When will you get more in stock?

Being a sales associate means that you frequently have customers asking you to check in the back for an item. What customers don't understand is that the back room in most stores is incredibly small and departments have limited space for overstock. This means that most of the time, if the item is not on the shelf, it's not in the back room either. When I inform the customer that I don't have an item in the back, the next question is usually "When will you be getting more?". This is a fair question. However, what most customers don't understand is that most people don't understand is that the warehouse seldom gives us any sort of idea of when we'll get a certain item in more than 48 hours in advance. Delivery estimates from the distribution center would be incredibly unreliable because so many factors change what freight is loaded onto a truck.

My handheld terminal will only display to me the number of an item we have on-hand, if the item is in the back room, if it's on order, if it's in the warehouse, and if it's in transit from the warehouse to our store. I don't mind explaining this much to a customer, what gets frustrating to me though, is when a customer complains about how dumb it is that our technology is that limited. You think I don't agree with you? I work for a company that makes billions of dollars each year, but we're still running Windows 95 on most of the computers in the store. I know how stupid it is. But that doesn't change the fact that I can't tell you when we'll have more in stock. When I offer the solution of checking another store for their item, most customers scoff at the idea of having to drive to another store. I understand the customer's frustration, but I'm literally exhausting all of my options to get the item in your hands today. I wish customers were more considerate.

Procrastination Nation

T'was the night before Easter and all through the store parents were frantic. "Do you have anything left?!?" No. No we do not. You waited until less than 12 hours before Easter morning to shop for your child's Easter presents. This sort of situation happens before holidays and birthdays. I might sound rude for saying this, but I have a really hard time feeling bad for parents that wait this long-- especially when they take out their frustration on me. If your child absolutely had to have a specific toy for the occasion, why the hell did you wait until the last minute to buy it??

Last night I had a parent scream at me because we were out of Easter grass. My only response was "you could try Dollar Tree".  We've been out of Easter grass for almost a week.

The thing that people don't understand about seasonal items (Easter, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's, St. Patrick's Day, etc.) is that we don't reorder these items. So once we run out, we've run out. That way we avoid losing money when we have to discount the product after the holiday.

Rude Customers

When you work with the public it is inevitable that you'll deal with a few customers that are less than ideal. Normally I'm able to resolve customer issues or at least better explain a situation to them. However, the other night I experienced a customer that really got under my skin.

I was in the backroom binning some overstock when another sales associate came and got me because there was a frustrated customer in my department. So I made my way back to the sales floor and introduced myself to the customer. After introducing myself, I asked her to explain the situation to me. In her high-pitched squeaky voice, she yelled "All of you guys are just incompetent fools. I hate shopping here, I don't know why they only hire high school drop outs. The shelf tag says this item is $13 but then when I went to the price checker it rang up as $34.99"!. My first thought was that the overnight stockers had stuffed this item in an incorrect home. However, after scanning the item I noticed that the item was in the correct home.

After digging a little bit deeper I found out that the item had gone on rollback about two weeks ago and when the rollback price fell off, my department manager neglected to change the shelf tag back to the regular price. I explained everything to her and told her that we would still honor the $13 price, I would just have to escort her to the register and verify the price change for the cashier. Unfortunately, for some reason, that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. She then proceeded to make personal attacks on me and caused a scene. I let her tire herself out like a screaming toddler and then asked her if there was anything else I could help her with. She rolled her eyes and I walked away.

As much as I tried not to let her personal attacks get under my skin, they really did. She had said some really hurtful things about me personally. Even though she was probably the worst person I'd ever encountered, I maintained a professional demeanor and gave her good customer service. I don't get paid enough for this kind of bullshit. I really don't. For a final thought, I'll leave you with this Tumblr post. It's the most accurate post I've ever seen in my life.