Retail Hell
Photo Credit: Quinn.anya (Flickr.com)
Where the heck are all these people coming from? I wondered as the door chime sounded once again. Most days, we had maybe forty or fifty come in the store during the entire time we were open. Today, we were getting that many every hour.
We’d been busy after Christmas, of course. We always were. We were prepared for it, staffed for it, and ready to meet the challenge of being busy. But it was mid-January now, and our company had cut back on hours for the month to help meet the goals for the fiscal year. We’d run so many sales that we were running out of everything, and most of the merchandise we had left was on clearance. Our Spring shipments had yet to come in, and there were signs up all over the store announcing our “Annual Clearance Event!”. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have guessed we were about to go out of business.
A woman approached me, held up one of our most popular men’s shirts, and asked if we had it in an extra large.
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry,” I said. “Everything we have is out on the floor.”
“Well, can you check in the back?” she asked.
“We don’t keep stock in the back, ma’am,” I said. “It’s all out on the floor.”
“Well, can you order it from another store, then?” she asked.
“We don’t have the ability to do that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Can you look in the computer, just to make sure?” she asked.
“I can,” I said. And I walked her over to the register with me and did just that. I was a little surprised to see that the inventory was listing a quantity of one on hand, but I knew that shirt wasn’t out on the floor.
“It says we have one,” I explained. “But our computer isn’t always up-to-date, and even if it says we have one, we may not.” I didn’t want to explain that this was because we had no way of knowing when shirts had been stolen until we did our cycle counts. And we just didn’t have the staff to do those at the moment.
The woman looked annoyed. “Well, how do you know you don’t have any more?” she asked. “You don’t seem very interested in helping me.”
“Ma’am, I assure you that I’m very interested in helping you,” I said. “But that shirt was a big seller, and extra large is our most popular size.” Mainly because everyone who shops here is fat, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “And we only get so many in for the season, and then we have to start clearing things out for the new year. Unfortunately, if you want something during the holiday season, you have to get it before it’s sold out, because we’re not likely to get any more of them.”
The lady rolled her eyes. “All I’m trying to do is spend money in your store,” she said defensively. “You don’t have to be so rude.”
This was one of those situations that could turn ugly fast. “Ma’am, I’m not trying to be rude,” I said. “I apologize if I’m coming across that way. I’m just trying to be honest, because I you to understand why that shirt isn’t available.”
She shook her head. “Just a bunch of excuses,” she said. “Typical.” She handed me the shirt she was holding and stormed out, the door chiming once again as she pushed it open and stomped across the threshold.
I was annoyed, but I was sort of glad to see her go. I’d endured a lot of customer abuse over returns earlier in the week; I really didn’t need to be hassled. Besides, this was the time of year when people would come in, make a single purchase, and then never come back again. It wasn’t like we’d lost a sale here; we didn’t have what she wanted.
Antoine, one of my associates, approached me. “Um, Karen,” he started. “Was she looking for this?” He held up a shirt identical to the one I was holding in my hand. I glanced at the tag and saw the letters XL peeking out at me. “I just got it returned, like, 5 minutes before she came in.”
I didn’t say anything, and just took a deep breath instead. Antoine looked confused. “Should I, um, go after her?” he asked.
“Put it in the return bin,” I said. “We’ll deal with it later.”
Fiction, Writing Scraps | SeanJJordan | 
January 10, 2010 12:23 am
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