Retail Recap 1

One of the many jobs I had before I was blessed with my position in IT was at an electronics retail store. I won't say which, for obvious reasons, but I will say it's a small-box electronics retailer that's been around a long time, and most people wonder why it's still relevant. Even the employees wonder this.

In any case, my wife (then girlfriend) worked there in college for a summer and when she left, I took the open position at that store. I went to college in a very small town, and keep that in mind as it becomes relevant to the story later on. I worked as an associate there on and off for my last years in college, and I learned a lot about small town living. I'd like to share a few of those observations (since my current adventures are a little boring!).

Lesson 1: People sometimes walk into retail establishments with no intention of buying anything. They just want to talk. Sure, some people come into a store to check out the merchandise and to price match, or even scout out competition for another store. That's all well and good! But there are some people (especially in small towns) who come in just to... have a chat.

My fifth manager at that small town location (yes, it went through 5 managers in the lesser part of a year) and I became friends. Mostly because we were of like ages, but also because we were both "city boys" who were living in the small town against our will. And neither of us really cared much for retail, just had it as a job. One month we were having horrid sales. It's not that we really tried overly hard on the normal months, but this month in particular no one was coming in. So he asked me if I had any ideas on how to attract more customers. Being dumb, I suggested we could get a coffee pot for people, encourage them to stick around more, look around the shop, and possibly buy cell phones (our primary revenue driver, despite having poor selection and we were a 3rd party retailer).

"No," he said, "We do not want that."

"Why?" I asked.

He reached over and patted me on the shoulder and said, in the nicest way, "That's the dumbest idea you've ever had, and soon you'll know why."

Not one week later, I was sitting in the back room playing Angry Birds on a tablet that was supposed to be for store demos. It was early morning (9-930ish) and a weekday, and that meant no customers, so kick back and finish your McDonald's breakfast, Patrick. And so I was. Soon, I heard the door chime ring and I got off my butt and paused my Angry Birds and made for the sales floor.

A middle-aged gentlemen was walking in the door. He looked like he had recently come out of a cave that he had been in for a few short decades. His coat was denim, dirty, and had holes all over. His hair looked closer to cobwebs than an actual byproduct of the human body, and his face was craggy and rigid. I greeted him and asked him what he was looking for.

"Oh, nuthin'," he said, in an awkward gravelly country drawl, "Jus' lookin'."

I nodded, "Sure, well, if you have any questions, let me know." He proceeded to look around the store by turning his head ninety degrees to the left, then turned back to me and leaned on the store's counter.

"How's bid'ness?" he asked, smacking his lips after the words exited. This was the first of a few dozen questions, all of them as idle and mundane as the next. Each time he asked another question, the miniature version of myself that inhabits my head would slam his own body against the walls of my skull in a small and rebellious attempt at suicide. But, being retail, and being trapped by the big brother eye of the security footage, I had to be polite and had to remain at my post. The district manager was rather strict.

"Ya know," he said at one point, "Ya'll'd do good to have sum coffee in here, Ah could go fer a cup!" And then, right then, I understood how suggesting a coffee machine was the stupidest idea I'd ever had.

But, being the semi-college educated man that I was at the time, I formulated a plan. I had an old flip-style cell phone. I reached a hand into my pocket and thumbed at the dial pad, lucky that I had remembered to mute it so that the customer couldn't hear the tone it played when I pushed the buttons. I slowly and painstakingly found each number and pressed 'send'.

"So, Ah put tha' corvette's engine into mah pickup, ya kno' the ford 250 Ah was tellin' ya abou'?" He went on and on as I waited. The words typed above were literally the words out of his mouth, and I know nothing of cars or whether it's possible to transplant a Corvette's engine into a Ford 250, but I surmise anyone who had the idea to mutilate a Corvette in favor of a pickup truck is in need of a shift in their priorities. In any case, as these thoughts rang through my head, I was saved by another type of ringing.

The store phone went off, my call had finally gone through. I excused myself from the conversation that had been going on for (according to the store's clock) over thirty minutes. I answered the phone and heard only the sounds of my pocket on the other end. But I--using the best acting skills I could muster--pretended the other end was an interested customer. I gave a wave to the man-who-speaks-forever and said into the phone, "Sure, let me see if we have those in stock," and went to the back room. From there, I watched the man-who-speaks-forever on the security monitor, and only after five long minutes of standing at the counter doing nothing (possibly talking to himself, warming up for my return) he finally left.

I knew then that having free coffee for customers in a store like that was just begging for people to come in, stand around and have a chat. And as much as I enjoy meeting people and being polite, there's only so much a retail person can take. Some of them do have other work to get to. Some of them just really want to beat their boss's scores on Angry Birds.