Week 7 – Chapter 15: Retailing

It's agreeable that working in retail can be a real pain in the ass to say the least and that usually it's the customers that make it so. Why do you think someone came up with the saying that "the customer is always right"? It's so that the employees can have something to calm them when what they really want to do is punch the customer in the face for doing or asking something retarded. One time in Kmart I saw this lady walk up to the register with her stuff and tell the cashier to hurry up because they needed to go to work...at this moment I thought to myself, why the F are you shopping then you dumb cow? F'ing go to work and shop later. Another time, I was in Office Max and heard someone asking an employee where they kept the pianos... foreigner maybe? or maybe just a complete idiot? Also, lets face it most people are just never satisfied, and always have something to complain about. It's safe to assume that there is always more than one side to any story. In the case of retailing there's usually two, the retailer and the customer. Having suffered on both sides of the playing field I can conclude that it sure does take a hell of a lot of patience to work in and to shop in retail stores.

So I decided to go on a shopping trip to hopefully try and record if something stupid would happen and sure enough it did. My first stop was H&M; this was my first visit to any H&M and sad to say it would also be my last. I went to get a scarf and I stood in line for over 20 minutes. There was only one person in front of me and he was already at the register. First of all, the cashier was rude, didn't even acknowledge the customer. Secondly, they were chatting away with another employee about stupidness. Third of all, they were folding the clothes in slow motion like it was laundry day or something. To make things even slower they walk away from the register in the middle of the transaction for like 10 minutes to do god knows what. Now you would assume that someone would think to come and take over the register at least to finish up with that one guy... but nope. By this time, all the people in line including myself start thinking and saying WTF?! Eventually, he comes back and finishes but when I walked out of the store I made a mental note to never go back to that H&M ever again.