What We Call You

If you are a regular shopper at certain stores, you have a name. Besides your regular one, this is one created by the employees of your preferred store. Every retail outlet has its regulars, and employee turnover in retail is notorious. So even regular customer's names get lost in the shuffle.

It begins when someone spots you and needs to tell another employee something they have observed about you. Gossip goes on every where, a sales floor is no exception, we are often petty, sarcastic, politically incorrect, and in need of diversion from the mundane. Conversations and the names that emerge aren't meant to be cruel just accurate. One I remember went something like this:

"Did you see those three girls again, you know the ones with the dark hair."

"Which ones?"

"You know the ones who weekend here because of the free childcare."

"I don't think I know who you are talking about..."

"You know the young ones, they take all the teen magazines and spend hours pouring over them back in Kids"

"I don't think I've ever seen them."

"I know you've seen them, two are extremely pretty and they all dress like hookers."

"Oh, I know who you mean!"

Thus was born "The Three Little Hookers" they came to the store for over 5 years and were often identified by their collective name.

We try to learn and remember names as we chat with regular customers, but are at a distinct disadvantage. We wear name tags and folks can quickly check those and remember who WE are but I have yet to have a customer come in properly labeled. And after you have chatted with someone for months you reach a point where it seems too late for introductions. Even when a customer orders something and you actually get to type their name into a computer, you forget, because you have done this same data entry for 40 other folks that same day and all the names begin to blend.

So we have Crazy Asian Lady, The Math Guy, The Cafe Doctors, Mr. Beatles, Smoke, The Woman with Two First Names, and The Guy Who Does Laps just to name a few. Even the security guys get dubbed something as they are undercover which make introductions to employees on the sales floor hard to accomplish . We had Lurch, Muscle Man, and Mr. Useless, until we finally exchanged names. So this is just fair warning watch what you do at your regular haunts, and remember you are creating a name for yourself.