So Horror Stories From Working Retail got brought up in the comments of a post with @minismallholding, and I thought I'd share a few funny-and/or-horrifying retail stories with y'all. ;)

I Pun Dangerously

I used to work primarily at the returns desk at a certain home improvement warehouse, and as you can imagine, returns nets you a lot of unhappy customers. Their stuff isn't working or wasn't the right part, and they're annoyed from the get go a lot of the time. Generally you just have to be extra polite and mind your sir's and ma'am's to keep the bomb in their head from going off, but this one time I decided to go for the joke.

This guy was in the line just fuming. Heat waves were coming off him like above a barbeque, he was so mad. I'm surprised he didn't spontaneously combust, he was so mad. He gets to my counter, slams a vacuum down on it and hollers, "This vacuum sucks!!!"

So y'all have to understand that I underwent pun training trial by fire as a teenager when I was introduced to my friend's mom who is like the Master of Punnery. Nowadays those things just pop into my head like a little cartoon demon. So naturally I said:

"But sir, isn't that what vacuums are supposed to do?"

Ohhhhhhh, he did not want to laugh. He had a good angry going on, and his face glitched a few times as it fought which emotion to portray, but finally he utterly cracked and laughed, and said, "Okay, okay ...it doesn't suck."

So I said, "WELL THAT'S A PROBLEM! Let's get you a new one!"

And we got the poor man a new vacuum. And I (luckily) cut the correct wire on that angry customer bomb. ;)

Shitty Parents, Part I

I have more than one shitty parent story, but the others come from my days working at a health food store, so we'll stick with this one today.

At said home improvement warehouse, I was walking down the aisle one day going back to my register (we were supposed to always walk the customer to wherever the thing they needed was, rather than just point, which meant I left my register a lot if there weren't any customers in line), and I come across one of those rolling ladders that the workers use to access the backstock up on high shelves. Well, a kid - who was maybe seven - had climbed up it, and onto the shelf, and was working his way up a stack of 2x4s 20 feet up as I turned the corner and caught sight of him. No adults to be seen.

I immediately ran to the ladder and started going up it as I asked him to come down onto it, and thankfully he did with no fuss and no accident. I took him in hand and asked him to point out his parents when he saw them, and we methodically worked our way across the warehouse looking down every aisle, until we found his parents clear at the other end of the store.

They were busily looking at products and didn't even seem to have any clue he was gone, and when I told them where I had found their child, they glanced up, said, "I told you to stay with us," and went back to the stuff they were looking at.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor and told the kid to stay safe, I walked back to my register, fully aware that if the kid had actually fallen and cracked his skull open, they would have sued the store for neglect, because that's the kind of person who does that...

royalty free image from dreamstime dot com

The Heist Is In The Details

I was once informed by a certain employee in a certain position of power, that I was the cashier that stopped the most theft. Mostly that came from me working returns and actually doing what we were supposed to do - that is, open every box, even if the sturdy strip of plastic or shrink wrap was still around it, to inspect the merchandise (yeah, hi scammers: we know you like to put your old faucet in the new faucet box and try and return it by sliding that strip back over the box and pretending you never opened it. It happens every week. Every week. You are not slick, and you are not original. Fuck off). But this one time, I caught a guy at checkout.

He was buying a door, which was wrapped in cardboard all around the jamb to prevent bumps and scratches, and had it in one of those carts with the vertical slots meant just for that sort of thing, or plywood, or drywall, etc. But Ocean's 2x4 had stuffed a bunch of other, smaller, expensive merchandise up inside the cardboard, hoping I wouldn't see it, and he could just roll out the door with it for free.

As I found each piece, I calmly pulled it out and set it on the counter and rang it up. Honestly, if he was going to pay for it at the end, I wasn't going to get him in trouble, I was just grinning as I found each piece of hidden merch and he sweated another bucket, staring at me like an animal about to flee. The only reason it didn't go down that way was because he had stuffed a pair of $25 work gloves up in there, and had ripped the tag off - correctly assuming, I might add, that there was an anti-theft tag on there, that would have set off the alarms at the door. Well, that also ripped off the barcode, so I couldn't ring it up, and I had to ask for a price. The phone at my register wasn't working, so I had to ask someone else for the price, and as soon as I said that and walked toward the head cashier to do so, Ocean's 2x4 ran for the door as fast as he humanly could run, certain I was about to rat him out. I calmly told the head cashier, "Well, I was going to just ask for a price and charge him for these, but since he ran, that guy was totally trying to steal... "

The irony is, if the idiot had positioned the door to where the barcode had been at the top and facing me at the register, I probably would have just leaned over with my scanner gun and not noticed the shit stuffed up in the cardboard at all. But I had to walk out from behind the counter with my gun searching for it, and bent over to reach the barcode at the bottom is when I saw it. He thought of the anti theft tag, but not how the door was going to be rung up. Details.

