Fake Fall

So this actually happened while I was working as a cashier. I do was doing my normal thing when out of the corner of my eye I see a very pregnant woman in flip flops slowly sliding to the ground. Well I didn’t know what to think of it, kind of odd I thought to sit in the middle of a pretty crowded walk way. So I asked her “are you ok?” and she responded in a rather annoyed way, “I’m 9 months pregnant and I just slipped, what do you think?” So at this point I’m not sure what to do, but I go and get my supervisor, and by this point this woman is making a scene. So it is the supervisors job to keep the person under control until the manager can get there and have them fill out paperwork. So by this point it is pretty damn chaotic around my register. It was discovered that there was a long trail of water starting at one end of the front of the store and ending at another. Someone had had a bottle of water and had slowly emptied it while walking. Kind of odd. Well anyway I filled out an incident report and things settled down. I didn’t hear anything more about it for a while, until I got a call from someone at corporate. Apparently this woman had filed a suit. Well from my perspective of the fall, and the odd trail of water, I would say that maybe she needed some extra money for junior.

Dumb Blonde

This story begins on a typical Sunday afternoon. I encountered the stupidest person in the world. This girl was probably around 18 years old, fairly attractive, and blonde. She was returning some boots she purchased online, and didn’t have a receipt. Alright done with the basics on to the juice. So when someone doesn’t have a receipt for something that they bought online we have two options; do a receipt look up with their credit card, or have them print a receipt from one of our kiosk’s. Well wouldn’t you know it, the boots were on her mothers credit card; that option out the window. I also should probably mention that getting information out of this girl was like picking the fruit out of jello; time consuming and unpleasant. Ok, so now we move to the kiosk where I will help her print her receipt. I tell her follow me, and she takes that to mean “go ahead go do your shopping and come back assuming that I was able to print your receipt without having any of your information.” So finally she comes back, and gets in a huff that I wasn’t able to print the receipt. So I told her to go and do it herself, and she walked up to an ATM thinking that it is one of the kiosk’s. Pretty funny moment if I do say so myself. Well anyway long story short it took about 45 minutes for her to finally be able to print the damn thing, all the while she was whining about how hard her life is and how “things just never go right for her”. God I would kill for the worse thing to happen to me be not being able to return some damn boots.

Nerf Gun Debacle

This story is actually kind of sad. I was returning a nerf gun. It is toy gun that shoots soft nerf bullets. Well anywho she was there with her two kids, a 10 year old boy, and probably a 13 year old girl. We have been having issues with people returning empty boxes of these nerf guns, so I opened it and inside is legos. These legos aren’t loose; this woman actually taped them into the box to represent the gun. Now as if this isn’t classless enough, upon being confronted about the legos she begins to scream at her son. She is telling him how stupid he is, asking why he didn’t tell her that that’s how the box was when they bought it. She tells him how much he is embarrassing her. I felt incredibly sorry for both her son and her daughter. For this woman to react that way, she had to have been the one to do it. Well we didn’t do the return. And she ended up looking like a complete lunatic, another days work.

Woman who pretends not to speak English

The other day there was an Asian woman who was having problems with her store credit card. She came over to guest service and asked us to help her with her issue. The problem is that in store we have no access to any credit card information for security issues. As soon as we told her that she had to call the 1-800 number on the back of her card and talk to one of the credit representatives, she all of a sudden couldn’t speak English. It was like night and day. At first this was incredibly annoying, and then incredibly entertaining. Seeing my co-workers trying to reason with this woman who, we knew could understand them, but was pretending to be completely ignorant, was hilarious. They went so far as to find a team member who spoke her language to translate. The woman said that she couldn’t call because she doesn’t speak English. Long story short, we couldn’t help her, and she left looking like an lying idiot.

Returning condoms?

The title gives it away but leaves the best part out. Well, the story begins on a fairly slow Monday afternoon. A white man, average build in his mid thirties approaches the counter. He seems a bit nervous. He puts his bag on the counter takes a deep breath and takes out the item. Oh my gosh, it's condoms, Trojan Magnums to be exact. Well, anyone who knows anything about condoms knows that "Magnums" are meant for the larger sized man. When I saw this of course I stayed professional, so I asked him if there was anything wrong with the product. I don't even know why I asked. When people return them like that we can't put them back out on the shelf. He replies with probably the most funny return line I have ever heard...they were the wrong size. Now while I can't assume that they were too big, I will. At this point it is taking all of my energy not to laugh in this poor man's face. I waited until he left.

Crazy DVD Player Dude

This incident probably happened about a month ago. A skinny short white man came into the store and demanded that we give him his DVD player back. He had left it earlier after a return went bad. He said he had attempted to return the DVD player at 11. He had left to "get his receipt,". By this time is was 7 in the evening. Who leaves a DVD player that belongs to them at a store for 8 hours intentionally? Very fishy. On top of that he kept saying how he wasn't a "criminal". Who was calling him a criminal? Maybe the voice in his head. I of course made the mistake of saying, "Why did you leave it in the first place?" while the security guards were checking the tapes. This set him off. He was very fidigety to begin with but he started pacing, talking about how he knows someone who works for us and that he knows we can do the return. Well lo and behold when we got the confirmation that the DVD player was in fact his I couldn't do the return. He insisted that he knew better, still couldn't do it, he freaked out and left with the DVD player again in search of his receipt. All I have to say about this man is crack is whack.

