The Shop Girl's Report - "A Shop Girl's Christmas"

Christmas is two days away! Will you be one of those standing in long lines at the stores with your last minutes gifts?

Christmas has always been my favorite season. I love the carols, the decorations, the lights, and the story of how God came down to earth as a humble baby born in a stable so He could reveal Himself to us. Wow! What's not to love?

Except... now that I am working retail so many hours at Christmas, I miss a lot of the good stuff. I don't get to enjoy the Christmas specials and holiday movies. I miss a lot of parties. I barely see my family. And my feet hurt!

Christmas brings out the best and worst in customers. Some radiate warmth and good cheer as they patiently wait in line, smile as they make their purchases and wish me a Merry Christmas. Others impatiently glare as they wait their turn. Then they want to price check every item they have grabbed. They argue over the prices. They want us to produce coupons they were supposed to clip out of the paper. Then they want boxes and tissue and complain if we don't have the right sizes. Then some of them actually want us to hold up the line while we fold all the boxes into shape and place each purchase in the boxes for them! I mean... didja look behind you to see the line that is piling up while you demand extra services? Did you notice I am the only one at this register? Brother. It's enough to turn me into a Scrooge.

Then I think about our soldiers in Iraq who are missing so much more than I am. Hey, I get to hear the Christmas music piped into the store. There are decorations in my department. And many customers wish me a Merry Christmas as I ring them up. What do I have to complain about? I am sure my poor tired feet don't compare to the aches and pains of our soldiers.

If you know a soldier, say thank you for me. And here's a poem you can pass along to any soldiers you know:
Christmas in Iraq

The Shop Girl's Report- "I Work with Orcs"

Tonight this shop girl had a rare night off and went to see the local symphony orchestra perform the Lord of the Rings Symphony. It was during a number that featured men singing like Orcs that it dawned on me... I work with Orcs!

I should tell you a little about the store and the people I work with. We are a small United Nations and just about as fair and well organized -- which means not at all. Our store caters obsequiously to minorities, both as customers and employees. Don't get me wrong; I am all for equal rights. What I can't stand is Reverse Racism: the unequal right some employees get because of the color of their skin. But I digress...

Bart is my manager, a nice young guy. I like working for him although he avoids confrontation so much that he won't take control of the department. Margie is an older black woman who works part time who is absolutely wonderful - by far the best worker there (including me). Mr. B is an elderly Jewish man who knows more about men's clothing than I will ever know. He once owned his own store. He can be crusty, but we get along well. Carla is new -- too new to tell but her first impression has been good. So why am I complaining?

First there is John Boy, an 18-year-old full-time skinny white boy know-it-all who is a rude smart-aleck. He puts on a good show whenever a manager is around but spends the rest of the time drawing pictures and flirting with the girls (even though he just married a 17-year-old girl). Then there is Albert, John Boy's partner in crime, a full-time, rude, obese 23-year-old black guy who hustles whenever Bart is around, and spends the rest of his time out in the mall with his buddies or up in the break room eating or just sitting on the counter. John Boy and Albert keep girlie magazines in a drawer behind the counter. I think everyone knows, but no one does anything about it.

Stephanie, a pitiful, older white woman with bad emotional problems transferred to our department part-time. She should never have been hired in any job that involves working with people, even part-time. She yells at customers and at us whenever she is confused - which is most of the time.

We are about to loose two part-time workers. The first is Kitty, a middle-aged white woman who is on so much Prozak she moves in slow motion and has been known to stand for lengthy periods of time just staring down at a spot on the counter. But at least she is sweet. I kinda hate to see her go.

We are also losing Patel, a diminutive man from Bangladesh who against company policy gives all his Middle Eastern friends the employee discount, marks down items for his Asian buddies, takes multiple l-o-n-g breaks, and frequently leaves the floor to use his cell phone. If you report him, he will try to turn the tables on you by saying you are only trying to get him in trouble because you are prejudiced. Glad to see him go.

