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Deal VS. Steal
One week, we had a special 2 day sale on Z brand antifreeze. It was deeply discounted and came in premixed (50/50) or unmixed. I set out the special 2 day sale papers, hung the special 2 day signs, and went on to my other work. Several minutes later, a woman approached me asking where the on sale antifreeze was. I walked her over to it, she plopped two bottles of the unmixed stuff in her cart and walked away. About 20 minutes after that, another woman came up and asked where the sale antifreeze was. I walked this customer over to where it was and was shocked to see that the unmixed stuff was gone. All 30 something bottles were gone…..in less than half an hour. Surprise, surprise, this woman wanted unmixed too. My handheld said there was more in back, so I told her I would run back to look for it. I found it on a pallet up on a shelf so I had to hunt down a forklift and someone licensed to drive one. Luckily, the woman was super sweet and super patient and didn’t mind waiting.
I had to fetch unmixed antifreeze for 3 other people before the back stock person got a chance to bring it out to the floor. The poor guy got mobbed. People were taking bottles off his cart before he had a chance to put them on the shelves. Eventually, the wave of customers subsided long enough for him to get the shelves stocked but it vanished shortly after. We found out that there was a man who kept coming in, filling his cart with antifreeze, buying it, leaving, and coming back for more. He bought roughly 60 bottles during the time I was there and I had to deal with all the irritated customers when it vanished from the shelves. My boss saw this and made a note to tell the higher ups to put a limit on the antifreeze next time.
Clearance Bitch
A coworker and I were marking the Halloween clearance. It basically involves hanging percent off signs, making shelf tags, and printing/applying clearance stickers for every item. Clearance stuff often gets scattered by customers who see something and think “Oh I love it and I want to buy it!” but somewhere while shopping decide “Meh…I don’t really want it after all” and abandon their almost purchase in the cereal aisle in between the Raisin Bran and the Wheaties. When this happens, another customer is more likely to buy it if they notice that it has a clearance price. If not, the sticker helps the employees return the item to the clearance area as soon as possible (so it doesn’t sit in the “I don’t know where the hell this belongs” pile until it’s worth nothing).
Anyway, we were marking the clearance stuff that had barcodes and putting the stuff with lost barcodes in a cart to take to the computer people who use their awesome powers of awesomeness to poof barcodes on stuff (it’s not a quick process though and it usually takes several hours or longer to poof the barcodes). A female customer is loitering around the clearance section, whining about the not-low-enough prices, letting me and my coworker know that she would never pay $X.XX for THAT, constantly interrupting us to ask up how much this or that is (despite the fact that there was a price scanner less than 10 feet away and we pointed this out to her; she must have a price scanner phobia or something), and dumping things she didn’t want in sections that we just finished marking and organizing. Basically, anything she could possible do to make our work miserable and difficult without getting thrown out, she was doing it.
At one point, she picked up a black robe from the costume rack and asked how much it was. I looked it over and saw it had no barcode. I explained that it had no barcode and I explained to her what needed to be done with it.
CB: Well go do it then. I’ll wait.
Me: Actually, I don’t do it; I bring the items to the X room and the people there do it when they get the chance.
CB: Well go make them do it.
Me: It takes a while and they have a lot of stuff to do. They fix all the equipment in the store and do all the computer work.
CB: bitch bitch whine cry sob boo hoo blurgle blagle fragle
So I decide to do something nice to try to get this woman out of my hair and out the door. I scoured the racks looking for the same product to make a sticker using that bar code. No dice. That was the only one left. So I looked for something similar and found a black Dracula-esque cloak, scanned that, and made a sticker that way. I figured the price may not be exact but it would be close, CB would be happy that I went the extra mile for her, and CB would leave. *looks at url…..* Ha ha…..ha….. It prints out as something like $12.
CB: $12??? Really? You can’t do better than that?
Me: Well, the cloak was originally almost $40 (it was a full sized adult cloak with a metal bat pin) and it’s the closest thing I could find to the robe (which was an adult size with a hood and a rope belt). 70% off of 40 is 12.
CB: whine whine whine bitch cry sob
Me: Well if you want to know the real price, you’ll have to wait an hour or so.
