Gripe

It's been a long time since I've whined about customers. Apparently someone noticed the lack because they decided to be especially obnoxious just to inspire me. Well, I can't really say that sort of thing anymore. I thought it was all about me, but it may actually be all about them.
So I get called for a carry-out and this gray-haired woman tells me she needs a couple of bags of fertilizer and three bags of bird seed.
On it.
While she goes on ahead to her car, I grab a cart and then wheel it to the pile of fertilizer. One, two. Then I go to the bird seed. Three 20 pound bags later, I turn around and hunt for her. Is that her? Nope, driving away. Ah, that must be her by the black car. So I wheel the cart to the black car.
She looks at the cart, somehow dissatisfied. "I forgot my garbage bags at home. Can you put the bird seed bags down first? They don't look too bad."
Ah, dirty bags. NP. I load in the bird seed, put the fertilizer carefully on top of them, and go back. But wait! There are a couple of extra carts, and there's some dirt that needs to be upstacked. So I do that, and then head back to the store.
Who do I run into on my way in? The lady.
"I wanted you to know that I complained."
????
"I went back and checked and those bags of fertilizer were the dirtiest of all of them."
"I'm sorry. I just grabbed the ones on top."
"I could see putting them in the back of a pickup truck," she said, apparently not realizing that I had no idea what kind of vehicle she drove in, and if she cared so much, why the hell was she picking up fertilizer in it? "But not in my nice car."
"I'm sorry," I say again, feeling slightly less sorry.
"I just wanted you to know I complained."
"I'm sorry," I say, when I really wanted to say well I guess you'll just have to have your slave vacuum out the trunk of your car for you. Oh, but wait, you won't ask them to do that. They have to magically know that it's not up to your standards.
"You should have someone come out here and wipe down all those bags," she added.
What. The. F ... never mind. "Okay," I said. Neither myself, nor anyone else in the store is going to come out here and wipe down every bag of fertilizer and every bag of dirt so that no one else will have this horrible experience that you've had. Oh, wait, you're the only one who cares who brought their 'nice' car to pick up fertilizer. Btw, if she'd asked if I could bring her a plastic bag, I would have. I could have also swept the dirt off with my gloves. But no. She let me load them up and then complained.
Also btw, I went back and checked. I should have given her the two bags with fertilizer caked on the outside of them in addition to the dirt, rather than the ones that had dust and bits of leaves. Those two were not in fact the dirtiest.
Missed opportunity. Next time I'll have to pay attention to which bags I snag.

March of the Acronym People

Collectively at the store we had an interesting day yesterday.

The Barbie lady came in.  No, she didn't buy barbies.  She bought three 25 pound bags of cat food (among other sundries.)  Is this an uh oh moment?

I haven't mentioned the OCD (Obessive Compulsive Disorder) lady before (that I remember) because she's very nice and compared to a lot of our other customers, she simply doesn't stand out as much as, say, Mr. Boston with his lovely accent, gambling habit and the wonderful way he learns and uses all our names, or Pretty Lady man who comes to BiMart because of all the "pretty ladies" and goes around the store telling us all how we're the prettiest.  

Yesterday, OCD lady really stood out.  She got one of our best checkers, thank goodness, a young lady with the patience of a saint.  I've never seen OCD expressed through another person before, so I thought I'd mention it.  After the checker rang through the entire order, the debit card didn't work due to insufficient funds.  The OCD lady was convinced there were sufficient funds, there had to be.  So she instructed the checker to void one of the items, put it back on, and then the OCD lady would try the card again.  For half an hour.  The checker's break came and went.  This caused a service snafu (effectively leaving us with only one checker) but we handled that from the sidelines.  The trouble was how to finish the transaction with a minimum of trauma.  Finally I flagged down our RVP superhero guy (Red Vest Power) and sent him over to help.  No dice the first round.  RVP guy retreated, watched for a few minutes longer, then decided to take a chance.  He broke the cycle by convincing her to go home and call the bank.  She didn't want to until he assured her that we would keep all her selections in their current bags, in her chosen shopping cart, until she returned.  So that'll be waiting for me when I go in to work today.  I'll guard it with my, well, not my life, but every customer service bone in my body.

