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Star Man posted:I hooked up friends and family with my Walmart discount whenever they asked and if they could wait until I was off the clock before making the purchase. Saved my parents like $70 on a TV and a friend a bunch of money on a Wii and a few games. There was a massive scandal in my high school where kids working at the Walmart would ring up a pack of batteries and let their friends walk out with a t.v. Went on for months, and I'm still not sure if management was just really dumb or they were a lot laxer about employee theft prevention back then.
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Sep 13, 2017 12:10
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Edge & Christian posted:Also I don't believe anyone is actually posting about this in good faith, but in terms of entitled consumers my perception has always been "not all white consumers are entitled assholes, but almost all entitled rear end in a top hat consumers are white consumers."
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Sep 13, 2017 12:20
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fishmech posted:Hot tip: a huge amount of older Americans are functionally illiterate due to the public education system being a whole lot worse than it is now, back when they were going through it, even people who are just like 55 today. They're like seriously often unable to read the kind of instructions on a self-checkout even though those are written so a 10 year old could follow them. Not doubting this at all, but I am really interested in the sources and studies on this if you have them, because it explains A LOT about what I see on the job.
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Sep 13, 2017 14:15
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there wolf posted:There was a massive scandal in my high school where kids working at the Walmart would ring up a pack of batteries and let their friends walk out with a t.v. Went on for months, and I'm still not sure if management was just really dumb or they were a lot laxer about employee theft prevention back then. At the WM I worked at in High School they would take the boxes from the display TVs fill them with poo poo and have a stock man "help a customer load the TV" into a friends car. Also one of the guys coordinated with his counter part at target to steal all the pokemon cards and resell them at a huge mark up to kids. KiteAuraan posted:Not doubting this at all, but I am really interested in the sources and studies on this if you have them, because it explains A LOT about what I see on the job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy https://www.cbsnews.com/news/battling-the-scourge-of-illiteracy/ https://nces.ed.gov/naal/related_pubs.asp#4 Assume between 20% and 30% of Americans over the age of 18 can't read. They never learned whole processes of identifying the letters and putting together the sounds to make a word. They just learned to memorize certain words. Xae fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 14:32
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Whoa can you talk more about the microfiche? How did that even work? 1) We'd have to figure out what that was if we didn't know (we had a couple of equally outdated "Rock Encyclopedia" type things floating around) and then when we determine you want, say, Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, you just pull out the Bu-Cr sheet of microfiche, stick it into the machine, scroll to Costello and try to find Armed Forces. Assuming it's there, you write down the distributor code and the UPC or whatever onto a sheet of carbon paper and fill the rest out so that we have the customer's information when they come back in 4-6 weeks to pick up their CD. 2) That's if it goes smoothly, whoever converted everything to microfiche was pretty terrific at putting half of Elvis Costello and the Attractions albums under C for Costello, half under E for "Elvis Costello and the Attractions" since it's a BAND name not a person, and a few under "Attractions w. Elvis Costello" for reasons I could never fathom. I bring him up specifically because by the late 1990s Rhino was in the middle of doing "deluxe" re-releases of most of Costello's albums, but Columbia's older mid-1980s CD versions were still listed even though they were "out of print" and we still had cassettes and LPs listed, so reading one line off would get people things they absolutely didn't want. This was the first "deluxe CD reissue" boom in general, and old albums from [insert star of the 1960s/1970s] would have their deluxe reissues hidden in the like "March 1996 Update" sheet, not the one where you'd expect it. It was a mess. Also Best Buy, Borders, Barnes & Noble, The Wiz, and several other retailers had already gotten way better at the special order system, and Amazon/online sales were a nascent thing, so more often than not when we finally got special orders in and I'd call out to let someone know that their Edith Piaf box set had arrived for them to pick up, they'd take no small pleasure in going "oh, I already got it from Best Buy, they delivered it faster and it was CHEAPER TOO" and then we'd have an Edith Piaf box set sitting on the shelf for most of a year because there was no mechanism to return stuff save for an annual "we ran through a spreadsheet and are telling you to send back this list of stuff". This also happened when there was some sort of relatively unexpected breakout hit (I can't remember which specific one it was, let's say the Fugees) and there was a very slow centralized process that sort of went "we'll send you new stuff once a month and we expect you'll sell 10 of these, 5 of these, 3 of these, and we'll adjust that based on your sales every quarter" that also made projections based on artists' previous albums. Which meant we were drowned in like... the second Hootie & the Blowfish album, or some algorithm that never figured out that not every Motley Crue album would go platinum in perpetuity, but also left us completely flatfooted for breakout albums/debuts. There was a situation where we could not keep the [Fugees album] in stock during the holiday season, we had like a literal waiting list of a hundred or so people who wanted the album, so we got special dispensation to special order 200 copies of the album. Someone in the warehouse misread a 1 as a 7 on our hand-written order forms, and so at great expense we were rush-shipped 200 copies of Mister Big's Lean Into It just in time for the 1996 holiday season. They were not returnable. We couldn't fit them in storage. We spent the entire month of December (and into the spring) with a giant wall of a one hit wonder from a decade previous dominating the space behind the cash register. We did not get any more copies of the Fugees album until the New Year. Some retailers richly deserved to die. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 16:25
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Edge & Christian posted:There was a situation where we could not keep the [Fugees album] in stock during the holiday season, we had like a literal waiting list of a hundred or so people who wanted the album, so we got special dispensation to special order 200 copies of the album. Someone in the warehouse misread a 1 as a 7 on our hand-written order forms, and so at great expense we were rush-shipped 200 copies of Mister Big's Lean Into It just in time for the 1996 holiday season. They were not returnable. We couldn't fit them in storage. We spent the entire month of December (and into the spring) with a giant wall of a one hit wonder from a decade previous dominating the space behind the cash register. We did not get any more copies of the Fugees album until the New Year. This is amazing. Thank you for typing this out.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:55
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There's actually a really cheap way to reduce shrink that some stores use, it's called paying the security people really well, hiring former cop sociopaths, and offering commissions for each stolen item captured. I used to work at a place like that and the only people that got away with theft were people that knew security/management. edit: lol at the "all white people are entitled" thing, maybe that has to do with the weird record store or Media Play you're working at. next someone will come in and tell us about who 'canadians' are and how much they tip
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Sep 13, 2017 18:22
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call to action posted:edit: lol at the "all white people are entitled" thing, maybe that has to do with the weird record store or Media Play you're working at. next someone will come in and tell us about who 'canadians' are and how much they tip
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Sep 13, 2017 18:33
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Maybe get our more? I dealt with a shitload of entitled Mexican bougie assholes in San Diego working at Fashion Valley. Straight from Mexico City to Hermes and Gucci. It wouldn't excuse some weird racialized statement like "well it's not that I hate Mexicans but nearly all the annoying people I encounter are Mexican" because that's racist.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:38
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that would be racist, but white people are scum and you can't be racist against white people, only little turd men cry about garbage like "oh it's racist against white people"
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Sep 13, 2017 18:39
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Oh ok, I disagree.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:42
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inside of every little turd man who complains about being racist to white people, is a fragile little ego who was brought to tears at some point by a nonwhite person and who has held a grudge ever since
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Sep 13, 2017 18:43
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Hmm if you say so. My mom is pretty cool.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:43
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It's really weird, when I worked in a super waspy upper class suburb most all the entitled problem customers were white people, but when working in an area full of rich chinese people most problem customers were chinese?! What was even weirder was the office in an area with a large well monied Indian population ended up having a majority of problem customers being Indian.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:43
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boner confessor posted:inside of every little turd man who complains about being racist to white people, is a fragile little ego who was brought to tears at some point by a nonwhite person and who has held a grudge ever since stop channeling TB
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Sep 13, 2017 18:51
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Almost all of my retail experience (both as a clerk/manager/whatever and as a consumer) up to and including last weekend is in the New York City metro area, I don't keep close demographic tabs on everyone who I've ever served/observed at a store but I'd like to assure the thread that not everyone I've ever seen in a retail environment is white. I live and work in areas of Brooklyn where white people aren't even the majority of residents, or majority of people I see on a day to day basis, but they comprise the vast majority of this specific facet of annoying customers. There are also all sorts of other issues that come up with (generally) non-white consumers from other cultures who believe they can haggle at a Costco or split open a multi-pack at Rite Aid and hold up the line arguing that they only wanted ONE, why can't you ring up just one? or a host of other things that do not include everyone in a demographic group, but when they manifest they manifest themselves overwhelmingly inside one demographic group. What you two will read from this: kill whitey
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Sep 13, 2017 19:15
