Strange Products.

I have 23 years experience working in retail, which started in 1974. I have seen many strange products in that length of time, so it takes a lot to surprise me. A few nights ago, I got a surprise. We are always finding stray merchandise throughout the store. One product that had magically found its way back to electronics was a bottle of Lady Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. My initial response was the laugh, especially since the bottle had the image that you see above. Of course I had to spend the rest of the night pointing this product out to my coworkers. After researching the product a little bit, I found out that they make a product for men, women and babies. For babies the product is used for diaper rash. Its use for adults is to prevent chafing on your backside caused by sweat inside your clothes. I never knew that was that big of a problem, but if you suffer from it here is your solution.

When I mentioned the powder to a friend of mine who works in that area, she told me about another product that I had to go check out, Gorilla Snot Hair Gel. I looked it up online and found a few reviews for it. Several who use it said once you put it in your hair you have to wash it twice to get it out. I also found out that guitar players like the product because it helps them to keep a hold of their guitar picks. The product has been around for a while, but for obvious reasons I don't spend a lot of time around haircare section.

I tried the link to my blog on my Facebook page yesterday but they rejected. I'm not sure if it's because of my account being hacked or someone from Blogger has been playing around. Several other people had the same problem. I'm going to try again today and we will see what happens.

More Black Friday Tales.

There have been a lot of news stories about what happened on Black Friday. Probably the worst was a lady who used pepper spray on people at a Walmart in California to try and get an Xbox. There were scattered reports throughout the country about people being attacked in parking lots and a few other reports of violence that took place in stores during the sale. Obviously, people ignored the petitions that were trying to shame stores because they dared to open earlier. They are saying that sales this year were higher than they have ever been. That's really punishing those retailers and making the point about them ruining Thanksgiving. Look for next years sales to start even earlier.

I did have to deal with a couple people that didn't quite get the concept behind the Black Friday sales. The big sale items are limited quantities. One man asked me when we were going to get more of the laptop computers in and for that price and another made the comment that when we got more Xbox's in that he could get one for that Black Friday price. Neither one wanted to accept the answer that I gave them when I told them the items would no longer be available at that price. Last night we had a gentleman who came in who had bought one of the 40 inch television sets and the set was not working. The set had been purchased at another store in another state, and he wanted a replacement for that price. The only 40 inch TV that we carry sells for over $300 more than he paid for that particular set. He couldn't understand why we would not sell him the one we had in stock for that price since he had waited in line for four hours to purchase his set. We did offer him a 32 inch set we sold for $20 more than what he had paid but he wanted a larger size than that, so he had to settle for a refund. That does happen and unfortunately, this time of year there's nothing more that we can do.

Early Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of talking with a lady who knew more about where to find items in the store than I did. Just because I'm in there five days a week I obviously know nothing. She was looking for a home security system that we had advertised. When I told her that we didn't carry that in electronics, she argued with me. After spending about 3 minutes trying to convince her I finally told her that I would put her on hold and get someone from the hardware department to help, which is where this security systems are located. She had to have the last word and told me, " You can transfer me to hardware, but I know they are in electronics."

I have a lot of fun with the pallets of merchandise that are brought out that have items on it that don't belong in electronics. I make jokes about it and I'm not upset with the guys in the back, as I have unloaded trucks and when you're dealing with as many pieces of freight as they do every night there are bound to be mistakes. Whenever I see something I'll make a joke of how it could fit into electronics. Saturday night on my pallet I had two of these:

For those of you who have never seen one of those before it is a 10 inch buffer which is used to polish a car. So how to use it in electronics? Easy. This is the new way of cleaning your TV screen. It will definitely help us increase sales when people bust the screens up and have to buy new ones.

Surviving Another Year.

