I worked in the computer department of an electronics retailer. Next to that department, separated by a tall shelving section, was the home appliances department. Computers typically had three staff members working at a time; Appliances only had one.

One afternoon, my Appliances coworker had a project that kept him away from his department (new product training videos, I think), but we knew where to find him if a customer needed help.

A woman approached me while I was restocking the networking aisle.

Customer: “Excuse me, I need help with your washing machines.”

Me: “Sure thing. Let me go get [Coworker], our Appliances specialist.”

Customer: “No, you can help me.”

Me: “Well, if you know exactly what you want, I can get it for you, but if you have questions, [Coworker] will be much more helpful than I will.”

Customer: “Just come with me.”

She leads me to the washing machines.

Customer: “I need to know which washing machine to get. What do you recommend?”

Me: “I recommend getting [Coworker]. My area of expertise is over there. If you were picking out a new computer or printer, I’d give you all the information you need and more, but here, I’m truly useless.”

Customer: “Ugh, I don’t know why you’re making this so difficult. Just… Just tell me the difference between these two washing machines.”

Me: “Okay.” *Looks at the machines.* “Well, this one has three knobs, and that one has four.”

Customer: *Blinks.* “You really have NO knowledge about this stuff, do you?”

Me: “I know how to use the one I have at home. How about I go get the Appliances specialist who can give you proper answers?”

Customer: “Yes. Do that.”

I am the author of this story. Earlier on at that job, shortly after being hired, I was at home on a Saturday afternoon watching the big college football rivalry game between Utah and BYU. It’s around the end of the first quarter, and Utah has already scored five touchdowns with extra points, all on turnovers. BYU is still scoreless.

For those of you not familiar with American football, probably the majority of GAMES don’t have that many touchdowns by one team, let alone single quarters. In other words, this is looking like a football snuff film.

Without warning, I get a call from my boss asking if I can help with an urgent ticket for a client who previously banned the current on-call tech. As a contract-to-hire employee hoping to score brownie points, I reluctantly agree.

The client is a tech retail store in downtown Salt Lake. Apparently, they had a power outage the night before, and two of their ad display kiosks weren’t working. I pack up my things, drive twenty minutes downtown, spend probably another twenty minutes or so finding parking and walking to the store, and introduce myself to the store employees.

The kiosks are nothing more than a couple of 55″ TVs with HP mini towers hooked up to them, and apparently running some specialized ad display software I’m not familiar with. It’s not clear to me where the towers are located, so I ask them to show me; they’re behind a panel next to the TVs.

I go to the first TV, reach behind it, push the “Input” button a few times, and Et voilà! The first kiosk comes right back up. I go over to the second one, reboot it, and sure enough, it also comes back up.

By the time I get back to my car, finish all my paperwork, and drive home, the game is over. Utah didn’t score at all after the first quarter, and BYU managed to score four touchdowns, bringing them nail-bitingly close to tying the game and forcing overtime. And I missed the whole thing because the employees at a TECH RETAILER didn’t think to reboot a PC or toggle the input button on a TV.

I’d like to say things got better from there, but next year, while actually on-call, I got pulled away from the game again, this time to reboot a PIN pad. It may have even been another store owned by the same client, but I don’t remember for sure.

Between the burnout, laughably low pay, and a boss and team lead so toxic that I miss the customers from that job more than I miss them, I left around a year and a half into the job, after already becoming the company’s most senior tech in Salt Lake.

I don’t miss that place.

The retail electronics store where I worked was having a problem with “shrink,” and management wasn’t sure if it was customers or employees doing the shoplifting.

One of the middle managers, let’s call him Sam, came up with a plan to stop the problem. He checked our security camera system and found several blind spots. He bought bright orange duct tape and made X marks on the floor with it in those blind spots. He told the sales teams that, if we were not actively assisting a customer, we should find an orange X to stand on. We could greet customers from there, but we could only leave those spots to assist a customer or to move to another X. That way, we’d always have someone monitoring the areas where there was a high risk of shoplifting activity.

No one but Sam liked this idea. The other managers agreed to it only because the general manager said it would be worth a try. All the employees complained that our other work would be neglected, but Sam insisted that this is what we needed to do.

For about three weeks, Sam would patrol the store whenever he was on shift, and he would scold anyone who was not helping a customer and hadn’t found an X to stand on.

Customers gave us funny looks. Some who didn’t need help wouldn’t shop in the areas near the orange X marks because it was weird to have an employee posted there like a soldier on guard. I have no idea if this reduced our shrink rate (I never saw the numbers), but Sam said his plan was working. Our merchandising team found their workload had increased because the rest of us couldn’t help them, and dust and dirt started to accumulate on the shelves.

