Anyone working in retail has dealt with a difficult customer. I had a doozy of one the other day. My current retail job has me in a hardware store, so mixing paint is part of that job. A customer had stopped one of our OPE technicians at the paint counter and although he can do paint, he doesn’t do it a lot, and was over there to print labels, so after he failed to get another employee that was busy with a pallet jack, I came over to mix paint.
Right off the bat, she was hostile, repeating to us both that there were two different colors she needed, and as I looked on her old can label to find a color name, she bluntly asked if I could handle this or if she needed to find someone else. Right there, my brain goes on the defensive, because I haven’t even said a word to her yet besides a hello and she is already doubting my ability. I confirm the type of paint she wants, and she wanders off in the store while I mix these gallons.
Low and behold, we had a few cases come in dented. It happens. It wasn’t even a large dent, just a slight indentation. I didn’t think twice about it. It’s a paint can. It’s not going on display. It does not effect the paint in the slightest.
She took the paint cans to the register when I was finished, and as a line formed, I went to the registers to help, and overheard her complaining to the employee that was ringing her out about the dent in her can and how she couldn’t believe we would sell it like that. If she hadn’t been so hostile, I would have maybe offered to see if we had an undented can, but alas, she was a bitch, so I walked on to the next register to ring out the customers behind her.
Unfortunately the interaction wasn’t over with, because of course she had coupons that she wanted to use, and tried to use more than what the system allows us to put through, and some were expired, and some weren’t. We do take expired coupons, but some of the coupons dealt with things only corporate controls, so I have no way of knowing if that coupon actually rung through since it was expired (think of the system like gathering points and it was a coupon to triple the points, something we don’t have access to on a store level).
It really is amazing how many people are complete assholes in a retail environment. Even today, I mixed a stain for someone (he had the lid to his previous can with all of the information on it), and after I was done mixing it he found a manager because he didn’t think it was the right thing even though you can clearly match up all of the numbers on his label and the new can. Can designs change, it doesn’t mean I didn’t do my job right.
Sadly, a customer like this can really set the mood for the rest of my work shift, and it was an overall crappy day. It’s another page in my retail book I’ll never finish, so I figure I should just get all these stories written down on the blog until I’m discovered and fired or I turn Stabitha and get myself fired….
Photo of the dented cans in question below…
This is your friendly reminder to not be a douche canoe.