Another Black Friday is over and nothing out of the ordinary happened last night. The best description that I can come up with is it is like watching piranhas feed. I spent the first part of the night guiding people to a line where we were selling laptop computers for $198, and I was also near several pallets of small appliances. At 10 o'clock I attempted to cut plastic that the pallets were wrapped with, and I wasn't very successful at it. People were pulling stuff off before I could do anything, not to mention I had to be careful not to cut anybody. The sale actually started a couple of minutes early because one customer shouted it was time and started ripping the plastic. Of course, that started the feeding frenzy. I wasn't nearby, but I was told that they had some excitement around the towels that were on sale. One enterprising young lady basically jumped onto the display and began tossing towels over her shoulder to a friend. Naturally, there were several people who could not understand why the items that went on sale at midnight were not available at 4 AM.

When I returned from lunch, I was drafted into running a register in the electronics department. I don't mind as much doing it there because you're not trapped in one spot. After getting the lines caught up I spent the rest of the morning assisting customers and ringing up a few more sales. The first part of the night, drug a little bit, but then the second part flew by. I left around 5:30. There had been reports that people are not going to be turning out like they had in the past. I'm not sure how things were in the rest of the country, but the crowds here were as big as ever.

Find A Different Profession.

A man who work for Target in Omaha, Nebraska, is protesting the fact that he has to come in to work at 11 PM on Thanksgiving night. He has started an online petition wanting people to sign to tell Target that they should not make anyone come in that night. Considering the fact that he has worked for Target for three years, and should have a basic understanding of the nature of retail, he should realize that the season we are entering into is the busiest time of the year. I can sympathize a little about schedule changes, considering I am going in two hours earlier than normal, but again, it goes with the season. The customers are there to buy and if you don't take care them, they will go elsewhere.

Not all retail establishments are open on Thanksgiving, but a lot of them are. My employer is open 24 hours a day, I worked for Kmart, which was always open on Thanksgiving, plus working in hospitals and nursing homes were somebody has to work on the holidays.  The advantage to working holidays is added pay. It was a little harder when my wife was alive, but the extra money was always too good to pass up. Now that I am single, it really doesn't matter to me whether I work them or not. In retail working weekends and holidays goes with the territory. If you're not willing to do that, you really need to find a different job. I agree that Black Friday is starting to get a little ridiculous, but that is the nature of the beast. Each year, somebody seems to want to up the ante. This year my employer announced that there will be a sale starting at 10 PM Thanksgiving night and another at midnight. Toys "R" Us took that one step further and announced their sale will start at 9 PM. Most other stores will be opening at midnight, Sears is scheduled to open at 4 AM and Kmart at 5 AM. If people are truly upset with the stores doing this then they won't come and shop. Does anybody really see that happening? That is the only way that opening at these times will stop.

Part of working retail is customer service. If you don't like helping people you need to be doing something else. I have always tried to do anything I can to help people. Last night I made a lady extremely happy. She was looking for a PSP, the portable PlayStation, which happened to be out of stock. It was a Christmas gift for her husband and she had just put in a 13 hour day at a restaurant to pay for it. I told her that we could order it through my employer's website and have it delivered to the store for free, which would take about a week. She really brightened up and we went to the computer and placed the order. She kept telling me how happy she was, and she knows one of the managers at the store and she is going to tell him about the service I provided. I don't see where I did anything spectacular, I just was doing my job. The look on her face was my reward. That is where I get most of my work satisfaction, knowing that I was able to help somebody. It doesn't work out that way all the time, but it really is nice when I am able to. Too many times when people ask for help, all they will get is we don't have that. When somebody is there with cash in hand, ready to buy something, you need to do all you can to close that sale. If not, they will go somewhere else to find what they need. There are those customers who no matter what you do for them will never be happy, but I've always found them to be in the minority. I still do everything I can for them and if they're not happy with it, they are the ones that have to deal with it.

Now On DVD And An Underhanded Marketing Decision.

There were only two "new" releases this week, and only one of them appeared in theaters. The Tom Hanks movie, Larry Crowne, brought in $35,608,245 and was rated 6.0 on the IMDB. I really have nothing to say about the movie because I have not seen it and don't plan on changing that.

The second release was two short cartoons based on the movie How To Train Your Dragon. The titles of them are Gift Of the Night Fury and Book Of Dragons. Again, I don't have much to say about these because I have not seen the movie that they are based on.

