Got Quads?

It’s not uncommon for parents of multiples, especially moms who primarily stay home, to get a part-time gig in retail. I know several twin and triplet moms who do this either seasonally or year-round. I’m no exception. I work three days a week at a national retail chain, so I’m going bring you this public service message: Please think twice before you yell at a retail worker. I’ve got to tell you it’s very hard to deal with frustrated customers during a season of joy.

I get how stressful the holidays can be, but please keep in mind that most of the workers you encounter during your shopping are there because they want to make an honest buck. I work roughly 20 hours a week and need a flexible job, one that I can do while devoting myself to being a mom of quadruplets. I’m doing what I have to in order to pay my bills.

But in reality, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re yelling at a mom of quadruplets or someone who’s not a mom at all. Your attitude can set the tone for the rest of our day. I try not to take my job home with me, that’s one of the reasons I chose retail. I go in, I work my rear off and then I come home to my family. At the end of the day, though, it can be hard to put work behind us if we’ve encountered an unnecessarily rude customer.

Take a good look at the workers you come across. We are mothers, fathers, grandparents, students, someone’s child. We are there serving you and trying to help you finish your holiday shopping. The company I work for wants us to essentially bend over backwards to make you, the consumer, happy. That’s not a bad sales-tactic. We want you to enjoy our store and to enjoy shopping there. I like being able to assist a customer and help him or her leave the store happy. But you have to know there are some things that are out of our control. Just the other day I watched a customer chew out a visibly pregnant 18-year-old co-worker over a computer malfunction at the register. This poor girl had no control over the issue and the woman yelled and screamed until my co-worker burst into tears. Unacceptable.

Some rules of thumb: if you are in a hurry and it’s Saturday perhaps you should put your shopping off until another day when the lines won’t be as long. We value your time and work as fast as we can to get the lines moving, but if people have a large purchase we can only work so fast. If an employee smiles and says hi, please say hi back, don’t ignore us. We don’t want to pester you, we just want you to know that we’re there to help you. Most department stores will ask you to bring out the clothes that you’ve tried on in the fitting room. If you don’t feel that’s something you should do then please please please don’t put the clothes on the hanger inside out because you think it’s funny. I would much rather pick up a huge pile of clothes off the floor. Finally, if you have a problem, either with the store or an employee, let us know in a polite manner. We are truly there to help you, but it’s a lot easier to do when we’re treated with respect… the same respect you expect and deserve from us.

Don’t get me wrong: the majority of people I encounter on a daily basis are pleasant and I would hope they would say the same thing about me. So when you’re shopping this holiday season or any time of year and something goes wrong take a quick minute to ask yourself whether the person standing in front of you is the person who should take the brunt of your anger.

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