h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oops - making an ar*e of things this morning - I'd come here from the 'Annoying ads' thread - and posted twice by mistake.

Teuchter - Very confused - and still ranting

Teuchter, you're forgiven...but I'm not so sure about forgiving the people who use their feet as bookmarks. I'd hate to see the books afterwards!?

Y

Books covered in custard!

You ever have one of those days????????


As I write this, I am sitting in my office waiting for someone who lives at the other end of town to come and let me out. Seems that the guy who was SUPPOSED to come down and lock up... forgot... and left me stranded. I don't have a key, the people who aren't unlisted or married to people I don't know the last name of, are off at a bar watching the hockey game....

The only OTHER person I know how to reach lives about an hour's drive from here.....

Culd a customer be much weirder than me?

I walked into a bakery today, paid for some bagles, and walked out before the clerk gave me them. Somehow, I completely forgot why I was there.

And, no. I was not on drugs (perscription or otrherwise), nor have I been found to have any mental problems or form of dementia.

I believe you Eto For the past couple of years we've been taking some form of collateral from people who want to check out cd's at the listening stations. If they listen to five discs, that can be $50 worth of merchandise which they could stroll out of the door with.

It started off as driving licences, and a few times each day someone would walk out of the store without getting their licence back. You'd think that once they discovered that they didn't have it any more they'd remember where they left it, right?

Well, we now have a two inch thick stack of forgotten licences, plus a couple of passports, and three or four sets of keys. Bearing in mind that most people drive to our store, you'd figure they'd soon find out that they'd left those in the store

About the keys--probably a couple drove there, one pair deposited the keys and the ther drove back. Then they forgot where the keys they left were.

Or maybe they gave you a set of old keys that they don't use any more. Cheap way to walk off with that much merchandise.

Maybe you should take something they'll really miss - like maybe their shoes?

I assume your listening booths are not set up with some kind of barrier with a collateral collecting sentry at the gate?

Actually, the listening stations are right in front of the counter - we're almost nose to nose with the people standing there listening to Korn or Limp Bizkit or Eminem, so you'd think it would be pretty easy to spot anyone trying to hide a cd, switch cd's in the jewel cases, or just walk out of the store.

Well, it would be if we had enough damn staff to keep an eye on them I can easily have five or six people yanking on my coat-tails all at once, as well as trying to check in an order, price cd's, deal the cd's people are selling, and explain where the bathroom is to some blockhead who's spent the day sucking 64oz drinks down their neck (we're a music store not a rest stop or a bar. Why on earth should we have a bathroom? )... and I'm supposed to keep watch on the listening stations *and* the shopfloor too?

In my experience, that's typical retail business practice - give the lackey employee responsibility for more floorspace than they can possibly cover, then blame said employee when customers complain about lack of service, or half the stock walks out the front door.

The shoplifters are nearly expert at figuring out when, where and how to pocket the merchandise so as not to be noticed. Even with full staffing, relatively few are caught or at least dissuaded from stealing the merchandise. You'd have to be everywhere at once to even make a dent in it.

You've hit the nail on the head there....

God forbid that it would occur to management that by having enough people to go around, and enough people to be able to get the stock out AND help the customers AND keep an eye on the shoplifters AND keep the place tidy AND do special orders, they might actually sell things AND keep the customers happy...

The bane of my existance was "secret shoppers".... When I didn't have time to do everything at once, that was when the secret shoppers seemed to have been out and about.

I can understand wanting to get a general idea about how the sales staff is doing, but picking out specific people and "testing" them is very unfair.

You know, I worked for 4 years and only once got a "meets expectations" grade on my evaluations?

This despite my not being a manager and yet did most of the work AND ran my department, did security duties, did receiving and returns on the order of $10,000.00 every two weeks, AND had customers who wrote to HQ to tell them about my going "above and beyond" for them....

Most of the points lost on my reviews were because of "secret shopper" comments. Of course, too, I have no way of knowing if, indeed there actually were negative comments.

As a matter of fact, I found out after I left that Chapters did their evaluations on a bell-curve. They gave good reviews to people who were marginal in order to keep them there and marginal reviews to good people because they knew that they were dedicated enough to stick it out.

After one review, I didn't get the 50 cent per-hour raise I had hoped for. However, they started people coming in off the street at 50 cents more per hour... It was supposed to be "incentive" to those of us who were not "towing the company line".

