Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Ugh, what a crappy week at work it's been... it's spring break for a lot of schools north of us, and the store has been insanely busy. But naturally we don't have more staff. So I'm stuck running the fitting room all by myself as people truck through so fast I can't keep up with the mess they leave behind. Why is it that the busier we are, the messier people are? I mean, these people STOOD IN LINE to get into the fitting room, and stood there and watched me trying my best to multitask my ass off and make sure everyone was taken care of, and then they leave every single item they brought with them turned inside out and wadded up on the floor?? To make matters worse, on my day off, they got an ASSLOAD of new stuff, which means they moved pretty much EVERYTHING in the store. So not only were we totally swamped, but I had no idea where anything went anymore, and had to wander around the store multiple times to find them. I was simultaneously trying to escort people to their fitting rooms, recover all the rejected items from the people leaving, get them rehung and/or folded and taken back out to the floor,as well as rehanging and rehoming all the garbage people had dumped in the area surrounding the fitting room (the clearance section, as luck would have it), running out to the floor to fetch new sizes when someone in the fitting room needed something else, running to the back to see if we had items that people couldn't find on the floor, AND rehanging items that the department managers needed for new displays, when a girl came out of her mom's fitting room and asked if she could get a pair of jeans in a size 10. I checked them out and saw that they were the same pair that I had just looked for 20 minutes prior and couldn't find. I had assumed that they had sold out, since they were on clearance and marked down considerably, and it's so rare it's almost unheard of for something to go from the clearance rack to it's own "home". So I told the girl that I had recently looked for those for someone else and couldn't find any. About ten minutes later, the mom appeared in the doorway holding another pair of the jeans and said to my manager, who had just come in to help take back some things, "This ain't right. She told us you didn't HAVE any more of these jeans. She didn't EVEN LOOK! That ain't right. I know what's going on..."
Yes, did I mention that this woman was black? Of course I didn't, because up until that moment, it wasn't relevant to anything. And she stood there and told my manager that I had just dismissed her because they're black. It was upsetting beyond belief. Luckily, my manager knew what I was going through that morning (mostly because she was going through it as well). She asked me, "What was that about? Did she ask you for the pants?" "Yes," I explained, "But another woman had just asked me for them less than a half hour ago, and I couldn't find them anywhere, so I told her I was sure we didn't have any more of them." [Besides, for any pants left over on the clearance "remnants" rack where these jeans had been, it's incredibly rare to have anything left bigger than a size 6. I constantly get people finding a stray pair of 8's or 10's and then asking me for the next bigger size when they don't fit.] So aparently on my day off, they got a new shipment of these clearnace jeans, and had moved them all to their own rack just outside the fitting room doors. I can see why she would assume I would know they were there, but *I DIDN'T*. My manager was sympathetic--she knew I was lost because everything had moved. She told me not to worry about it, but I couldn't just forget about it. I was upset about it for the rest of the day. Clearly, I had just made a mistake. I wanted to chase her down and tell her, "Lady, I MADE A MISTAKE. I DIDN'T KNOW because I just got here an hour and a half ago and nothing is where it was the last time I was here!!!" I was so offended by being accused of such an awful thing, so angry that she was so quick to jump to that conclusion... and now I'm just sad that I live in such a world that it's actually fairly reasonable for her to have made that assumption.
~sigh~ And now I'm all jumpy about it. Face it, I live in the middle of White America. Black people are about as common as four leaf clovers around here. Honestly, it wouldn't be unusual for me to get an entire day's work in without having seen one single black customer. So today when I had another black family come in, I wanted SO BADLY to be 100% there for them. But again, we were totally swamped and completely understaffed, and sure enough, she asked a fatal question: do we have a bathroom. I wanted to just shoot myself. See, we have a bathroom--of course we have a bathroom for employees. But it's in the back storage room, so any non-employee that is *allowed* to go back there has to be escorted by an employee. Sometimes a manager will let someone use our bathroom. But I'm not allowed to make that call, and I'm supposed to direct people to the public restroom about a half a block away. And given that we were horribly understaffed, there was no one available to escort them to the back, and then on top of that, the stock crew had a huge shipment in the back this morning, which meant that there were stacks of crap everywhere back there, and the liability is too high for something to go wrong, so managers would not be likely to allow anyone back there. I had to tell her no, they had to go to the public bathroom because of the heavy equipment and moving racks they had out back there at the time. I offered to hold her things and hold a fitting room for her (even though there was a line forming), which she graciously accepted. But I still felt like a heel for it. Ugh!!!
Yes, did I mention that this woman was black? Of course I didn't, because up until that moment, it wasn't relevant to anything. And she stood there and told my manager that I had just dismissed her because they're black. It was upsetting beyond belief. Luckily, my manager knew what I was going through that morning (mostly because she was going through it as well). She asked me, "What was that about? Did she ask you for the pants?" "Yes," I explained, "But another woman had just asked me for them less than a half hour ago, and I couldn't find them anywhere, so I told her I was sure we didn't have any more of them." [Besides, for any pants left over on the clearance "remnants" rack where these jeans had been, it's incredibly rare to have anything left bigger than a size 6. I constantly get people finding a stray pair of 8's or 10's and then asking me for the next bigger size when they don't fit.] So aparently on my day off, they got a new shipment of these clearnace jeans, and had moved them all to their own rack just outside the fitting room doors. I can see why she would assume I would know they were there, but *I DIDN'T*. My manager was sympathetic--she knew I was lost because everything had moved. She told me not to worry about it, but I couldn't just forget about it. I was upset about it for the rest of the day. Clearly, I had just made a mistake. I wanted to chase her down and tell her, "Lady, I MADE A MISTAKE. I DIDN'T KNOW because I just got here an hour and a half ago and nothing is where it was the last time I was here!!!" I was so offended by being accused of such an awful thing, so angry that she was so quick to jump to that conclusion... and now I'm just sad that I live in such a world that it's actually fairly reasonable for her to have made that assumption.
~sigh~ And now I'm all jumpy about it. Face it, I live in the middle of White America. Black people are about as common as four leaf clovers around here. Honestly, it wouldn't be unusual for me to get an entire day's work in without having seen one single black customer. So today when I had another black family come in, I wanted SO BADLY to be 100% there for them. But again, we were totally swamped and completely understaffed, and sure enough, she asked a fatal question: do we have a bathroom. I wanted to just shoot myself. See, we have a bathroom--of course we have a bathroom for employees. But it's in the back storage room, so any non-employee that is *allowed* to go back there has to be escorted by an employee. Sometimes a manager will let someone use our bathroom. But I'm not allowed to make that call, and I'm supposed to direct people to the public restroom about a half a block away. And given that we were horribly understaffed, there was no one available to escort them to the back, and then on top of that, the stock crew had a huge shipment in the back this morning, which meant that there were stacks of crap everywhere back there, and the liability is too high for something to go wrong, so managers would not be likely to allow anyone back there. I had to tell her no, they had to go to the public bathroom because of the heavy equipment and moving racks they had out back there at the time. I offered to hold her things and hold a fitting room for her (even though there was a line forming), which she graciously accepted. But I still felt like a heel for it. Ugh!!!
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