Two other DVDs did come out last night, but considering that they were released a few weeks ago in a different form, I don't consider them new releases. Both movies were from Disney, The Lion King and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. When first released. You can only buy them in a Blu-ray/DVD combo set. I had several people asking me for just the DVD by itself, and I disappointed those people by telling them it was not available. Now they are available, but I wonder how many people paid the extra and now have Blu-ray copies that they can't use. To me it was kind of underhanded of Disney to release them this way. I understand the marketing behind it, but I totally disagree with it. It strikes me as being insensitive to the wants of the consumer. Blu-ray is the wave of the future and in my opinion it will be about two more years before the option is taken away from us and DVD goes the way of VHS. Still, I think it was kind of dirty of Disney to do it this way.

Personal Shopper.

Personal shoppers a been around for a while. Usually they are employed by either stores as a service to their customers or by those rich enough to afford the service. Now several people are trying to take it to the next level by offering their perform the job is for one day only. The day they are offering their services is the day after Thanksgiving, or as those of us who work retail lovingly call it, Black Friday. Most of those who are offering this are unemployed and trying to earn some money for their Christmas. I really do wish them well and they will definitely be earning their money.

I have worked enough Black Friday's that the only way you will find me in a store on that night is if I am working there and they are paying me to be there. There is no bargain worth going through all the hassle that you have to put up with on that night. I would much rather pay full price then to go through that. Of course, I will be working it again this year, but I like to have a major change from what I have done in the past. Since I am now cash register trained I more than likely will be doing that. The idea of that really doesn't thrill me, but it actually would be better than standing by a pallet waiting for the proper time to begin selling the merchandise. Just standing makes for an awful long night and if you're running a register you stay pretty busy. I'll let you know how that works out that day.

New Releases And Midnight Madness.

Last night was a  very light night for new releases. I lead with the box office champion, but this one wasn't very hard for the movie The Change–up. Of course, had the movie that's coming out Friday night been released last night, this would not be the case. The Change–up was a box office disappointment. It had a $52 million budget and only brought in $37,081,475 and it is rated a 6.5 on the IMDB. I have not seen this movie and do not plan on doing so. This basic story has been done too many times and I really haven't cared for any version of it.

The Reunion is the latest movie from WWE productions. I think Vince McMahon wants to become the next Cecil B. DeMille. This movie was supposedly released on a limited scale. If it was Box Office Mojo did not track it. The IMDB rates it a 4.1.

The real big release last night was the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Last night was the first time that I had seen a big crowd waiting to purchase a game. Of course the fact that we held a tournament before the release time helped that out tremendously. I did not hear exactly how many copies we sold, but with two registers running it took half an hour to take care of everybody that was waiting. It was like a mini Black Friday, with the major difference being we had a very civil crowd. There wasn't anybody trying to cut in line, and nobody complained about having to wait. I have been told that the busiest that the store has been on a midnight release was when Twilight: New Moon came out. That gives me something to look forward to when the next Twilight comes out next spring. As far as the game goes, it is one that I do not play. I am no good at those type of games. I can hit the button fast enough and end up getting killed real quick. Of course, If I was playing somebody else, they would enjoy it because they would be winning all the time.

Now on DVD And A Retail Story.

Green Lantern was released today on DVD. It is one of the movies that I saw and my review of it is here. As I mentioned then, I was rather disappointed with it. It was not a bad movie, I just wanted to see more than what they showed us. It was a box office disappointment, bringing in $116,601,172. It brought in almost that much overseas, but considering they spent $200 million making it, it was not very successful. It is rated a 6.1 on the IMDB. I will be buying a copy of it when it gets down to around $10.

