Tis the Season... For Stinkers!

If you have every worked in retail, you will appreciate how difficult this time of year is.  The mall parking lot is CRAZY so instead of leaving the standard time to get to work on time, tack on 30 extra minutes or even an hour just in case.

It seems like every customer I encounter has the Christmas Spirit, but I still get some stinkers.  The ones who are stinkers are usually the kind of people who think the world owes them something.

We were so busy last Saturday that it wouldn't surprise me one bit that we sold out of a product.  I had a gentleman call the store around 7 p.m. on Saturday asking to purchase something over the phone.  The product he wanted to buy was sold out... but he INSISTED we still had some in our store because there was NO WAY we could have sold all TWO in 6 hours.  I went on to explain to him it was a very popular product and we have always had trouble keeping them in our store.  Not good enough, he went on and on how he spends so much money at our store and how could we do this to him.  He started naming off random names of people who also spend "thousands" of dollars at our store.

Was he trying to get my sympathy?  There was nothing I could do because we had nothing in stock.  After I calmly told him that one more time he got pretty mad and called me a liar... and some other things... nice huh?  I finally got the chance to look up what store in our district did have the product and asked if he wanted me to give him their phone number.  He did take it, then started explaining why he had gotten so mad.  At that point I was done with him so I gave him the phone number, wished him a happy holiday and got the hell off the phone... I had a handful of calls like that on one of our busiest Saturdays so I was pretty beaten when I got home.   What was the "had to have right now" product??? A Truffle Shaver....

I just wish people would take a breath, relax, and try to enjoy Christmas for once.  SO next time you are shopping and are annoyed with the store or the person helping you... take a breath and kill them with kindness.

You don't know if they just had a stinker and are trying to come back down from the anger adrenaline you get when dealing with a person like that.  You may even brighten their day and help them get back their holiday spirit.