In the fitting room: a fucking banana peel. REALLY?!?!
Here you have a child's dirty sock stuck on a jeans rack. WTF??? I have no words... How does this even happen?
So now I'm the fucking shoe department.
Black Friday piggy trails. I should have just called housekeeping and asked for one of those brooms with the long brushes so I can just push it all into a fiery pit of molten lava.
--Kerry
First off, I just have to say.
My line managers an idiot.
Today, she scheduled: My supervisor, me, another guy who started the same time as me and SEVEN BRAND NEW CHRISTMAS TEMPS.
So, screw me in the head with a hammer, I was training two other girls. (Lets call them Bella - honestly she didn't shut up about Twilight for FIVE HOURS - and Arwen - cause she looks exactly like The Lord of the Rings character)
But, SCIENCE NINJA, I hear you cry. You've only been working four weeks. Yes. Yes I have. And I haven't been given a till number yet. sigh.
Anyway, as soon as I got on, I found another new girl, not Bella or Arwen, completely failing at fitting room duty. So, I offered to show her how to do it.
After showing someone in, I turned back round to find the girl and SHE WAS GONE!
She had just walked off.
So me, Bella and Arwen were left on the fitting rooms for THREE HOURS.
By the end of it, I hurt.
But now comes BRIDEZILLA!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, Miss Bridezilla came in with her mother, Zillamother.
Now, they weren't -complicated- as such. But they just wound everyone in the whole store (and eventually the whole store chain) up.
If you were getting married, and needing to buy bridesmaid dresses, what would you do? I personally would bring the bridesmaids along to try on their dresses on themselves.
But apparently this is too complicated for Bridezilla and Zillamother. No.
They tried all the dresses on between them, and estimated what sizes the bridesmaids would need.
They had Bella and Arwen running back and forth to find different dress sizes for an HOUR.
Then they went and ordered - wait for it - 20 dresses!
Totalling over £2000!!!
After all the dresses were processed, they said their goodbyes and went on their way.
The next person to order something came up, and we tried to ask the computer to order it and, surprise surprise, it crashed.
Never mind, we are good retail slaves, so we used the phone to phone the ordering service in London.
Guess what, RHU-ers?
Bridezilla had crashed the WHOLE ordering system, nationally!
Apart from that little rant, working life has been pretty good so far,
Until next time!
--The Science Ninja
From Kerry. One of her fittingroom nighmares...cleaning up after a piggy shopper hoarder!
Hi all, Magic Mistress here again!
Thanks for the responses from my first post. :) Sadly, this story is not as lol-worthy. :(
Today it felt like I was in the Twilight Zone: I had a lot of fun customers and I wanted to punch my co-workers in the face. With a tire iron.
I had the day off before and I was opening by myself. The section I work in covers Dresses and Juniors, which is essentially two separate areas.
Usually, on non busy days, I'm by myself when I open for a couple hours. It's usually not a big deal, I just have to check both fitting rooms every hour and sign the piece of paper that says that I did.
As I'm opening the juniors register, imagine my delight when I saw a nice rack full of clothes waiting for me in the dressing room.
Irritating yes, but it's happened before.
Here's the kicker: the entire day before NO ONE SIGNED OFF ON THE DRESSING ROOMS!!!
You... how... why..?
Aarrgh!
There is no excuse for this. There couldn't have been that many customers all day for you to take thirty seconds to check 8 rooms (some of which also had clothes waiting for me in them) and sign your initials on a piece of paper.
And if you were that busy, call a manager! They would have sent someone (or themselves) to help.
Feeling my blood pressure rising, I checked the schedule to see who was working that day.
It was the perfect storm of nothing getting done. I'll call them Yuka-tan (points for reference) and The Cheerleader.
Yuka-tan rarely puts anything away and when she does she's slow as fuck. I always dread coming into work the day after she has because I have to clean up her mess and she constantly leaves her shit all over the wrap desk.
The Cheerleader is still fairly new and is not so bright (before you rage about the stereotype, I know not all cheerleaders are dumb as rocks, I'm just generalizing).
I could forgive her being new if not for the fact that I had talked to her THE DAY BEFORE about signing the dressing rooms.
