The joys of working retail...

[the2ndevil]

Just got called a “dumbass faggot retard”. Got to say, in 10+ years of retail, that is a new one for me.

[CeilingFan]

Mar 27, 2019 16:07:39 GMT -5 the2ndevil said:

Just got called a “dumbass faggot retard”. Got to say, in 10+ years of retail, that is a new one for me.

Other joys :

Having management cut your hours because "you're not working hard enough".

Being told that forming a workers union is  "unnecessary". 

[Deleted]

Reading all the retail stories on Not Always Right definitely makes me glad that in my travel agency job, I have to deal with less of the clientele that frequent these stories.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

I never did retail, but I did do fast food. Wendy's 4 Life.

Comparing the complaints from people in both fields, I'm glad I never did retail.

Horror stories:

Free fry fridays. Any friday where there was a football game at the local high school, high schoolers got free fries. No purchase required. The place was a f***ing zoo every time.

Someone comes through the drive through and orders like 30 spicy chicken sandwiches. This is a big order, like multiple refills of the fryer. You really should call ahead for that kind of a huge order. They pull the car around to pick the order up inside. Turns out it was my mom, who was in town with my brother's robotics team putting in a lunch order for the team.

I had one guy in the drive through ask for a bunch of stuff that wasn't on the menu intentionally just to f*** around,until customers were honking behind him, and couldn't just tell him to f*** off because you can't do that to customers unless you're a DGAF manager.

One lady just swore at everyone at each stage of the drive through and then peeled out with her food. "SHE WAS RUDE! YOU'RE f***ING RUDE! f*** ALL OF YOU!" Okay lady, have a nice day.

Someone didn't make it to the toilet with diarrhea. I assume intentionally, because they then made shoe prints up the wall with it.

Another person whipped ketchup ALL OVER the bathroom. The diarrhea was nasty but at least just cleaned up easily with a mop. The ketchup was just a bitch to clean.

Breaking the bottom of the salt shakers so that it goes everywhere when we picked them up happened a few times.

A manager was stealing funds and tried to pin it on me. He was definitely on some sort of drugs. He damn near passed out while cashing me out at the end of the day. The general manager knew my drawer was NEVER off though and suspected him right from the start. He was swiftly fired soon thereafter.

The weirdest though was when the restaurant was empty late at night, a guy came up to the register and started to talk to me in vague terms about some personal problem. He seemed totally shaken. Something about what do you do when someone has hurt you your whole life or something like that. (It has been more than a decade so the details are fuzzy) My impression was that he was trying to decide whether to kill someone or not, freaked me right the f*** out. I think I said something like "I'd think a long time before doing something I can't take back" or something like that and he went on his way.


There were good stories too though:

There was a group of seniors that came in every week at the same time. I never knew their names, but every person ordered the exact same thing week to week. Senior Pepsi. Senior Coffee. Etc. The oldest guy was Senior Dr. Pepper. I went away on vacation for a week or two and when I came back Senior Dr. Pepper was not there. I asked the manager jokingly if he had died. She said yes! And his priest came in the week I wasn't there and met with the rest of the members of the group.

There was another old couple who not only wore matching outfits every time they came in, but IDENTICAL outfits. Same shorts, shirt, hat. They had dozens and dozens of sets of outfits.

I made employee of the month one time. I was given a child's size Wendy's backpack. I was 20. It didn't fit, but it was useful for toting around consoles at least.

Some person mistakenly tried to order curly fries. I responded with the then current slogan "You're thinking Arby's"

A man who was PROFOUNDLY high ordered a "sizer seed salad" (Caesar side salad)

[DiBiase is Good]

I hope you told them to go f*** themselves in return.

[Spider2024]

Mar 27, 2019 16:10:40 GMT -5 CeilingFan said:

Mar 27, 2019 16:07:39 GMT -5 the2ndevil said:

Just got called a “dumbass faggot retard”. Got to say, in 10+ years of retail, that is a new one for me.

Other joys :

Having management cut your hours because "you're not working hard enough".

Being told that forming a workers union is  "unnecessary". 

Or all the part-timers getting slightly shaved hours (for the record all the full-timers must be guaranteed 40 hours a week, no more, no less) during the months where the store is doing less business, like January thru March.

3 months where it usually snows a lot up here in the Northeast.

And we sell a lot of big shovels, big bags of sidewalk salt, and even big snowblowers.

And said store would need lot attendants at work to put said heavy items into some of those people's cars. But often, the lot is undermanned in winter time, mostly because for some reason lot workers can only get the part-time hour plans.

(Also they've told us about the unions too. Not so much as "unnecessary", more like they were "evil".)

[edgestar]

Mar 27, 2019 16:10:40 GMT -5 CeilingFan said:

Mar 27, 2019 16:07:39 GMT -5 the2ndevil said:

Just got called a “dumbass faggot retard”. Got to say, in 10+ years of retail, that is a new one for me.

Other joys :

Having management cut your hours because "you're not working hard enough".

Being told that forming a workers union is  "unnecessary". 

An old manager, who was not well liked by the staff, told me that my hours deserved to be cut, because my performance "over the past 2 weeks", had dropped. That was the 2 weeks when I was in the hospital.

[Deleted]

Something I noticed in the stories on NAW where I cannot decide what's worse:

-The customers in all their various forms

Or

-The type of spineless manager who just gives the rude, entitled, belligerent customer what they want even if it is against policy "just to get them to shut up or out of their hair" and, in turn, cause the customers to turn a smug look at the cashier who tried repeatedly to enforce said policy.