I made a customer mad the other night but I really don't feel bad about it. A man tried to return a cell phone, claiming his phone didn't work and he wanted to exchange it for another one. Normally that is not a problem, however, he did not have the original packaging that it came in. I don't want to go into great detail about everything that I check out during a return, just in case somebody stumbles across this post and tries to figure out a way around what we do. Let's just say what I saw from this phone gave me reason to believe the man was being as truthful as a politician. He claimed he had talked to somebody "up front", and they had told him that exchanging the phone was no problem. Not having the original box was a major problem, and he also was missing the charger that went with the phone. He did have a receipt, but I refused to make an exchange for him. When I told him I was in a do anything for him the man went storming towards the front of the store and said, "Something will be done about this phone tonight." There is no doubt in my mind that the phone was either stolen or just an old phone that he was trying to exchange for a new one. After he left, I called one of the managers and told her what had happened. She told me not to worry about it, and that she would back me all the way. If there's something legitimately wrong I will do everything that I possibly can to make it right for a customer, however, I'm not going to let anybody rip me off. I've been doing this long enough to know the tricks that people can come up with. Incidentally, the man has not come back yet. Some other store may have had to deal with things, but we haven't.

Go Shop Somewhere Else.

 

I have worked retail for over 20 years. I know there are those customers that you are not going be able to please no matter what you do. The saying," the customer is always right" is not true. Even then, I would not knowingly go out of my way to insult a customer. A clothing store in Australia feels otherwise. The clothing chain GASP has decided to defend an employee who insulted a customer.

A young lady went there recently to look at bridesmaid dresses. When it became obvious that she wasn't going to buy anything the clerk told her, "Have fun shopping at Supre... I knew you were a joke the minute you walked in." Supre is an Australian clothing store known to carry larger size clothing. Of course, the young lady was outraged and wrote a letter to GASP. Imagine her surprise when she received a response to her letter basically telling her not to come back. You can read the full article here, which also contains both her letter and the companies response.

GASP seems to be unrepentant. In fact, they are reveling in the publicity and seem to think that they have done a great thing. They claim that sales are up tremendously. In one sense, that doesn't surprise me, but I believe it will turn out to be a very short-term success for them. I think more people will be outraged then will support them and that will turn into their down fall. There have been several customers that I would have to love to have told off, but that kind of behavior does not solve anything. That would have been reaching down to their level and I refuse to stoop that low. Another day, I will do a post on the theme the customer is not always right. Regardless of how I have felt in the past I would never have insulted a customer the way that that they did. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Disposable Printers.

Last night I had a gentleman who came in looking for a new printer. He asked me how much the ink cartridges for the printer cost. I looked on the box,  found out which numbers were needed and then went to the shelf to find out. He told me that he had bought one of those printers and had figured out that it was cheaper to buy another printer, rather then to buy the ink cartridges for it.  He had a point on that. It was actually was cheaper to buy that printer than to buy even one of the cartridges. The printer companies today are basically giving you the machine to get you to buy the ink for them, which is where they make their money. I personally wouldn't go that far, but I can see where some people would. It won't work again for him in our store because the printer he bought is not one that we carry on a regular basis, however, it did work last night.

We are living in a very disposable society. It's rare to find products anymore that are meant to last any length of time. We have become so used to things breaking down that we just accept that that's the way it is. It's not going to change anytime soon, it's just a sad commentary on our everyday lives. It is harder to find someone today that takes pride in their craftsmanship. Fortunately there still are a few who do, and it is always nice to run into them. Sometimes all you can afford is the cheapest available, but that doesn't always make the best deal. If you buy something and then six months later have to replace it, how much did you save? I've started using that as a factor when I buy anything. That kind of scares me because it makes me think I'm becoming a responsible adult. (shudder)

During the night my cynical side began kicking in. I thought of a way that the gentleman could be using that to scam us. He could take the printer home, remove the ink cartridges, place the used cartridges back in the box and bring it back for a refund. I'm not saying that he's the type that would do that, but I have seen it done before. When I was working at Kmart I was called to the front to take a gas grill to the back. The first thing that I noticed was that the gas tank was gone. That particular model came with one provided. Then I did what the person who refunded it should have done. I opened up the grill, and saw where the person had used it as a charcoal grill. Sherlock Holmes would've been proud of how I made that deduction, the used charcoal briquettes were still in the grill. What the person had done was come in, bought a new grill, took that home and then brought us back their old grill. Had the person up front been paying attention, it would've been caught. Instead, the guy got him a brand-new grill for free. There are plenty of scam masters out there and you really have to watch out for them. A lot of times is the most unlikely people who will get you.