I finally blew a gasket about 2 weeks later when they hired this idiot who didn't know how to alphabetize, thought all the books should be shelved by publisher "because that is how they do it at the library" (which one I do not know as this was news to me) and paid him more than me. This guy was a Satanist (not that I particularly cared but that was about all he talked about) who spent most of his time popping pimples and visiting with a very odd assortment of friends.

The day he took the pricing gun and stuck stickers with 666 on them on the phone, the walls, the books, the chairs, and the escalator handrail, I went down and told tha manager that if I didn't get my raise, and this a$$hole was hired off the street for more than I was getting, I was going to go to the Tribunal on it. I got my raise retroactive and he was fired...

I couldn't believe they hired him because I overheard him being interviewed.... When they asked him what the last book that had any impact on him was, he said "Mein Kampf". Apparently, "Hitler wasn't all bad because he did some good things for Germany... like make the trains run on time..." I thought... "Well, there is someone who just failed the interview....." But noooooo!

(sweetie wrapper - don't worry, it's not sticky )

Unused q-tip

You actually got *raises* while working in retail?!?

I never, *ever* saw a raise during my years in retail, unless the minimum wage went up, and no, I was *never* paid more than minimum wage.

They did institute a comission system at one point - with such impossibly high levels of sales for the departments that I worked in that I never got out of the negative comission hole (except for one time at christmas, and they let a lot of people go right after that, including me, so apparently their little scheme to increase sales by offering a comission incentive didn't work well enough). The trick was that you had to sell not only enough for your comission to cover your draw, but make up all the past negative comission before you could bring home a penny of comission. Thank goodness, they still had to pay me the minimum wage or I'd have owed them money for the pleasure (??!) of working in their store all day long, week after week, month after month.

We had secret shoppers too. I don't know how it happened that I actually got a good rating from one of them one time, because if I was actually doing everything they wanted me to do for that particular customer, I'm sure there were at least 6 others who were being ignored by me at the same time - I guess I just happened to get involved with the *right* one that time.

I was in retail for almost 6 years and the pay stinks. The job I loved, but the pay (and the commission structure) like Lady Scott says is appaling.

We also had mystery shoppers but we were actually scored on the store regardless of whoever served the shopper. I thought this was unfair as one person not pulling their weight makes the entire staff look bad. It suppose it wasn't as bad as being mystery shopped individually. Fortunately I never went through that experience.

Oh and bookmark. (My business card)

Well, it was one of the few retail jobs I actually got a reasonably decent wage.

I left Smithbooks when they made the magnanamous gesture of giving me a raise of what amounted to 5 cents a paycheque.... AND made such a big deal about how this was a GOOD thing. Considering that I was 4 nights of the week eating at my parents house (in my late 20s) and if I had a prescription to buy and my parents were out of town had to decide if I would eat or buy the prescription..... I was less than chuffed about it.

I was really ticked off one time when at the UU church I was going to, they invited a local businessman to talk on "Why I am a Capitalist". The packed congreagation was rapt as he told them how paying minimum wage was a good thing because he was "hellping students attend school" and gave housewives "a little spending money". It also allowed him to participate in the Lions Club doing "community oriented" deeds (the fact that he got more benefits from his business contacts obviously didn't have anything to do with THAT"

The guy next to me were outraged because both of use were working minimum wage and knmew what an absolute crock that was. They other guy and his wife both held down 3 jobs at minimum wage trying to keep a roof over the heads of themselves and their three children. During question and answer time he and I were studiously ignored as were tried to tell him and everyone else a few "home truths" about the joys of working minimum wage....

That is the crock that business owners have been making since Moses was in short-pants.... giving women "pin-money, students a "little something extra"... etc., etc.....

The guy right in that there are *some* high school kids working just to pay for gas for their cars and the incredibly high car insurance kids are forced to pay, and a few luxuries that they would not otherwise have. And there are plenty of housewives who work a part time retail job just to have some extra money to spend on little luxuries they might not be able to afford otherwise.

But still, the vast majority of people past age 18 are working minimum wage jobs because they can't find anything that pays better, yet there's no way you can support yourself on that kind of money.

*Unable to talk about the subject matter of those last two posts without being yikesed*

Are you at us? Or the lousey pay system?