Retail Hell

I often talk about my seven years working at Kmart for good reason. For the most part I had a blast working there and most of my social life to this day is spent with friendships I made with people who worked there with me. When I worked there I used the store as the base of pretty much my entire life. My friends all worked there and the ones that didn’t were all friends of friends that worked at the mart. I dated a girl there, I played on the softball team at the store, even when I was off I was there most nights. It was just a great time in my life.

However, there were a couple of days a year where working there sucked. I had a routine when I worked the floor. (If I wasn’t in the Pharmacy, I was a stock boy in the health and beauty and party goods sections.) I would punch in and make my rounds socializing. I would make sure the sale ads were stocked and then pretty much spend the rest of the night flirting with apparel and checkout girls with the occasional break to put away unwanteds.

I am a man of routine. So, when said routine is messed up I become grumpy. I am not as bad as I used to be but when I was 19, well I was not as good as dealing with shit as I am today. With that said, here are the five worst days to work at the mart. I knew if I was scheduled to be there any of these days I was in for a long one.

The 4^th of July – There is nothing worse than being stuck in a K Mart on the 4^th of July. First off, why the fuck would anyone want to go shopping at a K Mart on a summer day in July in the first place? You add on to that, it is the holiday of all holiday’s in the summer so you can use your imagination on what kind of people would come into the store. Other then the patrons who were coming in to grab a last minute bad of charcoal (those people were fine) you had all the losers of the world who had nothing better to do on a day off of work then to spend it shopping at K Mart. I am sure you can imagine the clientele. Add on top of this, I always had something going on that night that consisted on knocking back some beverages it just felt like time dragged the whole day.

Usually the apparel manager Mr. Fields would throw this huge blowout were someone would make this jungle juice and we would stay up all night drinking and then go golfing the next morning. So, all you wanted to do was have your shift end so you could go to the party. (I have a whole other blog on those parties. They were monumental.) Instead you were stuck with all the friendless bearded ladies in the Bridgeview area who had nothing better to do then to spend time at K Mart.

Black Friday – Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s Black Friday was about 20% of what it is today. So, I can’t even imagine the insanity of what it is like now, because it was a living hell even back then. First off we opened at 7 AM. So, that would mean I would have to drag my teen-aged carcass out of bed at like 6:30 which went against every bodily instinct I had. Then I would get to the store and just brace myself for what was about to come.

The old bags and lepers of the world would already be lined up waiting to get in when I pulled up. We usually had a sale that would run from like 7 AM to 11 AM. And all in the name of trying to save $5 these people would be waiting for us to open the doors. And as soon we did the rush was on. We would exhaust our entire shopping cart inventory in record time. Women in curlers would madly rush to the toys department throwing elbows trying to find a Teddy Ruxpin. And then the blue light specials would start and all hell would break loose. In all seriousness if you worked that day you deserved battle pay.

December 24^th – Christmas Eve was a whole other matter. There is a certain personality that waits until the very last day to go Christmas shopping. I am not talking about someone who forgot to buy one gift. I am talking about the people who would come in with their entire Christmas shopping list in hand and then frantically run through the aisles trying to find the perfect gift for Grandma with the store closing in fifteen minutes. I didn’t work checkouts. But, I had a register bag, which meant if the lines up front got busy they would page people who worked the floor to come up to the registers and open up. My girlfriend at the time was often times in charge of calling people up from the floor. Well, who do you think the first person she would call up to open would be?

So, one Christmas Eve I get called up there early and my line never stopped. Then I had some trailer park mama and her daughter come in with two shopping carts full of shit. This is not an exaggeration. It took me a half hour to ring them up. Their total came to like 2 grand. The mother then reached into her bra and pulled out a sweaty stack of twenties and just started counting them of and handing them to me. Needless to say I hit the eggnog pretty good that year to try to wash that memory from my consciousness.

December 26^th – This day may quite possibly have been the worst day of them all to work. You see you had every K Mart reject in the world that would come in to return those shitty gifts that their thoughtless relatives bought two days earlier. A person from each department was positioned at the return counter to handle the mayhem. I always used to wonder, was your gift that bad that you had to run out the very next day to return it? On top of that you had all the scammers out there that would try to return other unwanted items that they have had in their possession since the Eisenhower administration that they no longer wanted, because they knew the return policy on that day was much more lenient.

I saw used toilet seats trying to be returned. I watched as a lady got pissed when she tried to return a men’s tie that had a Sears tag on it and was rejected. You would see shoes that looked like they had 1,000 miles on them and people with a straight face would try to tell you they were new. It was comical.

If all that wasn’t bad enough the store was also filled with all the bargain hunters who were there to buy all the marked down Christmas shit that didn’t sell. They would rummage through the ugliest wrapping paper and bows and fill their carts with the items all to get that 50% off discount on things that cost $3 to being with. (Sadly this was my department so, I was usually dealing with these people for an entire eight hour shift.)These shoppers all tended to be the worst of the worst and would give me one gigantic headache.

January 1^st – It would always amaze me how anyone could get up a six in the morning on New Year’s Day to go shopping. It puzzles me at 40 but at 20 it blew my mind. I would spend New Year’s Eve saluting the year away in hard liquor shots and drinking games. Even if I knew I had to work the next morning that didn’t stop me. (My logic was I am young and I am going to enjoy my youth, my $5.00 an hour job be dammed.) This of course led to the inevitable hangover the next morning.

Dealing with your average K Mart shopper completely sober was bad enough. But you add a hangover to the mix along with the fact that the people who are at a Kmart on January 1^st at 7 AM are not exactly the upper crust of society and it makes for a lethal combination. My goal would be just to get through the day the best I could. But, it was never easy. I would usually be running some blue light that my sadistic manager would set up. And then all the blue hairs would come running at me to get their 25 cent bag of expired potato chips. I know when I go to hell (and I am going) it is going to be me re-living like New Years day 1989 for eternity.