Gearing Up

You can sense it as you walk through the mall.

Anticipation. 

The new holiday help as just started, the veterans are walking the floor with a calm and cool demeanor as they silently look over the displays.  They fold clothes.  Answer questions.  Ring people out.  Handle the crowds.  You can tell who was green and who was not.  The greenhorns are freaking about the lines.  The vets know that this is just the beginning.  The storm surge before the hurricane. 

The vets have a blank stare that only many holiday shopping seasons can bring.  The greenhorns have that naivety and have no clue what is in store for them. 

This is all a part of the week leading up to Black Friday.  Training the new people while making sure everything is in place. 

Retail.  They aren't gonna know what recession is.  The month leading up to Christmas Eve is a marathon.  Days will start to run together, everyone starts to look the same, and you still have a sense of calm in the chaos around you.  The retail machine is a well oiled one.  Supply chains are secured.  Headcount is accounted for.  Computer systems are double checked to make sure the flow of cash doesn't stop. 

For a weekend, retail workers are going to forget that there is recession.

Today I could sense all of it as I walked the mall with the Wife to do Christmas shopping recon. 

I have gotten 2 of the 5 blogs to be posted during the Black Friday weekend.  I must say, they are fantastic, and I cannot wait to introduce you to the soon to be famous bloggers who are going to fill in. 

Stay tuned.

Thanksgiving plans and an Invitation

"What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

How does one who works in retail answer that?  Do they think they are going to get a crazy awesome story on how they go through Thanksgiving with a smile on their face and a thankfulness that they have the long weekend to stay at home and veg out, maybe do some Christmas shopping?

No.

My plans for Thanksgiving [as of right now] are to get up extra early to start prepping the bird for the oven.  Then I go through the day, glad to have the family and friends over, and I listen to everyone else make plans for shopping, hanging out, and sleeping in all weekend.  My plans are not nearly as exciting.  I will kick my family out of the house around 8-ish so that I can get to bed early, because my alarm is going to be going off very very early in the morning so I can get to work the next day by 5:30am. 

I work in retail.  While many families may go out and have their Christmas shopping bonanza, Christmas decoration hanging parties, and singing with canned laugher and happy Christmas Carols, I am at work, listening to the same 15 Christmas tunes our Musak will play over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.....

You forget about the workers in retail this time of year. You see us all as punk kids working their way through college without a vested interest in you.  You think we don't care.  You think we are there to abuse. 

"Do you know how long I stood outside?" or "Do you know how long I waited?"  you'll say.  In the back of my head I want to shake you and tell you that there is more to life than shopping on Christmas, and that you take yourself WAY too seriously.  But nontheless I won't.  I will smile, apologize for your wait, and give you my undivided attention.  I take it upon myself to make sure your family has a nice Christmas present, and I ask you a lot of questions to make sure that the product you pick out is going to make your little Johnny smile in delight and tell you that you are the best mother/father in the world.  I am going to take your snide remarks, your shit eating grins, and overall grumpiness, and let it roll off my back, because frowns don't sell people, I sell people.

We are a week from Thanksgiving here in America.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Oh and I am looking for a few good bloggers.  Because I am going to be pulling some crazy hours next week, I would like to have you guest post throughout the weekend.  Shoot me over an e-mail at throwing25s [at] gmail [dot] com.  There is no theme, but I would love to have you on.  Just let me know if you want to come on and blog.  I have 5 spots open starting on Black Friday to December 1st. 

If the customer is always right.

If the customer is always right, then yesterday I was an asshole and a racist.

If anyone on the blog follows my twitter then you would have seen that yesterday I broke the cardinal rule. I let a customer get to me. I feel it necessary to tell the whole story.

As the afternoon was shaping up, I was rolling. I was getting new customers, renewing old ones, and I was driving revenue for my company. I was actually in a good mood. Everything was clicking. Then a series of customers came in that really started to grind me down.

