Spinning with Shaw’s Supermarket

After spending nearly 25 years as a cashier, there is one thing that I have figured out:  most cashiers are either stupid, rude, or both.

 

Any time that I have an interaction with a cashier, I always feel like I am either dealing with a brainless robot or someone who just endlessly wants to talk.

 

Thankfully, I have not ordered any drinks from Starbucks anytime in my life especially during their little “Race Together” program.  Why would I ever want to talk about such a controversial subject with someone who is probably uninformed and have no real clue about the subject?  Add to this that talking adds time to an employee’s interaction with a customer and many customers don’t really want to waste their time spent in such a small confining area for any more time than they have to.

 

Yes, it is all about the time.

 

In fact, there was a period when Staples wanted employees to spend no more than 3 minutes with each customer.  That is, from starting a transaction to saying “goodbye”, they only wanted a total of 3 minutes with each one.

 

Unless a customer was making a very small purchase and didn’t have anything that required explaining things like a service plan, this was all good.  Otherwise, that 3 minute window was a joke.

 

Of course, many times conversations were cut very short especially when lines were long and there was no backup help around.  Staples, during my last couple of years there, always seemed to under schedule for night business.  It was always busier than the schedule ever accounted for.

 

So dealing with customers is sometimes never fun and neither is dealing with cashiers either.

 

Enter the self-serve checkout.

 

This is a boon to anybody who doesn’t want to deal with people.  Locally, the Target and Walmart stores have self-serve registers.

 

Until 2 weeks ago, so did the local Shaw’s supermarket store did as well.

 

So introduces a problem.

 

I don’t like dealing with the cashiers at Shaw’s.  I had a very bad experience with one of their employees at the self-serve registers a few months ago.

 

Let me explain that situation.  One day I was purchasing a few reduced quick meals.  Each of them had an a coupon on them to account for the markdown price.

 

After I had scanned in the 4^th item and coupon, the system would not allow any more coupons for my remaining markdown items.  So the female supervisor, who is also a cashier had to open the top of the register system and retrieve the coupons that I already used and she literally threw them at me and told me that the only way that I could do this transaction was to go to a regular register and then I would have to split up the transaction because I had exceeded the maximum number of coupons even though only 1 was used per item.  I then asked her where that policy was posted and she just said that was the way it was and gave no further explanation.  I checked everywhere later on the company’s website and found absolutely no limit mentioned on coupons.

 

I reported this rude behavior to the store management via a store survey.  In my complaint, I mentioned that this employee should be fired for such bad behavior.   This was not my first problem with this employee, but I certainly wanted it to be my last.

 

Unfortunately,  this employee is still with the company and is still just as rude to customers as she was months ago.  To make matters worse, other cashiers are just as bad as this woman.  It seems that Shaw’s prides itself in the rude employees it has.  No other company have I ever seen so many rude employees as with Shaw’s.  .

 

Fast forward to about a week ago when I decided to make a complaint to Shaw’s on their Facebook page.  I wrote a rather lengthy complaint simply stating that I would no longer shop at the local Shaw’s only because they got rid of their self-serve registers.

 

The next day, I received a replay stating that they got rid of the self-serve registers as a matter of making for a more “personal experience” and make it more “convenient”.

 

Since I wrote my angry comment, a couple of others have made similar complaints about other locations where the self-serve registers were removed, and again the same words were used in the company’s response.

 

Overall, what Shaw’s is doing is creating their own form of spin by creating lies to cover up for the REAL reason for getting rid of the self-serve registers.  The real reason is that apparently there was too much theft at the self-serve registers.

 

Huh?!?

 

What?!?

 

Why is it that others have had no problems with the self-serve registers and Shaw’s claim that there is too much theft?     I actually found it very difficult to try to defeat the self-serve registers as each item seems to be weighed when entering the bagging area.  To add to that, there is a camera aimed right at the self-serve area, so the possibility of actually stealing is virtually eliminated.

 

As far as being “convenient” is concerned, longer lines have become the norm as Shaw’s still has only a couple of register open at a time.  However, in replacement to the 4 self-serve registers they had, they added 2 express lines instead.  This certainly doesn’t help the people who have to wait with large carts full of merchandise.  For the “personal experience” part, I wish not to interact with their rude cashiers ever!

 

So what is Shaw’s REAL problem (it is not theft, by the way)?

