Retail Horror: Part 3

Today, a story from Toys "R" Us!

This one, of all my retail horror stories, is the only one that could be considered at all my fault. This lady came up and bought a lot of small items. I don't remember exactly how many, but it was over a dozen items, and the total retail value was over 100 dollars. It was only my fifth or so day at the job, and the woman asked for gift receipts for each item, as most of the gifts were for a lot of upcoming birthdays.

Gift Receipts are receipts that don't include the price, so that a person may return an item without knowing how much you spent on them. Which is kind of stupid, because you can just look up the price of something online. But I digress.

Now, at TRU, in 2004, there were three options we were presented with, when it came to gift receipts. The first was No Gift Receipt. This was the most frequently-used option, as most people were just buying things for themselves. The second option was Single Gift Receipt, so all the items would be placed on one receipt with no prices listed. This was the Gift Receipt option that I saw used the most that wasn't none. Finally, there was Individual Gift Receipts, where one Gift Receipt is printed for each item being purchased, resulting in a multitude of receipts at the end of the transaction.

Also, it was totally still my first week, and this particular TRU store, at least at the time, did not do a very good job of training. I had three half-days of working with another employee, who showed me the basics of everything we do in the "R" Zone (video game section), and on my fourth day (which was my first full day), I was left alone to run the "R" Zone all by myself. I think this particular event took place on my first solo Saturday. Obviously, there were other people in the store, but not as many as you'd think.

The woman, in addition to asking me for individual gift receipts for each item, also asked me to hurry up. Apparently, she had left her child at the nearby Chuck E. Cheese's, and wanted to quickly get back to him. So, in my attempt to hurry, I accidentally hit the No Gift Receipt option, out of the habit I'd already formed after just a few days on the job. And the lady freaked out about this mistake, and demanded that I fix this situation, and re-do the entire transaction so she could have her gift receipts. Also, I had to hurry, because she had abandoned her child.

For the record, the only Chuck E. Cheese's nearby was one that was on the other side of the shopping center from the TRU at which I worked. Like, her kid could've walked over to TRU and it wouldn't have been a big deal at all. So it's not like she left her son very far away.

Now, why the heck this lady was paying for a dozen or so toys in the "R" Zone is beyond me - I was not the only register open, and you had to go completely out of your way to get to me, over any of the regular registers. Secondly, after exiting the "R" Zone, you had to go past all the regular registers, anyways, before leaving the store! So this lady thought that coming over to me, way out of her way, would be faster. Of course.

In addition, in order to void out her previous transaction, I had to call over a manager. But the store was always understaffed, because TRU corporate didn't give us enough hours to go around. So it took something like 15 minutes for a manager to get over to me, even though I had a walkie-talkie unit that I used to radio them, directly.

And, of course, by this time, there was a line of people who just wanted to buy one or two games lining up behind this lady, who was still complaining about the fact that she left her child alone at Chuck E. Cheese's.

LISTEN, LADY: YOU ARE THE MORON WHO ABANDONED YOUR CHILD. That is NOT *my* problem. Yes, I made a mistake. But if anything happened to your son, that's your own damn fault for being a fucking moron and leaving your kid unattended.

PLUS! I don't know what kind of sissy she raised, but if I was left alone at Chuck E. Cheese's for an extra 20 minutes, I wouldn't even have noticed. Or I would've considered it extra time to play Whack-A-Gator and Air Hockey. Or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, if this story took place back when I was a kid. You know, back in the late 80s, when there were a LOT more skeevy people wandering around places like that, and security was nonexistent. And, uh, I turned out fine.

Which leads me to a thought about the media: There are SO MANY stories of child molestation and/or abduction out there right now. What about the 99%+ of the kids out there who are absolutely fine? This isn't to make like of things like that happening; They absolutely do, and we need to all be aware of such a thing happening to not only our own children, but everybody else's kids, too. But the fact of the matter is, these particular Toys "R" Us and Chuck E. Cheese's locations were in the nicer part of town, and both places were always totally crowded with loudmouth kids on Saturdays. So nothing was going to happen, and if anything did, they wouldn't have been quiet about it.

And, hey, look, I'm not saying my hitting the wrong key wasn't my fault. It absolutely was. But this lady went to the "wrong" register in the first place, while leaving her kid alone. And one of those was far more of an issue than me accidentally not printing her up some gift receipts.

So, anyways. The manager on duty comes over, helps me get through this whole fiasco, and then GIVES THE LADY A $20 TOYS "R" US GIFTCARD FOR HER INCONVENIENCE. THE INCONVENIENCE OF HER BEING AN IDIOT?!?

I could not BELIEVE that when it happened.

Hey, if something happened to that kid, I'm really sorry. But since we never received any complaints, the kid was probably just playing Skeeball for an extra 20 minutes and didn't even notice. And she was rewarded 20 bucks for being an asshole in every metaphorical sense of the word.

Meanwhile, I got yelled at by her for 20 minutes, and basically scolded by my manager, who told not to make that sort of mistake again.

