Guest Post- A Retail Hell Story

For those of us who have worked retail, we have some idea what it's like- in fact, many of us have been there, or have at least witnessed events that those working in retail have to put up with on a day to day basis. I once myself worked a job in retail, and I can tell you, it's not easy.

Kerry, from Signing Life joins me as a guest blogger today to share an event from when she, herself, worked in retail. Thanks, Kerry, for helping me out.

I shall start by saying that I know I probably shouldn't have been this angry over this occurrence, but at that point in my retail HELL career, I felt I could not help it, nor did I care.

During one of my last months in retail hell, I dealt with the rudest, most inconsiderate devilspawn I've ever encountered, while I was closing ALONE as USUAL. They may have even beaten out the bitchy six-year-old first grader I took care of at a summer day camp (a story for another day).

These three little demon hellspawn seemed to be all sisters, or at least related in some way. The oldest was not more than twelve years of age, the middle one eight or nine, and the youngest about six. Two “adults” --and I use that term extraordinarily loosely-- presumably at least one mother, were accompanying them. As the older females shopped, the maniacal children were running around the department yelling, being obnoxiously loud, and knocking things off shelves and off racks, leaving them on the floor, apathetic to the fact that I now had to clean up after their piggy little aggravating antics like the little jerks they were. 

During their shenanigans, the oldest apparently picked up some shirts to try on, as she bombarded the fitting room with her and her sisters' presence. Every damn time they closed the door, they SLAMMED it shut. Which is not only disturbing to my ear drums, but if they broke it, no one else could use that room until it gets fixed, which was probably never, leaving a longer line for other customers and more headaches for us.

As she's trying things on, she's yelling through the door at her mom or whoever who is sitting RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DAMN ROOM. It's very close quarters, you can hear each other freakin’ whisper in there.

When she was finally finished, she waltzed out of the room like the diva she thought she was, and continued to run around with the younger ones.

As I saw that she brought NOTHING out with her, I went in to check the room, KNOWING that everything was left in there.

Sure enough, like I have some kind of retail hell psychic curse, there are the shirts, every single one of them, thrown all over the chair, tangled together, and not even one of them was hung back up.

Apparently, I must have “angrily” began cleaning up after them (what a surprise), because after I had brought the shirts out and hung them on the rack right outside the damn doors and began folding a table of pants nearby, where I wasn't in visibility range of the fitting rooms, the mom said something about cleaning up after themselves for me --whether it was positive or negative, I have no idea.

I don't know what the girl said in response to this, but I heard her mom say “As she was cleaning up, she was hanging them up really hard.”

The girl said something I couldn't hear, probably extremely rude, to which her mom must have told her she was being too loud, because she immediately followed it with, “Good, I hope I'm loud enough so she can hear me.”

OH REALLY?! WHY DON'T YOU SAY THAT TO MY FACE THEN, BITCH?!

All her mom said was, “You have an attitude,” but did NOTHING to correct her. They left the fitting rooms, and were in the department for another five minutes or so. Every time they saw me, knowing that I was already pissed, the middle one looked at me and just grinned with this devilish evil satisfaction on her face.

When they finally left, as they were already in the AISLE walking away, of course not to my face, the middle one said loudly enough knowing I would hear hear, “I'm so mad I have to clean up when it's my job!”

WHAT THE #$%&?! Now I'm absolutely infuriated. I wanted to slap that acid-tongued little monster and her bitchy mouth and evil grin right off her spawn of Satan demon face.

First of all, yes, technically my job was to clean the department, but there was a rack to hang the merchandise outside the rooms for a damn reason -- as I am sure just about every store has -- and IN THE DIRECTION YOU ARE ALREADY WALKING when you leave. It takes an extra TWO FREAKIN’ SECONDS! The rack literally states, “Back on the rack! We'll take it from here.” Just because “it's my job” doesn't mean you have to be a dirty little barbaric pig and leave your crap everywhere. And at twelve years old, I'm pretty damn sure you should be able to READ THE DAMN SIGNS on the back of EVERY door that kindly request you to bring everything out. They didn't care in the least bit that they left me a mess. If their moms or whoever they were weren't there, I would have gotten fired that day for bitching out a bunch of kids. I didn't feel like getting into a fight with parents. Those are the people I want to follow home, tear apart their houses and just leave it there and walk away because “it's their job” to clean it because they live there.

The worst part of the whole thing is that the “adults” did absolutely NOTHING to stop or correct them from acting the way they did or voice their spitfire bitchy attitudes. And that, my friends, is why everyone is an asshole.

My solution to this night – thank God it was my friend's birthday and she invited everyone out – was to meet some friends at a bar and dance out my frustrations.

My only satisfaction came from knowing that they will all probably have to work the same type of job in a few years, and karma will bite them in the ass. Hard. 

You know what, screw it, I don't care. I wish I would have bitched them all out. Freakin’ little jerks. I hope they swallow glass.