 

There big problem is old outdated merchandise not moved out correctly.  I remember years ago when people would stock the shelves, the new product was moved to the back and the old product would be put out front to make sure it sold first.

 

However, laziness has put the new product to the front and the old gets pushed to the back.  There is really no need for this type of laziness but it seems to happen everywhere, not just at Shaw’s.

 

A couple of months ago, I found a stale jar of spaghetti sauce that had expired nearly 9 months earlier.  I pointed out the problem to a salesperson on the sales floor and she took the jar and told her supervisor who didn’t seem to concerned over the problem.  Add this type of behavior to the rude cashiers, and you get a very bad shopping experience.  This was not the first time that I found expired items on the shelf at Shaw’s but it was the first time that I decided to report it.

 

Overall, I have found that Shaw’s has created a very bad shopping experience that has just been getting worse with the removal of the self-serve registers.  If they think that can create a better shopping experience with their change, they are sadly mistaken.  With the increasing number of complaints that I have read, it seems that Shaw’s is bleeding customers and risk going out of business because of their bad behavior.

 

They have already lost my business until they return the self-serve registers to the local store.  I don’t like the type of “personal experience” that they currently give and it certainly is NOT “convenient”.  I will shop where I can use self-serve registers and not be intimidated by rude employees.

 

Finally, for those of you wondering why I didn’t do a posting last week is because being April Fool’s Day, I thought that if I had written a real post it might have been taken as a joke and if I wrote a fake post, it may hurt the integrity of truth that this blog is always trying to show.  However, that doesn’t mean that I won’t write a fake one on some April 1^st in the future.

 

What do you the reader want?  Ignore April 1^st or someday write a wonderful fake post that brings that long needed chuckle here?

 

As always, I appreciate your questions and comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Staples Earnings Q3 – The Reality

First off let me say that just moments ago, I received an email saying that the local Staples store where I was once employed is currently looking for a couple of new full time sales associates.  Apparently the company either fired a couple of full timers or got a new boost from their sales results for last quarter.

 

However, I really doubt that latter idea happened.

 

In fact, realistically things continue to go downhill for the company.  For the 7^th straight quarter, sales have continued to drop.  It seems that competition from the big boy box stores have taken their toll on them along with the online companies they have to compete against.

 

While the company gained over the estimates, the bar has been lowered significantly every quarter.  Overall, the company gained about 9% in its stock today after the report, closing a few cents short of $14.

 

However, while the picture seems rosy, the company is still planning on closing at least 220 stores by year’s end, if not a few more.  It is that last part that should be disturbing to people as that “few more” is an unknown number.  Does this mean 5, 10, 25, 50 or more to close?  I guess we will have to wait to the end of the 4^th quarter to find out.

 

Most disturbing of the quarterly report transcript is that absolutely no mention was given to the possible data breach that was reported nearly a month ago.  I believe that they have had more than enough time to figure if they had a data breach or not.  It seems to me that they fear the fallout rather than the actual occurrence of the breach.  The time has come for the company to finally take its medicine and let the public in on the truth.

 

Of course, as I mentioned a long time ago, Staples is rather secretive on the gathering of credit card information and how they keep that information.  For those of you who remember then, I reported the company’s actions to the Better Business Bureau and they were in denial.  If you are interested in reading those posts just search “BBB” on this site.

 

Overall, Staples is falling apart as its seams despite people who own the stock who think otherwise.  Let me say that stockholders usually are NOT those who regularly shop at the company nor do they really care about what the company really does or its real performance.  Most stockholders are just in for a short time for a quick buck.  Therefore I expect that this stock will tumble in the coming days and weeks.

 

I also believe that the stock went up so much today was that it was riding on the coattails of both Lowe’s and Target, which also beat earnings for the 3^rd quarter as well.  I am not surprised with Target as it was in competition with Staples during the critical back-to-school season last quarter.  Apparently both companies had lowered their bars as Target is still trying to recover from their data breach of last year.

 

In the end, I expect to see Staples sales to continue to falter and decline.  However, it would be nice if Staples actually admit the truth about the data breach.  But then again, when has Staples told the truth?  Readers of this blog already know the answer to that.

 

Going Postal at Staples

Last week I mailed back a catalog that was delivered.

 

It was the second time I sent this same catalog back.

 

Not only was the name on the catalog not mine, but neither was the street mine either.