How Dumb Do You Have To Be?

To need directions to put together a box that looks like this. I found this on the floor this morning at work. The sad thing is, I have some coworkers who would have trouble doing this with directions.

You Can't Please Everybody.

Last night was very interesting. Every night before we start work we have a short meeting where we learn how sales are doing and the managers bring up anything they feel needs to be discussed. As soon as the meeting was over and I went to the sales floor the phone was ringing. There was another person working electronics, but she was helping a customer, so I answered the phone. The caller started out by asking,  "Doesn't anybody answer the phone there." According to the lady she had been trying for a week to contact the store. I really don't believe she was telling the truth. All I told her was that I didn't understand why nobody had answered, but then asked her what could I do for her. She was wanting to order something from our website and was having trouble doing so. The way the website works is you can purchase anything listed and have it shipped to the store for free. The item has to be paid for before it is shipped, but what this lady wanted was to have the item shipped to the store and then she would come in and pay for it. I told her that we couldn't do that. She did not want to register an account on the website, and did not want to use her credit card there either. I told her that if she came in a got a gift card that that would be an acceptable form of payment, which didn't make her very happy either. Then she told me she didn't understand why we just simply didn't have every item on the website in the store. I tried to explain that there were simply too many items for that to happen and that some of the items purchased were in limited quantities so there were not enough items to send one to every store in the company. She grumbled a little bit more, but then did thank me for my help and hung up.

That was quite a way to start the night. I have always said, there are some customers that no matter what you do, you could shine their shoes and wax their car, they would still find something to complain about. A lot of people don't seem to understand that even though our store is part of a corporation, not every store carries the exact same merchandise. For one thing, the stores are all different sizes. The one I work in is smaller than several others in this area. For another, they try and merchandise accordingly to what will sell in the area the store is located in. One example of that is being here in Georgia, we would be very hard-pressed to sell any snow blowers, where as in Illinois they wouldn't have a problem. I do everything in my power to make people happy, but the last time I tried walking on water I nearly drowned. Fortunately, people like that are in the minority.

The prank phone calls seem to have totally ended. Maybe they're just taking a break, but if I get any more I will let you know about it.

Electronics.

I have waited a while before really discussing my new job. For one thing, I fully expected at least once to be pulled out of electronics and sent to work in frozen food or dairy. The jacket that I wore while working in those departments is still in the trunk of my car. I didn't want to bring it into my apartment until I was sure that I would not be sent back there. The jacket is coming inside later today.

I really enjoy going to work again. I never hated working frozen foods or dairy, but I was just getting physically worn out. The workload that I now have is no way near as demanding as before. Occasionally there are nights where I have a lot of freight deal with, but a majority of the time what I have to put out is very light weight. When I worked electronics for Kmart, the largest television that we sold was a 36 inch set. It took up almost an entire pallet by itself, and you needed two people to lift it. Now I can pick up a TV that size by myself and take it to the shelf.

The reason why I am fairly certain that I won't get pulled back to the grocery side, is that I am now trained to run a cash register. That is something they have wanted done for a while, but could not convince the person who worked the department before me. She is upset that they have taken her out of the department, but it is basically her own fault. She used to be friendly with me, but that has changed. I don't let it bother me, she is the one that has to deal with.

My duties now consist of stocking the department, straightening the department, putting back all the merchandise that managed to wander around the store, opening shoes, assisting customers, and answering the phone. With shoes, all I have to do is open the cases. Where the case is an assortment I have to take those out of the larger box and put them on a cart. As you can see, there is nothing there that is very strenuous.

