Working in retail during the holiday season

[Frank Gannucci]

I have been working in retail for almost 20 years. Most of my time was with Sears (16 years). A little over a year with Macys that is best forgotten due to the people in charge not taking care of me and a little over a year in counting with Target that has so far been much better than Macys. I know that the holiday season can be the most stressful time at my job but it can also be the most fun. There have been some stories. Some good. Some bad.

When I was working in Sears during the 2014 holiday season, there was one day during the morning where I was at the Kids cash registers along with another associate. We were ringing up two different customers. A spilt second after she pressed the final button to end the transaction, the power in the store went out and as a result the receipt didn’t print. When the power went back on, we had to wait for our cash registers to boot up and we were wondering if the transaction went through. We found out via the customer’s smart phone that it did but barely. That’s not all. We also had to wait for managers to come by and have them scan their cards to start up the registers. A person from package pickup had to do it. Fortunately, the customers were very understanding. That’s not all. The power outage knocked out the phones for the day so we couldn’t page anybody. As my shift was ending, another customer asked if he can use our phone to call his wife. I told him the situation so he asked if he can use my cell. I kind of reluctantly said yes because I didn’t want my phone to be stolen but I didn’t want to be mean. He uses my cell, walks a few feet while I was helping another customer and I was hoping that he wouldn’t steal anything as well as I was hoping that I wouldn’t get called to another department. Fortunately, the guy was honest and returned my phone after he was done and I wasn’t paged.

Also during this season, I helped out at the tools cash wrap. I saw a man and a mother and her daughter (who are Hispanic) have words. At first, I thought they were joking around until I found out that the man was being mean when the store manager threatened to kick him out for being rude. The girls were naturally angry. The man claimed his family owns the mall. I was in my mind like: “Whatever.”

There was one time during that season, where I stayed overtime without being asked due to customers needing help at cash wraps and departments before I punched out. When I finished punching out, I called my mother to tell her what happened and I was looking forward to have dinner with my family and my visiting Uncle only to find out that he already had dinner with my parents and had already left.

The last Saturday before XMas 2014, I went to the gym before I went to work for a 12-9 shift. I was looking forward to having dinner when I get home because I loved to eat my dinner after work. Due to me helping out customers and cleaning up any messes I had made before I punched out, I got my lunch bag and I went downstairs to punch out only for my manager to ask me if I can cover someone’s meal break. I said yes. When the cashier came back, for whatever reason I went to another cash register and the cashier asked me to cover her break. When I asked my manager if I could, she smiled and said to my delight: “You need to go home.” She was delighted at my work ethic. When I came home, I told my family what had happened and since I was planning on going to the gym tomorrow in addition to having a 4p-12am shift, and they thought that at 34 years old, I was burning the candlestick at both ends. They reminded me that I am not a spring chicken anymore. I told them not to worry.

Monday before XMas, I went to the gym just before a 12-8p shift. During the 7p hour, I decided I was going to fill a bin with pillows. I scanned them out and put them on a cart only to find out that the woman’s cashier needed help so I went down there to help her out. During that time, a customer needed help in mens so after I helped out the womens cashier, I helped the customer in mens order a pair of pants. During this, the womens cashier needed help so i wnet to help her out despite it being way past 8. After that, I went back to the stock room where I was at and I put the pillows back where they were because my old foreman told me to never do that. I still followed that rule even though by this time, he had long since retired. I did this out of fear that his replacement also had this rule. As I was putting them back and scanning them back in, the womens cashier needed help again. So I helped her out. After that, I went back to the stockroom and I finished scanning the pillows back in and putting them back in. I got my lunch bag and I had to go downstairs to hand my scanner to the manager on duty in package pickup. She saw me at the punch out time clock. I was just about to push the final button to punch out when the mens cashier asked me to come to the mens cash wrap. She said: “Don’t worry. I’ll go to the mens cash wrap.” I didn’t even say anything or give her any feel8ng. By this time, it was 9:30p. I called my mother and told her what happened and I was going to Barnes and Noble to pick up Death of WCW. Sears didn’t carry the book.

