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Reading the number of threads on employees being asked if they work at their given stores reminded me of a similar but very strange issue I had at one of my previous jobs: strange because I got asked the question, but was then brushed off when I confirmed the customer's expectations.
To explain, during my university years I was employed by a cult merchandise outlet (okay fine, it was a comic book store). This was a grand two level 2,000 sq foot store located right in the heart of the city so we had quite a sizable number of staff on hand to run this place, including an in house security detail. My initial role was as one of the safety stewards, meaning I was to patrol the floors, man the cameras, log and check inventory and generally made sure no one caused any ruckus on our property. I also wore a different name tag and uniform to the rest of the staff.
The weird part is even though my uniform clearly stated I worked for the store, the fact that it had a big SECURITY label on the name tag apparently indicated to customers that I must know bugger all about the merchandise. Literally every time I was on the floor I'd get endless variations of the following exchange:
Customer: Excuse me, do you work here?
Me: Yes I do.
Customer:*notices my badge* Oh, you're just a guard? Never mind you can't help me. *walks away*
Me:
What makes me giggle about it in hindsight is, as stated before, my entire job was knowing what was and was not supposed to be in the store. I had to check every section of the place while on patrol, sign off on the manifest whenever we got a delivery and do a closing check every night. Double plus I'm a giant nerd anyway so I was pretty intimately knowledgeable about most of what we sold to boot. If anything I probably knew more about our wares than a fair amount of my colleagues since they were generally assigned to specific sections while I had to supervise the entire store.
Anyone else ever experience this odd reversal of the normal routine?
To explain, during my university years I was employed by a cult merchandise outlet (okay fine, it was a comic book store). This was a grand two level 2,000 sq foot store located right in the heart of the city so we had quite a sizable number of staff on hand to run this place, including an in house security detail. My initial role was as one of the safety stewards, meaning I was to patrol the floors, man the cameras, log and check inventory and generally made sure no one caused any ruckus on our property. I also wore a different name tag and uniform to the rest of the staff.
The weird part is even though my uniform clearly stated I worked for the store, the fact that it had a big SECURITY label on the name tag apparently indicated to customers that I must know bugger all about the merchandise. Literally every time I was on the floor I'd get endless variations of the following exchange:
Customer: Excuse me, do you work here?
Me: Yes I do.
Customer:*notices my badge* Oh, you're just a guard? Never mind you can't help me. *walks away*
Me:
What makes me giggle about it in hindsight is, as stated before, my entire job was knowing what was and was not supposed to be in the store. I had to check every section of the place while on patrol, sign off on the manifest whenever we got a delivery and do a closing check every night. Double plus I'm a giant nerd anyway so I was pretty intimately knowledgeable about most of what we sold to boot. If anything I probably knew more about our wares than a fair amount of my colleagues since they were generally assigned to specific sections while I had to supervise the entire store.
Anyone else ever experience this odd reversal of the normal routine?
or the shipping dept to track a package 
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