Postcards From the Edge of Sanity: "Do You Work Here?"

The worst part about working in retail, as anyone who has worked retail will tell you, isn't the shit hours or the pittance the company tries to pass off as a living wage. It's not the lack of a regular schedule, or the revolving door of turnaround for employees and management, or even the degrading nature of being attached to a brand name or a corporate Satan for the duration of your employment.

Nope, it's the customers. It's the cussing customers and the idiotic things they do to your store and to you as a person. It's the evolution of the phrase "The customer is always right," from "The customer has a right to be respected" to "The customer has a right to be the center of attention at all times, and can treat the people who work around them like second-class citizens." Most of all, it's the annoying passive-aggression that makes you want to slap them.

This guy probably shops at our store.

The title of this particular post -- "Do you work here?" -- is, as I mentioned last week, a particular pet peeve of mine. All of the employees of my store, nay, any retail store that's not run by hippies or Google, abide by a certain dress code for the sole purpose of showing the customer who is a worker and who is a customer. Blue polo + khaki pants = Wal-Mart employee. Anything else = customer. So when a customer (who is, coincidentally, not clad in blue and khaki) approaches me to ask a question, what do you think is the number one icebreaker used? "Excuse me, can you help me?" No. "I have a question, miss"? As if. "Hey, asshole, need a little help here"? Nope.

They choose to waste their first impression on me by asking me the one question they know the answer to. They ask the blue-and-khaki blob shelving dog treats with a Telxon and a step-stool if she works there. Not that it's the only question they ask me that they already know the answer to -- their passive-aggression knows no bounds. They'll ask where things are, only to correct you if you give wrong directions or say that you don't know, they'll ask if it's possible to get fish out of the tanks when you're standing right there, they off-handedly remark "to themselves" how the self-checkouts aren't working right (even though they are, they just have the patience of a crack-fiend trying to kick his sordid habit), they'll ask if we have something that we clearly don't have any of...it's incredible. And no matter how shitty they treat you, all you can do is thank them and wish them a good day. Bull. Shit.

On the plus side: Some customers -- not a majority, by any means, but some -- are genuinely pleasant to be around. Particularly the old people. Gawds, I love old people. There's the guy who does magic tricks in the checkout line (although that can get a bit annoying, to be honest), the lady feeds her cat more in a day than I eat in a week -- they're all ok.