CB: I don’t want it anymore. *drops it on the floor and keeps rifling through the stuff*
The robe went in the cart and she soon left to rifle through the Halloween candy on the other side of the store.
Do you really want to see that??
The day after Halloween, I was in the section with the Halloween stuff marking it clearance while several customers browsed the costume racks nearby. A male customer picked up ½ of a couples costume. The couples costumes were a special deal before Halloween where two partners would pick out their size in one of the two costumes so they could be “matchy matchy.” We had several options like Raggedy Andy and Raggedy Anne, Death King and Queen, Jack and Sally, and Dracula and his wife. This customer was holding the Lord costume from the Lord and Lady set. The cardboard insert in the bag showed a guy wearing a poofy shirt with a cape, trousers, velvet shoes, a curly wig, a fancy hat with a feather, gloves, and a scarf with a brooch. The costume in the bag was just the shirt, cape, and scarf with the brooch. Naturally, there was a disclaimer on the bag stating as such.
SC: Man I hate when they do that!
Me: …?
SC: *points to disclaimer* When they show the model wearing stuff not included in the costume. They should really make the models wear what’s included and nothing else!
So you want a picture of a guy in a shirt with a cape over his shoulders and a scarf fastened with a brooch pin around his neck, barefoot and bare-assed, 3-piece set flapping in the breeze? That will make you want to buy a costume? And what about the kids costumes? I assume you want those pictured the same way. We have a Dracula cape for sale. You want to see a picture of a naked 11 year old wearing a cape? We have a young girl monster costume. You want to see that little girl, stark naked with the furry monster hat, furry leg warmers, and furry gloves on? That won’t help sales. That will get us shut down and charged with possession of child pornography and exposing children to explicit material. The picture is meant to represent the costume in the best possible light so people can look and say “Oh it’s a pirate/vampire/zombie/princess/superhero costume! I can buy this and these accessories and wear it with this stuff I have at home!”
Honest advertising. Not always a good thing.
One week, we had a special 2 day sale on Z brand antifreeze. It was deeply discounted and came in premixed (50/50) or unmixed. I set out the special 2 day sale papers, hung the special 2 day signs, and went on to my other work. Several minutes later, a woman approached me asking where the on sale antifreeze was. I walked her over to it, she plopped two bottles of the unmixed stuff in her cart and walked away. About 20 minutes after that, another woman came up and asked where the sale antifreeze was. I walked this customer over to where it was and was shocked to see that the unmixed stuff was gone. All 30 something bottles were gone…..in less than half an hour. Surprise, surprise, this woman wanted unmixed too. My handheld said there was more in back, so I told her I would run back to look for it. I found it on a pallet up on a shelf so I had to hunt down a forklift and someone licensed to drive one. Luckily, the woman was super sweet and super patient and didn’t mind waiting.
I had to fetch unmixed antifreeze for 3 other people before the back stock person got a chance to bring it out to the floor. The poor guy got mobbed. People were taking bottles off his cart before he had a chance to put them on the shelves. Eventually, the wave of customers subsided long enough for him to get the shelves stocked but it vanished shortly after. We found out that there was a man who kept coming in, filling his cart with antifreeze, buying it, leaving, and coming back for more. He bought roughly 60 bottles during the time I was there and I had to deal with all the irritated customers when it vanished from the shelves. My boss saw this and made a note to tell the higher ups to put a limit on the antifreeze next time.
Clearance Bitch
A coworker and I were marking the Halloween clearance. It basically involves hanging percent off signs, making shelf tags, and printing/applying clearance stickers for every item. Clearance stuff often gets scattered by customers who see something and think “Oh I love it and I want to buy it!” but somewhere while shopping decide “Meh…I don’t really want it after all” and abandon their almost purchase in the cereal aisle in between the Raisin Bran and the Wheaties. When this happens, another customer is more likely to buy it if they notice that it has a clearance price. If not, the sticker helps the employees return the item to the clearance area as soon as possible (so it doesn’t sit in the “I don’t know where the hell this belongs” pile until it’s worth nothing).