Customer 1 wasn't as bad as it could have been, but the funny part about this guy is the day before. I was helping a young girl get her new phone fixed. She was being very abusive to the charging port of her phone so it needed to be replaced. As I was replacing it, my manager was working next to me with an escalated customer [read: pissed off]. As he is working with one escalation, another approaches. My manager was able to appease the pissed off people he was with, then that is when Customer 1 walked up. He was mad about his new BlackBerry. He had "3 replacements and they are all doing the same thing, it's a piece of junk, he wanted a new one."

The bad part about having an innovative product for mass distribution is that there are certain growing pains that come with new technology. There are kinks to be worked out. It will not be perfect until that product gets into the hands of abusive customers. That is when the kinks get worked out. Usually these things get fixed quickly, but then again, we know the general public are a bunch of impatient jerks.

So Customer 1 starts to talk to the other pissed of customers and says that he "sued this company for the time an aggravation it took for a replacement phone and the amount of times he needed to come in and deal with his non working phone." Let the bullshit rain begin. He said that "The corporate people called him and thought that it was a joke and said that they wouldn't go to court." He later went on to say that, "well if you don't go then I will get a default judgment in my favor." I mean this guy was laying it on think. Having been in the retail business for close to 10 years now, I can tell when someone is trying to justify their anger. They are like the rooster trying to fuck the hen house. They are puffing up that meek exterior in order to impress someone else and prove that they are right. I saw right thought his bullshit and noticed that he was holding the very BlackBerry I am now using. So fixing his issue was going to really take 13 seconds. But I was with a customer. As Customer 1 continues he gets mad and starts to walk out. That is when my customer sprang into action.

"Excuse me, sir?" she said in one of those hurried tones. Customer 1 stops and turns around, "If [this company] sucks as bad as you say it does and you successfully sued them, then why do you still choose to use this company?"

My jaw hit the floor. Holy shit. The balls or virtual balls this girl had. I think Customer 1 felt silly getting asked this from a 18 year old girl, but he was embarrassed and then left in a real big hurry. He returned yesterday and immediately wanted to talk to a manger. My manager on duty was working next to me as always, because I have a certain way of diffusing situations by proxy. I can over hear a situation, see my customer is getting that evil eye, and then I loudly educate this customer on how to prevent what ever issue that complaining customer is talking about. It works, complaining customers feel stupid, I am happy because I make 2 customers happy at once and they leave.

Well Customer 1 was complaining that his BlackBerry didn't work. Every issue he was telling us was 100% a real issue. The only issue is that it happens with every single one of them. There are several fixes on the internet, and best practices to reduce issues, and now that I have one of these "shitty" BlackBerrys, I know every single one of them. So I am with my customer and I ask permission from my customer to help out my manager. I literally pushed my manager aside and said, "Dude, a new blackberry isn't going to help you, just like it didn't the first 3 times we gave you a new one. Here is what you have to do." I took his BlackBerry and went into his settings and removed some programs that make the BB run slow. I hand it over and said, " Here is a list of websites that are BlackBerry communities. These are the geeks of BlackBerry. 80% of them have this phone and there are fixes and programs to make this thing disgustingly awesome." He said that he knew about all these sites and said that he couldn't use any of them because he had a Mac. The fact that he thought too long to tell me he had a Mac made me test him. So I start with, "You have a mac [imagine me making that thinking face] then you have Mac OS 9 right?"

He said, "Yeah its awesome! It's fast, and I think I want an iPhone." One thing you should never do is pick an agrument with a geek because they will make you look and feel dumb. My follow-up question, "When did you get it?"

"Last week." He said.

"How did you get Mac OS 9 on it?"

"It came with it." I should have told this guy to stop and tell him that he was lying, but what the hell, that is no fun.

"Well if you got it last week, there is no way. I have a Mac Book Pro and I got mine 6 months ago and I have Mac OS 10.5. But no matter which one you got, it'll work with a BlackBerry because mine works with it."

Customer 1 fails. He leaves and didn't get another phone. His phone will be fixed shortly and he will still not have learned his lesson.

So that being said, I got another customer yesterday that I let get to me, but I think he only got to me because Customer 1 was such an asshole.

