The murder card

Dear diary, today was my first day working retail and it was anything but fun or easy. Because I am new, I was still in training so a more experienced worked showed me how things are done. She was clearly not happy with the task, and would do just about anything to not do it or get out of it. As she was unable to do that, she had to let her anger out somehow. Unfortunately, that anger fell on my shoulders. Absolutely everything I did was wrong. I walk to slow, I walk to fast, I don`t fill the shelves right, I fill them to slow. I took too much time for brake and so on. She told me the basic rules of retail. The first rule is; the customer is always right. Stupidly, I asked if she is sure of that, because I felt and still do, that statement is not correct. She sighed, told me that in fact the customer is not always right, in most cases they are very wrong. But it’s our job to let them think they are correct and keep our mouth shut, so they will be pleased and come back to our store. Which brings me to the second rule. Always do your hardest to satisfy the customer. Anything they ask, you do, unless you are psychically unable to. If you don’t do so, you will get a penalty. Sadly, customers abuse that, and force retail workers to do all kind of nonsense. Making them jump through hoops and then they don’t even buy anything, they just make fun of you. Which made me wonder, why? Don’t they have anything better to do? Do they have lives of their own? Well apparently not they abuse the workers. It’s sad, really I felt bad for one older lady who got me in her claws. She was yelling at me because of the structure of the store and how illogical the items are placed. She criticized every single detail of the store, not listening to me, when I tried to explain that this wasn’t my doing. When the woman finally left me alone, my supervisor softened a bit, telling me that when a customer is yelling like that, for no reason, I should just smile and nod, not even listening to them. That is a rule I like. Work hard and work fast is the next rule, and I surely followed this one. I must also always be in a good mood and carry a smile on my face. Even if I don’t feel like it. I was never one for smiling and for being cheerful, even if I’m in a good mood, so this will be a big adjustment for me. But I must take it as just another silly job requirement. I must also always look my best, anything less will not be acceptable. I try to do that anyways, but I don’t like it when it’s being required of me. I feel this rule could force someone to be who they are not and direct their personal life which is very intrusive. Something I must not be at work. However, I must be helpful. I have to find a line between that myself and it depends on the customers as well. For some people even saying hello in annoying and intrusive, but some need a lot of help and will find it rude if you don’t help them with their every little request. For a short period of time, I was working the cash register. The work itself isn’t hard at all, but people make it hard, some try their hardest to make it difficult. Sometimes I was to slow, then I was too fast, then I scanned the prices wrong. How come not one single person can understand that I do not make up the prices right there in the spot. I just scan the product and the price is in the computer. There is no wrong way of doing that. If you can’t read the prices correctly, that’s your fault, not mine. It didn’t take long to notice peoples greed. I don’t even know how many people tried to convince for a discount. If they were eligible for a discount, it would show up in the computer. This was yet another thing no one seemed to understand. As if I can just give discounts at my own will. And when I didn’t I was a bitch, and a receiver of several death threats. I hope other days will be better. Today was crowded, because it was the grand opening of the first and one of a kind EasyWay mall. Because of the crowd, people were nervous, anxious and very demanding. I had to work six hours longer than I anticipated due to the crowd. Never in my life have I been so talked down to, so disrespected as I was today. Just because someone works in a store or is a waitress it doesn’t give you a right to treat them badly. By doing that, you just show how petty and little you are, which is the opposite of what that person is trying to do. I witnessed a lot of this kind of behavior today, which made me think, we haven’t evolved or grown so much. However, I did witness a murder. Since it is legal to kill anywhere, even in public, one man decided to kill his victim today, on the day of the grand opening. Come to think of it, it was actually quite a symbolic gesture. Using the Murder card in the EasyWay store, on their grand opening, brilliant idea. The murder was simple, he shot a woman, threw the card over her body. The cleaning crew that was started especially for this kind of situations arrived quickly, cleaned up the body and after that, everything went back to normal. The man who committed the murder approached me, sometime after that and started to ask me about yoghurts. What they are made of, what’s the price and so on. I politely explained all the ingredients are listed and so are the prices he got mad. Calling me every bad name known to man. But just like any other day, this one has passed too and I can only hope that tomorrow is better.