Retail Hell The Book

Saturday Sale Hell At Old Slavery

HOLY BALLS.

HOLY.

BALLS.

What the fuck, I dont even....

It's a doosey, ladies and gents.

Old Slavery has these mega sales called One Day Wonders. No doubt you've heard of them. They're always on Saturdays and they feature one item for one day at a ridiculous price, usually with a limit per customer.

Today's was $6 Polo shirts. We also had $2 flip flops, and all bottoms in clearance were $6.

I did not understand the word madhouse until today.

I was working the fitting room and I couldn't keep up with the mess. People were bringing in fucktons of clothes (most fitting rooms have limits! Ours is ten!!!), taking forever, and then not buying ANY OF IT, leaving it all over the floor, in my bins, freaking EVERYWHERE. SO MUCH.

The picture is from around 4pm? Yeah. Fucking holy balls.

Also, I'm sick. Again. Goddamn dustmite allergy.

So yeah, tiring day. To top it all off, even after the customers left, my processing bin kept mysteriously filling. Dumbfuck Mcgee keeps coming up and putting huge lods of mens pants into my bin.

Me: "Whatcha doin?"

DFM: "Oh just cleaning mens clearance. I'll be back for it."
*she comes back with more armfuls*

Me: "You know you have to process that right?"

DFM: "Yep" *she proceeds to meander around the store*

Rawr.

AND NOW, PARENT OF THE YEAR AWARDS!!

First prize goes to the woman who let her infant crawl around on our dirty clearance floor and play with sharp plastic hangers. I had to take them away from him so he wouldn't put them in his mouth.

Honorable mention goes to the woman too lazy to find an employee to climb a ladder for her and too lazy to do it herself, so she sent her 7 year old up the ladder. "Go get mommy some flip flops." NONONONO, FUCKING STOP.

Yep. Sleep needed. Sleep forever.

<3

--T-Shirt Sponge

Retail Hell Study: 302 Sale Shoppers All Ask The Same Dumbass Question

From Retail Hell Underground:

Hi all, Sweetie@Criminal here ranting about custys!

There are other questions that I dread more than "Do you work here?":

"Is this item covered by the sale?"

and

"Does this coupon apply to this item?"

I know that may seem like valid questions to some but to me its like pouring acid in my ears.

Let me explain:

Criminal is like a 40% off wonderland. There is never a time when we DON'T have 40% off in either a coupon or a 40% off store wide event. NEVER. But the question always gets asked.

Like just last week there was a store wide 40% off sale; I was ringing as usual. I heard,"Is this item covered in the sale?" 97 TIMES!!

My co-slaves and I had a contest going on about how many times we heard it. I didn't win. I was only there for 4 hours. The winning number was 302, that poor girl was working the front of the store and she was there for 6 hours.

The worst part of my rant is that there are banners and signage all over the store that say that the ENTIRE store is on sale. If its not in our store its not on sale, if its contained with in our four walls its discounted.

And yes, that's right I said BANNERS. SIX, big ass, banners that I think Ray Charles couldn't miss, and he's dead (god rest his soul)! I could understand if custys missed the tiny one's placed on EVERY fixture. I could even understand if they missed medium signs on every table. But BANNERS...come on! So when the store wide event is over that's when the headaches..umm I mean coupons start. The words ENTIRE PURCHASE are on the coupons. If you are buying it, you get the 40% off. Also there are stipulations and guidelines on the back of the coupon, so I don't know if people suddenly forgot how to read when they enter the store, or just forgot the definition of the word ENTIRE.

Here is what I think, the fight against illiteracy ends outside of Criminal. If anyone else has a problem with something like this I would love to hear about it.

--Sweetie@Criminal

Piggy Shopper Caught in the Act

Caught in the piggy act of yanking shirts from back stock drawers and making a huge mess of dress shirts.

 

Moron Day Sale

Destined For Markdown

At the Replay store in Beverly Center, Los Angeles.

They had no sale signs inside but there was a non discreet sale announcement in the front window:

Everything 70% Off

Yes, 70% off of Ugly.

The vomit-inducing fringy-leather denim skirt above (yes it's a skirt not shorts) is, of course included in the 70% off blow out. Below is a pic of it's price tag:

I know, they're high, right?

Just about everything in the store was fugly and a million dollars.

..and of course 70% off.

I should have taken more pictures.

  

  

Miricle Signage!

--From DGSUCKS on Retail Hell Underground

 

 

Sale Trough

Carolanne caught this birdseye view of Piggies and Discount Rats rummaging a sale table, which we often called a trough. The resemblance to feeding time down on the farm and the first few hours of a One Day Sale is uncanny.