Last, there is Myrtle. An elegant looking black woman, Myrtle used to work here when we had a manager who didn't like me. Myrtle is able to leave the floor to go shopping whenever she wants because she is in with the managers. Not only that, but she learned to be disrespectful to me from our old manager. Now she is back as seasonal help and as spiteful as ever. I can't help it if some of these descriptions sound like stereotypes -- these are the people I work with. Like I said... I work with Orcs.

Or maybe it was just a bad weekend....

The Shop Girl's Report- "ChristianActivities.com"

I was talking to Darla the other day about men. A lot of shop girls are single and caught up in the dating rat race. Darla had met a cute shop boy at the Mattress Store. He came in our store several times to scope her out. She was excited when he asked her out but less than excited when he didn't call her the day of their date. She got all fixed up -- and Darla doesn't take much fixing up with her exotic cafe au lait coloring and lovely features. But when he did finally call it was to try to change the plans where he would no longer pick her up but meet her at a central location at a later time. His ardent pursuit had changed to a wishy-washy uncertainty. "Men!" I said and rolled my eyes. "Yeah," said Darla. "He was a total waste of hair spray."

It is especially hard for single Christian shop girls to meet nice men. Often, as in my case, working two jobs prevents me from being very active with a church, and I don't have any free time to socialize. When I do get a rare night off, I usually have to spend it catching up on chores. So, on the rare occasion I get a night off and decide to go out, it is vitally important I spend the night doing something "quality."

I have found websites like ChristianActivities.com to be very helpful in finding good events to attend, good music to listen to, and good articles to read.

Tonight our mall is letting all the little ones trick or treat in the stores dressed in their Halloween costumes. Shop girls who work nights may not usually get to go out and have fun... but sometimes the fun comes to us!

The Shop Girl's Report- "Witch's Invitation"

There are many things I enjoy about being a cosmetics department shop girl, and one is the interesting people I meet... and that includes fellow shop girls.

One of the strangest women I worked with was an austere older woman named Julia Light who worked in the cosmetics department with me four years ago. With her sober expression, silver hair pulled severely back from her face, and black garb, the pentagram she wore at her neck completed the picture. She was an overt pagan and practicing witch (claiming to be a "white witch"). Behind her counter she kept catalogs of pagan mail order products, and she frequently referred to "the goddess" in conversations. I always thought Julia Light's name was quite ironic for one who dabbled so in darkness.

We worked together well, although Julia knew I was a Christian and I knew she was a witch. But when she invited me to her home with the rest of the cosmetics department, I had mixed feelings. News that her previous parties usually took an odd turn at some point during the night had already reached my ears. I prayed about it and felt led to go as a way to reach out to her as well as to get to know my fellow shop girls better.

When I arrived, I discovered that much like the home in Carman's song, her house was filled with occult symbols and art celebrating "the goddess." Julia herself was clad in a long, flowing black gown, and she invoked the name of "the goddess" on numerous occasions throughout the evening. She also laughed and said she had laced the wine with an aphrodisiac called "damiana." I drank Sprite. I socialized with my department for an hour, but when a seance was announced, I knew it was time to leave.

The next year I again attended the department's party at her house (and I brought my own iced tea). I was not comfortable with the perverse sexual conversations, so I politely made my excuses and left early.

Julia frequently brought up sex and religion. When she talked badly about Christians (at work), I pointed out that Jesus was not to be blamed for what erring Christians might have said or done, that Christians are imperfect people in need of a Savior, and that she should consider looking at Jesus instead of at Christians. Our conversations about religion were always civil and at her initiation. She was polite but not open. She preferred to trust in "the goddess" and in karma.

Her stated belief was that karma wold take care of the trials of life. She said she never let anything upset her because if someone wronged her, she would just let karma take care of the problem. "What goes around, comes around."

