Retail Stories!

[ThatNickGuy]

Inspired by a post over at the "You might be an ass..." thread, let's share some retail stories! Yay! I swear, I could probably write a book on the number of ones I've heard or experienced.

I'll start with two of my all time favourites. Everything else pales in comparison. I might have told one or both of these before on here, but I'm not sure.

1) Setting: Subway

The store I used to work at was near the bars. So, late Friday nights were insane. Towards the end of one night, a group of admittedly quite hot young chicks come in. They're pretty tipsy, but one of them had clearly had more to drink than the others. A looker - blonde, long legs, huge...tracks of land - but likely not much going on upstairs. We (co-worker and I) theorized former cheerleader.

Anyway, she stumbles up to the counter, lifts up her shirt to reveal the goods and say, "Hey, if I show you my tits, will you give me a free sub?"

Me: "Um, no, I'd get in trouble for that."
Her: *jiggle* Are you suuuuure?
Me: "They're very nice, but sorry, I can't do that."

So, she moves down the line while her friends order. Suddenly, she hikes up her already relatively short skirt, plants a leg up on the sneeze guard...and reveals that she's gone commando that evening. She starts rubbing herself back and forth against the sneeze guard, I guess trying to look erotic or something.

Me: "Please...just...just go."

So she stumbles outside to wait for her friends and that was it for her.

End of the night was the best, though. I was cleaning up the containers and such while my co-worker was mopping the front. Jokingly, he put his face close to the spot where she was and pretends to lick it up. Unfortunately, as I said, he'd been mopping the floors...slipped...and planted face first into the sneezeguard. Never seen someone run to the bathroom so quick before.

2) Setting: Gay bar

A good friend of mine worked as a bouncer at various bars. For awhile, he worked at a popular gay bar. Now, he's not gay and, in fact, happily married, which I think makes the punchline funnier. My friend is...well, he's a big guy. We're talking John Goodman kind of big man. Not the kinda guy you screw with. But also the kind that wears his heart on his sleeve. Great guy.

Anyway, I was waiting for him after work. We were going to go for drinks or something. I'm waiting in the parking lot out back and there's this drunk, homeless old man stumbling around.

My friend comes out the back door and is just about to lock it when...
Old Man: Yooooooou fucking ******! You an' yer kind are nothing...*keeps mumbling something I don't hear*
Friend: Is that a fact?

He just nods and doesn't even give the guy the time of day. He turns around to lock the door...and the old guy shoves him hard against the door.

Old Man: Ah'm not gunno glory hole you, you fuckin' ******!

My friend just nods calmly, locks the door, turns around and smiles at the guy. He leans in close. The old guy was maybe tall enough up to my friend's chest and about a third his size.

Friend: (very politely, with a smile) Sir, if I wanted to fuck you up the ass...could you stop me?

The old guy's face goes white, he sobers up on the spot and gets out of there as fast as he can.

 

[Silver Jelly]

Friend: (very politely, with a smile) Sir, if I wanted to fuck you up the ass...could you stop me?

The old guy's face goes white, he sobers up on the spot and gets out of there as fast as he can.

That's real badassery, no pun intended.

 

[GasBandit]

Heh, it's like a more salacious version of notalwaysright.com.... proceed.

(nothing even remotely like that has ever happened to me in my work. Closest I've got is the time in high school when I worked at best buy and almost fell off the top of the display shelves. But, it was almost.)

 

[PatrThom]

I've had a guy come up to the counter with the last gallon of milk in the store (convenience store, early morning), place it on the counter while waiting in line, knock it off the counter so that it explodes on the floor, and then demand a refund. It took longer to explain to the guy (he was intoxicated - surprise!) that I couldn't refund something he hadn't yet paid for than it did to clean up the mess.

While I was an assistant manager, I also had a guy ask about filling out an application to work at the store who, when he handed it in, admitted that he had punched out the manager at another store when he had previously worked for the company. He then went on to explain, "But he deserved it!" I don't believe they ever even called him for an interview.

--Patrick

 

[Matt²]

I've had a small sign up in my shop for the last year that says "Free advice given at the rate of $30 per half hour" (which is nearly double my current hour rate) with a smiley face on it.

situation : guy comes across the parking lot and starts asking me questions about what to do with problems on his computer.. I've learned since then to not answer those types and say ".. if you bring it in I can take a look at it instead" instead of talking myself out of work.. anyways, at this time I hadn't realized that and was telling him what he should do,.. but then he starts to argue with him over the free advice! He finally walked out in a huff.. I later learned that he (or his twin) assaulted a television news cameraman.

 

[LordRendar]

notalwaysright.com.... proceed.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.................. (gets sucked into the site,dissapearing for the next few hoursreading amusing annecdotes and nodding,feeling the pain only people in the service and retail industry know.)

 

[Chazwozel]

I used to work at Home Depot:

Guy: Do you sell generators?

Me: Yeah, they're in the last aisle in hardware

Guy: Do you know how generators work?

Me: Yeah, basically it's lawn mower engine attached to a spinning dynamo or alternator. It converts mechanical energy from a gas engine to electrical through the spinning of the dynamo.

Guy: Is there any way I could hook up water to the generator, you know, so it powers it?