 

The only thing that I had in common with the delivered address was the house number only.

 

How could the postal service make this dumbass move twice?

 

Since there was no postal bar code on the catalog somebody actually had to read the address on the actual catalog and prepare it for the right address.

 

But to get it wrong twice?

 

I really expect that the postal service to do better than this as far delivering my mail.  It is bad enough that most magazines I receive come in a less than readable condition, but to make a move like this is just stupidity.

 

Now enter Staples.

 

Staples apparently is testing a pilot program to handle “traditional mail services”.  What exactly this entails is not detailed to any degree that I could find, but given that the postal workers are protesting it, the services must be interfering with the core business of the postal service.

 

To me, this sounds like a great way to save the millions of dollars that the postal service have lost over the years and in years to come.

 

On the other hand, having Staples deal with the mail is much scarier than the postal service themselves.  After all, does anybody really want a company known for scamming and lying to handle their day-to-day mail services?

 

Of course, Staples has been selling stamps for years and sending out packages by UPS since back before I started with the company.  But this in no way gives them the path to handling and taking over the postal service.

 

I see this as a huge mistake as the hourly employees of Staples won’t care at all about the services and like their other endeavors will be a failure.

 

Unless, of course that Staples wants to go millions of dollars in debt like the postal service.

 

But then again maybe that may not be a bad thing.

 

 

Equal Opportunity Employer?

Writer’s warning:  The following blog post may contain material that may be offensive to some readers.  Reader discretion is advised.

 

Last week, I wrote that most Staples stores would be closed Easter Sunday.  I never heard from any of my former colleagues or from any other Staples employee so I assumed that Staples in Maine was closed.

 

To find out for myself, I decided to call the local store that I used to work at.  The phone message didn’t say that the store was closed and when I went to get transferred all I got was “all associates are with other customers”.  I stayed on the line for about 3 minutes and assumed that the store was closed and someone didn’t fix the phone to say the store would be closed.

 

I would really hate to have been a real customer who thought the store was really busy and decided to go the store to go shopping for the day.  Even if the store was really open, I would probably be part of very small minority of Caucasian people in the store.

 

In other words, the store would probably be filled with non-Christian customers.

 

Now, I know that I am opening a real can of worms here by saying that, but seriously any Christian person would probably spend the day with their family as opposed to going shopping.  Even the big box stores like Target know better than to being open on one of the biggest religious holidays of the year.

 

As I pointed out in my last post, I was forced to use a personal day to offset the lost Sunday.  I believe that this certainly violates not only freedom of religion rights but also their status as an equal opportunity employer.

 

Even if the company asked even one employee or if a Christian employee volunteered to work on Easter Sunday, it would be a true violation of the above mentioned rights.

 

So why would the company want to be open during a Christian holiday?

 

My thought points to the fact that 3 of the top people at Staples are non-Christian people (or at least that is what their names points).  The most prominent one is Demos Pameros, President of the U.S. Staples stores.  While I could not find an origin of this last name, my thought is that it is close to a Muslim based name.  Again, this is an assumption which may or may not be true.

 

However, my point is that if Mr. Pameros is of non-Christian faith, it would not surprise me in the least to want to have stores open on one of the most religious holidays of the Christian calendar.  His belief is probably that there would be enough non-Christian people out there to make it practical to be open.

 

Unfortunately, there is a big problem with this philosophy.

 

They need employees to work Easter/

 

I don’t believe that Staples have enough non-Christian employees to allow all Christian employees to have had the day off.  Therefore, Staples violates freedom of religion and also is violating their “equal opportunity employer” status.

 

When I worked at Staples, the most number of employees that I believe that were non-Christian was 4.  This is certainly not enough to cover all the hours on Easter even if they were still employed with the company.  I don’t think that there is any store in the company that has enough non-Christian employees to even be open for even 1 hour much less a full day.

 

So why does Staples enjoy violating people’s rights?

 

The simple answer is that they lie.

 

Are you surprised about that?

 

How about discriminate as well?

 

Yes, they do that to as I am the perfect example of that.

 

Briefly put, when I became disabled during my final year at the company, I was constantly harassed by the management as to when I would be able to stop using a stool that was allowed by my doctor.  In fact, my doctor was harassed by having to fill out what seemed to be endless paperwork stating my disability.  In the end, I was terminated because of my disability whether Staples believes that or not.  I will have much more to say about that in future posts.

 

So if Staples can discriminate to me because of a disability and can make employees work on a religious holiday are they really an “Equal Opportunity Employer” or as what I have been writing about in this blog as a bunch of liars?

 

I will leave that for you, the reader to decide.  I already know my answer.

 

 

RadioShack and Sears Sufferings

Another possible hacking victim has been announced and it just so happens that it is Sears.  As if this company didn’t need to be hurt anymore it now has been announced that it may have become the latest victim in this ongoing problem.

 

Of course, the keyword here is MAY be a victim as they are not really sure that they really are or not.  Seriously here: why Sears is crying wolf when they may or may not be a victim?  Certainly their customers should be kept more in the loop than just using the term “may be”.

 

No mention is given if Kmart, which is owned by Sears, is part of this possible attack.  Since they both run similar register systems, I would say that they too are part of the attack.

 

It is sad when a company like Sears say that they may be a victim when companies like Neiman Marcus waited months to tell the world they were attacked.  It seems that accountability is lacking in the retail industry.

 

I still believe that other retailers will announce attacks over the last few months including Staples.  However, the longer companies wait, the more it will hurt their reputation and destroy their business.  Hasn’t any retailer learned anything yet from the Target fiasco?   Apparently not yet.

 

On another front, RadioShack announced this week that it plans on closing up to 1100 stores in the next few months.  This would mean up to 20% of their stores would be gone.  This is up significantly from the last round of closures announced a few months ago.

 

Apparently, sales to the retailer continues to slump to record levels causing the company to reevaluate itself.  Why did they spend millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad when they really couldn’t afford it in the first place?

 

So the real question is which stores will be closed and which ones may even be scaled back significantly.

 

My thought is that the stores that are going to be history already know who they are.  It is just that the list has not been made public as they may not want to scare other retailers in the same areas to want to abandon the region as well.  I also believe that many of the employees also know that their stores are closing as well.  It is just that these employees are told not to talk to any media outlets as the company has not made any final announcements yet.  Many of these stores have probably known for months that they were in line for termination and were warned that if sales didn’t pick up then they would close.

 

Unfortunately, nobody can make a customer buy anything at a certain store to try to save it from going out of business.  What happens happens.  Trying to force customers to make purchases will create a hostile environment that is bad for both the customer and the employee.  However this is exactly what some companies do such as Staples.

 

What will be most interesting is to see whether most of the stores that will close are located in malls, strip malls, downtown centers, or standalone locations.  My thought is that it might be an equal mix of all of these with more mall locations closing than anything else as malls are failing and many stores are starting to leave malls.

 

Speaking of company exits, the pizza location Sbarro seems to want to go bankrupt.  They closed 155 locations in the last week including the one in the local mall.  However, I feel that this company won’t be missed as most of their pizzas have been pretty bad in the last few years.  I stopped eating at their locations about 4 years ago.  Unfortunately, they are just the latest food court company closing up shop after declining food eaters in malls.

 

Overall the recent news of all 3 of these companies is more proof of an economy on the brink of collapse.  Unfortunately, those who serve on stock boards are blinded by all the negative information and continue to push the stock market to record levels.

 

Certainly the 1% is winning while the rest of us are losing.

 

 

 

 

 

Shaw’s’ Hidden Policy

Just when you thought that Staples was the only bad company (actually I have discussed others here), I now introduce Shaw’s to the bad company crowd.

 

For those of you who don’t know what Shaw’s is, it is a grocery store chain located in the New England/New York area. Up to a few months ago, the chain was owned by the Supervalu chain of stores, but now is independent.  Apparently independence has not done the chain well as I describe here.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the local Shaw’s store where I was purchasing 8 dental products, which each of them had a 55 cent off coupon on the package.  After I scanned all the items at the self-serve register, I started scanning my coupons from the packages.  Everything was fine for the first 4 items so I continued scanning the remaining coupons.

 

After I finished scanning all 8 coupons, it required management approval for some reason.  So when the woman supervisor scanned her employee card, I noticed that the register only doubled the value of the first 4 coupons and not the last 4.

 

The woman supervisor told me that it was policy that there was a limit of 4 coupons to be doubled.  When I asked where it was stated, she either did not hear me or ignored my question.  As she started taking the items off the receipt to void the transaction, the other coupons started doubling themselves over the limit of the 4.

