By Jane Harper

Remember the customer who wouldn’t stop texting my personal cell phone? Well she texted me at 7 a.m. on my day off a couple of weeks ago. Seems she just felt the need to reach out and wake someone. Actually, she was checking on a pending special order, because, like 95 percent of customers who order things from us, she decided to stop listening when we got to the part of the transaction when I tell them specials can take up to six weeks. I got the last laugh, though. I waited until the next day when I was in, called her to update her, then politely let her know she’d been texting my personal phone and would perhaps get a timelier and more accurate response if she called the store directly. She seemed only mildly miffed, and I haven’t heard from her since, so I guess that’s good news, though I have the feeling it’s not over yet.
Since then, I’ve had several customers who just seem completely off the rails. Take, for instance, the woman who brought in a toy she’d been given as a “new puppy” gift and wanted to exchange it because she was sure her puppy would just destroy it. It was a sweet little toy, perfect for small breed puppies, and very popular among customers and gift-givers alike. And there’s no stuffing in it, so who cares if the puppy destroys it? Puppies destroy stuff – better their own toys than your shoes or furniture. But she insisted she wouldn’t have a toy that his tiny teeth could rip up, and asked for advice on something better and more durable.

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Posted on October 19, 2015

By Jane Harper

So I’ve mentioned my co-workers before. There aren’t many of us – the bosses, the old guy, the part-timer (technically, there are two part-timers, but one only works a couple of days a month), and me. There are many times I enjoy how few co-workers I have to deal with. I’m not much of a people person anyway – part of what makes me good at this job is the amount of time I get to focus on the canines. We’ve had a few other workers come and go over the years, but only one lasted longer than a couple of months. I got along really well with her, and was sad to see her move on to more lucrative things, but we’ve remained friends.
Because there are only five of us, we are very much like a family. This can be good – when someone is ill or going through hard times, we tend to comfort one another. My bosses are also my friends and advisers at times. In fact, on days I’m not working alone, I’m often asked if I’m the wife, daughter or sister of whichever colleague is there.
Like any family, though, we have some issues. Over the past year, one issue has been nagging at me, and it’s bothersome enough to warrant sharing. My significantly older co-worker, “Joe,” either brings his personal issues to work and takes them out on me or he’s got a bizarre condition that causes him to have verbally violent temper outbursts directed at me (and only me), even in front of customers.

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Posted on October 5, 2015

By Jane Harper

Three or four times a year, the schedule for the following week is released and, with no warning, we see that one morning an hour-and-a-half before the shop opens we are all scheduled for a “staff meeting.” I find the nomenclature somewhat amusing because, aside from the two owners, the staff consists of me, a guy who works two days a week at the most, and an older man who is well past retirement age and has already announced when he’ll be retiring in 2016. Staff meetings almost always occur on my day off, which means I have to drag my ass out of bed way too early to attend a meeting that is almost always exactly the same, and while I appreciate being paid for it, it doesn’t set a great tone for the remainder of the day.
Staff meetings usually cover a few main topics: Store standards, which we all know by heart, but apparently need reminders on from time to time; the outlook as we pass from one season to the next; and, my least favorite part, work attire.
Let me remind you I work in a dog supply store. It’s a boutique, yes, but it’s still a dog supply store. Pets are welcome, which means I do a lot of squatting down to scratch ears and I often come home covered in fur and drool.

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Posted on September 24, 2015

By Jane Harper

Several weeks ago, I received a call from a woman in another state. After my (required) lengthy and extraordinarily perky greeting, she said, “Hi, Jane! This is ‘Anita Perkins!'”
Who? I have a lot of regular customers and I deal with a lot of distributors and owners of other businesses, but I definitely don’t know an ‘Anita Perkins’ (not her real name).
But, being the retail pro I’ve become, I responded with a cheery, “Hi Anita! How are you? What can I help you with?”
It turns out Anita was in “my” store just after Christmas of 2014 (our absolute busiest time of the year) and purchased numerous expensive leather and Swarovski dog collars for her many expensive pure-bred dogs (all of whom happen to be a breed of which I’m not particularly fond). I have no memory of Anita, the sale we made to her, which was, I’m sure, sizable, or much of anything from around, say, October through March, when we tend to rake in the money that’s used to allow us to get by in the lean months. But, since we’re in the midst of those lean months now, a decent sale would be a great thing.

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Posted on September 1, 2015

By Jane Harper

I work in a small, high-end boutique that caters to a very specific subset of (often wealthy) customers: Pet lovers. Just for fun, we’ll call my shop “Creature Comforts,” because it truly is focused on the supreme comfort of dogs, cats, and their “parents,” and to that end, it’s not uncommon for someone to drop $800 or $1,200 on high-quality pet merchandise in one go.
But before I get into the crazy specifics that make up my days and weeks, I’d like to share a few things that should be general knowledge for every consumer in every store, whether it’s Target or Brooks Brothers, because, as a retail warrior, I hear the same stories repeated time and again, and if one more fucking person messes up 15 stacks of carefully folded t-shirts after declining help in finding a size and then doesn’t buy a goddamn thing, I just might have a nuclear meltdown.
This is not a joke.

