Working Retail: Stories of the Underpaid - General

>mfw customers spend 5-10 minutes complaining about prices. Dude, I know that times are bad, but we need to make money too. How do you expect us to pay our employees and afford rent? It's sure as hell not going to happen if we sell you everything for the price you can buy it online for. Since I work at Radioshack, we're partnered with the Livestrong Foundation, so we (try) to collect donations for Cancer Research and Treatment/Therapy for cancer sufferers, right? What pisses me off most about this is when we ask the customer if they'd like to donate a dollar (ONE FUCKING DOLLAR) to help people with cancer and their shit gargling answer is "No I can't really afford it" while they're spending 40-50x that on something they DON'T need like some fucking fancy cable or a new cell phone or a god damn laptop. I want to grab them by their shirts and scream in their face "You know who can't afford what? Those people with cancer can't afford their treatments you selfish cunt. They're laying in a hospital bed dying and trying to explain to their children what's happening to them and where mommy is going because they can't afford the treatments while you stand here buying a $100 cell phone and a $50 phone case that you [i]don't need[/i] and tell me you [i]can't afford[/i] a $1 donation." But I don't. I tell them their total, take their payment, then go into the back room and punch the steel door that leads to the alley behind our store.

[QUOTE=Ven Kaeo;32296699]>mfw customers spend 5-10 minutes complaining about prices. Dude, I know that times are bad, but we need to make money too. How do you expect us to pay our employees and afford rent? It's sure as hell not going to happen if we sell you everything for the price you can buy it online for. Since I work at Radioshack, we're partnered with the Livestrong Foundation, so we (try) to collect donations for Cancer Research and Treatment/Therapy for cancer sufferers, right? What pisses me off most about this is when we ask the customer if they'd like to donate a dollar (ONE FUCKING DOLLAR) to help people with cancer and their shit gargling answer is "No I can't really afford it" while they're spending 40-50x that on something they DON'T need like some fucking fancy cable or a new cell phone or a god damn laptop. I want to grab them by their shirts and scream in their face "You know who can't afford what? Those people with cancer can't afford their treatments you selfish cunt. They're laying in a hospital bed dying and trying to explain to their children what's happening to them and where mommy is going because they can't afford the treatments while you stand here buying a $100 cell phone and a $50 phone case that you [i]don't need[/i] and tell me you [i]can't afford[/i] a $1 donation." But I don't. I tell them their total, take their payment, then go into the back room and punch the steel door that leads to the alley behind our store.[/QUOTE] I maintain that if we were allowed to be perfectly honest while working at our jobs (without fear of being fired), customer interactions would be far more satisfying. Yeah, most of the customers that come into the store are perfectly decent individuals but man...I can't even begin to count the number of assholes who come in and not only trash the place, but get OFFENDED when we go through our little marketing spiel or ask if we can help them find something. Apparently a sizable chunk of the public view is still along the lines of "Retail workers are sub-human. Treat them as such."

There's too much entitlement laid in the customer's mind and it always results in them thinking people working retail jobs are less human than they are. I always have some casual conversation with people working retail and I always make sure to thank them because they are fucking troopers.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;32297502]There's too much entitlement laid in the customer's mind and it always results in them thinking people working retail jobs are less human than they are. I always have some casual conversation with people working retail and I always make sure to thank them because they are fucking troopers.[/QUOTE] Holy fuck being a Grocer is horrible, not only for the customers that are unusually bitchy for waiting in the goddamn line [sp] WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING, YOU ARE GOING TO WAIT IN LINE AND IT'S GOING TO BE AT LEAST TEN MINUTES! WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WHINE ABOUT DOING SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO FUCKING DO WHEN I CANNOT HELP IT? [/sp] and it only makes it worse if you have horrible goddamn managers.