Anyway, we were marking the clearance stuff that had barcodes and putting the stuff with lost barcodes in a cart to take to the computer people who use their awesome powers of awesomeness to poof barcodes on stuff (it’s not a quick process though and it usually takes several hours or longer to poof the barcodes). A female customer is loitering around the clearance section, whining about the not-low-enough prices, letting me and my coworker know that she would never pay $X.XX for THAT, constantly interrupting us to ask up how much this or that is (despite the fact that there was a price scanner less than 10 feet away and we pointed this out to her; she must have a price scanner phobia or something), and dumping things she didn’t want in sections that we just finished marking and organizing. Basically, anything she could possible do to make our work miserable and difficult without getting thrown out, she was doing it.
At one point, she picked up a black robe from the costume rack and asked how much it was. I looked it over and saw it had no barcode. I explained that it had no barcode and I explained to her what needed to be done with it.
CB: Well go do it then. I’ll wait.
Me: Actually, I don’t do it; I bring the items to the X room and the people there do it when they get the chance.
CB: Well go make them do it.
Me: It takes a while and they have a lot of stuff to do. They fix all the equipment in the store and do all the computer work.
CB: bitch bitch whine cry sob boo hoo blurgle blagle fragle
So I decide to do something nice to try to get this woman out of my hair and out the door. I scoured the racks looking for the same product to make a sticker using that bar code. No dice. That was the only one left. So I looked for something similar and found a black Dracula-esque cloak, scanned that, and made a sticker that way. I figured the price may not be exact but it would be close, CB would be happy that I went the extra mile for her, and CB would leave. *looks at url…..* Ha ha…..ha….. It prints out as something like $12.
CB: $12??? Really? You can’t do better than that?
Me: Well, the cloak was originally almost $40 (it was a full sized adult cloak with a metal bat pin) and it’s the closest thing I could find to the robe (which was an adult size with a hood and a rope belt). 70% off of 40 is 12.
CB: whine whine whine bitch cry sob
Me: Well if you want to know the real price, you’ll have to wait an hour or so.
CB: I don’t want it anymore. *drops it on the floor and keeps rifling through the stuff*
The robe went in the cart and she soon left to rifle through the Halloween candy on the other side of the store.
Do you really want to see that??
The day after Halloween, I was in the section with the Halloween stuff marking it clearance while several customers browsed the costume racks nearby. A male customer picked up ½ of a couples costume. The couples costumes were a special deal before Halloween where two partners would pick out their size in one of the two costumes so they could be “matchy matchy.” We had several options like Raggedy Andy and Raggedy Anne, Death King and Queen, Jack and Sally, and Dracula and his wife. This customer was holding the Lord costume from the Lord and Lady set. The cardboard insert in the bag showed a guy wearing a poofy shirt with a cape, trousers, velvet shoes, a curly wig, a fancy hat with a feather, gloves, and a scarf with a brooch. The costume in the bag was just the shirt, cape, and scarf with the brooch. Naturally, there was a disclaimer on the bag stating as such.
SC: Man I hate when they do that!
Me: …?
SC: *points to disclaimer* When they show the model wearing stuff not included in the costume. They should really make the models wear what’s included and nothing else!
So you want a picture of a guy in a shirt with a cape over his shoulders and a scarf fastened with a brooch pin around his neck, barefoot and bare-assed, 3-piece set flapping in the breeze? That will make you want to buy a costume? And what about the kids costumes? I assume you want those pictured the same way. We have a Dracula cape for sale. You want to see a picture of a naked 11 year old wearing a cape? We have a young girl monster costume. You want to see that little girl, stark naked with the furry monster hat, furry leg warmers, and furry gloves on? That won’t help sales. That will get us shut down and charged with possession of child pornography and exposing children to explicit material. The picture is meant to represent the costume in the best possible light so people can look and say “Oh it’s a pirate/vampire/zombie/princess/superhero costume! I can buy this and these accessories and wear it with this stuff I have at home!”
Honest advertising. Not always a good thing.
Long time no see, Kisa! 
He is my Black Dragon (and yes, a good one) strong, protective, the guardian. I am his Silver Dragon, always by his side, shining for him, cherishing him.
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