Post by Lantlas on Feb 6, 2007 23:51:54 GMT -5
"Mystery Shop"
Finally, it was time for my second fifteen-minute break. This had been a rather eventful day, and I’d thought things of people I’d never expected. “Just one of those days,” I laughed to myself. Oh well, at least I’d have interesting stories for when I was hanging out with a group of friends.
Before I could walk out the door, a customer tugged at my sleeve. “Excuse me?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Do you have tanning beds here?”
I blinked several times. This had definitely been a strange day, but that was by far the best one yet. We’re in the middle of fall in central Pennsylvania, and a movie store in the mall is supposed to have… tanning beds? “I think GameXPress might have them, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, thank you.”
She walked out of the store, presumably towards Brian’s store. I waited for a few seconds, then started to walk down towards the food court. I waited outside of the door, and a minute later, saw a very confused-looking Brian emerge. As he turned to look at me, he had the driest look on his face. “I hate you.”
“Hey, I thought you guys had tanning beds!”
“What are you talking about?”
Oops, maybe that lady had gone to someone else. “Ooooookay, why do you hate me then?”
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “I just got a call from some lady. She said the guy at MovieXPress gave her this number, saying that it was the number of the guy who makes all the important decision in the movie business. She demanded that we started making VHS again.”
Trying to keep a straight face, I looked away from his general direction. “And what did you say?”
“I told her that the guy in the movie store was possessed by the Big Shaggy Ostrich, and that evil demon spirit compelled him to destroy all the video tapes in an attempt to take over the world.”
I nearly spit out the drink of soda I had in my mouth. That was so unbelievably random that I couldn’t help clutching my sides in laughter. “Did you just say… the Big Shaggy Ostrich?”
“You don’t know about the Big Shaggy Ostrich?” he replied in a fake tone of compelling fear. He pretended to dart his eyes back and forth, then cornered me and began to whisper. “Be careful, he’s always listening.”
“What the hell are you on?” I demanded.
“Hey,” he giggled, “serves you right for giving her my phone number. Now she’ll probably show up with a priest to perform an ostrich exorcism.”
“Do you think they could perform an ostrich exorcism?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he retorted. “That would open the debate on whether ostriches have souls in which to be possessed, and whether an ostrich would be so angry at the world that he dubbed himself ‘the Big Shaggy Ostrich’ and decided to take over the minds of guys who work at movie stores.”
“And then the animal rights activists would probably get involved and kill all of us for attempting to end the life of an animal demon spirit.”
“Or we’d at least get that fake blood thrown on us,” he suggested.
“The Big Shaggy Ostrich would probably like that.”
“Of course,” Brian agreed. “He’s a fan of B-horror movies.”
“Probably sandwiches them with animated children’s movies.”
“I’ve seen that,” I added.
“I don’t doubt it. Some guy today bought a pre-school game at the same time that he bought ‘Postal’.”
“Postal?!”
“Yeah, the game that actually gives you a discretion warning that says they don’t advise you playing it if you intend to have a career in politics.”
“Wow,” I remarked. “Screwing hookers and laundering money won’t get you out of office, but playing a video game could?”
“Um… You’ve never played that game. Trust me.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I laughed.
Brian and I weren’t able to stop and see Chris, since he’d been removed from the building a short while back, so we just continued to walk around the mall. While we were in mid-conversation, a blonde girl, I assumed about our age, came up to us.
“Hi! My name’s Allison!”
“Um, hi Allison,” Brian awkwardly responded.
“Ohmygod, I’m so super-psyched to be here!”
“Why? It’s just the mall,” I noted.
“You guys, come on! It’s a beautiful day, and I’m swimming in the sunshine of the heavens!”
Brian and I looked at each other, and we both tried to sneak away when she wasn’t watching, but she hooked an arm around each of us. “So, like do you guys go to church?”
“Yes, but…”
“Our church gets mad if we talk to other churches. They get jealous and start spreading rumors about the other church, you know… Saying it’s a follower-stealer home-wrecker and all, so we tend to avoid all the divine drama and just stick with our home church.”
“Right,” I added.
“Well, you two silly dillies should come on down to our church sometime! We’re allowed to wear jeans and stuff, and we sing and dance and hug each other! It’s so full of love!”
“We don’t like love,” Brian quickly replied.
“Right, we’re anti-love. We’re so full of not love that we could not love love itself.”
“Um…. What he said!” Brian reiterated.