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lol you work in brooklyn. ok now i completely understand why you'd think every white person is poo poo also what you just said is way more reasonable than what you posted originally and i agree with it
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Sep 13, 2017 19:15
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Whoa can you talk more about the microfiche? How did that even work? For a more functional look at how microfiche worked in retail, I picked my mom's brain about using it in her bookstore in the 90's. The microfiche was used for the distributor's catalogue, showing everything they had or could get; it was organized by author and included title, publisher, publishing date, and ISBN. You'd get glossy paper catalogues from the publishers and go through with a highlighter to pick what you wanted, and then go to the microfiche to see if the distributor had it and get the ISBN which you'd write down on your order sheet. She got a PSO system around 95-96 and was one of the first to request her distributor send her a copy of her inventory on disc, which she could enter into the computer. Still had to manually type new orders into the database, but the POS was able to keep a record of sales and compile a restock order to send over the modem.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:39
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http://fortune.com/2017/09/12/neiman-marcus-last-call/ posted:Neiman Marcus Is Closing More Than 25% of Its Outlet Stores 
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Sep 13, 2017 22:41
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Haifisch posted:God forbid they train shoppers to look for low prices. neiman marcus last call does badly because it's full of only the weirdest shittiest old lady pants suits that even the ugliest lucille bluth lookalike passed up on. nordstrom rack is the only way to be for "high end" outlets.
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Sep 14, 2017 00:59
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yeah basically. We have several p big outlets around, like Vacaville or Livermore, and honestly we very rarely find anything that a) fits (i.e. not overstocked XL's or some poo poo, good luck finding a small-medium), and b) actually looks good and also not just some trash made specifically cheap for outlets. Nordstrom rack can be OK, but in general most are hideous rejects or hideous reject trash made specifically for outlet. I find it better just to go to a cheap-but-good place from the getgo like Uniqlo or even H&M (ymmv significantly w/r/t quality tho). My girlfriend can also sometimes find good things from just Anthropologie's sale section instead.
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Sep 14, 2017 01:48
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fishmech posted:I remember that Safeway tried to expand into the northeast by buying into the Philadelphia market through purchasing Genaurdi's and also getting a small amount of stores around DC and Baltimore in the early 2000s, but that kind of collapsed. Safeway's tried Northeast stores a few times. They actually had stores in the New York metro in the 60s which were sold to Finast, which eventually ended up forming most of Stop and Shop's initial New York presence a few decades later.
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Sep 14, 2017 03:22
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Xaris posted:yeah basically. We have several p big outlets around, like Vacaville or Livermore, and honestly we very rarely find anything that a) fits (i.e. not overstocked XL's or some poo poo, good luck finding a small-medium), and b) actually looks good and also not just some trash made specifically cheap for outlets. Nordstrom rack can be OK, but in general most are hideous rejects or hideous reject trash made specifically for outlet. i have to search the trash for treasures by nature of being 6'4“ putting me in plus sizes cuz of hip and shoulder width. all the plus size stuff assumes you have a huge donk and boobs and here i am looking like brienne of tarth digging for the one thing in the store that isn't sacked out in all the wrong places. i definitely have a better hit rate and Nordstrom rack but you're right it's surrounded by a mountain of poo poo and unwanted Silver jeans
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Sep 14, 2017 04:40
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I'm an Amazonian and have worked in the Seattle HQ for three years, can someone tell me what percentage of retail murder I am responsible for?
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Sep 14, 2017 22:31
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What's your role at the company? Assuming Amazon is responsible for all retail store closings in a given year, an average of store closings over the last three years suggests the average Amazon employee is responsible for 0.11 store closings. Work harder!
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Sep 14, 2017 23:04
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Arglebargle III posted:What's your role at the company? Assuming Amazon is responsible for all retail store closings in a given year, an average of store closings over the last three years suggests the average Amazon employee is responsible for 0.11 store closings. I'm a Quality Assurance Engineer so my job is to ensure that it remains possible for you to buy as much as you want on the retail/third party side as you want to and that you have a drat nice experience while doing so. I suppose you could distill my entire job down to "I get paid to kill retail more efficiently"
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Sep 14, 2017 23:11
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HonorableTB posted:I'm a Quality Assurance Engineer so my job is to ensure that it remains possible for you to buy as much as you want on the retail/third party side as you want to and that you have a drat nice experience while doing so. I suppose you could distill my entire job down to "I get paid to kill retail more efficiently" "Nice experience" as in "wading through hundreds of cheap fakes, trying to find the genuine article"?
