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A mundanely weird day of work
Anyone who works retail can tell you that some days are filled with crazy customers for no particular reason. And it’s not just that some days feel that way. Conferring on our lunch or dinner breaks we talk to each other. "It’s one of those days," someone will say. Then the room fills with personal testimony of the absurd, inappropriate and bewildering along with speculation to the cause of it all. "Why today?"
Thursday wasn’t one of those days. It didn’t make for great stories. But there was a vibe. Everyone was just mundanely crazy, doing weird things that fail amusing description. Doing things that I know were off when I saw them, but upon re-telling don’t seem to translate to others the full weight of retail-worker oppression. It almost proves my point from my retailers are the new social workers entry because these are the type of incidents that are so common-place that we forget almost as they happen. An example:
I’m wrapping cheese behind the counter. A man walks by quickly then sees me, and comes back. "Any cheese samples?"
"Yeah, hold on a second, I’ve got some right here. It’s the cheese on the table out there." The store’s just opened so I don’t have anything unwrapped yet. I start opening a cheese that will be on our sample table later that day.
"Don’t touch it!" he says loudly. I can feel the buttons start to be pressed.
"Don’t worry, I’m not touching it with my hands," I say, wary of Customer being a germ-phobe. My hands are clean and legally sanctioned by the State of California to handle cheese, but I’m trying to placate. I put a sample-sized piece on the little paddle we use so the customers can reach the cheese piece while we remain behind the counter.
"What kind of cheese is it?"
I hand him the sample and start to respond, "Here ya go, it’s …" Customer throws up his arms in anger.
"I didn’t ask you for a sample! I asked what kind of cheese it is. That’s not the way it works. No. No. no."
I look at him and wait for him to stop. When he does, I say, "Well, I was just about to tell you what cheese it was…"
"No. No. No," he says again. "You’re playing me."
"What-ev-er." I reply, mustering all my teenage snarliness that remains. "I think you’re playing me. And I’ve had enough. See ya." I turn my back on him. He keeps talking. I keep ignoring. He hangs around for awhile and gives up.
After he leaves, I try to do a little inventory of the situation. My retail instincts had told me to shut this guy up and get rid of him quickly. Did I cop an attitude first? Did I do something unconscious that made this Black man think I was racist thereby bringing on the weird reaction? Was there any way I could have handled the situation differently? My answer was no to all the above.
Just then, my co-worker Insane-a came over to buy cheese for her lunch. I told her what happened and she knew who I was talking about. "I had to get him kicked out of the store last week because kept saying "I didn’t asked you where the olive oil was, I asked you if you had any! And then he started calling (another co-worker) a bitch."
But that’s why Thursday was just a mundanely annoying day. He didn’t call me names. He didn’t ask for the non-existent "manager". He didn’t throw food or cause a dramatic scene. He was just especially needy in a mysterious way.
He set the tone. A raw foodie came in soon after. They’ve definitely replaced the macro people as the neediest customers. She demanded to know why I didn’t carry a cheese from a certain raw milk dairy *. When I told her that I didn’t carry it because it didn’t exist she got very upset and insisted it did. Luckily it was during business hours so I called up the dairy, put them on speaker phone and proved that I was right.
She then went to the freezer section and demanded that we carry a certain sorbet from a local company** that also doesn’t exist. When the freezer worker tried to explain this, she said, "Well it should. Raw foodies are taking over the world."
"That’ll be a short war," he said under his breath.***
Then The Biter came in. She has been shopping at our store for about 20 years as her mental health has slowly deteriorated. For years she has talked to herself while systematically dismantling produce displays in search of the elusive "right sized" fruit. I don’t mean leaving things messy. I mean taking every apple out of the bin and putting them somewhere else. A few months ago we told her she couldn’t come back because she started biting the produce to mark which ones she wanted. Unfortunately she changes her mind often.
When we banned her she started crying and begged to be allowed to shop again. Over a few weeks we negotiated her return with certain ground rules including no biting. She now needs to get a worker to "help" her in the sections where she is liable to do damage. Luckily she doesn’t eat cheese.
Her visit was not dramatic at all. It was that kind of day.
*Organic Pastures also sells raw organic colostrum. I don’t know why that creeps me out, and the vegans would say that there’s no difference between that and more common fruits of the "cow rape industry", but it just does.
