Ab Initio
If you're a floor employee at any large retailer, you know what a bitch the entire Christmas season is. The Christmas season starts, for us anyway, at the beginning of October and goes through Boxing Day (day after Christmas).
Customers turn even more feral than usual, there is NOISE every minute the store is open (and by "NOISE", I mean screaming, kicking, crying kids whose Mum has seen fit to drag along with her as she goes up one aisle, down the next, oblivious to the disruption the kid(s) is/are causing to the ear drums of both staff and other shoppers), shoplifters figure that they have a better chance of stealing in the midst of all the confusion and the checkout lanes stretch to the ends of the store.
I fucking HATE this time of year, because it is enough to drive me up the wall. I'm constantly stopped by customers asking "do you work here?" I wear the store uniform, with a big badge proclaiming that my name is Cody and I work for MajorRetailer. But, just to make sure, they all ask the same question - "do you work here?" Inevitably they want to know if we carry such-and-such a toy (which I have never heard of but which is this year's hit with the two-to-four-year-old market), where the toilets are, and the location of those exercise balls that were advertised in week-before-last's catalog (they think).
The worst part, however, is that one of my jobs is to carry out large and/or heavy items to customers' vehicles, and EVERYONE wants my arse this time of year to take their crap out to their car.
Do you wanna know why this is so annoying? It's because whenever some fuckwit buys a 110 pound, eight-foot long trampoline set, I get to pick up the trampoline set from Sporting Goods, maneuver the frigging thing through the store, then outside - to their tiny little Suzuki hatchback. "Do you think it will fit?" said fuckwit customer will ask anxiously? Believe me, it takes every bit of willpower not to drop the whole fucking set onto fuckwit customer's foot.
Lemme ask potential customers for one small kindness: please, please make sure that your goddam car is gonna be big enough to carry the item you're buying. And I'll answer a few questions before you ask them, right now:
1) No, dumbass, it will NOT slide through the hatch and rest on the front and back seats - it will stick out a mile in the back and when it falls out/gets hit by the car behind you in traffic, you're gonna blame me for it.
2) No, I do NOT have the time to zig-zag my way back into the store, through 10,000 customers who get real annoyed with having to move out of the way, with your fucking trampoline set, and then make the arrangements to have it courier'd to you, which involves phone calls and paperwork.
3) No, I cannot rope the trampoline set to the top of your car. Unless you don't mind having your head crushed to pulp on the drive home.
People: think about what you're buying - beforehand - and whether you have space in your car or other vehicle sufficient to carry the item.
I'll tell you more about why I so intensely hate Xmas in my next post.
Customers turn even more feral than usual, there is NOISE every minute the store is open (and by "NOISE", I mean screaming, kicking, crying kids whose Mum has seen fit to drag along with her as she goes up one aisle, down the next, oblivious to the disruption the kid(s) is/are causing to the ear drums of both staff and other shoppers), shoplifters figure that they have a better chance of stealing in the midst of all the confusion and the checkout lanes stretch to the ends of the store.
I fucking HATE this time of year, because it is enough to drive me up the wall. I'm constantly stopped by customers asking "do you work here?" I wear the store uniform, with a big badge proclaiming that my name is Cody and I work for MajorRetailer. But, just to make sure, they all ask the same question - "do you work here?" Inevitably they want to know if we carry such-and-such a toy (which I have never heard of but which is this year's hit with the two-to-four-year-old market), where the toilets are, and the location of those exercise balls that were advertised in week-before-last's catalog (they think).
The worst part, however, is that one of my jobs is to carry out large and/or heavy items to customers' vehicles, and EVERYONE wants my arse this time of year to take their crap out to their car.
Do you wanna know why this is so annoying? It's because whenever some fuckwit buys a 110 pound, eight-foot long trampoline set, I get to pick up the trampoline set from Sporting Goods, maneuver the frigging thing through the store, then outside - to their tiny little Suzuki hatchback. "Do you think it will fit?" said fuckwit customer will ask anxiously? Believe me, it takes every bit of willpower not to drop the whole fucking set onto fuckwit customer's foot.
Lemme ask potential customers for one small kindness: please, please make sure that your goddam car is gonna be big enough to carry the item you're buying. And I'll answer a few questions before you ask them, right now:
1) No, dumbass, it will NOT slide through the hatch and rest on the front and back seats - it will stick out a mile in the back and when it falls out/gets hit by the car behind you in traffic, you're gonna blame me for it.
2) No, I do NOT have the time to zig-zag my way back into the store, through 10,000 customers who get real annoyed with having to move out of the way, with your fucking trampoline set, and then make the arrangements to have it courier'd to you, which involves phone calls and paperwork.
3) No, I cannot rope the trampoline set to the top of your car. Unless you don't mind having your head crushed to pulp on the drive home.
People: think about what you're buying - beforehand - and whether you have space in your car or other vehicle sufficient to carry the item.
I'll tell you more about why I so intensely hate Xmas in my next post.
posted by Cody Mac at
4:12 PM
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