Yesterday was the day before Father’s Day, and like most major holidays, we were busy as hell.  There 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 at the registers, a lady comes up and asks “Is there anyone that can help in the greeting cards?”  I ask her “What did you need exactly?” (while ringing out another customer) and she says “Your Papyrus card racks are pretty empty.”  (Papyrus cards are an upscale card line that we sell very few of.)  I reply “I’m sorry, that’s all we have, we’ve been pretty busy and have sold a lot of cards today.”  She immediately gets furious and says “That’s NO EXCUSE, being busy.  Can you check in the back for me?”   I say “I’m sorry but there are no cards in the back, everything we have is on the rack.”

She apparently didn’t believe me, and asked to see the manager.  I told her “I am the assistant manager, I’m in charge at the moment, and really, everything we have is on the rack.”  She huffs a little and goes to another register to buy the card she apparently had to “settle” for.  A couple minutes later I hear her ask the cashier for the manager, as I’m walking by the cashier points to me and the customer says, “No, he’s ONLY the assistant manager, I need the real manager.”   In my calmest voice possible, I say “I’m sorry, but I’m the manager right now.”  She 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.  I am exactly 0.0% concerned about her calling my boss.

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.   Most stores run on tight inventory and while the customer may envision the back room looks like this:

The reality is, it more likely looks something like this.

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”  it means we’re OUT.  Zero. Nada.  Zilch.  If 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.”   If you refuse to believe me and make me go in the back to check anyway, I 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.   Please believe me.  That is all.