Tales from the retail world...

[midnight growler]

An old person driving a scooter is more dangerous than smoking at a fireworks factory.

Had an old lady in her own scooter run over the foot of a woman wearing flip-flops. This wasn't just a brushing of the toes either, the scooter wheel came up and over the entire young woman's foot. Those things are heavy! Of course the little old lady had no idea what she did and continued on. We made an ice bag for the woman and she had to sit down for about 20 minutes at our snack bar because of the pain.

More recently, we had another little old lady almost run over her adult son in a scooter. We have two rows of checkout registers. The son, maybe in his early 50s was walking in front of his mother. Bad idea, but I guess someone has to be the sacrificial lamb. As I look up from cashiering I hear "Mom, stop Stop! MOM!" He is holding onto the basket that forms the front of the cart trying his best to walk backwards/sideways to avoid getting run over. However it takes about 3 seconds and 10 feet for the little old lady to finally hear, see and understand the fact she is about to completely hit and run over her son.

I've also had my fair share of people trying to rip us off. One lady we all know by now comes in with her kids and tries the old "kids tore the tags off" routine. What she didn't realize is that ALL of our clothes and shoes have an extra set of tags or serial numbers that I can use to find out the price. 4/5s of the time was spent saying "actually it looks like this is ringing up as" "oh really? ok then I won't get it." My manager was walking by her, caught a whiff of her and realized she was probably high.

The funny/tragic thing? She came through my lane a week later and did the exact same thing and got the exact same result.

The look people have when the realize its not gonna work is priceless. There once was a woman who did a fairly decent job trying to switch tags on stuff but thankfully I was paying attention that day. As I picked up an item I saw that tag, realizing what was happening and simply said "hmm thats not supposed to be on there" and peeled it off. She asked how much it rang up for and I replied calmly "what it should be." I picked up the next item which she had also messed with and peeled off the fake tag when she simply turned and walked away without saying anything.

I admit though that I did have a bit of fun once with a similar schemer. Woman (why is it always women!?) comes up with a few items, one of which is blatantly been messed with. I keep a straight face and ring it up for the correct price when she asks me how it rang up. She says "oh I thought it was xx." I wanted to have a bit of fun and said "oh well I can have my manager come over and we can check."

"nah, thats fine"

"oh no, really, its no problem at all! It won't take any time"

"no no no don't worry about it"

Making her squirm like a cat on a hot tin roof was fun

 

[sjwaste]

This isn't me working retail, but it's retail interaction.

I was at the Whole Foods in Portland, ME recently. As I'm pulling into the parking lot, some lady is moving fast with a shopping cart containing her groceries and baby. She darted out in front of my car, and thankfully I was anticipating it anyway so I was already stopping. I'm then proceeding to loop around the aisle and she DOES IT AGAIN. She's practically running with a shopping cart full of groceries with her kid in tow. I avoid her again and loop to the back of the lot and find a spot. It's crowded. As I'm walking toward the store, she's putting her kid in the car, jumps in, starts and puts it in gear almost simultaneously and backs up without looking. Almost ran me over, except that again, I had identified the crazy lady who didn't care about putting her child in danger.

The moral is: Even in Maine, the patrons at Whole Foods are generally lunatics with little common sense and (for the area, at least) even less common courtesy.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

The wife and I are 40-something, make a comfortable living, and yesterday the sales manager at a BMW dealership (their used car section) advised us against buying any of the 7-series cars before the 2007 model year. This may seem like advice normally expected, but we went there because of the four cars they had on their lot from '04.

After two hours he shows us the vehicles' history record for service and each one of them had 80-100 visits in their lifetime. We were stunned, not at the lack of reliability in the Bimmers, but the honesty of the sales manager. He even showed how they were acquired (all in trades), what it cost them, and that they were never going to his retail line and instead to the auction.

How many of you have been discouraged from buying by the sales manager?

