D-GAS Scrub Store PTSD flashback

Ugh, I just had a PTSD flashback of when I worked in D-GAS Scrub store.

Crusty: I need to find scrub pants that match the shirt I bought last week.

Me: Okay, do you have the shirt with you?

Crusty: No.

Me: Okay, then there's not a lot I can do.

Crusty: It's got flowers on it!

Me: Ma'am, it's Spring. Half the store has a flower motif.

Crusty: I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU ARE REFUSING TO HELP ME! JUST HELP ME MATCH THE SHIRT!

Me: Ma'am, again, did you bring the shirt with you?

Crusty: I told you no!

Me: I can't color match a shirt that isn't here.

Crusty: It's got the color blue on it.

Me: Without. The Shirt. I can't. Color match.

Crusty: BLUE!

Anyone in the clothing industry will tell you over and over and over again that there are many many many shades of blue. Even spouting off things like "navy blue" will result in hundreds of possible matches, as 'navy blue' simply translates to 'the darker shade of blue.' Reducing your search from 1000 possible matches to 300 possible matches still means that it is imposible to be sure. Unless the Flying Spaghetti Monster smiles upon you, there will be a return within 24 hours and a screaming harridan pissed that the  stupid cashier 'was too stupid to give me the right pair of pants!"

Because of course it's all our fault that the Crusty was too stupid to bring the shirt along to help her match her colors properly. Did she want to hear this? No, she cut me off and interrupted me and told me to stop blithering and to help her find her pants.

Me: Ma'am, tell you what, spend some time walking through our store and see if you can find the pattern of the shirt you bought.

The store isn't large, and anyone with a pair of eyes can spot patterns and colors easily, especially since we put all of the same pattern together, for some inexplicable reason.

This would not do. It was not her job to find things for herself, that was my job as an employee and I needed to find the match to her shirt.

She made this proclamation while wedged between four round hang-tables, surounded by flowery scrubs.

My dedicated co-worker would arrive in an hour to give me my lunch break and until then I was alone. With no manager to hand her over to, or to lord it over me, and no possible way I could get into trouble, I took it upon myself. 

Me: Listen lady, I cannot help you without the shirt. I cannot, and I will not, spend all afternoon going shirt by shirt through this store looking for a pattern that YOU cannot clarify. Bring the shirt, and we can do something for you. Until then, either look for it yourself or go to the [store that's three cities away].

Crusty: This is an outrage! MANAGER! NOW!

Me: No.

Crusty: HOW DARE YOU TELL ME 'NO!' I WANT A MANAGER NOW!

Me: We don't HAVE a manager. We haven't had one for three months.

Crusty: *splutter splutter squawk*

She left when it got through her thick skull that she wasn't going to get her way.

Comments

[perky]

Crusty: "I saw a coupon in last week's paper for like, I don't know it was like 3 dollars off Tide. Or maybe it was 2 dollars of Era Plus."

Me: "Do you have the coupon with you?"

Crusty: "No, can you just give me the discount?"

Me: "No, I need to have the coupon in my draw at the end of the day. If you like, you can bring the coupon and the receipt back with you and take it to the customer help desk and get a refund for the coupon then."

Crusty: "You are no help, you know that?"

Me :head desk:

[Chicajojobe]

Ugh! Happens in all clothing store! I can't tell you how many times someone came into The Baby Store saying, "I need something for my child/grandchild/nice/nephew who's 2 years old. What size should I get?"
Then they'd get mad when I told them I had no freaking clue since, shockingly, not all kids are the same size at age 2 or ever!

The worst of which being the Battle Axe who came in at closing time on Christmas Eve, a surly expression firmly glued to her face, and announced she needed a gift for her granddaughter. Luckily, she did know what size she needed, she did not, however, know what she wanted at all...which she was kind enough to inform me was not her job, but mine as the sales person. So I spent 20 minutes trying to wow her with sparkly Christmas dresses in hopes of getting her sour expression to budge. It never did even when she finally did pick something, paid, and left without so much as a "Thank You" for staying late to help her unpleasant ass.

[Nomnom]

Hell babies of any age aren't the same size. That's why I never bother buying the newborn sizes of anything since inevitably the baby will be born ALREADY bigger than newborn size or they'll only be able to wear it for the first week of their lives.

[photoslave]

My "favorite" custies were the ones that would come into the studio and tell me they wanted to precisely match an old photo without actually BRINGING the photo in. Then they would flip their shit when I couldn't get it exactly how they wanted. Then there were the idiots who would get mad that we didn't have a background or prop that they saw at another brand studio.

[Queer Geek]

Usually I'm a lot nicer even the custy is being a twat. I'd pick a couple floral patterns and say to the custy that I think that this might HOPEFULLY work with your outfit since they didn't bring anything with them. Then if they said it wasn't the right one I would tell them that unfortunately this all we have in stock and let them see if they find anything comparable. But that's just me.

[NC Tony]

Even after all this time, customers still think we're supposed to be mind readers and know exactly what they want. We're not psychic, if we were, we'd be buying winning lottery tickets and staying away from the psychos.

[The Last Archimedean]

What happened to brains? Did we breed them out of existence for most people? Because it don't take a genius to figure out that if you want to match one piece of clothing to another, you need to have BOTH pieces of clothing present for the comparison.

[The Singing Library Clerk]

And that's why I try to buy all the matching stuff the same day.

She was just a bitch, but I admit I'd be afraid to bring things in. I once had a sales clerk basically accuse me of stealing a purse I had for two years and the store no longer sold but used to. Luckily her other coworkers seemed to think she was an idiot as - like I said - the store no longer stocked and hadn't for over a year. So how could I have stole it that day? But once bitten, twice shy.