“Well, in case you two stubborn little bunnies change your mind,” she giggled as she pulled out something from her pocket, “here’s the card of where we are! We meet on Tuesday mornings as well as Sundays, and we have punch and cookies!”
“Punch?” Brian stared at me, frightened.
“See you guys at the Sun!”
The girl skipped away, and within a few seconds, latched herself upon a few other people.
“Is it just me,” I began.
“Or did that girl seem WAY too happy?”
“That was actually frightening on so many levels,” I added. “Did the Big Shaggy Ostrich give you that divine drama line?”
“Yeah,” Brian snickered, “but he said I could take credit for it.”
“Swell guy, that Big Shaggy Ostrich.”
“Indeed.”
The break ended all too soon, and I returned to my store to finish out the last four hours of my shift. The boss was out front with a clipboard, and he didn’t look too happy. I had a bad feeling I was in trouble… again. “Alex, we need to talk in my office.”
I groaned as we headed for the back again. This day couldn’t possibly get worse… could it?
As he sat down, he looked at the paper on the clipboard. “Alex, you know why I have you ask every customer about all of our add-ons, right?”
“To maximize the sales and raise your bonus?”
“Um… I don’t get a bonus,” he lied. “No. The reason is because we get mystery shopped.”
“Mystery shopped?”
“That’s right, mystery shopped,” he repeated. “Outside sources come into the store and take notes. We get scored out of 100, and each of our add-ons are five points if they’re mentioned, zero if they’re not.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“We just got mystery shopped today, Alex. You got a 65.”
“I take it that’s not good?”
“No, it isn’t,” the boss answered, tapping his pen on the table. “You asked them about reserving an upcoming title, and explained the benefits of doing so. You asked them if they had a preferred shopper card, but didn’t explain it when they said they didn’t, so that was points off.”
“They only had one item,” I replied. “Who’s gonna spend seventeen dollars when they’re spending less than that on the DVD itself?”
“Moving on,” he ignored my remark. “Twenty of these points revolved around selling the magazines.”
“Twenty?!”
“Yes, and you got none of them. You didn’t offer it to them for paying with a credit card, you didn’t tell them it was free, and you didn’t explain the details about how to cancel.”
“Sorry, but I hate asking people for their credit card information,” I explained. “They get really mad about it, especially when they’ve been in here before and turned it down.”
“The point is, Alex… this mystery shop not only makes the store look bad, it makes you look bad. You don’t follow along with the script.”
“But I still have higher numbers than everyone else combined!”
“That doesn’t mean you’re ready for management,” he snapped. “Your attitude hasn’t helped you. The sarcasm and the negative feelings when they aren’t around, I told you, are going to prevent you from ever moving up, and this mystery shop here sealed the deal.”
“So I’m going to continue making six-fifty an hour because I don’t bother every single customer with every single add-on offer?”
“Not only that,” he continued, “but you’re moving down to twenty hours a week.”
“Twenty? How am I supposed to live off of that?”
“Maybe next time you’ll think about how you present yourself.”
“Like there’ll be a next time,” I griped as I slammed the door.
“Make it fifteen,” I heard him through the door.
I slunk up to the front, and Caroline was there, looking worried. “What’s wrong, Alex?”
“I just bombed the mystery shop,” I replied.
“What’s the Mystery Shop? Is that a book store that sells stuff like Hardy Boys novels?”
“No, Caroline,” I groaned. “The mystery shop is where they come in the store and grade you on how many of the add-ons you try to sell them.”
“Oh,” she answered. “How come I never heard about this?”
“Probably because you always ask every customer for everything.”
“Yeah,” she looked a bit confused. “You’re supposed to, right?”
“Yes, I just hate bothering them with everything, especially when we’re supposed to read along with the script.”
“Why?”
“Well, I work in this business because I enjoy working with people. It makes me happy when I help a customer find what they need, and send them on their way with a good impression of the store, and me. I think it drags down that good image when we constantly badger them for five different things, especially when we have to ask for all of them, even if they already have a couple. I already know people who avoid this store because they get tired of hearing it every time they buy something. It just doesn’t seem right.”
“I never thought about it that way,” Caroline agreed.
“And they just cut my hours because of it,” I added, angrily.
“That’s not fair! You should try to do something about it!”
“Caroline,” I responded as I slyly nodded. “You might be right about that.” I pulled out my phone and began to send Brian a message. This would be a night they would never forget!