So let me set up Customer 2 or as I will call him Dirka Dirka. Dirka Dirka came in Saturday and wanted to upgrade using one of our promotions. Be didn't pay his bill on time so he had a past due, so until he pays it, he can't do anything. He was pissed because, "He mailed it in." That could be true, but the situation still remains, we haven't gotten it so your account is still past due. He understood and said he would be back Monday. That's cool, but I told him 3 times that the promotion he wanted to take advantage of ended on Sunday. He 'said' that he understood but he left anyway.

Monday was here faster than a 18 year old's premature ejaculation. Dirka Dirka came in and of course, like I told him, the promotion had ended and the price of the phone he wanted went up by $50.00. Sorry dude, I told you it was going to happen.

Well customers think that we can do whatever. They think that walking into my store is like walking into a flea market [not my description, but one of my co-workers]. Let's haggle these prices. Well the thing about it is, we can't haggle. The price is what it is. It's already severely discounted.

So as this transaction kept going he said that he wanted to leave my company. He said that [insert any one else here] would do what he asked. Having been around a while, I can tell you without equivocation, no they won't. Every single company out there besides mine, will make you wait until your 24th month to get a new phone at any kind of discount. My company will do it for you every year, if you have a certain price plan, which Dirka Dirka had. I never told him I couldn't do anything, I just told him what I COULD do for him. I could give him a comparable phone for the same price, oh and its brand new too.

He finally just said get him the phone he wants, he will buy it and then switch, but he needed a phone today. I was disgusted. You want me to sell you a phone when you tell me you are going to leave. Ok, cool, because it's resigning your contract for 2 years and you're going to have to pay a fee.

I left and got the phone. I started to ring it out and I had to tell him [its the law] that he is signing a new contract and that he will be subject to a early termination fee of up to $175.00.

He then promptly called me an asshole. I shrug it off. I have been called worse. He then told me that he was NOT getting a discount and the only reason he wasn't getting a discount was because I was a racist. I snapped. I loath being called a racist.

Why? Because it shows 2 things. That I am that closed minded, and that this guy had lied to me enough. He didn't mail in his bill, he made a payment that same day over the phone with a credit card. That was just the beginning.

I told the customer to follow me. I ripped the price tag off the wall and showed him how much the phone he wanted was. It was $409.99. That is the cost it costs me to put this phone on the shelf. I am selling it to you at this price. $199.99 with a rebate of $70.00. He called me an asshole once again, mind you in a lobby FULL of customers. I said that if he called me an asshole one more time that I would gladly send his account up to our regional manger and she will GLADLY cancel your service for being this abusive to an employee who is TRYING to help you out. I don't have to give you this price, I can tell you to go pound salt, just like EVERYOTHER company will. He left very angry and very pissed off, and my blood pressure was so high, my face was red and my hands were shaking.

My manger whisked me away to the back and was laughing. He said, "never have I seen a customer say those things to a rep and the rep never backed down. The rep would have folded and started crying in the back." He said I tried to do the right thing, and had it been him, he didn't think he could keep his cool as long as I did. I told him that I was sorry, but I didn't like being called a racist or an asshole repeatedly. He agreed.

But I broke that rule. I let him get to me. He wasn't mad at me. He was mad at himself and took that frustration out on me and my company because the phone he broke was the source of his anger. It wasn't my fault he threw his phone on the ground in a fit of rage. It wasn't my fault he didn't pay his bill. It wasn't my fault that this guy was a Class A asshole.

Vacation is just 3 days and 14 hours away. I'm not counting down.

Talk about a crazy day!

I am currently sitting in a very very noisy party where I know absolutely no one but my wife and another friend of mine, Char and the host.

Right now Journey is playing very loudly on a an old school hi-fi system. You know the one that Patrick Bateman (played like a genius by Christian Bale) had in the movie American Psycho. Along with the loud music comes a lot of very drunk people attempting to dance.
[note to self: next time I am drunk, stay put in a seat. I can now see what everyone else sees when I drunk dance.]

Oh God, they started singing! Shoot me now!

I am huddled in a corner with my BlackBerry punching out this blog.