 

[Maligx]

never

 

[Tristicus]

Today I had a guy come in..looks sort of businessman like, but has that greasy sleezball look going on as well. Walk towards him, "Can I help you with anything?" - "Is there anyone here that knows about computers?" - "I do" - "No someone that actually knows something" - "I've been building them since age 10, I know a little bit". See, it's funny when people assume you know nothing and then they meet someone like me who knows a good amount about most items we carry and tech stuff in general and they look at you like an idiot when you try talking technical to them. They guy kept bragging about how rich he was more or less, and how he was buying one PC for a guy to sit in a room and create CAD drawings for him that he thinks up and he was backed up 1250 already and some crap. Then tried to tell me that I know I need more than 6.0gb processor because 2.0ghz I7 (or similar) wasn't enough...confusing ram/processor...whatever. Stupid people.


There was a homeless guy who used to come in and sit on the couch and fall asleep in home theater. One of the cooler managers that left a while ago was shooting spitballs at him and hiding, lol.

Went over to help some people with computers one night/greet them or something, and they instantly started giving me shit. I said "can I help you" or something and they instantly said "yeah can you explain why it is so goddamn noisy in here" or something of the sort (someone was testing a car stereo)...I kind of looked at him and said "Uhm..this is a tech store?" and he said "OH REALLY? THIS IS A TECH STORE? ALL I HEAR IS BOOM BOOM BASS" ... "Well sir, some people like bass." "OH REALLY, SOME PEOPLE LIKE BASS?" ... "I did just say that sir, correct." Then he got angry and him and his fat wife kept saying things and I just basically laughed in their faces.

Most customers complain and bitch at me because we don't have something in stock then ask to get the $500 computer for $400 because we don't have one in stock. I tell them it is first come first serve...and they ask to see a manager. Funny thing is, the usual manager is a big black dude and scares half of the customers as soon as they see him, lol.

I've had several customers ask me if I did work on the side. Of course I've said no, but I always want to do the opposite.

 

[Iron Woode]

I has some stupid hippie-type 20-something year old enter my store with a mangy looking dog on a rope asking if we had any scraps to feed his dog. I told him to get the hell out of my store or I'll call the police. He left quickly.

True story.

 

[Bryf50]

I was working as a cashier in a convenience store. Some guy comes up to me with a ~5 dollar product and hands me a $50. I count out his $45 in change and give it to him. Then for some reason I looked away for a moment. When I looked back the guy is holding $7 and saying I gave him the wrong change. I obviously knew something was up but I decided the best thing to do was to call the manager and ask him to count my register. Instead of just walking away at that point, he starts cursing my out and calling me all sorts of names. By the time the manager came to my register he actually switched back the 20 dollar bills into his change and tried to change the situation to him complaining to the manager about me being rude to him. Then it got really weird. The guy was still going at it trying to get a reaction out of me. The manager told me to go to the back room while he handled it. As I'm walking back the guy chases after me and pushes me. So I shove him into an aisle and his change goes flying all over the floor. It finally ended with him picking up his change and saying some shit about how is brother was gonna beat me up in the parking lot. Sadly security arrived about a minute too late.

Another time it was me and a few others at the registers. There's a guy on the line talking on the phone and clearly making fun of all of us behind the register. Calling one of the girls ugly(true but still =p), a gay guy "Twinkle Toes" and me a i love you or some shit. The guy eventually makes it to my register where I tell him to leave the store and I wasn't going to ring his stupid ass up. He doesn't and it just ended with the manager coming over and ringing him up to get him out of the store.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I walked by the back of the store and notice a little brown lump on the floor. Of course I'm like ah hell who's dog pooped in the store. As I am investigating I see a little more and some smears around, and it creates a rough trail to the bathroom where there is finally a much bigger pile. As I am bitching about this to a coworker I notice a lady nervously shuffling off and it finally clicks that this incontinent bitch shit herself in my store!!!! She left a goddamn trail of poo that managed to roll down her leg out the pant bottom the whole way and it was soft baby mush poo and smelled awful. The only relief from this incident was that the pooer clearly heard us loudly bitching about someone's dog shitting and then figuring out it was people poo. My coworker was retching the whole time we were cleaning it up another coworker walking by took pity on him and helped clean up. Disgusting.