I feel badly for her.  At least she came to our store.  I doubt other places have the patience with her.  I'm worried that she's standing out now because she's either off meds or she never was under medical care and is getting worse.  Sigh.

Finally, at the end of the day, our RVP guy came up to the front with a customer and he seemed enthusiastically agitated.  ??  We'd locked the front doors and had turned out most of the lights trying to get all the customers up front and taken care of (no paint lady, thank goodness, just regular orders so it was going quick) so I seemed puzzled by how RVP guy was apparently trying to keep this customer up front.  RVP guy wasn't taking his time so much as going way above and beyond our normal spectacular customer service.  ??  And then I caught a critical part of the conversation.

"I don't know how this could be happening.  You guys see me come in here all the time," the customer said.  "And I write checks all the time.  I haven't heard anything about bounced checks from my bank."

Bing!  It's thousand dollars of check debt guy!!  TDoCD guy was standing right there within throttling distance of my super, but my super wasn't working that day.  Lucky for him.  I could imagine her launching herself, grabbing him by the throat while her weight powers him down, and shouting "Call the police!!"  RVP guy decided that he couldn't do that, it turned out, because all the bounced checks, (did I mention there was a thousand dollars worth of them?) had already been shipped off to loss prevention only three days ago.  He was certain that if we did call the police, we'd have no proof of wrongdoing.  Denied!  TDoCD guy was trying to make it sound like he was a victim of identity theft or something--I even suggested it and he got all coy with me.  Unfortunately for him, RVP guy and every other manager at the store had seen this guy's signature quite a few times by now on checks.  It was burned into their brains.  They'd also had to initial quite a few because some of them were for over $100, and they check ID on checks over $100, so most of them had looked him in the eye, looked at his ID ...  Yep, this was him.  The checker didn't recognize him, but TDoCD guy was trying to, guess what, write another check for over $100 and RVP guy went over to initial it--and then said he wasn't going to accept the check.  That's when the games began.

But we had no proof on site for fraud, so TDoCD guy walked out a free man.  For now.  Little does he know that the phone number RVP guy gave him was for loss prevention, not customer service.  Hopefully they'll convince him to come in to 'straighten things out' where he can land solidly into waiting handcuffs.

So I was late getting home, and sore, and drained.  It was kinda fun, but sad, and exciting, but annoying, and worrisome, and I guess just one of those days.

The Barbie Lady Strikes Back

I was in the lobby minding my own business when I heard a dismayed cry.  "My goodness that added up fast!"  I turned around to investigate the familiar voice and hubbub to see, yes, the Barbie Lady.  An additional checker bagged a cartoonish number of Barbies while the Barbie Lady herself handed over her credit card to the main checker.  Our assistant manager also stood by, a dismayed look on his face.

We all knew it was only a matter of time.

The Barbie Lady would be back, and she will come again, returning most of her purchases.

Why does she do this to herself?  Why does she do this to us?

At least she doesn't collect cats or dogs or something else that can suffer in her care.  C.S. imagined that her house must be tiny alleyways between four foot tall stacks of Barbies.  Right now, I can see that all too clearly.

I'm explaining here because my beloved husband told me about an alternate interpretation after I wondered about the comments on this post.  I wrote:

Does anyone know a ward for Barbie Ladies?  Maybe we can hang GI Joe dolls over the door or something.

I meant the above as a pagan and didn't think about the other way 'ward,' as in a place where mental patients are held, is known.  It's actually the more common usage rather than mine, which is an object that repels something (like garlic to a vampire.)  It was supposed to be funny but on sober reconsideration it wasn't really that humorous even in its original intent.  Now, all is clear and I feel like a jerk for defending myself, even if I was defending something I hadn't meant.  Sorry!