She had thought it was ok not to sign the paper if the fitting rooms were clean.
Um, no. Just no.
I suppose I should be grateful that we're one of the smaller stores of our type, otherwise the fitting room would have been a fallout zone.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that Yuka-tan is being transferred to a different department so I won't have to worry about her mess.
Now, I'm off to quell my rage with apple cider and peanut butter M&M's.
Til next time RHU,
--Magic Mistress
From Kerry: Guess what this photo is of?
A fucking panty liner stuck to a fitting room stool.
EEEEW WTF???
She's missing rubber gloves, disinfectant, and a garbage bag.
Long time reader, first time writer. Call me Sabrina - my manager called me this for 3 months...
That's not my name.
I work at a retail store that we will call "JC Nickels."
This didn't happen to me, but a coworker.
We are in charge of working the register, putting clothes away, checking our fittings rooms... The usual. This isn't the first time this has happened.
My coworker "Jan" goes to clean out the juniors fitting room. Most customers like to take one of every color of the same stlye of shirt try it on, turn it inside out, and throw it on the ground.
We had been busy this day so the fitting rooms were a disaster (we can't put a limit on how many articles of clothing they take in) Jan naturally goes in to grab a pile of shirts...
Little did she know there was a surpirse waiting for her.
She made it to the register right out side the fitting rooms to find diareahha all over her shirt hands and creeping down her leg.
Yes, someone forgot that we now have indoor plumbing.
100 dollars worth of cloths are ruined, and my poor coworker has shit all over her.
But it gets better.
After changing, rinsing off (she should have been sent home) and filling out a report, our LP told us that we need to check our fitting rooms more often to prevent this.
However, most days we are by ourselves because "there is no money in the budget".
For 3 days people used each of the womens, misses and juniors fitting rooms as bathrooms.
Oh the joys of working retail.
--Sabrina
From Wolfycat:
It's SUMMER HELL at Smosh Mess for Less.
There have seriously been busloads of people, all non-English speakers, coming to shop daily and adding to our afternoon rush. I've been stuck doing fitting rooms for the majority of my shifts, and my human interaction has mostly been women trying on sundresses and people looking for the bathrooms. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
And then SHE comes.
She walks steadily down the aisle towards me. I greet her and offer to count the dresses she has in her hands and she just grunts at me and walks past me to where the dress go-back rack is and starts rummaging through it (and messing up the way I had it sorted).
I help a few more people, and then she gives this loud grunt/growl from right behind me that almost scares the pants off me.
"I try these." She thrusts about 20 dresses at me. I'm standing right by a sign and rack that says "LIMIT 8 ITEMS ONLY" or some crap like that.
I offer to count 8 dresses up for her and hold the other ones and just switch them out as we go along.
"No...I try these." She just stands there staring at me, tightening her hold on the dresses. I tell her she can only take 8 at a time.
"NO. I TRY THESE."
I repeat everything in very broken Spanish to her, complete with stupid-looking hand signals, but pretty sure I got the important words across.
"I WANT TRY THESE!"
At this point, she's looking a lot like Consuela from Family Guy. The lady that covers Housewares hears the commotion and talks to the woman in rapid Spanish. Woman finally leaves me alone and heads to check out soon after.
Then, as I was helping a group of ladies get numbers for the fitting room, some lady came back out and was waiting to give her number back. She ends up getting impatient and throwing it to the floor, which one of the other ladies picks up and hands to me. The other lady could have easily put the number back herself.
Later on, some woman was walking around the back of the store spraying a bottle of to-go Febreeze everywhere. She rounded the corner from the kids' section and nearly sprayed me in the face as I sorted racks. I asked her what was wrong and she said the store smelled like rotten eggs. I dunno. She left soon after.
They had a new girl cover me for lunch, and I came back in time to hear some lady raging at her all "WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY MOTHERFUCKING DRESSES!!!!!!!!!"
Keep in mind that I was up front clocking back in when I hear this. All my coworkers up front are looking at each other like WTF??? A supervisor and LP guy start heading down there and I follow.
All the while the bitch is screaming about bad service and how the new girl is a stupid whore. It turned out to be this blonde lady wearing booty shorts that made her rump look like an upside-down mushroom and a tank top that she must have gotten from the junior's section.
