the letterman list of retail

My friends and I always said that we would write a book about the retail lovelies that we encountered on a daily basis in the store. Some of our favorite stories that you may not believe to be true unless you actually lived them, because if you don't work in customer service, it's hard to believe that people are actually that special. For those of you that have never actually experienced the joy of serving the public in this capacity I'll give the letterman list of retail.

10. The lady who wanted to return a pair of shoes that were eleven months old because they were "too squeaky". Never mind the fact that these shoes looked as if the child had used them to train for a marathon in mud puddles and oh by the way, came into the store wearing them. I returned them. Sweaty feet and all.

9. The lady that wanted to return two pairs of pajamas at full price. Only she had one top and one bottom from each set.

8. Skeletor..theif extradoinare with her tinfoil bags. She makes the list because she's the first person to ever call me a honky and a cracker all in one sentance. Impressive.

7. Cleaning up bloody and peed in underwear left in the dressing room. Probably TMI and you would think given my weak stomach this would be closer to #1 but sadly, it is not.

6. The man that wanted a specific pair of boots located on Christmas Eve, after said boots were located by some miracle of God himself at a store 15 minutes away Mr. Crazy wanted FedEx to pick them up and deliver them on Christmas Day. Yell at me all you want buddy, I don't work for FedEx.

5. The teenagers lovebirds that took turns masturbating in the rounders.

4. The original PITA that came in almost every Sunday night at 5:45pm with her twin daughters to have a forty-five minute fashion show and never bought a single thing.

3. The lady that ran under the gate as I was closing it on Christmas Eve screaming that "AT&T said she had 1 minute left to shop!" and wielding a cell phone at me like a sword. Do you think she left the store in one minute?

2. The crazy lady that screamed at me and banged her fist on my counter of the registers calculations of discount coupons, meanwhile her child is breaking the window apart and her other child is robbing me blind. She ends up throwing two bags of clothes across the counter at me and has to re-enter the store four times to return stolen items from the clepto.

1. The lady that insisted we were having a huge sale. We were not. She wanted the coupon and the discount code we were offering to our customers. I didn't have a code. There was no sale. She left, she would be back with the information. She returns and show's me the calendar in our catalogue. The huge sale she's interested in...Daylight Savings Time


My tolerance for nonsense is pretty high. Extremely high in some cases. That being said I am also a stickler for good customer service. If you can't even make an effort to provide it, I would prefer you not even waste my time and get me to someone that can help me. Jason has been waiting on his cellphone to be delivered since Monday. It was supposed to arrive on Tuesday but we found out it was shipped to the wrong address. When I called the "customer service representative" she suggested I go take it off of the porch of the house it had been delivered to. Seriously. I mean, a customer service representative advising stealing. Does it get any better? I kindly explained that it was about a 35-40 minute drive in rush hour traffic with 4 children and I didn't think stealing a phone off of someone's porch and getting arrested was the correct approach and was there another option? Her response: Just be quiet and let me think.. Okay this is going downhill fast and she must really, really be having a bad day. I ask to speak to her supervisor. No.
Excuse me? Are you going to help me or not? Her response "Helping you would require that I leave my desk, and I'm not going to leave my desk right now." Enough is enough is enough. I can say that in all of my years of retail and customer service I would never have spoken like that to anyone. If I would have I would have been looking for another job. And people say they can't find good help?