The All-New Reality Layaway Payment Plan

The beauty and the burden of working with the general public is that there is no filter. Eventually, they all seem to come out of the woodwork.

I am seldom struck speechless by someone's otherworldly bizarre remark. Especially since Bush left office. There are, though, rarified exceptions...



I confess that I chose to spur this person on rather than simply detaching myself from the situation. I somehow knew from his askew stance and perniferous aroma of vodka that this would be "one for the blog".

Sooooooeeeeeeeey, piggies!!! The trough's full, and I'm a-waitin'!!!

Team Member X

The Dime Bag

The theme this weekend seemed to be the value of a dollar...or rather...the value of 10% of a dollar. I felt it bizarre that on multiple unrelated occasions, disputes swelled over the matter of TEN FUCKING CENTS.

This guest was very aforethought about redeeming her rain check. The whole time, she glared at me as though I was going to steal her purse.




This incident really caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting violence to errupt over something as banal as double-dipping one's coupons. The funny part was that this occurred at the returns desk, after she'd already made her purchase. And then, due to FTC policies beyond my control, she didn't even get her refund anyway. The story here is somewhat truncated; I was really just confirming what the head cashier had already told her.




This lady must have had a victim complex, since she was obviously more dead-set on throwing a tantrum than clearing the matter of a dime's discrepancy up.

Take two; they're small,

Team Member X

The Twilight Zoning

If you haven't noticed already, a lot of these anecdotes come from working the service desk. This is chiefly because this is the place where people tend to become the most unhinged, and therefore, mildly hilarious. At times, though, I am positive I have entered an alternate dimension, or been dosed with MDA, or both.

Sometimes the most enjoyable perspective is that of the fly on the wall, being forced to observe slices of other people's lives exclusively by dint of proximity.

I felt it was particularly important to point out that this person a.) had just donated plasma (see bandaging on left arm), and b.) was wearing a short sleeved dress shirt and a tie. Both of these elements convey the sense of desperation that effectively frame the tone of this guy's outburst at a Target ATM.

This exchange defies any further explanation, except to assert that this is exactly how it transpired, including the four words I contributed to the dialogue and where it went from there.

Submitted for your approval,

Team Member X

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

One thing that makes working the returns desk at Target relatively palatable is that we have a very loose returns policy. Do you have a receipt or form of payment I can trace this purchase to? No? How about a driver's license? Is this resellable (presuming it is not already visibly so)? Okay, here's your refund. Wham, bam, thank you for choosing Target. No long-winded explainations are necessary. You can go now. Thank you.

The first frame was just my astonishment that people actually return crap from the Dollar Spot. I may be shameless enough to bust out the Moonwalk at random in the grocery aisle, but even I have my limits.

Working in customer service naturally privileges me to examine an expansive cross-section of humanity. In stark contrast to those who suffer from diarrhea of the mouth, I get to witness a
healthy sampling of a subspecies I have yet to be able to completely comprehend or define. They somewhat resemble a side branch of the Darwin scale which spun off somewhere around the Cro Magnon. To dismiss them as merely quiet or antisocial is to ignore the subtext of their deeply disturbing absence of evolutionary hallmarks. Sometimes I am amazed to even see that they have opposable thumbs. Although they sporadically display the ability to formulate complete sentences, they tend to primarily grunt and flail their way through the bulk of their transaction. I contend that these life forms are the reason that Denny's has pictures on their menu; so they can merely point and grunt at what they would like to order. In fact, last time I ate at Denny's, I saw just such an occurrence transpire. A presumably upper-middle class lady literally pointed to the Moons Over Mi-Ham-i and mumbled as the means of placing her order. To be fair, though, she was too engaged in an inappropriately loud conversation into her Bluetooth to be bothered to address her lowly server with any level of civility.

I concede that the notion that this guest was laden with feces and ate her refund was more a matter of general impression than hard fact, but the rest of the elements are pretty much verbatim. The scary part was that this person worked at a hospital, and as such, her astute perception and keen responsiveness may well mark the difference of life or death to someone.

Inside voices, folks!