She's standing there yelling her head off and waving a hanger
around. New girl is in tears and cowering behind the desk.
Bitch: "WHERE! THE! FUCK! ARE! MY! DRESSES!" *throws hanger to the ground and breaks it*
LP guy: "Calm down right now, or I'm escorting you out."
Bitch: "I PUT DRESSES ON LAYAWAY A WEEK AGO AND THIS FUCKING WHORE THREW THEM AWAY! I NEED THEM FOR MY JOB!"LP guy: "...We don't have layaway."
Supervisor: "We just do holds for 24 hours and that's it. If you waited a week, your dresses are long gone. Sorry."
Bitch: *looks like she's about to turn into a werewolf* "FUCK THIS STORE! FUCK YOU!" *flips off supervisor* "FUCK YOU!" *flips off LP* "FUCK YOU!" *flips off me and new girl* "FUCK YOU!" *flips off random customer* *continues on cussing everyone out*
LP guy has had enough and starts slowly advancing on the woman like a black panther on the prowl. By this time, supervisor has called up trainee LP man who is taller and bulkier than first LP guy.
The lady starts backing away from LP guy but doesn't shut up. She actually almost backs into trainee LP but he goes "Ma'am." and she looks at him. Her eyes go wide and she finally shuts up.
"You're throwing me out?"
"Come with us, ma'am."
And they show her the door. Needless to say, for a while after, customers avoided the fitting rooms. We gave new girl time to sit in the break room and recover, and the supervisor said she was taking the LPs out for drinks later on.
And still, the faint smell of Febreeze lingers in the air...
--Wolfycat
4th of July N.A.T.! Left over tags from tons of stolen shit probably from one person. >:O
--Kerry
Here we have a "real" fitting room sign! (unlike the fantasy ones on RHU) Hiedi spotted this one:
I took my son out today to buy new pants (silly boy has grown 7 inches in like 3 months) and I saw this notice outside the fitting rooms.
I asked which retail slave came up with the sign. When the gal who posted this sign came forward, I said "As a former fitting room slave, can I hug you?"
We did, and there was a level of understanding and respect between us only retail slaves forced to clean up bodily fluids from fitting rooms could understand.
--Hiedi
We're having a big sale at Gord and Raylor and that seems to bring out the people who have absolutely NO idea how to behave in public.
"Give us some examples, Joe!", I hear you say. Okay, you asked for it:
Case Number One"Yes ma'am, how can I help you?"
"Can you explain to me why these (men's underwear) packages are SEALED?""Excuse me?"
"My husband wants to try these on and they're stapled SHUT!""Ma'am, we don't allow people to "try on" underwear here in the store."
"Well, that's just STUPID! Why?""Ma'am, would YOU want to put on underwear that's been tried on by ten to thirty people a day?"
"No! But men are different.""So you're saying it's okay if your husband gets a urinary tract infection or something worse?"
"Don't be so melodramatic, honey! C'mon Harry, let's go to Macy's!"Another part of my job is checking the fitting
rooms. Custys leave anywhere from one to, seemingly, a thousand pieces
of clothing on the floor.
I'm ready for that , but not this:
I went into the fitting rooms by the Loungewear section and, sitting on the bench in room #1, with the door wide open, was a naked old man.
He was staring off into the distance and breathing heavily.
"Sir, are you alright?"
"Huh?"
"Are you alright?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm just tryin' on a couple of suits."
"Okay, I'll just shut the door here."
And I left.
Ten minutes later, I see him wandering the other side of the store. Sure enough, the suits are in a pile on the floor. No biggie. Happens all the time.
About ten minutes after that, I went to check the fitting rooms by Athletic Wear. Guess who's there? Naked again? With the door wide open again!?
"SIR, if you're going to undress, SHUT the door!"
"Huh?"
"SHUT. THE. DOOR!"
"Ohh. Okay. You don't have to shout, y'know!"
So, you tell ME: absent-minded old codger or exhibitionist?
I know we all like to get our way all the time, but the sensible among us realize that's an impossibility. The big sale, like all big sales, has some exclusions. Things that are already marked way down and some designer lines are typically among these exclusions.
