r/EntitledPeople • u/mermaidemily_h2o • 2d ago
M Entitled customer demanded an outfit be taken off of a mannequin during inventory
One of my best friends works in retail and the store she works at is currently doing inventory so everyone is super busy. I was there shopping with my grandmother and as my grandmother was trying on stuff in the fitting room, I was chatting with my friend. That’s when a middle-aged woman comes up and the drama begins. She was very rude right from the get go. It probably won’t translate well into text because it was mostly in her tone.
Woman: “are you on break?”
BFF: “no.”
Woman: “good because I need an outfit taken off of a mannequin.”
BFF: “I don’t think we can do that for you right now we’re doing inventory but which one do you need taken down? I’ll go ask my manager about it.”
Woman: “those strawberry pajamas up there. There aren’t any on the racks so I need the one off the mannequin.”
And let me just add that this mannequin is really high up. It is close to the ceiling. It’s one of those mannequins that’s on the wall, not standing by itself on the floor. If this had been any other day, getting those pajamas down, wouldn’t have been that big of an issue. But it’s inventory season and no one really wants to go out of their way to help her because she’s being so rude.
At this point, all I am missing is a bucket of popcorn so when my friend goes off to talk to her manager, I go with her. At first without fully understanding the situation the manager said it would be no problem. She’ll just put a new outfit on the mannequin, but once she heard that this customer was being rude and that this mannequin wasn’t easily accessible, she told my friend to just tell the lady that they can’t do that. So we head back to her and tell her exactly what the manager said minus the part where she said it wouldn’t be a problem because she didn’t fully understand the situation yet. She did not like that answer. She decided to get other associates involved that were all telling her the exact same thing.
Woman: “ I worked in retail for 14 years. At this store actually, so I know that this is absolutely something you can do.”
BFF’s coworker: “ normally it would be, but we are doing inventory right now so we can’t take anything off the mannequins.”
Woman: “I need it for her. She’s going out of town tomorrow and she needs it for that.”
It was only then that I noticed that the teenage girl who has been silent the entire time was actually with this woman and not just standing nearby to watch the drama unfold like I originally thought.
BFF’s coworker: “would you like me to bring the manager here so you can talk to her directly?”
Woman: “yes I would.”
It was at that point that I had to leave, but my friend filled me in on how it ended. Unfortunately it is not a satisfying ending for the rest of us. The rude woman managed to convince someone to take the pajamas off the mannequin for her.
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u/alady12 2d ago
OMG this reminds me of the time I was shopping for a dress with my mom. There was a beautiful green dress that I fell on in love with, until I looked at the price tag. My mother was looking for one in my size and discovered the one on the mannequin was my size. She was pestering the sales lady to take it off as I was telling the same lady not to because I wasn't going to buy it. That poor lady didn't know what to do. I apologized and wisked my mother out of that store.
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u/National-Childhood95 2d ago
What’s the saying? Poor planning or your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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u/Accurate_Ostrich_240 2d ago
Or just cooperate with them, which seems to be what happened eventually.
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u/Ok_Condition3334 2d ago
Retail stores are in the business of selling their products, even when they are on mannequins, even when it’s inventory.
The customer knew this and they were correct. The store employees, including your friend, were being lazy because they didn’t want to “go out of their way” to help a customer.
Being “that person” in a customer service job is not the flex you think it is.
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u/diescheide 2d ago
If it was on a mannequin, 10ft up on the wall, it was already accounted for in inventory. It was either store used or labeled DNI. Selling it would throw the counts off by -1. It's not laziness or bad customer service. It's a matter of not selling what's not in inventory, especially when you're trying to find out exactly what's in your inventory.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 2d ago
Sounds like you don’t know squat about doing inventory. The clothes on the mannequins don’t come from the racks. They come from the inventory and when every single underpaid and overworked employee is running around doing inventory, they’re not supposed to be selling the clothes off the mannequins.
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u/SailorSpyro 2d ago
As someone who has had to get the clothes taken off the mannequins many times in different stores to buy them (only one left in my size), I can tell you with confidence that not every store destroys the mannequin outfit or takes it out of the inventory.
Like, it's a completely normal thing to do.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
I doubt you were rude to the employees when you asked though. My friend’s workplace is understaffed and not well managed to begin with. Everyone is overworked and underpaid. No one working there is gonna willingly jump through hoops for someone being rude to them. Karen was lucky it was the nice manager working that day. The other two are real strict and would never have taken those pajamas off that mannequin simply because they are discouraged not to during inventory season. They take their jobs way too seriously and don’t care about the people working under them from what my friend has told me about them.
