Retail

When people ask what I "do" for work, I reply with the utmost enthusiasm, "I work retail! Wow what an exciting life I lead etc!" In all honesty, this is probably the only bit of small talk I have to offer people I have just met. Anyway my brain is slowly deteriorating and I'm developing some form of psychosis at this point from working this job. Here are some shitty/annoying people I noticed:

The Dog Woman:
A Russian woman with a thick accent, and an even thicker body. This woman pushes her long-haired chihuahua around in a stroller constantly as if the dog cannot walk on its own. This dog also wears clothes. She refers to her dog as her "baby" (I see the resemblance). This woman only shops in the sale section, buys almost nothing and when she does it's not over ten dollars. She most definitely spends more money and care on the dog than herself. It's clear that this woman has some kind of mental disability- it might just be stupidity or she might have some abandonment issues with her parents or some furry fetishism. Hey, who knows, this dog actually might be her child. Only in a life more absurd than the one I'm living in now I guess. She comes into the store at least twice a week. What's the most concerning to me is that she prefers my help to any of the other associates. This is a drawback to being severely interested in observing the deranged.


The Batshit Crazy:
This is one batshit lady. She is a frumpy woman in her 50s or 60s or anywhere in that vague middle-aged realm. Anyway this bitch walks up to you and expects you to be entirely at her service for her whole trip to the store. This can be anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours. She will follow you around and ramble about nothing and ask advice about what she's wearing but no matter what she tries on it just looks horribly awkward. So what does one do in this situation? I'm obviously passive-aggressive enough to write a blog, so do I tell her it looks good and make a sale while being dishonest or do I tell her it looks bad and permanently get her off my back? Well I mean I really don't understand the appeal of an extra-small dress on an extra-large woman. It's just absurd. She will also buy something spontaneously, leave the store, come back five or ten minutes later and then return or exchange what she had just bought. I don't understand how she has the means to buy all of this crap because she is obviously stoned and shopping every day of the week.

The Meticulous Asian Woman:
Alright this isn't racist (or is it? I don't care) so whatever. This woman only speaks in broken English, and walks around the store very slowly delicately examining every inch, every detail of the shirt, sweater, whatever. She will come up to me and painfully ask for the price of the item she desires. When I give it to her, if it's too high she will just say "No" and walk away without the item. She will try on nothing. She comes to the register and decides against the item for one of two reasons (1) she finds a loose thread, or some other flaw upon further examination of the object or (2) she realizes she can not beg for an additional discount off the item. She purchases nothing. There's nothing else to say except it's just annoying.


The Drunk Mother:
I've only witnessed this woman at my store on one occasion. She came in on the weekend ten minutes before the store closed, and was wearing nothing but a see-through dress over a bikini. She said to us that she had just been to a pool party and wanted to go shopping (most likely on a whim) and was pretty belligerently drunk. She starts yelling (what she thought was talking) to all of us about how she needed some clothes, and instead of finding them herself (what a concept man) she dragged my coworker around the store and had her retrieve her size of almost every item in the store. I guess she forgot how to put on clothes and was walking around the dressing room shirtless for about five minutes. Anyway she stayed about forty minutes passed closing, and ended up purchasing around 700 dollars of merchandise, only to return about half of it a few days later. I will not even go into the mess she made in the fitting rooms. The eerie part is I saw her at another store while I was window shopping doing the exact same thing to another associate. It is extremely depressing to realize that some women have absolutely nothing to do with their lives except buy copious amounts of clothes every day on their rich husband's credit cards. This will slowly but surely be the means to the end of the world.

The Neiman Marcus:
This woman bought two hundred dollars worth of clothes and said to me, "This is nothing to me, totally inexpensive. I usually shop at Neiman." in her pretentious rich-person accent then had the nerve to laugh at me. My response was "Oh!" and then I proceeded to crack up in front of her because I couldn't contain myself. Good thing I didn't interact with her before the register or else I'd have probably bitched her out about how she should be sending her gratuitous disposable income to Haiti or Darfur. I mean you could buy like 75 Happy Meals for those kids and send them to Darfur and make some ridiculous reality show eating contest. Or is that demeaning? I don't even know.

There are many other delightful regulars and types of customers who venture into my little corporate retail store but I am too pissed off to write more about them. There's just something about entitled rich assholes that really 'grinds my gears' for lack of better cliche. Needless to say I should have known what I was getting myself into given that I work in White Suburbia, California.