The following day, it was deja vu except no gym and other exceptions. I worked 90 minutes overtime. On XMas Eve, I was supposed to work 7:30a-7p but due to my overtime, my manager said I have to leave at 4p. 4p sounded better than 7p. I was hoping that no cashier would break any rules by having me cover their break. We are not supposed to combine our 15 minute break and 30 minute breaks. Cashiers would constantly break this rule and I would hate it when I covered their combined 45 minute break. I would be fine if it was a 15 minute break or a 30 minute break though. Fortunately that didn’t happen.

Any other stories?

[RetroGuy2000]

I worked retail over the holiday at many jobs when I was younger. I'm very glad I do not have to work retail anymore.

When I was about 18, I worked at Waldenbooks. It was a fun job, and you could read the books, as long as you kept them in sellable condition. That location must have closed in 2011, with the closure of the chain; the mall it is in is still open, although most of the stores have changed over the years. This summer, I visited that site.

I also worked at some terrible stores.

I liked shopping at Sears, although you could tell during the last decade that the management wasn't investing in the stores anymore. They still had the ancient beige point of sale registers that looked like they were from the 1980s. About a year before the closure of hundreds of stores, my local Sears even stopped selling TVs. After my local Sears closed, they walled off the entrance, although they still rent 1/4th of that store to Spirit during Halloween.

Not too long before the mass closures, we visited a massive Sears in Tucson, at the Tucson Mall. I have no idea how they were staying open; they were mostly empty, still selling some appliances on the upper level, and deeply discounted clothing on the main level. The place was so eerie, and they didn't even have all the lights on. This was before they had even announced that that store would be closing... but of course, everyone knew. They weren't even bothering to stock most areas of the store.

LOTS of happy memories at Sears.

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by Frank Gannucci

Any other stories?

First of all, thank you for the job you do, I know that having to deal with shoppers suffering holiday anxiety is not fun. You've got (some) shoppers who are spending money on people they really don't like, and having to deal with crowded parking lots, and long lines waiting for their turn at the cashier....so many of them have already long exhausted their patience before they see your smile.

I worked for a real estate outfit for a number of years who owned one of the largest indoor malls on the west coast (in fact the Mall of America in Minneapolis and the mall up in Edmonton Alberta were the only two larger than us in the world) so, I got my fill of "holiday cheer" every year.

Coordinating the decorations, the extra burdens that all those shoppers put on your food courts, on your plumbing, your entry doors, the long hours, the special needs of the major department stores, etc.

We had 20,000 parking spaces, and from Thanksgiving till New Years, there was never enough...so,..we developed a hybrid parking plan.

We rented a large off site parking lot from the city government, and required ALL employees, of all stores to park off site, and we provided free bus shuttle service running like every 15 minutes, 18+ hours per day. Thus making more parking spaces available for shoppers.

Store employees hated it, and hated us as enforcers. There were always employees who tried to beat the system, and we had spotters on the roof every day at 6:00 AM looking for renegades.

And, violations were an immediate "hook", there was no time to play footsie with people who were knowingly trying to beat the system. Gosh how we were hated.


Working for that mall was a lot of fun, (otherwise) but to this day every year when the holiday season is upon us, I am immensely grateful that I no longer have to work 12/7 for the month of Christmas.

[Frank Gannucci]

GentlemenJim, it’s my pleasure.

[ponytail]

I have to say thank you to all the people who work in retail. You guys put up with a whole bunch of crap. My brother and sister-in-law both worked in retail for years. Both told me of the good, the bad and the ugly side of retail. Thank you for all you do!

[GentlemanJim]

Later in life, I worked as a manager of a Salvation Army thrift store for 3 years, and it grew really depressing having to deal with the A-hole customers. Not all of them, but there is a certain portion that for them it's a game trying to "beat the house".

