This year, I had the pleasure of working a big anchor retail store in the mall. My job description consisted of keeping the departments replenished and getting the store ready for the next business day. It sounds simple enough to do as a side job, right?
I have a new deep empathy when it comes to today’s retail workers. I use to work retail a long time ago. It was a respected service industry job that had the perks of deeply discounted purchases from the store in which you worked. Fast forward today and that has all changed.
My job started during “Back to School”. I was not shocked by the amount of refolding, re-shelving and rehanging I had to deal with. What I was shocked and horrified with was how badly customers treated the people hired to help them with their purchases. Their customers that charge like bulls right up to customer service rep and start rattling off the items on their lists. As the customer service person is locating these items, the customer proceeds to throw clothing to the floor, discard hanging clothing to the floor and destroy displays. The children that come in with these shoppers proceed to follow in mommy and daddy’s example. I watched as teenagers came in groups and proceeded to topple towers of folded shirts, shove other customers, curse at each other because there was no personal accountability and break the arms off of clothing racks. Everyday at closing, I usually had to find the clothing and missing limbs off of mannequins. Many of the workers didn’t understand why were the customers getting worse and worse every year. “Perhaps, its because people were making the personal choice of devaluing the job of the associates.” “Minimum wage now means minimum amount of respect if any at all.
I felt so bad for my coworkers, spending hours preparing tables filled with folded clothes only for an adult to come through and pull it apart. The customer didn’t look at the tags to see the sizes, they flipped through the clothing like it was a file of papers pulling each shirt out, looking at it and then throwing it over their shoulder or worse messing up other folded items when they threw that item aside.
My patience was truly tried in the days after “Tax – Free weekend”, but ultimately my dignity suffered the most.
I have no problem with re-shelving, refolding and fixing the store back to pristine conditions after the mobs of people have left. What I did have a problem with was how people had forgotten that these associates they were asking for help were still human beings.
The worst things I had seen customers do, aside from rip up artfully created displays, was trash the associates like they were soulless things. I watched customers make associates follow them around, hunt and seek out items and then yell at the associate for not being able to find what they were looking for. Many times when customers come late the items they are looking for are out of stock. I remember trying to explain to a multitude of customers this simple truth and getting cussed out. A mom forgot she had her kids and used rough language with out regard to any of the other people with kids near her.
The absolute worse was when a woman came in and harassed every department, leaving my section for last. She didn’t go to the young men, or any of the older women, she came up to me. She took a gruff tone from the very beginning. She informed me that she was late (something that was in her control and not my fault), that she was trying to buy clothes for her kids and grand kids, and that she needed me to search for sizes that were not available in our department. I informed her that there were no more of those sizes available and tried to redirect her to other items. She still wanted me to help her search. I helped her search and as we looked for these non existent items, she threw clothing across tables and onto the floor. I picked up the items and folded them to keep the table neat and to “try and look” just in case, “by some miracle” we came across the size. To no avail did we find the sizes she was looking for and at this moment she turns and yells that I was not helping her. I responded in a quiet voice that I was helping her, I also had to keep the area tidy as I went. She was even more upset and said I was not making her a priority. I responded softly that she was my priority and I was helping her the best way that I was trained to do. She got infuriated, began to talk down to me like I was a slave, began throwing more clothes to the floor, and screamed insults. I looked to my lead associate. He put his head down and continued working trying not to draw attention to himself. It was obvious he was not going to help. I saw that she was trying to escalate a situation, so I calmly told her I think she needed to speak with a manager if she was unhappy with the present service. She yelled, ” Well You Do That!!! You Get A Manager HERE NOW!!” I walked to the cashier and had them to call the store manager to the front. My supervisor told me the woman tried to find me after I left. He said it was like she had second thoughts about her behavior.
I tried to return to the table three times, but by then I was so upset I left the area. I didn’t give that lady the satisfaction of knowing the results of how inhumanely she had treated me. When I returned a forth time to resume my area, three managers came to address the problem with the woman. She tried to convince the managers that I was disrespecting her and was only interested in folding clothes. The managers informed her that I was one of their good associates, that I was following policy and it didn’t seem like it was my nature to ever be rude to anyone. My supervisor , who had been present at the situation, informed the managers the woman was trying to provoke an argument and that she had been very inhumane. He explained to them that the woman had been tearing up the tables on purpose and making unrealistic requests.
During my third attempt to try and work , the store managers came and talked to me, they had figured the woman was getting her jollies by terrorizing the more mild mannered workers in the store. Apparently, she had caused eight workers to walk off from the job that day. This particular woman had an insane habit of coming to the store yelling and fighting with employees. She gets the service agents so worked up that they will do anything to get rid of her…such as offer her discounts or take back her clothes for a full refund against company policy. Lately, her scams haven’t been working and so now she is even more demeaning, crass and aggressive towards employees. The managers didn’t want me to be the ninth to quit. I was given a 15 minute break to recuperate and then allowed to return to the floor.
Unfortunately, this woman was not banned from the store, but no one except a manager is allowed to deal with her. Currently, the store is working with most of its customer associates gone. while I am making more hours, I ,also, carry the burden of doing more work because of the absent workers. Our managers are trying to resist hardened aggressive customer service workers.. but if the store is going to continue to allow that kind of insanity, they will have to hire hard-hearted customer service associates that can deal with a increasingly growing gruff crowd of customers. …just like Wal-Mart.
In my opinion, it is not professional to allow customers to become nuisances for monetary gain or for an insane sense of entertainment. I am aware that there are some stores like K&G men’s fashion in Meyerland, Houston, Texas that use to call the police department to escort nuisances out. The police have started arresting people on the charge of creating a disturbance/ disturbing the peace because these folks would do nothing more than cause a scene to try and get something for free or discount.
It has been a long time since I have set foot in anything but the small stores at a strip mall. The brutish inhumane customers that venture into big mall spaces remind of why I don’t shop enclosed malls anymore.
SuburbanBlues 