Tales from the Underpaid: the Customer is Often Wrong
One of the best days in a retail career will be the one when you get to tell off a customer for being an asshole. They’re so rare; the job is a pan full of mud and the moment when you see that glimmer of gold wipes away all the misery, no matter how small. This is a medley of nuggets and flakes, from all over my career, and I remember each as if they happened yesterday.
Late on a Friday night, a woman came into my Home Depot because her dryer had gone out. This happened all the time; it’s a store many people don’t visit unless or until something goes wrong. She couldn’t take the machine with her so she needed to set up delivery. After being told she couldn’t be added to the truckload for Saturday (at 9:55 PM on Friday, for fuck’s sake) she came up to the registers to pay.
“And I need next day delivery,” she said smoothly to the cashier, pulling out her credit card. “They told me I could have it.”
A head cashier has only petty power, but I also had a walkie. I had gotten the warning from the late-night appliance salesman, who had guessed something like this might happen.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t see tomorrow on my available dates. I can get it to you on Monday.”
Handled politely! I didn’t intervene.
“I’m sure that’s a mistake,” the customer said, her Karen frills unrolling along her reptilian neck, ready to spring out to stun her prey. “They said you could override that.”
“I can’t,” the cashier said, turning the monitor so the woman who was turning pink-mottled and purple in the face as she held back her nature could see it plainly. “First available is Monday.”
“I’m not taking my clothes to the laundromat like some Mexican,” the Karen hissed, leaning across the countertop. “I need it tomorrow.”
I stepped into the cashier’s cube and patted her on the back. She went into the office behind me and out of the line of fight without a word.
“I’m so sorry about that, ma’am,” I said as my venom sacs filled and my fangs quivered. “But we don’t have any available delivery spots until Monday, she was right.”
“I don’t care—” she began, her frills rolling out, her eyes nictitating.
“As a matter of fact, that model is completely out of stock and I can’t sell it to you at all,” I followed up, zeroing out the sale and clearing the sceen.
She rattled in her throat, she danced her fringe to dazzle me. “That’s not possible! I just saw it.”
“You saw the floor model,” I told her, raising my tail rattle. “But it looks like we have nothing to sell you.”
Swelling, rushing at me with her claws raised, she made her final gambit. “I want to speak to your manager.”
“Certainly,” I told her, picking up my walkie. “My manager Eduardo Victor de la Cruz is around here somewhere. Unless he’s at the laundromat.”
When I pulled my fangs out of her neck, she disappeared into the night. I locked the door behind her.
Danny was working in garden while I was cashiering out there one beautiful sunny day at Lowe’s. Mo was watering the lantanas, telling me how her student loan debt had grown to over $200k in forebearance. Danny, who was sweeping up dead leaves, was worried he’d be like her.
“I think that’s how much I’ll start with, after law school.”
“Doesn’t bother me a bit,” Mo said, cigarette lines around her mouth looking done like an ice pick. “That number is not even real to me.” Mo, who did LSD every weekend, was not exactly a figure of aspirational wisdom to the younger employees.
“Never owning a house is real,” Danny said ruefully.
I rung up a flat of succulents and walked out into the sun, enjoying the glistening world of plants outside of the paint-and-lumber smelling big box for a while.
“Excuse me,” a woman said to Danny. “Do you know if this is an annual or a perennial?” She held in her arms some flowering bush; I couldn’t ID it on sight.
“I’m not sure,” he said, smiling. “But if we ask Mo here—” he turned to the plant specialist to invite her into the conversation.
“Ugh,” the customer said with disgust. “You aren’t smart enough to wear that apron.”
Danny looked back at her, shocked and then amused. He unsnapped his Lowes apron-vest and pulled it off his shoulders. He held it in both hands, staring at it. Then he looked up at her, full of earnest belief and said, “No. I’m not ready to give up the dream.”
He put on his vest and walked away from her. I retreated into the register cubicle to laugh without being seen. From inside, I heard her ask Mo the same question.
“Google it,” Mo said with total disregard. “I’m going on break.”
The final story in this sequence is not mine, except by inheritance. My biological mother was a high school drop out and a single parent. She worked low-paying shit jobs until she died, and she saw more terrible customers than I ever will.
She was training a new girl to work the drive thru at the burger place where she used to stash my brother and me under a table for hours when she couldn’t pay a sitter. The girl was nervous and a little slow, and people with no other outlet for their frustrations are often rude to someone in that position.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said. “Please tell me one more time. That’s two number threes and one number four with no cheese?”
“No,” the man bawled back at her through the static of the machine, but audible through the window as well. “I said three number twos and a number five with EXTRA cheese, you dumb bitch.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said again, miserably. ”OK, I hav your three number twos and your number five, your total will be—”
“Wrong AGAIN,” the asshole yelled, full of glee. “I said three number fours and two number fives. And you forgot the CHEESE.”
My mom strode over and pulled the headset off the poor kid. “Take five,” she said. “I’ve got this.”
“Please pull up to the window,” she told the customer. “I’ve got your order.”
After a minute, a light pickup appeared in the window. A man with bad teeth and a sweat-stained trucker hat grinned, awaiting the ass-licking that people with little money and no power depend on getting from retail and food service employees, no matter how badly they behave.
My mom walked up to the glass. She stuck her face out the window and pointed up the street. “On the corner up there, by the light, there’s a McDonald’s. I suggest you try them for lunch. They serve fucking clowns there.” And she slammed the drive-thru window shut.
The Home Depot, still extant, 2008-2012
Lowe’s Home Improvement, still extant, 2002-2007
Zipp’s (now Rally’s, depends on whether you believe it’s still the same place or not) 1988-1989