Return(s) of the Barbie Lady

I was going to blog about this yesterday but I was tired, and then all day today I've been fighting a cold.  I think the cold is winning.  Grr.

Anyway, I was minding business at the front counter when in comes Barbie Lady.  She introduces herself, and I have to refrain from telling her that we all know her on sight at this point.  "I remember you," I tell her instead.

She starts loading barbies and barbie clothes onto the counter.  "I've been to Target and Walmart and Big Lots and a bunch of other stores and no one will take these.  I know some of them are yours because they have the stickers on them."

Indeed, some of them do have BiMart stickers on them.  I explain to her how the UPC codes (in theory, anyway) are unique to the stores and that's how we can tell if they're ours or not.  

"But these are BiMart's because they have the stickers on them," she says, getting immediately defensive."

"Yes, I understand.  We'll scan all these and see what's what."  So I get an RF and start in.  Fortunately some of the boxes, even though they have different styles of clothes in them, have the same UPC so I can stack them and scan just one.  It quickly becomes an exercise in frustration because the system keeps going down and I have to reboot the RF for every other scan.  

To pass the time the Barbie Lady repeats how she's been to all the stores.  She was at Walmart until 2am the day before and she's frustrated and exhausted.  Maybe I just start to have a day, but all I can think about are the poor Walmart employees dealing with a gizillion returns in the post-holiday buyer remorse days as their credit card bills come in, not to mention a healthy percentage of theft items coming back among them with no receipt or fake ones, and then this woman shows up and starts telling them her woes and piling up stuff on their counter and half or more of it isn't even theirs.  

"Big Lots would only take it back for half price," she told me, as if this was outrageous.  "They said they don't carry it and they offered to take it for half price.  And Target said that their stuff only stays in the system for six months.  Are you sure that this isn't yours?  Maybe it's out of the system."

"No, it would still be in our system," I assure her.  We had a fondue machine come back.  We didn't carry them this year.  We had them last year.  Another of our stores across the river apparently did carry it this season, but the point is that she got all these things in the fall and they'd still be on our computers.

I employ the help of a cohort and we start organizing better so that I can start writing things down, marking them off the receipt, and dumping them in the go-back bin.  She starts leaning over the counter.  "I know I paid more than that for those."  

"It's what the RF is telling me, and it matches the tag," I tell her.  "See?"

"Okay, maybe that one, but that one I definitely paid $10 for."

"It's on sale for $6.99, regular price $8.99.  It's right here on the receipt."  I circle the item on the receipt, trying not to get annoyed.  I know she needs the money desperately, but this is starting to verge into two things I don't care for--people who are not my coworkers and supervisors trying to tell me how to do my job, and people who are trying to get more than what they're due.

"I have more of those out in the car," Barbie Lady tells me.  "Should I go get them?"

No, don't get them because you can always bring them in later and we can do this all over again and maybe the RF won't be working at all that day.  "Please," I tell her.  "That would be great." So she goes out and comes back with a fresh cart of things.  A customer comes up and needs a card replaced.  "Would you like to shop around first and come back?" I suggest.  "I'm sorry but I have my hands full.  Or if you'd like I can do it now."

"No, I don't mind," he said.  "I'll come back."  

This apparently set a dangerous precedent.

So we're working and I have one return slip filled and I'm starting another.  I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when the Barbie Lady looks over my shoulder and says, "She can't help you right now.  She's really busy."  Then she looks at me.  "Can we get this going?  I'm just really tired.  I've been trying to get these things returned for hours."

Whoa there!  Turning a customer away on my behalf?  My cohort and I exchange glances.  "Excuse me."  I turn my back on Barbie Lady and tell her, "I'm sorry, I'd be happy to help you.  What can I help you with today?"

