Retail Thread: I'M A BALLET DANCER! I HOPE YOU ALL SHIT YOURSELVES TO DEATH!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Retail Thread: I'M A BALLET DANCER! I HOPE YOU ALL SHIT YOURSELVES TO DEATH!

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

iamsmike posted:

Then there's the third. The customer who reaches out, bonks their hand on the glass, and is confused. They narrow their little eyes and, full of intense concentration, they try again.

I wish capital punishment for stupidity was legal. :commissar:

# ¿ Oct 16, 2010 16:52

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 20:55

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Operation Juicebox posted:

Norton 360

I feel so dirty every time someone asks me to sell Norton to them.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2010 02:50

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Operation Juicebox posted:

I know. Unfortunately selling Norton (as opposed to any other antivirus) is the only software that contributes to my commission.

Wow, that is just the worst policy.

Ok, maybe not the worst, but still.. it's like an HMO forcing doctors to prescribe herpes

# ¿ Oct 21, 2010 20:41

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Wow, that sounds really wrong. How are YOU held liable? That's utterly retarded. Do you have tape footage of the cars who ran which you could give the cops? Also, isn't there insurance that covers that type of thing?

edit: I should really reload pages before I reply to things. :argh:

# ¿ Nov 12, 2010 05:12

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Godspeed, fellow retail workers. May your customer-herds be placid this day.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2010 08:44

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

I got to be told how I should be fired for not price-matching an item a guy bought 2 weeks ago with the black friday sale price, because "we should have told him that."

# ¿ Nov 27, 2010 20:18

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

invision posted:

"Does product Y do X?"
"No, blah blah"
Well, my sister has product Y, and it does x."

If you don't know what the gently caress you're talking about, and I explain it, don't try to correct me. I'm right. I know I'm right because I own the loving product myself. this $99 dollar GPS doesn't let you talk to a human, or let you give it voice commands. Your sister has loving onstar or something integrated with her vehicles nav system. I hate you.

But I'm the customer and THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT so sell me the $99 GPS that I am going to come back and complain to a manager that you lied to me about the features on!

# ¿ Nov 29, 2010 01:41

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

I'm sure lots of places would hire you

for retail

That's the crux of the problem.. once you're stuck in retail, the only jobs you can run to are jobs that are just as miserable, until you either stick with a miserable place long enough to become an rear end in a top hat manager, or get a degree and move into non-menial fields.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2010 23:22

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

The General posted:

But seriously, he's a horrible human being.

This. gently caress managers who demand you be able to sell something to someone on the spot. We're human beings, not magical sales wizards. Human beings making closer to minimum wage than is comfortable, at that.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2010 12:26

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Ygolonac posted:

Quick! Get some venomous snakes to take care of ~~customer~~ ~~management~~ ~~bird~~ all problems.

You've cracked the code; this advice can truly make any retail job less miserable!

# ¿ Dec 21, 2010 05:51

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

"Clever" customers seldom are. Especially the "Oh, that one item just rang up at $0 (because it's a rider item to something else), so my whole purchase is free, right? Hurr hurr derr!" line that I hear at least a half-dozen times a day.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2010 06:56

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

TheBandOffice posted:

They decided to term me and two other Counter Operations Agents today at Geek Squad to hire on someone at lower pay to do all of our work...Merry Christmas

Seriously? Wow :/

# ¿ Dec 25, 2010 00:20

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Mr. Toad posted:

RE: Name badges.

I have a pile of different name badges in my locker. I pick a new one each day. I made it almost a month of not being myself before anyone noticed. Unfortunately I got called out by management after I got cocky and tried to be Veronica for a few days.

That's awesome. Name tags serve no purpose other than to allow customers to be more irritating.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2011 02:17

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Duckman2008 posted:

Best Buy is big on this, they have opening and closing pump up sessions every day where they talk about how to maximize profit/sales and get people pumped. It got old fast.

I don't even go to the shop talks. gently caress wasting my time on that. I have important stuff to take care of and wasting 15 minutes being told stuff that is totally irrelevant to me is not only wasting my time, it's hurting the company. I've told that to each manager that has talked to me about not attending them, and they've shrugged and said "Fair enough, as long as you're working on stuff." I'm in Geek Squad :smithicide:

and am the only person doing old pc work in the mornings, so I can get away with it.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 01:19

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

I used to work in a Best Buy, busting my rear end for terrible pay and an insulting corporate culture that basically screams a constant mantra of "WE THINK YOU ARE STEALING. WORK HARDER. GET BETTER NUMBERS. WORK HARDER. UNIONS ARE THE DEVIL. STOP STEALING. WORK HARDER." gently caress those guys.

Now I work for a university, making triple what I did at BB, in an environment where I actually look forward to going to work.