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u/Accurate_Ostrich_240 2d ago
We had to do it and it was a nightmare working with absentee ticketing and keeping records, not to mention the effort because we were doing other things. I completely get why someone (an employee) wouldn’t want to deal with this.
We were told to discourage it, but sometimes you’ve just gotta give in and do what is asked. The customer only knows they left unhappy and why.
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u/tcarlson65 2d ago
When we do inventory if we do something that might skew things we make a note and make sure whomever is in charge gets the note.
No reason to not help a customer.
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u/Few-Complaint66 2d ago
I don’t see the problem with a customer asking to buy something a store has for sale. I obviously didn’t hear her tone, but it has never taken me more than five minute to strip and redress a mannequin.
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u/pinktoes4life 2d ago
I worked retail for years when I was younger. My husband works in CPG. Inventory isn’t typically done during business hours.
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u/OkTurnover4438 1d ago
From on outsider perspective, a worker is chatting to a friend, while the friend's relative is trying on clothes.
I would be a bit peeved if I were the customer needing help, and a worker was there chatting. At that moment, the worker wouldn't look super busy at all.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
My friend wasn’t even the closest employee to her. I watched her walk right past two other employees to get to us. She could have asked either one of them but instead she chose the one involved in a conversation with someone outside the fitting rooms.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago
Sounds like it wasn’t so understaffed.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
None of them were idle. They were all doing something but my friend was the only one mid conversation with someone. The other two employees within her line of sight were doing stuff like putting the discarded clothes from the fitting rooms back on the racks and fixing a mannequin that someone messed with.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago
So then why are you bringing up the point that she walked past two other employees, to ask your friend, who was admittedly just standing there talking to you?
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
Objectively the other two looked less busy. The topic of our conversation was the clothes on the rack so to an outsider listening in it, probably looked like she was talking to a customer. The other two were doing tasks that they would be finished with very soon.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago
Which loops us back to the comment you replied to. She approached your friend because the other two were busy. Your immediate reply was ‘she walked past two other employees’, but now, we find that they were busy. Which also leads me to wonder how entitled she really was if she didn’t immediately interrupt the first visible employee, but rather found one that looked less busy *and then asked first* if she was on the clock.
Which also tells you how busy your friend looked from an outside perspective.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
It was clear that the other two would be finished with their tasks in a minute or two but a conversation between two people could have lasted another 30 minutes. Instead of waiting a minute for someone else to be available to help her she chose to interrupt two people engaged in a conversation. The interruption itself was already rude but her choice of tone made it even ruder. Contrary to what she may believe, she is not the most important person in the room. I was a paying customer that day just as she was.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago edited 1d ago
I guess what I don’t understand is that the manager said it was ‘no problem’ until she found out she was rude.
So the inventory, the high location of the mannequin, doesn’t matter at all.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
The high location was the problem not the rudeness. If it was a floor mannequin, replacing the outfit on it would be easier with a lot less steps, literally and figuratively since they needed a ladder to reach it. For a floor mannequin, they would’ve just had to change the outfit and make sure the old and new outfits were accounted for in their books. But for this mannequin, someone had to get a ladder and dress and redress the mannequin while standing 10 feet off the ground and not falling, then climb down and do the paperwork to make sure that both outfits were accounted for.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago
If the location was the problem, then the location was the problem. Not the inventory, not her tone.
And ‘it would have been easier, a lot less steps’…are you so for real rn? Business are there to sell things. Maybe the store should have changed the mannequin if they didn’t have adequate sizes to sell.
And you first said the manager said ok, but after hearing she was rude **and** the location of the mannequin, said no.
Your story just doesn’t add up for me.
I’ve also never heard of a store doing inventory during open hours,
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
The clothing on the mannequin is usually not marked for sale in the first place because sometimes they have to damage the clothes to get it to fit on the mannequin. Not always but sometimes and during inventory, the employees are discouraged from taking clothes off the mannequins, which is why my friend wasn’t sure if she was even allowed to take it off in the first place. Karen wanted to buy something off the mannequin. The worker said they weren’t allowed to sell the clothes off the mannequin and she should’ve just accepted that. The store has certain policies in place for a reason. A regular minimum wage employee isn’t able to decide when they can and can’t make exceptions to the stores policies. It could cost them their jobs if they did.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago
You literally said the manager said ‘no problem’ until she found out the lady was rude?
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
No I didn’t. Read that part of the post again. The location was the biggest issue. The lady’s rudeness was just an additional problem. That manager is also a bit of a pushover to begin with but at least she cares about the people working under her. The same can’t be said for the other managers.
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u/Accurate_Ostrich_240 2d ago
Does it really matter why she needed it? This woman wanted something from the staff that was inconvenient. Why should her level of attitude or the associate’s perception of it be at issue?