Irony:

The employee in a certain position of power who told me I was the cashier who stopped the most theft, it turns out, was a thief, and got fired for doing so. I doubt he was pocketing shit on the clock, and so guessed that he must have had accomplices who he turned a blind eye to or told how best to steal. Or maybe he did pocket shit and then sent friends through the returns line without a receipt. Part of me wonders if he told them to avoid the blond cashier's line or to come in on my days off, since he knew I was the one who caught the most shit when even I didn't know I was the one who caught the most shit...

Unless You're Using Your Dick As A Tool...

If you know my blog, you probably know I'm a trans man, but back in those years, I hadn't yet embraced this truth about myself, and so was still presenting as female. You may or may not be surprised to learn that if you have a vagina and you work in a hardware store, you're going to deal with a lot of condescending sexism. A lot of condescending sexism. Like, we had a master electrician who was a woman and worked in electrical to fill in gaps between her regular jobs and men would ask the pimply faced teenage boy who worked in that department rather than ask her and then have to eat shit when the boy asked her for advice because, shock - HE WAS JUST A KID AND SHE WAS A FUCKING MASTER ELECTRICIAN.

Normally this kind of shit pissed me off beyond all reason, but one day it made me laugh. This guy comes up to my returns counter, which for once, did not have any customers, and says with this apologetic face, "You're probably not going to know what this is... " and holds out his hand.

I said, "A solenator for a sprinkler system. Need me to show you where they are?" And I got to watch this look of wonder develop across his face like a little kid who just walked into Disney World or some shit as he nodded and I started walking to the correct aisle. Chasing after me, he shouts, across the warehouse to his friend, who had gone off in search of a penis to show them where the sprinkler stuff was:

"HEY!!!! SHE KNEW WHAT IT WAS!!!!!" ...and the friend came running after us.

Seriously, kids. Do you know how many of those parts I had come through my line? Every day? Every dayyyyyyy. It was as common as drywall. Get over yourself. You ain't installing it with your cock, you don't gotta have one to know what it is.

I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

There were certain returns that required you to enter in the person's ID number. I don't remember why - maybe it was for cash, maybe it was if they didn't have a receipt, maybe it was above a certain amount, it's been too long so I don't remember. But the point is that we couldn't override it. It wasn't us trying to choose who we gave a return to; cashiers don't have that power. It was mandated by the computer, and we couldn't tell it "no" and still process the return.

So I had this guy come through with a return like that, and he had a Canadian driver's license. Mind you, I live in Denver:

Nations Online Project, modified by me

We are like a thousand miles from Canada. It's not like we're on the border, where people might be expected to hop across to go shopping all the time. We're far, far away. So, my computer didn't recognize his ID.

International Man Of Mystery told me I was "racist against Canadians."

Yes, he was white. Yes, I am white. No, "Canadian" is not a race. Yes, my mother's family is from there, even. But I was "racist against Canadians" because my computer didn't recognize an out-of-country ID.

There are a certain set of people who will cry "racist" (or sexist, or pick-a-discrimination) in an attempt to get what they want because they think people will break the rules for fear of being called racist, and apparently, a white guy from Canada thought he could pull that shit. He's not the only one, though. A black man told my black coworker that she was racist against black people for not taking his return. Again, dude. If he had said that to me? Fine. But he said that to a black woman. She just stared at him like, "Really?" He left (without getting his return).

Jesus Wants You To Give Me Cash Back

There was this lady - and I don't even remember the circumstances of her return, I just know that I couldn't do what she wanted, whether that was the return, period, or cash back without a receipt, or what, but she was so pissed off she began screaming at me so loud, I didn't have to call the manager - the manager came running from across the warehouse. They had seriously been in the back office.

I wasn't even upset by this idiot - I had been working retail long enough I did not give in to petulant three year olds in the guise of functional adults throwing temper tantrums, and I was not impressed or upset by them, she could just cry herself to sleep for all I cared - but the manager actually took over and told me to take a break like I had just been to war and seen hell, when in actuality, I laughed as soon as I got to the break room.

But the funniest part about this walking stereotype of "Karen who wants to see the manager" was that in the middle of her tirade she felt compelled to scream at me about how much Jesus Loved Me.

Like...

Did she think I was going to break the rules because I felt the love of Jesus compelling me to cheat for her red-faced ass?

Go drink your wine and leave me alone, Karen. Jesus is not a magic word to get what you want, like the password to get into an exclusive prohibition-era speak easy. Jesus wants you to not be an asshole to low paid retail workers.

Buddy Jesus from the movie Dogma

Well that's it for now, Steemians! I hope you enjoyed this peek into retail life. If so, let me know and I'll regale you with more TALES FROM THE CASH REGISTER (spooky music here)! ;)

That minnow your mama always warned you about

My Zazzle Shop:

My Ko-fi: