do you have a large?

"Hi, how are you? Have you tried our Erin Skinny Jeans?" Yes, I get paid minimum wage to say this to every customer that walks in the door. Surprisingly , I love my job but not so much the customers. It's shocking to me how inconsiderate and unintelligent some are while shopping. They honestly get under my skin until I want to throw the jeans at them and tell them to help themselves.

Lets start with the people who show no sign of thinking in what they do. If you are shopping please know the size you wear. That's right, there are actually people who don't. I recently had such a customer. How does this woman buy clothes not knowing what size to get? Thank God her boyfriend was there to guess what size the pants on her body were. That same day I had a woman want "large" pants. Guess what? She didn't want large pants, she wanted long pants and she didn't know the difference. I guess one of my job qualifications is to be a mind reader now. Imagine how long it took me to explain to her they were in the stockroom and I could get her a different color. The store I work at is not the only place that suffers from these types of people. I even witnessed it while I was at the store White House Black Market (pay attention to the name). Simple clues tell you this store probably has all black and white clothes, if the clothes aren't enough to give this away. Believe it or not, while I was shopping, I heard a woman ask if the shirt she was holding in her hand was navy or black? I bet you can even guess which it is.

Other people are just inconsiderate. They are probably worse because you can't laugh at them behind closed doors. You are so frustrated there is nothing to laugh at them about. They are the ones that watch you fold the jeans and take them out of the wall as soon as you are putting them in. When I ask them if they need help, of course they say no. My face is saying, "enjoy shopping" while my head is saying "then what are you looking for if it's not your size?" These customers are the worst because it happens at least 5,678,098,090,192.23 times a day. It's almost like they get enjoyment of watching me not yell at them. Like they grow horns and have an evil laugh while they are tearing up a stack of shirts that took you twenty minutes to finally get straight. These are the customers behind my idea that I desperately want put up in our store and would probably make a big hit across the nation. It would be right when you walk in and it would say, "we are not your mother and we definitely don't get paid enough to be your maid so clean up after yourself."

Then there are the half days or vacation days where parents drop their kids off at the "free babysitters," a.k.a the mall. With the new shoe “heelies,” kids don’t just run, they roll, right into your store and weave between customers and racks. These "customers" try everything on in the store, in every color and size only to buy nothing with their Daddy's money and leave it for us to clean up. Don't get me wrong, there are customers that are great, the ones that are genuinely nice and take your help instead of "doing it themselves.” The people that can carry on a conversation with you and not make you feel like dirt. Mostly, it is the ones that are patient and considerate and most likely have worked in retail before. Technically all these customers are great because they provide entertainment for me. Getting to mock and laugh at the ignorant customers makes saying that lousy line for minimum wage worth my while.