I've worked multiple retail jobs, and have acquired many stories from my experiences. But it's not just my personal stories that I plan to share. Using my recourses, also known as friends and co-workers, I'm collecting others experiences in the wonderful world of customer service.
In the East Bay in northern California, the - once - small town of Walnut Creek, has been over worked and over developed, and turned in to an overpriced Mecca of designer clothes and fine home furnishings stores. And from one of the small stores that survived the development comes the first story from a retail worker.
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I work at a women's consignment store in the gloriously snooty town of Walnut Creek, CA. Beyond the enjoyment I get out of watching women - dripping in designer clothing - walk into our store and freeze in horror when they realize that the clothing is... GASP... used, before tripping over their $1000 boots in their haste to get out of there, I have had a few interesting experiences working at the store.
This story has to do with a mother and daughter who came in to shop for back to school clothing a few years ago. At the time, I was a sensitive and easily excitable teenager, who hated confrontation. Unfortunately for me, when the mother-daughter duo came up to purchase their clothing, one of the items in their pile (of seriously no less than ten pieces of clothing) was improperly tagged, and the price indicated that the t-shirt was only $1.
Now, at this point I should explain a little bit about how consignment works. Women bring in their "delicately used" clothing; we price it, tag it, and put it on the floor (usually rich house wives, in an attempt to make a little cash without their husband’s knowledge, come to sell their clothes that they - god forbid- couldn’t wear a second time. So they sell it in our consignment store, where they in turn get 50% of the selling price). Usually this is a seamless operation, but every once in a while something goes wrong. Sometimes clothing ends up on the floor without a censor, other times things end up with the wrong tag... we're human, we make mistakes, it happens. When this particular shirt was consigned, whoever was entering the information for the tag had forgotten to give it a price, and by default, the computer system priced it at one dollar. Regular customers know this happens occasionally, and usually bring it to one of our attention, so we can actually price the item.
However, this time things didn't happen so smoothly...When I went to scan the ticket for the improperly priced shirt, I quickly realized the error, and also that I had to tell the woman that the shirt she wanted to purchase wasn't actually $1, and that I couldn't sell it to her at that price (seeing that the consigner wouldn’t be pleased with their 50% return of 50 cents).
I tried to break this terrible news in a delicate and polite manner, aware that this was something that was the store's fault. I then offered to sell the shirt to her for $8, less than it was worth, in order to try and appease her. Unfortunately, appease her I did not, and she immediately began ranting, at a near-scream, that what I was attempting to do was ILLEGAL, and that I had better sell her that shirt for one dollar or she would call the Better Business Bureau RIGHT AWAY, and that I would certainly be fired for incompetence, poor customer service, and generally being a terrible person. Of course, at this point, I'm near tears and in utter shock that I have a grown woman screaming at me, so Monica came to the rescue and repeated why we couldn't sell her the shirt-- it's a consignment store, things get improperly tagged, it's store policy to re-price items that don't get a price, etc. etc.
At this point, the woman takes a turn for the irrational, and decides that we won't sell her the shirt for $1 because we are DISCRIMINATING against her, and that we're obviously IGNORANT RACISTS. (Which was insane, because, for one, she was a completely unremarkable, middle-aged Caucasian woman, and of course, we don't discriminate against anyone, let alone her.)At this point, her horrified daughter is near tears, and begging her mother to just pay for the other items and leave, she doesn't even like the shirt, it's not a big deal, etc. etc. Without calming down at all, the woman screams that they won't be buying anything from this GODDAMN STORE, and urges all of the other stunned patrons to SHOP ELSEWHERE, and stop supporting such a POORLY RUN, DISCRIMINATORY SHOP. With that, she left, tugging her embarrassed daughter behind her, yelling that we would be hearing from the Better Business Bureau, as well as her lawyer, and to be ready. Of course, we never heard from anyone again-- not the woman, not a lawyer, and not even the BBB, but the story has stuck with me as one of the more insane retail experiences I've had to live through.
-Consignment Store Clerk