One night a young woman whom I knew from a hobby group came in to shop, and she noticed Julia's pendant. Sheila asked me what it was, and I told her it was a pentagram. A few weeks later Sheila cornered me at a club meeting and pursued the topic. In shock she asked, "Does she know what that is? I mean, she is never very friendly but I always thought she was at least a nice person." I explained that while Julia was a practicing witch, she was nice enough to work with. This conversation took place four years ago and was the only time we discussed the matter.

Earlier this year I was called into the store operations manager's office. Julia had made an official complaint against me and wanted it taken to the corporate level. According to Julia's complaint, I had recently approached a young woman while at work and divulged Julia's religious and sexual orientation. The young woman -- my friend Sheila from the hobby club -- had allegedly run straight to the cosmetics department and told someone about the hypothetical conversation.

After being warned by the operations manager that I was NOT to discuss this with anyone at work, I called my young acquaintance and asked her what had really happened. Sheila said she had recently been shopping in the cosmetics department, and again Julia was wearing her pentagram. Talking to the shop girl waiting on her, Sheila complained that she had not been able to wear a cross when she worked at the Disney store. Sheila stated that she found the pentagram offensive and thought it was unfair that Julia was able to wear it to work.

"How did my name enter the conversation?" I asked Sheila. "We never mentioned you," said Sheila. When pressed as to how my name became attached to the incident, all she could come up with was, "Everyone there knows we are friends."

I explained to the operations manager what I had learned, and I told him Sheila was willing to come in and tell him herself. In spite of this, I ended up having a formal report issued by the corporate office finding me guilty of discussing Julia's religion and sexual orientation in the workplace and also rebuking me for involving the customer! I was never contacted by the corporate office during their "investigation" ... nor was Sheila. I requested a copy of the corporate rebuke but the operations manager refused to allow me to copy it.

The irony is Julia was outspoken about her religious and her sexual preferences. She brought up religion and sex at work frequently, and she spoke disparagingly about Christians at the workplace with no repercussions. But an unsubstantiated false accusation brought against a Christian was treated as a serious offense.

I will probably never know for sure what actually DID transpire in the cosmetics department that day as I was told it would jeopardize my job if I ever discussed it. But I do know that a co-worker I thought I was on good terms with didn't trust karma or "the goddess." She went straight for the jugular. I guess a witch can't bank on karma after all. On the other hand, while a shop girl may not be able to trust in justice in the workplace, I can trust in my God. And next time, this shop girl will think twice before she accepts a witch's invitation.

Matthew 5:11
Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

The Shop Girl's Report- "Diamond Girls"

"Diamond Girl, you sure do shine. Diamond Girl, you sure do shine." (Seals & Croft, 1973)

Being a shop girl has its positive side. Many customers are a delight to wait on. Today, for example, one of our regular couples came in. He is a black preacher with a deep voice flavored with a Jamaican accent and a hearty laugh. She is all business, but she always has time to stop with him and talk for a moment before she heads to the Ladies Department. Their eyes always light up when they see me, and I am sure mine do, too.

He stays in my area and heads for our sales racks. He seems to take great delight in looking for the bargains, like he is a big game hunter pursuing elusive game. Carefully his eyes scan the room until he sees a likely clump of sales items where something really good might be hiding. He approaches the register with evident delight in his successful hunt, and then he stops to tell me about his children and about his family trips back to Jamaica that always seem to turn into missions trips.

Sometimes a customer will write a letter to the store manager complementing especially good service. Granted, we hear far more petty complaints than we do sincere compliments, but if we get three good letters or mystery shopper reports in a row, we win a diamond pin. I have earned my diamond pin five times in a row. I am a Diamond Girl.

Tonight the Diamond Girls were treated to a delicious dinner at one of our ritzier restaurants. The meal was served by waiters in suits! Shop girls don't often eat where waiters wear suits. The dinner was delicious: prime rib, pasta, chicken, sweet potato casserole, cranberry salad and more. But I think we just enjoyed sitting down together, relaxing and catching up. Shop girls don't often get to sit down, relax and catch up with each other. It was a real treat.