Me: uh, you could run water through a water wheel or build a dam...

Guy: I was thinking of hooking my hose up, like up, you know, up high and then the water flows and spins the - what did you call it- dynamo. I'll be rich with my invention.

Me: uh, well... no. You're inventing a perpetual motion machine. The pressure (or flow) from your hose has pressure in it from being pumped up into a water tower. That takes energy. Secondly, they already do this on a mass scale using gravity: it's called a hydroelectric dam.

Guy: Uh, no, my hose water comes pressurized, I don't have to put it in a tower.

Me: uh, What?

Guy: What if I get on my deck and pour the water myself, would that make you happy?

Me: I don't really care what you do, but now you're just "inventing" a dam.

Guy: Wow, you think you're better than me?

Me: uh, what?

Guy: You know so fucking much about generators and electronic [Sic] why the fuck are you working at Home Depot, smartass?

Me: I go to college...

Guy: I'm going to Lowes, maybe there they'll treat great inventors with respect!

Me: (under my breath) See ya Tom Edison.


Do I need to mention that the guy looked like an ultimate Frisbee playing hippie?


__________

So theft of power tools is always a huge issue at Home Depot. One day while I was working the self-checkout registers this guy comes plowing through with a cart full of power tools. He literally had about 3 grand in this cart.

I stop him.

Me: Wow, that's certainly a lot of power tools. I need to see your receipt.

Thief: I PAID FOR THIS! HOW DARE YOU CALL ME A THIEF!??!?

Me: I just want to see your receipt, sir. No need to get angry. I'm not calling you anything.

Thief: MY RECEIPT IS IN THE CAR! I'M NOT GOING TO GET IT.

Me: Then I can't let you out with all this stuff. Sorry.

Thief: THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. <starts a chain of F-bombs, cussing me out>

My manager at this point interjects and tells him if he doesn't get the fuck out of the store in 10 seconds he's calling the police. The guy leaves.

 

[Hailey Knight]

After "I'll be rich with my invention."

You should've said: "No, I'll be rich. Thanks for the idea, sucker!"

 

[Chazwozel]

After "I'll be rich with my invention."

You should've said: "No, I'll be rich. Thanks for the idea, sucker!"

The guy was a loon. I didn't want to encourage him.

Man, I've got tons of these stories. An old man got really pissed off at me once because we don't carry T-squares for table saws. He called me worthless because I didn't leave my register to help him find anything (I'm the fucking cashier)! I had suggested that he may find a table saw T-square replacement by the actual table saws or with the T-squares in the "tool corral". I guess he took my statement to heart and thought I said we did have them, and I was simply refusing to help him.

 

[Hailey Knight]

I'm lucky my jobs have been breaking rocks/digging holes/painting before college, and then a proofreading job after college. The closest I ever did to "service" was my 2-4 hours a week at the front desk in my college admissions office, and I usually approached people with such a subservient nature that they never got in my face about anything.

I think only one person ever got angry at me, one of those "My Child is Special" moms. Around the waiting area, we had sheets explaining different majors available, their primary courses, their professors, etc. The woman orders her daughter to collect one of everything, and then starts growling at me over the admissions price, the number of courses in Pre-Med, Pre-Law. She eventually demanded to speak with someone else, so I went upstairs for a supervisor, who she went on the same rant about how the little sheets of paper didn't tell her enough, and why should her daughter go to this school. I'd love to say my supervisor just shrugged her off, but I think she actually pulled one of the other student workers out to bring her to one of the class buildings and find a professor (read: waste someone's time).

Two quickies were decent though:

- I had to call certain student homes to see if they were still interested in coming. Third call, a woman speaking broken English picks up the phone. I start to ask about the student. "NO ONE HOME!" and I hear the phone crash down on the receiver. :|

- Sitting at the front desk while a tour of the campus is about to get started, I see a woman storm out of the meet-up room in a huff, dragging her 17 or 18 year old daughter by the arm like a 3-year-old, and she shouted something along the lines of "Well, I never!" or "Not putting up with that!" I watched her go and my boss came out with a blank look on her face. They had just mentioned that the school had a large gay population and apparently this was too much for the mother. My boss just looked at me and shrugged. "Eh, she don't wanna be here, we don't need her."

 

[HCGLNS]

Ages ago I worked in the the engineering department of a major hotel. Regardless of your duties their, guest calls always come first unless it would affect public safety. So I am working on some paper work and get a call that a guest has a horrible noise in their room. So being the only one available I trundle off to investigate. Turns out their is a loud humming noise in their room, reverberating throughout it. Now this is rather bizarre because there are no actual sources of mechanical or electrical noises in any of the rooms in this hotel, all services are supplied remotely from the roof. So I search the surrounding rooms for an external source (hell guests will bring anything and plug it in). I return having found nothing and I notice that the buzzing is still there but lessened. The guest is irate that the sound is still present. Baffled I look around the room to see what if anything has changed and noticed that she has moved her bags. I step forward and listen to her bags, and say "Ma'am do you have an electric toothbrush? The source of the sound is your bag, I believe that it was just echoing when you had it in the hallway." She turned beet red.

Yeah, it wasn't a toothbrush.