 

Being irritated over the whole thing, the woman supervisor told me to go to a “regular checkout with my items” and she threw my coupons back at me as if I was to be blamed for the system not to work the way it should.

 

So off I went to the regular checkout grudgingly.  I decided to checkout as 2 transactions my 8 products to eliminate any possible problem.  The first transaction went fine, however the second one stopped me in my tracks as my credit card was not accepted because the same amount was in 2 consecutive transactions.  I have used my card many times at other places with same amount consecutive transactions with absolutely no problem whatsoever.  This is apparently a Shaw’s’s problem and not a credit card issue.  After a couple of minutes, the transaction did go through but this embarrassment could have been avoided if the registers were programmed correctly.  To insult to injury to all this was that the cashier was sort of rude to me while doing my transaction.  This is true of many of the cashiers who work at Shaw’s being rude.  This is why I use self-serve registers and recommend anybody with any intelligence to use self-serve when available.

 

Overall, I was very dissatisfied with my experience this particular day.  I filled out a survey on their website expressing my displeasure with how things went.  Thankfully, unlike Best Buy, I never received an email asking me to respond to them with either a phone call or an email.  Apparently Shaw’s does respect the privacy of their customers unlike companies like Best Buy and Staples.

 

What is the takeaway from all of this?

 

First, the woman supervisor was extremely rude to me unjustifiably.  She tried to create policy where no existed.  Nowhere is there a coupon limit posted in store or located (easily) on their website.  Therefore, the policy really does not exist.

 

I saw this type of event happen many times over the years at Staples.  However, unlike Shaw’s, the supervisor was NEVER rude to the customer despite sometimes not satisfying the customer.  As far as I am concerned, this woman supervisor should be terminated.  Shaw’s is no position anymore to lose customers or have people like me making postings like this explaining how bad the customer is treated.

 

Shaw’s like Staples is desperate to keep customers, but creating hidden policies that don’t exist is no way to retain customers.  Hopefully, Shaw’s unlike Staples will correct their problems and unhide their policies and post them where all can see them.

 

This is a lesson that both companies could learn from.

 

Dairy Queen, Bon-Ton & Staples Too

You may have heard of the teen who worked at Dairy Queen that took a $20 bill out of his own pocket after a lady picked it up after a blind gentleman dropped it.  According to the report, he ordered the lady to leave the store when she refused to give the money back to the blind gentleman. After that, he took out his wallet and gave the blind man $20 from his own pocket.  He got many phone calls thanking him for what he did including mogul Warren Buffet himself.

 

Now if this incident happened at Staples, the employee would more than likely get fired before the end of his shift for taking money out of his own pocket.  The reason is that Staples requires that employees carry no money with them out on the sales floor.  Since the company would have zero-tolerance toward this type of action, he would have no recourse despite being the “right thing to do”.

 

Secondly, by treating the woman rudely, it would be possible that if that happened here in Maine that the woman could sue for discrimination and collect a huge payday like the woman who had a case against Piercing Pagoda and made a $100,000 collection.

 

Certainly both Staples and Maine itself are messed up in their priorities.  Both need to change their ways and dig deeper into details before jumping to conclusions.

 

On another front, a new store opened at the Maine Mall back on Thursday, September 12.  Bon-Ton, however, was open for business 2 days earlier for those like me who was interested in browsing the store.

 

The store is located in the former Filene’s location that pretty much has been vacant since that company’s closing 7 years ago.  For a short period of time, a recreational area was located in this space, but has since moved to another part of the mall.  Pretty much the store looks pretty much the same as when Filene’s occupied the space.  As far as the outside goes that is a different story.  Gone are the beautiful windows that overlooked the parking lot from 2 sides and the gray color of the building itself.  The store is painted the same color as the other side of the mall which houses H&M, Forever 21, and Sports Authority.  Not that this is a bad thing, just not unique anymore.

 

When I entered the store, there were several employees around the front of the store.  However, not a single one of them greeted me as I walked in.  I didn’t really feel bad as most every place I go I am never greeted by anyone at all either.  The layout of the store is very similar to Macys, Lord  & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s and all those other similar stores.  And this is where the problem exists:  too many stores all selling basically the same things and being just like each other.  The bad thing about this store is that it reminded too much of the former Filene’s store that occupied the space.

