A window into the life of a salesman

[Steel2686]

I worked for The Sports Authority. We had daily meetings before the store opened. I was the receiving manager and still had to go to these pointless meetings. At the end of every meeting, the store manager would say "Sell! Sell! Sell!"

Yeah... That's motivation.

[Talon04]

Fast food for me was the worst. Mangers yelling at you and the customers yelling at you.

I remember this one time at Braums where I was working and we had four people on shift, its supposed to be six to seven, and we had been busy all night so I'm exhausted and we get this lady who orders who shakes and I get her to the window and take her money and then look for my crew who is supposed to be helping me. Noone in sight, so I started them got them blending and then found one of my guys and had him come help me. I walk back to the window and hand them out and the lady proceeds to rip into me about the length of her order. I replied it was beacuse we where short handed and the rest of the crew was picking up some of the store as we were busy. She then screamed at me that 'she was in the food industry and you don't clean anything until closing time!' I looked at her and said 'Yes Mam I'm sorry.' She glared at me as I closed the window and drove off then called the manager and tried to report me and got told the same thing by her.

[Dave M]

Then there was the time a guy was standing in my line while I rang the stuff up. His back was to the register behind him, where a friend of mine was working. At the time, she didn't have any customers so she was just standing at the register. She looks down and sees a brand new, expensive paint brush sticking out of his back pocket, with the sticker on and everything. So she grabs it and says "sir did you forget this????" just as nicely as she can. "oh, uhhhhhh....yeahhhh...sorry about that!" Right!

I worked retail theft for a number of years. You woudn't believe some of the stories I could tell, and excuses I've heard.

[Craig 94 TA GT]

My first job was a greeter at The Good Guys during Christmas . It was the worst job I've ever had because of trying to deal with customers. We had a free discount promotion, so basically the whole store was on sale. But I had to hand out the flyer of "spend this, and save this." 2 out of 3 people didn't even look at me when I had to greet them and say "free discount." I felt like saying "sucks for you, you won't get a discount now, loser." But I couldn't. I hated that job.

Of course, I saw some guys roll up in brand new LS1 (at the time), and we'd just start chatting for hours. That was the cool part - have common ground with them and they'll be ok. Otherwise, they think you're just out to pressure them into buying immediately.

There was one clown though (off topic) who rolled up in an LT1 Formula and claimed it was a "Banshee" 413 inch motor with 500+ hp, etc. etc. I saw the car - it was a regular Formula with big tires. The guy was high or something.

I do agree that there is always tension between sales and customers though. The customer seems to always think that the sales person is out to get a sale immediately, and pressure them. It's a tough job, which is why my career path went into engineering rather than sales.

[Steel2686]

Don't get me wrong... I dealt with a lot of very nice people doing retail. Probably 85 to 90% were at least respectful if not pleasant. The problem lies with the remaining 10%.

now, as a customer, it's probably the same ratio for sales people. A solid 90% are easy to deal with. There's that select few, however....