(nffcnnr)
Ever wonder why you get the stink-eye from that girl at The Gap? Or why that dude at American Eagle groans when he sees you approaching a table of clothes? There’s a good chance it has something to do with your lack of table manners.
Over at TheGloss.com, they present a list of 5 Reasons You’re a Sucky Shopper, and right at the top is this:
An immaculately folded pile of graphic tees should remain immaculately folded. Do you know how long it takes to fold those shirts? A long fucking time. Do you know why? Because there are certain standards we have to adhere to while folding (with a really fun folding board might I add) so the pile can be immaculate enough to lure you to it. You mess it up, you make it worse not only for the people working there who have to stay until 1:30 in the morning cleaning up your mess (yea, happened last night … feel bad about it), but also for your fellow shopping peers. No one wants to try something on or even look at an item that comes from a pig sty. You ruined another shopper’s opportunity to admire a really great and comfortable striped shirt. You’re a mean person, that’s what you are. So here’s what you do. When going through the immaculately folded piles of clothing to find your size, you gracefully search for the tags that are sewn to it by the collar. When you find what you’re looking for, carefully remove the shirts on top of it, keeping them folded, take your selection and then return the folded shirts to its pile. You’ll annoy me less.
5 Reasons You’re a Sucky Shopper [TheGloss.com]
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That quote is so douchey, I don’t even want to read the rest.
I do try to be careful with the folded shirts in the few times I shop in an actual store, but sometimes you have to unfold the shirt and hold it up to see if this particular version of the size is the same as other shirts of that particular size (I have Old Navy t-shirts that say they’re the same size but are actually different sizes).
Of course, more often, I’m not unfolding anything because I’m shopping online. And when we all do that, no store employee will have to worry about shirt folding every again.
“5.) In a hurry? We don’t care. So many times, people get impatient when the alarm goes off because a sensor is still attached to their jeans. “UGHHH I’m in a rush. I can’t believe this.†I don’t care, dude. You’re rude. We’re just trying to run a business here and you’re going to have to come back anyway to get the sensor removed. And we don’t trust you. So if you put up a fuss, we’ll probably start to think you’re trying to steal something. So relax. We’ll take care of the situation as efficiently as possible because you annoy us and we want you out of the store ASAP too.”
Maybe the clerk should remember to take the tag off in the first place.
Otherwise, I see this person’s point, if I don’t think they are all the end of the world situations. I’ve worked retail, it sucks, I’ve hated customers, but if messing up t-shirt piles is the worst thing you deal with in a day, count yourself as lucky.
As if the sensor thing is not a much bigger issue for the customer. If you leave a sensor on my item, I had better either have my receipt or be ready to receive the side eye as an “obvious shoplifter”. Oh please, if you think I stole the item call the cops, otherwise do your job and shut up.
This is the same reason, I think, that in libraries there are signs that say “Do not reshelve books”, and they have collection shelves placed strategically amid the stacks. They’d rather return the books themselves than have them misplaced and impossible to find in the future.
Of course, in a public or university library there are thousands upon thousands of items arranged meticulously. In a typical Urban Outfitters there’s maybe a couple hundred t-shirts…
So boo-fuckin’-hoo retail worker. You’re so hard done by.
Why are clothes folded so I can’t see the size tag without dismantling the pile?
Why is the size/color I want always at the bottom of the pile?
Dude, how long does it really take to fold a shirt? Seriously. I used to work the clothing section at Target. They had boards for idiots, but any employee out of training with half a brain can fold a shirt neatly in about three seconds. Pants in maybe four. I’m all for consumer manners but this “100 reasons why X employee hates you” crap is getting annoying. Do your job and move on with your life.
This is a ridiculous rant by yet another person who either wants to be paid without a need to complete any actual work or wants to cherry-pick just what tasks to do during their working (used very loosely) hours. Just another reason to shop for everything you can on-line. I’d hate to inconvenience these people by providing sales which can lead to a job. Everybody wants a check, but very few people are willing to actually work.