It turned out she was there to pick up some furniture.  She'd come from Vancouver, where they were sold out.  All it took was a few seconds for me to page someone.  All my fond feelings for the Barbie Lady flee.  I turn back.  "I'm sorry, that was probably rude," Barbie Lady says.  "I'm just so stressed out by all this."  Mmm hmm, I'm thinking.  And this excuses you being rude to a customer on my behalf?  "It's just that I had no Christmas.  I was by myself, couldn't even get myself a present, and the bank has called me four times and I've had to go over there for hours each time, and I'm trying to straighten out my credit cards.  Starting a business is so much harder than I thought it would be.  And my doctor told me that I have a degenerative nerve disease, so I can't work, but I'm not considered disabled so I can't get unemployment."  She starts to get all teary-eyed, sniffling.  

This starts to burn me.  I know people with degenerative nerve diseases.  It's a struggle, but they work and those who can't work are formally disabled and get social security.  I know, people slip through the cracks and I don't know her life story, but there are people out there in much worse shape who are getting by.  It's the timing more than anything, like she's trying to gain my sympathy so I take pity on her and, what, feel better about what she's doing?  Work faster?  "I suppose I could work here," she adds, laughing through her almost-tears, sarcasm full on.  "At least I could make grocery money.  I don't know how I'd live."  I'm standing next to someone who's only income comes from her job here, and although this isn't technically a slam her tone is definitely of the 'I'd be crazy to try and of course it would be a snap to get a job here and keep it' kind of thing.  I'm thinking, not with your interpersonal skills, ma'am.  

She didn't hear the theme music that follows me around everywhere suddenly go dark and eerie, didn't notice the darkness that filled my eyes and turned on a little red light behind the pupil, or the fangs when I smiled.  Yes, Kami went bad, I have to admit.  "Yeah, I understand," I told her.  "The holidays are tough for me too.  My father died of brain cancer on Christmas Day."  K-slap!

She looked like a deer in the headlights.  I felt a little guilty.  That's not something I do.  Well, okay, apparently it is something I do.  But she got herself into this mess, buying dolls and doll clothes from retail outlets at prices that everyone else has to pay.  Everyone who is into these dolls knows where to get them and their prices.  Reselling them, she's going to make money how exactly?  And now she's trying to make me feel sorry for her so that I excuse her rudeness?

And I'm trying to excuse myself, I know.  I lost it.

"Well, don't you have the story to tell!" she said.

I do, but it's not for her and I shouldn't have mentioned it.  But she did stop with the poor me stuff, which was a happy relief.  I finished her return and sent her on her way.  She'd been in at least once since I did her first return, so there are only a scant handful of items left on the large receipt she has.  She didn't bring the copy of the receipt my boss printed off the computer when she couldn't find it.  It wouldn't help her anyway.  If she didn't buy it here, we'll know.  She won't be able to double up on returns.

I'm sure I'll see Barbie Lady again.  Until then, to all my fellow retail employees out there:  Never give up, never surrender.

Barbie Crazy Lady

I'm at the lobby, minding everyone's business because that's my job, when in comes a lady with two large bags of returns.  This happens from time to time.  In fact, it happened twice, once with an employee's spouse, of all things, with Christmas lights.  When I thought about it the second time someone brought back bags and  bags of lights it started to make sense.  You buy 10,000 Christmas lights or, in one case, twenty, and you only need eight to do the roof, so you bring back the other twelve.  

Anyway, by now you've guessed that the lady was bringing back Barbies, not lights.  Three Barbies with horses, and four smaller boxes.  I started having bad thoughts, and they immediately became worse thoughts when she declared, "I have just been all over town, Walmart, Target and Fred Meyer, and nobody would take these back.  I'm never shopping there again.  They have the most ridiculous return policies.  They require a receipt!" 

Imagine that, I think sarcastically.  That they would require proof that you purchased something before they allow you to return it.  The nerve!  "Well," I say soothingly, "It's probably because of all the fraud."

"The fraud?"

"People returning things they've stolen and stuff like that."

"Well I can't imagine anyone stealing stuff like this.  It's too big."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," I told her.  "People are shameless.  They hide it in their baby carriages or strap it to their legs under skirts.  It makes it hard for everyone."  I look at her.  "So I guess you don't have a receipt."