Team Member X

I Can't Get No Guest Satisfaction

Easily a whole book could be written about ricockulous customer complaints. On occasion, they may bear validity; after all, some employees have the customer service skills of an acanthamoeba, and even the best of us can let slip a moment of craven unprofessionalism. But far more often than not, the complaintant is someone who is just looking for an excuse to blow off some steam at the expense of a random stranger, preferrably one on the clock bound to a modicum of professionalism and, as such, is unable to retaliate. All too clearly are such incidents reflections of displaced aggression and anger in these people's personal lives that they otherwise have no outlet for. People seem to feel that doing business with a retail establishment somehow entitles them to abandon elementary ettiquette and behave on the level of a four year old.

The upside to this arbitrary paradigm is the sheer comic delight in the absurd pettiness of a lot of these complaints.



Yes, her T-shirt says "AARP Ba-Donk-A-Donk".

It is abysmal, nonetheless, when a guest wails and moans in spite of an employee's best attempts to placate them. Clearly, these are the bottom-feeders who are determined to generate an altercation.

What never fails to baffle me is the lengths some will go to to achieve resolution to the most miniscule of issues, exclusively out of principle and not practicality to any extent. Or moreso, when I try to make them contemplate, even momentarily, the sheer asaninity of their assertions, and they respond stone-facedly staid to their stance, refusing to let this register to any degree.

Occasionally, a guest will make dilligent demands for their issue to be resolved by an employee, when the root of their dilemma can be traced no further than to their own wanton abandon and carelessness.

"How can I help you help yourself?"

Team Member X

Six of WalMart, Half A Dozen of the Big K

Despite the differentiations between Target and other bix-boxers previously expounded on in this blog, there are a great many out there who see shopping carts, cash registers, and name tags and, I can only assume, figure that we are all some interconnected megaconglomerate. All too often, a guest will bring in gifted merchandise and assume, if we carry it at all, we are obligated to refund them for it. I don't know if they presume that all stores get together once a week and sort out inventories, or what the logic is, if any. A s much as I would like to go off on these Darwinian byproducts about personal responsibility, to do so would go against our policy of "Fast, Fun, and Friendly" So instead I usher them through as absolutely fast as possible just to get their devolved, mouth-breathing asses out of my face. Then they commend me for my lightning quick turnaround time, apparently oblivious to my overt motives.

Now, I have a very soft spot in my heart for our elderly. They bear unfathomable depths of wisdom which can only be garnered through the echoes of time, yet generally display a delightfully innocuous way of perceiving today's world through their antiquated perspectives. I think it's immensely cute. So I tend to show a great deal more patience when faced with a trying situation involving our precious senior citizens. But sometimes, I sense that this societal immunity is abused by a handful who play the octagenarian card to try to get away with the otherwise unthinkable.

If you can't tell, I was really tired that day.

Stay tuned,

Team Member X

When In Doubt, Blur It Out

I will give this guest credit for one thing; she did have a receipt. Unfortunately, I was unable to apply her Reaganomic approach to our return policy (and the concept of time) to resolve the situation to her satisfaction. Ultimately, she left remaining in complete denial of some very fundamental realities presented in this exchange.

These two episiodes are in a sense flip sides of the same coin. Ironically, they were observed within a week of each other.

As long as retail chains continue to do business with U.S. Americans (I somehow feel this is a uniquely American byproduct of our hyperemphasis on superconsumerism), there will be lots more to come.

"Can I Help You Find A Clue?"

Team Member X

Hey, Zombies Need Price Adjustments, Too

Seldom does the day go by working at the Boutique when I am not at some point exposed to the crass decay of humanity and the flourish of mental stagnancy fast replacing rudimentary scrutiny and even the scantest of objective dilligence as the norm in our world today.

Whether it's the intersection of stubborn determination and absolute incomprehension:

Desperate adherence to the indulgence of the first stage of the grieving process (denial):

Or the paths of logic of some which remain beyond explanation to the cogent world:

Those seeking a voyeuristically lobotomizing experience need look no further than their nearest big box retailer.

If this is what can be expected of the baby-boom and post-boom generations at the zenith of their maturity, then...well, like Sonny Bono said in his famous last words, "It's all downhill from here".

