Customer started crying in the dressing room and wouldn’t leave the store…
This is my first week working retail as I’m normally a teaching assistant but needed extra income for the summer.
It was Saturday and so we were pretty busy. A woman came in with 5 or 6 dresses to try on that, in all honesty, I could tell were not going to fit. After about 15 minutes I went back to check on her because a line had formed for the 4 dressing rooms we had and she wasn’t out yet. I asked her if everything was alright, she kind of shakily said yes, so I went away.
Another 10 minutes, I check again.
“Still doing okay?” A bit more firm now, she responds. “Yes, I’m fine!”.
I stood nearby to keep an eye on things and kept hearing sniffles. Another 5 minutes went by, I knocked on the door this time.
“Ma’am, are you almost done? There are other customers waiting for the dressing rooms.”
She stuck her head out the door and I could see then for sure she had been crying. She handed me all the dresses.
“Put these back.” And then she closed the door.
I kinda stood there confused for a minute and responded through the door again.
“Are you alright?”
“…”
“I’ll put these back and give you a minute, but I’m sorry, we really do need the dressing room.”
Another 15 minutes went by. 931
By now she’s been in there a total of 45 minutes crying. The manager wasnt there that day and all my coworkers were less than helpful, so this was all on me and I had no idea what to do. I knocked on the door one more time, a bit forcefully.
“Ma’am. You’ve been in there for a very long time and while I can see you’re having a bad day, we can’t let you just stay in there. You don’t have any clothes in there even. I can give you another 5 minutes but if you won’t leave by then I need to call security.”
The door FLEW OPEN and this woman, red faced and teary eyed scream-whispered at me about how if the store wasn’t going to carry any “normal” sizes then the least they could do was give her space when it made her feel bad! She went on a mini rant about unfair sizing and catering to normal sized people and the beauty industry.
I do sympathize, and honestly our sizes do run a bit small, but they still fit the normal “straight size” range of 0-14. I felt bad because I know how frustrating that can be, but also I didn’t need that anger directed at me.
I just looked at her and told her again “You need to leave now.” Thankfully she did, but she flipped me off at the door.
Weird situation that has really put me off for the rest of the week. I’m sure it’s pretty tame compared to a lot of the stuff in here, but this is in fact my first rodeo and I did not enjoy it.
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ETA: This is a repost since my last one was removed! Fixed the problem. 430