No, she doesn't.  So I call my boss over and start scanning things.  Imagine my surprise when it's actually ours!  When I look more closely, some of them even still have the store price stickers on them.  My internal sarcasm withers in shame and hides.  They still might be stolen, but I never believed that.  I had been pretty sure they simply were purchased somewhere else on extreme sale and were being returned for regular price here, but those thoughts retreated and I started filling out the refund slip.  "Looks like these are $15.99 and these are $11.99."  

She was absolutely sure that she'd paid about $40 for the big dolls, so away she goes to the toy aisle to check.  Meanwhile, my boss takes one of the boxes to go look for a receipt on the system.  

What he finds, and what unfolds, surprises us all.

"That's the lady," a coworker who works the floor tells me excitedly in passing.

"What lady?" I say.

"That lady who bought $900 in Barbies.  I remember her!"

And then the boss emerges.  "I found her receipt.  Look at this!"  It's three pages of receipt, totalling to $900 of Barbie stuff.  The floor worker remembered right.

Suddenly we're all over helping her.  After dealing with so much return fraud and ridiculous things like returning a bar of candy, it's such a pleasure to handle even a big return for an actual customer who brings our store business.  I'll be nice to just about anyone, even people I know for a fact are stealing from us, but I'll be actually happy to help someone who shops our store because they like us and they appreciate us being around, even if they never buy another thing.  It's the reaction a retail employee has to good customers.  We can't help it.  We love good customers because they're such a contrast to the bad customers who normally (and unfairly) get all the attention because of the chaos they create.  Good customers normally fend for themselves very nicely so we don't always get a chance to go out of our way to help them.

So now the barbie crazy lady has an entourage.  The boss hand delivers her return at the register.  She decided to buy something, another barbie, of course, apparently one that she didn't have.  The boss makes her a copy of her receipt so that now she has one, and everyone's happy.

Wherever you are, Barbie crazy lady, thanks!  You made my day.  I hope you enjoy your Barbie.  I know I'll enjoy fantasizing about your house, and your Barbie displays, and your fabulous ebay Barbie business, and fabulous you.  

Signed, Kami, the crazy writer lady

Plus is positive Minus is negative

I begin this by saying that she was a nice lady.

A customer came in today wanting to return batteries she hadn't used. Apparently her radio tuner had stopped working and she thought it had merely run out of juice, so she traded batteries and lo, it didn't work. The new device she purchased needed a different size of battery, so she returned the original new batteries (which didn't look opened so I assume she got more than one pack) and got a new radio and the correct batteries for that.

Sounds like a plan to me.

So imagine my surprise when she returned to return the new radio and new batteries. Hmm, I'm thinking. "So, I guess the new radio didn't work out?"

"Oh, it was fine. But I opened up my old radio one more time and realized I had put the batteries in backward. Now it works, so I don't need this one anymore."

If it was a scam, I don't get it. Someone, enlighten me!

August Babies Birthday Bash was happy times. It was a smaller crowd, which is sad because we missed a lot of good friends but wonderful because it was a really nice sized group and not overwhelming in the socializing department. We ate kangaroo (I don't think I'm radically different for having eaten a marsupial, though it was tasty) and sirloin and hot dogs and all the usual junk food. Much alcohol and pop was consumed, and people were overwhelmed by cake (argh, too much chocolate!) I spent much of the day at work, but them's the breaks sometimes. Going to work today was muuuuuuuch harder than having to work on ABBB day. I wasn't hung over in the morning since I had only about three drinks and stopped drinking early, but I was very, very tired and sore, presumably from hiking back and forth between the house and the firepit after standing on my feet all day. It's a good feeling though, the post-vacation need to sleep feeling.

Work again tomorrow, but just a half day. Good thing too. I'll be ready for a nap by the time I get home.

Curse of the Crazy Paint Lady

I wondered today, at about 8:15 (the time when I was supposed to be leaving the store) if blogging about customers now and again had somehow messed up the customer character generator in the big game of retail checking. Characters seem to be melding into each other, or creating weird dopplegangers. Either that, or history is rewriting itself with my full awareness.