[the2ndevil]

Mar 27, 2019 16:27:33 GMT -5 DiBiase is Good said:

I hope you told them to go f*** themselves in return.

The temptation was there, but I decided I would very much like to remain employed so I threw him on hold for the Pharmacist to deal with. And after I got back from my break, I was told the pharmacist actually ended up hanging up on the guy, and the guy said something that could have been considered a threat.

[Natural Born Farmer]

Mar 27, 2019 16:44:23 GMT -5 @desertassassin said:

Something I noticed in the stories on NAW where I cannot decide what's worse:

-The customers in all their various forms

Or

-The type of spineless manager who just gives the rude, entitled, belligerent customer what they want even if it is against policy "just to get them to shut up or out of their hair" and, in turn, cause the customers to turn a smug look at the cashier who tried repeatedly to enforce said policy.

It’s absolutely the latter. You grow to expect the customers to be douche bags. When the manager refuses to have your back against them , that’s much worse. Cherry on top is if they insinuate that somehow you should have been able to make the customer happy while also not breaking company policy or forcing a manager to get involved.

There’s a lot to the idea that everyone should have a service industry or retail job for awhile. Much as I hated it, it’s definitely made me an exponentially more patient and easier to deal with person in any sort of setting.

[Vice honcho room temperature]

Mar 27, 2019 16:07:39 GMT -5 the2ndevil said:

Just got called a “dumbass faggot retard”. Got to say, in 10+ years of retail, that is a new one for me.

Damn you Dire Straits

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Mar 27, 2019 17:06:21 GMT -5 Natural Born Farmer said:

Mar 27, 2019 16:44:23 GMT -5 @desertassassin said:

Something I noticed in the stories on NAW where I cannot decide what's worse:

-The customers in all their various forms

Or

-The type of spineless manager who just gives the rude, entitled, belligerent customer what they want even if it is against policy "just to get them to shut up or out of their hair" and, in turn, cause the customers to turn a smug look at the cashier who tried repeatedly to enforce said policy.

It’s absolutely the latter. You grow to expect the customers to be douche bags. When the manager refuses to have your back against them , that’s much worse. Cherry on top is if they insinuate that somehow you should have been able to make the customer happy while also not breaking company policy or forcing a manager to get involved.

There’s a lot to the idea that everyone should have a service industry or retail job for awhile. Much as I hated it, it’s definitely made me an exponentially more patient and easier to deal with person in any sort of setting.

Eh, I got high enough in my position when I did retail that I could make most things go away myself. Had complete control over the till, which was massively helpful.

[jason1980s]

Mar 27, 2019 16:31:39 GMT -5 Spider2024 said:

And said store would need lot attendants at work to put said heavy items into some of those people's cars. But often, the lot is undermanned in winter time, mostly because for some reason lot workers can only get the part-time hour plans.

(Also they've told us about the unions too. Not so much as "unnecessary", more like they were "evil".)

Do you work for home depot?

Mar 27, 2019 16:24:42 GMT -5 YAKMAN is ICHIBAN said:

I never did retail, but I did do fast food. Wendy's 4 Life.

Comparing the complaints from people in both fields, I'm glad I never did retail.

You need to put these stories into a comedy routine. Actually just tell the stories, no extra comedy shtick. Sorry for your horror but they had me laughing. Best ones are ketchup being a bitch to clean compared to poop and your mom ordering 30 chicken sandwiches.

[Spider2024]

Mar 27, 2019 19:15:33 GMT -5 jason1980s said:

Mar 27, 2019 16:31:39 GMT -5 Spider2024 said:

And said store would need lot attendants at work to put said heavy items into some of those people's cars. But often, the lot is undermanned in winter time, mostly because for some reason lot workers can only get the part-time hour plans.

(Also they've told us about the unions too. Not so much as "unnecessary", more like they were "evil".)

Do you work for home depot?

Good guess!

[lucas_lee]

At my new post they put on the front desk at the hospital and ive gotten a lot of death threats, n-bombs, and threats to f me up after work. That im completely done hahah

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

Mar 27, 2019 19:18:35 GMT -5 Spider2024 said:

Mar 27, 2019 19:15:33 GMT -5 jason1980s said:

Do you work for home depot?

Good guess!

Home Depot corporate: "This store is showing it has 6 employees on at the same time? There should be no more than 4, when it's busy."

Never worked for Home Depot, but even I know that corporate ties their hands to the point where every store is undermanned.

[Shark]

I work in retail, but I always go in on the early morning shift, I'm talking 5am, and unload everything off the truck. That has it's own problems like the people who put the pallets together putting boxes of pots and pans on top of glass. But the upside is I don't have to deal with customers very often.

I do recall working one Black Friday though. I was coming out from the stock room with a large box of pots and pans to restock a display and this woman comes over and asks me to help her find something and she talks a million miles an hour and doesn't even let me put down the very heavy box I was carrying. 20 minutes later, she finally finds the popcorn maker she had been wanting to save $10 on.

[Nickybojelais]

The best move I ever made was moving from a customer facing role to a backstage warehouse operations role. I now have absolutely no contact with customers anymore. Apologies to all you members of the public...but I just couldn't stand facing you any longer!

[Deleted]

Mar 27, 2019 16:07:39 GMT -5 the2ndevil said:

Just got called a “dumbass faggot retard”. Got to say, in 10+ years of retail, that is a new one for me.

As someone with over a decade of retail experienced so well, I've just got to ask : What happened to piss them off?

[DASH 243✅]

Best thing I ever did in my retail job was get the hell out of it.