I quit Toys "R" Us two weeks later, and shortly afterwards got employed in a cafeteria to clean tables, which was a FAR better job.

The moral of this story? Don't get jobs in places you like to shop, because the other customers are fucking insane.

Retail Horror: Part 2

Continuing some of my more memorable retail horror stories from my days at Blockbuster and/or Toys R Us...

It's absolutely amazing how angry people can get over four-dollar late fees. After two and a half years, I had been called every single name you could imagine. But there was one day that will always stand out in my mind.

This lady who thought of herself as very well-to-do (you could tell, because her earrings cost more than my entire outfit... and her fur coat probably cost more than my house) was mad at me because she returned her movies something like two days late. The entire time I worked there, Blockbuster's late fee (or, "Extended Viewing Fee") policy was that if the movie was late, the renter had to pay for a full extra rental period. The fees weren't pro-rated or anything; After the movie was over 2 hours late, it was an extra four bucks (I have no idea what Blockbusters EVF policy is, now, but I know they've changed it a couple of times since).

But this one lady, man...She was SO MAD about the fact that she couldn't remember when to return movies, she took out her Blockbuster rental card, and tried to rip it in half, right in front of me. And when she couldn't do that, she THREW IT AT ME, and it hit me, RIGHT IN THE CHEST!

Not like it hurt or anything, as it was just a 2" x 3.5" laminated card, but still - That lady ASSAULTED me, because SHE couldn't be bothered to return her movies on time!

She demanded that I cut her card in half, and proclaimed that she would never do business with Blockbuster, again. So I charged the late fees to her credit card on file, and deleted her account.
In hindsight, 9 years later, I see that I may have acted a bit hastily in deleting her account, but, seriously...

Retail Horror: Part 1

A good friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous for the time being) is considering starting a blog that contains his daily adventures in working retail. This has inspired me to relay some of my favorite retail horror stories, from my days working at Blockbuster and Toys "R" Us, over the next several days. 

Hey, horror stories are appropriate for October, right? It's almost Halloween.

Let me first express that I hold no ill will towards Blockbuster or TRU for my experiences. These are the kinds of things can that happen at any retail location, and even though I ended up leaving both jobs (Blockbuster in 2003, and TRU in 2004), it was because I was leaving to do something else, not because of anything at the companies.

(And now that my paranoia of saying anything libel is satisfied...)

I started working at Blockbuster ten years ago, and left in 2003. So it's been a while since these things happened, but the one that will always stick with me happened on my 2nd or 3rd week. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon (we rarely have any other type of Saturday in the Phoenix area), and this woman came in to drop off her movies. As soon as you walked in the door, there was a drop slot for the tapes to go in, so that we could check them in pretty quickly. But this one woman decided that she was apparently too good to put her movies where they went, and she left them on top of the counter -- 

Which, by the way, is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea, because those tapes could get confused with ANYTHING ELSE that we put on the counters - Movies already checked in, movies other customers are renting, movies we're about to run back on the shelves... Just a bad deal, overall. 

But, myself and a couple of the managers were up front that day, and we saw her put the movies there. Which would have been fine, except for one thing; The movies belonged to Hollywood Video. You could tell, because they were in the black-and-white-and-red cases that Hollywood Video used to rent tapes in, rather than the blue-and-yellow-and-white cases that Blockbuster tapes came in.

So I looked up at the woman, and said, as kindly as I could, "Excuse me, miss, these aren't our movies."

"WELL I DIDN'T EVEN RENT THESE MOVIES!!! I'M RETURNING THEM FOR MY FRIEND SO DON'T YOU DARE YELL AT ME!"

I was shocked and stunned; The only time I'd ever been yelled at, previously, was by my parents when I was little, and did something seriously wrong.

I later found out that she had actually called the store that night and complained about the way that I'd treated her. The manager on duty that night couldn't believe what he was hearing, and the following Saturday it came up at the store meeting. Fortunately, the managers that were there with me stuck up for me, and I wasn't in trouble for doing nothing wrong. But, still!

All I was trying to do was help this lady get her movies back to the correct store so that she wouldn't incur any late fees, and I was basically treated like I was the scum of the earth for it.

This was just the beginning.

Why comic books cost $3.99

The biggest complaint I hear, as the co-owner of a comic book store, is about the rising cost of comic books. Why can't comics cost 1.25, like they did 17-20 years ago? Well, I'm going to break the fourth wall, as it were, and explain several of the key factors as to why comics cost $3.99.

First of all, when you buy a comic, you're paying at least four businesses: The comic store, Diamond comic distributors, the print shop, and the publisher.

The publisher wants to keep costs down as much as possible while maximizing profits. Each comic has a minimum of four people working on it: The writer, penciller, inker, and colorist. Sometimes these duties are doubled up by one person, but not often. Plus, sometimes inkers and colorists will have people do some of the more tedious tasks for them; For example, inkers will often have somebody do "blacks" for them, where they just fill in all of the large black areas. Colorists, similarly, will have someone do "flats," where they fill in large areas with a base color, over which the credited colorist will work their magic. And then there's the editor, who needs to oversee an entire line of books and make sure there aren't glaring inconsistencies amongst them (for example, if a character gets their left arm chopped off in one comic, it had better not be the right arm in another comic!), plus the Editor-in-Chief, who oversees the entire company's books to make sure that the editors didn't miss anything.

