Dept. Store: familiarizing myself with half the shoe room

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My thinking is, well, if it's not in the half I'm familiar with, it's probably in the other half!

And that worked.


Other than that, it was a pretty ragged day. They had me work in the men's shoe dept. by myself for the first 4+ hours of the day.

We had the morning "huddle"---and the store's not seemingly aware that we get a minor surge of customers when we first open and many of these people are making returns, and it's important to treat these people with courtesy. This is the other half of the transaction. We want people to easily and comfortably make purchases, so we need to make it so that people can easily and comfortably make returns.

A customer needed to return something where he had paid with a Visa card where he now has a new debit card and a new number. I had to call a manager.

At lunch time we had a mini-surge. One customer was returning something where she had paid $30 with a gift card and the rest with a credit card. So, we return $30 on a (new) gift card and the rest on the credit card. But, the new gift card wasn't scanning or maybe I wasn't doing it right. Again, I'm a pretty new employee. So, I call the manager again. And kind of this thing, every additional time you call the manager, even for a very valid situation, kind of this vague feeling . . . that you're a problem employee I guess. And behind the lady with the return was a customer who had said he was kind of in a hurry. So I suggested to the manager that perhaps I ring him up at another register, and maybe that came across as delegating upward and that's not really what I was trying to do. (I should have opened both registers in shoes even though other associates only open one)

And then we had the customer who was buying a Boeing 747!--and she made the transaction about that complicated! I check in the back, can't find the shoes, tell her we don't have them. Can't find the second pair either, now that's embarrassing. She asks me about a coupon, if it applies. She asks about a second coupon. We just have to ring it. We have a lot of coupons. Happy to try a couple of coupons, and we'll go with whatever one gives you the best deal. But it's almost like she's trying to negotiate with these hypothetical coupons, and as an associate, I'm not in a position where I can negotiate. She wants to check if another store might have the stores (eminently reasonable request) and if we can have them send it (according to a more experienced co-worker, an enormously complicated procedure). And during the time, we have other customers in the shoe department. The manager had sent over another associate to help me. She can't find the shoes in the back either, which makes me feel better. Yes, yes, the lady wants to be treated as a valued customer, but her transaction is merely a possible transaction sometime in the indefinite future if she gets a good enough deal on the coupons. And, oh yeah, while all this was going on, the manager doesn't pick up the phone. I think all the managers were having a meeting.

I call up the other store, I introduce her to the associate there by name, I have skills of politeness. Fortunately, she stays on the phone a while, so I can help the other customers, but I'm not doing the associate at the other store any favor.

(When I rang up the guy who was kind of in a hurry at the other register, a lady afterward came up to the register with a whole armload of clothes and that's kind of what you want. That's a free gift. They track us on sales numbers. Then the lady in that department came up, after I had started moving the clothes, getting the tickets ready to scan. Well, had she helped the lady. Am I entitled to this freebie? Probably not. The dept lady was a little defensive, and I wasn't real gracious in yielding. Well, I'm just going to let a medium mistake stay a medium mistake. I'm going to be open to her winning me over lady.)

(because of these doggone sales numbers, even though we get $0 commission, the seasonal people. Some people in shoes and suits do. Because of doggone sales numbers, people engage in greedy and grasping behavior, yeah, I guess me, too. Because I'm getting criticized for not making the numbers. Then last three hours 3pm to 6pm they sent me out of shoes without changing my number.)


The other good part, I got there early. And I did my trick of staying in my car reading a book for a couple of minutes. Get there early, it covers a multiple of sins, at least it does in my book!