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    Once Upon a Time in Retail: No Receipt, No Return
    Once Upon a Time in Retail: No Receipt, No Return
    Once Upon a Time in Retail: No Receipt, No Return
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    Once Upon a Time in Retail: No Receipt, No Return

    By Siobhan Murphy

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    About this ebook

    This is a sarcastic memoir about the trials and tribulations in the retail industry. Starting at one retail establishment and then transferring to another, the author highlights the good and the bad about each place. And even through the pain and struggle, she still found ways to grow, learn, and turn the bad into something to laugh about. Retail is not just about picking out a product and buying itthere is so much more, and she tells all.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateDec 18, 2013
    ISBN9781491843161
    Once Upon a Time in Retail: No Receipt, No Return
    Author

    Siobhan Murphy

    The author lives in a popular college town in the Midwest with her husband. She hopes to write more in the future.

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      Book preview

      Once Upon a Time in Retail - Siobhan Murphy

      © 2013 siobhan murphy. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 12/10/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-4318-5 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-4317-8 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-4316-1 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922436

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Part One: Corporation Red

      Part Two: Big Blue

      Part Three: Something Borrowed, Something Blue

      Part Four: The People

      The End

      Prologue

      I am writing this book for two reasons. The first is to demystify what really happens at retail establishments. Not-so-secret secrets will be revealed. Hopefully, you will no longer be like the customers noted in this book, but highly enlightened customers instead.

      I am also writing this book for all of you retail employees. You are not alone. I feel your pain. I promise I understand how hilarious and upsetting customers can be. Hopefully, this book will enlighten you and make you less depressed about your job.

      Finally, this book is dedicated to my favorite retail associates. I love you all for all the headaches we survived, and I love you even more for all the laughs we had afterward. All names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent alike.

      Stupidity (stoo-pid-ity): An ever-available resource, created by humanity, in the retail industry.

      Part One: Corporation Red

      The stupid people: They cannot be helped …

      It was 2006. I was sixteen years old and about to begin my third job. I was starting as a cashier at Red Corporation in the middle of November.

      Early on, I learned most everything I needed to know courtesy of two ladies, Cruella and Glenda. Clearly, I liked one more than the other.

      Cruella knew her stuff, but she was hateful. Never had I despised someone so much. Cruella taught me everything Red wanted me to know, and she taught me a few things Red probably did not want me to know. Cruella showed me all of the ins and outs of the register terminal. She showed me how to be confident and stare down rude and nasty customers. She also told me who the managers favored and disliked, and she taught me how to work the system. I knew I wanted to be favored by the managers, Goody Two-shoes that I was, but Cruella was so bitter about being in the disliked category that I just nodded as she trashed everyone she could think of. Honestly, Cruella did know how to run a register, as well as the service desk, but she was not people-friendly.

      Then there was Glenda. Glenda taught me what Cruella could not. Most importantly, Glenda taught me to have fun at work. Glenda and I shared more laughs than I knew were possible, and she and I became close. It was because of Glenda’s recommendation that I acquired a position at the customer service desk and eventually an office position. Everyone liked Glenda: Years after Glenda resigned, the personnel manager asked her to return to Red. That was never going to happen, but Glenda and I laughed at the thought. My favorite cashier moments happened when I was at work with Glenda.

      One evening, I was closing with Glenda. I was at my register, and Glenda was at the service desk. An older woman with graying hair wearing an outfit that was not fit to be worn outside her home came through my checkout line. She was carrying a large value package of toilet paper. I started to scan her other items, and the woman stopped me.

      You need to check that toilet paper for mice, she said. I did not have a clue what she was talking about. I just looked at her, puzzled.

      Check it for mice! Hold it up to the light and check it for mice! she exclaimed. Like an idiot, I held the toilet paper package up to the fluorescent lights and determined that there were no mice. Glenda was laughing herself silly at the desk, and I was completely dumbfounded.

      I started examining the package. There were holes in the package where the cardboard rolls were inside the toilet paper. People had poked their fingers through the holes to grab on to the package. Everyone does it.

      Those little holes are perfect homes for mice. Thank you for checking. The woman paid and left. I went to the customer service desk and explained to Glenda what had just occurred. We were especially confused because we were fairly certain if there had indeed been mice in those rolls that she would have noticed before the 150-foot walk from the toilet paper aisle to the checkout line. But this is simply an observation: What did I know?

      Glenda and I proceeded to make fun of this situation when we heard a little girl scream. I looked at Glenda with a very serious look and shouted, Oh no! They found mice in the toilet paper! We laughed hysterically. It was an incredibly funny coincidence. I did feel a twinge of guilt when the little girl came through my line with tear-stained cheeks and whimpering, but it was still exceptionally funny.

      Censored thoughts: When to keep your mouth shut …

      Two years later, I had officially been trained at the customer service desk, and I knew all there was to know about the register.

      Customer service is a special breed of nasty. Although it can be fun and mildly entertaining because there are generally more things to do than being a cashier, customer service is like being repeatedly slapped in the face. It is painful and irritating and generally leads to stress relief in the form of smoking, drinking (my preference was Mountain Dew), or complaining.

      I knew people could be difficult, but it sometimes felt as though Red attracted a special breed of crazy. I mean, the store was in a poor, somewhat trashy community, but there were a lot of religious establishments, so I would have guessed that the apparent religiosity in the town would have diluted the unadulterated stupidity and nastiness. However, I was wrong. So very wrong.

      A cashier may occasionally incorrectly ring up an item, or the price may not be what the customer thought it was. The employee may or may not be at fault.

      However, there are times when we have absolutely no control over the circumstances about which the customer is complaining. My personal favorite is when a product hasn’t been available for five years and a customer becomes irate that we no longer carry it. So, one day, a mean lady came into the store and started to complain—no, no, berate me—about the situation noted above. I could feel my blood pressure rising, my heart pounding, and my face burning. But I just continued to nod and say Yes, ma’am. On and on she harassed me. The phone would ring, and she would just keep going. I had to signal to a cashier to pick it up and transfer it for me. Finally, the lady shut up, declared she was going to Yellow, and stormed out.

      In my mind, I yelled back at her with a smooth presentation of facts that proved this was neither my fault nor Red’s. The goods in question were no longer being manufactured. However, I

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