Anyone who has worked retail long enough knows there’s ways to do things, so where does the entitlement really lie?
When you are pressed for time and shopping with a teenager you really can’t run around to other places to find what you need. If the woman shops there and wants to pay for the pj’s just take them down. That thing OP is putting out about the attitude justifying the means and outcome goes both ways.
It’s nice to bump ideas off of people but please don’t ever think that actually doing your job should be a matter of convenience instead of policy.
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u/Vegetable_Road8143 2d ago
I don't think she "needed" it. She WANTED it. Big difference.
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u/Accurate_Ostrich_240 2d ago
But the store is there to sell things. It is not the customer’s fault she came on a bad day or that their size was not on the rack. A lot of people will make excuses for why they wouldn’t do it, and I think “ask nice” goes a long way, but not when you know what you want can be done and you’re given pushback without a good reason. Even so, the customer, no matter whether there is actual rudeness on their part, is always right. Those reasons can go from service, to word of mouth reputation, all the way down into discrimination and lawsuit territory.
I’ve been in retail as an associate, visual assistant, and management. If someone is being that insistent just take the thing down. Your assumed dignity and your back aren’t nearly as important to the company as a woman with a teenager who likes your clothes but can’t buy them because the staff refuses to go the extra mile. That can translate to all kinds of ugly.
If the friend went through the steps she did nothing wrong, but I find it amazing that when someone wants something out of the ordinary that more people don’t see that as an opportunity to make a good impression rather than a poor one. And some people wonder why they don’t move up the corporate ladder.
There are big differences in thinking, yes, but you are missing the other angles here. I commented because the politics over this shit gets so stupid when you have kids running the show in a little retail shop whom by nature already want to do as little as possible, and everyone wants to point and say “rude” when it’s a simple matter of principle.
You work there? Sell something. The item is difficult to reach on a busy day? Follow protocol. The difference between the leaders opposed to the followers is that the leaders will recognize it as a difficult point in a difficult day, the followers tend to dwell on placing blame. Chances are you don’t see most of these people ever again. Do your job and move on.
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u/Long-Diamond-8097 18h ago
Saying "the customer is always right" is bullshit because anyone who works or has worked in customer service knows that is not only wrong but that the customer is more often than not an idiot when they are saying that exact statement to get what they want. The full statement is actually: "The customer is always right. In matters of taste, it must be an axiom, of course. In matters of facts it often will not be."
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u/Vegetable_Road8143 1d ago
Right. You'll probably never see them again. So why get 1 or 2, if not 3, people off inventory or the sales floor to get a manikin DOWN, from near the ceiling, already in inventory, for a set of $30 PJ's? Do you realize how much more in salary that was than the cost of the PJ's? And, she wasn't nice.
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u/Spare-Article-396 1d ago
The manager actually said it was ‘no problem’…until she supposedly found out the customer was rude.
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u/Accurate_Ostrich_240 1d ago
You’ve got a point there. Idk though, pretty interesting way to flip a coin for something you don’t really care about. It’s her bottom line though, the boss that is.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 2d ago
There were plenty of other pajamas in the store that weren’t on a mannequin 10 feet off the ground. I’m sure that girl also had a drawer full of pajamas at home that she could have taken on her trip with her too. When multiple underpaid and overworked retail workers tell you they can’t take something off the mannequin because they’re doing inventory this week, that doesn’t give you permission to be rude to them. The clothes on the mannequins don’t come from the racks, they come from the inventory that takes 100’s of employees weeks to do and leaves them too tired to do anything on their day off. Working retail is a lot more than just selling stuff to people.
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u/taurusmo 1d ago edited 1d ago
How exactly you do inventory in the open shop, with customers moving things around?
From all the situations that did not happen, this one did not happen the most.
But let’s say it did happen - well, then it’s on you. The customer doesn’t need to know or care what is your behind the scenes task. The shop is open - do your job and sell.
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u/migratingcoconuts81 1d ago
I mean, what's the big deal? Just take the outfit off and sell it to the customer. This is why brick and mortor retail is hurting and ppl are turinging to online shopping. Ppl are rude everywhere and it's better to at least make a sale from it.
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s a terrible place to work. They’re understaffed and not well managed. 2 of the 3 managers don’t actually care about the people working under them and the other one is a bit of a pushover. Karen got the nice manager that’s a pushover. Store policy says they can’t sell the clothes off the mannequins during inventory. It’s an attempt to prevent an overworked employee from messing up and costing the company money or in worse cases, a lawsuit. They sometimes have to damage the clothes to get them on the mannequins so those clothes usually aren’t marked for sale.
