Tales from the retail world...

[Azndude51]

Originally posted by: grohl
Summer in college, I was probably 20 or so. I was considering a career in medicine and thought it would be a good idea to "get my hands dirty" so I worked as a nurses aide in the hospital. I worked in a med/surgery floor and telemetry. Basically the floors with the oldest and sickest that are usually your long-term players.

Anyway, I worked the night shift and went around every 4 hours to do vital signs. I answered the intercom and generally did whatever needed to be done. Many nights I had to change beds.

Now, when a human being soils themselves, it's a pretty tough thing to handle at first. I have a real problem with fecal matter in general, but seeing a human in their own waste is sad. We'll all be there someday, you see; I guess it's a peek in the future I don't really care for. Well, one night I happened to be working with another aide - a real luxury since I was usually by myself. Her name was Alice, and she was a old bitter fatass who was a lazy bitch and could care less about patients. We had just finished cleaning this poor 60 year old woman with Alheimers, changing sheets and giving her a bed bath. Exactly 5 minutes later, she calls out and says "sonnie, help me, I'm dirty." I said, "Alice, meet you there " and she was like "uh, don't think so" and I'm like dumbfounded! I just remember standing there looking at Alice in the dimly lit hall - she was smoking a cigarette, and she looked at me and said (never forget this) "Sometimes you gotta teach them a lesson - we'll let her lay in it until the next shift".

I hope Alice gets the same treatment someday.

Damn, that's sad, I really don't want to get old and sick. What did you end up doing about the old lady?

 

[imported_mateo]

Juse read all 41 pages of this and decided I would add my crazy retail stories:

Almost 15 years ago I used to work in an ski/rockclimbing shop (kinda like REI but much more specialized). During the summer I worked selling stuff and in the winter I mostly worked as a ski tech.

Hanging out in the back working as a ski tech was some of the most fun I ever had at a job.

#1: To conserve space we had all of the rental ski poles suspended over the work bench hanging by the handles. It was a horrible system and if you pulled on a pole too hard you could set off a chain reaction that resulted in hundreds of ski poles falling from the sky onto you! We would all yell "pole-va-lanche!!" and start ducking for cover. When it was happening it was actually pretty scary as you could actually get cut...the poles were sharp.
Aterwards though we would laugh for a good 15 minutes.

#2: The ski shop was set way in the back, seperate from the rest of the store. We had a big open window so we could see what was going on and interact with customers. We were just removed enough from the customers that we could get away with all kinds of stuff. Mostly, we would make fun of EVERY customer that came in the store. We would watch customers and make up a story about almost every single one. If they were chicks we would talk about what we would like to do. We got SO out of hand some days... I never knew humans were capable of cussing so much and coming up with some of the creative/vile stuff that we did.

We would stay pretty quiet and keep to ourselves until the people left and the store was empty. Than we would be yelling stuff up to the front, making comments, and laughing loudly about the latest customer that had just been there. On a couple occasions the store was not actually empty and we totally got busted talking major trash and saying rather vile stuff... more than once someone stormed out in disguest. Oooops.

#3:We ran a ski shuttle up to the mountains on weekends. Sometimes if it was busy during the day we would have to work late and set up the next days ski shuttle after closing time... this usually took a couple hours. One day the owner of the store decided to be "cool" and he bought a case of beer to help pass the time. We ended up getting
just drunk enough to totally screw up all the skis. The next day no ones equipment worked right, boots did not fit the skis, and one women even broke her leg. Oooops again.

#4: The owner was a pretty sketchy guy. One day he fills a rack with all kinds of ancient ski clothing that never sold. Some of this stuff was years old. He puts the rack right by the front door and writes "sale" on it. That night, the store amazingly was "broken into" and all of the crap that never sold was stolen. All they took was the crappy old stuff. No snowboards, no skis, just bunch of old ski clothes. Hmmmmm

The owner also used to have "contests" where you fill out your info and drop it in a box. You could then win a pair of skis, boots, etc. NO ONE ever won. It was all a scam to grow his mailing list.

#5: We made most of our money in winter. During summer we sold rock climbing and camping stuff but it was often VERY slow. Some days all we would sell is a single power bar. I remember entire days with not a single customer.

So...we started bringing in porn to pass the time... nothing better than getting paid to watch porn all day. We compared collections and would trade the stuff like baseball cards.