I work in a traffic citation payment center. People call, we get information from them, and hold their hand through the painful process of paying the fine for being a dumbass on the road. Note that ALL we do is take payments. I had a dude call and ask ME to make HIM an appointment at a court in a different state. Granted, we cover 25 states, but we only cover their PAYMENTS. I told him that we're only a payment center and we can't make appointments for people and he promptly responded with "No, you're wrong." Oh okay, I apologize. I just learned that our department just got expanded to not only help those that can't or don't have the ability to pay their ticket in conventional means, but to also help the lazy retarded fucks like you who think they know more about MY job than I do. lemme call the court up and do YOU a service for NO CHARGE when you could have saved yourself the time and called the SAME COURT on your own and done the SAME GODDAMN THING. I for some reason can't remember how I responded to him, but I know he didn't get his appointment from me. I've heard of people calling in and trying to make an over-the-phone payment with cash and checks... and I had a lady today give me "www.yahoo.com" as her email address. Same lady had to re-read the line "you are hereby ordered to appear before a judge on the 14th day of september" around 12 times before it clicked in her binary switch of a brain that the sentence means her court date is on the 14TH OF SEPTEMBER.

[QUOTE=Ven Kaeo;32294128]What's that? You put together circuits and are telling me a resistor resists current? No. You're wrong. I read up on it online. Resisters store power. Huh? That's a capacitor? No. Capacitors emit light. For a guy who works at Radioshack you don't know much about electronics.[/QUOTE] I'm glad you at least know your electronics stuff. Some of the employees at the Radio Shack in my hometown know nothing about electronics.

I work at Albertsons I make $14.50 an hour as a cashier If weird shit happened at my store, I would maybe be working worth my paid wages. I have strange people come through my line everyday.

Thank you for this post

I feel sorry for you guys, my mother is one of the terrible customers you describe. [editline]15th September 2011[/editline] Still, be thankful you have a job :v:

I start work at maccas next week. My first job. I'm doing night shifts, my first one is a saturday night. If I survive my first week I'm sure I'll have some interesting tales to share here

[QUOTE=Adius Shadow;32299687]I work at Albertsons I make $14.50 an hour as a cashier If weird shit happened at my store, I would maybe be working worth my paid wages. I have strange people come through my line everyday.[/QUOTE] $14.50 to scan shit? Wow screw off lol

"may I help you find anything" is retail employee for "I'm making sure you arn't stealing anything."

[QUOTE=RichyZ;32301382]different minimum wages everything else there is more expensive[/QUOTE] The highest minimum wage is $8.50ish an hour. You're making $6 more per hour than the highest minimum wage. [editline]15th September 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=The one that is;32301689]"may I help you find anything" is retail employee for "I'm making sure you arn't stealing anything."[/QUOTE] No it isn't, you stupid fuck. "How can I help you today" or "Can I help you find something" is retail employee for "Hey what're you here for? I know where everything is, let me help you track it down." Our managers require us to greet customers within 10 feet of the door or within 10 seconds of entering, whichever is faster. And we have to ask them what they're looking for. [editline]15th September 2011[/editline] Also it really pisses me off when I greet a customer and they very rudely interrupt me and say "I know what I'm looking for" and then spend 15-30 minutes looking for it. You may know what you're LOOKING for, but I know WHERE it is. Jackass.

Maybe they're saying "No leave me alone I wish to look at other stuff then get what I came for" I know I normally tell people I'm fine when they ask if I need any help then slowly wander around looking at stuff.

My dad used to work in a petrol station, got some pretty stupid customers: Bloke walks in, pissed off because the machine charged him like an extra 10p. So he says to my dad "This is criminal, taking money off customers". At this point my dad is like, "What?" The bloke says, "Well it all adds up, a 10p here and a 10p there, and before you know it you've conned 10 people". My dads response: "Yeah, so I'll have £2, big fucking deal. Wanker." The bloke throws the money at him and walks out. My dad notices he is 10p short.

[QUOTE=The one that is;32301689]"may I help you find anything" is retail employee for "I'm making sure you arn't stealing anything."[/QUOTE] meh, we just let them take it. one guy will make sure that they've stolen it, then 2 of us will get them outside. lets just say we're not the most pleasant to theives. most of the time, we don't phone the police as it can easily take up an hour of our time (plus not everyone is that cooperative). so it's generally a case of telling them to give us what the stole back and to fuck off, or be dragged back into the shop and held until the police come.

If there is one thing I have learned from working in customer service, it's never fuck around or piss off the people trying to help you. So I always make sure to treat every customer service person kindly and respectfully only because I know how much it sucks ass to get a butthurt customer that ruins your day.