**I like this company’s products, and I would have linked them, but even though they are SF-based, their website says "check for our products at Whole Foods and Wild Oats first" so fuck them.
***And when he told me this story I said, "Hell, give ‘em the vegans too."
Thursday wasn’t one of those days. It didn’t make for great stories. But there was a vibe. Everyone was just mundanely crazy, doing weird things that fail amusing description. Doing things that I know were off when I saw them, but upon re-telling don’t seem to translate to others the full weight of retail-worker oppression. It almost proves my point from my retailers are the new social workers entry because these are the type of incidents that are so common-place that we forget almost as they happen. An example:
I’m wrapping cheese behind the counter. A man walks by quickly then sees me, and comes back. "Any cheese samples?"
"Yeah, hold on a second, I’ve got some right here. It’s the cheese on the table out there." The store’s just opened so I don’t have anything unwrapped yet. I start opening a cheese that will be on our sample table later that day.
"Don’t touch it!" he says loudly. I can feel the buttons start to be pressed.
"Don’t worry, I’m not touching it with my hands," I say, wary of Customer being a germ-phobe. My hands are clean and legally sanctioned by the State of California to handle cheese, but I’m trying to placate. I put a sample-sized piece on the little paddle we use so the customers can reach the cheese piece while we remain behind the counter.
"What kind of cheese is it?"
I hand him the sample and start to respond, "Here ya go, it’s …" Customer throws up his arms in anger.
"I didn’t ask you for a sample! I asked what kind of cheese it is. That’s not the way it works. No. No. no."
I look at him and wait for him to stop. When he does, I say, "Well, I was just about to tell you what cheese it was…"
"No. No. No," he says again. "You’re playing me."
"What-ev-er." I reply, mustering all my teenage snarliness that remains. "I think you’re playing me. And I’ve had enough. See ya." I turn my back on him. He keeps talking. I keep ignoring. He hangs around for awhile and gives up.
After he leaves, I try to do a little inventory of the situation. My retail instincts had told me to shut this guy up and get rid of him quickly. Did I cop an attitude first? Did I do something unconscious that made this Black man think I was racist thereby bringing on the weird reaction? Was there any way I could have handled the situation differently? My answer was no to all the above.
Just then, my co-worker Insane-a came over to buy cheese for her lunch. I told her what happened and she knew who I was talking about. "I had to get him kicked out of the store last week because kept saying "I didn’t asked you where the olive oil was, I asked you if you had any! And then he started calling (another co-worker) a bitch."
But that’s why Thursday was just a mundanely annoying day. He didn’t call me names. He didn’t ask for the non-existent "manager". He didn’t throw food or cause a dramatic scene. He was just especially needy in a mysterious way.
He set the tone. A raw foodie came in soon after. They’ve definitely replaced the macro people as the neediest customers. She demanded to know why I didn’t carry a cheese from a certain raw milk dairy *. When I told her that I didn’t carry it because it didn’t exist she got very upset and insisted it did. Luckily it was during business hours so I called up the dairy, put them on speaker phone and proved that I was right.
She then went to the freezer section and demanded that we carry a certain sorbet from a local company** that also doesn’t exist. When the freezer worker tried to explain this, she said, "Well it should. Raw foodies are taking over the world."
"That’ll be a short war," he said under his breath.***
Then The Biter came in. She has been shopping at our store for about 20 years as her mental health has slowly deteriorated. For years she has talked to herself while systematically dismantling produce displays in search of the elusive "right sized" fruit. I don’t mean leaving things messy. I mean taking every apple out of the bin and putting them somewhere else. A few months ago we told her she couldn’t come back because she started biting the produce to mark which ones she wanted. Unfortunately she changes her mind often.
When we banned her she started crying and begged to be allowed to shop again. Over a few weeks we negotiated her return with certain ground rules including no biting. She now needs to get a worker to "help" her in the sections where she is liable to do damage. Luckily she doesn’t eat cheese.
Her visit was not dramatic at all. It was that kind of day.
*Organic Pastures also sells raw organic colostrum. I don’t know why that creeps me out, and the vegans would say that there’s no difference between that and more common fruits of the "cow rape industry", but it just does.
**I like this company’s products, and I would have linked them, but even though they are SF-based, their website says "check for our products at Whole Foods and Wild Oats first" so fuck them.
***And when he told me this story I said, "Hell, give ‘em the vegans too."