Now why would a relatively sane Kami think that?

Because today, shortly before closing, the crazy lady dashed in. "I have only one thing!"

Sure, whatever. The store is pretty full at closing today, so I figure she might arrive at a line if she hurried too much. I would probably be outta here in no time with just a few go backs to take care of when she inevitably changed her mind about her purchases. Except.

The crazy lady reappears near the front of the store. "Um, I need help at the paint counter."

Um, ack?

Someone dashes outside to get the hardware guy (who is doing his job starting the close up the store front since it's now after 8pm) so that we can have the hardware guy help her ASAP at the paint counter. Meanwhile, my line dwindles to zero. The other closing checker gives me a pitying look as she shuts off her light, ropes off her register and heads off to count out for the night. "It shouldn't be too long now," she says.

Uh huh.

Memories of the paint lady coming in (this was during the holiday rush crush) flood back. Could it have been the crazy lady back then as well? The crazy lady I remember from a different day, the post-holiday major percent off holiday stuff sale, where she was fine buying a $2.99 roll of tape (there was a different brand for 1/3 the price) but refused chocolate candy because even with the percent off it was too pricey. That was all fine and good, I get paid either way, and go-backs are a fun way to take a break from checking. I call it anti-shopping, cheerfully skipping through the aisles with a cart of things that need to go back on the shelves and stopping occasionally to spring on unsuspecting shoppers with an overly cheeful "Are you finding everything okay?" or, for thrills and variety, "Can I help you find anything?"

I imagine, as the minutes tick by, the crazy lady choosing colors very carefully while the hardware guy messes with the paint mixer, paces, stares at the different cans of paint and tries to anticipate her decision-making process by asking such questions as "light or dark color? Gloss, semi-gloss, satin or flat? What brand would you like?" How about we go with the first can that comes into my hand and go with, oh, I don't know, pure white?

I have one major consolation. I wasn't sure I would have enough fives, ones and pennies to get through my last hour, and I didn't want to call for those because A. if I didn't use them I'd just have more to count and B. if I used all my pennies and had to open a new roll just before closing, invariably someone, like a child, would come along with lots of pennies to get rid of, say an entire 39 cents amounting to the change on their balance, and I would have 89 pennies to count.

But it turned out that I would make it with change to spare. Yay! Even the crazy lady can't make me require a roll of pennies and a bundle each of fives and -- now don't be stupid, Kami. She might have a $100 bill, buy and candy bar, and want all her change in fives, ones and pennies.

The crazy lady arrives at last with her 'one thing,' which includes 4 large clear Rubbermaid storage bins, two paint rollers, a tarp, candy, sunscreen, and I don't remember what all else as well as the paint. "I'm an Oregon resident," she declares.

"Great!" Sounding like a cheerleader is my primary defense against being annoyed. Being annoyed is no fun for anybody. Just put on a smile, raise your voice half an octave, pretend you have DD breasts and bounce! The job's a game just like in Mary Poppins only career oriented! Check it out! I'm Barbie with a menial job!

I ring her up, but by the end I've forgotten the Oregon thing and I have to back up from the total, not a big deal, but she pipes in with, "is it too late to add an ice cream bar?"

It's not too late to ring up half our office supplies, ma'am. Bounce! "No problem."

So the ice cream sandwich gets added in, tax is removed, paperwork is achieved and I'm done for the night. A supervisor loiters at my checkstand. The hardware guy is locking up the cigarette case behind me, crowding me while I'm trying to get out of my register. The crazy lady is forced to edge around a palette of goodies now blocking the back door. Two employees help her carry her stuff to her car because there's no way a cart is getting out.

I guess that's the way to get primo service. Only next time, I think the managers might close the store a bit early if they see her coming. As for me, I got primo service too. A supervisor helped me count out, and I was on my way out to the car by 8:24. All's well that ends well.