Adventures In Retail: Lies, Damned Lies, And Sales Pitches

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Birthday - Alfred Hitchcock (director)
Birthday - Anne Oakley (markswoman)
Herbert Hoover Day (Iowa)
Independence Day (Central African Republic)
Women’s Day (Tunisia)

 

I conned somebody for the first time yesterday.

 

It seems I am not cut out for full-time retail. One 9-6 shift on Saturday was enough to make me reexamine the turn my life was taking, and that was with both an hour break for lunch with Aunt and a significant number of chocolate-covered coffee beans. But our store is having its bigass Sale To End All Sales,* and theoretically this will attract hordes of people, so I have to work a lot.

 

But sometimes helping hordes of people means that you sort of cheat with some of them.

So I had customers in four different fitting rooms and a stack of things to steam and a bunch of frazzled managers and a whole bunch of customers who other salespeople were helping but they kept wanting to ask me things. It was busy. And I asked one of the more demanding ladies if she needed anything.

 

“Yes,” she said, and my heart sank. “Can you get these pants in a six?”

 

She handed me a brown pair of our sale shorts, and I read the tag and set out to find them.  They were on the shorts rack outside, along with several other similar types and colors.  I sorted through the sixes, seeking a matching number on the tags.

 

I didn’t find one.

 

There were, however, a few extremely similar pairs: brown, same length, same basic design features.  I shrugged and took a couple in to her.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see your particular pair in a six,” I said through the dressing room curtain.  “Would you care to try one of these similar styles?”

 

She peered out irritably. “No,” she said. “I liked the others.”

 

I moved back to the shorts rack and put one pair back, and made to do the same with the other.

 

Then I paused.

 

They really were very similar to the first pair.

 

She probably hadn’t looked at the first pair’s style number.

 

And given human nature, I could try an experiment …

 

I have often said that I am incapable of lying—not because lying is Wrong in any moral sense, but because a lie is Not The Truth, and I have a bureaucrat on my shoulder who insists that everything be as accurate as possible. It is a fundamental Rule of my behavior.

 

But sometimes, with very small things like almost identical shorts, the bureaucrat may not notice.

 

I turned and, with the same pair of shorts that I had just shown her still in my hand, returned to the fitting room.

 

“Here,” I said. “I found a pair of shorts in a six!”

 

She poked her head out again and regarded them.

 

The shoulder bureaucrat, sensing that something was not altogether following the Rules, looked up from the pens she was sorting.

 

“That’s better!” the customer said.

 

The bureaucrat, satisfied, returned to her pens.

 

Later, when she brought her things up to the counter, I saw the shorts among them.  I rang them up and she left happy, and I was left trying to figure out if I had actually lied to her, or if I had just taken advantage of human psychology and if her liking the shorts justified it. I figured yes, but it was still enough to make the shoulder bureaucrat suspicious.  She’s going to have a lot of paperwork from this irregularity.

 

Gives her something to do, I guess.

I’m getting the hang of retail, though.  妹 came in to browse, and after a few minutes she held up a pair of tan capris with a nifty little lacy belt thing.

 

“These are nice,” she said to herself thoughtfully, “but something seems wrong. I don’t know.” She turned to me.  “Do you have these in ‘cooler’?”

 

“Yes,” I said without skipping a beat, and handed her a chocolate brown pair.

 

She stared at me. “Wow, you do have them in ‘cooler’!  Hey, you’re good.”

 

I should hope so.

 

 

*We seem to have one of these every month.