Author Topic: How's your shopping Karma?  (Read 3427 times)

Offline MisterPL

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How's your shopping Karma?
« on: September 9, 2003, 10:23 PM »
Going on toy runs as often as we do, I'm sure we all share similar experiences and run into the same kinds of situations. From finding a decent parking space to struggling with customer service, being a mass market consumer can be trying.

Still, I do my best to be nice. I return carts to the store on the way in, or put them in the "corral" when I'm done. Sometimes I'll even do it for a complete stranger, especially if they're elderly or preoccupied with a small child.

I tidy up the pegs and shelves from time to time, picking up after the last motherless band of kids who weren't taught any better or adults who think it's someone else's job to clean up their mess.

I help other shoppers pick toys, whether I'm directing them to the right aisle or offering advice on what to buy.

I'm friendly to the cashiers whether they like it or not. Most do, the rest are indifferent, but not once have I ever gotten chastised for smiling or using the name on an employee's tag when I bid them a good day.

Over the last few weeks, desperately searching for 2003 Star Wars product, I've had plenty of opportunity to finger someone in the parking lot for driving against traffic or speeding through pedestrian crosswalks. There are always the stereotypical idiot shoppers, a cigarette in one hand, the cell phone in the other as the SUV magically drives itself. Then there are the people who are too lazy to push a cart to the corral 5 feet away, and their counterparts who will walk past carts left in parking spaces on their way into a store and gripe to customer service that there aren't any inside.

Collecting has its challenges, but shopping takes the cake. EVERYBODY shops, especially around the holidays. Freaks who spends 11 and a half months in a van down by the river come out of the woodwork, their lack of shopping etiquette painfully apparent. I'm always running into people who simply should not shop, period. They don't have the patience, the personality, even the aroma to be in a retail environment longer than a minute. It's clear that they hate the very idea of shopping and seem determined to make everyone's experience as miserable as their own.

I give those people the most smiles, almost to the point of laughing right at them. Fish out of water.

I have to say though that despite these little hurdles, my shopping Karma is pretty good. In fact I've got a surplus of it, not just from my actions but from my inactions:

- I didn't honk my horn at the guy in the van driving on the wrong side at a snail's pace.

- I didn't flip off that soccer mom behind me who seemed insistant that turning left on red was perfectly acceptable.

- I didn't make rude comments to the apathetic cashier who was obviously destined for a career as a hairstyle model more than retail management.

Yup. My shopping Karma is lookin' good. How's yours?
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Offline DrunkJedi

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #1 on: September 9, 2003, 11:02 PM »
I'm polite to store employees and I do sometimes hang figs back up on the toys.

I am the opposite when it comes to driving. I have a wicked sense of road rage even when I'm in the passenger seat (flip people off, punched someone in the head when they tried to run us off the road). Although I think being a Twisted Metal fan since #1 helped that.

Offline Ben

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2003, 02:33 AM »
I typically ignore store employees except for cashiers, who I have to at least say hello to. I get the feeling that some employees hate collectors, but after seeing a feeding frenzy of Hot Wheels a couple weeks back, I honestly can't blame them.

I'm cutting down on hunting, because soon the Christmas season starts, and I really hate hunting then with all the accusory stares from the folks MisterPL mentioned.  Strange folk they are...

I'll take an elderly person's cart to the corral. I'd hate to see them get hit by some jackass on his/her cell phone.
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Offline Karma

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2003, 03:46 PM »
My shopping is just fine, thanks for asking!  ;D
-Karma

Offline Nicklab

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2003, 06:13 PM »
Today, it really paid off!  I had a great toy run, and I was pleasant as can be with all the store employees I came across.
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Offline jadesfire

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2003, 06:38 PM »
I'm always polite but when I actually FIND something, I can put Mary Poppins to shame with my "I-love-the-world" attitude. ;D :D ;)

As for returning shopping carts to the corral, I ALWAYS do.  My father lost his leg and hobbled on a cane to put away a cart one day when I had taken him to the store (he was a stubborn Croatian ;)) and after watching him I swore to myself I would never leave one in someone else's way again.  

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Offline SiteC

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2003, 06:44 PM »
At Wal*Mart and the mall I have to excuse myself through: mothers with 3-6 kids who seem to not have a sense of direction and run into you, old women commandeering shopping carts, of which, have hit me twice in my rounds over the years, rude employees who give me glares when I, a 19 year old man, ask when the latest shipment of toys come in, have older people staring at me in line with a "wtf are you buying a toy for?? look, I have in the past had parents tell me to get out of the toy isle and stop buying 'kids toys', I once battled a mother at TRU over a Jurassic Park figure (she SNATCHED IT out of my shopping cart!!), and of course have been disgusted when I find nothing but pegwarmers.

But I weather through it.

I usually put  figures back on the pegs when I find them laying around, because I figure if i can hang all that i can find up it will show that they NEED TO ORDER them.  I hate messy toy isles and do my best to keep 'my' areas nice...SW pegs are abused so.  I hate going into a store and all the figures are flopped off the pegs and laying all around the shelf below.  I also hate parents that casually toss things back into the shelf that their kids grab.  

