Those crazy sales people

So, Tink went to buy a camera and the sales clerks were tossing the bad ones on the floor. Which made me remember...............

I managed a china store several years back. I had one employee that was a cross between Antonio Banderas and Cheech or chong, take your pick. Anyway, the women swooned for him but he had a wicked sense of humor.

When the ladies would ask him how durable the china was he would whip a dinner plate across the room. And all be damned but they never broke. Of course during a staff meeting when he tried to teach the rest of us how to do this we broke some 20 odd plates. In fact I don't think one of us was successful in duplicating this talent.

He also spent an entire morning picking out service for 12 for a customer. It was an outlet store so we had a mixture of 1st and 2nd quality. She called in her order saying she didn't have time to pick it out and would he be so kind to do it for her. Considering the order would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 grand he agreed to have it ready. Well she came in and he had it not only picked out but wrapped and bagged. She then informed him that she thought maybe she wanted a different pattern. He put his hands on his hips and announced to her that he had spent his entire morning making sure she had the most perfect set of 12 anyone could hope for and she owed it to him to take the dishes. So she did. I fell over backward in my hiding place under the counter. (No way was I going to get involved in that train wreck) (And no way in hell would I ever get away with saying that to a customer)

In addition to him I had the greatest crew a manager could ask for.

I had a sweet Mexican mother of two that worked for me part time. She was running the register and asked to see someones drivers license when his signature didn't match the back of the credit card. The customer flew into a rage, got into her face and started screaming "F&*$'n Jew" "F&*$'n Jew!" At the top of his lungs, face beet red, and spittle flying from his mouth. The assistant manager told him to leave immediately. The guy refused and just kept screaming. So I called the police and told them to come pick up the guy. He finally - still screaming mind you- left the store. The police apprehended him half way across the parking lot (his behavior and our pointing him out made him easy to spot) He got into a confrontation with the police and hauled off in the squad car. Meanwhile I took her back to the break room to calm down. She was bawling. As I'm sitting with her she looks up to me with her tear stained face and says " Why was he yelling at me, I'm not Jewish, I'm Mexican."
I just had to hug her. And try my best not to giggle. She was so cute.

Another employee of mine was a very sweet older woman. I was getting ready to close up shop one evening and she came into the stock room, very calmly. She then said in her usual quiet voice "It's the strangest thing. There is a man with a rifle outside our door."
I asked her "Is it a police officer?"
She calmly answered with "Well, I'm not sure, he's all in black."
"Are the doors locked?"
"Yes, that's how I noticed him, I was locking up."
So, I tell her to stay in the back and I carefully go up front, just peaking around the corner of a wall and sure as shit there is a man completely in black hiding behind a pillar with a sniper rifle. So I calmly head back to the stock room, lock her and myself in the office and call the police. They tell me to stay where I am and they will call when it is safe to come out.
Not 10 minutes later they call and tell me that there will be an officer outside our front door with his badge out and we should go talk to him.
As it turns out the alarm at the jewelry store down the way had gone off. There had been a rash of jewelry store robbery/murders up and down the California highway system. So they weren't taking any chances and had called in the swat team. It was a false alarm thankfully.

My assistant was a great guy. He was funny, easy going and worked really hard. One day he came to the back where I had been doing some receiving. He said that two guys in the crystal department were getting into it over the last wine glass in a certain pattern. I thought he was kidding but he assured me that they were inches from a fist fight. So I went out there. And sure enough these two lug heads were circling each other and taunting one another to take a swing. (IN my crystal department mind you with crystal shelves none the less). So I stood in between the two boys with the glass in my hand that they wanted. I cleared my throat, they looked at me with hyped up anger in their eyes and I promptly dropped the glass smashing it into a million tiny pieces. I then informed them that they could leave their name and phone number at the register and we would call them when more glasses came in. They did leave their information, we did call them, and they did come back. Go figure.........

Lastly, one afternoon a car drove up on our curb and parked right in front of the store. Two big bruisers came in and stood guard at the door - I was at the counter dialing 9............they flipped out ID..............1..........my assistant read their badges..............."Russian embassy" he says to me...........okay, put the phone down..................Then another gentleman steps out of the car and comes inside. He would like a certain pattern. Along with the dishes he bought cream soup cups, espresso cups, and other accessories. All in all close to 5 grand. As he was paying I couldn't help but notice the glock under his jacket. They took their stuff, loaded it into the car and drove away. Weirdest damn thing that I have ever seen. Well, ok, some of the other stuff was pretty weird too.

So there you have it, just a few examples of my life as a retail manager. I'll share more some other day............