Interesting things at work ...

The other day, I noticed a customer had some things in her hands. I asked her if I could put them in a room for her, but she said she had already been helped. Then I tried to ask her if I could put them at the counter for her. The words were in my head, but tripped over each other trying to get out. Frustrated and annoyed, the customer told me quite rudely to leave her alone. I apologized and went hiding in the corner of the store like a dog with its tail between its legs. She probably thought I was some stupid young Asian girl.

On Friday, my manager was putting up a sign on a fixture that said selected merchandise were marked lower. But there were some things on the fixture that weren't part of the selected merchandise. She asked me if customers would read the sign and see that it said "selected merchandise." I told her, no way. They never read the signs completely. They'd just rather assume it was everything on that fixture. So, she didn't put the sign up and waited instead.

Later that night, just as we were getting ready to close the store, a customer asked if she could put something on hold for an hour. Only problem was, it was 8:30 and we closed at 9. And after we closed the store, we still had two people in the store. One lady tried on a skirt in three sizes. The other was trying on an outfit, and I showed her different things to go with it. She decided that the skirt made her look fat, and after being in the store for about forty-five minutes, she decided that she was done. It was about fifteen minutes after closing before we finally got those two out. And of course the store was a mess and I had a ton of clothes to put back. We didn't leave till like ten.

Tonight, I started work when the store opened and I wasn't off till after we closed because I was the closing associate. After my lunch break, my energy/effort level dipped. Not sure why. Maybe because I just passed the fifth hour of my shift. This customer has a pant and a blouse and asked about our 25% promotion. I told her the specifics (basically it didn't include the pant and blouse) and she gave me a bugged out look, and then looked at the sign. She looked like someone just hit her in between the eyes ... you know, the deer in the headlights look. Then she goes and asks me if they were going to be a different price on Memorial day, and if we were going to have a special for Memorial Day. I SO wanted to tell her that I wasn't a fortune teller, that I couldn't see the future. But I bit my tongue and I told her that I didn't know. Most of the time, I don't know when we're going to have any kind of special until maybe a few days before it happens. There is no way I was going to know two weeks in advance if we were going to have a special. What do I look like? A fortune teller? Wait, and that's not the end of the story. She sees a dress in the window. Wants to know if we have it. Sarah tells her we don't because I already looked for it for someone else. Customer wanted to know if we could see if Pasadena had it. So, I had to climb on top of chair in order to get the item number. And then yell it out to Sarah, who's in the middle of the store. The customer THEN tells me what size she needed. I tell her to go tell Sarah, who's AT the REGISTER looking it up. She looks at me, quite irritated, and says "thank you" quite sarcastically. SO then I get down from the chair, walk to the register, and tell Sarah what size she needed. The customer comes to the register, and we tell her it 's not available in her size. She then asks me to check the Woman's size. WOMAN'S!!! What the heck is she wanting a regular size for if she wears a WOMAN'S size. Now I would've understood if she could fit into the smallest woman size and the biggest missy size, because that's what I do. BUT NOOOOO. She needed something two sizes bigger than our biggest missy size. And as she's leaving ... she asks how much it is. Mind you ... it's not an expensive dress at all. Not by our store prices. By then, I was really tired of this stuff. She did NOT need both of us looking something up for her. LOL maybe she was distracting us so her hubby and son could steal something. Who knows.

I felt bad today about an interaction with a coworker. She had an idea to do something, did it, and then asked my opinion. I told her no, it was a bad idea, and that our manager wasn't going to like it. After I said it, I realized I might've said it too harshly. But I don't think I was wrong. I just should've said it a little nicer. I'm pretty sure our manager isn't going to like what she did. And I'm going to hear plenty of it when I go back to work. I was just too blunt, I think. At least I was honest. Anyway, I guess she talked with the lead sales associate about it, and left what she did. The other associate agreed with me, that our manager isn't going to like this new idea.

One more to end the entry. A mother came in with her two grown daughters. They had a bag, so obviously they were going to return something. This something turns out to be a "gift". As they were looking at stuff, they were of course looking at the prices. I was walking by them, when they were looking at a sweater. One of the daughters commented, "this store is a rip-off." Gotta love working with the public.