 

[Exterous]

See, it's funny when people assume you know nothing and then they meet someone like me who knows a good amount about most items we carry and tech stuff in general and they look at you like an idiot when you try talking technical to them.

Or when they bring their 'tech guy' with them and it turns out he, also, knows nothing.

Most customers complain and bitch at me because we don't have something in stock then ask to get the $500 computer for $400 because we don't have one in stock.

It was my experience that it was usually the more well off people too. I had one couple that I did a credit app for. He was a dentist and she was the department head at a local major university. They pitched the biggest fit in the world and complained to the dept and store mananger that I was being unhelpful because I wouldn't give them the next model up for the same price. They didn't want to wait the 3 days it took to get them the one they wanted or the $100 to get the much better one.

Then I had one kid who came in and we got to talking. Super nice guy. He had lost his job and had been trying to go back to school and generally seemed to be having a rough go at life. He wanted the cheapest computer possible but it was still more than he had. When I told him the price he looked pretty dejected. I told him I was sorry and he said "Don't worry about it - it's not like you set the prices. I'll see if I can scrape together some more money and come back in a month". That was the day after the first people.

I've had several customers ask me if I did work on the side. Of course I've said no, but I always want to do the opposite.

Yeah - you probably don't want to do that. Some people can deal with them but IMO it was always a big hassel as expectations are sometimes really high. The two times I have had to go to small claims court were over computer service issues

 

[Jeff7]

...
It was my experience that it was usually the more well off people too. I had one couple that I did a credit app for. He was a dentist and she was the department head at a local major university. They pitched the biggest fit in the world and complained to the dept and store mananger that I was being unhelpful because I wouldn't give them the next model up for the same price. They didn't want to wait the 3 days it took to get them the one they wanted or the $100 to get the much better one.

Then I had one kid who came in and we got to talking. Super nice guy. He had lost his job and had been trying to go back to school and generally seemed to be having a rough go at life. He wanted the cheapest computer possible but it was still more than he had. When I told him the price he looked pretty dejected. I told him I was sorry and he said "Don't worry about it - it's not like you set the prices. I'll see if I can scrape together some more money and come back in a month". That was the day after the first people.
...

I'd get on my dad's case about that sort of stuff when he'd get annoyed with a CSR at a store or on the phone. Most of the time they can't do much of anything anyway without a supervisor's permission, so yelling at the low-level CSR isn't really going to do a whole lot except make his day lousy.

 

[nick1985]

Back in high school I worked at a Wendy's.

Guy comes in at about 11, and starts ordering breakfast. I told him that we switch to lunch at 10:30. He tells me to go to hell. I told him I'd be right behind him.

*edit*

And I can also confirm that women's restrooms are farrrr worse than the men's. Shit, piss, and blood smeared all over everything. Never seen anything like it, filthy beasts.

 

[kage69]

I had a slightly drunk redneck try to do the 'shave arm hair' test with a fully serrated Spyderco Endura II once...

Yep, went through a lot of papertowel at the cutlery store that day...

 

[secretanchitman]

this happened earlier this year...

this lady came up to me because apparently her brand new macbook pro that she bought yesterday stopped working. i took her laptop and plugged it into a spare ac adapter. of course, the plug turned orange so it indicated that it was charging. i also checked the battery indicator on the side and yet again, it was only flashing 1 green led, so it had very little to no battery left. i pressed the power button and the laptop turned right on (keep in mind that she wasnt paying attention to what i was doing because she was texting/emailing on her phone). after she saw the screen light up, she was surprised and asked, "how did you get it to work!? i was using this for 5-6 hours yesterday and all of a sudden it shut off! i thought my laptop broke on me!!!" i asked, "well, did you plug in the ac adapter to charge the battery?" "what do you mean? you're saying that i had to plug this in to charge? i thought these things ran for days!!!!"

i *promise* im not making this up...but she honestly didnt know that the laptop needed to be charged. i cant believe she just took out the laptop from the box and clearly *didnt* see the white power brick and extension cord right underneath the laptop.

