Some people just suck at retail.

I heard from a friend that my blog has changed her mind about the way she behaves in stores.  She is now much less likely to drop merchandise where ever she pleases and that is a very good thing.  However, thinking on my own experience in retail hell, I wanted to offer some observations on those who just suck at this job.

I work with a girl, yes literally an 18 year old girl whose biggest goal in life is to become an underwear model.  No I am not kidding.  That is all she wants to do and thinks that this particular store is a great place to start.  Have I mentioned in all honesty that she is kind of well....uh...dumb?  So dumb in fact that she struggles to alphabetize stock in the store room.  During our training, which I was so lucky to have with her, she told me she wants us all to be best friends.  In fact, she gave us a little taste of her next beauty pageant speech about how....and I quote...."How like, diversity is so super important, because like everyone can all be friends and that is like so important because then we can have like world peace."  No I am not kidding!  Sometimes when she speaks I like to count how many times she uses the word "like".  Its a fun way to divert attention away from the fact that she is speaking at all.  I know its a little mean, but I am here to tell the truth and the truth is not always kind.

Customer service skills are not her strong point, in fact I have had to try to deal with many of her angry customers.  She often answers questions with "I don't know" or "Um, I am not sure." Which you know when shopping just pisses you off.  It is in fact her job to know.  And because she is "cute" she is on the sales floor, chatting with customers, and those of us who are not as "cute" are in the back actually working.  No, I am not kidding about that either.  I have in fact been told that I am not cute enough to be on the floor.  So, as I am stocking the floor, she tells me to go get her something from the back, and then proceeds to tell the customer, "Oh she will get it, she is good at it"....AND THEN.....the customer who was asking her for help gets mad at me because she gave her the wrong size and I did not move fast enough for her.  REALLY???  Forgive me ever perfect customer that I don't like being told by an 18 year old what to do and that I did not jump and run to the back for your ever important size.  I did in fact drop what I was doing to get this persons item, its just that she was mad at her, and so she yelled at me because she was getting bad service.

I am great with customers, but not cute enough.  Maybe I am too old for this.  So let it be said that I know lots of people are not cut out for this kind of job, slavery is not for everyone.