From December, 2010:

Hey there RHU! Queer Geek back again with another delightful holiday story.

Now many of you may not realize this but good ol’ Queer Geek here not only solves custy problems at his job but moonlights as a free therapist as well.  Just call me Dr. Pill because I’d rather swallow a bottle of Prozac than deal with any more crazy custys this Christmas!

What do I mean by that?  Well let me explain.

Being a Big Fancy office slave, I help my store with menial tasks from answering idiotic custy questions like can I return used underwear to can I get an 80% discount on a defective item to researching lost custy shipments.

On this particular day, I got a call from a custy who I shall refer to as Drama Queen because she literally kept me on the phone for an entire hour trying to solve her problem.

“Thanks for calling the Big Fancy, this is Queer Geek.”

“Hello, my name is Drama Queen and I’m very upset," she told me, "Your employee did not ship me out my make-up order, my free gifts with purchase, and my free samples.”

Now let me mention here that I have sympathy for anyone who works in the cosmetics industry. Beauty Slave, if you’re reading this. I feel your pain. Ever since the make-up companies decided to do gifts with purchases and offering free samples to consumers if they bought some of their make-up products, custys have been trained to have a sense of an entitlement where they can get anything free from cosmetic samples to makeovers.  Basically they are wasting the make-up person’s time and money by not really buying anything and asking for a handout. Drama Queen was no different but more on that in my story.

“I’m sorry about that,” I tell her.  “Let me fix the problem. What is it you ordered and I’ll see about getting you your gifts with purchase and samples and ship them out to you ASAP.”

“I ordered the Such and Such make-up but I was specific about my samples and gifts with purchase,” she informs me. “I wanted the blah blah sample with the blah blah gift with purchase that does the blah blah blah. I don’t want the blah blah sample because I didn’t ask for the blah blah blah when I particularly ask for the blah blah blah…"

At this point my eyes roll to the back of my head from her demands. “Miss Drama Queen, we can replace the order you originally had and ship it out but some of those free requests and gifts you may no longer available so I can substitute it with something comparable.”

“I DON’T WANT THOSE GIFTS! I WANT THE SAMPLES I ASKED FOR! THAT IS WHAT YOUR EMPLOYEE PROMISED ME!” screeches Drama Queen.  “I WANT THE BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH…”

Appalled at how unreasonable she is being, I try to rationalize with her with trying to resolve her issue but she is not having it so I tell her on the phone that I’ll see what I can do but then the conversation turns bizarre.

“I’m sorry but I’m just really depressed,” she starts off. “I just lost both my parents passed away this month and my dog is sick and I’m struggling financially. Did I mention my parents had passed away and my dog is sick?”

Okay I can understand her displaced anger toward me but then she starts bawling on the phone and that is when the therapist gene in me kicks in and she has to tell me her whole life story.

“I have to work two jobs just to make ends meat,” she cries.  “It is so difficult with the economy being the way it is.  You know people are struggling right now. You know everyone needs a job so I can to work two jobs to support my family. That is why I’m going to apply part time at another retail store so I can pay for school and have Christmas dinner for my family. Then my parents passed away this month and now my dog sick. Did I mention that my parents passed away and my dog is sick?”

This conversation turns into an entire hour of her repeating herself and I’m trying desperately to end the call but like a leech she keeps sucking me back in to which I politely inform her.

“Okay Miss Drama Queen, I work on your issue and get this taken care off.”

“But I didn’t tell you about my son who is going play at his high school concert. He is a really good musician…”

*CLICK*

Epilogue: I finally ship her replacement package and samples (which I had to hunt tothe ends of Earth to find for her) and leave her a message hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with her.

Everything would have been fine until she called me back….

“QUEER GEEK!” she screeched on the phone, “DID YOU SHIP MY PACKAGE AND MY BLAH BLAH BLAH SAMPLES?”

“Yes I did,” I replied. “It’s arriving this week.”

“Good,” Drama Queen responds. “Did I tell you my parents passed away this month and my dog is sick right before Christmas too?  Oh and that I’m struggling with money like everyone in the economy?  Oh and my foot is starting to ache. I think it's gout? Do you think it is gout?  It could be cancerous..."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

--Queer Geek

read more Holiday Tales here

 From Tenebris

--Tenebris

discover more Christmas Carol Carnage here

checkout the horrors of Holiday Hell here

From Online Retail Hellion, December, 2009:

Working for an online-only retailer may not have the piggy messes to clean up at the end of the day (and I have worked that terror before), but it does have the wonderful combination of everything else retail related, with the added bonus of phone-based customer service, where customers can be even more abusive because you are only a faceless voice on the other end of the line.

With the holidays here again, I thought I'd share my favorite holiday story from working online retail. This story happened to a former coworker:

The setup: It's 5 days before Christmas, delivery companies worldwide are in overdrive trying to get people's stuff delivered on time. Delays inevitably develop (last year we had to deal with an entire 'brown' delivery truck full of our stuff catching fire, burning all the presents inside inside to slag. Really!).

My coworker "Dan" gets a call from a customer who had just checked the shipping company's website, and found that her son's XBox 360 wouldn't be delivered until December 26th. Therefore, since we were the company she had handed the money to, she called us to bitch. Though we had handed the XBox to the shipper in plenty of time to get it to her (it f-ing left the warehouse the day she ordered it), delays in the shipper's overloaded system had caused the package to be bumped to the day after Christmas. But, it was, of course, all our fault.