 

When I went to the second floor, I took the elevator up.  Here is where I noticed the big flaw in the whole remodel process.  The metal numbers by the push buttons inside the elevator were significantly worn out.  Whether this was an oversight, it was obvious that the equipment was very old.  Other than that the store looked pretty “new” otherwise.

 

Overall, it took me about ten minutes to walk both floors as I really didn’t care anything about what they were selling.  Apparently nobody else was neither as I never saw a single transaction rung up during my stay in the store nor did I see anybody walking around with a bag from the store either.

 

What really bothered me the most though was the television ads that the company ran prior to its opening?  They claimed that their store was located in PORTLAND Maine when in reality it is located in SOUTH PORTLAND Maine.  Even the website points to a link of Portland instead of South Portland.  If you don’t know what city you are in, you will confuse the customer and anger the local residents of that town like myself.  For this reason alone, I am deducting 4 points off my grade for not knowing their location.

 

My Score:  4

 

Summary:  No greeting by any employee in a store that is so much like many others that there is nothing here to differentiate from the competition.  I have no interest of returning to this store ever again.  Hopefully, this company dies like so many lookalikes.

 

 

 

 

Staples’ Ink and Toner Pass Scam

Last year, Staples created the Back to School shopping pass.  Basically this scam was that you pay Staples to get a 10% discount on your back to school merchandise.  I believe the price of this card was $15 but I really don’t remember because I didn’t write about it last year.  I don’t know why I didn’t because this was a scam.

Now Staples is back with another money making scam: the Ink & Toner Savings Pass.  It started running in the ad that began last Sunday.   It is prominently featured on the cover of the flyer with the dreaded asterisk after the title.  Basically, it gives a 10% discount on ink and toner purchases or so they say.

The dreaded asterisk points to the center of the flyer at the bottom in EXTREMELY SMALL print.  But with a magnifier in hand, I got the awful details:

• The card costs $15.  This means you have to spend at least $150 in ink just to get the value of the card back.  If you figure sales tax into this, you have to spend even more depending on what your state’s tax rate is.
• It is only good through May 31, 2013.  This means you have to get your ink FAST before this offer expires.
• It is NOT good on HP ink and toner.  Since the majority of ink sold is this brand, this eliminates many customers from taking advantage of this offer.
• It is not good on remanufactured cartridges.  This is less of a problem than it seems as many manufacturers don’t sell these anymore.
• It is NOT valid on online orders or by-phone.  Basically, if the store doesn’t carry it or it is out of stock you are screwed.
• Pass can only be used once per day.  So if a customer forgets a cartridge and has to come back to the store, it is tough luck on using the card on the same day.  Given how evil Staples works, they probably track this and stop a customer cold if they try to use it again even if it is at a different location.

Given all these restrictions is there any wonder why anybody would ever want one these “discount cards” at all?  This is yet another way for Staples to rip off the customer, make a profit at the customer’s expense, and most importantly lie to the customer.

I would really be curious if cashiers or other employees have to try and sell this card and if they expect any quotas of sales from these cards.  If they do, my suggestion is to stop selling these cards immediately.  If I was still employed with them, I would never sell them in the first place, but then again I never participated in ANY of their scams, which is why I am no longer with them.

 

The Other Woolworth Positions

Besides working the customer service desk, cashier, and front-end supervisor, I also held other positions in the store as well.  Some were one-time shots, others more often.  Listed below in order of appearances are those other positions and comments about them:

Restaurant Cashier 

There is nothing more awful to look at then watching people eat.  Try this experiment if you don’t believe me:  put a mirror in front of you and start eating.  If you are not freaked out within a couple of minutes, then congratulations, otherwise welcome to my personal hell.  Even though this was a sitting position, it had a lot of downtime.  Most employees read between ringing up customers and it was quite obvious why.  I just sat there staring at the smoke-filled room, waiting for the next customer to come to the counter with their bill to be rung up.  This brings up another point:  many of the bills were added wrong.  So I had to account for these errors and ring their bill up as listed on their check.  No wonder this register was always short.  Nobody ever knew how to ring up over in the restaurant.  It would not be for a couple of years when smoking was banned in the mall and smoking in the restaurant was eliminated.  This was an eventual state law, but too late for the couple times I worked in the restaurant.  Certainly not worth the 50% discount for restaurant employees, which I was for about a week.  Probably the worst place in the store to work short of the pet department, which I never worked.

