Just Moosin' Around: Abercrombie Summer 2013
Summer break from college means one thing: work time.
This summer I was recruited to work at Abercrombie, which I loved but was also pure torture – sending a broke college student to the mall every day: hello temptation! I spent most of my lonely time up in the front of the store admiring the clothes and deciding what to buy with my paycheck. But in all seriousness I enjoyed working there. My managers and coworkers were all awesome, and despite loud music and dark lighting, the store had a fun atmosphere. The best part of working in retail is easily the crazy customers and the stories that come with them. Luckily for you I’m going to share them now.
First we have funny or strange customer questions:
- My sister was working at the register and a man asked her if he could get a gift card that didn’t feature half naked children on it. For the record, we do have those.
- While standing in the front of the store folding clothes a woman comes up to me to ask a question. She brings me a pair of shorts and points to the “8” on the size sticker and asks if the eight means that in order to wear this pair of shorts you had to be eight years old. She was wondering because her daughter is seven years old and the lowest number on our clothes was eight so she didn’t think her child was allowed to wear our clothes.
- I’m asked if the deer on our wall is real. In case you are curious the “deer” aka a moose is fake. Abercrombie & Fitch: Making PETA proud since 1892
- On a lady’s way out after tag lining her, she says to me “we’re going to a store with more daylight” Okay, it’s not even that dark in our store. If you want dark try Hollister.
This is the Russian Lady Story. This lady was just nuts and I’m not even positive I can retell this store for you to fully appreciate this interaction. But here we go:
The Russian lady walks into our store with her daughter and immediately starts pulling clothes to try on. They really didn’t even stop to check a price or anything. It was like a tornado speaking in a Russian accent flying around our store. I see them go ask for a fitting room. Two minutes later I see them storm outta the store, the mom proclaiming “I’m never buying from you evil people!” Well that was odd. I asked my coworker in the fitting room what happened. We have a store policy that you can try on as much as you please but only five items are allowed in the fitting room. Everything thing else must hang over the door until you try it on. The lady got upset at this policy. My coworker and I laugh a bit at how wild she was flying around the story. Five minutes after storming away “Hurricane Svetlana” returns. She walks up to me and asks why can she only try on five items? I explain to her about our policy and tell her she can try on as much as she likes but only five can be in the room at one time. She then asks me why I let her walk around the store with so much stuff if I was only going to let her try on five. What did she want me to do, tell her hey you have twelve items in your hand but you only get to take five in the room at once so put seven back. I try to explain our policy to her again but she just raises her voice in her loud Russian accent. This continues for a bit, she just gets louder and louder. Finally I let my manager deal with her after that.
That doesn’t even capture how… interesting and nuts this lady was but I didn’t write down all the details after she stopped by so my bad!
While standing around looking good and folding clothes you witness and overhear funny things from customers. Here are some of the more memorable experiences.
- After checking out a mom leaves the store and forgets her daughter in the corner of the store. It takes her at least five minutes to realize this and to come back to collect her child
- I witnessed a mom telling her child to shut up or she would take her the f*** outta there and beat her a$$. I was seriously in shock. She got a disgusted look from me.
- -A younger boy sprays our perfume, smells it and goes “mhmmmm!”, his mom then asks him if that’s what his girlfriend smells like
- A lady walks in and excitedly tells her kids come on let’s go look at the big moose on the wall! They don’t look at any clothes, just check out the moose then leave
Abercrombie Kids has been at our mall for many years, yet people constantly get it
confused with Abercrombie and Fitch, the adult store. At first I
understood. Then I realized every single sign in the store, even right
when you walk in, reads “a&f kids” in big bold lettering. It was a
rare occurrence for a shift to go by without someone asking if this was
in fact the kid’s store
- An older woman, probably about mid-thirties, walks in with her friends. She holds up a medium t-shirt and complains that we must be shrinking our sizes because she always wears a medium but this just looks way too small and starts ranting about how have changed our sizes. She looks embarrassed when I tell her that she is in the kids store and the adult store can be found on the lower level.
- Two larger gentlemen come in asking if this was the “big guy store”
- A bigger lady, who is on the phone, asks me what size our jeans go up to. I tell her a sixteen, thinking she’s talking on the phone to someone she is shopping for. She excitedly hangs up and tells me how happy she is that we carry her size, thinking it’s a women’s size sixteen not a child’s, and then asks me about how the jeans fit. She was so happy. Once I realize she is looking to shop for herself I relocate her to the adult store.
- A man walks in, looks around all confused so I ask him if he needs help. He said yes, his girlfriend asked him to pick up a pair of the “dawn” shorts. I pause for a second, not sure if he is shopping for his girlfriend or maybe he is a baby daddy. I just say well the adult store is found downstairs…. He was looking for that store. But hey, you never know …
Hopefully more stories to come after winter break.