"You've ruined my son's Christmas!" she screamed so loudly that I, a few desks down, could hear her. "I want you to personally tell my son that his present isn't going to get here on time, and that he's not going to have a present under the tree on Christmas morning!"

Dan stammered, tried to reason with her, but it was too late, the child was on the phone.

"Hello?" a voice said, sounding about 12 years old.

"Hey there buddy," Dan said, as upbeat as possible, "I'm really sorry, but your XBox 360 isn't going to get there until the day after Christmas."

"I'm getting an XBOX 360?!" the boy yelled, exploding with excitement.

"Yeah, but it's not going to be there until the day after Christmas." says Dan.

"I don't care! I'm getting an XBox!!" the boy shouted, and handed the phone back to his mother.
Shouts of "Yes! Woohoo!" could be heard in the background as the mother mumbled something about "Yeah, well, it better show up..." and hung up.

--Online Retail Hellion

Read more Holiday Hell stories here 

From Captain Ham, April, 2014:

I had my first shift in probably WEEKS today, because someone else called in sick and I was the only person to answer their phone.

It wasn't too bad, I didn't mind. I had a pretty awful week and having to be retail happy made me actually happy- several of my favorite coworkers working today helped with that too.

So, it's almost Easter. Story time:

The friggin holiday aisle is 1/3 empty and it's just DESTROYED when I walk in. There were a whole bunch of extra people in today for whatever reason, so everyone who wasn't on cash was cleaning and facing. I took the Easter aisle because I wanted to see what was there; there's small kids in my family, if I can get some tips over to the ol EB on cheap chocolate I will. I spent a solid two hours cleaning and running stuff back- a lot of which had nowhere TO go because it was the last item of its type.

Ok, totally good, its decent and looks presentable. Go help out at cash for half an hour, have some more returns from customers needing three of the same bunny basket to keep the little ones happy and all, and a few more last-one things to find homes for. I go back and do that, straighten up the candy some more as its ransacked.

I'm doing my minimum wage thing, guy comes in with his spawn. They're looking up and down the meager Easter offerings left. One kid takes off way down to where the summer stuff is trickling in while the other is touching EVERY basket. Dad sort of meanders through looking at stuff and making a few comments. Literally five seconds after they get in the aisle, the little girl has knocked five baskets on the floor. I am standing less than 5ft away. Dad is RIGHT BESIDE HER SAYING NOTHING. Son is messing around with stickers about mid aisle. Son and Daughter go racing behind me as I'm putting more stuff back up and go dodging around these baskets I'm trying to pick up and starts yanking down ALL of the bunny ear headbands. Like a good quarter of all those headbands come down and make it to the floor and the candy shelf below.

And again, I am STANDING RIGHT THERE with my apron and blatantly putting shit away. And Dad does nothing, says nothing. Kids give no fucks. I just literally stood there so dumbfounded. I put the basket down and walked away. I could not believe this blatant piggy behavior happening RIGHT beside me. I went a few aisles over until I saw them move somewhere else before going back to fix it all.

Literally, what the hell? What the actual hell? If I had been feeling a little snappier and quick witted I would have said something. Hell, if I hadn't been coming from about a solid week of moping around and wondering if I had been fired, I would have said something.

Christmas wasn't even this bad. I swear everyone up here is stir crazy because of the awful winter ending- and they go and take out all that energy being a disaster in my damn store.

--Captain Ham

read more Hellspawn Tales here

and for more Dollar Store Hell go here

From Jit, sent Thanksgiving Day night, November, 2010:

Tomorrow when I go into work, I'm going to rip everyone's motherfucking BALLS OFF!!!!! AAAAAAAUUUGGHH! I HATE WORKING HOLIDAYS!

I mean, "I had a bad day."

1. I went into work at 2:30. I was scheduled at 2. Already I'm stressed and kicking myself because not only did I fuck up and not get the right time on a HOLIDAY the ONE TIME I was scheduled to work in a department and not at the register, the people leaving at 2 had to stay till 2:30 because people called off that were supposed to be working with me. So they had to stay past their shift for me. Fuck me.

2. One person that was supposed to be working with me until eight called off. NOT a good day to call off.

3. From 6-8:30 I was completely alone and swamped.

4. The front end cashiers were swamped because of call offs, therefore

5. Because of number 4, I worked through all my breaks and unpaid lunch.

6. After our sale ads ended at 9, someone eventually sent a coworker back to help me at 9:20 when we were DEAD AS ALL MOTHERFUCKING HELL. And she did SHIT for helping me. I know it was busy up there too, but still. Jeeze. She went MIA in 10 minutes.

7. A new co-worker gave unauthorized information to four of my customers and made me look like an ass for not telling them what he did. They all had the audacity to say that they preferred guys working in electronics because they know their shit. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!!! This was during the busiest part of my shift. Little fucker didn't even bother sticking around to help me ring out any customers or get any merchandise for them off of the shelf... auuuughhh

8. I was supposed to leave at 10:30. I got clocked OUT at 11:15 because of an indecisive customer plus the only manager in the store had to deal with her, she was also the only one who could clock me out.

BUT! ONNN the positive side..

1. The customers didn't eat me alive for not being fast enough.

2. One of my manages kicks some major ass and stayed back with me for a half hour-45 minutes to get control of the number of customers I had to deal with.
 
3. It's over now.

BUT!!! ONNN the negative side...

1. I have to do this all over again on Black Friday. *SOB*

Wish me luck?

With retail hell love,

--Jit

read more Black Friday Hell / Working on Thanksgiving tales go here

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