{"id":979,"date":"2015-06-21T08:10:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T15:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/?p=979"},"modified":"2015-06-21T08:10:41","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T15:10:41","slug":"sunday-soapbox-customers-and-the-backroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/?p=979","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Soapbox–Customers And The Backroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"What<\/p>\n

Yesterday was the day before Father’s Day, and like most major holidays, we were busy as hell. \u00a0There was a crowd all day in front of the greeting card section and a lot of people printing photos and buying assorted goodies for Dad.<\/p>\n

At the peak of the craziness, with every associate in the store at the registers, a lady comes up and asks “Is there anyone that can help in the greeting cards?” \u00a0I ask her “What did you need exactly?” (while ringing out another customer) and she says “Your Papyrus card racks are pretty empty.” \u00a0(Papyrus cards are an upscale card line that we sell very few of.) \u00a0I reply “I’m sorry, that’s all we have, we’ve been pretty busy and have sold a lot of cards today.” \u00a0She immediately gets furious and says “That’s NO EXCUSE, being busy. \u00a0Can you check in the back for me?” \u00a0 I say “I’m sorry but there are no cards in the back, everything we have is on the rack.”<\/p>\n

She apparently didn’t believe me, and asked to see the manager. \u00a0I told her “I am the assistant manager, I’m in charge at the moment, and really, everything we have is on the rack.” \u00a0She huffs a little and goes to another register to buy the card she apparently had to “settle” for. \u00a0A couple minutes later I hear her ask the cashier for the manager, as I’m walking by the cashier\u00a0points to me and the customer says, “No, he’s ONLY the assistant manager, I need the real manager.” \u00a0 In my calmest voice possible, I say “I’m sorry, but I’m the manager right now.” \u00a0She asks for the SM’s name and wants his phone number, I give her his name and the store # and tell her he’ll be in tomorrow and she goes off in a huff. \u00a0I am exactly 0.0% concerned about her calling my boss.<\/p>\n

Now it’s true that in some stores (including possibly ours at times) there may be times when a clerk lies and says “There’s nothing in the back” because they’re too busy or unable to look for something, but the majority of the time (and in this case) there really is NOTHING IN THE BACK. \u00a0 Most stores run on tight inventory and while the customer may envision the back room looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The reality is, it more likely looks something like this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So the moral of the story is…if you ask me “Do you have any more of this item?” and I say, “No, I’m sorry, I’m all out right now” \u00a0it means we’re OUT. \u00a0Zero. Nada. \u00a0Zilch. \u00a0If you then say “Well is there any more in back?” I will assume you’re an idiot and clarify my answer with “No, as I said, we are all out right now.” \u00a0 If you refuse to believe me and make me go in the back to check\u00a0anyway,\u00a0I may go back there to appease you but I will work on something else for a while before coming back out to tell you I looked high and low but couldn’t find any, instead of wasting my time looking for something I know I won’t find. \u00a0 Please believe me. \u00a0That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the day before Father’s Day, and like most major holidays, we were busy as hell. \u00a0There was a crowd all day in front of the greeting card section and a lot of people printing photos and buying assorted goodies for Dad. At the peak of the craziness, with every associate in the store Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-stories","category-retail-humor"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}