Late Arrivals

There is nothing - nothing - that pisses me and my workmates off more than customers who come in to do their Xmas/Back to School/Anything shopping ten minutes before The Store closes.

I see them roll up in the carpark - Mummy, Daddy and their 5 kids - at 5:50 pm, unload all the rug-rats, and stroll leisurely into the shop. Big sign at the front of the shop - Closing Time 6 pm - is ignored. They all head off their separate ways - Mummy to the Larger Ladies section, Daddy to Fishing and Camping, and the spawn to CDs and DVDs. Never mind that the tills are starting to be shut down, never mind that they are the only customers in the shop, never mind that NONE OF US GET PAID FOR WORKING OVERTIME.

It's now 5:55 pm and one of the register operators makes the "5-minutes-left-to-shop" call over the PA system. Do these fuckers make a beeline to the tills? No, they just keep rollin' along, adding item after item to their trolleys. The kids throw in heaps of junk-food, toys and electronic games, all of which will be discarded at the checkouts ("No, Brian, we are NOT buying all that - I told you before!"), and all of which will have to be put away again by the night staff.

Customers, please, please, time your department store visits to end before closing. Even if you want to buy "just one" item - that "one" item is holding up all of the staff, who just wanna get home, not service your dim-witted self. And when the staff announce that it's 5 minutes, or 10 minutes, before closing - stop whatever you're doing and head to the checkouts.

Please.

Day From Hell

So, yesterday was Xmas Eve and as usual it was mass confusion and irritation from start to finish.

Customers bitching about the heat (summer is here but the a/c system has been fucked for several years. Years.). Customers fighting among themselves about going through the "exit" line instead of the "entrance" line. Stealing, stealing and more stealing. Customers carrying out half-a-dozen wrapped parcels containing 100 stock items redeemed from Layby, and setting off the security buzzers, which means they gotta open the parcels so we can see what set the buzzers off. They love being stopped like that. Screaming, kicking, swearing, sweaty kids who didn't want to go with Mummy to The Store and who Mummy simply ignores for the whole time they're in there. It's such a Christmas-y atmosphere in The Store today.

I'm "on trolleys" today, which means I'm trolley collector, but that job also includes literally anything that the department managers don't wanna do, and in fact doesn't normally involve more than a coupla hours total bringing in trolleys. It's the extra shit that makes it a hard job.

At noon, the Store Manager comes to me and says "if you have time" (which means "if you don't find the time, don't bother showing up at work. Ever."), could I blow up the 300 balloons that they want for the Day After Xmas Sale. The helium cylinder is kept behind layby, which, at this time of year, is wall-to-wall stock. I get David, the young college dude who works here part-time, to shift some of the stock outta the way so I can get to the fucking cylinder, and start blowing up the balloons. After 10 or 12 balloons, the cylinder runs out of helium. I report this to the Store Manager who tells me he's got much more important shit on his plate, so to take my problems to his Assistant. The Assistant says to contact his assistant to see if the party-hire shop we use has any filled cylinders we can exchange for this dead one. They do. I ask Store Manager if I can take his car, but he doesn't have the company car that day, so I gotta schlep 5 long blocks with the dud cylinder on a trolley. And bring back the full one.

It's raining and the streets and footpaths are crowded but I get to the party hire shop and make the exchange. Get back to The Store and resume my blow job, puncturing a whole lotta balloons in the process, which scares the crap out of the Layby girls, who scream every time it happens and swear at me.

I was supposed to finish at 6 pm, and had got everything done that needed to be done so that I could get the fuck outta there as soon as they made the "store is now closed" announcement.

At 5:30 the Store Manager comes up and says I need to do a trolley run, up and down the street, so that any errant trolleys won't get damaged while the shop is closed for Xmas Day. Guys, it's hot outside, with light rain falling (which I had been out in for a good part of the day, bringing trolleys back in) and I really, really didn't want to go down the street hunting up the fuckers. The footpaths here in this town slope towards the street and trying to maneuver half-a-dozen trolleys several blocks back to The Store is just so a major pain in the arse. That's putting it VERY mildly. I openly curse the lazy, mother-fucking bogans who leave trolleys scattered over town and get startled looks from some passers-by.

But out I trot...up and down the street, and find about 7 trolleys. Getting them back to The Store was enough to put me in a fouler mood than I'd been, but I did it. And got back to The Store at 5 minutes to 6 pm.

I have this look on my face that says "don't any of you dare ask me to one more thing", which works, and I exit the place at 6:01 pm.

Hope ya'll have a Merry Christmas! And remember to go to the Big Sale on Boxing Day - cuz I won't be working that day! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Thieves

Christmas seems to multiply exponentially the number of department store thieves at the place where I work. My guess is that they figure that with all the noise and confusion of Christmas shopping, they have a better chance of ripping off the stores.

One of my roles at The Store involves that of Door Greeter. We're the chick/dude who you see when you come into the shop, ostensibly to say g'day to you when you step through the door, thereby enhancing your shopping experience.

In reality, we're there to stop thieves, or at least cut down on the amount of stock stolen. If you've been in this role as long as I have, you can usually identify potential shoplifters in a number of ways. Not always, I should add, but a lot of the time.

I am still, after having done this job for a number of years, gobsmacked by the people who I wouldn't suspect of being thieves but who do it...and have been doing it on a regular basis...sweet-looking old ladies who smile so nicely as they exit the store - after having stolen clothing, hidden deep inside their handbags, under the knitting gear. Fresh, cute young girls from the local Catholic high school who just happen to have stolen $250 worth of apparel and who suddenly get VERY nasty with the store detective who stops them...until they see the evidence on video. Schoolboys with emo haircuts who get caught swiping boxes of hair-removal kits. I mean...WTF?? Do they shave their legs? (and yes, I do know that leg-shaving is common with dudes now...)Pubes? Or schoolboys with emo haircuts who steal packets of condoms. Or schoolgirls who steal pregnancy testing kits.

Yep, it's all ages and types who steal from department stores but it's mainly the under-25 crowd who do the best job of it. I don't know what happens to them after the cops come in to take them to be booked at the cop shop and I dont know what goes on in court when their case comes up. But I really often wonder if catching them and prosecuting them actually stops them from stealing in the future. Maybe, I guess.

We had an old girl, well into her 70's, escorted out of the store the other week, into the waiting police van. Her body language indicated to me (anyway) that she'd been in this sort of van before. When she was stopped by security, she told them that her son ordered her to steal, evidently to support a drug habit of his. I believe her.

Very few days go by without at least one customer escorted out of the store into a waiting police van.

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.