We were all out of this guys favorite eggs. He had a huge belly around the age of 55-60 with a very disfigured face and a giant mole. He wore glasses and had a cane even though he was in a motorized chair. He asked I go and look in the back and I said "Certainly, I'll be right back". I went to check in 3 different places and moved some stuff around in the cold storage where I freeze my balls off and turned up with nothing. I come back to the customer and said "Sorry sir we seem to be out of those eggs we have the rest of our other eggs as you can see right here, I asked my manager before coming back and he said we should have them by this Sunday". He then yelled "FUCK YOU CALL THE DAMN TRUCK DRIVERS AND TELL THEM TO DRIVE FASTER YOU SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE SHIT IN STOCK". He then yells at his disfigured wife "Let's leave this store Laura this place isn't helpful". He was just a fucking asshole in a motorized chair that thinks he should get extra special attention and the world should be at the front of him. For how old he is I thought he'd understand how the world works or something but instead he was one of the biggest scums I have met on the planet.

[QUOTE=Ven Kaeo;32301816]No it isn't, you stupid fuck. "How can I help you today" or "Can I help you find something" is retail employee for "Hey what're you here for? I know where everything is, let me help you track it down." Our managers require us to greet customers within 10 feet of the door or within 10 seconds of entering, whichever is faster. And we have to ask them what they're looking for.[/QUOTE] In the training for where I work that is actually what you do if you suspect someone of planing to steal something, it lets them know that they are being watched without going straight up "don't steal yo, that's bad".

heh the kroger cash registers are IBM SurePOS systems and they fuckin suck I like to refer to them as Sure Pieces Of Shit

Hm, when people bitch about prices, I tell them honestly, "Sir, I don't make the prices. The store doesn't make the prices. We're part of a chain of stores, and corporate makes the prices, if you want to yell at someone, yell at them." Or, even better: People who threaten to shop somewhere else. I don't care. I don't even shop at the store I work at, I go somewhere else. I have to be there for 8 hours a day, why the hell would I want to spend my money I earned there too?

[QUOTE=RichyZ;32301382]different minimum wages everything else there is more expensive[/QUOTE] I don't know anywhere in the US that pays nearly 15 bucks an hour minimum wage. That's almost double the national minimum. One of my friends is a manager at KMart and he makes less than that.

At the Braum's (Generic fast food resturant/ice cream shop) near me, the guy in front of me started screaming at them for not serving him his chips and dip, grabbed a stack of child seats and started tossing them across the resturant, while screaming at one of the employees "Don't tell me to fucking calm down you whore" before storming out the door when the cashier started to call the police. I don't even think they serve chips and dip.

I worked at a grocery store chain Kroger for a year and I've got a ton of stories. I'll just go ahead and post my favorite. It's my favorite because it instills so much anger just thinking about the whole situation. Being a cashier I had to constantly deal with people's complaints, troubles, questions, and general bullshit. My job was to get them out the door as quick as humanly possible in the best possible mood. This specific occasion had to deal with two customers, the first customer was an elderly woman who had bought a few groceries and a book of stamps--no big deal, I finish with her and give her the stamps plus her receipt and thank her/wish her a good day. That customer leaves and the next one comes up with around $400 worth of product, I scanned and scanned and just about midway through the order the lady asked me to stop because she saw something ring up wrong. I scroll through the list and stop at a big pack of toilet paper; she tells me that the price is wrong and that it should be $6 cheaper, curiously I ask my bagger to go check the price on the shelf. At this point all I can do is make small talk and apologize to the customer about taking up so much time. A few minutes goes by and the elderly woman before my current customer comes up to me and asks if I can exchange her stamps for a new book (two stamps were overlapping each other), I let the woman know that I can take care of it at the end of the order, to which she nods in agreement. The waiting continues and the bagger comes back to tell me that the price that rang up was indeed correct. The current customer made one of those "annoyed scoffs" and says that her sales papers says that it is cheaper than what's on the shelf. I ask if she has it with her, she replies by pulling it out of her purse and shoving switching to the page and in a demeaning way reads it slowly back to me at the sale price. At this moment I'm kind of shocked by this disrespect but quickly notice a fine detail which put the smuggest expression on my face. I look at the woman and I say, "Ma'am this sales paper expired a week ago, and we can't honor the sale unless a tag on the shelf was wrong." At this point the old lady is getting impatient and turns to me rudely asking why I can't just open the register and give her new stamps. I tell her I can't for security reasons, and for the simple fact that I don't have an override key to do so if were allowed. This is entirely true too, at that time it was our rush hour and supervisors were busy sorting out other issues so I couldn't have one go to another empty register to exchange the stamps. The old lady does the same annoyed scoff as the first and turns away, and I continue to deal with my current customer. I told the lady that there wasn't a thing I could do and that if she wanted to dispute it with customer service she could. She then asks to see my manager; at the time he was in a conference call and I let the customer know that he'll be down as soon as possible. This is when I get extremely frustrated; the two customers start talking about me right there in front of me saying that it's wonderful how terrible customer service is and that "I have know respect for people paying me." At this point I page the manager again and get him on the phone, I walk away from the register and explain the situation and that I really need his help. Finally my manger makes his way to my register and the customer pitches the same argument I got and how it's false advertising and that other stores would accept the sale. He basically just says, "No ma'am they would not, I cannot give you the price on an expired sales paper." Annoyed she finally pays and leaves. I turn to the old lady and say, "Now ma'am I can handle your issue, I quickly pop open my register exchange the stamps and tell her to have a wonderful day, thanking her for her abundance of patience. Working retail has taught me one thing: I hate people. Period.