I got a stern talking-to twice when I dared to do some cleaning in my department instead of planting myself on an orange X, and Sam threatened me with a disciplinary write-up if it happened again.

The next day, I clocked in to find that we had only one customer, and my coworker was already busy helping them. I found an orange X to stand on. Sam was not on shift yet but would be later that day. Another middle manager, Ron, came by.

Ron: “What have you got going on today?”

Me: “No customers at the moment, so I’m standing on my X.”

Ron: “You know you don’t have to stand there ALL the time, right?”

Me: “Sam said that if there are no customers to help, we need to be standing on an X.”

Ron: “There are a couple of crates of stock you could put away.”

Me: “I’ll have to leave that for the stock crew. I was told to stand on my X.”

Ron: “How about you go put away that stock and wipe the dust off the lower shelves. I’ll tell Sam that I gave you permission to leave the X.”

Me: “Nope.”

Ron: “Why not?”

Me: “Your shift ends in an hour. Sam’s shift starts right at the same time. What if you don’t have a chance to give him this information before you leave? I don’t want to risk that write-up if Sam comes around and catches me working on something he doesn’t know you told me to do. The crates will have to wait for the stock crew. Sorry.”

Ron gave me a suspicious look, nodded, and left.

That afternoon, I had helped one customer (it was a very slow business day), but I immediately went back to the X, which is where Sam found me every time he came by.

Two days later, I was on shift with Sam again. The stock crates were still there, untouched. Already in kind of a sour mood because of university-related stress, I stood on an X.

Sam: “Hey, could you put away the stuff in those crates?”

Me: “No. I need to stand on this X.”

Sam: “The stock crew is too busy. I need you to take care of those crates.”

Me: “No.”

Sam: “No?”

Me: “You have threatened me with disciplinary action if I leave this X for anything other than helping customers. There are no customers at the moment, so I need to stand on this X. Or I could move to another X, if you want me to. But my wife is currently unemployed, and I can’t afford to do anything that puts my employment at risk. As I’m sure you know, a write-up has the potential to lead to dismissal.”

Sam asked a coworker to unpack the crates, but he gave Sam essentially the same response I did. The next time I came to work, all the orange tape was gone. Sam never said another word to me about it.

This story reminded me of one of my own.

It was about a week before Christmas. I’m used to snowfall, and am usually prepared for doing some shoveling and scraping to get my car free in the mornings. Except this morning, I had parked by the curb the night before because I was visiting my mom, who lived nearby.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem, even with the foot-and-a-half fall we’d had that night, except apparently the snowplow decided to come along the not-so-busy road rather early that day, and basically buried my poor car in at least three feet of very hard plow-packed snow.

I grabbed my shovel and went to work, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a fast or easy job, so I texted my manager that I would be a little late that morning, complete with a picture of the snow burial.

The combination of freezing temperatures and the plow pushing and packing the snow meant my tires were trapped in essentially ice blocks, and there were small icebergs on either end blocking me in.

I’d been struggling for about twenty minutes and had barely made a dent in the mess when another plow came by. This was not an official plow, but a personal pickup truck that someone had rigged a full-size plow onto for ease of winter driving. He pulled up close and shooed me away from the vehicle and then did some very careful maneuvering of his giant plow, getting as close to my car as possible on all sides.

Luckily, there was nobody in front of or behind me, so he had the room. He did several short little passes, each time coming closer to my car to try and get as much snow as possible. Then he got out and used the shovel to break up the chunks of ice left near my tires and push them aside as well.

Once he was sure I was free, he hopped back on his plow and continued on his merry way. Probably took him maybe ten minutes where it would have taken me at least about forty-five minutes or more to get out. My manager was pleasantly surprised I made it and just as pleased by the helpful stranger as I was.

Related:
Mister Plow Is Canadian?!

I’m taking a commuter train to a rock concert in downtown Salt Lake. Just before I board, I see an email from Discover Card saying my replacement credit card was on its way because it has been reported lost/stolen.

I think, “That’s strange, I don’t remember doing that. Is this a phishing email?”

But then I look in my wallet, and sure enough, my card is gone. I call Discover, and as it turns out, it fell out of my wallet when I tapped the fare payment card against the reader. I didn’t see it happen, but someone found it at the station. Rather than go out on a spending spree (because no one EVER checks ID or signature here), they called it in and reported it.

There are still plenty of good people in this world. They just don’t make very many headlines.