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Finally, it was time for my second fifteen-minute break. This had been a rather eventful day, and I’d thought things of people I’d never expected. “Just one of those days,” I laughed to myself. Oh well, at least I’d have interesting stories for when I was hanging out with a group of friends.
Before I could walk out the door, a customer tugged at my sleeve. “Excuse me?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Do you have tanning beds here?”
I blinked several times. This had definitely been a strange day, but that was by far the best one yet. We’re in the middle of fall in central Pennsylvania, and a movie store in the mall is supposed to have… tanning beds? “I think GameXPress might have them, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, thank you.”
She walked out of the store, presumably towards Brian’s store. I waited for a few seconds, then started to walk down towards the food court. I waited outside of the door, and a minute later, saw a very confused-looking Brian emerge. As he turned to look at me, he had the driest look on his face. “I hate you.”
“Hey, I thought you guys had tanning beds!”
“What are you talking about?”
Oops, maybe that lady had gone to someone else. “Ooooookay, why do you hate me then?”
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “I just got a call from some lady. She said the guy at MovieXPress gave her this number, saying that it was the number of the guy who makes all the important decision in the movie business. She demanded that we started making VHS again.”
Trying to keep a straight face, I looked away from his general direction. “And what did you say?”
“I told her that the guy in the movie store was possessed by the Big Shaggy Ostrich, and that evil demon spirit compelled him to destroy all the video tapes in an attempt to take over the world.”
I nearly spit out the drink of soda I had in my mouth. That was so unbelievably random that I couldn’t help clutching my sides in laughter. “Did you just say… the Big Shaggy Ostrich?”
“You don’t know about the Big Shaggy Ostrich?” he replied in a fake tone of compelling fear. He pretended to dart his eyes back and forth, then cornered me and began to whisper. “Be careful, he’s always listening.”
“What the hell are you on?” I demanded.
“Hey,” he giggled, “serves you right for giving her my phone number. Now she’ll probably show up with a priest to perform an ostrich exorcism.”
“Do you think they could perform an ostrich exorcism?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he retorted. “That would open the debate on whether ostriches have souls in which to be possessed, and whether an ostrich would be so angry at the world that he dubbed himself ‘the Big Shaggy Ostrich’ and decided to take over the minds of guys who work at movie stores.”
“And then the animal rights activists would probably get involved and kill all of us for attempting to end the life of an animal demon spirit.”
“Or we’d at least get that fake blood thrown on us,” he suggested.
“The Big Shaggy Ostrich would probably like that.”
“Of course,” Brian agreed. “He’s a fan of B-horror movies.”
“Probably sandwiches them with animated children’s movies.”
“I’ve seen that,” I added.
“I don’t doubt it. Some guy today bought a pre-school game at the same time that he bought ‘Postal’.”
“Postal?!”
“Yeah, the game that actually gives you a discretion warning that says they don’t advise you playing it if you intend to have a career in politics.”
“Wow,” I remarked. “Screwing hookers and laundering money won’t get you out of office, but playing a video game could?”
“Um… You’ve never played that game. Trust me.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I laughed.
Brian and I weren’t able to stop and see Chris, since he’d been removed from the building a short while back, so we just continued to walk around the mall. While we were in mid-conversation, a blonde girl, I assumed about our age, came up to us.
“Hi! My name’s Allison!”
“Um, hi Allison,” Brian awkwardly responded.
“Ohmygod, I’m so super-psyched to be here!”
“Why? It’s just the mall,” I noted.
“You guys, come on! It’s a beautiful day, and I’m swimming in the sunshine of the heavens!”
Brian and I looked at each other, and we both tried to sneak away when she wasn’t watching, but she hooked an arm around each of us. “So, like do you guys go to church?”
“Yes, but…”
“Our church gets mad if we talk to other churches. They get jealous and start spreading rumors about the other church, you know… Saying it’s a follower-stealer home-wrecker and all, so we tend to avoid all the divine drama and just stick with our home church.”
“Right,” I added.
“Well, you two silly dillies should come on down to our church sometime! We’re allowed to wear jeans and stuff, and we sing and dance and hug each other! It’s so full of love!”
“We don’t like love,” Brian quickly replied.
“Right, we’re anti-love. We’re so full of not love that we could not love love itself.”
“Um…. What he said!” Brian reiterated.
“Well, in case you two stubborn little bunnies change your mind,” she giggled as she pulled out something from her pocket, “here’s the card of where we are! We meet on Tuesday mornings as well as Sundays, and we have punch and cookies!”
