Hall - Return to the Big Fancy : [a riotous descent into the depths of customer, corporate, and coworker hell]

1ST QUARTER
Let the Sharking Begin

2ND QUARTER
Dancing for The Big Fancy Man: Corporate Ridiculousness

3RD QUARTER
Super Seller Blood on the Sales Floor

4TH QUARTER
Seasons Beatings! Its Not Over Till the Bloodsucker Buys Something

INTRODUCTION:

You stupid idiot, dont you know how to do anything right? said the prune-faced old lady to the grocery store cashier. I suppose thats why youre a clerkyoure too dumb to go to school and get a real job.

I was standing in a checkout line at my favorite neighborhood Ralphs grocery store (#198), where I know all the peeps who work there and the hag that said this was right in front of me. Unfortunately for her, her sudden outburst and belittling tirade was one movie Id seen way too many times.

Looking like she just crawled out of Middle-earth, the crotchety old biddy continued to berate the cashier, who had waited on me countless times. I knew for a fact she was very good at her job. So why did Crotchety get her granny panties all in a bunch?

Because she was trying to use a coupon that wasnt scanning. Probably because she bought the wrong item, or she didnt buy it at all, who knows?

Maam, shes doing the best she can to try and help you, I ever-so-politely pointed out. Theres no need to call her names. Its a problem with your coupon. Its not her fault.

The hag turned to me with hackles raised and said, Excuse me, do you work here? Im a customer and this is none of your business.

When cashiers are humiliated like this, surprisingly, most customers say nothing. I was not one of those customers.

Crotchety was going down.

It becomes my business when you treat the people in my favorite store like second-rate human beings, I replied heatedly. I dont work in retail anymore and now I talk back to the customers. This nice girl has been here for years and probably waited on you many times. Stop being such a huge bitch and leave.

Crotchetys mouth started to quiver. She turned away from me to leave while angrily mumbling how she was going to call the cops on me.

Go right ahead! I will be happy to get arrested for calling you a bitch in the defense of any grocery store cashier!

My Retail Tic had been set off.

*

While most people have normal nervous tic disorders relating to spasmodic muscular movement, my little hair-raiser rears its angry tic head whenever I bear witness to a scene like that one. I have no doubt that Im overcome with this affliction because of a life spent slaving away in service-oriented jobs. My tic began to grow as a teen working newspaper and flower delivery, fast food, flea markets, and movie theaters. As I reached adulthood, a fetish for fashion led me to the life of a department store sales associate for nearly twenty years.

When I eventually clawed my way up out of retail hell after decades of entrapment, I felt the need to create a place where service-industry workers could gatherand Retail Hell Underground was born. It features photos of two of my coworkers (who are the characters Cammie and Jeremy in this book) and me wearing skull masks and retail costumes; I went for a Tales from the Crypt theme because we all felt dead in retail. I might have escaped retail, but my friends were still in deep and couldnt show their names or faces or they would have been fired by their stores. The website became a place where thousands of service workers and retail people all over the world could tell their stories, rant, and laugh about the craziness of it all. Many of them took on secret identities also so they could tell their tales and have a voice. Retail Hell Underground became known as RHU to its beloved readers and voices. Soon after that I wrote a book called Retail Hell, humorously chronicling my beginnings as a handbag (thats handbag, not purse) salesman at The Big Fancy Department Store. Running a blog for service people to bitch on and promoting a book of my past retail nightmares ensure I never forget my hell.

But I think it created my Retail Tic.

Unfortunately, my Retail Tic cant be cured and usually requires speaking outor else medicating with Xanax or Jack Daniels.

My Retail Tic can be activated in any number of ways.

Sometimes its a shopping cart left somewhere it shouldnt be left, or rejected merchandise dumped in an area of the store where it doesnt belonglike a pair of socks tossed in the freezer with the Lean Pockets. I once stopped a man at a grocery store and handed him an empty carton of Eggo Waffles in the family size. I had just picked it up off the floor. Apparently his wife sent him in with an empty package so hed buy the right Eggo product. Once he found it, I watched the piggy toss the empty carton as if the litter fairies were right there to catch it. He gaped at me, speechless, when I said, Sir, I believe this is yours. I just watched you drop it.

My Retail Tic will also fire up when I encounter rudeness at places like Whole Foods Market. I had to loudly ask a group of mannerless healthy people to move their asses so an older woman could get by with her cart. Rudeness doesnt care whether youre shopping at Kroger or Whole Foodsits equal-opportunity, and its everywhere. And one time when I was leaving Costco with my sister, some entitled customer tried to line-cut. We got into it because she felt she had the right of way even though she wasnt in a lane. You dont get to create your own lane, lady, I snapped, cutting her off with my cart.

Last month the woman who gives me a buzz cut at Supercuts told me about a customer she had who wanted a discount on a $5 blow dry. And then another lady told her that she felt my gal had pushed her into a shampoo, so she was using the tip to pay for it! Her only sin had been to ask the customer if she wanted a shampoo. She did her job, with no hard selling. If she hadnt asked she probably would have gotten whined at as well.

Its freakin Supercuts, bitches!!!! You are not at Jos Eber salon!

And if I had been there, I would have told them that.

*

By the time the holidays roll around, my Retail Tic is always a festering, furious mess.

Most of that comes from editing the stories on my website, but recently when major stores got into a war over opening times for Black Friday and decided to open at midnight, or to simply stay open on Thanksgiving Day