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Posted on August 25, 2015

By Guy Essenfahr

As far as household pets on four legs go, I am a dog person. I always have been. By and large, I love dogs unless they’re yappy little creatures more suited for teacups and nestled within the carry-on bags and arms of Hollywood starlets or Mickey Rourke or Chicago Bears he-man Steve McMichael.
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with those people.
I show up on peoples’ front porches with pizza and sandwiches. It’s what I do to keep the lights on. Consequently, I often run into dog owners, and usually owners of rather large dogs. I work with other pizza-deliverin’ guys whose bane of their entire existence is dogs. Not saying I’m more enlightened or anything than they are, but I actually like the dogs I run across in my pizza-deliverin’ travels.

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Posted on February 27, 2013

By Guy Essenfahr

I don’t care what our government’s bean counters have been saying about the economy “recovering.” It isn’t, and it’s not getting any better. But this really isn’t news to people like me who have spent the past several months (or in my case, the past three years) trying to land a decent job we’re qualified for – or hell, even minimum-wage jobs we’re overqualified for.
If nothing else, the whole rotten experience has given me a vast new appreciation for our ancestors who somehow managed to make it through The Great Depression or The Dust Bowl without blowing their brains out.
But being hopeless isn’t the same as being helpless, because there is one basic-survival job that has always been available even in times of dread like this; a job that has over the past few generations provided sustenance to high school and college kids, married guys with second mortgages, and divorced guys with too much alimony and too little paycheck left over from their daytime jobs.
This is why I am Pizza Delivery Guy.

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Posted on June 15, 2012

By Jerome Haller

About two years ago, I completed the company’s job application. A human resources staffer liked what he read and asked me to stop by the store on a Saturday afternoon.
I did not keep the appointment. Instead, I called in a fake ankle injury and spent the day competing in a softball tournament. Besides, I had a temp office gig at an advertising firm and figured I could coast with that for a spell.
That was a bad assumption. A few days later, a supervisor unceremoniously canned me.
While suffering shock, I stumbled to the Harold Washington Library to search for another job. I nearly cried while thinking about my arrogance and stupidity. I logged onto a computer to peek at jobs on Craigslist, hoping for a miracle.
Someone must have prayed for me that day. A miracle did take place. Within minutes, my cell phone rang. The same staffer who liked me had called back. He asked me to stop by the store the next day. I jumped at the opportunity as though it were the last lifeboat on the Titanic.
During a brief chat in the main office, he told me the job paid minimum wage and required me to stand for eight hours on third shift. I gladly accepted. He gave me a schedule. I arrived for work two days later, meeting Pitbull, and plunged into retail security.

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Posted on July 17, 2011

A strange man started coming into the store late at night. A burly, tall guy, he wore the dirty jacket and pants of a laborer. Despite his youthful face, he usually looked quite tired. He often wandered around the store touching merchandise. That raised a red flag, so I watched him.
He also shot the breeze with the Nice Cashier. After I had seen this a few nights, I pulled her aside and asked if he made her uncomfortable. She said no. They knew each other because both lived near the store.
He continued talking with the Nice Cashier until the store fired her. Afterward, he occasionally showed up with his girlfriend and their daughter. I never greeted him because I never shook my initial impression.
A tragic event changed my view.

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Posted on July 14, 2011

By Wrigley Beer Man

People often ask me what the worst part about my job as a Wrigley Field beer vendor is. (“You mean, other than watching maddeningly mediocre baseball year in and year out?” I always want to ask.) For me, this is an easy one. It’s not lugging my product up and down the aisles like some 21st-century pack mule. It’s not even the drunk and sometimes staggeringly rude fans. Without question, it’s the hour-and-a-half I’m forced to spend before each game mindlessly waiting for the day’s assignment with my fellow grizzled and unwashed vendors.
Back in the “good old days” – I put this in quotation marks because the Old Guard is always pining for times gone by, when vendors allegedly made heaps of money without interference from The Man – we used to congregate before games on Waveland Avenue, near the day-of-game ticket windows across from the firehouse. But a few years back, the Cubs moved the vendors’ staging area to a gated, concrete slab around the corner on Clark Street, affectionately known as “The Cage.”
And that is where my fellow beer dudes and I spend a cramped and noisy couple of hours before each Cubs home game, waiting restlessly for our vending assignments and for fans to flood into the Friendly Confines. Since most vendors don’t have the time or inclination to chat during games, it’s here – in The Cage before games that we do most of our socializing.

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Posted on June 30, 2011