 

[kage69]

Back in high school I worked at a Wendy's.

Guy comes in at about 11, and starts ordering breakfast. I told him that we switch to lunch at 10:30. He tells me to go to hell. I told him I'd be right behind him.

*edit*

And I can also confirm that women's restrooms are farrrr worse than the men's. Shit, piss, and blood smeared all over everything. Never seen anything like it, filthy beasts.

It's funny to see you post that, I've been in a debate with a coworker just today about this stereotype of women keeping their restrooms immaculate. Bullfuskin SHIT!
The communal bathroom on this office floor has been the brunt of much nastiness lately, and not from the dudes. Dudes might miss a little, maybe fail the courtesy flush, but no guy ever left a toilet looking like he tried to beat it to death with a used tampon. Someone in my office has disgusting 4" pubes that look like they are fried from piss saturation.

I'm going to start a collection for our custodian, no joke.

 

[nick1985]

Someone in my office has disgusting 4" pubes that look like they are fried from piss saturation.

lol!!!

 

[kamikazekyle]

Meh, guess I'll keep the dream alive, seeing as how I read every post up to this point.

Years ago I had a five year stint during college at a regional Mom & Pop chain of video stores. I wound up working in all the stores as I also did an internship for IT support and web development with them (college credit requirement; killed two birds with one stone).

Anywho. It was a weekend night, which normally mandates three employees closing due to the crowds. As it was slow, the extra person left early, and later on my coworker had to rush out as her daughter went into labor, leaving me alone. I get a call from a lady checking to see if her account has any late charges, tell her what her balance is, and we end the conversation. Pretty common. The crowds then start picking up, of course, so I forget all about it.

Later on that night, just before close, a trio of African American women walk into the store, pick out some movies, and bring them up to check out. They didn't have a membership card, so I ask for a phone number so I can pull up the account, and for the primary renter to show me their ID. While the lady is pulling out her ID, I notice that the number she gave me was from the call earlier. Of course, her ID doesn't match the account in the least. We used to get this every once in a while: someone would send a friend in to rent on their account but wouldn't come themselves. Seeing as how the person was required to sign the receipt saying they ack'd renting the movies, the totals, and to return them on time (along with the primary account holder signing a contract at opening that they wouldn't lend their account to anyone), I couldn't rent to her.

I tell her I can't rent on this account, so she then begins to cuss and become very irate. Trying to calm her down, I tell her it's no problem that I can just open up a new account for her for free. I check the system, and lo and behold she already has an account with oodles of late fees that have been sent to a collection agency. At this point, I inform her of the charges and that I can only rent to her if she pays the fees and charges in full. Now she goes into full blown "I'm going to kill you mode," tossing all manner of creative swear words along with the usual "I'm going to make sure you never work in this town again," and adding in various claims that I'm a racist and she'll sue me and have me arrested for discrimination (I'm Caucasian). Thankfully, I was polite and calm the entire time and one of her friends managed to physically drag the woman kicking and screaming out of the store before I had to call the police. The remaining woman apologized, handed me a normal membership card to her own account, and in thirty seconds she was on her way with the movies.

----

On of the locations was located right next to a college campus, so we got a variety of drunk/high/etc students. I was in the front office doing some paperwork and heard someone go into the adult room. A while later my coworker who was managing the checkout came barreling in, her face flush wrapped in a mix of anger and tears. She told me she couldn't handle it.

So I walked out and there's two frat brothers dressed halfway as clowns with a video camera that had been recording the whole thing. It was initiation week, so it this duo was tasked to dress up as a clown and go rent an adult movie while being filmed. I was about to tell them to get the hell out before I called the cops for filming on private property, but they quickly apologized and left on their own.

