From  December, 2009:

DepotDemon speaking to you all about the age old question that is the bane of all retail...

"Do you work here?"

We all know that this question does not end well, but for once it does.

I am one of those people who shops at Wally World, way more often than I should, but what can I say? I'm cheap. :/ I never wear a blue shirt near the place, but still I get asked if I work there.

I work another job as a security guard...wait, officer (eye roll inserted here) and the uniform is a white dress shirt, and dark grey dress pants. Al long as memory serves, those colors come nowhere near blue and khaki, in any dimension.

To top it off, I have a heavy winter coat on.

I'm standing in mens wear looking for gloves, and this obnoxious fat lady turns to me, and asks very loudly and gratingly (is that even a word?) "Do you work here?"

To which I look down at my outfit, look back up, and say "Are you kidding me? Does it look like I fucking work here? I mean I know white looks like blue but I'm sorry I don't."

As she walked away, I heard a grumble about "the manager" or something.

I suppose I could have been nicer, but I did just come from Depot and there was 3 years of repressed Depot anger and I just didn't give a damn.

So for once, I got to say what I really felt and it felt AWESOME!!!!!! Bwhahaha!

--DepotDemon

read more Mistaken Identity Stories here

From an RHUer, April 2009:

Swear to God, I don't know what gives customers their entitlement complexes, or their idiocy. Maybe they weren't loved enough when they were little. Maybe their mommies were retail slaves and were never home, thus driving them to take out their rage on the slaves of today.

I work at the OTHER massive home improvement store, although I'm a wimpy cashier, rather than a hardcore lumber-loader. ;-) I sling the occasional bag of topsoil or concrete, though. But I had a guy the other day that seriously made me wonder what kind of women he's used to. I was hopping back and forth from our tall ladders to the racks of display lamps to change burned-out bulbs, and I overheard a man saying to one of the managers who was nearby, "Shouldn't you get a boy to do that? That looks dangerous!" For one thing, I'm a lot lighter than a lot of our male employees, and can shimmy among the lights easier than them. And I guess it's ok if a guy falls and busts his head, but not a girl. My manager said that I was perfectly capable of doing my job, which I appreciated. :thumbs up:

I often work returns, which drives me fucknuts on occasion. I despise customers who obviously stole shit and bring it back, but I can't do anything about it without proof, unless the loss prevention manager is actually on top of it and puts their license in the system so it rejects returns without receipts.

A week or so ago, I was working in Lawn and Garden, which also takes returns, and I had a lady ask me about replacing a plant she'd bought a year or so ago that had died. We have a one-year guarantee on our plants, so I told her that yes, we could replace it/refund it if she would bring it back. She gave me this bewildered look and said, "But it's in the ground!" Stupid bitch actually expects us to replace a plant without ever seeing it? Be a good way to stock your garden for free. I ended up explaining to to her like she was a dumb 5 year old, asking her if she would ask to get a new vacuum if hers broke without bringing it back. That made her get it, amazingly.

Then 2 days ago, I had this evil bitch who was bringing back a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, all on separate receipts. That doesn't matter usually, you can scan all the merch and all the receipts and the system will give the money back in whatever tender you paid with. But this bitch INSISTED I do each receipt separately. I explained how the system works to her, and she snapped, "Well, I just want to do it my way." Uh, do you see a BK sign anywhere, lady? Fine, let's take 20 minutes to do your return which could have taken 5. She returned some sod, and the L&G lady asked me if there was anything wrong with it. Apparently, the same bitch had called a couple days before to get the sod, and expected us to set aside 75 squares of sod for her to pick up eventually. Garden Lady told her if she would pay for it over the phone, of course she would set it aside for her, but that was the only way. Bitch huffed and whined and paid up, then said, "You'd better pick out good ones, or I'll be back." Oh, the terror. If you want good ones, pick 'em out your damn self. I told Garden Lady she should have pissed on the sod before she gave it to her.

You know, this is my first retail job, and I've had it for over a year now. I'll be glad when I'm done with uni and can get a real job with regular hours.

--RHUer

*read more Home Improvement Hell Stories here

From Depot Demon, March 2009:

I get all kinds of custys at a certain home improvement store who loves the color orange, including the most sexist assholes you can think of.

I work in Lumber and Building materials, which involves lifting some heavy shit. If I can't lift it, I can't work in that department. However, male customers love trying to get the other male associates in the department instead of me.

Here are some examples of shit that has been said to me and some I've heard from other women:

"You shouldn't be working here, why aren't you cashiering like women should be? Leave it to the guys."

"You know, women shouldn't be working. You should be at home making your man dinner." (That one made me go WTF.)

"I got a bad back. Why don't you get one of the guys to lift this for me?"

"I'll go to the other store down the street. I don't want a girl to help me."

"Let me get a guy over here. You women don't really know what you're talking about"

"You know what? Let me get that guy to help me. He should know what he's talking about better than you."

"They must be desperate, if they're hiring girls"

This kind of thing happens all the time.

