retail rantage..
 

I don't like to shop, I will avoid it all costs but sometimes you have to bite the bullet..

I just recently bought a package of socks..there were nine socks inside.:confused: Did they short me a sock or did I get one extra. I also bought myself a pair of pants..the sales clerk failed to take off the plastic security thing,(which obviously proved to not work when I left the store) Back home when I discovered this was not part of my denims, and tried everthing short of welding it off..I had to bus it back to the store and sort it out with the dim clerk. Did not make my day at all.

But my real rant:
A month ago I bought a brithday card at a local shop..I also got a gift card and a couple of other things. The girl rang up my order and I noted she scanned my card twice. I thought maybe at the time it hadn't scanned through the first the time..but I get my reciept and check it and I saw she had scanned it twice. I ask/point out, to her about this and she says "oh you have to pay for the envelope, its seperate" What the hell?? So I'm wondering what a bizarre country I'm in that charges something that I last checked, was part of the purchase price. I tell her she's doing this all wrong..there's no bar code on the envelope. She gets all red in the face and borders on this attitude, and says for me to take it up with her supervisor as the line up behind me grows. Well it took me fifteen minutes to get the damn money back for the over payment..I know it wasn't much money, but it's the principle, you know? The retail business must thrive if they have to bleed us of every bit of cash.

"Life is like a doughnut, round on the outside
Empty in the middle." Homer Simpson.

Now, thats off my chest. But I'll be damned if I go to another store again:mad:

I would just like to state for the record that I did NOT write this thread.

I know what you're all thinking....

And you would point this out because....?

The semblance is uncanny.

Anyway. Yeah, she was wrong. I used to be a checker at Safeway and the envelope for a card always comes with the card. She was just being lazy. Very lazy since fixing that sort of problem is a cinch.

First of all, you'd have to look at the sock package to see if you were shorted or gifted... does it say 4 pairs or 5? Or perhaps it says "random number of socks"? :)

Anyway, I had the same thing happen with a pair of shorts I bought recently. Considering I live over an hour away from the store, I wasn't about to take them back so they could spend 2 seconds and remove it. I decided that I could do it myself... and I succeeded, although it took me a screwdriver, pair of pliers, about 30 minutes, and a couple band-aids. What a pain in the ass those are without the removal tool.

Correct me if I'm wrong...but, isn't that the whole point of 'em?http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/rhlandis/huh.gif

I'm glad you held up the line--what a lazy, lying little wench that clerk was! I only hope she got fired soon thereafter.

It's good for people to stand up for themselves (in the right way, heh).

The security tags can be removed with a magnet....you risk the possibility of the tag being inkfilled if you pry it off with a tool. Run a strong magnet over the larger side and pull out the pin simultaneously-might take a few tries.
The security alarms probably didn't go off because you held the bag at floor level or above your shoulders; note the crossbars at store entrances-they cover the area of an average sized person shoulder to calf.(Now that I've told everyone how to shoplift!)
Uh, yea, that cashier was dumb as a stump....has nothing to do with retail as a whole. Trust me, it sucks a hell of a lot more on the inside than it does to those on the outside. :(

true that!
And just so everyone here knows, DO NOT BUY GIFT CARDS!! i just lost 50$ because some fucking parttimer forgot to activate the card i got for xmas. so now, every store i go in tells me to check with customer service, so i did and they said it wasn't activated and this is how they know if it's stollen or not so she won't activate it unless i show a receipt. who the fuck keeps receipts for gift cards 6months ago? It's fucking gay.

Being on the other side of the counter isn't all it's cracked up to be.


Although I do agree that what the woman did was fucking stupid...


The last thing that I ever want to hear is someone trying to tell me how to do my job.

Haha, yes... that was the joke. :)

Actually, I'd bet that they didn't go off because she ran the tag over their little pad that deactivates the sensor inside... so it became just a dead tag at that point. Kind of like what they do with DVDs... they rub them on that pad to kill the sensor inside so the alarm doesn't go off when you leave the store, but the sensor is still inside the case.

It's got to be a thankless job..I mean you wouldn't go into it to get rich so unless you really enjoy doing it..I won't say they are all idiots either, just the ones I seem to have encountered lately.I don't want to give anyone behind the counter a hard time but I also don't want a shopping experience I don't particularly enjoy to make me feel incompetent either, especially when it comes to parting with my money. It is a smallish victory for me to get my way, inspite of the manager no doubt assessing me some punk ready to hold up the cashier at gunpoint.

No doubt the clerks must be doing a lot of different things at the same time and then you have to deal with self-righteous customers like myself. I'll treat them decently enough if they can do so in return by not trying to slide one over, or just prove to be lazy half arsed and in this case an outright liar. There are stupid customers as well, but customers cannot talk too long to a stupid sales person, but they can spend alot of time yelling at, or explaining the same damn issue over and over again..I was doing the latter..I have to commend myself a bit on not starting a scene even though I was at the end of my tether.

Standing in lineups is another unpleasant part of the whole thing as well.. I was twenty minutes in queue waiting for this sad episode to unfold. I made the people after me stand there even longer..Why is that there are three or four open registers and several idiots wandering about who can't seem to handle register duty?

**So magnets to take those things off..well damn that could have helped...and how did you figure that out. I had no idea ink was inside of those things so good enough I didn't open it. I think I might just start buying onlline.:|

I agree to some extent, in highschool I used to be a cashier at IGA and had a lot of dumb customers. BUT, this cashier was a complete tool. The trick is to always be right. Nothing made my day more than being asked a stupid question and going out of my way to (as politely as possible) make the person feel like a dumbass for asking. Sick and twisted I know, but when you hear some of the shit you do as a cashier, it's feels good to get back at some of the people. That's hilarious medlar that you said that about paying seperate for the envelope, so funny, def something I would have said.

I work retail....pity me...
Note how a cashier removes the tags. Generally, they're placing one side into a hole or groove next to their register. That's a magnet. It will release the holding pin from the tag. Ink is not always inside them, some are simply designed to set off the sensors at the exits; the ones with ink will be marked as such. And they are generally much thicker than just the sensor ones.
There are three or four or twenty empty registers because that's how managers schedule-some stores have started a payroll bonus program for their managers in which, any time they can keep the payroll costs down or below what's allocated, they get bonuses. Those you see wandering the floors are assigned departments that they have to maintain and may not be trained as cashiers. In our store, everyone is trained and there's a revolving 'backup cashier' schedule for when extras are needed if the lines get busy. But that's not universal. And scheduling is guesswork at best. What might be statistically a slow time and thus doesn't require a heavy staff at checkout many times becomes close to madness-there's no predictability even when things are predictable.:shakehead:

I used to work retail - it's a thankless job. I'm going to stand on the fence with this one. I've been there when the store clerk in front of you is about as helpful as a sack of hammers - on a busy holiday shopping day! I've also been there when the customer wants the moon because they feel their money should smell differently from every other customer's in the store. medlar, I feel your frustration. But retail shopping is a necessary evil to get the stuff we can't grow or produce ourselves.

I totally agree. But for that statement to be valid, people on the other side of the counter have to make sure they do their job right in the first place... Then I won't have to go through the trouble of telling you how you fucked up. (You being figurative of course)

I have worked retail however, and asshole customers are the worst. I used to just pawn them off on the rediculously sweet girl I worked with. They never gave her nearly as much shit as me. Plus, I was liable to fly off the handle and lose my job if I didnt.