My co-worker, who was born and raised in Russia, was trying to explain this to a crusty.
"The coupon SAYS "SALE"!
"Well there oughta be a SIGN or somethin', SAYING that!"
"Why the hell they let you people work here anyway is beyond me! You can't even speak English! Why don't you go back where you CAME from?"
"Dot's good I-DEE-UH! I VILL go bock vere I come from! Do svidaniya, tovarich!
Me? I had to run to the break room and laugh my ass off!
Peace.
--Joe the Cigar Guy
As requested by Postal Slave, there is indeed further news of Bryan, The Fake Marine.
My buddy (let's call him Bob, 'cause that's his name) was working the counter at the smoke shop. The door chimes sound and Bob looks up to see a tall, lanky white guy in U.S. Army desert camo. The guy is grinning from ear to ear and Bob still doesn't recognize him.
"Hey Bob, how's it going?"
"Holy shit! BRYAN?"
"In the flesh."
And there was much hand-shaking. Then Bryan got down to it. He told Bob how he was really sorry for cooking up the whole Marine thing, but he'd always wanted the respect that goes with being in the military. He just didn't want to actually BE in the military. After he got fired from the smoke shop, he bounced around a couple of months doing nothing except partying with his buddies. Then, one morning as he was suffering with yet another hangover, he took a long, hard look at himself. He didn't like what he saw: a young guy with no job skills to speak of, no prospects, no goals, no real relationships. He told Bob that he thought (briefly) about suicide, but realized that it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
"Yep... a dirty fucking diaper in my fitting room. Cause it's too difficult to take the kid to the goddamn bathroom to change him!"
--Kerry
"Apparently it's necessary to turn the shirt and hanger completely upside down to hang it up"
--Kerry
Wolfycat again. It's
my day off, my feet are propped up and I have several candy and fast
food wrappers littered around the general vicinity.
I swear my job stress is making me gain weight. Yesterday I had entered the deepest layer of Smosh Mess for Less HELL!
My shift was noon to closing, and my manager decided to make me the go-between bitch and have me do a bit of everything. I was on recovering, sizing the juniors section, shoes, backup cashier, and running racks for fitting rooms. Oh, and on top of that I kept getting called to the Watch Tower (glass cases where the watches, fine jewelry and expensive sunglasses are kept)."I don't believe we do." I said.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste."How...slack."
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. She then whipped out her cell phone and told her husband "Ashley" to come to the store. Then she turns to me. "I'm going to wait for my husband to come so he can pay."
"Okay," I said pleasantly. "Would you like me to reserve your items up front?"I ask her again if she wanted me to hold anything while she waited, she politely refused again, so I locked the cases once more and we parted ways.
In the time it had taken for her husband to arrive at the store, I had finished sizing juniors, given up on shoes (they are a hopeless case to keep in order during business hours), and ran two fitting room racks.
I get a call to the Watch Tower again, and sure enough, Miss Scarlet and Mr. Ashley are waiting for me. I reopen the cases and Miss Scarlet then proceeds to whine and beg with Mr. Ashley to buy her all this random shit that's in the cases and he ends up storming out in a huff. Okay, then! I lock the cases and go on my way.
Then about an hour later I witness a coworker catch someone trying to smuggle a pair of shoes past the registers. The genius cut the cord thing on the hard tag...but then put the hard tag in her pocket. Our LP guy was quite astonished that he actually had something to do this early in the day.Everything at that point was uneventful except for the large guy that stank up the whole back end by taking a massive dump in the men's room and just grinning creepily at me as he left.
So I plug my nose and start spraying non-scented deodorizer. LP guy comes to take a potty break, taking spray in with him to try and oust the odor still lurking inside. Giggling ensues.
One of the ladies from earlier comes up dragging one of
the little boys by the hand. "Where's the restroom?"
she asks.
I point directly behind her. A few minutes later I hear two sharp smacks and the little boy's wails echo off the walls. The lady starts scolding him about misbehaving and he yells about his tummy hurting. He keeps crying for a while, but I get a sudden rush of '8-item-ers' and soon forget about them. The toy section is around the corner and lingerie is in clear view from the fitting rooms. After they came back out the lady must have stuck the teenage girl with watching the boys and went back to lingerie to pick out more butt floss.
