This is the most difficult time of the year for retailers and retail workers. I speak from direct experience, having been in the retail trenches for several Christmas seasons, and knowing how impossible the customers, the craziness, and the business can be. I have a lot of patience and understanding when it comes to standing behind the cash register and ringing people out. People are awful, so I try to be the person who is kind and patient when trying to get out of the store with my purchase.
On the hunt at Ulta for some perfume for a gift, I ended up not finding anything (all the Tom Ford stock was gone from the floor, and no one was available to answer questions on whether there was more in the back) so I settled for some nail polish as a consolation prize. I had arrived at Ulta early to avoid the crowd, and by the time I got to the register with the nail polish the store had only been open about fifteen minutes. Surely not enough time to frazzle the cashier, but there she was, telling me to input my phone number and not taking kindly to my response. I said I didn’t have an account (I step into Ulta maybe twice a year tops) and didn’t want to open one. I asked what the sale price on the polish was and she sighed, looked annoyed, and said she couldn’t scan it without me entering my phone number.
In my head, and from my retail days, I didn’t think that’s how it worked.
“You can’t scan it to get the price?” I asked.
“Not if you don’t enter your phone number,” and she brusquely moved off to the other register.
“Retail is so different now from when I worked in it!” I said with a passive-aggressive laugh because I wasn’t having the attitude or the mood or the pressure to enter my phone number.
She scanned it at another register mumbling that the scanner on the floor was broken, then returned to my register to ring me out.
“Just so you know,” she began with the slightest snootiness to her tone (believe me, I know snooty), “we don’t call you if you enter your phone number. I just want you to know that.”
“And yet I get a dozen calls a day from telemarketers who just happen to have my number somehow, so I’m not giving it out to anyone else.”
I did not mirror her tone, because it would be too easy.
Besides, I needed a fresh blog post, and the unhelpful staff at Ulta Beauty provided this one, so all’s well that ends well. (And I probably won’t be going back to that store anytime ever.)
PS – After I posted this story on social media, Ulta reached out and did the usual public apology then DM’d me asking if I wanted the store to get in touch with me. All they needed was… wait for it… my phone number. And people say irony is dead.
