Super Saturday

There are days when working retail is almost entertaining, and there are days when it's pure hell.

Yesterday was a Super Saturday at Mervyn's, which means, really, Stupid Saturday. The morons crawl out of the woodwork to get their hands on deals that we will have again in two weeks. But because the ad says "Super Saturday," they figure it must be special.

I could go on for hours about retail tricks and luring customers in, but I won't.

No, the purpose of this blog update is to share just how moronic people can really be.

I hadn't been on duty 20 minutes when a lady with arms full of stuff walked up to my register (reminder: I work in the Home Fashions department) and asked me, "Excuse me, do you have long underwear for women?"

I could take this question many ways, and if I didn't really need the extra income this job generates, I'd probably answer in one of the following ways:

1. "I personally don't wear long underwear, but if I did, it certainly would be for women, and I wouldn't tell you about it."

2. "Let me just check in the Kitchen Aid products. Nope! None in Kitchen Aid. Let me just try looking in our Memory Foam mattress covers, before I send you over to lingerie."

Alas, these aren't considered "good customer service," so I said, "Er...I don't really know, but you could check our lingerie department." All delivered with a friendly smile.

Lingerie, by the way, is the department right next to mine. If you take about 30 steps from my cash register, you're there. So this lady is obviously not only stupid, she's lazy.

Later in the evening a woman comes up to my register with a couple of Memory Foam mattress pads, wanting a price check. No problem, that's easy. She starts asking about the difference between this one and that one and I patiently explain that I haven't a clue. She wanders off to keep looking and I forget about her while helping other customers and cleaning up my department.

A little while later she approaches the register with one Memory Foam mattress cover and says, "I'll take this one." I reply with a chipper, "Great!" and start ringing her up. I scan the item, press total. She's got her checkbook out. I've got two or three more customers lined up. I'm alone in the department.

She pauses in writing her check and says, "Could you look in the back and see if you have any of the other ones in a Queen size?"

I gape at her and look apologetically at the line of people behind her. Call for logistics to help me out, and for someone else to come help ease the line of people waiting to be rung up. She had me ring the damn thing up! I thought she was done!

The last and best of my Stupid Saturday stories is a return story. Shortly after my break, the gal who was covering while I took it let me know that a lady was returning a comforter, and exchanging it for a quilt. No problem. She comes back and I ask for the receipt. "Oh, my fiancee bought it with his debit card. I don't have it." I explain to her that with receipt she'd get $29.99 back. Without, she gets $24.99.

"What?"

"Without the receipt we can't honor the price he paid for it."

Steam is starting to seep out of her ears so I get on my walkie talkie and call for management assistance. The manager gets on and reaffirms that without receipt, we can't honor the price, "but if she has the debit card, we can do a receipt look-up in the computer."

The lady asks if it would work if she calls her fiancee and has him read the number to me, to which my manager replies, "No, we have to swipe the card."

(This is all still going on over a walkie talkie with me as the middleman...and we all know what always happens to the middleman).

So the lady is getting pretty upset. "This is ridiculous! You tell your manager that I won't shop here again, and I come here a lot!"

"I'm sorry, Ma'am."

"It's not your fault. But this is ridiculous."

With that, she grabs her little boy's hand and stomps off. Thirty seconds later her little boy picks up a lid to a decorative glass bathroom jar, drops it, and it shatters all over the display table. The next customers in line give me a very sympathetic look as I groan quietly and massage my aching temples. The husband gives me a facetious smile and says, "We're returning these jeans. We don't have a receipt." I started giving the no-receipt spiel, catch his look, and say, "Oh...you're joking, aren't you?"

A couple of hours later I saw the pissed-off woman and her son walking through my department. So much for never shopping our store again. Rotten luck.