Saturday night the prank caller was asking a lot of stupid questions about televisions. They wanted to know what size we carried and which one was best for their game system. I played along for a little bit with them, and then told him they just needed to come in and see what we had. A second caller wanted to be transferred to the fitting room in our fashion area. When I told her that there was no one there, she asked me what my name was. When I told her that she told me that I had a nice name, and that I had a sexy voice. I told her thank you and hung up on her. They tried again last night, but made the call while I was at break. They called three times. The first time they said they had an upset stomach and wanted to know what the largest bottle of Pepto-Bismol was that we had. They called back and asked about the largest bottle of Maalox that we had, and they described the discomfort that they were in. TMI. They then called a third time, and the person who was watching the department called the manager and had her pick up on on the phone. After our manager talked to them, there were no more calls.

Video Game Tales.

Yesterday I talked about video games. Today I ran across a list from Oddee.com, which listed 10 unbelievable video game stories. You can go here for the entire list, but I'm only going to comment on two of the stories. The first story involved the man from Hawaii who was suing the video game company for not telling him that video games are addictive. This falls back onto several comments I've made on this blog, including one that I made just last week about how people will sue over anything. The lawsuit was filed over a year ago and most of the complaint was dismissed in August of last year. I have searched and cannot find a follow-up to that story, so either it has been settled out-of-court, or is still active. I should find it amazing that the entire case was not dismissed, but I have seen too many things that are allowed to continue on long after they should have been dropped. If I find a follow-up to this, I will make mention of it at a later date.

The second story was from 2009. It concerned a mother who called the police because her 14-year-old son would not quit playing Grand Theft Auto. She had gotten into an argument with her son and felt that was the only way to get through to him. The police officers were able to get through to the boy, but as a person who has sold video games, I wonder how much his mother checks out what he is playing. Grand Theft Auto, is a video game that is rated M. That means her son would not have been able to purchase it by himself. Stores will not sell the game to anyone under 17. I realized that an older friend of his could've bought the game for him, but in my opinion, a 14-year-old should not be playing that game.

When I was working at Kmart, I had a lady who came in wanting to purchase a video game system for her eight-year-old daughter. X-box had not been out very long, and she asked me how good that would be for her little girl. She told me she had heard a lot about Grand Theft Auto, and if that would be a good game to purchase. I explained her a couple of things that took place in Grand Theft Auto, and she agreed it would not be an appropriate game. I also explained to her that X-box, was geared more for older game players. I sold her the Nintendo system that was available at that time, which was the Game Cube. At a different time, I had a young man who was 16 years old and wanted to purchase an M rated game. I told him that I could not sell it to him, but if his mother came over she could purchase the game for him. When she came over I explained to her about the game, and she turned her son and told him, "I told you I was not going to have that kind of thing in my house." The young man gave me a look, letting me know he was not very happy with me, but that I could live with. I didn't want his mother coming after me.

Are You ready For Some Football?

Monday night I got my first taste of some of the fun that happens when you work electronics. The game NCAA Football 2012 was released at midnight. For the first time since I have worked electronics, I had to run a cash register. It has been almost 10 years since I last did that. I was a little rusty at first, but I quickly got back into the groove. It does make my job a lot easier, because now I can rang items up in the department, instead of having to walk certain things to the front of the store and hand them to a cashier up there. Most nights, there is not a lot of merchandise purchased that needs to be paid for in the department, but as we get closer to Christmas that will change.

There were actually six people who came in to purchase the game. Personally, it's not the kind of game that I play. I prefer role-playing games and puzzle games over the sports games. I had forgotten how popular NCAA game is. The last time that I sold it, I was electronics manager for Kmart, and it was a very strong seller then.

The prank callers must be on vacation. I have not heard from them in two days now. We will see what happens when I go back to work tomorrow night.

When I wrote about seeing the movie Thor, I said I wanted to wait until I had it on DVD and watch it back-to-back with Iron Man, so I could decide which movie is my favorite Marvel movie. I no longer have to wait for the DVD. I went and saw it again yesterday. It is playing in Calhoun, so it only cost me $1.50 to see it again. Thor is the winner. I will definitely be buying the DVD when it comes out on September 13.

The Dangers of Retail.