#6: We had this incredibly stupid (but hot) chick that worked the floor selling ski stuff. She had NO idea what she was talking about. Once a sales rep compared one of their more expensive binding systems to the airbags in your car: worth paying a little extra for added safety...that was the line to sell the product. She started telling people that the bindings had air bags if you crash on your skis!

#7: Random things learned: the flammability of every thing known to man (ski cleaning/waxing chemicals are VERY flammable and fun!), every cuss word known to man, chicks LOVE calling you over to the dressing room while in their undies to bring them a different size (wierd flirty kinda thing...who knew! My budyJim got lots of good looks at chicks in their undies), any toys left behind by some kid becomes shop poperty and the weeks entertainment when no one is in the store, watching porn at work is fun!

Now I work in health care where I have experienced some of the craziest stuff you could imagine. Mostly gross stuff but also plenty of disturbing stuff that makes you scared to be in a hospital. I miss the days in the shop though...

 

[Brainonska511]

Any new stories?

 

[TitanDiddly]

NEIN!

 

[legoman666]

I laughed so hard when this happened, I'm just glad the kid's mother didn't see me. I worked at Krogers for 3 years (a grocery store). I'd often get sick of "paper bags inside double plastic" so I'd take a mop and walk around the store. Well one time while walking around with my mop, I saw a kid climbing on the shelves. These are some pretty hefty shelves, probably not in danger of breaking, but I ask the mother to please keep her kid off the shelves. She tells him to get down. About 15 minutes and two trips around the store later, I spot the mother and her kid again, and he's climbing on the shelves. This time I just shake my head and walk away. At this point, I get called back up to the front of the store to help bagging again. About 5 minutes go by then I hear a call for "cleanup frozen foods." I hate bagging so I take my mop and go to frozen foods. Turns out the stupid kid was climbing a free standing shelf at the end of the Ice cream aisle. The entire shelf was full of glass jars of caramel and chocolate sauce ice cream toppings. As you could imagine, the shelf fell over. There must have been >150 broken bottles of caramel and chocolate all over the floor and the kid. The mother took her kid and bolted from the store before anyone caught up with her. The best thing is that the kid had caramel and chocolate all over him.

Needless to say, I had to clean up the mess. Took forever but it sure as hell beats bagging groceries. Funny thing is, Kroger won't make the customer pay for stuff they break. It happens all the time, but the mother took the kid and disappeared.

 

[paulxcook]

Shit this thread is old.

 

[JTsyo]

I worked at a K-Mart during HS and swore off retail after that. I remember having nightmares after the first day of working. There isn't a specific story I remember but I know I hated it.

Retail Comic

 

[gamefreakgcb]

Woohoo! Finally finished after 6 days. Never worked retail so no stories here. Thanks for the many laughs.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I worked at Blockbuster when DVDs first hit the shelves and actually had a customer come back complaining that the DVD didn't work. I checked it out and everything looked fine so I asked him if he had it hooked up correctly. To make a long story short, he was trying to use the DVD in his VCR...

I just realized how old this thread is and I probably have this in here already.

 

[imported_nightfox]

Had a customer come up to me and ask me what the price of some cheese was. I walk with him to where the cheese is, take it, look on the back, and look at him.
Is it that hard to look on the back for the price?

 

[Ninjja]

Originally posted by: Phoenix15
<blockquote>quote:
Originally posted by: DnetMHZ
When I was a teenager I worked at an Acme store and I had an old lady sh!t at my register.. literally sh!t on the floor.</blockquote>


I worked at a Wal Mart during college. I was walking out of the bathrooms in the back of the store when this HAAWWWWWWTTTT cashier came walking up rapidly towards the bathroom. I always flirted with her and was about to start some game when RECCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH she PUKED all over the floor and the front of the milk cooler. She had a stomach virus and the asshole manager wouldn't ler her leave. She was SO embarrased. It all worked out in the end as we got married Sept 18th last year. :thumbsup:

ahaha!! awesome story!!

 

[RESmonkey]

Originally posted by: Phoenix15
<blockquote>quote:
Originally posted by: DnetMHZ
When I was a teenager I worked at an Acme store and I had an old lady sh!t at my register.. literally sh!t on the floor.</blockquote>


I worked at a Wal Mart during college. I was walking out of the bathrooms in the back of the store when this HAAWWWWWWTTTT cashier came walking up rapidly towards the bathroom. I always flirted with her and was about to start some game when RECCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH she PUKED all over the floor and the front of the milk cooler. She had a stomach virus and the asshole manager wouldn't ler her leave. She was SO embarrased. It all worked out in the end as we got married Sept 18th last year. :thumbsup:

Pics or shens

 

[Kalmah]

"I want an Ipod that doesn't play mp3s.."

