So Much For Supporting Your Staff…

I used to work at the front desk of a furniture store that was not the best. It was a single family-owned shop and not good for my mental health. In my defense, at the time of this interaction, I’d been working for like two and a half weeks straight without my days off because my manager, the owner’s wife, kept having random “emergencies” that would require me to be in since no one else in the history of the store could do anything. She’d usually show up eventually, but I’d still have to stay because she might decide to leave again.

Before anyone says anything about Washington State, while technically they weren’t required to give us two days off, they were required to pay overtime, give us meal breaks, etc., and the store did not. Honestly, if I’d been a little older and wiser, I could have had a lovely Labor & Industries settlement when I left, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, at the time of this particular interaction, my brain was about two steps away from completely fried which is the only reason I can think of for why this was so hard.

We were running a tax-free sale, and one of the salesmen brought his customer up to the counter.

Salesman: “Hey, [My Name], this is [Customer], and here’s his order.”

He walked the customer and me through the invoice again so that the customer could hear what they were ordering one more time.

Salesman: “And I know we’ve got the sale going, but I didn’t include any of that on here.”

Me: “No worries. I’ll get it taken care of. Thanks.”

I sat down and put the invoice in.

Me: “Okay, your total is [a lot lower than it should be]. Um, hang on.”

I tried to do the math again, and it was still coming up wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out. I realized later that I was getting the tax and subtracting that from his total, so rather than just giving him his total without adding tax, the total was [Total] minus [Tax], which was not correct. But again, my brain was not firing, and I couldn’t figure it out.

I’d done the math about five times, and my manager had actually decided to grace us with her presence that day, so she came up to the counter.

Manager: “Can I help?”

Me: “I can’t get his total right.”

Manager: “Let me take a look.”

She put everything into the calculator and came up with the correct numbers. The customer had included delivery and a couple of other things, so his total was a little higher than the price of the furniture but still less than it would have been with tax.

Manager: “Here’s your total: [correct total].”

Customer: *Only half-joking* “Oh, man. I liked her math a lot better.”

Manager: “Yeah, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. With this tax-free sale, your total is [total].”

She ended up giving him an extra 5% discount because I “didn’t know what I was doing”, and then I got a lecture about how I needed to pay attention because she couldn’t be giving out discounts to customers all the time. Never mind the fact that I’d been there for more than a year at that point, and I’d never had an issue like that; it was still my fault that she’d decided to give that customer a discount.

I had to suffer another six months after that interaction, but I finally was able to break free and I never went back.