Can't always get what you want.

You can’t always get what you want. No matter whom you are. Especially, if you just got hired, and are trying to argue with you manager. It’s a Tuesday night and I’m closing. There are markdowns & marketing to do. This is when certain items in the store get a clearance sticker on them and you have to figure out a way to market the new price point. After instructing a newer associate how to refold some sweat pants, I proceed to ask her to mark them down as well. She replies, “Are you serious.” Um, yes that is what I just asked you to do, are you okay? She goes, “I’m just livid.” Now I’ve only heard this word a few times and it was not a good situation. Hearing this statement come out of this girl’s mouth frusterated the hell out of me, as well as made me laugh.

 As I’m setting up this markdown gun for her, she whips out her iPhone are starts texting away, I look up and say, “Are you texting all your friends what a mean manager you have”? No just my brother. What nerve. Anyways, show her how to mark these pants down, which really is nothing more difficult that a 5 year old could probably do. Once completed with that assignment she approaches me with the question, “What’s next.” And not the kind of peppy voice you’re assuming came out of her, like I asked her to starve herself for three weeks and then run a marathon kind of tone. I think to myself, I’m scheduled…no WE’RE scheduled to stay until 2am, and I’m not letting this little girl get her way.

I go on by telling her what other items have to get marked down. Which by the way, I had two other employees AS WELL AS MYSELF, doing this markdowns. She acted as if I was out to get her. I hear her saying how she’s just in a bad mood because she’s been up since 6am doing hair. Did I tell you that you had to take on a second job? Did I purposely schedule you a day that I had no idea you even had another job on the same day?

This...is a kesha.

 No to both of those questions if not already assumed. Is putting stickers on price tags too agonizing for ya? I even offered if she wanted to switch with another person so she would be straightening up the clothes instead of doing markdowns, “NO, I’M FINE.” Was what I got. After making her mark down the other half of the store she approaches me with another “NOW WHAT”. I threw up a peace sign and said you can go home now. She goes, “No, really, what now.” As if she really thinks I WANT her there to listen to her heavy signs and complaining. No, you can really go home. She clocks out and leaves, walks back in the door 3 minutes later because she forgot her Ke$ha34@#$%$&** CD.

 Does that give you any idea what this girl’s like? “She needs to chill the fuck out, and smoke a bowl or something”, Came out of the mouth of another worker after kesha left the building.

The customer's always right.

The saying of 'the customer's always right'...is wrong. As a manager of a retail store and being an employee for two previous years, I've learned, the customer's NOT always right, in fact a lot of the time they're dead wrong. The other day there was a customer shopping around, mind she had a coupon. Once at the register to check out she asks the cashier “am I able to use this today”? The cashier looks at the coupon [EXPIRES 11.15.2010.] it was already mid December. The cashier replies, “no ma’am unfortunately the coupon expired last month.” Pause…”Is that your manager over there”? Pointing in my direction as I overheard this whole conversation. “Yes it is actually.” I pull my head up asking if there’s something I can help them with. She goes, “Am I able to use this”? It’s a coupon for 30% off our entire collection, automatically I think wow this customer spends a lot of money here. “No it actually expired last month; you should have gotten a coupon recently that doesn’t expire until after Christmas.” Pause. She pulls it from her other hand acting as if I caught her stealing or something? The cashier goes to throw it away and after the transaction is complete she goes, “Well let me have that back because the OTHER stores let me use it.” It’s funny how someone can make you feel so uncomfortable by you just following the rules. If I let you use that coupon, you’re cheating the system because all you’re doing is constantly getting a discount, which is fine, if you don’t wait until a month later to use it. If no coupons expired, what makes it any more wrong of me to take a coupon from last year? There’s a date on it for a reason and I don’t know what it’s like to be royalty and get my way everywhere I go because I’m an overworked, stressed out, middle aged parent who’s buying clothes for their kids, not even themselves.

 Another funny story. A woman comes in with a pair of jeans that had a rip down the crotch seam, they were her daughter’s jeans that she had bought for back to school, AKA August. We actually sold out of the jeans after they went down to $19.95, in fact all the stores in the district did. It is wrong that they ripped after a couple of months, but let me continue. I ask her if she has the receipt, no. I’m going to have to give you store credit for $19.95, because that was the price of the denim before we clearanced out of them. “Well that’s just not right, so you’re telling me you have NO other jeans like this.” Well I can show you some that are pretty much the same color, same style, same fit, just a different price. “How much is the price difference”? She demands. I go to the register, “You would owe us around $20.00 because the jeans you’d be purchasing are still full price.” “Um, can’t you look up how much I paid for them using my rewards card”? We are technically not allowed to do that, only because once again. There are boundaries for a reason, you lose your receipt, and you get store credit. Being interested in how much she ACTUALLY paid for them, I go along with the woman. I swipe her card and go to the month of August, I check the tag, scroll down, and what do I see…$5.95. I approach the woman with a sense of confidence. I let her know that she only paid 6 bucks for a pair of jeans and odds are she used a coupon at the time of buying them taking that $20 pair of jeans to $6. She was definatly in shock.

She tries to laugh like nothing ever happened; now I’m her best friend. I tell her that she probably should go with my original idea of crediting those jeans for store credit. She giggles and agrees. Once again showing that the customer is not always right, there are rules for a reason, and that there’s more to managing clothes than many believe.

Management Vs. Parenting

When hired as an employee your first thoughts may be; money, money, money. At least, that’s what mine were. I got a job because I had to get a car and I had to get a car to get to my job. I was probably one of the more reliable employees where I was hired because anytime someone needed a shift covered, I’d always take it. Nowadays, I’m seeing people who beg for these minimum wage jobs, then once hired, won’t do shit.

I think that with the change of everything in this new world, our work ethic had dramatically decreased. I have to train a lot of the new hires and the expression on some of their faces when I ask them to do something so daunting as getting a fitting room or taking out the garbage is quite delightful. You got hired here to do this; you’re actually getting PAID right now to do this, why are you complaining? I wish that was more of a rhetorical question. My parents both always tell me how they would work 50 hour weeks so on and so forth and there are 16-18 year olds getting hired where they act as if it’s the end of the world to do simple tasks. I didn’t ASK you if you wanted an application, in most cases, you turned one in, in hopes to get a call back-interview-then hired. It’s not fair for companies and businesses to be wasting time training kids like this who act as if they’re some sort of royalty.

Not to mention it’s a waste of payroll, or even other associates or perspective workers who might actually NEED a job, not just want one because they don’t get enough allowance a week. To me, your work ethic is your morals. That is what your drive is through life. My drive is to get happy, be successful in myself and not having to worry about living paycheck to paycheck. With that, I work hard to get the money I need to do things in my everyday life I consider a pleasure. It is hard to judge someone who is asking for a job, because you don’t really know what they will turn out like upon being hired. Someone can talk you into thinking they are the best worker alive, and deserve nothing but to be accepted into the workplace. On their first day they have a hard time grasping that, YES I DO expect you to work just as hard as you wanted this job because YOU told me how hard of a worker you were.

If you want something bad enough, work for it. You can’t expect to get what you want without effort. Don’t expect to get respect by being just the opposite. Hard concepts? No they are not. I think that this society as we know it is going downhill. Kids are more concerned with their iPhones or headphones while people across the world are worried about if they’re going to have a meal to eat the next day. Fair? No. Parents aren’t setting boundaries and it’s clear in the workplace with the outcome of these new faces in the ‘working world’. In conclusion, it’s sad to say that the parents themselves don’t even have the time of day to see these occurrences in their very own households.