Next up on the Consumerist: Why your barista secretly hates you
…You know how when you order your coffee and I ask if you want it upsized? You look at me like you didn’t just say what size you ordered, that annoys me. Also; when you say you want a large black coffee, don’t get mad at me for asking if you’d like cream or sugar, I’m just doing my job.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to have all clothes on hangers? You could even have multi-level racks with two, or even three, rods on which to hang clothes, depending on the type of item. I *always* think things look better on hangers, and this would almost completely eliminate the need to fold stuff. I don’t think it would take up too much space at all.
Can you please open up a retail store? I’ll send you my resume.
Reminds me of that snl skit with Sean Hayes and Jimmy Fallon as the snobby store folders. Perfect.
http://www.vidstogo.com/player.php?ext=wmv&vfname=jeffreys6
Stores like yours seem to hire two kinds of people…cashiers and folders.
Instead of shooting dirty looks…..did it ever occur to you to walk over …..and assist the customer? No, you probably just watch and then fix the pile after the customer has walked away,
Your store probably gets rave reviews from your Regional Manager who loves your neat store. Too bad management doesn’t care more about selling to the customer and less about those neatly folded piles.
Get a different job shirt folding monkey.
I used to work retail for a few years in HS/college. Folding shirts sucks, so I got a couple Masters degrees and get paid a lot more now (bonus: no shirt folding)
know what i really hate.. and i am not an employee.. but as customer.. People who cannot bear to put their fucking carts away! It makes me rage hard
Dear Jayde_drag0n,
We have take up a collection and would like you to have these -
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Please add one to the two dots you already use in your comments. (An ellipsis always contains three dots.)
Thank you.
awww Mr. Trollface you seem like you’re having such a bad day
so here
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/funny-pictures-cat-hug-moment-forever.jpg
Having customers sort through piles of clothes may seem inefficient, but they want you to hold the merchandise. Once it’s in your hands, you’re more likely to buy it. So this problem won’t be going away for retail shoppers anytime soon.
Ugh – I can’t believe how vicious some of these comments are. Let me put it in a way that will hopefully sway some of the “It’s you job, shut up and take it” folks: Every minute a retail person spends on cleaning/folding/fixing a mess is a minute that they are NOT HELPING CUSTOMERS.
I worked at the Disney Store, and that meticulous mountain of stuffed animals in the back was my horror show for months. Every day I spent about half of my shift maintaining it. HALF of my shift had zero to do with customer service.
Be considerate of things that don’t belong to you, that others are responsible for. That’s all. Try to be neat when using a display. No big deal.
At least stack things in an order where I can predict where I’ll find my size, instead of digging through it all.
1) a. If you want the shirts to stay neat then stack them in such a way that I can easily reach the size and price tags without unfolding everything. You think I want to dismantle the stack just to find what I need?
b. Make sure the shirt sizes stay in order. Actually, that one is for consumers too.
2) Put a sign in the dressing room asking people not to leave clothing in there. I put things back if I don’t want them but I know that some people think that employees prefer it if we leave it for you to put up rather than us putting things back incorrectly (kind of like how libraries tell you not to re-shelve books).
3) I actually agree with this one even though I think it’s dumb to get mad at the customer for handing the employee the clothing they don’t know where to put back when you just asked customer to hand the employee the clothing when coming out of the dressing room.
4) I agree. However, this is also your manager’s fault. Any employee should be able to tell customers that they are closing the store and that they need to leave (or at least get to the register with what they’ve got). I can’t believe you couldn’t tell someone who was sitting there reading to get out; they probably didn’t even realize what time it was.
5) In a hurry? We don’t care.
This is the exact WRONG thing to say after going on about how annoyed you are that other people are wasting your time, especially when the the problem the customer is complaining about is your fault.