 

Destined For Markdown

Ever unpack merchandise and you immediately knew it was headed for Markdown Mountain? These lovely men's undies by Todd and Ted were born for a sale table.

 

Retail Hell Survival Tips

Here's some retailicious advice from the comments on last week's post about a douchy Discount Rat trying to take advantage of a Newbie:

From Twink:

My favorite way to handle a situation like that, is to make it appear that I'm zoning the aisle, and then irritate the customer, by telling the cashier to wait just a moment, I'll go look for the signs and so forth.

I love how many custys simply say "Nevermind forget it, I don't want to wait", and then pay for the stuff they know is really on sale and leave.

Then I tell the trainee, that if the same thing happens again, look around, see if you can spot a cashier that's not busy and ask them to do you "a favor".

Then explain what's going on to the other cashier. Most customers will actually try to hurry and leave when you do that because they don't want to get caught trying to scam you out of items. And if they still give you hell, even after the other cashier is gone, use the action code/ phone/whatever, and don't hesitate to ask for a manager.

From Atombomb1945:

For customers like these, I like to take as much time as possible, finding everything for them personally and giving them the best customer experience they can have. That way, twenty minutes later when they demand to speak to the manager, I can truthfully state that I was doing my best to make sure the customer was happy. They are so pissed at this point that they normally insist that they are going to get everyone in the store fired and end up owning it. Thus, my low faith in humanity.

From Snuzzle

TO be fair, sometimes it's not always the custy's fault. I work in a pet store, and a lot of times a blue collar will be clearance whereas a purple one (same brand, same length, same style; just a different color) is full price. In that case I don't blame them for being confused.

However, A LOT of the time they just take it to stupid lengths where "I saw this dog crate had a sign on it saying 19.99"

Uh, lady, that sign clearly states "cat scratching post." Which are kept on the other side of the store. Praytell, how did that sign get on this $300 dog crate?

Then they run out of the store quicker than you can say "scammy mc scammerson".

From Joe

In Africa the lions go after the young animals.
In Retail Hell, the asshole custys go after the new employees.
And in both situations, it gets bloody.

Newbie + Picky Discount Rat = Retail Hell

RHU Blogger Spritzy writes:

So I was waiting in line at the checkout yesterday and the lady in front of me was being rather picky...among the large pile of all-sale items she had on the counter, she had brought up 5 or 6 items without tags and described the sale that it was supposedly on for each item.

"This one didn't have a sale sign on it but this other one did...I want the first one but with the sale of the second one."

"That one doesn't have a tag and it's the only one left and I have no idea how much it cost but I found it on a $2.99 rack and I expect it to ring up as such."

"I think this one should be on sale, it looked a lot like the other ones that were on sale, so it should be too."

Then handing it to the poor cashier (who was a new cashier in her second day of training), she asked how much it rang up and craned her neck over the counter after each item was rung up to check how much it scanned. Presumably because she didn't trust what the girl said. 

Of course the poor girl was working a bit slowly because she was really new and unsure how to process all the price checks and changes and such. I don't blame her for working slowly cause the lady was tossing different price complications at her left and right. But of course the delay in ringing the items only made the lady more impatient.

When it came to the shoes the lady had a huge issue "These are ALL supposed to be 50% off!"

The cashier looked it up and said the sale in the ad is for buy one get one 50%

"NO NO NO NO! *stomps foot* I saw a sign!!"

I hate it when people say "I saw a sign" Sure you saw a sign...but did you actually READ it or just glance at whatever part you thought was the sale you wanted and filled in the rest in your head?

And for that matter who knows if that sign you saw was actually for what you're buying? Or do you think that the sale on frying pans includes flip flops?

So anyway, then the lady said the sign was for the shoes were both 50% AND buy one get one 50%.

So I don't quite get that...would that mean that the shoes would all be 50% and then one would be an additional 50% off of that? Pshaw, yeah right!

The poor cashier called the department and of course they didn't call her back and the customer was getting all huffy. (I also hate it when departments don't answer cashier pages, it leave the poor cashier stranded without an answer and a ever more aggravated customer fuming at the counter)

I never saw the end of this horrible incident because I was offerd to go to an open lane, which I gladly did before the fire and brimstone started spewing.

I have a hunch that it did not end well.

I just feel so bad for the new cashier girl...being in training probably made it worse since she wasn't sure how to handle the situation. It's situations like this that make the store loose cashiers three days after they're hired.

 

-Spritzy