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I've been meaning to update this earlier, but I've been watching the Olympics, lol. Those male gymnists and swimmers are cute! Arms!! Cute! *flails* Roflol. I've also been watching a bit of the '96 Women's Olympics, the one where Kerri Strug still performed with a broken ankle or something. That was an amazing one. I loved that US team *__*
Anyhoo, working at the Gap isn't that bad. I've gotten used to all the crap I have to put up with and I only get mildly annoyed with what happens at work instead of po-ed like I usually do. Stuff that still annoys me:
Reasons why behind the cut...REALLY LONG OMG WTF.
- So the managers are still promoting Gap Cards (GAP CARDS, WE NEED THEM, WHO WOULDN'T WANT ONE? THEY BE SO AWESOME!) but at least they aren't harassing me over the walkie talkies like previously (You know, I think Nancy can get our next Gap Card. Nevermind, I KNOW Nancy can get one. So Nancy, we would really like it if you get one in the next half hour :D). I'm thankful for that. Maybe they finally realized that the economy sucks and not many people are interested in a credit card. However, they are starting to cut hours now and they make the three who are lucky enough to stay late *coughmecough* get stuck with a good 45 min to clean up THE ENTIRE STORE. Folding, sorting, putting away things, and sizing them. I usually start a good two hours early, but things get messed up because of people touching them. *sigh* I never size, I just kind of stick things in place and make sure they aren't lumpy lol. But we HAVE to finish everything, and rush. And with rushing, customer service in the last half hour we ARE open goes down. More about this in the crappy customer section of my ramble.
- A new thing the Gap is promoting to handle the not so great customer service scores (lol, I wonder how many of those scores came from me >>;) is something called REAL Service. We had a three hour long store meeting talking about what this is. Basically, the Gap is trying to get us to find ways of relating and engaging the customer so we can advise them what things to try on and how we can help them locate something. And usually before I start work, I get a little pep talk with a manager, and they always ask me how I could ___ with a customer. I usually recycle my answers, but they are starting to catch on. They like my answers though, so I don't care (So what grade is he going in? Oh third grade? I liked third grade. My teacher was really nice to me and I learned a lot. Oh we're having a sale on jeans. And if you open up a Gap card, you can get 15% off your entire purchase, it's a great deal. Oh, maybe another day, that's fine. Have a nice day) That's real service right there. :P
- So yeah, this guy who's getting a bunch of Gap cards every shift? I called him Super Rookie at first because he was getting one a day like I was (for my first week), but when he started averaging three per shift, I started getting a bit annoyed. (His real name is Devon btw) Don't get me wrong, I have other co-workers who are just lucky to get so many (3+) a day and I am glad that they are able to but it's really suspicious of this guy to start averaging FOUR+ a day. He was hired as a stock person but was immediately put as the main cashier once the managers found out of his little gift. I remember a conversation last week between him and a manager on the walkie talkies
Devon: So Lauren, I just opened up my FIFTH GC today, how many Starbucks gift cards do I get? (the managers are starting to award prizes for gc's a day. It's two for a gift card of choice)
Lauren G: I owe you two.
Devon: Aww, but I've done so much for the store the past week! Is it possible to use one of my ELEVEN last week for one more gift card this week? I only worked three days last week. I would have gotten more for you!
Lauren G: Sorry, those were already accounted for.
Devon: Aww, but I'm doing so well! Can't you just throw another gift card in there because I'm such a great worker?
Lauren G: ....
Alaina: NANCY, THERE IS A WOMAN ON LINE TWO LOOKING FOR BABY CLOTHES, AND DEVON THERE ARE PEOPLE IN LINE. GET MOVING
Alaina is a hilarious manager, I'm sad I don't get to work with her that much. I'm fairly happy that Lauren didn't give in, but she and Jenny do favor him. :( The other workers are starting to notice something is amiss. I was talking to two of them during break time and they say that the reason why he gets so many people to sign up is because he lies to them (it's not a credit card at all!) and they are angry because it makes everyone else look bad. Some don't even get 5 in a month much less a day :( Sigh.- The company rules are still inane. If we see someone trying to steal, we don't try to apprehend them. We just let them go and report it. We try to 'talk them out of it' by giving them amazing customer service. Customer service my butt. And the cash registers are still a pain in the butt. I know most of the keys, but they have the stupidest rule on discounts. We can't apply two manual discounts in one transaction. That's understandable because we don't want people abusing things. But annoying when we do have discounts that apply for another another one (such as a sale discount and the gap card discount).