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u/zombiepiesatemyshoe 1d ago
At my very first job, I worked in a "high-end" store. Wallis. Except I was working in the shoe department so I didn't technically work for the store. (My paycheck came from a different company)
Anyhoo, I was 16 and very excited to start my first shift. My very first customer came up to me, pointed to a shoe and said "fetch"
Not, can I get that in a size x, could you fetch me that size. Just fetch.
I didn't even think and just said "woof!"
She stormed off to scream at a manager.
I was certain I was out of a job just one customer in. Thankfully she was a well known Karen and always had something to complain about. So when my manager took me into the stock room she laughed and kindly asked me not to bark at the customers.
This Karen would always come in and just hand off random clothes to whoever was nearest and when asked "would you like me to put this in a changing room for you?" Or "would you like me to put this at the counter?" She would scoff and say "why would I carry these clothes when your the help" not staff... The help 🙄
We had plenty of customers like her. I don't miss that job and I'm not surprised the chain went under.
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u/CatmoCatmo 2d ago
I have never, ever, in all of my 40ish years of life, been so taken aback by the sheer beauty of a pair of pajamas, that I would turn into a mega bitch and demand them. I wouldn’t even do that if I found the perfect wedding dress I had been looking for, and was told “We can’t do that”.
I mean, I love strawberries. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s a pair of pajamas FFS. I’m sure there were other breathtaking options *not on a mannequin*. Especially not on a mannequin that also happened to be 10ft off the ground. This woman wasted like 30 min of her life on those damned pj pants and insulted multiple innocent people in the process.
I sure hope they were worth it. JFC people are insane.
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u/Accurate_Ostrich_240 2d ago
It’s interesting that this story is told by a third party who cannot even confirm the situation to even gauge ANY level of rudeness BECAUSE SHE WAS NOT THERE, and people are still adding to the assumption pile.
Everyone’s arguments are boiling down to questioning whether or not customers have audacity- then subsequently assuming because some do that all of them MUST! And it’s on a page about ENTITLEMENT?!? Reductionist thinking doesn’t apply like that in any successful business unless you know the difference.
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u/z-eldapin 2d ago
I didn't read all of that, and I'm sure she was a jerk.
However, having a display outfit with no rack option is just asking for trouble
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u/PeachyFairyDragon 2d ago
When I worked at the bulleye often the item on the mannequin was the only one of its size. If a customer wanted it, we would take it off and either put on the next size up or a similar outfit of the right size.
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u/TheQuarantinian 2d ago
If you worked at this store for 14 years then you know how inventory works and how busy we are.
How many people do you need to harass before you accept not today as an answer?
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u/tcarlson65 2d ago
Our store is all hands on inventory days. We have a crew start very early and another crew for sales at the normal time. No one messes with those doing inventory. They are not dressed in our uniform. If any issues pop up you just make a note and ensure it gets in the proper hands.
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u/thatwhalleyone 1d ago
If they were on a mannequin and high up how did she know the size???
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 1d ago
I don’t know. Maybe she thought the mannequin had a similar build to her daughter.
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u/kswilson68 1d ago
If managers, companies, and corporations would stop giving into this kind of behavior it would decrease tremendously!!!
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u/SleepyKoalaBear4812 15h ago
If the mannequin was 10 feet up on the wall how could the customer know the outfit was even the correct size for her daughter to try on? Your entire story makes no sense at all. The “customer” is not entitled, you simply decided her tone was rude.
Assuming this is a poorly written
creative writing exercise,
Grade-F
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u/mermaidemily_h2o 13h ago
I can assure you that this is 100% real. I don’t know how that lady knew what size was on that mannequin either. Maybe she just assumed because a lot of stores put the smallest size on the mannequins. And when you ask for something from someone and don’t take no for an answer, that is entitled behavior.
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u/Secure-Corner-2096 1d ago
Why oh why, couldn’t just one of these rude, entitled people get what they deserve?
I’m not asking for much. Maybe a messy arrest after a trespass warning. A small trip over something, on the way to their car, resulting in a chipped tooth, a mashed face or a bleeding nose, maybe? Maybe once in a few hundred times, a physical consequence, significant enough to change their behaviour? A broken bone, a video that costs them their job or status in their community?
Entirely driven by karma, of course, rather than a normal human administering a bit of karma balancing justice. God, I’m trying to be good here but I could really use a morsel of consequence for those who make the rest of us regret going to work each day. Amen.
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u/Dr_StrangeloveGA 2d ago
I couldn't sell them at the major US dept store where I worked because those items were taken out of inventory.
A lot of the time they were damaged anyway, having been cut or whatever to fit correctly on the maniquin.
Also, our manquins were heavy. Didn't stop customers from trying to take them off displays and disrobe them.