 

[PCMarine]

I used to work in the bakery department of a grocery story.. that was a pretty fun job (most of the time). Some notable stories...

1) Of course coworkers and I would eat anything and everything that we could get our hands on and management couldn't do anything about it. I would frequently grab a frozen pizza from frozen foods and toss it in the bakery oven (often times ahead of items that needed baking right then since they were out of stock). Also, there was a cooler across from the bakery stocked with sandwiches and cold drinks... needless to say management was puzzled at the high rate of theft which that cooler had.

2) We shared a huge walk-in freezer in "the back" with frozen foods. Fellow coworkers and I would punt bags of peas and other veggies... often to the effect of them exploding all over the place. Once again, the frozen foods manager was puzzled at how many frozen vegetable packets had "leaked" all over the floor. Or we'd toss boxes of cakes with "fragile" written all over them 10 ft up onto the shelf... predictably many boxes didn't make it and just crushed on the floor. We'd put all of them out for sale.

3) I had the general policy of, "when in doubt, throw it out." As in, if I were too lazy to bag up some baked goods, I just tossed them. One easter, we were completely out of dinner rolls, yet I tossed out a whole rack of dinner rolls because we didn't have time to bag em (leaving on time was a higher priority), and couldn't save them for the next day.

4) Just because we wear latex gloves, doesn't mean we have changed them in the past few hours. As a consumer, you need to make sure the employee is using the wax paper to handle your food, or ask them to change gloves first!

5) When we washed the floor (which was supposed to be a nightly activity; of course, this rarely happened), we had a hose for applying soapy water that looked EXACTLY like a penis. It boggled my mind how the manufacturer could make such phallic looking equipment. Well one day, one of my coworkers had the bright idea to feed the hose through his pants and dangle it out of his fly (so it looked like he was JO'ing all over the place). We, of course, could hardly breathe because it was so ridiculous looking - till a store manager came back RIGHT then to ask a question. The guy with the hose quickly spun around (with his back turned to the manager) and I tried my best to answer his question with a straight face). Good times

6) I knew a guy who would smoke weed in the walk in freezer in the bakery (not a private place at all) while serving a customer searching for an item we had "in back."

All of this was in a high-end grocery store that served a very wealthy community... I've got countless more stories, but this should give you a good idea...

 

[hellokeith]

Great thread, here are a few of my additions:

* My sis worked at a check-cashing place that sold phone cards. Lady walks in and purchases a phone card. She goes outside the store, and my sis can see her standing out there for a while messing with the card but couldn't tell exactly what she was doing. Finally she comes back in like 10 minutes later and asks my sis how to get the card to work, because she keeps trying to make a cell phone call but the cell phone people tell her she's already out of minutes. Edit: just for clarification, this was a long distance phone card, back before they had prepaid phones and reloadables.

* Gas station / convenience store I worked during summer after high school. There was a 7-11 (competitor) directly across the street. It was about 1am and completely dead. My buddy and I were hanging out near the gas pumps just talking when we see the car coming down the road with steam pouring out of the engine. It pulls into the 7-11, and out jump these extremely hot girls.. very short shorts, half-shirt belly halter tops, tan and perfect hair etc. They are just standing away from the car with hands to their mouths, obviously in dire straights about the car problem with no idea what to do. My buddy looks at me, we're thinking exactly the same thing, be a hero yada yada. He heads across the street, but I have to go back to the store to turn off the inside light (not the pump lights since people can still pay at the pump) and lock the door. I'm inside just about to turn off the light, when a car.. very slowly.. pulls into the parking lot. Instead of going to the pumps or even just right outside the front door, it circles around the store and parks in the back parking space. An old man gets and walks.. very slowly.. to the front door. All the while my buddy is across the street helping the hot damselles in distress. The old man comes into the store. Now mind you, this is a very small inside, since the place is mainly a gas station, so you can pretty much see all 3 aisles from the front door. Nevertheless he comes in and proceeds to walk.. very slowly.. up and down all 3 aisles, and then goes back down them all again, including the beer cooler twice. Then he comes up to the counter.. about 5 minutes has passed now, my friend across the street helping out the extremely hot chicks with their very simple not-enough-coolant in the radiator problem, looking like a stud mechanic superhero.. and the old man asks me where are the adult magazines.
"We don't carry any magazines here, sir." :frown:
He walks out with an angry facial expression. As his car drives away, I see the hot chicks' car pulling out of the 7-11 parking lot, no more steam coming from the engine. My buddy comes in.. "where were you dude? those girls were so drunk we could've easily gotten them to go out with us, but after I fixed the radiator issue I got mad of stalling for you and accidentally said their car was a junker, and then they got pissed and drove off. Man they were so hot.." :frown:

