Being on the side of retail that is less desirable, you gain insight on the way that society treats sales associates because of their vision of them as retail workers. Here are a few things that the retail world would like you to know as you shop (besides that sales associates are human beings too).
1. Cleaning up your mess
The job of a sales associate is to assist customers in finding what they are looking for, not cleaning up the tossed shirt piles or picking up the clothes that customers leave balled up in the corner of a dressing room. Spending time doing those things takes time away from the customer’s actual needs. And what really gets me is that most of the time it is caused by grown women.
2. Relating to the first point
When I am folding a table, cleaning up a mess, especially after I have cleaned an entire row, and someone comes along, watches me clean this table, looks at what they are interested in, picks it up and then piles it like crumpled paper. Haven’t your parents ever taught you to clean up after your mess? Mine did.
3. “Can you get up there and ring?”
When a customer is waiting in a long line and asks me to get behind a register I’m stunned. While I am there to assist customers, my manager tells me what to do when and where. Most of the time we have as many associates on the registers as we can have; if there are fewer associates ringing than there are registers it is most likely that there are issues with the registers that keep associates from ringing on them.
4. “Can’t you just give me a discount?”
No actually, I can’t – I could lose my job. It is not my job to get you discounts or save you money. I could get fired for giving discounts that customers don’t qualify for, and the fact that you asked for it makes me want to give you discounts even less.
5. Cutting us off
I am required to ask if you want to sign up for our credit card, debit card, email, etc. Wait for me to finish what I am saying and then politely say “no thank you.” It is rude to stop people mid-sentence, especially if you’re on your phone texting(or you just asked me for a discount) because I just gave you an opportunity to save money and now you seem ungrateful. Once you cut me off it doesn’t make me want to be nice to you, let you know of any other deals or fold your clothes nicely. Being personable goes a long way.
6. Talking on your phone while I’m ringing you up.
It’s just awkward. I don’t want to interrupt your conversation, but most of the time customers don’t pay attention to the purchasing process without distractions, much less while they are on the phone. The maximum amount of time that this process will take is 5-10 minutes, depending on how much you’re purchasing, so putting the phone down for a minute to figure out what you need to do will be for both of our benefits.
Retail is hard, and it is an underappreciated job that most people have once experienced. Don’t take it out on us; we’re just the employees.