Today in Retail

Hello. :D

So uh... I work retail. You know, the classier alternative to the ever-dreaded standard college job. You know the one I'm talking about.

Pictured: the collective smile of "if this picture leaks on the internet

and my friends and family see this, I will find out where you live and 

kill you in your sleep." Also, Ronald McDonald.

I have the particular pleasure of working in an office supply store, and not a particularly cheap one, either. Given my store's proximity to one of the many low-income districts around town, the variety of, er... clientele... can get very interesting. Some times obnoxious, some times insightful, some times delightful, but 100% of the time, no one day is the same as the next.

We are at the tail end of our back to school season, which is a relief, because things finally calm the hell down a little bit after the notebook and backpack aisles stop looking like the Tasmanian Devil was going back and forth around them all day. Here in Savannah, though, we as an office supply store have to face one final storm before the back to school season comes to a close.

That's right, boys and girls

We have to face the swarm. Of SCAD bees.

Buzz buzz. We're here for your furniture.

Being a SCAD-ling myself, I fancy myself to be in a unique position where I can actually try to make a couple of new friends, perhaps people who I can talk to during our college duration about how the SCAD bus is pretty much the worst thing ever and share my work with, forming what could be lifelong friendships and professional contacts with like-minded artists. It never works, but I digress.

Yeeeeah. I'm that kid in most social settings.

But my inability to make friends is not what I'm discussing today. I want to discuss the one sure thing that comes with every SCAD student's package, the one unseen, thankless element that all students come to Savannah and quickly forget about: the SCAD Moms and Dads. They, to most students, are the providers of all their financial needs - everything from their tuition to the socks they're going to not put on 3 weeks into the quarter because they're already about to miss the bus for their 8 AM class. Well, as the new year starts and new students the world around flock down to Savannah to begin school, the parents more often than not are right behind them, and with good sense, decide that maybe four years of sitting on a miserable wooden stool might not be the most comfortable living situation.

So it's off to the store we go!

Now, here comes a most valuable lesson I think most people can, and probably should have already learned, especially when it comes to going to the store. Occasionally, we as the store I work at will cycle different sales throughout the store to try to get rid of stock, or to create the illusion that the customer is actually saving money so they can justify coming back and paying full price for the rest of our crap later on.

"5% off!? Willikers, what a bargain! I've bested

this corporate capitalist money trap yet!"

It just so happened that we have been running a particularly good special on our office chairs, as luck would have it... for most people. And herein lies the problem: most customers I've ever interacted with expect the product to always be there, when they want it. Being an office supply store, this is perfectly understandable for some items, such as pencils and notebooks. And most times we are accommodating with the demand for stock of those. Chairs are not so easily accessible, especially chairs with special discounts on them. 

It's one hour before we close, and the demand for chairs has been nonstop for that entire afternoon. Naturally, stock is running low, and to all of the customers' amazement, still nobody has come to repair the magical everlasting vending machine of items in the ever-hallowed "back" of the store. 

A pesky annoyance for us all.

Keeping cool in the face of a mob of angry customers who just drove all the way from California to see that their kid's every living need is taken care of is a difficult thing to do, but in the world of office supply retail, you learn to cope. Still, it leaves me to puzzle this one vexing question: has nobody told these SCAD moms and dads that - to coin a phrase - "The Early Bird Gets the Worm?" Now, I understand that this is one of those ironic phrases, but surely it has some meaning outside of the implications of the natural food chain. Perhaps, for example, that you can't expect a chair that was $30 since the time the store opened at 8 in the morning to still be available to you 30 minutes before the store closes? Also, I promise you as a store associate that I'm not taking a stab at you when I say "We are not allowed to sell the display." Please don't look at me like I just kicked your puppy Olympic soccer-style.

Somehow there's a shortage of photos depicting people

kicking puppies on the Internet. Or perhaps, like most people,

I don't want to actually see that - much less caption it here.

What's wrong with the world, anyway?

I promise, I just work at the store, and I'm going to the same school your kid is on Monday. I'm not trying to sleight you in any way.

((P.S. This is a post I began working on last night upon coming home from work, but I got tired and didn't finish until I woke up this morning. Forgive.))