---

That same store saw over 50% of its revenue come from the adult rentals and sales, so the owner thought about putting a novelty and toy section with the movies. Especially after the above incident, it wasn't a popular idea with the other employees. Though I do imagine that with the college right next to the store and no other adult stores in town, it probably would have been a copy machine for cash.

---

I had a college student come in and buy a hentai movie, then come back later that day and try to return it since the genitals were censored out. It was a direct Japan export (with subtitles), so at the time of its production it was legally required to be censored. He was a bit sheepish when I was explaining to him the reason. It was listed as a previously viewed title and felt sorry for the guy, so I went ahead and gave him credit for another and put it back on the shelf.

---

We had to check all movies reported as damaged by the customer before we could do an exchange or credit. Normally we had a little TV tucked into the counter hidden from view to do this. But it sometimes broke, or the store didn't have one, so the employees would have to check the movies at home or in the overhead TV's. One night we had two adult movies that needed to be checked and nobody wanted to take them home. So my manager popped them into the overheads real quick after closing. Thankfully it was a weeknight so the parking lot was empty by that time, as you can see the overheads from the lot and the movies went right into full-on previews.

---

One customer rented nothing but adult movies, but we started to notice that they were coming back with "stains" or curious spots on the tapes. After the first batch, we instructed him to drop them in the returns slot and used latex gloves. We eventually had to approach him about it since it kept happening. Thankfully it stopped after that.

---

We had someone who couldn't buy a house because his son returned a video game late and without an instruction manual YEARS before, and it was a high enough total to have the account sent to a collections agency. At that time he rented, we still had fees for missing manuals. Seeing the time since he had last rented, it's kinda understandable that he wouldn't remember and would be angry. But most people I talked to that got sent to collections never believed something like an overdue movie charge would get turned in; he didn't find out till the bank refused the loan due to the entry on his credit report.

---

We had a theather style popcorn machine in every store so customers could eat popcorn as they looked for movies. People would come in off the street, grab a few bags, then walk right back out the door. When confronted that it was for customers, they'd say nothing and keep walking, or get unusally upset. As an aside, those pre-packaged packets of oil/butter make for a fun time trying to clean the machine out at night. I hated doing that.

---

When hurricane..Ike I think it was... came through, it knocked out the power to one of the stores. The owner still had the store open for business, and I happened to be there visiting as it was on the way to my parents house. A gentleman came into rent an adult movie, so the employees had to provide him with a flashlight for the adult room (which was in a closed room with no windows).

The owner had also bought in a lot of ice from another store that had power, so this store emptied their drink cooler into a huge tupperware bin full of ice. As they were the only place out in public with cold drinks during summer, they sold out in a day and had one of the highest revenues they'd ever had for a weekday.

---

There was one lady who rented several video games and new releases, and came in a few days later to say they were stolen with a bunch of other stuff at her house. We said we'd waive all fees if she could provide a police report, which she didn't have. A day or two later we found the movies/games in the overnight drop box.

---

*There were the usual prank calls about the adult rooms.
*Suspect spots in the corners of the adult rooms.
*Every now and then we'd find a torn shrinkwrap/empty box for one of our budget for-sale titles or adult for-sale title. Only once in a while, and it was a minor loss. Most of our budget titles and adult for-sales we got for $1.50 and resold for $7.99 to $9.99 and they'd still sell like hotcakes.
*Usual people coming in and complaining about DVD's not working or something, when they clearly scratched it to hell (we checked both surfaces of DVDs before renting them out). The fun ones were when they returned the disk shattered and said it came that way.

Most of the day to day stuff in the normal rental sections were pretty generic. Sometimes a customer would be a little upset at a price or that a movie wasn't in a special or something. It was usually the around the adult room that had interesting stories.