Normally working retail is not an extremely dangerous job. You sometimes deal with irate people, but you rarely have any physical altercations, unless you're dealing with a shoplifter. Then all bets are off. You never know how they are going to respond to the situation and you have to be prepared for anything. Even knowing that, an incident that happened at the store I work at a few days ago, was very surprising. A customer leaving the store set off the alarm system, and when asked to step back inside the store, they used a tazer on the person who asked them to stop. The employee who was stunned was a lady we will just say qualifies as a senior citizen. She is one of those who greets people as they come in the store and is one of the nicest people that we have working that area. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. I truly hope that they catch the person that did this. According to company policy, if the person refuses you don't try and stop them yourself and I am sure that the lady did not make any physical attempt to bring that person back into the store. She simply asked them to return when she was attacked.

This is the worst assault that has happened to anybody that I have worked with. I've known of a few people who've been shoved and a few who a been punched, but those were loss control people trying to apprehend a shoplifter. When you have that job, that kind of activity goes with the territory. The worst that has ever happened to me is being called a few names. I never take name-calling personally, I simply chalk it up to people being upset and they are getting their frustrations out. There are better ways of handling it, but I am not going to judge what other people do. People seem to think that they are always right, but that is a topic for another day. I will be addressing that before this week is over.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing just simply seems to be a sign of the times in which we are living. Too many people want to use violence as their choice of dealing with situations. Usually something like this is more common in larger cities, and while Calhoun is not a large city, it still is a good-sized community. I find it funny when I hear people refer to Calhoun as being a small town. The town I grew up in was a small town. The other day I mentioned all the fast food places that you can find here, and that list was simply on one stretch of road. There are several other fast food places here, in addition to Walmart, Kmart, Home Depot, Office Depot, Kroger, an outlet mall, I could go on but I think you get the idea. There is not a lot of violent crime here, but it does happen. This isn't Mayberry, you do have to keep your doors locked at night.

Last night was one of those rare nights that I did not get a prank phone call. However, I did get one on Saturday night. The caller wanted to know about the size of part of my anatomy. This one didn't beat around the bush, I was asked that as soon as I answered the phone. Of course, I had a few lines that went to my head on how to respond to that, but to respond to these people would only encourage them to call more often. Had it not been for that, I would've simply replied," why don't you ask your girlfriend." I know, I'm bad. I forgot to mention about a call that I had a couple weeks ago. I think person must've been asthmatic, because all I could hear was them gasping for breath. Since I had no way of tracing the call, I couldn't call 911 to send an ambulance to them. I hope they recovered.

Baseball Card Tuesday.

Now that I have the Dragon program, I'm trying to get back into a routine with this blog. As I have mentioned before, my weekend is Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday is usually a fairly busy day for me so I want something that is easy to do, and quick to post. Therefore, this will be a day where I will post pictures of baseball cards using different themes each week. This weeks theme is my five favorite cards from the 2011 Topps series 2 set. The first card that I selected was Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves. I like the nonchalant attitude that he seems to have catching that ball.


Next up is José Valverde of the Detroit Tigers. That is an unusual position that he is in and it made me smile.


I enjoy shots of guys leaping and jumping so this card of Nyger Morgan of the Milwaukee Brewers made the cut.


A jumping shot, this time Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado Rockies, avoiding a member of the Kansas City Royals and looking like he is having a great time on the field.


Another jumping card, Darwin Barney of the Chicago Cubs is getting out of the way of Geoff Blum of the Arizona Diamondbacks. I love the look on Barney's face.


I will be going through the sets that I have completed and will select five cards from the each of those and will be putting those here on Tuesdays.


I did have a prank call last night. I'm beginning to believe there is a small group who are getting together doing these. The call last night started out innocently enough as somebody asking about purchasing alcohol. Local regulations here make purchasing alcohol from 11 PM to 6 AM illegal. The caller was trying to get me to come up with a way to get around that for them. After I told him there was nothing that I could do since it was the law, the person then said that they were in the bathroom without toilet paper. I simply said, nice try, and hung up.

Walken On Sunshine.