Switching price tags on merchandise, theft of many flavors, hostile personalities.... I think the experience actually changed me. My whole life I had told myself that I was a "people person", but that experience made me realize that I was only fooling myself.

We used to get a lot of used TVs, especially during the analog to digital conversion time period. And people would always want to see if a TV worked before they would even think about buying it. So, I'd take one of those tuners that could tune the new digital channels, run that into a splitter, and feed several TVs from that.

And people really liked stealing those tuners. So, I started super gluing the cable wires directly to the threaded fitting on the box....so once day I'd go up to the TV section and find the cables cut, and the converter gone, or another time go up and find someone destroyed the box trying to twist the connectors off with pliers.

The problem was the converters were small enough you could slip them into a purse or large pocket.

So, I got the bright idea to put the converter inside a suitcase, glue and screw it shut with the wires coming out the holes I drilled in the case.... And some idiot cut the wires, peeled a $2 price tag off some other merchandise, put the tag on the suitcase, and tried to buy the suitcase for $2 with the converter inside.

I had given the cashiers instructions to always inspect the insides of every case before sale, and when they called me for a case they couldn't get open, I recognized my own handiwork where I had put the screws in to seal the case.

Between that episode and the customers who buy several items on the busiest day of the year, used a charge plate, and then decide after the sale but before leaving the store that they really need just one item taken off their purchase....I realized that retail was not for me...

[Frank Gannucci]

Also years ago, stores like Kohl’s and Toys R Us would announce that they would stay open for 100 hours and 86 hours straight respectively…except in Bergen County, NJ which has a blue law that prohibits shopping on Sundays. No joke. Paramus, NJ where had both stores has tougher laws than the county which prohibits stores from opening between 11p-7a because many stores are next to homes. I lived in that county from 1980-2006 so I know about this.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnb...heres-why.html

When I worked for package pick up at Sears, I had to process web orders. During the holiday season, we would get a huge load of web orders to process and we would start one hour before store opening and we would have three hours to process them all. I found out that the people who worked at the now closed down Sears in Paramus (which was a huge store) that they get BOMBARDED with web orders on Monday’s and if they had trucks to unload that day than that makes their day harder. Also, there would be a possibility that they would have to help out customers on the sales floor either because they are the first people the customers see or the other associates couldn’t be bothered to help out the customers either because they weren’t allowed to or they were lazy. “Not my department” would be their excuse even though the customers could have been asking something easy like “Do you have this mower in stock?”

[mets82]

I don't have a story per say, but I work in a grocery store and let me tell you, especially this time of year, this week of the year, the store is packed. The customers, for the most part, are nice but it's too much for people to handle. I mean we maybe 2 service clerks in general that bag groceries and get carriages. I'm usually one of the service clerks and it's a lot to do because you also have to close the bottle room, clean it, empty out the machines, which takes about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, to do.

[stevea]

Around here we've lost all Sears and of course K Mart. Sears at Greenwood Park Mall had the nicest salesman in appliances, specifically TVs. My mother, probably in her late 80s at the time, needed a new one and he even came to her apt. and set it up for her. At another appliance retailer called HH Gregg (now out of business), the sales person just wanted to sell it, and they knew nothing.

Also I do sometimes feel sorry for people who work at places like Subway and I hear what they sometimes have to put up with. Most customers are nice but there are those few. Put the mayo on "wrong" and they're having a fit.

[mets82]

How do you put the mayo on wrong?

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by mets82

How do you put the mayo on wrong?

Flood the sandwich with it, or apply it massively uneven, most at one end, vs hardly any at the other.

My real mayo "gripe" however is the mayo bottle is about empty, so it "farts" air as they try to apply it. So, they bang the mayo bottle (nozzle end, of course) on an unsanitary surface, to force the mayo to one end. And you know, like the counter next to the cash register, where the woman before you sat her 2 year old while she fumbled for credit cards, so whatever junior stepped in out in the parking lot, is now on the nozzle of your mayo bottle. Stuff like that.