“Punch?” Brian stared at me, frightened.
“See you guys at the Sun!”
The girl skipped away, and within a few seconds, latched herself upon a few other people.
“Is it just me,” I began.
“Or did that girl seem WAY too happy?”
“That was actually frightening on so many levels,” I added. “Did the Big Shaggy Ostrich give you that divine drama line?”
“Yeah,” Brian snickered, “but he said I could take credit for it.”
“Swell guy, that Big Shaggy Ostrich.”
“Indeed.”
The break ended all too soon, and I returned to my store to finish out the last four hours of my shift. The boss was out front with a clipboard, and he didn’t look too happy. I had a bad feeling I was in trouble… again. “Alex, we need to talk in my office.”
I groaned as we headed for the back again. This day couldn’t possibly get worse… could it?
As he sat down, he looked at the paper on the clipboard. “Alex, you know why I have you ask every customer about all of our add-ons, right?”
“To maximize the sales and raise your bonus?”
“Um… I don’t get a bonus,” he lied. “No. The reason is because we get mystery shopped.”
“Mystery shopped?”
“That’s right, mystery shopped,” he repeated. “Outside sources come into the store and take notes. We get scored out of 100, and each of our add-ons are five points if they’re mentioned, zero if they’re not.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“We just got mystery shopped today, Alex. You got a 65.”
“I take it that’s not good?”
“No, it isn’t,” the boss answered, tapping his pen on the table. “You asked them about reserving an upcoming title, and explained the benefits of doing so. You asked them if they had a preferred shopper card, but didn’t explain it when they said they didn’t, so that was points off.”
“They only had one item,” I replied. “Who’s gonna spend seventeen dollars when they’re spending less than that on the DVD itself?”
“Moving on,” he ignored my remark. “Twenty of these points revolved around selling the magazines.”
“Twenty?!”
“Yes, and you got none of them. You didn’t offer it to them for paying with a credit card, you didn’t tell them it was free, and you didn’t explain the details about how to cancel.”
“Sorry, but I hate asking people for their credit card information,” I explained. “They get really mad about it, especially when they’ve been in here before and turned it down.”
“The point is, Alex… this mystery shop not only makes the store look bad, it makes you look bad. You don’t follow along with the script.”
“But I still have higher numbers than everyone else combined!”
“That doesn’t mean you’re ready for management,” he snapped. “Your attitude hasn’t helped you. The sarcasm and the negative feelings when they aren’t around, I told you, are going to prevent you from ever moving up, and this mystery shop here sealed the deal.”
“So I’m going to continue making six-fifty an hour because I don’t bother every single customer with every single add-on offer?”
“Not only that,” he continued, “but you’re moving down to twenty hours a week.”
“Twenty? How am I supposed to live off of that?”
“Maybe next time you’ll think about how you present yourself.”
“Like there’ll be a next time,” I griped as I slammed the door.
“Make it fifteen,” I heard him through the door.
I slunk up to the front, and Caroline was there, looking worried. “What’s wrong, Alex?”
“I just bombed the mystery shop,” I replied.
“What’s the Mystery Shop? Is that a book store that sells stuff like Hardy Boys novels?”
“No, Caroline,” I groaned. “The mystery shop is where they come in the store and grade you on how many of the add-ons you try to sell them.”
“Oh,” she answered. “How come I never heard about this?”
“Probably because you always ask every customer for everything.”
“Yeah,” she looked a bit confused. “You’re supposed to, right?”
“Yes, I just hate bothering them with everything, especially when we’re supposed to read along with the script.”
“Why?”
“Well, I work in this business because I enjoy working with people. It makes me happy when I help a customer find what they need, and send them on their way with a good impression of the store, and me. I think it drags down that good image when we constantly badger them for five different things, especially when we have to ask for all of them, even if they already have a couple. I already know people who avoid this store because they get tired of hearing it every time they buy something. It just doesn’t seem right.”
“I never thought about it that way,” Caroline agreed.
“And they just cut my hours because of it,” I added, angrily.
“That’s not fair! You should try to do something about it!”
“Caroline,” I responded as I slyly nodded. “You might be right about that.” I pulled out my phone and began to send Brian a message. This would be a night they would never forget!
Help me get this read on the web... www.fictionpress.com/s/2231693/7/ scroll to the bottom of the page, at the bottom left, click the submit review button.