In Proverbs the Bibles says a good wife is worth more than rubies. I think a good shop girl is worth more than diamonds.

The Shop Girl's Report- "The Customer Is Always Right"

I live a double life. By day, I am a successful career woman but by night I am a shop girl. I am the one you come to when your jeans, which you bought a size too small and then laundered in hot water, somehow are too tight. You want to return them smelling like Tide, with the tags off and no receipt. I am the one you come to when you buy $18 of makeup and then want the gift that comes with a $22 purchase. I am the one you bring the cashmere sweater back to -- the sweater that somehow got lost in the back seat of your car for three months and now smells like cigarette smoke. I am the one you buy the expensive dress from, and two days later, you return it, missing tags, smelling of perfume and with deodorant stains under the arms. You tell me it was never worn. I am the one you bring 30 items to to price check from another department, and then you argue with me about every price... but you don't want to take the items back to the department where you found them to let the appropriate person ring you up.

And... if I question you about any of it, or try to explain the store policy, or that I don't know the sales from another department, you demand to see my manager. If I don't keep a humble, apologetic look on my face, you declare I am rude, mean or spiteful. You might even imply that if you were of a different age, a different race, a different sex, you would have been treated differently.

Don't get me wrong. I have worked a second job at retail for more years than I care to recall. I understand "the customer is always right" and that you deserve to be treated politely and professionally. And I acknowledge that there are times a clerk doesn't know the right price, doesn't ask the right questions, and doesn't act exceptionally friendly. But let's face it; sometimes the customer is WRONG.

While most customers follow the Golden Rule and treat clerks with the polite respect they want to receive, unfortunately many customers have learned how to get their way by demanding to see a manager. They have learned to manipulate the system. In many department stores, the managers will back the customer instead of the employee who is going by the rules. The manager will take back the laundered jeans, the smelly sweater, the stained dress and apologize for the clerk who was just doing his or her job. To make this ploy ironclad, the customer must also make the employee look bad, so this is where the terms "rude, mean and spiteful" are tossed in. In many cases, the clerk's intelligence is also impugned.

Case in point: Tonight my brother came in to make a plan for my day off. He had to hunt me down because we have been short handed and I was in a different department. As a woman approached the register, I asked my brother to step aside while I asked her if she needed any help. Yes, she said as she pitched the dress on the counter, she had a dress to return. She didn't have her receipt. I pointed out the register for dresses was the next one over and that without the receipt it would be better to take it over to the dress register. I never had a chance to explain I didn't work in that area, because she immediately started yelling at me loudly enough that people in the general area turned to see what the ruckus was about. "I bought this dress at THIS register and I am not walking ANYWHERE" she shouted. "You WILL take this dress back or you will call a manger. Now what's it gonna be?" she hollered. I calmly said I would call a manger which I promptly did. With that accomplished, I turned to my brother and said I would see him tomorrow, we set the time, and he left.

When the manager arrived, the customer told her I had been too busy flirting and making dates to wait on her and that I had refused to wait on her while I carried on with some man. I laughed and said I might be from Tennessee but that I didn't date my brother. That made her even angrier. She again raised her voice and said, "You can date your brother; you can date your daughter, you can date a woman or a man these days. We are past the days when a woman just dates a man. I hope you have enough class to realize that. Surely you have enough class to know THAT!"

Then she began to tell me that she spends thousands of dollars in this store, that she pays my salary, and that I work for her. With that she turned to that manager and laughed and said, "You may not even have to get onto with her, because I'm doing it for you. I took care of her." She laughed again with the obvious relish of "putting me in my place."

Then she stalked off, but apparently she decided I didn't look chastised enough, because she came back and said, "Miss manager, would you come with me?" She took the manager across the floor into another department where they could not be seen or heard, and there she fabricated some new concoction of what had transpired... and insisted the manager write it up as a formal complaint. The manager did just that, even though she had witnessed first hand some of the woman's loud, erratic behavior and even though company pollicy is that without a receipt, a return MUST go back to the department where it is sold. The customer is always right. The customer's perception is more important than the truth or company policy.