Job security…you don’t like your job..let someone else do it who needs work….someone call the waaaaaambulance
Oh well…. I don’t know how to fold them back like they were, but I won’t buy something without being able to inspect it first and trying on a few different ones… If you don’t like your job… QUIT
Personally I hate tables with stacks of shirts and whatnot – I’d much rather see the clothing on a rack so its easy to look through them, and it DOESN’T leave a mess.
I think the biggest problem with articles like this is that they don’t point out customer types, they say everyone, I do not act in the offensive manner in which they describe, yet I am lumped in with the people who do. That’s what gets people angry. And I am sure that the OP would say “well we appreciate customers like you.” But they don’t, because if they did they wouldn’t have written this article the way they did. The OP seems bitter and jaded, I am really sorry that life didn’t work out for you the way you wanted, but it’s no reason to blame me. I am sure that people like the OP make other people’s lives just as hard when they aren’t at work
How about placing a sample item on display so I can see the length of the sleeve or body, along with details front and back? Up close enough to see details, not hanging from near the ceiling in an often dark store. Granted it won’t cover specifics, but it reduces the random pawing.
I’ve noticed that the removable stickers that show size when the item is folded, makes sifting far less common (although it still happens). If Target can do it, then others surely can.
Beyond that, refolding the clothing is form of job security.
As someone who worked in the retail clothing industry, I back this guy. Stop chastising him for complaining about his job. His job is to also help you find things because he wants you out of the store as much as you want to be out of it.
SO: When he asks you “Can I help you find anything?” DO NOT reply “Just looking.” Tell him “Yes, I would like this t-shirt in a medium. Do you have it?” He knows how to search piles without messing them up. Chances are, he’ll probably go and get you one from the back that hasn’t been tried on and manhandled.
You get out with your item, he makes a sale. Everyone is happy.
But then you get people who complain about you making them do your shopping for them and that’s a legitimate complaint too.
I shouldn’t be making someone run and fetch everything I want when the stock is right out there for me to get at.
I worked in retail for 7 years and I can understand this worker’s frustration. I was not a lazy employee. I just rather be able to quickly assist customers with finding what they need, set them up with a fitting room, and ringing up their merchandise, than cleaning up the 100+ shirts a 13 year old decided to sweep into a pile on the floor. I understood that re-folding those shirts until the crack of dawn was part of my job, but it wasn’t the primary part. Retail employees are there to sell you something and provide adequate customer service while doing it. For those who complain that the store shouldn’t even have folded up shirts, retail employees agree. We would love for everything just to be put on hangers. Unfortunately, it is usually the corporate marketing people, who probably have never worked in a retail store, who get to choose how clothing is displayed.
I worked a stint as “retail support” in a major department store in an extremely busy mall for a while. My job was essentially to unload stock and keep the dress shirt area neat and pretty. Our pad had about 8-12 10 foot tables (depending on promotions and seasonal issues) with folded dress shirt stacks, in addition to 6 large rows of cubes in the middle of the floor.
I didn’t mind if people shopped them. That really doesn’t bother us. They ultimately pay our checks. Most customers will at least try to put things back if they can’t find the size, or notice that the size is inside the collar and printed on a sticker at the back of the collar and bottom front of the shirt on most brands we carried. The ones we hated were the customers that would just toss shirts everywhere on the table, knock over every stack, and/or mix up the colors. That’s the line for me. That’s where it, to use an example someone used earlier, it goes from the hotel maid making the bed to the hotel maid being forced to clean up urine and feces off the wall. The worst one I ever dealt with was this one asshole managed to ransack 6 different tables looking for a size we didn’t carry (14.5, 36 sleeve, long. Honestly I don’t even know if that exists). Normally, if we see a customer looking confused digging on the table, we ask if they need help. Almost every time they say “Oh I’m looking for {SIZE}.” We know where they are, we can look it up to see if we even have it, so we’re glad to help. This guy turned away help 5 times while he trashed half the pad until he finally asked if we carried that size. Recovery on a normal shopping day for us might take 20 minutes. After this guy was done with our tables, it took an hour (our manager was really big on sizing the stacks and having the color in a specific order, which makes this even more time consuming since he mixed up 6 tables worth of shirts). Yeah, it was my job, but that’s the type of customer from hell they’re bitching about.
