Retail workers: share your stories here.

[Mutley]

In honor of the site www.customerssuck.com let's hear your best customer horror stories! Here's one of mine:

I got stuck being the cashier one day, and this woman came up to my register with her young daughter who was probably two or three years old. The woman was talking on her cell phone as I was ringing up her stuff. Irritating, but whatever.

After a minute I look up and see her daughter walking toward the exit door. I looked at the woman and said, "Excuse me ma'am," she ignores me and keeps talking. Now, her daughter is out the door and headed for the parking lot. So, I turn back to Miss Clueless and said it again, louder, "Ma'am! Your daughter is outside." But she's too busy talking on her cell phone to listen to me, OR to pay attention to her daughter. So, I leave my register and run outside. By now the kid is running around the parking lot and cars are going by her. So I run up to her, pick her up, and go back into the store. I set the kid down next to her mother, who still apparently has not noticed what has been going on.

I finish ringing up her crap, and she pays me. As she's walking out the door I hear her say to whoever is on the phone, "That was the slowest cashier I've ever had to deal with."

[grace0418]

1. Grrrrrrrr. I would've MADE her pay attention if I had to slap

her. But that's probably why I'm not very good in retail.

I have a combo nightmare/sweet revenge story. I used to work at the gift shop at the Art Institute of Chicago. Nightmare. Job. As you can imagine, the shop was always busy, but especially so around the holidays. There would be days where I didn't move more than 2 ft in any direction because I had a line wrapped halfway around my section. There wasn't anything we could do about it, every register was open and every cashier was ringing as fast as possible, with a partner to bag up items. It was just busy. But you always get the bitchers, who wait until the last minute to buy gifts then complain because the stores are busy. DUH!

One particularly busy day, I had this horrible woman in my line who would NOT SHUT UP. She was a member of the museum (always the biggest complainers) who thought that her $40 membership qualified her for a gift shop all to herself a few days before Christmas. Her rant finally crescendoed into a declaration that she was ON THE BOARD and she EXPECTED TO BE WAITED ON IMMEDIATELY.

Coincidentally and unbeknownst to me (or her apparently), the president of the museum just happened to be in my line, ahead of her. He turned around and said "Hello, I'm the president. I'm sorry, I don't recognize you. Did you say you were on the board? Hmm, I'm terribly sorry for not remembering your face. But surely you can understand that they're terribly busy and we all have to wait our turn patiently."

I wanted to kiss that man, who turned around and winked at me. Other people in the line actually cheered. I thanked him profusely and the bitch shut her stupid piehole after that. That was sweet.

[Mutley]

2. LMAO!

That's a great one!

:rofl:

She was probably just making that up about being on the board.

[LaraMN]

3. Somebody took a crap in a fitting room

on top of a pile of $60 jeans, at the department store I worked at. It was a nice store and the department I worked in sold higher-end women's clothes. I had come to expect some arrogant, uppity customers, but not a "mad pooper."
When I worked at a Wal-Mart, some male did something even WORSE on top of a pile of women's lingerie, in a fitting room.:scared:

[Mutley]

4. EWWW!!!

Thank god I never had to deal with anything THAT bad.

:puke:

Someone did overflow the bathrooms in my store once, with sewage type material floating around. The manager asked me to clean it up and I told him I would quit first. I don't do toilets, except my own.

[hfojvt]

12. well lah-de-da

I certainly never imagined 20 years ago when I was taking university courses in quantum physics that it would be my job, but somehow it happened. That's what I get for not sticking with my first job, working for the military testing weapons of mass destruction. (sorta tongue in cheek since I consider a B-1 bomber or an automobile (40,000+ accidental deaths every year, imagine how destructive they could be if they tried) to be a weapon of mass destruction.)

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Hmmm...nothing major coming to mind here.

Although I know I had some doozies. Guess I've blocked them from my mind.

The customers that used to annoy me were the idiots that would come into the record store and say, "I'm looking for this song...it's got the word love in it..."

:eyes:
FSC

[Mutley]

6. Oh yes, that narrows it down to about 250,000 songs!

:rofl:

Thanks for the help.

:eyes:

Some people are idiots.

[billyskank]

7. Oh man, that "love" song!

That fucking rocked! :rofl:

[Mutley]

8. Hey billy!

Got any stories to share?

[billyskank]

11. No, I never worked in retail

or anything where I actually had to face real people! Sounds like I really missed out... ;)

[Mutley]

13. Yes, you should really try it.

It'll give you a whole new outlook on the human race as a whole.

[billyskank]

20. Hmmmmmmmmm

Naaaaahh. :)

[flamingyouth]

9. I once had a woman who insisted on ringing up her own purchases

(She had been a problem for several months but this was the capper)...

I told her that that would not be possible. She accused me of having a "cash register that cheated" her. We argued (me, calm) back and forth. Meanwhile, her four-year-old daughter kept quietly saying, "Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom." This went on for a while, then her child began to cry.

I told her - why don't you take your daughter into our employee restroom, she needs to use the bathroom. But still she kept arguing with me.

And then her daughter urinated all over the floor.

I told her that we just weren't the store for her and that she'd have to find another place to shop.

[fudge stripe cookays]

10. Good for you!

Poor kid, I feel bad for her.

How you feeling sweetie?
FSC

[flamingyouth]

17. I do too

:(

I'm doing okay - had the cortisone epidural on Tuesday and am back to work, etc. So taking it a day at a time. Thanks. :hug:

[Mutley]

14. Wow! Her reaction to that must have been pleasant.

How could she just let her daughter suffer like that??? :grr:

[flamingyouth]

16. She was shocked that I was firm with her about it.

And I was so pissed about the way she treated her kid... :grr:

[Mutley]

19. Right! How humiliating for that little girl.

And I'll bet the mother got mad at her for having an accident, too. Though it's not very liberal of me, sometimes I feel like some people shouldn't be allowed to have kids.

[ComerPerro]

15. LMAO. Nice. I despise cell phone usage in stores

Its so rude.

Then again, there were some customers who I would have preferred just talk on the cell phone and leave me the hell alone.

But, its just so damn rude.

I refuse to talk on the phone at any time when I am interacting with other people.

If I'm just idly haning out with someone, or on a trip, then that's different.

Some people just fail to realize that just because your cell phone rings doesn't mean you have to answer it.

[Mutley]

18. Precisely!

It always makes ME feel rude to have to interupt their conversation to give them their total. I can't stand that! But what really pissed me off is the way she ignored her daughter. That kid could have been hit by a car and the mother wouldn't have noticed.