[wife just walked through the room 'dancing and singing' Journey is over, on to Abba's Dancing Queen]

The story of why I am here requires a story.

Today was a very busy Saturday. Retail this time of year is crazy, but today was the busiest day of the season by far! So I need to give you background. I sell mobile communication devices. More specifically I am a sales supervisor. So I manage a small staff in a mall kiosk.

[I am now in the car driving home. Thank God-]

In my industry there are 2 things that analysts use to judge success. New subscribers and Churn. New subscribers are a given, pretty self explanatory. Churn is just jargon for the rate in which current customers leave our company. Now Churn isn't something I can measure on a day to day basis. So when we set our goals, we only have new subscribers in mind. Don't get me wrong, current customers count too, but let's face it, growth is the name of the game. Keep the customers you have and attract new ones too. In this economy, if you can show growth, you are a part of a successful company.

With that being said, let me give you an idea of how busy it was today. On a typical Saturday, outside of the holidays, getting 6 new subscribers is a great day. During the holidays getting 10 new subscribers is great. Well today we added 23 new subscribers. It was so busy I didn't have time to think.

Its just one of those days where you just hold on for your life and wait for it to be over.

[I'm home now]

So I got to work about 12:30pm and left work about 11:30pm. 11 hours, a long day no matter how busy, but add 130% more customer traffic and you have a very busy day. Oh, yeah, almost forgot, I was up at 6am with my daughter and her friend. 6 year old sleep overs are not for the faint of heart. So, I've been up for a while. [I cooked Audrey and company pancakes. They rocked if I must say so myself!]

About 10:30 my wife tells me that she is going to a Christmas party and would like me to come along. Reluctantly I accept and when I leave work I go to this party. I trek halfway across the state, or so it feels.

Now this party is being thrown by a friend of ours, a common pleas judge for a neighboring city. To say this guy throws one hell of a party in an understatement. I walk into this house looking for my wife. She was no where to be found. Wading through the crowd felt like I was in a movie. Think Can't Hardly Wait, but with older, more drunk people, and what they were getting drunk on was not cheap keg beer. Most of these people make a decent amount of money. These people work hard, and my god they play hard. I knew the host, and 2 other people. I was not having fun. When one arrives to a party as late as I did, its like coming into a child birth to watch the placenta hit the floor. The beautiful part is over, now all that is left is sloppy seconds.

So now that its nearly 2am, its time to end my day and go to bed!
The only great thing about busy days are that I get paid on commission. Let the crowds come!

At the end of a long day

This weekend in retail is what we insiders call the 'mad dash'. It's when last minute shoppers run to the mall and shop and shop and shop and shop. The weekend before Christmas is historically worse than Black Friday. The volume is higher, the hours are typically longer, and the deals this year seem to be better.

Retail this time of year is the equivalent to 14 hour shifts at the plant. I am one of the fortunate that was blessed with the ability to bullshit, so I make a great salesman. My Grandfather, Father, and anyone before me in my family had to work. I don't have to work. I mean I go to work, but I get paid to talk all day. I get paid to tell people what they want. How awesome is America?

Well today was a pretty long day. I worked from 1pm to 11:3opm tonight, and I am beat. Not as much as the wife is right now. I came home and I find my 6 year old passed out on the couch, my daughter's friend sitting on the couch disappointed that her hostess couldn't hang much past 10pm, my dog running around the house all freaked out, and my wife is sitting the chair worn ragged from the kids and dog. This is Audrey's first sleep over, so the wife wasn't sure what to expect. I think she bit off more than she could chew. The next one, I don't think I am going to be allowed to work.

Of all the times I wish I had a camera ready, it would have been tonight when I got home to capture that scene. I wish I could have gotten it, but you win some and you lose some.

After changing into some comfy clothes, putting Audrey and her friend to bed, I poured myself a drink. Isn't always nice at the end of a long day, to have that one drink you always love?

Bourbon and water is my poison. I am pretty sure my wife needed it more than I. I'm sure if she could have found the corkscrew, the case of wine we just bought would have been gone.

**of you hadn't noticed I added a FaceBook badge to my FaceBook page. Feel free to add me**