I once had a guy place his toddler down in the middle of my table of 500 perfectly folded t-shirts. He was waiting for his wife and the kid was getting antsy, so his solution was to let her trash my hours of hard work. I almost killed him.
You know, this is the third (I’ve seen) in what appears to be a continuing series on “Why Even If You Didn’t Know It, You’re Pissing Off The Hired Help.” This includes cooks and waiters and now retail sales people.
I am now echoing some of the other commenters here — quit it, Consumerist and you irritated service economy people. I do not want to know that I’m somehow irritating you by asking for an extra fork because that means you have to walk 5 more feet to the utensil rack, and if everybody did that you’d be walking an extra mile a night.
You are hired to do a job. A good portion of doing that job is dealing with customers, and making them happy. I agree that there are a lot of jerks out there who will do the equivalent of asking for 10 forks, but up to and including that particular over the line moment — suck it up. I am not going to be asked to care if I don’t leave the shirts back exactly as you folded them earlier.
What the heck else are you going to do with your time to look busy if the store is empty? And I do promise, the more stink-eye you let out, the emptier your store will become.
Good grief.
This person needs to STFU and here’s why:
1. Neatly folded clothes on tables are meant to attract people and get them to *touch* the merchandise. Customers are more likely to purchase something they have touched. In fact, I worked in one store where we had to put the item in the customer’s hands. So asking people not to touch the merchandise decreases their likelihood of a purchase.
2. Call it job security. If they could throw a bunch of sweaters in a bin and have a machine/robot sort them and fold them, there would be less demand for store staff. In fact, I’m going to invent this right freakin’ now.
3. If you feature a long-sleeve t-shirt, for example, and you have the shirt folded in such a way that I can’t see how long the sleeves are, how they’re finished, and if there’s a different design on the hem, then that’s shitty merchandising. If I take a neatly folded t-shirt and pay for it without looking at it and find an embroidered flower on the sleeve, I will kick a puppy. Do you want that on your conscience?
4. I totally get dealing with messy pigs who don’t respect your workspace and tear your displays up. I worked retail. However, part of shopping for clothes is interacting with the merchandise and I try to do it as neatly as possible. That said, I’m not going to go and borrow your folding board and fold back a shirt I just looked at. I will try and put it back as neatly as I can.
Grow up. Consumerist needs to hashtag this #firstworldproblems
Here’s a tip, fold them so we can see the size right on top, instead of folding it in or not including the size on a sticker.
Barring that, hang shit up or deal with it.
When I worked in retail, I was always pathetically grateful for the extra hours I would get while working in the clothing department. It made the gross dressing rooms worth it.
While reading these comments I was, initially, aghast at the general “shut up and do your job” attitude. Then I realized that this is the Consumerist: a blog about the customer and how great or unjustly abused he or she is.
I was in retail for four years, and the majority of my job was cleaning up after customers. For the vast majority of my time there I enjoyed the work. Customers, in general, were very pleasant as long as you treat them with the respect you expect from them. However, every single day there was a customer who came in and apparently had a bad day and decided to take it out on the shirts. We had an admittedly poor sorting method, but the customer would move 3/4 of the items and do absolutely nothing to try to put the items back the way he/she found them.
It was infuriating. Since my time in retail, whenever I go shopping for clothes, I either make a damn good effort to return the clothes to the state I found them in originally, or return them to an associate. Leaving items strewn about the place and using the excuse “it’s ok because they might buy something” is unacceptable.
Businesses do not own the customer, nor does the customer own the business; act like human beings. The basic point here should be “treat others how you want to be treated”. An old axiom for sure, but the common decency of a lot of people can be appalling.
