academic zombie

questionoftheday asks: What’s the silliest thing you’ve ever seen someone get upset over?

My answer:

I love the headline for this question is about retail, because hoo boy have I mets loads of people who got upset over silly things during the holidays. I feel like our store is relatively drama free until Christmas rolls around the corner.

Back in December, I was working BOPUS (Buy Online, Pick Up in Store). We moved our pickup line away from the customer service desk closer to the stockroom. Not only did this clear up the congestion problem between people picking up online orders and people coming in for holiday returns, it just made associates' lives a lot easier until the holiday season was over. We usually had one person stationed there to get the BOPUS orders, while another associate was responsible for handling phone calls canceling and extending BOPUS orders.

I had one woman who expressed her unhappiness that she waited in line at customer service for ten minutes before discovering we moved the line. She expressed we should've changed the location in the e-mail when their orders were ready for pickup.

(Never mind that the move is temporary, that we more than likely have zero control over what the automatic e-mails say, and she most likely walked past our new area, which had two huge signs indicating it's the new pickup area, but I digress.)

I apologized and guaranteed I would definitely pass the message onto my management and see if we can put another sign up at customer service, or see if there was a way to edit the automated e-mail message.

This wasn't enough, though. She complained as though I hadn't said anything. She just wanted to rant for the sake of ranting, specifically targeted towards me. The boyfriend who came to pick up the order looked embarrassed and was polite with me and my other co-worker while we did our jobs. When I went in the stockroom to retrieve his order, apparently she'd told her boyfriend, "No, I used to work retail. I know for a fact these people are idiots."

All because she and her boyfriend waited in the wrong line for ten minutes.

To get annoyed, I understand, because if I were in her shoes I would've been annoyed. Resorting to name calling at someone who has no control over what the automatic e-mails say was a little silly.

And it's very doubtful she ever worked a day in retail. She was younger than me. lmao do you really think the workers have any control over what management does in their store?

And the same day, I had an old woman tell me over the phone that I personally ruined Christmas because her granddaughter's Peppa Pig pajamas were shipped to the wrong store (ours) and that I couldn't get them shipped to a different address because we don't have a system set up for that. Like ??? what little kid is absolutely devastated because they didn't get PAJAMAS on Christmas??????