- So the Gap has this back to school jean sale called BOGO (Buy one get one 1/2 off) where I manually have to key in the discount code to get the discount. Usually for major sales like this, the tags are preprogrammed to discount it so I just can apply the Gap discount easy peasy. But! I had a family today who wanted to get a Gap Card as well (begrudgingly, his wife wanted one lol) and while I was running his transaction, I realized i didn't do his bogo, so after his gap card approval thing went through, I tried to get back to the main screen to override the price of the jeans. Didn't work. And even though he was approved for the gap card, I didn't have his gap credit card number, the receipt didn't come outtt. SO HE COULDN'T PAY FOR HIS STUFF. I called the manager (Lauren H) and she suggested that he just pay for everything with his debit card and then she will void it. And put it back on his gap card when the receipt printed out. Easy right? But she somehow also voided his gap card along with it. Even though the computer database said the number was valid, the cash register wasn't reading it. So we had to go through tech support, and retry the number over and over again. By this time the man was getting impatient, his wife was getting stressed out from their children trying to maim each other. Then Lauren had this brilliant idea of him just paying everything with his debit card again, and we just give him a coupon for discount off. Which served to tick the man and his wife off more, because it would put him $600 in the hole, the first debit counts even with post voids. While they were waiting for us to scramble to find a solution to the problem (by then Lauren had dragged another manager, Jenny, over to help) the kids were being impossible. I think they wanted attention because the parents were ignoring them, but the daughter smacked the boy in the eye, the boy pulled on her hair, they were crawling on the floor....all of this was playfighting...
- I got really scared then, because the man looked like he wanted to slaughter me for suggesting the Gap card in the first place, both managers probably hated me for causing the mayhem (I failed to realize that I should have done a lot of things differently such as putting the bloody jeans as a separate transaction, going on with the sale, and returning and rebuying the jeans...ah, why Gap. Why can't you make it simple and allow me to give two discounts....*sigh*) So I apologized profusely to them and started to engage the kids in a conversation so that they would stop trying to rip each other apart and let the parents ignore them without a fight. It worked, because the parents looked a lot less stressed and annoyed and the kids were peaceful for a good half hour (we took forever trying to figure this out, wtf). They even seemed peaceful after a while. o__o The parents even told me that I need not help them pseudo-baby sit their kids and that I can help other customers while the problem is being fixed, but I told him that I felt really guilty for the entire episode and that the least I could do was give them some peace of mind.
- We finally got the problem fixed, and they left. But Lauren gave them a customer service slip, so hopefully they don't remember my name. *dies* I kind of failed them....
- Another annoying customer that I forgot to mention was the Chubby lady. She complained that she received customer service that was 'not on par with what she deserved' and how the female (me) never greeted or even was present when she needed help. How the male (a guy named Ben) failed at helping her. And she said that the only time she talked to a sales person was when I told her she had five minutes to go to pay and leave. Needless to say, I did greet her, but she ignored me or didn't hear. And I was trying to clean up the half of the store she wasn't in as well as a stack of clothing that a manager pushed me to do so I could not see her when she was behind a wall okay?!. Igh. Ok, I feel bad for not spotting her and helping her find whatever. But I don't feel bad for her completely blowing me off when I did offer help. After I told her to quicly finish, she said "well, I would be done quicker if you had better customer service" and she just walked away and started tearing apart a display. She then complained to Lauren H. Sigh. The worse part was that she came in exactly a week later to further complain and that was to Lauren G. Which led to a little chat between me and Lauren about being more alert to the customers needs. Yeah, I'll tell you what she needs, she needs gasteric surgery.
Sigh, the fail that is my life
The better things that have happened to me lately:
* I have gotten an internship. :D I'm the loan intern with a credit union, and the work is so.....refreshing. I feel motivated to work because I actually like what I'm doing. *thumbs up* Nevermind that my job is pretty easy. I get paid better than the Gap too. :D
* According to my friend Liz (who also interns there) the people like me at the job and they liked two ideas that I suggested (lol a supply list and a new formula on excel to help them count).
* I have figured out my bus route. I swear, the bus I have to take to work is the most unreliable bus ever. It's always late, slow, and when it is early, never waits even though you're accross the street waiting for traffic to cross.
* I have received a "motivational award" at the Gap. Apparently, I'm really spunky to work with and provide great customer service. WTF. You should have seen the look on my face when they told me. It would have been priceless.
* Lauren G (the manager who I was pretty sure didn't like me) praised me for wonderful conversations with customers. "Very engaging, very positve" WTF. I just talk to them so that there are no awkward silences.
* I bought a nice dress to wear to more formal events. It was originally for my cousin's wedding, but she called it off. I still got it because it was a good deal. :P
*My Summer Class is over so I can get more sleep! :DD
* I have discovered a beautiful .hack/sign song by watching Super Junior M on tv. It was played in the background randomly during an intro. LOL. *points to Music* It's gorgeous.
Current Music: Fake Wings - Emily Bindiger
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