---

I did work at a grocery store for a stint in high school, but quit since the hours were pretty bad and my grades were slipping. About the only thing that happened there was a lady picked up a broken bag of sugar and walked through the entire store with it leaving a trail, even stepping in the stuff. Thankfully it wasn't bad to sweep up.

Though, the owners were stingy as hell (family owned). When the county rescue squad moved to a new building, they purchased the old building next door to their store in order to have a place to put their extra exotic and sports cars. Not too long after I quit, the roof of the store collapsed due to ignored rain damage and poor maintenance. I don't think anyone was hurt, though.

I think that's about it. I've had stuff while doing IT that I could probably recall, but will have to save that for another time.

 

[Saint Nick]

I never understood how people got semen every where, especially on tapes? Jesus Christ people, it isn't hard to wipe yourself up, or blow it into a sock.

 

[RearAdmiral]

Moar! I only used to work in a restaurant. I mostly did dish washing but was asked to cook when it was slow.

Somebody sent back some pancakes because there wasn't enough whipped cream on them. Whipped cream isn't gold, I certainly didn't skimp on it as it is easy enough for people to scrape off. We basically had plate size pancakes, so I covered all the brown I could see with an Everest of whipped cream. It was mostly old people, which as anyone who ever worked in a restaurant knows, they suck and never tipped our waitresses.

 

[dabuddha]

We should never have let this thread die off. Need more stories!

 

[A Casual Fitz]

Last week someone overdosed on heroin and died in the Burger King across the street from where I work.

 

[ModerateRepZero]

We should never have let this thread die off. Need more stories!

QFT. I sorta miss my retail days

Key word: sorta

 

[Lummex]

I just started working retail, like a month ago. So far no amazing stories like I've read in here, but I'm sure something will happen.

The worst thing that's happened so far (still, not so bad): Since I was so new, I hadn't done a furniture purchase before (we mostly sell small stuff and only get furniture every once in a while to sell), so I had to learn how to do a stock search, whether i should go get it or have someone else do that, and a bunch of stuff all at once. Needless to say i was taking too long and the customer was getting pissed. i tried to tell him i was new and assure him that the furniture would get here shortly, but he was getting more and more annoyed. He asked to pay for his other small items first and the furniture later, so i obliged. When the furniture got to the front so i could ring it up, another customer had been being helped. So the guy comes around the checkout counter, picks up his unpaid for furniture, and starts to walk out. I had to go get him and explain he hadn't paid for it yet. So he just sets it down and leaves very angrily. I was mortified and then had another angry customer later. I know it's not a big deal, but being new I was so pissed and sad that day. the end

 

[A Casual Fitz]

Are people scared to post in this now?

 

[QueBert]

I work at a liquor store, this older biker dude comes in a few times a week and always buys a Steel Reserve (nasty malt liquor with high alcohol content) and a Four Loco (nasty high alcohol content flavored malt liquor) I give him a hard time usually, and he explains how it's the "perfect combination" So he came in a few weeks ago, same 2 items. I give him shit and he tells me a story about how he was at another liquor store a few days before and a homeless guy outside asked him for money for booze. He went inside and to be nice he bought an extra Steel Reserve for the dude. He went outside to give it to him and got "I appreciate it, but I don't drink that shit!"

The thought of a homeless guy turning down a free drink cracks me up, I don't blame him Steel Reserve is god aweful. I have some regular customers who could easily afford to drink something like Arrogant Bastard yet still go for Steel Reserve confuse the hell out of me.

That same week a tispy girl came in and offered to show me her breasts for a 750ml bottle of Ciroc. Not really a good deal imho, and she fucked it up by flashing me before I had a chance to say anything, not that I was going to say yes. But if I had been considering it, after seeing them for free there was no need to give her anything. I'm pretty sure being intoxicated didn't help her negotiation skills.

 

[ModerateRepZero]

Are people scared to post in this now?

I think either it's a slow week or people are somehow lacking in entertaining stories.