Don't forget to take your Lithium and your Ritalin, kids!

Team Member X

A Journey Through Descent Into Depravity, Desperation, and Dress Codes

A while back, a contest was held in the employee lounge, asking "What is your most embarrasing Target moment?" Most of the respondents shared tales of their pants ripping at inopportune moments and spilled liquids gone awry.

All I could come up with was "When I clicked 'Submit' at the application kiosk"

Sandwiched neatly between the #1 discount retail chain (WalMart) and #3 (Kmart), the Target experience is a unique one. WalMart "associates" are well-known to be particularly zombified, acutely projecting the chain's overall aesthetic of generic, effective, and devoid of humanity. Kmart "associates" may display a broader range of personality and energy levels, but the general spirit of defeatedness from working for a once-monolith retail juggernaut whose glory days have long since faded into the sunset permeates through nonetheless. Somehow, I can't peruse a Kmart without becoming overwhelmed by the overall spirit of a captain determined to go down with his ship as the last of the lifeboats deploy. (I actually had to submit a bogus application online just to find out what they refer to their rank-and-file workers as, and was thoroughly disappointed at the abscence of creativity there. It kinda gave me that same sense of looming mortality).

But the Target "team member" remains unwaveringly cheery and optimistic, delighted at the chain's admirably comparable success without the stigma of Walmart's lowest-common-denominator ethic or the aforementioned death pall of Kmart. At least, that's what "guests" seem to expect at Target. In an informal poll conducted by this writer, people who have never worked there unanimously view Target as "significantly cleaner, more upscale, higher quality, yet more expensive".

There is no little if any absolute truths to these presumptions.

Our stores are just as filthy as any other retailer. If one were to complain to a manager that the restroom at Walmart was in substandard condition, the response would be more akin to "Well, what do you expect? It is Walmart, after all." As opposed to Target, where spotless and adequately furnished commodes are asssumed to be the standard. An objective analysis will reveal that a Target restroom is just as riddled with stray urine, toilet paper fragments, empty paper towel dispensers, etc. as the Wally World in Paris, Tennessee (sidenote: I LOVE Tennessee, it is a beautiful state populated with exceptionally wonderful people, but the Walmarts are scuzzy as fuck).

While the classiness of one big-boxer to another is entirely subjective, the assertion that Target's merchandise is any better is ridiculous. The majority of it all comes from the same overseas sweatshops regardless of it's destination, and store brand goods generally differ only in which South Sea subsidiary they originate from. I'm largely certain a double-blind study would confirm this. And that Target's "higher quality" goods are higher priced, well, the difference is marginal at best. True, Walmart sells some of their goods at uncompetitively low price points at the expense of the extortion of their venders. Those fanstastic deals, though, are generally found at the endcaps, prominently displayed to reinforce the "value" of shopping there. The stuff to be found further down the aisles, though, tends to generally run on par with any other big box store, give or take a couple percent.

So, maybe working at Target somehow conveys a slightly more elevated amount of perceived prestige than the others. This I assert is due exclusively to their brilliant marketing personnel. Target knows damn well the power of media impression in a market where all other factors are generally equal. More on that later, when I'm not about to get kicked out of the library that I have to go to to get online because, as a single-member household, I don't make enough to afford internet at home.

Anyway, if the 39.5 hours a week spent in the Third Circle of Retail Hell doesn't completely suck the life out of me, my intention for this blog is to post the true fruits of my labour; true accounts of ridiculous customer experiences, some in words, but most presented in my preferred medium, cartoons! Yes, the sole thing which keeps me from utilizing my military traning to kill with my bare hands is periodically ducking out and scrawling these absurd encounters with society at their absolute worst in picture form.

The sample at the top of this post is obviously not one of these, but it gives the reader a sense of the tone to come. I have a stack of entries already from the scant 8 months of my employ. I just haven't gotten around to scanning them yet. Hopefully, this blog will give me some motivation on that front.

Gotta go for now. They just did the 5 minute announcement over the intercom. Unlike some people, I respect that these guys just want to get home at this point in the day.

Peace out, bitches!

Team Member X