Already, we're at 8 people, amongst whom $3.99 has to be divided. If it were divided evenly, they're each getting just under 50¢ apiece, per copy. But that's not how it works. More on that later.

So, presuming everything goes smoothly, a single comic book issue is created. But it needs to be printed, so that everybody who wants one can buy a copy! This means the comic needs to be run through a printer. As a professional graphic designer, I've spent my fair share of time in print shops. The presses used to print big jobs like comics take at least two people to run them properly. This does not account for the people in shipping and receiving, to make sure the comics go out on time, or the people who keep the presses and building operating quickly. 

Suddenly, our 8 people went up to over 20 people responsible for your comic, and, even though this isn't really the way it works out, let's continue to presume everybody's getting an equal share of the issue at hand. Now everybody's getting about 20¢ per copy of a $3.99 comic.

And then there's whatever shipping service gets used to transport the printed books back to the publisher, who need to make sure they got printed correctly. Those comics then need to be shipped to Diamond Comics Distributors, who will distribute the comics to the comics retailers. Diamond employs hundreds of people, but let's look at the bare minimum of who has to be involved in your $3.99 issue: There's the Diamond Representative who helps the stores decide what to buy (my Diamond Rep has always been absolutely fantastic with me, incidentally, and without giving out names, I appreciate everything she's done for me and my store). 

And then there's the local rep, who swings by every few weeks to make sure everything is going okay, and inform the store of any new stuff coming out that we may have missed in the Previews catalog, or to let us know about any upcoming deals each retailer may have coming up, if they have any.

 And then there's the people in their main warehouse, which, I believe, is now in Kentucky. When a store orders X number of comics, someone in that warehouse has to grab that many copies of a comic, put them in a box, and ship that to Diamond's local distribution center. Our is in Los Angeles.

So then the guys in the Los Angeles Diamond hub have to find out exactly how many copies of a comic we've ordered, put those in a box, and ship them to our local post office. And then, depending on the deal each store has with the post office, either they send someone to deliver the comics, or the store sends somebody to pick them up.

I've lost count of how many people have been involved in getting your monthly comic in your hands, but we're not done, yet.

Now that the store has the comics on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, the store employees have to open the boxes, check the orders to make sure it's the proper quantity, check for anything that got damaged in shipping, and put them on the shelves.

Okay, so that's a VERY QUICK view of what each comic takes to get to you. By my quick math, we're down to less than 5¢ per copy per person involved, assuming there's only one person working at a comic store, and they don't pay for electricity, air conditioning, heating, insurance, telephone, internet, or rent.

But the money you pay for each issue isn't distributed evenly. Here's how that breaks down:

Diamond Comic Distributors takes all the orders for everything from every direct market comics retailer, and, based on a formula that has never been explained to me (I'm sure it's out there, somewhere; I've just never bothered to look for it), they determine a level of "discount off cover price" that each retailer gets. As far as I can tell, the discount is based on some combination of longevity and quantity ordered; the longer you've been a customer, and the more you order per month, the higher your discount.

If I remember my numbers correctly, the minimum discount Diamond offers is 35% off cover price. So for each copy of a $3.99 comic, a retailer with a 35% discount pays about $2.59. The maximum discount Diamond offers is 53%, meaning those retailers pay about $1.88. But MOST stores get a discount of about 50%. So, for the sake of easy math, let's call each $3.99 comic $4.00, and assume a store has a 50% discount.

When my store wants to buy a copy of NEW AVENGERS, we need to pay Diamond 2 bucks per copy. Which means that the store only makes two dollars for every copy sold. I don't know how the other two dollars gets distributed, but IF it gets distributed evenly (which I doubt), that's 1 dollar for Diamond, and 1 dollar for Marvel.

Which means, when you buy five comics (and let's say you're in New Hampshire or Oregon, so there's a 0% sales tax), you're giving $20 to the retailer. $10 goes to the retailer, $5 goes to Diamond, and $5 gets divided up amongst whatever publishers you just supported.

And when you buy five $2.99 comics, cut all of those values by 25%: $7.50 goes to the store, $3.75 goes to Diamond, and $3.75 goes to the publishers.

And this doesn't take into account licensing (IDW has to pay Hasbro in order to keep using the TRANSFORMERS brand name, for example).

And as a retailer, I'm far more inclined to suggest a $3.99 comic to a customer than a $2.99 comic. That's an extra 50¢ per issue that I'm getting.

Hey, I love getting as much bang for my buck as the next guy, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how comic stores stayed in business in the 80s and 90s with comics that cost under 2 bucks, using this model.

So, to everybody who wants to go back to the $1.25 price tag of 1993, thank you for wanting to bankrupt the entire comics industry. You're doing us all a huge favor with that one.