Alright, I am a retail worker. I am am Assistant Store Manager-Visual Merchandising. It is my job to make the store pretty and keep it that way by putting in place all the various recovery methods the OP talks about and to make my staff recover the store at night…sometimes they do stay until 1am. Here is the reality. This is what they are hired to do. I tell my associates if someone messes up a stack after they have recovered it for the night that means they did a job well done. Someone was interested in that item enough to look at it. As I can sympathize with the OP, this is their job and this is just a rant like anyone else has about their job. If I had to give people advice about shopping it would be this: be nice. These associates are not paid a ton and do not deserve to be treated like crap by you because you are having a bad day, your sitter didn’t show and now you had to bring your kids shopping, we do not have your size in stock and/or we do not speak your language in our store because you are from somewhere in the world. We have had customers at my store who were so nice we didn’t mind they messed up the entire store at close and we are going to be there for another hour to recover it.
So the employees are complaining about the very thing that allows them to work enough hours to pay their bills? Would they prefer we replace them with folding robots that roam around the store?
Well captain crankypants, if you turned the shirts so the neck was closest to the customer or made sure the size/price tags were visible, then we wouldn’t have to dig through the stacks of XXLs to find the one Medium buried at the bottom. If you organized better instead of following the staus-quo, then you wouldn’t ave anything to complain about.
I’ve worked in clothing stores before, and spent an hour+refolding several different kinds of jeans at Urban Outfitters (each with their own special fold!) only to see a group of tweens pull it apart in 3 minutes—but that’s your job when you work at a place like that. The tweens walk away , the salesperson comes back and spends another hour cleaning up the jean wall. Just the nature of the job.
It does not take a long time to fold a pile of shirts.
I am a retail manager, stared at the very bottom.
Use a T-shirt folding board.
One pile, no. A hundred piles, yes.
Are you familiar with the store Delia’s? I used to get stuck there for at least 2 hours after closing time on the weekends (often longer) folding the massive wall of t-shirts.
Take this hint from a retail manager: folded items have visible size stickers. Usually, you can see the size by just lifting up the front right-hand corner of each shirt in a pile.
Retail sucks. You know it, we know it. Please help us hate our lives a little less.
I survived a Christmas at GAP simply by finding some weird Zen thing in folding. Your mileage may vary.
A-HA! They DO use the Flip Fold, I do too!
Common decency and manners are dead in modern American society. The “hired help” is getting more and more cranky because on top of the crap they have to deal with from management (non-living wages, 12 hours a week, never having any holidays/family time, etc) they get to put up with every mouth-breathing imbecile who is so far stuck in “Me Land”.
I identify with all the responses, and the OP in some respect, but..
Why can’t you guys just fold things like normal people? It doesn’t look as cool I suppose, but it also doesn’t take rocket science to figure out.
Wow not much sympathy. This is a good crowd.
Having worked retail for a number of years (before becoming a corporate puppet and cubicle monkey), I can relate.
However, I disagree with the sentiment that my “job description” was to clean up after other people’s mess. My job was to assist customers in their shopping experience. Sure, part of that is setting up the store the night before and early in the morning so that the place looks neatly organized and is therefore easier for customers to locate what they’re looking for.
Part of the “training” for this job…besides how to properly fold and stack items, was how to identify the customers who are approaching the stacks and are looking for their size. It’s pretty easy to see, pretty easy to approach them, and assist them with finding their size. You have two open hands and know how to cleanly find their item. Another commenter said it before, sometimes customers will have stuff in one hand/arm and will just find a size and try to rip it out from between the stacks.
Example from experience: Working in clothing retail, saw a pair of customers approach a table that had stacks of polo shirts. They were taking the top shirt off the stack and opening it up to see what it looked like. This is common, this is expected, this is fine. However, they then began to look for their sizes by picking up EVERY shirt and opening it up and holding it up to their body. Every stack. Every shirt. Then throwing the shirt to the opposite end of the table if it wasn’t what they were looking for. THIS is the kind of customer that retail workers hate. Not the normal customer who looks at one shirt, then puts it back down on/near where it originated from.