It was between rushes when it happened.
Everything was sorted, no racks needed running, and I was just putting the non-slip foam thingies on the hangers and keeping an eye out for more custys. The little boy from earlier emerges from the toy section yelling for mommy.
He runs up the aisle towards lingerie, leaving a trail of diarrhea behind him. My jaw drops in shock. LP guy was in the office and was on his way to the water fountain and he saw it. He goes to get the floor signs and I call the manager and front desk. I tell them the description of the mom and boy.
As soon as I get off the phone with them, two girls come up. One's hopping on one foot holding a flip-flop covered in shit.
Without a word I give her sanitizer and some paper towels and send
her off to the bathroom. LP guy buzzes me on the phone and says the
trail went from toys all the way up to shoes and that we were in bad
need of a mop.
And a Haz-mat crew.
I'm kind of freaking out because custys coming back out of the fitting room are trying to find a way to cross Poop River, manager and LP guy are still marking Poop River in other parts of the store, and I can't leave my post to get the mop ready from the utility closet.
Fitting room girl comes back from lunch looking like she might spout it back up again. I go get the mop and start conquering Poop River. Manager comes back and starts spraying disinfectant all over the place.
Mopping that shit almost took me an hour. I had to change water like 3 times. Ugh.
And it turns out the mom and kid bailed right after that. Perhaps it's a good thing, because if they had still been in the store trailing more shit, I would have made them bathe in the smelly poopy mop water!The only bright side was that the Nice Cutie Manager guy just made me clear the front end and sort nubs after closing and then horsed around on the intercom to entertain everyone else on the floor finishing up.
No other custy messes from then on ever compared to Poop River.
When a custy makes a mess we say "Eh, shit happens."
--Wolfycat
Me: "Sir, you need to take a number."
Custy: "Well, if you're fat ass wasn't fucking talking and doing you're fucking job,2. I am overweight, but I am not lazy. Asshat.
The third thing was the kicker to my day. A lady with three children, one of them with a baby to try on clothes. Compeletly normal. She goes in and all of a sudden I smell a strong odor of baby powder. (Yes, you guessed it! She changed her baby in the stall)!She comes out of the stall and the conversation goes like this:
Me: Ma'am, did you change the baby in the stall?Custy: Yeah.
Me: "I need you to go back and take care of the dirty diaper. Also, we have a changing table that you could have used in the bathroom."Custy: "Isn't that you're fucking job?"
Me: "No, it is against the health code, and I didn't have that baby. Please go back in and grab it. Then go into the bathroom and dispose of it properly.Custy: "Fine!" *goes in*
Now, me, stupidly, thinks it is over. It is FAR from over!
The woman comes out and THROWS, yes, THROWS her daughter's dirty nasty diaper at me.
That was the fucking LAST STRAW.I became the Incredible Redhead Hulk at that moment.
I didn't care that there were 20 people around.I didn't care my boss was 2 feet from me.
I didn't care if I got fired.I was fed up!
Me: "OH FUCK NO YOU DIDN'T JUST THROW THAT FUCKING DIRTY NASTY DIAPER AT ME YOU NASTY BITCH!"
I am ready with fists out ready to fight this bitch.
Manager doesn't say a fucking word to the lady.I can't wait until I get out of bartending school. It's going to be awesome when I can tell Smosh Dress for Less to Suck it!
---Redheadactress
"A ripped open package...theft? Oh no! Whats this?... the toy is still here... with everything included! A sudden appearance of conscience? Or the toy wasnt good enough? hmmm..."
--Kerry
This is what fell out from underneath a pile of clothes I was cleaning from a fitting room. All Jewelry tags! Fuckin Nasty Ass Thief! Every item was cheap and on sale, which I think makes her a bit of a Nasty Ass-Discount Rat Thief!
Hey Retail Slaves! I'm Freddy, Crypt Keeper of RHU! Retail Hell Underground Blog is for anyone slaving away in a service related position who wants to rant, tell their story, blow off steam, or just have a chuckle about the insanity of working in the 10th Circle of Hell! I'm also the author of Retail Hell, the funny memoir about life as a handbag sales associate at an upscale department store!