Rude, rude, rude people

So today I was working doing my normal thing. A young blond girl, probably 18 or 19, comes up to the counter with a very bad attitude. I realize that when I say that I sound like a 65-year-old grandmother, but seriously, this girl was awful. The first thing she says when she walks up is, "You guys need to stop hiring stupid people." I don't know what she expected me to say, "Yes everyone who works here is a complete idiot, thank you for noticing"? What I actually did was take a moment to stop myself from slapping her, calm my voice, and say "Do you have a specific complaint about an individual?" She seemed flustered when I said this, probably because she didn't realize that I have a vocabulary. She responded with "her..." and pointed towards the front lanes, never really finishing her thought. I finished her return, and did not tell her to "have a good one". She didn't deserve it.

Crazy Eyes

This week I encountered a woman who literally scared me. While she didn't scream at me, or jump over the counter, she had the most frightening, intense eyes I have ever seen. Her eyes made it seem as if she was on the brink of insanity. She would ask a question such as, "Can I have this price adjusted?" and I would tell her our policy, and the expression in her eyes would change so dramatically that I would change my tone to bring the intensity down. Hey eyes made me feel like I was staring at a bull about to charge. I don't know if she was doing this intentionally or not, but I lean towards not being aware. I wonder if she realizes that everywhere she goes people are scared of her.

Intro to Dealing with the General Public

Before I start my blog I figure that I should give you, the reader, a little background into my subject. To begin I should tell you that I work for a large retail corporation in the guest service department. Working in guest service my duties include handling returns, processing defectives (all the opened and destroyed items that we can no longer sell), sorting reshop (random crap that you the customer/guest leave all over the place), and most importantly staying as cheerful as possible in the face of very aggravated/rude people. I will admit that many times I do have an incredible amount of difficulty staying nice in the face of true evil; but I'm only human.
Now with that out of the way we can dig into the juice that is the random crazy people that I deal with on a daily basis. I will start by talking about a "regular", someone who comes in often enough for me to actually recognize.
This particular woman likes to come in around closing time. Once she is spotted everyone who knows her will do whatever they can to avoid her, because once she spots you it is impossible to get away. She is like a pitbull. She latches on and will not let go. Now while I wish that I could get a still from a security camera to show you what this woman looks like (so that you can avoid her) this is the best I can do.
One night she came in about 2 hours before closing. First she came to guest service, asked a few pointless questions, and got a sales ad. She proceeded to spend about the next hour and a half in one of the motorized carts reading the sales ad, bothering employees passing by, and talking to random customers. Throughout this time my supervisor "D" (who is her favorite person) would periodically walk over and ask why she hadn't started shopping yet, to which she answered some nonsense.
Finally this woman actually goes out into the store (in the motorized cart). She is driving around everywhere, bumping into things, knocking over displays, just in general making a mess. I'm glad that I don't work on the salesfloor. So by this time the store is closing, announcements have been made but she is still shopping. People throughout the store politely tell her that the store is closed and finally she is led to the front to be rang up. This woman who closely resembles a bag lady spent more than a thousand dollars! By the look of her you would think that she is homeless. I mentioned this to one of my fellow employees and he told me that she does this all time time, spends an obscene amount of money on random crap. It is his opinion that she is a hoarder. He is probably right.
Anywho, this is one example of the many interesting/crazy people that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. More stories to come.

VH1, VH1, What Have Ye Done

I don’t know how many people remember this, but VH1 was originally a music station. The basis of VH1 entertainment was forever changed with one show; The Surreal Life. If one thinks of the primetime programming on VH1 as a tree of sorts, The Surreal Life would be the base, spawning many branches. From the Surreal Life came My Fair Brady, and Strange Love. Here is where it gets really crazy, from Strange Love came Flavor of Love. Flavor of Love in my opinion is somewhat of a cult classic. Everyone has heard of it, everyone watched it even if they didn’t like it, you couldn’t look away; VH1 struck oil. Flavor of Love on its own had 3, count them, 3 seasons, and Flavor still didn’t end up with any of those women. From Flavor of Love came I Love New York, Charm School and Rock of Love. While Rock of Love wasn’t a direct spin off the concept was derived from Flavor. At this point I could continue the list, but I think we all get the point. Since when is it so hard to come up with a fresh idea? It's like they have created this never ending chain of shows. However I have to give them some credit, each show has been popular, and they have quite a following; which begs the question, will people watch whatever you put in front of them?

3 Blogs that Interest Me

Black and Missing, but not forgotten: This blog I found on blogspot, and while I will admit that the topic of this blog is not light hearted, I think that the subject matter is very important. I see this blog as a modern grassroots organization. I like that these people are taking matters into their own hands and raising awareness about an issue that does not get enough attention.
PostSecret: Postsecret I didn't even realize was part of blogspot. This is one blog that I read religiously, every Sunday when the posts are new. I find it really interesting to get a glimpse into the lifes of people that I will never meet. It is a way for people to be more connected, even if it is just for a few minutes while your reading the secrets, it makes you feel more connected to all the people around you everyday.
Monday Artday: I like this blog because it is simple, and because I like that they post art work from different kinds of people. There have to be millions of people who create their own artwork all over the world, but it is such a small selection that we actually get to see. I think it is interesting to see different peoples talent and perspectives.

1) The first idea I have for my blog is to write about funny people that I interact with during my shifts at Target, it is a goldmine.
2) The second idea I have for my blog is to write a series of short scary stories, I think this would be fun as well as creative.