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Sep 14, 2017 23:42
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Fame Douglas posted:"Nice experience" as in "wading through thousands of cheap fakes, trying to find the genuine article"? Can't do anything about that one friend, my wheelhouse is making sure you don't encounter bugs while buying all of your fake merchandise 
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Sep 14, 2017 23:45
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Are you bullied by Site Reliability Engineers
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Sep 15, 2017 00:17
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HonorableTB posted:I'm a Quality Assurance Engineer so my job is to ensure that it remains possible for you to buy as much as you want on the retail/third party side as you want to and that you have a drat nice experience while doing so. I suppose you could distill my entire job down to "I get paid to kill retail more efficiently" QA doesn't add value so you are 0% responsible for killing retail.  That is unironically what my company believes.  While we're not in retail we tie into ebay in a market that Amazon is targeting. Please put us out of our misery. Please.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:28
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HonorableTB posted:I'm a Quality Assurance Engineer so my job is to ensure that it remains possible for you to buy as much as you want on the retail/third party side as you want to and that you have a drat nice experience while doing so. I suppose you could distill my entire job down to "I get paid to kill retail more efficiently" so on a scale of 1-10 if you gently caress up your job, do people die
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Sep 15, 2017 00:34
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HonorableTB posted:Can't do anything about that one friend, my wheelhouse is making sure you don't encounter bugs while buying all of your fake merchandise I can't think of the last time I encountered a bug on Amazon so good job 
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Sep 15, 2017 02:14
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I can't think of the last time I encountered a bug on Amazon so good job 
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Sep 15, 2017 02:22
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I can't think of the last time I encountered a bug on Amazon so good job Thanks TB, that makes me feel pretty good! If you've tried to order wine, handmade items, or anything from a third party seller who sells via Amazon, then that's my direct work that you're using and I'm glad to know that I'm at least halfway competent at my job 
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Sep 15, 2017 02:31
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What really bothers me about so many jobs disappearing, even though many are terrible slave-wage jobs with no benefits, comes from how utterly, terrifyingly wrongly society treats the lessening need to work. Everyone is so obsessed with this idea that everyone has to justify their own existence by performing some kind of toil, and if they don't then they do not deserve even the basics of life. It doesn't matter if those resources are abundant and that there may simply be no work to do, and I think that that is a sad commentary on humanity.
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Sep 15, 2017 03:35
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JustJeff88 posted:What really bothers me about so many jobs disappearing, even though many are terrible slave-wage jobs with no benefits, comes from how utterly, terrifyingly wrongly society treats the lessening need to work. Everyone is so obsessed with this idea that everyone has to justify their own existence by performing some kind of toil, and if they don't then they do not deserve even the basics of life. It doesn't matter if those resources are abundant and that there may simply be no work to do, and I think that that is a sad commentary on humanity. At some point, automation will be so effective that either most people will need to be taken care of, or they will need to be killed. Developing combat robots is a mistake.
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Sep 15, 2017 03:43
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It's going to take a while to get rid of the cultural programming of 'if you don't work, you don't eat.' To be somewhat fair that attitude was justifiable for a really, really long time, but like a lot of other things that might have been justified in the past but aren't now, people tend to hold on to it for its own sake instead of going 'why is it this way?'.
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Sep 15, 2017 03:44
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Haifisch posted:To be somewhat fair that attitude was justifiable for a really, really long time, but like a lot of other things that might have been justified in the past but aren't now, people tend to hold on to it for its own sake instead of going 'why is it this way?'. God willed it 
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Sep 15, 2017 03:48
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When was that attitude ever justifiable??
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Sep 15, 2017 03:52
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For the long spans of human history where getting food wasn't trivial enough to have <10% of the population working to get it? I'm not saying that attitude ever worked out super well in practice(especially for the people who physically couldn't work and weren't lucky enough to have family willing to support them), but it made more sense back when you had to have the majority of people working to ensure your community's basic needs were met.
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Sep 15, 2017 04:03
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