 

[pstylesss]

So... they were drunk and driving? Just looking to clarify.

 

[Delta6Echo]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
I thought I had repressed all my memories of my retail days.

I worked at a best buy for about 3 years when I was doing my undergrad. I was there introduced to the fine sports of HP printer bowling and Kodak Hackiesack. We used to toss $1000 video cameras about 25 feet in the air to the guy stocking them up top. We only dropped one or two a night, tops.

Once, I was manning my department all by myself when this 700-ound old man waddled in. He STANK. Not just a little BO stinky, but literally eye-watering, gagging stench. I then got stuck giving him a 20 minute sales pitch on a digital camera because he wouldn't stop asking questions. All the while trying not to throw up. It turned out that there was district management in the store that day and they were hiding behind the next aisle while I was in the middle of the pitch and listening. I got my department a perfect score at least.

I couldn't believe how many douchebags there were in the world until I worked retail. Once a guy came in to buy an SLR camera for his wife. He then proceeded to tell me how he needed to get this camera for his wife so that she wouldn't be using their other camera that he wanted to use when he went on vacation and screwed around with other women.

My department (camera/camcorders) was fairly low pressure, but the Computer dept. at BB is usually a major profit center and they usually have some hardass/slimeball supervising it. That attitude tends to filter down to their sales guys. I remember one of them telling me how he convinced a customer to buy a service plan by telling them about the danger of the "recoiler crystal" breaking on the computer.:roll:

Another guy would tell people they needed to buy the Retail version of XP that matched the color of their motherboard.

OMFG....that about sums up BB :roll:

 

[dfdave12]

Gonna bump this with a quick little story of my own:

Worked in a Michael's Arts and Crafts store this past Thanksgiving and Christmas period. Was in the process of stocking picture frames in the framing secton, when a customer comes up to me and asks "Where are your picture frames?". Really couldn't believe he said that as we were standing literally in the middle of one of the frame aisles, so all I managed to say was, "They're all around you, sir."

Had a nice laugh after that..

 

[Kalmah]

Customer points to tag in front of product and asks, "Is this the current price?" Almost daily.
No, it's freakin next weeks price.. $#%$^# ???? :disgust:

Customer: "I'm buying this, so can I get a discount?"
Uhhh... why would you get a discount just because you are buying it.. what the hell else can you do with it??!! That's like going to the gas station and asking for free gas because you are planning on buying gas or something.. sure.. pay for your gas and we'll give you enough gas free to void any profit we where about to make off it.


Customer: "I need a dvd"
me: "a blank dvd?"
customer: "no, a dvd"
me: "a dvd with a movie on it?"
customer: "jezus f'ing christ, I just want a dvd.. nevermind. I'll go somewhere else. you're worthless"
me: "????"

customer: "I need a converter"
me: "uhh.. what kind of converter?"
customer: " don't you guys know anything?"
me: "what exactly are you trying to convert?"
customer: "it doesn't matter, just tell me where it's at!"
me: "we don't sell mpeg to divx converters, try google"
customer: *walks away in disgust*

customer: "where are your ipods" (while standing in front of them)
me: "right here"
customer: "what, over there?" (pointing over an isle to the other side of the store)
me: "no, you are looking right at them"
customer: "oh, these are ipods?"
me: "no, that is an armband for an ipod"
customer: "are you even going to try to help me?"
me: "that's what I'm doing right now"
customer: "so tell me about the ipods"
me: "what do you need to know about them?"
customer: "whatever you can tell me"
me: " they store music on internal flash memory usually as mp3s, but they also support wav and a few other formats. The amount of songs you can store will depend on the codec and the bitrate you use. At a decent bitrate in mp3, they sound just about as good as wav that is more than 10x the size. There are nanos and videos.........."
customer: "what does that mean?"
me:" what does what mean?"
customer: "what you said"
me: "uh.. what I said... is.. exactly what I ment... wha..?"
customer: "ok, thanks" (walks away)

