#i get glasses at super mega discount because of my job so these were 10 dollars

[mintmatcha]

mutuals who wants to see my new glasses...

[retail-hell]

Short stories of working at Jo-Ann’s.

• I’m a crafter, and I’m not 100% familiar with all of our fabrics and sewing items. Which by proxy means I don’t know how to sew in any way except for how to make a pillowcase like I learned in 8th grade. I had a lady come in and I’m back up register so I’m available to help so I offered help when she said she had a question. She proceeded to badger me on how to make a dress. I told her I’m not familiar with how, but one of my managers (who does drag and makes BEAUTIFUL dresses) is. “I saw him earlier but I don’t know if he’s still here. You make go back to the cutting counter to see or ask.” She’s huffy I won’t follow her (I’m clearly doing an important project). She comes back to ask when he works next. I saw I don’t know, I don’t know his schedule. She turns red and leaves.

• Around the start of Black Friday sales ( the first time around, I just made it one year) I was put to train on the cut counter. I’ve done a couple simple cuts before to help out. But I was only trained for less than an hour before I was needed at the register. SM scheduled me for counter my next shift and I was immediately overwhelmed by the line, what people wanted cut, I literally didn’t know what I was doing, it was just me and one other person who was already cutting so she couldn’t teach me, no one could, and I was eventually sent to the back to take care of my first massive panic attack in years. I’m still a little traumatized and have refused to cut since.

• Our store doesn’t sell sewing machines. Instead we have an independent stored that rents floor space from us to sell sewing machines and their other various items. They close at 6, it is 6:10, they are gone, and a lady comes to the register with three of their items and one of ours. Here’s how the conversation went:

ME: Sorry ma’am, I can’t sell you these three items. They are not ours.

LADY: What do you mean? They’re in your store and I need them.

ME: They belong to the independent store in the carpeted area. Their barcodes are made clearly different, and we cannot sell them. You can come back tomorrow to get them. They unfortunately closed at 6.

LADY: You don’t understand, I need them for a project I have to finish tonight. Can I just give you money in and envelope to leave for them.

ME: Logically and morally I cannot do that, ma’am. It would be categorized as stealing as I can’t sell another store’s items.

LADY: You know what? I’ll find someone else to help me.

She proceeds to take all items. Throws the one that was ours onto a random shelf as I watched. Screaming that it was terrible customer service for not doing what she asked. (And as I learned after she left) Yelled at my manager for saying the exact same thing I did, angry that she too wouldn’t steal from another store for her. Then power walked out in a huff. That same manager asked me if she bought anything else, worried she’d leave a stupid survey that would hurt our scores. I simply said no she only wanted those.

• All the customers that complain that our fabrics is a mess and our store is a “mess” are the same ones doing it because we all watched them.

• Bless the few mothers that actually control their kids, instead of letting them run around the store using anything and everything as a toy. Such as the family that let their kids break a big glass vase and proceeded to tell no one. But said “oh at that was us” when a manager found them still looking in that area.

• I had a woman tell me that all of our gift cards were disgusting and that she was super mad that we didn’t have birthday themed ones, nor did we have envelopes for them.

• Customers that say “Oh it was this way not too long ago” and roll their eyes when I say “oh well it’s been like this since before I started working here over year ago and when I shopped here before then”

• “The packaging is a little damaged, can I get a discount?

• All of the empty packaging hidden and plainly visible we see all over the store. Clearance, regular, and sometimes empty bolts stuffed into fabric clearance.

• (I was here this day but I know the story) One day, receiving a large truck load, there was a woman looking for an item that wasn’t on the shelf. She then took it upon herself to go into our freight room to look through boxes and totes for her item. One of the managers eventually yelled at her, threw the tote the lady was looking in at that moment out the door, and slammed it shut when she had followed it.

• One lady was looking for an extremely large sized pillow. And was mad that I told her we don’t carry it instead of looking for it. (I was the only one on register are pillows are in the back.) She said she would call back later to ask again. She never did.

• One much older gentleman (who seemed to have a ferret up his but the moment he came into the store) was first angry that he had to take a number to ask for help because it was busy at the counter. It was empty at the register I really don’t know why he didn’t ask me. He refused to have our female manager help him. He turned the male manager, who was cutting for someone else, to ask him for a pattern for a robe. He was told where and how to find them, as my managers were too busy to leave the counter. The gentleman proceeds to just come up to the register. At the same time counter person came back from lunch. MM ran to help me at the register since there was now a rush. The gentleman comes to me and asks if I’m the manager. I say “no it’s the gentleman next m-”. MM interrupting “yes me and the woman in the back.” The gentleman decided to ignore my manager and complain to me like I’m the manager and can do anything about it. Then asks if I can help him find the pattern. I tell him the exact same thing and apologized that I could not leave as we don’t have the people to cover the line. He turns around, fuming, but following my directions. We get through the line and I’m sent to lunch just as the gentleman comes back and he stares at me as I come out from behind the counter, turning as I went around him. “I’m terribly sorry sir but I have to go lunch now as we behind”. His response was to huff and slam the pattern book he had on the register counter my manager was at. Yelling at him to find it. He did, the gentleman then left.

• One time I was trying to get to the register to help out. But I was stuck behind a gaggle of later 20-early 30s women moving two steps at time, blocking the whole walkway between the aisle. They scoffed at me as I said “pardon me” and squeezed between them.

• Hearing “do you work here?” ten times a day, wearing the bright green apron, having all the gear, and doing my job.

• “I found this on your website, why can’t I find it here?!” Clearly says online only or not available in my store.

• Over Christmas a lady tried to return a Christmas light necklace without a receipt, that was clearly different in design and packaging of what we had on display right next to us, claiming she bought it last week. No you didn’t honey.

• We’re still working on a mega huge yarn reset, and there is nothing but complaints about the boxes in the aisles when they should know by now that we obviously don’t have a back room based on the up stock shelves and that we don’t have enough people because they definitely would’ve been working on getting the yarn out.

There’s more than just customer stories though.

• we had 8 stackout fixtures, they took away four, ands expect us to have 20 set

Be creative!

•magazines were moved to right in front of registers, dropping magazine sales, queue item sales, and causing traffic jams when we busy and people are shopping the magazines.

Be creative!

• we are literally drowning in clearance, we have to have it throughout the store including on queue panels, even though they started wanted us to set 11 queue panels months ago with us only really having 10

Be creative!

• they sent over 50 planograms to be done in one week and as I far as I’ve heard that was legit and not an accident which is ridiculous. Being as hours has been cut so much there had only been one or two people able to work in planograms in general

Be creative!

• sending a million sequin ty animals of all sizes to be set in a tiny display and a million boxes of each type of seasonal candy and only giving tiny sections put it. Such as the Easter candy stackout that had three different peeps in one two foot basket and sending five boxes of each one

Be creative!

I don’t understand how much more creative we can get when it feels like our store is getting smaller and smaller as fixtures are taken away or filled and boxes of overstock just keep coming. I love my job, it’s just extremely frustrating how the uppers and customers are treating us.