I start a job at Argos in November. As I lack patience for idiotic customers, which I've seen plenty of, this should be interesting. I'll keep you all updated.

Right so I work in an Amusement Arcade, and we have loads of 2p pushers (You put in a coin and it pushes other coins off) Now we had this guy who came in most days, who was about 60ish and looked like he had schizophrenia. He used to come in and pick up the 2p's that had fallen from the pushers, he used to pretend to play them but rarely put any coins in. One day a co-worker of mine was saying he couldn't find our PAT tester (All buisness electronics have to pass PAT testing), so my boss looked on the CCTV to see where my co-worker had left it. It turned out the old guy had seen it on the top of a machine, and just grabbed it and stuck it in his bag. Before he put it in his bag he looked around, right into the camera, so we got a nice image of his face. The day after we knew he stole it I was leaving work, and I happened to see him crossing the road to go into the arcade, I quickly ran to my other boss (Who I saw as I left doing something to a machine) and told him the guy had just come in. He went up to the guy and said "We know you took our PAT tester, we have CCTV footage of you taking it, bring it back or we'll show the footage to the police, you're going to get it from home aren't you?" The guy came back with it, and wanted a receipt to prove that he had brought it back, he was told that he was banned and to get out. He hasn't been back since. Also I some guy walk up to me and say "I put 50p in this ride and my kid didn't get a go" Next to where he put his 50p in it said "£1 a ride"

[QUOTE=markg06;32301843]Maybe they're saying "No leave me alone I wish to look at other stuff then get what I came for" I know I normally tell people I'm fine when they ask if I need any help then slowly wander around looking at stuff.[/QUOTE] Thing is, it's my job to help you find what you're looking for. I have to ask you. It's required, and if I don't follow my 'customer path' I can be written up for it. You (not you, but you the consumer) don't need to be an asshole about refusing my help. Also, generally, we don't fucking want you in the store slowly walking around and browsing at your leisure. We have things we need to do, and they don't revolve around standing on the sales floor watching you in case you decide to steal something. We can't go about our business with a customer in the store. We have to watch him and we have to be there ready to help if he needs it. And we don't want to have to sit around watching you for however long you want to wander. We want to do our job. We want to get our sale set up, or finish putting out product, or putting out tags. Or maybe we just want to sit in the back room, drink our coffee/soda, and relax. [editline]15th September 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Moreto;32303612]In the training for where I work that is actually what you do if you suspect someone of planing to steal something, it lets them know that they are being watched without going straight up "don't steal yo, that's bad".[/QUOTE] Where I work our customer path involves greeting the customer to 'make them feel welcome'. Our way of finding thieves is handing people our weekly sales flier. If they leave it somewhere or stuff it in their pocket without looking at it they're generally would-be thieves, as must general customers at least glance at it. Also, would be thieves are always looking at YOU and not the product. They're not very good at pretending to look at/read things. They're always watching you and seeing where you are and trying to be where you can't see.