I was not the only one reported today. A young woman in our cosmetics department was written up twice, once for refusing to give a gift to someone who paid less than the promotion but demanded a gift anyway and once for telling a customer she would need a manager's approval before she could take back $100 worth of returned cosmetics. In both cases she was following company or departmental policy. In both cases the customer was backed up and the employee was reported.

I have to ask those managers who work in companies that chant the mantra "the customer is always right," who treat your employees like expendable commodities while you kowtow to customers who are OBVIOUSLY abusing both your policies and your employees -- what kind of message are you sending? If you take the time to publish manuals on how returns should be handled and then rebuke employees for following the manual (and angering customers who wants to bypass the rules), what kind of support are you giving your staff? Should the reward for following the rules be a rebuke? Do you think your rules will carry much weight if you indirectly or directly punish your employees for following them?

Those of you who are customers who pull these stunts of bypassing the rules by clamoring for a manger and dumping your ill temper on the clerk - SHAME ON YOU. You are literally stealing from the company with your returned worn clothing, and your abuse of the clerk is as bad as a man who emotionally abuses his wife or a boss who browbeats his staff.

The Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth. I guess one day shop girls will rule the planet. I would settle for a little more respect while I'm behind the cash register.

The Shop Girl's Report- "Real Men Wear Socks"

Part of the area I sometimes cover at Hechts is the men's shoe area. I say "area" as opposed to "department" because at the Hechts where I work, there is no shoe department, just an area with a small selection of shoes as part of the men's department.

One thing I don't understand is why grownup, adult men and their wives will come in to try on shoes without socks. When I tell them they need socks to try on shoes, they give me the "You've got to be kidding" look. When I tell them it's a health violation, they ask for the little peds they make for women. When I tell them we don't have those for men, they ask for a pair of socks. When I try to explain we don't have a laundry facility to wash the socks after each use, and we can't just discard them after each use, people get often angry and storm off in a huff. If I've seen it once, I've seen it 100 times since I've worked in the men's department. What I don't get is -- how is it they have lived so many years, and tried on so many pairs of shoes and never heard this before?

Are grown, adult people that oblivious of athlete's foot and other fungi that are spread upon contact and like to live in the dark, left-over moisture residue from your sweaty foot? Would they let strange people wear their shoes without socks? Would they let strange people wear their shoes at all? Have they never been asked to wear socks before when trying on shoes? How is it adult males (and their wives) have reached a certain age without knowing YOU BRING SOCKS WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO TRY ON SHOES?

Please! It is not MY fault you didn't come prepared! Don't take it out on ME because you didn't have the sense to bring socks! And, yes, that goes for trying on sandals, too. You just push your socks up between your big toe and the first toe and scoot the sandal on your foot. Otherwise, you risk catching or spreading something nasty.

It's one thing for some little tyke to show up in his little bare feet, but REAL MEN WEAR SOCKS!

Really, I am beginning to think this column should be required reading! People NEED an education on shopping etiquette ... and I am just the ShopGirl to set the record straight!

Matthew 10:14, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.”

What's a Shop Girl?

Shop girls are the clerks and cashiers where you shop.

We love people or we wouldn't be working in retail. We frequently earn close to minimum wage ringing customers up, helping them find a particular product, cleaning out dressing rooms, bagging purchases, putting out stock, marking items down, and doing all the tasks that keep a department running smoothly. We are often treated badly by impatient customers and managers alike.

We frequently have other jobs as bankers, educators, administrators and government workers. Especially those who work at night have often worked a full day job before coming in to work as your local shop girl. Often we have had to take a 2nd job due to a financial hardship.

This blog is dedicated to all workers who have ever worked a retail job, or worked in any other job dealing with the general public where money is tight and bosses are mediocre. This is the Shop Girl's Report on business and money.