r/TalesFromRetail

I find it quite frustrating that, in this technological age where answers are literally at our fingertips, many people still choose to call for basic information. For instance, someone searched for our business on their smartphone, skipped over our business listing, and didn’t bother to visit our website to call about store hours.

It’s not a major holiday or a busy shopping season, so when I receive calls asking for something as simple as our store hours, I can’t help but feel annoyed. This information is readily available on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, so it really makes me wonder why people don’t just check there first.

What exacerbates the situation is that I can't casually suggest they check our website or use their smart device without the risk of being seen as rude or unhelpful. It seems odd to me that after so much advancement in technology, some people still prefer the old method of making a phone call just to ask for information that they could have easily found online.

A vendor for one of our designer handbag brands supports our store once a week with fill-in, recovery, markdowns, setups, etc. She had been assigned to our store for the last year or so.

Our merchandising manager doesn't like the way the vendor does her job and told her to her face because she had enough. The vendor said our manager doesn't know what she's doing (MM has been doing this successfully for 20+ years).

The vendor has intentionally changed things to how she wants it vs. what our company's standards are. The vendor insists that at her other locations her way works and we never give it a chance here and we're always the ones giving her a hard time.

As a result of this, the merchandising manager started having our merchandising colleagues do everything the vendor is supposed to do instead so when the vendor comes, she has nothing to do. Then she complained about why the work was already completed. Our manager told her that if she as so much touches anything on those tables/fixtures, she will report her.

Right before a recent regional visit, the vendor came and changed everything because at her other location the same people who visited liked it. Our merchandising manager saw her changing it and flew into a rage. She yelled at her and scolded her for disobeying her and told her to leave. Vendor left crying. It took hours to re-do it at the last minute. During the regional visit, they loved what we did with our display and then proceeded to trash what they saw at the other store that the vendor did.

After this, the merchandising manager informed the vendor's manager about what happened and said that the vendor doesn't do any work when she comes to our store and should be reprimanded. She left out the part that our team is intentionally doing her work. Vendor was reprimanded and our store is no longer part of her stores based on this lie.

The merchandise manager reached out to vendor's other stores and told them what happened too and encouraged them to call her boss too and get her dropped from there too.

The vendor went and reported what our merchandise manager did to her to our company's HR even though she is not an employee of our company but is doing so because our company has a no-tolerance policy for this type of retaliation against a vendor.

Now there is a full investigation happening.

I only recently started working in retail, which means I'm not as fast as a cashier as I was.

Yesterday it got fairly busy, we had a huge line and I had trouble with some items not scanning. While one coworker was helping me figure everything out, we obviously called someone to open up another cash register.

Apparently we took too long and this one lady in line just threw her shopping on the floor (some pool noodles and towels) and stormed out of the store, calling me horrible names while doing so.

And while I do get the frustration and how she probably had places to go, we really only took 2-3 minutes. With another cash register opening that she could have gone to.

I was doing work in our fabric department, but I'm not well versed in fabric and sewing. A lady asked two questions that I couldn't answer, and the actual fabric people were away at the time. She then found a fabric she wanted before the fabric people came back, so I went to cut it for her. I was hoping her request would be simple since I already failed her twice lol. She decided to take the whole bolt, which was 4¾ yards in length. She asks if we can do 4½. I said yes. We would have to clearance the remaining ¼, but it's no biggie. I measure it out and make one cut. She goes, "NO! Don't cut it!". I was so flabbergasted that I forgot about customer service and blurted, "You can't have 4¾ for the price of 4½!!?!" If you tell me you want 4½, I'm going to assume you want 4½ yards total. It's crazy to think I wasn't going to cut the fabric!!!