"Old Farts" by Alicia A

Ever wonder why employees can be so mean? Well maybe it’s because customers suck. Whether it’s a fast food restaurant or at a retail store, most customers are just stinky old farts who follow you around with the type of persistency that makes you want to die of suffocation. I am currently working at a retail store, and I know it may appear as if I was one of those employees you would see on WorldStar or in a Vine who would go off on a customer or maybe even do some type of wrestling move on one of them. In reality I would like to think of myself as one of the kinder type of employees. Of course I don’t exactly cut down whole forests and rebuild an entire village for these people but I do, however, help them out to the best of my ability and make them happy so they don’t come back to rip me a new one.

This is my first job and to be completely honest I don’t even know how I got it, I mean I don’t have the best speaking skills and I am quite forgetful when given specific instructions, but for some reason I showed some type of potential and hey I guess I’m happy enough with that answer. With this being my first job ever, I don’t know, I guess I kind of expected for customers to be sweet and respectful not demons who rose from the fire pits of hell to make my job miserable.

This is mostly a rant so bear with me but it seems necessary to rant after dealing with all the different types of people that walk in and out of the store I work at, It seems reasonable to form some type of opinion about them right? I mean what justifies an old man calling the store just to tell us he’s naked? Ok so, what bugs me the most about these previously mentioned farts is that they are inconsiderable and rude. Why? I don’t even know. The store is literally a dump most hours of each day, why? Now I DO know the answer to that question and I bet you guys can guess it too…it’s the customers (*ding ding ding* the crowd goes wild *distinct cheers in the background* the announcer gives you a check for a million friggin’ dollars for the winning answer!!) Anyways, so people walk around picking up clothes and dropping them all over the floor, and you would think they would have half a brain and think to pick it up but noooo that seems completely impossible and not within their abilities as a functioning human being. Not only that but these people man, these people, they see a pile of clothes on a table leftover from some other seemingly incapable imbeciles and what do they do? They add on to it! And you see what we are left with is an avalanche of clothes, accessories, food, wrappers, etc. And what pushes my buttons the most is when I’m working in a particular section in the store and folding clothes with such crisp creases and folds, sizing everything from top to bottom, putting clothes where it belongs, and just making that area look as presentable as I possibly can –and may I add it takes my hours to do this –and someone walks on over and man handles all of the clothes once again in 2.5 seconds. And what do I do? In a perfect world I would throw my body over the table and my instincts would be to attack and make them rue the day they ever walked into my store. But in a more practical and sensible world, I would simply continue working and give them the occasional side eye.

So what’s the lesson after all of this you ask? Well I’m not even quite sure of it myself. I do however know that I am more conscious when I enter into a store. If I pick something up and later decide I don’t want it anymore, I go put it back to its original spot. If I unfold a shirt, for example, I fold it back and gently put it down into the same position it was in before. If I drop something on the floor, I make sure I pick it up. Never before would I really do these things, but after working at a retail store and dealing with customers face-to-face I realize what workers go through and don’t want to make their jobs even more miserable than what it already is. I’ve learned to have patience with workers and to be as nice as possible when asking for something. I don’t know, I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t be like one of those stinky old farts.