I don’t know, but this is a common gripe from retail workers. It’s something they’ve always got to deal with, because some people seem to have this air of superiority about them thinking that because they’re the customers…they can do whatever the heck they want in the store and “someone is being paid to clean it up.” I think it’s dumb that there are people who are shopping in a store that automatically think they are better than those who are working there.
We said. Thank you.
It might be because I’m really loaded right now, but dude needs to shut the fuck up. That’s his damn job, and me browsing shirts is not causing problems. That’s how I figure out what I want to buy – you know, try things out and see if they fit.
Or would you rather deal with my fucking return when the shit dont fit?
i worked retail for 6 years. the fact and the matter is, you can spend 8 hours making a display of folded t-shirts, jeans, whatever, look pristine. then, you can have 30 people come into the store and look for their appropriate size. even if EVERY. SINGLE. ONE of these people were extremely careful in selecting their size and placing the pile back down nicely, the display STILL would not look as good as it did in the beginning. it’s called wear and tear.
get over it.
yea, true, its their job, but them folding clothes hurts customer service overall
as consumers we should be more considerate in some regards
otherwise, we deserve service fees tacked on if we mess things up
I don’t care how much you dislike doing your job. Part of your job, whether you like it or not is cleaning up my mess. That doesn’t mean I or anyone should ransack the store, but some refolding, rehanging, etc, is to be expected. And yes, I’ve worked retail and I took the job with the full expectation I’d have to do all the stuff you don’t want to do. It seems to me that you expect to have to do nothing at work except ring people up at the counter.
Maybe this whiney little girl should quit her job and let someone who will appreciate it have it.
As usual, everyone is missing the point. If you hate your job so much and feel like you’re doing the work of 3 people maybe you’re being exploited by your employer. Y’all could bitch about innocent customers, or get a brain and a backbone and form a union. Don’t tell me it can’t be done – every employee has a right to organize, and if you get fired for it it’s obviously not such a big loss.
Here is something you are not realizing, there are fewer and fewer employees on the sales floor. You may have 3 on a entires dept store sales floor. It’s not just messing up the piles of shirts. It’s leaving your cups and food wrappers every where, pissing on the fitting room floor, shitting in a shoe and walking away acting like nothing happened. Have shit run out of your childs diaper and continue to walk out of the store like you didn’t see it. Not watching your children as they distroy display items and you do nothing about it. Taking makeup form the cosmetic counters and drawing on the maniquins. People showing up before the store opens demanding you exchange an item because they have a photo shoot in 30 minutes and you didn’t try the jacket before that to see if it fits. Then you yell and scream at us because we are not willing to break the rules and give you discounts your not suppose to get and possibly lose our job over you. The things I have discribed above are all things that have happened in the last 6 months in the retail store where I work.
We don’t have a problem with you looking at the merchidise but don’t be an jerk about it.
Before you say quit complaining get a real job, I did have a real business I owned a business with my husband. Then he got ill and couldn’t work. I had to find a job just to keep us going. There are not alot of jobs out there I have all the business experiance but things are tough where I live and retail is what I could get. I need to feed my family just like you.
My favorite part of the job while working as a bagger at a grocery store was putting items back on the shelf that had been moved out of place. It was easier and quieter than dealing with customers directly, I wasn’t subject to weather conditions like when I gathered shopping carts and it meant getting comfortable with the store layout, which in turn made me an asset to the company because every time they changed the layout I knew where to find stuff before everyone else.
What really sucks about retail/customer service is helping customers who think they’re entitled to /everything/ and that it’s your job to give it to them because you’re too young to work anything other than a minimum wage gig. There are limits, man.
You get paid to fold the clothes….So if you don’t want to fold said clothes then GET ANOTHER JOB. If you don’t want another job then SHUT UP AND DO YOU JOB!
I don’t feel sympathy for these people, they are supposed to do what they get payed for…