Three posts in one day??

Can this be real? Yes it can! My third post in ONE day! Maybe it is over kill now but something happened at work that I felt like mentioning here.

I have believed for quite a while that if you want to see how inconsiderate, rude, and lazy people can be; work retail. I have so many stories and examples of people at possibly their worst every day I work!

For the most part I feel that I do a very good job at dealing with rudeness with patience and good customer service. But every now and then it is too much and I have to admit, I get frustrated. Noticeably frustrated. Today was one of those days.

Today at work, it was busier than it has been for several weeks. First of all, it is a pet peeve of mine when customers think they are the ONLY ones there. I do my best to help everyone and for the most part people see that it is busy and realize they can not monopolize me. Every now and then someone thinks they deserve all the help. Anyway, this lady and her daughter came in today looking for ties for the daughter's wedding. Of course I help them. Here are some problems with wedding ties that it is important to realize, and relatively common sense, if you are looking for a color that is not in season you WILL have a difficult time finding that color. If you are not willing to be creative or flexible you WILL not find ties. If you procrastinate you WILL not find ties. So these people were looking for SAGE green ties, the spring type sage green, and the wedding is on this Saturday!! I understand that they were stressed but that is absolutely no excuse for how they were talking to me and how rude they were! They were incredibly demanding, incredibly rude, and expected me to stand there while they debated what to do in case they think of a question. Well, I dealt with all that relatively well. But it was busy and a lot of people were needing help that were not getting help. So I am starting to get frustrated.

Well, we go back to the desk and I look up stock on these ties, etc. No luck. She then proceeded to act like it was my fault that we did not have more ties.

When the ties they wanted were coming to a dead end she decided it would be a good time to do a return of these two shirts that we have had in our store for quite some time now. Of course there is a line gathering behind them and people are just getting generally frustrated, including me. Well, she did not have a receipt for these shirts. Our policy is that we can still do the return but they only get the lowest sale price in the past 30 days and it has to go on a merchandise voucher (a gift card basically). I explain this policy to her and she looked annoyed but asked to see the value she would get for the shirts. So I start the process and tell her that she will be getting 21.99 for each shirt. (they are usually on sale for about 24.99 so not a huge difference). Wow. Boy was she annoyed at the 21.99 price!! She insisted that she had bought these shirts for 48.00!! I told her in a professional, but frustrated manner, that I have never seen these shirts full price and even if they were full price the price would only be 45.00. And she gets upset and tells me she will take the shirts back and try to find her receipt. Oh, and she wanted cash back. Ridiculous. Anyway, I say that's fine and give her her shirts back and she leaves.

Well, one of my coworkers over in the Men's dept comes over to me later and asks me what happened with this lady. So I tell him the story. I guess this lady and gone to that desk and complained about me saying that I had called her a liar. I have to admit. I laughed. Is that horrible of me? I did not call her a liar. I IMPLIED she was lying. Which people do. That is why we had to make our return policy stricter. Anywho- my coworker got a kick out of it too.

What really upset me though is later I was helping another customer and trying to explain some things to some complicated questions. Well this lady comes back and butts into the middle of our conversation and demands to know my name even reaching to grab my name badge! So I tell her very briskly that my name is Cali. She storms off. I think she made a complaint about me. I am not really concerned about this. Maybe it is cocky of me. But I have so many compliments and good things said by customers that it is no big deal.

The whole point of this is that all this lady accomplished is looking like a rude word I shouldn't say not only to me but to a few of my coworkers who witnessed the scene and who found out about it. Yes I was in the wrong too because I got frustrated but everyone has a breaking point.

So please pleas please, don't be idiots when you shop. Realize that for the most part the associates want to help you and will do what they can to help you but if it is busy then wait your turn and they can only do things with in store policy. Common courtesy people. Common courtesy.


That is my rant/puplic service announcement for the night. ;)