The joys (and woes) of working retail

So, you know that I'm working at Old Navy for the summer. I just started last week and today I was getting trained in the fitting room. My trainer was going through how to hang items properly (called "processing"), how to re-tag merchandise, returning unwanted items to the sales floor and how to help customers find other sizes and colors. A young lady comes in with an armful of bikinis and I, naturally, greet her and open up a fitting room for her. After several minutes, I walk by her room and ask her if she needs a different size or color. She hands me a bikini bottom and asks for another size in that color. The runner assisting me goes to fetch the new size and I start processing the unwanted pile of clothes. When I get to the bikini she tried on, it had been thoroughly soiled with...god...who knows what that was. Menstrual blood? Poo? It took me all of my strength to expediently grab a plastic bag and wash my hands without barfing right then and there. I didn't want to embarrass the customer, so I asked her if everything fit alright and she just smiled and piled on the other unwanted items. Lo and behold, I find ANOTHER with some more disgusting fluids on it. I simply CAN'T BELIEVE that she would just return the items like that to me, piling it on top of other, clean and perfectly good merchandise. I bag that up ASAP and tell my leader what I found. She laughed, apparently totally grossed out too, saying, "That happens a lot. Just mark it as damaged and we'll get rid of it". ughhhhhhhh *shudder* THIS is why I hate, hate, hate retail.

But then there are some days where it is just downright hilarious to be working in retail. Okay, so it's my first day working on the cash register. I've been told that men are very different from women when they shop. If men can't find something, they won't ask. They'll just drop everything and leave without so much as a peep. If they don't see it displayed in an outfit on a mannequin, it is pretty unlikely that they'll actually be able to put anything together independently. So, back to the cash register. Add this story to the weird things men do when they shop: Two guys walk up with merchandise, chatting. They place their items on the register. I ask, "Are these items together?" thinking that maybe the friend was picking up the other's purchase. The two of them state in strong unison, "NO", reaching for their items and separating them so they're not touching on the register's table. I had to laugh, because me asking if the two clothing items were to be purchased at the same time was like I was asking them if THEY were together. They had to prove just how now gay they were by taking two steps away from each other and look in different directions, holding their items separately. It's like the two guy friends that can't go to the movies and sit next to each other without it being "gay", so they sit at least two seats apart from each other just so it doesn't look strange to others.

Oh retail.. How I haven't missed you.