is bliss but maybe people should be called out when they’re caught living in the past.  They might’ve grown up using words they picked up from family, friends, and the media, but that’s no excuse for them to still use them.  I used to shit in a diaper but that doesn’t mean I should still be doing it.

     I’m also not a complete prude as to let language alone dictate how I should feel.  George Carlin – a hero of mine – would go on about how words are just words.  They only hold power over us as long as we let them.  While I was surprised by people still using words many have long since left by the wayside, and while I often wish I could openly criticize people for sounding stupid and uneducated by using certain words, I know that words are just words.  The flipside of that is that I don’t want some random customer walking by as a customer uses some offensive term and sees me, unable to criticize that customer and suggest using other language in public, standing there with an awkward expression on my face.  I don’t want me saying nothing to imply that I condone stupidity.

     It also makes me wonder if all of this is mainly an American issue.  I’ve been abroad but I’ve never really had to interact with people treating other people of different ethnic background differently.  Does a random Englishman go up to another Englishman in a store and ask if their wool coats were made by some drunk mick?  I wonder what common interactions are like elsewhere where origins of products is an issue for people.  Do people still cling to offensive words as much as it seems people in the States do? Hmm…

     More soon from the frontlines...

Curveballs

     There are times when customers can really surprise you and for the better.  It’s rare, to be sure, but it happens.  I’m used to the customer that flips out on me for a problem that isn’t even related to something I’ve done.  I’m used to the customer saying or doing something stupid because they can’t read something or find something that’s easy enough for them to find.  But a customer who actually goes out of their way to do something nice for you?  How many of us has that happened to?

     A few months ago I was assisting a couple that came in looking to buy several products.  In the course of assisting them, we talked and joked around about every random thing under the sun.  A more relaxed couple I have not met.  It was one of those interactions you almost wished wouldn’t end because you knew the type of customers you might have to deal with (assholes) after such a pleasant transaction.  The husband was even showing me several pictures of the house he was redoing and even the people who were helping him.  I thought they were going to adopt me at the end of the interaction – that’s how friendly they seemed.

     And w/ the money they were dropping, I almost wouldn’t have minded another family to celebrate my birthday with.

     But time passed and I eventually put the couple out of my mind.  Not that I wouldn’t have recognized the pair but it’s not like I went around feeling nostalgic about the interaction we had.  It was a sale and they went on their way.  I know our business promotes the friendly salespeople they have and how it’s because of us that they end up buying from our store and not some other store, but it always felt like a lot of bullshit.  I mean, I’ve found people to only care about one thing and one thing only: price.  I can’t blame them, of course.  I’ve had people come back to the store looking specifically for me but that’s generally because they knew my store would bend over and take whatever price the customer wanted to pay for a product.  I was just the salesperson to facilitate the transaction.

     So, it was kind of surprising when the husband came back into the store a few months later and talked to me about what brought them in and other random things.  He wasn’t sure if I remembered him but it was kind of hard to forget this guy if you had seen him.  He said he had to finish up in another part of the store but that he had something for me.  I wasn’t sure if I had heard him correctly and thought he had some sort of issue with his purchase.  I wasn’t in the mood to deal with an issue, even an issue from a customer who had a happy-go-lucky attitude.

     Several minutes go by and he returns carrying a plastic bag that looked pretty heavy.  I thought his wife and him had brought me some fruit that they had picked or something.  That enough was enough to surprise me and want to thank the guy for the touching thought.

     He came up to me and said how it was just a “little something” that they had seen while on vacation and they just had to get it for me.  They even remembered my name!

     I thanked him and shook his hand as he walked away, leaving me to open the bag by myself.  I gently placed the bag on a table and looked inside to find a gift from Europe they picked up that had my name inscribed in it.  My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as I lifted it up out of the bag.  It was easily the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten while working in retail because it came from a customer who didn’t have to do that at all.  I was just some shmuck who sold them some electronics.  But to remember my name and pay money to get some salesperson a gift while you were on vacation?  I should be so lucky to receive such kindness from relative strangers in the future!

     It was something that won’t be forgotten about any time soon.  It was quite an amazing thing to experience in a life where you’re used to being treated like a servant.  I suppose being nice and helpful really does make a difference for some customers.  A very select few recognize the good you do for a shitty pay.