The prank caller last night asked for a Nintendo 360. When I told her that Nintendo made the Wii and X-box made the 360, she told me she wanted an X-box 720. I told her she needed to contact Bill Gates to make one and then I hung up.

Prank Phone Calls.

I am really enjoying my new job working in electronics. The physical work is no where near as hard as working frozen foods and dairy. One of the jobs that I have throughout the night is answering the phone. Usually at least once each night I get a prank phone call. Some people just don't seem to have anything better to do. Here are some examples of the calls I've had since I started working electronics:

"Do you sell chocolate? What kind do you have?"
I told that caller, "You'll just have to come in and see for yourself."

"Do you sell condoms? What sizes do you have?"
Once again I answered, "You will have to come in and see for yourself." I was nice and didn't say, "I'm sorry, we can't help you. We don't sell any that small."

"My name is Bond, James Bond."
I simply hung up on him.

"Do you have the phone number to Kmart?"
I mentioned earlier that I am not going to name my employer, even though if you read some past posts here, it's not very hard to figure out, but it definitely isn't Kmart. I simply answered no and after I hung up, it dawned on me that I had the perfect answer to that question. If I ever get asked again, I'm going to say, "I sure do. It's 411."

I was asked if somebody under the age of 17 could buy an M rated video game. The person asked me a couple of different questions and then asked, "What if it was my birthday?" At that point, I simply hung up on the person. Incidentally, most of the callers are the same person. He has a distinctive accent, so it's hard not to notice.

Last night I was asked, "I bought a $25 gift card at your store and they wouldn't accept it at JC Penney."
I told them, "I'll let you figure that out for yourself."

The first night that I worked in electronics I got a phone call from somebody who claimed to be in the bathroom in the back of the store. He told me he was in there and that we were out of toilet paper. I was skeptical, but I did call a maintenance person to go in there and take a roll with them. Of course, there was no one in there. About 20 minutes later the person called back asking where the toilet paper was. When I told him we had sent somebody in there and there wasn't anybody in the bathroom. They claimed that they were standing on the stool, so we would not have seen their feet. Again, I just simply hung up on him. About three hours later he called again with the same tale. That time I didn't say a word, I just hung up the phone.


I guess some people just are easily amused, and are trying to use me for a cheap thrill. I sometimes wonder if they're not recording these things. I've heard a lot of phone gags on the radio and maybe they are hoping that I will provide them some kind of entertainment that they can then use. Unfortunately for them, I'm on to their game, and I don't play along. From now on, every day that I get a prank call. I will post it here. As I mentioned the majority of the calls are being done by the same person. We will see how long it takes them to get tired of doing this.

Loving The Customer.

I have touched on this subject before. 90 to 95% of the customers I deal with are very nice people. I really enjoy helping out, but then there are those who you would really like to give a good swift kick in the butt.

Saturday night I actually got out of the cold. The aisle I was stocking had salad dressings, condiments, pickles, and ethnic foods, which is mainly Mexican and a small Oriental section. There is a four foot section of Mexican dried peppers and spices. If you have never seen them they come in cello bags and look like this:



A man was looking at them. He would pull one off the peg hook, look at it, and dropped the bag on the bottom shelf. He repeated that process about five times. We have enough work to do without someone creating more for us. Of course I had to bite my tongue and not say anything. There also is a possibility that even if I had said something he would not have understood me. I won't guarantee that he could speak English.

A couple of weeks ago when I was working in frozen foods we had a man who was complaining because we did not have any Tai Pei Cashew Chicken.


I looked at the shelf labels and the one for cashew chicken was gone. That meant that we have discontinued that particular item. When I told the man that he complained even more. He asked why did you discontinue such a great selling item. First of all, it was not that great of a seller. Just because it was his favorite didn't mean everyone else agreed. He was not happy when he left. He will now be even unhappier. We are now carrying several new dinners and the section was reset. Cashew chicken is still gone. I am sure I will hear about again if I see him.

To paraphrase an old saying, "Customers, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." Fortunately, it really is the minority who are major pains in the derriere.