LogFAQs > #942222936

FatalAccident posted...

Dont actually get how Karen has become a derogatory term that people are using unironically

Well, the issue with working retail is that you deal with a lot of customers. Most are benign and just want to get their stuff and leave, but every once in a while you deal with a customer that's EXTREMELY entitled and believes that the store or employee should cater to their every whim. Sometimes they're running a scam or trying to get free stuff, sometimes they're being rude and expecting employee's to just bend over, sometimes they're just being completely unreasonable, and sometimes it's something else... but they tend to have certain traits in common (such as being upper-middle class white women in their late 30's to 40's with a specific haircut that I think is called 'chic'). They frequently escalate any incident to management or try to go over managements head the moment they don't get exactly what they demand. So you might have a kid running loose in the store knocking clothes off racks and trashing mannequins, approach the mother to try and get her to bring her son under control, and then she'll fly off the hook at you and claim you are trying to tell her how to raise her son and then demand to speak to your manager where she'll then demand to have you fired and to get $200 of expensive clothes for free to cover 'emotional damages' all while her kid continues to be a little hellion. No, this did not happen to me, just something I saw.

My own stories involved a woman coming up to try and buy a can of tuna but provided a coupon for salmon that was expired, 2 for 1, and a different brand entirely (IIRC the coupon was for Chicken of the Sea while she was trying to buy Bumblebee). Obviously I refused and she screeched for management. When the manager came they gave her the discount and she was back the following day trying to pull the exact same thing.

There was also this guy who took a photo of a coupon and demanded we use the photo to give him 50% off his purchase without the coupon being present. A woman who tried to get an employee fired because her baby took a toothbrush off the rack and the employee asked for it back so they could put it back. A woman who tried to get another person fired for saying 'the black woman in aisle X needs assistance' when a customer asked for help with something (not over a loudspeaker or anything, straight to the manager). One who tried to pick a fight with an off-duty employee who was trying to buy some food for their upcoming shift (they weren't even in uniform yet). A man who tried to get an employee fired for 'not being polite enough' and proceeded to pee all over the bathroom floor. My favorite is the 'Pill Monkeys' who would bring in massive stacks of coupons for '$10 of 100 count' of a coupon, buy the cheap 10 counts (which cost, like, 2-3 bucks) in massive amounts, then get off with paying, like, $1.20 for our entire inventory. We had to outright change our entire policy for that and put in limits on how many pills could be purchased by one person. We got a nearly-identical scam done by their wives but with laundry soap instead of pills. Massive amounts of a mismatched product that the computer would still accept and, if the employee objected to them buying 60 bottles of detergent for less than the price of a Big Mac because of the massive wad of coupons they tried to use, they'd demand the manager over and try to pressure the manager into overriding them. If it worked or not depended on the manager until eventually the store manager told all the shift leads that they needed to refuse sales like that and should actually listen to their cashiers every once in a while.

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I am the gentle hand who heals, the happy smile who shields, and the foot that will kick your ***! - White Mage