Retail Hell Underground: Corporate Caused Hell

Hey RHU Family! After my last post I was bolstered by your kind words of love and support, followed my heart and put my notice in. I would like to say my last day passed, but as the fates would have it retail isn't quite done with me yet. The powers that be decided that the week of vacation I had saved up can't be paid out, and can't just be burned, so I have to return for one more shift. Still, I'm taking 2 weeks off to visit family out of town. Still, you can't imagine the weight lifted off my shoulders. Obnoxious e-mails from Harpy Queen are no longer any of my concern. I'm super grateful to the lovely people I met there, I've become really close with one lady and we have promised one another we will remain close no matter if I'm working there or not.

Aside from the horrors of HQ I never had too many terrible customer interactions. I'm sure a few memorable ones will return to my brain and I'll recount them to your amusement but there are two that stand out as probably the weirdest interactions I had at my time in high-end retail.

The first happened around Christmas. I had been there for about 4 months at that point and was pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the store. We had a restroom that we would allow customers to use with an escort (we had a lot of stock in the back) but with the insanity that is Christmas it was decided we would inform anyone that asked that the restrooms were out of service currently and apologize for the inconvenience. (I never realized this until working in clothing but as soon as people want to try stuff on they need to pee. It's weird.) Most everyone was fine with our explanation except for this one elderly woman (EW). It was within the first hour of us opening and she was browsing the shoes. After I ask her if she needs anything she speaks rather sharply to me.

EW - I need to use your bathroom.

Samus - I'm so sorry ma'am. Our bathroom is currently out of service. We are having issues with the plumbing.

EW looks at me indignantly and then accuses me of lying with the quip "Well then where are YOU going to the bathroom?"

Thankfully I'm pretty quick on my feet, casually pointed to the huge restaurant across the parking lot and said "At (Restaurant). I'm sure they have a restroom you can use." She looks out the window where I'm pointing and almost looked surprised that she had never seen that massive building before in her life. Or maybe her expression was one of 'how dare I suggest you have to WALK across a parking lot to pee'. Later when another associate showed up I informed her of this story. Now I hadn't known this associate for long and all I knew of her was that she was a school teacher and she was super nice. When I told her the story she scoffed and said:

Teacher - "Where are we going to the bathroom? In your mouth, bitch!"

I had to go into the back I laughed so hard. I will never in my life ever forget that. It was just too funny - this petite, sweet, cute woman with such a cutting tongue. I loved her instantly.

The second happened not long after. A guy came into the store with a pair of jeans. He said he bought them "online" and they were too long and demanded they be hemmed in our back room. I was instantly confused. Our back room is stock. We don't have any kind of tools needed to tailor or fix anything. He was a close talker, kept leaning over the counter as I kept defending the store that we've never done any sort of tailoring here and he kept saying I was wrong, that my SM had done it before. I didn't even know what length he needed and when I tried to ask him he kept saying he needed them hemmed! HEMMED (as if I didn't understand the term) Now there was a nice lady we'd recommend customers to who needed minor repairs or hems but again - he INSISTED we did it for him "in the back" before. He eventually got so fed up with me he left the jeans and told me to call him when they were ready.

When I finally got in touch with SM he reassured me I was right, he's never done that before, he's never tailored someone's denim for them and he would have to come back and get his jeans and if he was interested he could use our lady. Sadly I wasn't there when he returned but my SM said (once again leaning way over the counter) argued that it was our store and he had them fixed here. My SM said he'd been there for years and had never once done that, even showed him the back room filled with stock and zero place to fix anyone's clothing.

The guy glared at SM and said "Well then, one of us is a liar." and left.

--Samus

From Carhop

So I think I've mentioned before, my little mechanic shop also sells gas. Recently the company in charge of our gas changed hands. We still sell the same type of gas; it's just managed by another company. Well, part of the change over was an upgrade on our point-of-sale system. Cool. But inevitably there were bugs in the system because, as any techie will tell you, NOTHING upgrades smoothly.

Well, apparently along with the new gas management comes a new tech support. And new problems. Instead of calling them up "We have X problem, " and a tech gets sent out, we now deal with a receptionist of sorts. They give us a ticket number, and that's it. Then hours later we get a call and have to explain X problem all over again. At that point, we either get a tech sent out for the pumps themselves or, if it's for the POS, we (and by "we" I mean "I" because I am the closest thing to tech support my shop has) get transferred to another tech support who inevitably has a name like Deep or Gita. Which honestly, probably wouldn't be a problem if our phones weren't staticky as shit and they would slow the hell down so I can understand them! And I have to go over the problem for the third time! And only if I can't get the problem fixed by following their instructions do they send a tech out.

It doesn't help that most of our system is well over a decade old and should probably be replaced.

--Carhop