Forever 21 is a an amazing store where girls get lost and even workers struggle to learn where everything is located. Anyone who has ever worked retail has probably had similar rough experiences as I have, so bless those who have had to put up with the chaotic and insane nature that is working in a clothing store.
The Forever 21 that I worked in was in a very busy mall in hometown. On a good day I would be bored and fold the same pile of jeans or tank tops all day since the store wasn’t busy. On a bad day, I would barely have time to pick up an item from the floor before someone asked me to climb a ladder to get some clothes down, or someone came up to me asking for a manager. Do not blame the employees for the mess that Forever 21 can become; we try our best to keep up with the amount of people that come into the store.
Let me preface this by saying that all the names are changed but all the stories are true. Some people who shop in Forever 21 are animals, and these stories are great examples of why. (Some of these are not my own personal experiences, but experiences of my coworkers and friends.)
1) Teenagers Play Tag
My least favorite shift while working at Forever 21 was the closing shift. I’d clock in at 5PM and depending on how busy the store was that day, sometimes I wouldn’t leave until midnight or 1 a.m. resetting the store. I was an hour and a half into my shift on a Friday, and at my home town mall, Fridays are the days where all the “scene” kids filled with teenage angst who normally shop at Hot Topic fill the mall. A large group of five to six teenagers came into my store and decided they were going to play a game of tag in the store. Knocking over piles and racks of clothes in their wake they ran rampant in the store until my manager had to stop them.
2) Prank Phone Calls
Every Friday night my store got a barrage of prank phone calls, each one more aggravating than the next. Friday nights were generally extremely busy because of the back-to-school season and the fact that teenagers love hanging at the mall for some odd reason. Answering the phone is always difficult, especially when you have a line wrapping around cash wrap and into the clothing sections. One particular Friday night I unfortunately answered the phone and had to answer a series of questions for a rather odd man. The conversation went like this:
ME: “Hello, this is Sonya at Forever 21, how may I help you?”
MAN: “Hi, I was wondering if you had any bathing suits for women?”
ME: “Currently it’s the end of the season so we only have a few bathing suits left, but not many different sizes. Were you looking for one in particular?”
MAN: “Yeah! I was looking for a G-String, can you send me a picture of one?”
ME: “Sorry sir, we don’t sell those here.”
MAN: “Oh well that’s disappointing, guess I won’t be able to go shopping there. I didn’t want to get a tan, why do we get tan?”
At this point in the conversation, the line around the register had grown three times it size and I could no longer answer the various inappropriate questions being asked so I hung up. Most of the prank calls we received ran along these lines and we never failed to receive one on Fridays.
3) Fitting Room Baby
Out of all my experiences at Forever 21 this one had to be the most wild. I was the fitting room attendant for that day and the store was rather busy for a mid day shift. We have two handicapped fitting rooms that we reserve for those with disabilities and mothers with small children. A mother came into the fitting room with a stroller and a child who was around two or three. She went into the fitting room with five items and after around fifteen minutes came back out closing the door behind her and went to leave the fitting room. I stopped her on the way out telling her she couldn’t leave her child in the fitting room, and her immediate response was, “Oh don’t worry about it, she’s just a child she can’t open the door! I’ll be right back!” Because of insurance reasons we can’t let mothers leave their children in fitting rooms by themselves, but also because of my conscience I couldn’t let this mother leave her child alone! She continued to argue with me for some time insisting that it was okay because her child was “advanced” and would be fine in a fitting room by themselves. Let’s just say she left the store without buying anything and definitely with her child in her hands despite being angry at me.
4) CPS Called
A friend of mine worked at Forever 21 before me and was a manager for a while. She once had to call the mall cops because a mother left a child in the store by themselves for hours and no one could find her. So when the mother finally returned the mall cops had called Child Protective Services to investigate, the mother was so angry she approached my friend who was the manager at the time and punched her in the face. It’s probably the craziest story I have heard to this day concerning people who shop at Forever 21. This woman was so offended that someone was concerned for the safety of her child, she punched someone square in the face.
5) Fitting Room Adventures
I was closing the store with a few of my favorite co-workers and it was fairly empty that night. A couple came in two to three hours before closing, high school age. Her boyfriend was clearly just there for the ride because he followed her around the store and carried all of the clothes she wanted to try on for her–it was kind of sad to see if you ask me. My coworkers and I all felt bad for the boy because he was clearly tired and embarrassed by how loud his girlfriend was being. Mind you, this girl was shopping in every section of the store and picking out a minimum of four things from each section, and Forever 21 has a minimum of 4 sections at a time, so he was walking around with a huge pile of clothes. Even when offered a bag to hold everything in, she told him not to take it. When she finally decided she was going to try things on she went to the fitting room where a coworker of mine was the attendant. At the time my coworker was folding a table of tank tops and didn’t notice them disappear. He went into the fitting rooms to clear the rooms of hangers and extra clothes and opened the door of a handicap fitting room to find the pair of teenagers straddling one another on the floor. They were immediately separated and watched closely until they checked out and left. It was one of the craziest experiences of my few months working there.
Forever 21 will always be one of my favorite places to shop, what with its adequate clothing for decent prices. And despite the chaos that the store is usually in, the employees are generally nice and the amount of great people watching stories you can get from a Forever 21 store is insane. Ask anyone who has worked in retail and they can tell you equally if not better stories about those who live in the world around us.