Thinks I learned from retail, ie conversion rates and pimpin ho's

Retail is really stupid. You're payed to be a middle-man, essentially. But I don't give a shit because it's easy, and I don't have to do any bending or lifting or running or hammering or kick-pressing or steel tempering. Or even sod laying. So right off the bat I prefer retail to every other single job I've had.

But customers are the problem. With the exclusion of the rare friend who visits me at work I think the people who shop at HMV may be a separate species... possibly half person half anteater. Or perhaps part armadillo. There are really very few people who come into the store that you cant categorize as one of the following:

Emo kid
This is such an easy one. Emo kids and record stores go together like emo kids and a human sized blender, or in simpler terms, completely fucking naturally. We allow loitering, and anyone who's met an emo kid knows that loitering is the national sport of the emo nation. Having bangs fucking with your depth perception may also be a factor, and loitering will eliminate any chance of bumping into something, or accomplishing something in their worthless lives. The term emo kid encompasses emos from age 12-50. Emos. Gross.

Stupid bitch with a stroller
First of all, lose some weight. Second of all fucking ziploc your kid, or better yet, wear a condom. Strollers are like parade floats, gigantic, annoying when you're trying to get somewhere fast, and are a massive magnet for pedophiles. One woman with a stroller blocking one isle pisses off at least 20 people who would have bought something. As my first manager at HMV once said "if these stupid chicks with babies fuck up my sales one more time I'm going to nerf gun their babies back into their baby-holes".

Person who has apparently never shopped before
Detecting one of these is easy. They will walk up to you and say

• Can you look things up? Like to see if you have them?
• Do you have a gospel section?
• Where are your DVD's?
• Anything that could start a conversation, ie their kids, pets, diseases

Occasionally they won't say anything, but they will pay in exact change. Let me break something down real simple for all the readers of this blog. Cashiers are 200-100000 times faster at counting change than you will ever fucking be. I don't like to toot my own horn (that's a lie) but I can count change faster than most people realize they even need any. And so can anyone who's worked cash for more than 6 months. Counting your pennies is not saving me time. It's making me furious. So furious that I'm going to do what I usually do when that happens, and mark your receipt as non-refundable. And then kill your family and burn your house down. Exact change is for chumps.



The next category I will treat with care because I have serious issues with people who discriminate against the group I'm about to talk about, but it's a problem nonetheless.

Handicapped people, specifically the people who are either their relatives or caregivers.
I write about some offensive stuff that can be seen as sexist or racist, but you will never read a sentence that bashes people with disabilities. People who pick on the disabled (CARLOS MENCIA) aren't worth anyones time, and should be ignored. The problem arises when irresponsible family members think that we have enough staff to accommodate their relatives or friend's special needs. We simply cant. During Christmas we had to close transactions on a till because we're not allowed to say "no" to a sales related request. If someone wants to listen to 10000 CD's, and they happen to be disabled and are unable, due to their condition, to see that it's busy and a lot of people will be inconvenienced, that's everyones tough luck. During the day in question, because of one person and his caretaker, lineup time was just under an hour. AN HOUR. TO BUY A CD. It just doesn't work. We're kind people at HMV (another lie, with the exclusion of the incredibly cheerful Jordan Hunter), but when the same kid comes in every week causing massive, MASSIVE delays because his sister wont monitor him, you'll understand if we get a bit frustrated with the system. I guess the solution is to have more people working, but that just doesn't seem possible in the job market we're in. So it has to be said. And HMV wont shell out for more people even if there were people to be had. Damn limeys.

Last but not least: scavenger hunters.
This isn't a cute term. Every weekend there are literally dozens of kids whose parents think a nice mall scavenger hunt will keep their kids occupied. We don't babysit. And 1000 kids running in the store and not buying shit throws off our sales figures (conversion: sales/number of customers that day). When our conversion drops our manager gets gangraped by the HMV VP's. If you're so uncreative that you have to send your kids to the mall, the place that every kid spends grade 7-11, then you should have your kids taken away. I guess it all goes back to how shitty playgrounds are now. So fuck you city of Calgary, get rid of these metal playgrounds and put the wooden ones back so smelly dirty children will stay the fuck out of my hair on a busy saturday. Seriously. Go to laser quest you little pussies.

Thank you. I'm sure there will be complaints on this one, please direct them to comments so we can do what we normally do which is not very much.