presenting the Holiday Edition…

What the….

Sorry I haven’t written anything for a bit because I have been working retail and it was Christmas. But I did see some things that I thought you may enjoy. It’s been one of the weirdest holiday seasons I think I have ever worked…but then I say that every year. I also say I am not going to do this again next year…meaning work retail at Christmas…and then some how I forget how really bad it gets and do it again. We shall see if I do it again next year! But that’s not why you came here….so here for your enjoyment is my holiday edition of “weird things I saw at work”. I have quite a few because the closer it got to Christmas the more I things I saw…It got to the point that my coworkers would come over and say…”here’s one for your blog”….

I don’t even know where to start, but here goes…

1. Bottle of Gatorade in toilet – ok, I know that you need to throw things away when you are shopping…but really?? Did someone actually think they could flush that down the toilet…

2. Woman looking at phone for directions – no this one did not ask me for directions to the bathroom, the mens department, the mall, her car(yes people really ask me where they parked their car) I especially like when I’m standing behind the counter and they ask, “do you work here?” I got to the point I started saying…well that depends on what you want…anyway this woman had a map pulled up of the store and was trying to find her way out….this is not a huge store…does anyone think of just walking around a bit and looking for the door? Evidently not this woman…

3. Person with a picture on their phone – this was the thing this year, everyone had pictures of perfume and were asking me if we had this or that? But this person(man) came up and showed me a picture of the Lancome counter right beside him and asked where this was?  I thought he was joking…mistakingly… as evidently I was mistaken many times the past few weeks….thinking people couldn’t possibly be this stupid…anyway, I turned him around and pointed to the Lancome counter and said ….THERE!

4. Man asking for directions – yes, again…he asked where the bathroom was…I always ask now..womens or mens…since recently someone got angry at me for assuming they were a man when they were a woman… I told the man it was upstairs..he asked where upstairs..I told him in the corner of the mens clothing department…he looked at me and said, “where exactly”…I turned around like I had another customer because I wasn’t going to take his hand and lead him to the bathroom…

5. Coworker ends up in emergency room – my friend and coworker told me Christmas Eve morning when I came in that she had been in the emergency room until 2 am…she was showing a man perfume and bent down to get something and as she was getting up he was spraying the perfume….in the wrong direction and it went into her eye and immediately it swelled up. She is on steroids…

6. Man who needed a certain brand of perfume – now this would be fine and happens all the time..in fact I am glad when men know what brand they are looking for instead of trying to describe the bottle or scent to me….but this guy says…”do you carry perfume from Nordstrom”…again I think he must be putting me on because we are clearly not Nordstrom…I just looked at him and said I think you need to go to Nordstrom for that one. And off he went.

7. Putting a lock on one of our perfume cases – we had an issue with one of our cases losing the lock. They must be kept locked at all times. However this case had been without a lock for over a year. On the few days leading up to Christmas we take all the locks off as it would be crazy trying to get in and out of the cases constantly with locks on them. On the day before Christmas…a guy…huge guy…comes in and proceeds to put a lock on the case that didn’t have one. We could not get past him inside the counter area to wait on customers and he just kept working on it even when one of the associates told him this was not a good time to do this. Finally he finished up and left. I looked around at all the open cases and I mean all the other cases that were hanging open….that is except of course for the newly fixed case…I said and I might add a little too loud….wow, I’m so glad that we finally have a lock on that case!

8. Toddler eating cardboard – my coworker said she was talking to a woman about perfume and the lady had an 18 month old child with her in a stroller…my coworker looked down and the child was eating a huge piece of cardboard. My friend says to the woman, “oh, she shouldn’t be chewing on that it has paint on it”…to which the lady replies, “oh at least it’s keeping her quiet.” and I must say, thank goodness for that cause we have enough screaming kids in the store…

9. Guy looking for a gift for his wife – this sounds quite normal, right? I agree it was until I showed him a perfume and he took the bottle from me and sprayed it in each of his arm pits. I walked away….

10. Long haired guy looking for Rudolph – this guy comes up to my friend and I and shows us a picture on his phone. I’m thinking another perfume…no. It was a red nose…Rudolphs nose….one of those furry red noses, a huge one like people have on the front of their cars only bigger…and asked where he could find this? We both looked a each other and looked away so we wouldn’t crack up like we were ready to do and she says…maybe the Dollar Store…or somewhere, I really don’t know what store she told him cause I couldn’t look at her or stand there any longer. I wonder if he found one..

I have more but this is quite enough for today I think. It is a hard job working retail at Christmas. Most of the people I waited on were nice…they thanked me for my help and wished me a Merry Christmas…many more than in years past. Everyone was doing the “Happy Holidays” thing for a long time but this year it was Merry Christmas again. It did my heart good to hear it. I tried to keep a positive attitude when it got hectic and not let things get to me. That didn’t work every day. But it helped. That and lots of Starbucks coffee…

“Working retail at Christmas is fun….said no one ever…”