Going to Hell over a Cabbage Patch Kid

Let me first just say that I don't approve of being rude to those in the service industry, they get paid jack, little to no benefits and their work is thankless. Having said that I too have worked in the industry and I always hated customers, period. It's like the driver/pedestrian dilemma, if you are driving all pedestrians are thoughtless and think they own the road, if you are a pedestrian then all drivers are impatient and maniacs.

Back to our story. I have been looking for a Cabbage Patch Kid with red hair for Jane for Xmas for the last few weeks, I have been to a few stores with no success. I was in Target last Tuesday and asked one of the roaming sales associates if they had anymore dolls anywhere. The answer came back as yes but they were up on the risers and not to be rifled through. I'm sorry what?? So she went on the explain that her manager told the sales staff that they can not get any dolls down off the risers because it wouldn't be fair to other customers. Okay, again, what???

It's not like the dolls that were out of reach were a special price or were being released on a special day. There is even a sign on the top shelf that says if you need help with anything on that shelf to get an employees help. I told her that it didn't make any sense and that I did understand that it wasn't her fault as it was the stores policy. So I left thinking that Target is super lame but maybe they were saving the stupid dolls for Black Friday or something, whatever.

So Saturday I happened to be at Target again looking for maternity clothes and went to see if there were any dolls left over from Fridays bedlam (I didn't go out on Friday so that can't be confirmed). There were no red head little dolls until I saw some on the risers again. So I paged an employee and sure enough it was no-helpy-mc-helperson for the other day. She started on the same spiel as last time and I told her that was ridiculous and I wanted to see her manager. The protest came back that her manager is the one who told her that they are not allowed to get them down.

Blah blah blah her manager comes over and basically tells me that they can't get them down without checking in back first and then if they didn't have any then a person from the back would get them down for me. Nice, okay so couldn't helpy-mc-helperson have explained that one to me? That one is still a mystery. So the manager made it sound like getting something off the top shelf would be akin to Def-Con 4, keys would have to simultaneously be turned for this feat.

She ended up paging a back room dude to help me who was more than helpful and made it clear that he had nothing better to do then to help me find the right doll.

So what have I learned, not much other then Target hides most of their nice employees in the back room or behind a counter and I'm glad I don't work in retail so I don't have to deal with customers like me.