     I hope all of you out there get to experience something like that with a customer you’ve helped.  Whether it’s something that cost them a dollar or a hundred dollars, a gift is a gift, and we retail employees should appreciate anything we’re given.  I hope those of you who’ve had someone who has gone out of their way to do something nice to make your shopping experience a bit better will remember that.  Sure, there might be an incentive for them to get you back into the store down the line (I mean, how else will we get paid?) but that incentive isn’t that great.  If I could tell 90% of the people I run into at my jobs to bugger off, I would - repeat business be damned!  If I’m nice to you it’s because I was raised to be nice and to treat you with respect.  It’s not because my job did a great job in convincing me that I should be nice because they haven’t.  So show those hard workers some respect and maybe show your gratitude in some way.  Corporations may say it’s not good to accept something from a customer but how can one say no to a personally inscribed gift?

More soon from the frontlines...

Competition Comes Knocking

     Throughout both my years in grocery and electronics retail I’ve had to deal with new stores that vie for your customer base.  Some tend to have a bigger impact on the scene than others.  Some fizzle out quicker than others.  However, the same reaction to news of an upcoming competitor always takes place each time.  The complete and total meltdown.

     It’s not that bad, in reality, but the people running the store, the district, the company, tend to make you feel that way.  It can generally start with the company devising ways to find out what this newcomer is all about.  People get sent into their stores to do a little snooping around and see what’s working for them and what’s not.  This can sometimes lead to the, “Oh, shit, that’s what we should be doing!” response that most management people have.  This can be a disastrous scenario because in some cases, the established store that feels threatened by the newcomer will sometimes drastically change things about themselves to mimic the newcomer.  I can understand the instinct to do this but it’s a terrible idea, in my opinion.

     First of all, people are shopping at your store because you’re obviously doing something right.  In this economy, if you haven’t gone into bankruptcy or closed down completely, it’s a miracle and you should keep on keepin’ on.  If you are changing key things about yourself to steal someone else’s thunder, then you’re changing the reasons people come into your store.  If they wanted to shop at store X, then they’ll shop at store X instead of trying to get the exact experience at store Y.  Do you go into a Target and think, “Man, this is a pleasant place to shop but why isn’t it more like K-Mart?”  If you wanted to shop at K-Mart, shop at K-Mart.  There was a pretty well-known store that closed their doors a few years back and people at my company credited to the fact that they were playing catch-up to us.  They changed different aspects about themselves but just couldn’t get traction.  Now, I don’t know if they’d still be in business had they just amplified the things they do well instead of trying to be like us, but at least they could close down knowing they played the game on their terms.

     Now comes the part where the store you work at implements the changes.  Sadly, the things they’re trying to change are the things that nobody cares about.  They’ll worry about too much signage when they should really worry about adequate staffing.  They’ll see workers’ desks and just see clutter when they should focus on making sure the products on their shelves are in stock.  They’ll remove tile flooring and lay carpeting down to make things look more elegant when they should fix the leaking roof or the bathroom that constantly smells like crap.  Yet, they want to take the easy way out of improving their company.  As we all know, the cheap and easy way out is always the best option, right?

     Good luck trying to convince management in your store that they’re focused on the wrong things, too.  I totally understand that some changes are out of their hands.  They don’t control the amount of money they have to hire people for example.  Yet, people just seem content to not question anything and just continue to go along to get along.  It’s maddening.  So all you can do, as an employee, is stand by and watch as the gong show plays out all around you.

     For months in advance, the sentiment of management about the approaching doom that is a new business coming into town can be a bit disappointing, to say the least.  In private, the management, which should be rallying the morale of the workers, will look at you with wide-eyed horror as they say to you how worried they are about the new competitor.  It’s as if they think we’re all going to be out of jobs within six months.  To me, this worriment is just proof that they don’t have faith in their own company’s ability to compete and also their employees’ ability to compete.  Only those who worry about a competitor coming in are those who think that something is wrong with the way they’re doing things.  Why else be so nervous about 1 new store being added to the mix?  It’s not like ours is the only company in the city that sells the products that are on our shelves.  If you think this competitor is such a threat and you say things like, “I don’t know what we’re going to do…,” (which I’ve heard from management in the past) then why hire the people you’ve hired?  That’s what’s annoying to me about the messages being spread from management when new competitors arrive.  To the workers they project confidence in the staffing they have but in private a lot of them seem to have no faith in their people.

     Personally, I don’t worry at all whenever a new store opens in the area.  I have faith in my coworkers and the company I work for to know that we’ll be fine.  Our business might hurt but that’s the nature of things.  We’ve stolen customers away from multiple competitors for years and we’ll continue to do so, just like they’ll do with our customers.  It’s the nature of retail.  If you can’t handle the other kids on the block, you might as well pack up your shit and go home.  And that’s life, really – you can either hold firm and believe in yourself and know that you can handle challenge or you can just give up and never get anywhere in life.

     More soon from the frontlines...