The secret? Networking, networking, networking! Job postings are a good place to start looking for *a* job, but for getting a *good* job, there is nothing that beats being recommended to a job by a friend. See if there are local networking groups, or just try to expand your social circles. Don't constantly talk about how you need a better job, but people talk about their jobs all the time, and once in a while drop a comment to the effect of "hey, if any of you guys with a cool job ends up with a position open, drop me a line."

Eventually, something will come up. Won't be in a day, or even a month, but eventually things change, someone moves on/gets fired, and you get a phone call. Try to be the guy who is going to get the phone call from a friend rather than the guy who sees the job posting in the paper.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2011 12:03

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Dodgeball posted:

Everyone I know keeps telling me I should apply for geek squad, at Best Buy. Anyone have any experience or stories about working for or even using geek squad?

You will be paid a rather laughable wage for skilled labor, and the job is vastly more retail than technical. Most Geek Squad members are discouraged from actually fixing anything, you are instead expected to hook every computer that comes in up to a remote repair service so that the stores numbers for utilization of said service look good. Expect to be pressured a lot to sell credit cards.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2011 11:26

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Jedi425 posted:

Be prepared to see some of the filthiest computers your eyes have ever been laid upon. I don't mean in terms of viruses or malware, I mean in terms of dust, food matter, pet fur, and cigarette tar. Working in Geek Squad is the only time in my IT career I have ever been unable to breathe.

This is also true. People who use Geek Squad for tech support tend to be goddamn savages who, as far as I was able to tell, make a paste out of leftover cigarettes and dead cats to inject into their fans.

Jedi425 posted:

Your co-workers will make or break you. My time with the Blue Beast was only tolerable because I had an awesome crew of regular guys to work with, and when they started quitting, I quit too.

Agreed. I had a great supervisor and coworkers, but 2/3 of the upper management were idiots and/or unbearable.

Jedi425 posted:

You'll be asked to push services that are essentially Information Superhighway Robbery. Connect a hard drive to an external enclosure and copy some files? Probably a couple hundred bucks. A totally automated virus scan that requires 5 minutes of effort? 40-50 bucks. I tried to avoid checking-in units as much as I could, because I felt genuinely bad for charging those kinds of prices. I imagine it's only gotten worse in the 5 years or so since I left.

Their backup and repair rates are somewhere between Extortion and Felony Assault. Yet people pay it... :smith:

# ¿ Apr 27, 2011 13:29

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Sankis posted:

It seems so petty. I now understand retail.

That is what you actually meant.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2011 15:48

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

miscellaneous14 posted:

Well, I got the job, thank god. Unless I need to get a part-time on the side, I'm effectively finally done with retail at this point. Hope some of you guys have the same luck soon.

Congrats on escaping. I just recently got out myself. And don't kid yourself, if you have a fulltime job in not-retail, going back to retail part-time will probably make you cringe too much to go through with it.. though the liberation of not caring about the job is probably fairly nice.

# ¿ May 5, 2011 00:52

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Cowslips Warren posted:

I actually got a call from a hospital today, and have an interview set for Monday. O_O I've applied for several jobs over the past month, just in vague worry due to rumors milling around the company about people being let go for whatever reason, and also due to an accident in my work vehicle, and half forgot about this one. I'd be working at a switchboard graveyard shift at one of two hospitals. ....any advice for me? The HR lady sounded very nice and detailed everything save for the pay and shifts.

Has anyone here worked at a switchboard and how did you like it?

People are pretty abusive to operators.. but then, they're pretty abusive to retail people too, and the job is a lot easier and usually has less rear end in a top hat managers, because it's pretty hard to tell someone to answer the phones faster.

# ¿ May 6, 2011 02:48

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

Testro posted:

In all honesty, I would let it drop.

..

Seriously, it sucks that you bore the brunt of it but there's nothing your management can particularly do about it to make you feel any better. From what you've said, it sounds like you're really not very well. Try and shove this idiot out of your mind...easier said than done, but he's not worth the brain space. You need to get better and stressing over his actions won't help you.

This man is wise. The douchebag has already done what he can to you, dwelling on it or hoping that management will do something is just going to stress you out worse. There really isn't anything your management even CAN do. At this point, he can only continue to upset you by your own doing.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2011 00:11

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 20:55

Lights: Dec 9, 2007; Lights, the Peacock King, First of His Name.

silversiren posted:

I guess I just wanted some sense of justice or maybe to feel like someone up here cared about my well-being but I think that's expecting too much. Oh well.

Someone who's unbalanced enough to flip out at a cashier and start calling them stupid is likely living a pretty miserable life already. Justice is most likely being served every time that he gets out of bed and has to face another day.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2011 00:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Retail Thread: I'M A BALLET DANCER! I HOPE YOU ALL SHIT YOURSELVES TO DEATH!