I love it when I'm the only one there, and I get to watch them suffer, or the look on their face when I lift something for them. It's like their world gets turned upside down! Muhaha!

Love,

--DepotDemon

From DepotDemon:

One of the worst things about my department at the Depot is that we (the apron clad associates) have to go through the aisles and make all our wood products look pretty and the piles flat. In the pic, I had just finished not even 5 minutes before and watched them throw the wood on the pile...it doesn't even belong there but next to it. It sucks. :(

--DepotDemon

April 2009

From Home Improvement Whore:

So last week, I was on a regular register in the middle of the store for a few minutes. I only had a couple of customers in that short time. One of the last ones was a man who bought a key for something like $1.60 and gave me $100.60. So I gave him back his 99 dollars in change, told him to have a nice day, and he went on his merry way.

A couple minutes later, my head cashier told me to go down to commercial sales to give the cashier there lunch. I'd been down there 5, no more than 10 minutes when I got a call from the cashier who'd taken my place at the regular register.

This is about how it went. She's S, I'm H.

S: Do you remember a customer you had a little while ago who just bought a key and paid with 100 dollars?
H: Yeah, why?
S: (You could tell she didn't want to say it)... He says he gave you 200 dollars and you didn't give him his money back.
 
H: No, he only gave me 100.
S: (telling this to customer, then turns back to phone) Well, he says he put 200 down on the counter, and walked off without it, and now it's gone.
H: No, he didn't put any money down on the counter.
S: (reports this to customer, then turns to phone again) He says he did, and that you must have it.
H: (pissed off now) Well, if he wants to, he's welcome to come down here and watch me turn out my pockets, because I sure as hell don't have his money.
S: Ok, [my name]. (hangs up)

So I got a little more of the story that night from the other cashier, and the rest a couple days later from the head cashier he spoke to afterward.

Guy couldn't keep his story straight. First he said he was missing a hundred dollars, then he said it was TWO hundred dollars he was missing.

The cashier told me he'd kept saying, "Why'd she run off so fast? She MUST have it!"

Dude, I'm a frickin' cashier. I can't just run off whenever I feel like it.

Apparently that didn't occur to him. My head cashier told me later that after she'd checked under the cash drawer, where we keep the big bills, she offered to check the security cameras that hang over every register in the store to see if he'd laid the money on my counter.

This is when he decided, "Well, let me check my car and make sure it didn't fall out of my pocket or something!" Scurries out the door, then trots back in a few minutes later going "Oh, here it is! It was right outside the exit door, I must have missed putting it in my pocket, hahaha!" {runs out door}

Lying sack of shit. If you saw somebody drop 100 dollars, you'd A) run up to him with it and give it back to him or B) pocket it yourself and walk off whistling. No way it'd be lying outside the door for 10-20 minutes.

Naturally, after trying to scam us and blame me, he didn't have the balls to apologize. If I ever see him again though, I'll cuss him out. I hope he at least has the good sense not to come back to us. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

--Home Improvement Whore:

June 2009

From u/DeadMiner Tales From Retail:

It’s mid-winter in a small northern town, the hardware store has slowed down predictably. A costumer strays in and says “brrrr.” We were in the middle of a bad blizzard and a long cold streak, so many of us had run out of clever ways of saying “It’s cold.”

Me: “Good afternoon, can I help you with anything?”

Customer: “Yeah.”

Me: “What can I help you with?”

Customer: “I need a 2/4 inch black pipe cap.”

Me: “1/2 inch black?”

Customer: “No, 2/4.”

Me: “Well it’s the same thing, just making sure we’re on the same page.”

Customer: “I meant 3/4 inch.”

Me: “That’s fine, follow me.”

We make our way over the fittings, I hand him a black 3/4 inch cap.

Customer: “No, this isn’t it.”

Me: “Well what’s wrong with it?”

Customer: “Everything, it’s too big, I asked for brass, and it’s supposed to go inside the pipe.

Okay, so first of all, this is why I repeat to customers what they asked for. I heard black, I said black, he didn’t argue with it. Second of all, if it goes into the pipe it’s a plug, not a cap. Admittedly I ignored the “too big” comment under the assumption that it was redundant as it would be smaller fitting in a pipe than it would be fitting around one.

Whatever. I hand him a 3/4 brass plug.

Customer: “I told you, it’s way too big!”

Me: “Is it possible you meant 1/2 like you initially said, or maybe 3/8?”

Customer: “When I say 3/4, I mean 3/4.”

Me: “Well this is 3/4.”

Customer: “It’s too big, what don’t you get?”

Me: “Sir, you asked for 3/4, this is 3/4, says it right on the bag. This is what you asked for. Would you like me to show you the smaller fittings?”

Customer: “Are they 3/4?”

Me: “No, they’re smaller.”

Customer: “Then you don’t have them, what a waste of time.”

He left, and scowled when I said “Have a nice day!”

--u/DeadMiner