Women’s Department

It wasn’t often that a guy would work in the women’s clothing section.  This section also included the baby section as well.  Spending a night or afternoon in this section might interest some people, but the thought of endlessly straightening women’s clothing on racks was more than just dull – it was super dull.  Besides that, dealing with the fitting room was almost an endless task as well as this was a babysitting job just to make sure that nobody ever stole anything.  I would also note that this position also required endlessly straightening up the shoe department.  As anybody who has ever looked at any store’s shoe section, this could be an endless task by itself.  I am so glad that I was only in this department a couple of times, just because the store was very desperate.

Men’s Department

Across from the woman’s section was my other hated section: the men’s department.  It was easier to relate to this section because I was a guy, but it still was not the fun section either.  Most importantly this section was small and had just one fitting room unlike the woman’s section that had 4 fitting rooms.  The worst thing about this department was the straightening of the Dickies clothes.  Anybody who has ever handled these clothes know how heavy they can be especially the full suits.  What made this department so bad was that it was a very claustrophobic space.  It was a great relief when I finally got to leave this department for even for a few minutes.

Jewelry Department

Speaking of tight spaces, nothing was any tighter than the jewelry register area. The space between a wall and a counter was about 3 feet wide, which made it a pretty tight squeeze to enter the register area. The rest of the department wasn’t much better either. It was not uncommon to bump into one counter while trying to maneuver around another. In doing so, it was very easy to knock the jewelry onto the floor, which I did frequently. This was another one of those thankful departments that I rarely appeared in only when the store was desperate.

Domestics Department

This one should almost be disqualified as this area was part of my customer service desk duties as well. During my downtime (read: when I felt like it), I was supposed to straighten up the curtain and bedding section, which was 5 aisles wide to the right of the customer service area and the area of the sewing section which was about 4 aisles straight forward of the customer service desk. I usually wandered into these sections just for the exercise alone, but the straightening was sometimes very frustrating. Curtains were especially troublesome as it was difficult to sometimes figure out which package each open package piece belonged to. I know many times I probably screwed this up, but what do you expect from somebody who knows nothing about curtains.  The sewing area was hardly any better as keeping the different types of yarn in the right bins was sometimes an endless battle of emptying the bins and resorting the yarns out by type.  No matter what neither section of domestics were enjoyable, thus I tried hard not to spend a lot of time in either section.

Sporting Goods Department

Yee-Hah!  Nothing more satisfying to a gun-toting cowboy than working in this section.  This section, which was nestled between the Stationary department, the toy department, and the housewares department, was probably the most depressing department to work in.  As I knew nothing about rifles, camping, or bicycles, this section was not a favorite of mine.  Since this department wasn’t visited much, not much ever needed straightening.  So this department was nothing more than walking around being bored.  The worst thing about this department was the handling of the rifles.  The smell of the gun oil made me sick and getting it on my hands was even worse.  I eventually figured a way to handle the guns by wrapping my hands in paper towels to handle them.  Yea, it looked stupid but it worked for me.  Worse than handling the rifles was the paperwork needed to sell one.  Thankfully, a form needed to be faxed to Augusta to perform a background check before any rifle could be sold.  This took about 5 days and it did anger some people.  I guess the satisfaction of having a rifle today was not in some people’s plans.  I usually got stuck working in this department on Saturday nights when one of the two regular associates were off.  Never looked forward to those nights at all.

Music Department

Finally, the one department that I spent the most time in by far was this one.  It was also the department I also enjoyed the most as well.  I mean who would not enjoy being surrounded by videos, cds, boom boxes, and video game systems.  This was my playground of fun.  When nobody was around, I would go over to the Sega Genesis machine and play Sonic the Hedgehog.  I was never any good at it, but I enjoyed it just the same.  We also had a Nintendo kiosk, but was not set up to actually play games – it just looped a demo on a laser-disc player contained within the display.  When we stopped carrying video games, I purchased that laser-disc player and got the Nintendo demo disc left inside as a bonus.  I think I have quite a collectable despite laser-disc players no longer being manufactured.