customer: standing at the other side of the store with his hands in the air whistling and waving like a lunatic. then yells across the store, "come here, can you help me?"
me: (I don't work in that section, but walk over anyways to tell him I will find someone for him)
customer imediatly starts talking without giving me a chance to say anything
customer: "bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla" (for 5 minutes)
me: "I don't know"
customer: "why, don't you work here?!!!!!!!" (enraged)
me: "no, I work over there, that's why I was standing over there... let me get somebody for you.."
customer: "I hate this place" and walks out pissed


me: "can I help you find something?"
customer: "no, but can you tell me where your computers are at?"
me: "underneath the big sign hanging on the ceiling that says 'computers'"
customer: "ok"


customer: "I don't need an antivirus because I'm sending the computer to mexico"

 

[Excelsior]

I've been working retail for about 6 months now, and none of these tails surprise me. There are so many customers I just want to tell off. I feel for the managers. I wouldn't last long in that position.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Kalmah
customer: "where are your ipods" (while standing in front of them)
me: "right here"
customer: "what, over there?" (pointing over an isle to the other side of the store)
me: "no, you are looking right at them"
customer: "oh, these are ipods?"
me: "no, that is an armband for an ipod"
customer: "are you even going to try to help me?"
me: "that's what I'm doing right now"
customer: "so tell me about the ipods"
me: "what do you need to know about them?"
customer: "whatever you can tell me"
me: " they store music on internal flash memory usually as mp3s, but they also support wav and a few other formats. The amount of songs you can store will depend on the codec and the bitrate you use. At a decent bitrate in mp3, they sound just about as good as wav that is more than 10x the size. There are nanos and videos.........."
customer: "what does that mean?"
me:" what does what mean?"
customer: "what you said"
me: "uh.. what I said... is.. exactly what I ment... wha..?"
customer: "ok, thanks" (walks away)

I'd argue you failed here... the customer obviously didn't know jack squat about technology. As soon as you said "flash" you lost the customer.

 

[Kalmah]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Kalmah
customer: "where are your ipods" (while standing in front of them)
me: "right here"
customer: "what, over there?" (pointing over an isle to the other side of the store)
me: "no, you are looking right at them"
customer: "oh, these are ipods?"
me: "no, that is an armband for an ipod"
customer: "are you even going to try to help me?"
me: "that's what I'm doing right now"
customer: "so tell me about the ipods"
me: "what do you need to know about them?"
customer: "whatever you can tell me"
me: " they store music on internal flash memory usually as mp3s, but they also support wav and a few other formats. The amount of songs you can store will depend on the codec and the bitrate you use. At a decent bitrate in mp3, they sound just about as good as wav that is more than 10x the size. There are nanos and videos.........."
customer: "what does that mean?"
me:" what does what mean?"
customer: "what you said"
me: "uh.. what I said... is.. exactly what I ment... wha..?"
customer: "ok, thanks" (walks away)

I'd argue you failed here... the customer obviously didn't know jack squat about technology. As soon as you said "flash" you lost the customer.

I agree, I did fail. Low pay and store politics heavily affect such decisions though. When the place that I work keeps douching me over every other week I sometimes just don't care.

Get hired in one department
managers add another department to my 'area of duty' without increasing pay..
then another...
then another...
Then the store makes a new position called the 'product flow team' who are suppose to stock shelves and make price tags.. then when this PFT doesn't get all their tags out at night, I can't leave until <b>I</b> do them while the guys that are suppose to do them go home..
When I'm helping customers I'm not putting out enough tags
When I'm putting out tags I'm not helping enough customers
When I'm stocking shelves I'm not watching for theft.
When somebody steals It's my fault.
when the store makes sales goals, managers get bonus on their checks..
Managers get ugly when store goals are met because they get greedy and want more..
I get told that I am on the edge of being fired...
the next day I get praise for being the best sales associate on the team..
I can't go home because the product flow team sat around in the warehouse instead of doing tags so now i have to do them...

.
..
...
..... I don't f'ing care.

:frown:

 

[Eeezee]

This thread is alive still??

THE LEGEND WILL NEVER DIE

 

[ViviTheMage]

i just read through them all.............so many, really funny though.

 

[mykol1010]

more stories more stories!