"The Twelve Pains of Christmas" currently depicts those various portions of Christmas preparations that can drive one insane (i.e. stringing up the lights, 5 months of bills). Someone needs to develop a version that describes the unique ways in which customers drive retail employees up a wall with their less than desireable behavior.
While I do work for a chiropractor, I needed to pick up a second job (due to costs of living in NJ) to make ends meet. I love people, in general. They are fun to watch and even more enjoyable to interact with - even the "difficult" ones. After an evening at the women's clothing store which has employed me for the last 7 months, I still like people - I just despise the general public. Job positions in retail ought to come with a warning label. I have noticed that women, over the age of 40 in particular, allow themselves certain freedoms in a store for which they would most certainly crucify their immediate family members if said family members emulated their behavior at home (i.e. opening and unpacking entire contents of 10 shoeboxes without cleaning up after themselves followed by trying on 36 separate pieces of clothing in a dressing room only to leave said clothing on the floor).
This past Saturday was an exercise in patience. The smallest inkling of trouble began around 5:00 PM, followed by several others situations in increasing levels of intensity, until it finally culminated in the need to call the local police to address a half-crazed customer. To trim that evening down, I will recount only the first and last episodes.
The first involved a woman trying on considerably more than 36 pieces of clothing. As she emptied her stash onto the "return rack" outside of the fitting rooms, we kept taking the clothing off and putting it into a stack in the back of the store, just out of curioisty, to see how much one person can possibly try on. An hour and a half later, she was finished. The clothing stack was approximately three to four feet tall (mind you, there were no bulky sweaters to inflate the stack height). Total item count? 63, not counting the 10 pairs of shoes she left on the floor prior to commencing the fitting frenzy. In the meantime, two girls, approximately 12 - 14 years of age were waiting for her to finish. We naturally assumed that these were her children. My manager had just finished cleaning up this woman's shoe disaster when the two girls came back by the fitting rooms and proceeded to open up shoe boxes and try on a whole gammit of shoes, emulating the mother by not cleaning up after themselves. My manager, thoroughly tired, went back there to do some cleaning again and politely asked the younger of the two girls to put the shoes away when she was done. The girl's response? "I'm the customer, you're the servant." Completely appalled, my manager replied, "excuse me, but who do you think you're talking to?". The girl, now realizing that her response was completely inappropriate, attempted to cover up by saying that my manager had misunderstood her - she had only been playing a game with the other girl (yeah, right - and pigs fly). My manager waited until the mother completed her destruction of the dressing room and approached her at the sales counter. It was then that she found out that the one girl was the woman's daughter. The other one, with the attitude, was the daughter's friend. My manager complimented the woman on her own daughter's behavior and proceeded to recount the behavior of the friend. Again, the friend lied and the mother bought the story and even defended her!
The final episode that evening involved a ticking time bomb in the shape of a 50+ year-old woman. She thought that she would pull a fast one - use two coupons and get the item for free. The first coupon gave her 20% off one item and the second coupon stated "$15 off of your purchase of $15 or more". Essentially, the first coupon was going to bring the price of the desired item down to $15 and the second coupon would render it free. Nice try! My manager tried to ring her up on one register, but the register wouldn't apply the 20% discount. Figuring that the particular register may be acting up, she tried to ring up the same item on another register. Same story. She then inspected the coupon to find out in the fine pint that the 20% coupon could not be applied to sleepwear. Of course, that was the only item that the customer had come to the store for. My manager underlined the fine print and showed it to the customer, who proceeded to get annoyed. She insisted that my manager should manually override the system and force it to accept the coupon. Mind you, this customer had to have pulled this stunt on other managers in the past - get loud and obnoxious and the manager will do anything to get you out of the store. The problem with this situation was that she was messing with the wrong manager - this manager plays by the rules. If the system says "no go", my manager stands behind it (not to mention the fact that she could get into a lot of trouble with the corporate office if she tried to override it and they found out).
The customer got louder and louder, cursing out my manager while at least five other customers in line behind her looked on in amazement. The customer accused my manager of being an idiot and, as a side note, commented that she could not possibly be a manager because no company could possibly hire someone that stupid to be a manager (faulty logic - just walk into some stores and you know what I mean). My manager kept her mouth shut. The customer carried on and then demanded to speak to a superior. At that point, my manager gives her the office phone number of the district manager but noted that, since it was already after 8 PM on a Saturday night, there would be no answer at that number until after 9 AM Monday morning. The customer became livid, threatened to come in and harass my manager every day until Christmas, and demanded my manager's name. My manager wouldn't give it to her. After significant ranting and raving on the part of the customer at that answer, the customer turns around, item under her arm and heads towards the doorway. When asked where she was going, she shouted back that she was leaving with the item unpaid for and that my manager would have to call security and the police. When the police would show up, then my manager would be forced to reveal her name.
With that, she stomped out of the store. About 10 feet into the mall walkway, she saw security running in her direction. She threw the item back into the store, but they saw her and marched her back into the store to question her. She fed them all sorts of lies. In the meantime, my manager called the district manager's cell phone and asked what to do. The district manager told her to do what the customer wanted - call the police. But, she added, press charges. So the police were called and they sent three officers. One initially took the customer's statement. When another came to take my manager's statement, the customer kept inching closer and closer in an attempt to cut in on the conversation. My manager took the officer into the stockroom to continue the conversation uninterrupted. They came back out 15 minutes later and the officer went to the customer and asked her to turn around and put her hands behind her back. Thoroughly shocked that her plan had not worked and probably realizing that she had played her game too far, she tried the only other thing that she thought would work - tears. I don't know if men are able to distinguish one type of crying from another, but it was obvious to every other woman in the store that this customer was crying crocodile tears for effect. The arresting officer looks over to his colleague and his colleague approaches my manager and asks if there is any way that charges would be dropped. My manager pondered this for a few moments and then replied that she would if the customer never showed her face again in the store. The police took the news back to the distraught customer and marched her out of the store. It was actually kind of funny - not only did this customer's tactics backfire on her, but she never did get my manager's name. By this point, it was well after 9PM and the mall closes at 9:30. Security personnel continued to stand by our doorway until we dropped the gate at closing time.
Because of the various fiascos that evening as well as the volume of customers up until the time of the half-crazed woman, we had not been able to maintain the store's appearance. We were there almost until midnight cleaning up the store. And this is the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Thankfully, it's off to PA for me in a little over a week to a job in a nice real estate agency - no more retail for me!
I survived the two weeks I was doing split duty between two offices. Only by the grace of God.
If someone had told me everything that was going to transpire between January and now, I would have either worried myself into an early grave or just lost my mind on the spot. I’m very glad that God doesn’t typically let us in on the future. Very few of us could handle it. I sometimes wonder how the prophets were able to process and cope with the knowledge of the future that God gave them.