Another fun part of the department was watching VHS tapes, listening to the radio, and playing cds.  The important thing about cds was that I was working there when the transition was made from the long extended cardboard boxes that the cds were in and were left in their smaller cd jewel cases.  Thank the tree-huggers for that one.  To protect the cds, a new security package was introduced that housed the cd that needed to be opened with a special key.  A similar package was also used on cassette tapes as well as their cardboard packages were also eliminated as well.  I will have more to say about product security in future posts.  One thing I proved about cds while working there was that it was absolutely possible to play a cd to death, did that twice with the same title.  The cd, which was a department favorite, was Weird Al Yankovic’s “Jurassic Park”.  A very enjoyable cd for those who love parodies and all his work is always entertaining.

However, not everything was fun and games in the department.  I spent a lot of my time endlessly pricing things that were brought over to me.  My hands were sore after a long day of pricing merchandise.  More will be said about pricing merchandise in a future post as well. 

The funniest thing that ever happened in that department was when a bird got loose in the pet department and decided to fly over to the music department to do a little looking around.  The little bird sat upon a video tape rack and one by one knocked each video tape to the floor while standing on the one next to it.  When the bird got to the last tape, the bird jumped to the shelf and pushed the last one onto the floor.  This bird was easily caught because it just wanted to sit on this rack with nothing else on it.  It certainly wasn’t the first time that a bird got loose and certainly wouldn’t be the last either. 

Conclusion:

Overall everyday at Woolworth brought variety.  Hardly a day was ever dull as there was always something to do or maybe just a little time for some fun.  But you can’t have fun if you don’t carry merchandise and with that will be the next topic as I discuss the regular merchandise carried along with the more odd stuff carried.

Up Next:  Oh the Merchandise We Carried!

Let’s Start Cashiering!

Virtually all retail jobs start with training as a cashier.  This was the starting point of all three of the companies that I worked for.  However, where I went after I was trained as cashier varied from company to company I worked for.  Most employees hate being a cashier quite possibly for one of a couple reasons:

• You stand in one spot for a long period of time, usually hours at a time.
• It gets monotonous to keep doing the same thing over and over.
• The customers are rude.

The third reason will be discussed in a future post, but the first two are the most important as the shear boredom leads many employees to quit just after a few weeks.  However, the biggest issue is that most employees just can’t figure out how to give back change.  As funny as that sounds, they just don’t get how many nickels, dimes, pennies, or quarters back to a customer.  Add to that the paper currency and it just accumulates to trouble.

Another intimidation is the register itself.  Too many buttons or too many functions lead the employee to hitting the wrong key more often than they should.  Add to this that employees have to scan merchandise and then bag it and you have the perfect recipe for disaster.

For example, I believe that a good cashier can retain concentration while scanning merchandise and maintaining a conversation with the customer at the same time. However, many times the employee gets so wrapped up in a conversation that they don’t pay attention to what they are doing. Such is the point that in the last 10 years I have accumulated over $200 in free or discounted items from stores because of the incompetence of the cashier. Needless to say, that if somebody was overcharged they would demand a refund. However, if they were undercharged, the customer just runs away laughing their head off knowing how stupid the cashier really was! Only once in my 20+ years in retail did a customer ever come back because they were not charged for an item and that was a large printer that was sitting on the floor by the cashier. Of course this happened at Staples and this cashier was promptly fired without ever given another chance. So much forgive and forget!

Another bad thing about cashiering is the training of other cashiers. Normally I was the sucker, I mean employee, who trained most of the new people on the cash register. As part of their training, they had to use my cash drawer to ring up transactions. The bad thing about that is that many of these people were amongst those who can’t count change back to a customer thus creating a shortage in the drawer. And guess who got blamed for problems like that? ME!! Sad to say that managers never researched who was on the register when a problem occurred so it is just as easy to blame everybody and have it go into their permanent record. Ah, you can smell the manager incompetence! I became an easy target for all the register problems since I was one of the very few full-time cashiers.

On the other hand, I have found cashiers that have personalities of a dead dog.  They act robotic and seem totally disinterested in the customer much less their job.  These people are even worse to deal with than the excessive talkers as they are very unhelpful and add to the fact that many of these companies are failing.  If you get lousy service or deal with lousy employees, the company becomes lousy as well.  As if places like Borders would have learned that and Best Buy should learn that, but then again nobody ever learns from their mistakes in the retail world.

Up Next:  My Next Position – Front End Supervisor or Is That Stupid-Visor!