Saturday, July 31, 2010

Sorry, Customer Lady

First off, I am not going to mention where I work now. No matter how I leave employment with them, be it on good terms or very bloodily, I won't want anything on the internet of me saying anything that could be taken as my view of them as a company. No, I only blog/vlog about customers, not the company.

Secondly, this will probably be a vlog someday soon. So you can essentially read the manuscript for a video that hasn't been filmed yet. Meaning you can subsequently watch the video and...not laugh, I guess?

MOVING ON.

So, some of the things I CAN tell you about my job is that it's in retail. Retail of the electronics variety. The majority of my time is spent making photos for customers, selling cameras, and telling customers where the burnable CDs are located. And so far, seeing as how I've only worked there for about three weeks, I haven't gotten many upsetting customers.

Until Thursday.

Digital cameras, iPods, and other heavy duty technology are located behind the photo studio desk in cabinets with locks so as not to be stolen. The studio closes at 9:00pm and it's pretty obvious when it's closed. There are two signs that are put out saying that it's closed and the time when it will re-open, the cash register is shut off, the photo kiosks are shut down and the lights are turned off. That being said, if there's a customer waiting for their photos and they do all the necessary computer/editing stuff before the 9:00pm mark, I will hand them their photos when they're done. I just can't check them out at an empty register.

Around 8:55pm, a lady, we'll call her Cheryl, finishes her photo order and I tell her it'll only be about fifteen minutes for them to be printed off and I'd be able to give them to her then. While Cheryl is waiting, I start cleaning up the lab. Shutting down the kiosks, emptying the register, locking the cabinets, and even sweeping the floor. Around 9:05pm, a woman, we'll call her Ann, comes in with her daughter and starts looking at the digital cameras.

Three things go through my mind. First, she's here after 9:00pm. The photo studio closed at 9:00pm and she got here too late. The second thing was if I'd want to rummage through the cameras and compare makes and models with her even though it was her fault for showing up after we closed. And thirdly, and finally, she hadn't asked me for help. I had made eye contact with her multiple times while finishing up Cheryl's pictures, said hello, and still no asking for help. So maybe, just maybe, she was just waiting there for someone else.

My hopes were wrong.

I give Cheryl her pictures and go back to the computer to finish closing stuff up. I decide to just let Ann be and see what her move is as I turn to leave the media center. Of course, right as I'm about to turn, I hear an, "Excuse me?" and I wheel around to see that woman and her daughter. Obviously, it wouldn't been an issue if she had come up to me a half an hour, or even twenty minutes, but it was then 9:20pm. And the photo studio had been closed for 20 minutes. And I had done my job and locked up the cabinets.

So, back to her, "Excuse me?".

"Yes?" I replied, then knowing, regretfully, what she wanted.

"Could we take a look at a couple of these cameras?" she asked. Yup. I had known what she wanted. Great.

"I'm sorry," I say. "It's 9:20pm. The photo studio is closed now. We closed at 9:00pm."

"So, we can't see the cameras?"

"I'm sorry. The cabinets are all locked up because we closed at 9:00pm," I reiterated, but still being polite. I wanted to tell her that she showed up after 9:00pm and that I didn't feel bad turning down her request, but again, I was being polite.

"Well, fine then," she said. "We'll just take our business to Wal-Mart." It was obvious she was trying to rub in my loss of a sale.

"Alright then!" I say to her, sounding cheerful, as she turned to leave.

I may have lost a sale but was I who had the last laugh, customer lady. Because if you went right to Wal-Mart after leaving my store, you would know that the Wal-Mart photo lab also closed at 9:00pm.