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January 18, 2012
RETAIL HELL STORY TIME 2-FER: AWKWARD CUSTY MOMENT AND MISTAKEN CUSTY IDENTITY
Here's a couple of short anecdotes that are too short for a submission on their own.
The first one is from back when I was working at a computer store in Ogden, UT. I was in the back room where the computers get repaired. The daughter of one of the owners, who was then about 10-12 years old, came in so I greeted her in my customary fashion for greeting children I'm familiar with: "Hey shorty! (not that she's short for her age, it's just a thing I say to kids)"
Unbeknownst to me, there was a customer just on the other side of the door.
This lady was of small stature.
Luckily, she's a longtime customer and understood that I wasn't talking to her, since I didn't even know she was there.
* * *
The second one is much more recent, from a few weeks ago. A fellow associate came up to me at work and asked if I knew how to get fish from the aquarium.
Being that the pet department is one of the most understaffed in the entire store, most or all of the folks in the adjacent departments, especially the garden center, are trained to get fish, too, and I'm no exception. I wasn't sure which department he was in, but I took him over to the fish tanks.
There was a customer there - this detail is important. I proceeded to show him how to prepare the bag, which tools to use and where they're located, all that good stuff, and have him get the fish and put them into the bag. I demonstrated the procedure to tie it up in such a way as to leave a bunch of air at the top, then wrote in marker on the bag to identify the type (UPC) and quantity of the fish, then handed him the bag.
Well, as it turns out, the fish were for him, and the customer at the tank didn't even want anything. So in essence I just made a customer, who happened to also work at the store, get his own fish!
He wasn't upset about that, and I inquired about his fish's well-being a few times after that.
--Duke Of URL
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