Monstrous Customers: “I have NEVER had a cashier who couldn’t even wrap something right!”
From ImmaCoolCatMom, Tales From Retail:
After about 8 months of working retail, I have finally found a full time job in my field of study. Next Saturday is my last day with the department store discounter...but I seriously considered cussing out a customer last night and making my spectacular exit a few days early. Alas, I am apparently gutless.
I will preface this story by saying—the store I work at does not have any paper to wrap fragile stuff in. This is a little weird, because we do sell home goods...but it’s also a big discount store so you get what you pay for.
A woman came in last night to buy two decorative cardboard boxes, a small bath mat, and a little metal elephant statue. Typically what I would do in this situation is to wrap the small statue in the bath mat to cushion it and then place it in the box to keep it from bouncing around inside the bag. I begin to do so. The woman stops me.
Lady: “Don’t wrap that up in the mat! Don’t you have any paper?”
Me: “Unfortunately, no. I have some paper towels I can wrap this in, but—”
Lady: “Just wrap it in a plastic bag!”
Me: “I can do that! However, I will have to charge you 5 cents for the bag.”
Lady: “WHAT? That’s ridiculous!”
Me: “Unfortunately, there’s a 5 cent bag tax in cityname and we are required to charge—“
Lady: “I KNOW THAT! Do I LOOK like someone who doesn’t know what the law is?”
Me: “Sorry, many of our customers don’t live in cityname and are unfamiliar—“
Lady: “JUST WRAP IT IN THE PAPER TOWELS!”
I grab the paper towels from under the register and begin wrapping.
Lady: “Excuse me, we’re those on the GROUND?”
Me: “No ma’am, they were in the cubby under the counter.”
Lady: “This isn’t going to protect this at all! Rewrap it!”
I add more paper towels.
Lady: “I have NEVER had a cashier who couldn’t even wrap something right!”
At this point, I ignore her and put everything into bags and begin to finish the transaction. I consider and decide against doing anything that would get me fired, but I do spend the rest of the transaction talking in the sort of especially sickly sweet, condescending tone that adults who hate children use to talk to children. This included describing step by step the instructions on how to use the card reader, even as she angrily screeched “I KNOW THAT!” several times throughout the process.
Still kind of wish I had told her what I thought about her attitude. So glad I am leaving retail.
Good Job and Big Congratulations! I did the same, sort of, and still have random flashbacks, both hauntingly negative and sentimentally positive of all the retail.
Posted by: Double U Gal | Thursday, February 22, 2018 at 10:13 PM