GICW Coffee Table Book; entries 1 and 3
Today was a day for the story book at work, but before I get too far I realize that I haven't written some of my best Goodwill customer stories here... So here are a few classics, rounded out with tonight's new addition.
Poop Grabber:
Unfortunately, despite it being against store policy, people bring their dogs in all the time... Usually they put them in the shopping cart, sometimes on leashes, once or twice in strollers... This is back when I was just a new employee, a cashier, back when we had slow nights. I was main cashier, up at the register, unable to leave my post. One of our regulars comes in with her dogs and they promptly poop on the carpet in our entryway. This doesn't phase me. I can grab a plastic bag, newspaper, something and just get it up. The woman grabs the poop with her bare hand and puts it in her purse. Having never in life prepared to react to such a situation, I made a face. Seeing my face, she raced around the jewelry case and up to my register and yelled at me about how "she had handled it, and it was completely unprofessional for me to react in that way." Then she went to try and get me in trouble with someone else, assuming the other employee was a manager when in fact they were just a donation attendant. The issue died there, and the woman never brought her dogs back again, but despite being an obvious case of deflection, it was my first entry in my GICW book.
$500 Key Lady:
Until working in retail, I never really thought about how many people lose stuff... Multiple times each day people "Forget their wallet." Usually that's just an excuse to leave after having stolen something, but sometimes it's legit. People lose phones, scarves, sweatshirts, as well as keys. A standard car key can be replaced at a dealership for $20-30. In an ever more common practice, some cars come with imobilizer chip keys. If the key is not present or in the ignition, the car cannot be started. No hot wire, nothing. Great anti-theft, but it boosts the price of the key. My Mazda has an immobilizer chip key that costs $100 to replace. Anyhow, this customer had a BMW with an imobilizer key. Perhaps she lost it in our store? In the parking lot? We never got that part of the story. She wanted every employee to stop what they were doing and assist her, for hours, searching for it. She was quite irate when we offered to take her contact information, and we even relented some and had two employees look for a while. Still, not enough. Hours of her irate, and any time she enters the store my shoulders droop.
Lamp Post:
This is Jordan's public enemy #1. He'd probably be better at telling it than me. On rather rare occassion, we'll lose contact with the service that processes all non-cash transactions (debit/credit/checks). On super, super rare occassion, it also cuts us off from the other stores. This rather small man wanted to buy a ye olde style lamp post, a rather significant investment. Due to the outage, his credit wouldn't scan through. We got a supervisor up there, apologized profusely, offered to hold the item indefinately and even call when we'd be able to scan it through. He was there for a half hour or so, getting ever more irate. He wanted the supervisor to pay the credit portion for him, or to deduct it that amount. She got rather infuriated back and stated clearly why we could only do what we offered. In the end we either made a false credit or the system came back, but what was clear was that when he comes in, we all know the day is a bit worse.
Donation Park and Ride:
The donation drive thru is not a place to park, let alone blocking the doors. Two donation attendants screaming that you can't leave a vehicle parked there might be the first warning. An announcement coming overhead, "Will the owners of a green Ford please return to your vehicle in the donation area immediatly" might be the second. After shopping for twenty minutes, the verbal falling out at the door was almost spectacular in its horror. Innocents were caught in the cross fire, including a new supervisor days into the job getting called a fat ass despite not taking part in the verbal altercation. The donation attendants were called liars for claiming they had asked them not to park there. And yet, despite all this, they bought a matress and frames from us... Still, terrible parking job.
Defying Gravity:
So as I was putting clothes away one night, I looked up and spotted a child somewhere between 6 and 10 perched atop the book aisles. In a demonstrative tone I shouted "Get down." Perhaps it was too demonstrative as it summoned his mother from several rows over. She hit the boy while he was still on the bookshelves, thus ending his desire to actually attempt to get down. He tried to use anything on the top of the shelves as ammo to throw at his mother, but his mother disappeared again, trying to get other family members to assist most likely. With the mother gone, I moved over and asked the boy "Would you be comfortable if I helped you down?" He nodded yes and then I held out my hands to support him by his shoulders. It was actually quite easy, he weighed less than an arm load of clothes or books. Once down, the family spirited away into the store, and left about twenty minutes later. When the security footage was reviewed to put a picture on the incident report, we found the child's younger sibling (and mother) ran around behind the registers as well... which is not cool. Interesting mentions of this incident ranged from Adrienne noticing "Joe arms" rising up to procure the boy, and Jordan's mad scramble to figure out who to alert to this unprecidented situation.
(dis)Honorable Mentions:
Hawk Eyes, Mumble Gruff, and others: My least favorite place to work is the glass showcase. It really personifies wasted time. If we're at the registers, we're selling stuff. If we're on the floor, we're stocking stuff. Tangible numbers, tangible time, tangible improvement. The showcase is a time trap... It's a neccessary evil, of course, but you'd think there was nothing worse than someone who had to look at every single thing... But there's something worse... If you work all the way from one end to the other, then work your way back, and even possibly start making a third pass... That is hell. Mumble Gruff even asked me today "if I wasn't here, what would you be doing? Would you prefer that or this?" Perhaps she lingered because I said "I'd be putting away clothes, and probably that. We get in trouble if we don't get the clothes put away." I guess she wanted us to get in trouble...
Never send a dad to do a daughter's dirty work: How do you round out four hours of switching price tags? Always send your seven year old daughter through line with the merchandise to avoid getting called on it!
Oh no, I'll wait for anyone that's not you: Regular price switcher? You won't go to those that always catch you on it? Yeah, cashiers can warn each other with non verbal cues...
Mega-hips: Regular price switcher, hips wider than she was tall. After years of getting away with it, a non-verbal conversation between me and Jordan managed to get her caught by the authorities and forever banished. Huzzah!