To the average consumer, the back room of a store is a mystical and magical place filled with hundreds of every item our company has ever sold, in every size and color imaginable. Should an item not be on our shelves, it is surely in the back, which must be a well organized space with directions to where everything is kept and possibly run by elves. In reality, most back rooms are the size of a walk-in closet in a downtown Manhattan apartment. That is to say, really fucking small. And most have little to no product in them, just a break area, bathroom for employees, old signs, paperwork, and store fixtures we're not currently using. If we happen to have product, it's probably poorly organized at best.
I'm fortunate enough to work in a store that keeps what product we do have back there fairly organized. But due to the lack of stuff in there, I know without looking what we have and what we don't. So when someone comes in and asks if we have this clearance item in a 3X in the back, the answer is "Are you fucking crazy woman? That shirt is 6 months old and marked down to $0.99. You really think I have MORE in the back?" But what we say (with a smile mind you) is "Oh! Let me go look! I'll be right back!" and we go behind that employees only door. At this point we just stand there. Maybe we take a bathroom break, take a sip of a drink, fix our hair, etc. But it takes us all of half a second to look and go "Nope!".
Now, if we were to poke our head in the back, come back out and tell you "no", you'd accuse us of not looking or not wanting to help you. Oh dear Elle I would never!!! you might have just thought to yourself. Shut the fuck up. You have. This is something we learn early on in our retail careers. If we're entirely honest with customers, we will inevitably get yelled at by them. And it sucks. So we lie a little. All of us do. Especially about our backroom.
This past holiday season I was fortunate enough to work on Christmas Eve. I had a woman ask me for the SINGLE MOST POPULAR SHIRT we sold that season in a medium. All we had left were extra smalls. And because of the holiday rush, our backroom was a ghost town. Not a spot of product, save the overflow electronic items we keep locked up, was in there. I kindly as I could at 5pm on Christmas Eve at work in the mall told her that we had all of our product on the floor and did not have more in the back. I also explained it was a very popular style, and we barely managed to keep any on the shelves even though we got a new run of it almost every shipment. Well. That was not good enough for this woman. She bitched. And moaned. And bitched some more. What exactly am I supposed to do? I'm not some Taiwanese 3 year old in a sweatshop. (NOTE: Elle's Store™ does not employ sweatshop workers of the Taiwanese persuasion or any other. The previous sentence was just to make a point.) I can't make you a new shirt. If you needed it for your dear little Timmy and really wanted to make his Christmas this year, you would have thought about it more that 17 FUCKING HOURS BEFORE CHRISTMAS MORNING YOU FAT COW.
But of course, I can't tell you this because I would get fired. So I will smile sweetly and "double check in the back for you" which is to say, I will close the door, curse you out, take a drink of some nice Starbuck's coffee, and cry a little before going back out to tell you we do not, in fact, have more in the back. Just like I told you before the yelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment