Retail Madness

I thought it was just me, but it turns out that I am not alone in my retail customer service adventures or in XUP's case, nightmares. If you want a good belly laugh go to here.

I certainly find her latest story to be funny but then again I’m feeling a little tired and may be overly giddy tonight. I’ve been laughing for about the last 10 minutes or so. I'm on cold medication too.

Take a read and continue to go back. She's always a good read guaranteed!

Anyhow, as I said, I have some interesting stories about retail, good and bad.
See here and here.

And here’s another story for you.

This past Friday night, I was in a rush as per the usual and was looking for two cork screws, for a gift exchange happening Saturday morning. So I wander into the local DOLLAR store. I’m just through the front door and am welcomed by an overly rambunctious staff person who gets right in my face and with a strange look says ‘yes, no, maybe’.

When I finally realized what she was saying and that this was her feeble attempt at humor I kinda smiled and said ‘I’m looking for corkscrews, do you have any?’

She looks at me with a rather puzzled look on her face, tips her head slightly to the left and says ‘you mean to open a bottle of wine or something, like to take the cork out of the bottle?’

‘Yeah sure, that’s it’ I say, trying to keep the DUH out of the tone of my voice. What the hell else would you do with a cork screw!? Enlighten me people.

Anyhow, so while following her down the isle trying not to trip over boxes of gift wrap and ribbon; out comes my idiot comment.

Me: I always find that these dollar stores have a very peculiar and odd kinda smell to them.

(It’s true; I have always smelt this odd odor. Maybe it’s a mix of cardboard and diesel fuel, I assume from their shipments.

So, I’m still following her down the isle and no sooner did I get my odor comment out when she stops in her tracks and turns around and faces me. She looks me right in the eye and says the following.

Her: Well, believe it or not, this DOLLAR story is not owned by Somalian folk so it’s odd that you’d be smelling Somalians.’

I don’t recall even mentioning anything of the kind, but whatever.

I bought the corkscrews and left very alarmed.

So for anyone responsible for training retail customer service folk, you may want to add ‘avoid racial comments’ to the manual.