I work as a cart pusher for a 24 hour Walmart. My job title is "Stock Man" my job is push carts all day. Occasionally I get assigned other bits of work. Such as stock the ice, help a customer out with items, bring in boxes filled with bags, just mundane tasks they need done and don't want to waste on a cashier. Thing is about my Walmart is, we do not have a single cart pushing machine. (A Walmart a few miles away has 2 cart machines.) So me and the other guy that was hired with me have to push carts by hand while going generally up hill. Our store is situated in a valley where below us is a busy highway, so the parking lot is slanted toward the bottom of the valley. On a regular Weekday, a single cart pusher can handle themselves for the 8 hours the are assigned. On Weekends, especially Sundays, we need two cart pushers to keep up with the customers. It can get hectic due to traffic and pedestrians. We were first told to never push over 10 carts for safety reasons for us and customers. But due to how crazy it gets, we generally have to push 25 carts each time about every 5 minutes. So within 8 hours we push about 2000 carts into our store. So now you know what our main job is. Every now and then we can find items left behind by foolish customers. I have found so far an iPad2, car keys, purses, wallets, purchased items, clothing, chemicals of all kind, and kid toys. And even with all this valuable stuff we find, we also find a ton of shit, and I mean shit. I find bags of half eaten food from our indoor McDonalds, used hand wipes covered in all kinds of marks, bottles, cans, spilled food/drinks, and last and certainly most annoying, literal shit. Most of the time it's in a diaper, sometimes it is in the cart itself. If you think pushing carts and being a parking lot janitor is bad now, there is more to it. We have these Cart Pens for customers to put their carts in. Some do, most don't. Most will leave a cart where ever they last were. I find them in a ditch at the bottom of our store, sometimes in another store's parking lot, and sometimes sitting in the middle of the street, which blocks the road for others. I have to go and bring them all back to the Cart Pens or the store. Some of the people that use the Pens have trouble understanding that the flap on the end of one side is telling them to push into the other opened side. So they jam their carts into the flap which will bust the door. The rest will soon follow causing a mess of carts to be stuffed into the wrong side. Others will just toss carts at the Pens and leave them. So I gather carts, clean the parking lot, and organize the carts in our parking lot and other parking lots(only our carts though.) Lastly, we have to push the carts through one of our two automatic doors. They are angled behind some pillars so we have to twist the cart line around pillars and customers attempting to jump by so they can enter/leave faster. None have any patience to wait for us. After the doors, we have to split carts up to fit whatever is missing in the rows inside the store. We have 4 rows of about 25+ carts each. We have to wait for customers to cut corners around the carts and wait for the idiots to try to pull carts from the wrong end(the back end where we put carts in) Some assholes will attempt to take a cart from the lines we move into the store, which is dangerous as the carts are all jammed in a way to keep together. Other than that I get called in to help a customer. Usually they wait and are generally kind. But every now and then we get a few assholes. Recently, during a slight rain, I was having a blast shoving up about 20 carts uphill on a slippery road. Took me a few extra minutes to keep my balance but I made it. I arrived to the top and saw a woman yelling toward one of our People Greeters, who was a little old lady. The bitch was screaming that Walmart should have people waiting on foot to help her get a TV into her car. Of course, she was only waiting a minute since she got out of our store and her son drove her car up to the top to make it easier. The whole time she screamed at me and the People Greeter. I and the son put the TV in the car while the bitch kept making threats of returning the TV and never shopping at Walmart again. The son kept telling her to be quiet, but he was the whipped kind of son that wouldn't never raise a voice to their mother. But yea, we just ignored her and shrugged it off, the People Greeter got stressed out and kept telling me how the bitch fits the category of "Privileged Customer Syndrome" or the feeling a customer has where they think they own the world. Even with all the shit I have to put up with outside, cart pushing has it's bonuses. We rarely need to interact with managers or customers and we get to move freely about the store and parking lot. As long as we keep the Cart Pens full and clean.

Did you get to keep the iPad?

[QUOTE=Blanketspace;32314933]Did you get to kep the iPad?[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kep[/url] ?