I dont know about all of you, but one thing I absolutly loathe at retail is open air packages....you know..."try me" boxes.  We have all seen them before...I dunno about you but I DO NOT like the unwashed hands of the masses fingering potential product I want to buy.  That doesnt just apply to toys, it applies to everything, but toys are the big bad when it comes to that.  If something I am buying is in OA packages I go to the top shelf for it.  No way am I buying something that some little kid touched after he picked his nose, and another came along who just  sucked his hands, and another who is just dirty in general.  Ick.  OA Boxes need to die.  Thank god most SW stuff doesnt have them.

The Holidays, I avoid stores if possible.  entering stores after Nov. 20th is asking for death.  Also, it seems people are more fiesty and want to beat you to death for toys around this time...

oy, what a rant.

Perhaps more later.




Offline JediMAC

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #7 on: September 12, 2003, 07:36 PM »
Hmm...  I think my shopping karma should be fairly decent.  Nothing great though, but nothing bad.  I'm usually all business from the moment I enter the parking lot, to the moment I (hopefully) go through the checkout...  But I'm pleasant to the employees and fellow shoppers that I occasionally cross paths with during my galavanting through the many nearby Targets.

I suppose I can still get a little feisty with morons in the parking lots on occasion still, but I'm usually too hell bent on securing a swift and ideal parking spot for my hasty entrance into the store, to bother mouthing off and honking at the bad drivers, like I usually do.  Being in such a rush, I usually don't mess around with the dirty shopping carts either.  'Cause after all, even though it's never actually happened in the last 8 years, I'm just sure that one of these days someone will beat me to something great in the SW aisle by a matter of mere seconds, on an item that is never to see the light of retail again!  Pause for a shopping cart or old lady, and I'm going to miss out, and be forced to pay $200 on eBay for those figures, I'm sure of it!   :P

I rarely ever encounter anyone in the toy aisles, especially in front of the SW stuff.  Can't even recall the last time I saw a fellow SW collector at a store...  But as you probably recall from this thread, I almost always clean, organize, and most of all consolidate the SW section.  But I'm not sure if that brings me good toy karma (as you suggest John), or bad...  Might possibly be bad, 'cause I'm in a constant state of battle with the Target toy stockers and employees, who always (daily) try to spread out their 16 or so remaining SW figures across all 10 of the SW figure pegs.  Then I come along every other day, and consolidate them all onto just 2 or 3 pegs so they can see how many empty pegs are there that they should be filling up with NEW Saga product for me and the locals!   8)

So I'm sure my consolidating habits tend to irritate the Target workers more than anything.  If that diminishes my toy karma, so be it.  At least they can see that they're wasting perfectly available and very valuable retail space!

I'm usually friendly to the cashiers, and try to lighten up their otherwise dull and monotonous jobs with a little witty banter during checkout.  That is until they either carelessly drop my figure(s) onto the floor, or throw them forcefully into the bag, thus ruining any possibility of said figure(s) making it into my carded collection...   >:(  At which point I'll sternly, though politely, suggest they please handle my merchandise a little more carefully.

Pretty sure I've got some good SW trading karma though, with my fellow collectors and friends around the boards.  So hopefully that'll pay off some day when I really need it...   ;)

Online Jeff

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #8 on: October 26, 2005, 03:44 PM »
I had some great "shopping karma" today.

I did my duty to improve US-Canada relations by picking up a set of #57-63 for a Canuck, and karma rewarded me with finding Holo Emperor at the local TRU.

Thanks, Karma!   :)

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Offline Nathan

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #9 on: October 26, 2005, 04:00 PM »
I'm usually friendly to the cashiers, and try to lighten up their otherwise dull and monotonous jobs with a little witty banter during checkout.

Same here. Even more so than during normal shopping, when I'm toy hunting (or EU book hunting for that matter) I try to be extra-specially nice to the employees and cashiers. I want to counteract possible stereotypes of collector-scalpers and show them that not all of us are total maladjusted freaks. And when I ask them to do something "special" like pull something from the back, I make sure to thank them profusely afterward.

Just doing my part to help the collective image of the community. :)
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Offline Victor_Von_Doom

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2005, 04:06 PM »
I try to help people as well. Life is too short to get mad at trivial things.

My karma is going pretty good  ;D I believe (in a way) everything that goes around comes around, and I try to stick to the golden rule. For instance, I have been helping a newbie on Rebelscum. It turns out he lives in my hometown, and saved a Gree for me. If I had just got angry with him or refused to help, I wouldn't have that Gree.  8)
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Offline Ook

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2005, 07:23 PM »
I've had great luck lately, and some good shopping karma. A couple months back, I won $20 on a lottery scratcher. My winning number was 13 and ALL the numbers on the ticket were 13, with each prize being 2 bucks.

Then I got 500th Vader for $7.99 because somebody left the "1" out of "$17.99".

I found the only 3 shock troopers at Walmart, when they were still new. I took my "lucky ticket" with me that day. :D I had gotten the guy at 7-11 to grab it out of the trash for me. I always carry it when I hunt figs, now.

I found the Gree wave as soon as it was out.

And most recently, I found the last wave as soon as they hit. I grabbed 2 Tac Ops off the pegs and when I found a third, I handed it to another collector. I only wanted 2, but after opening them I decided to get several more. Next time I went for them, this other guy handed me one that he was going to buy. :)

I used to be the guy complaining about never finding anything, so this is a nice turn of events for me.

Offline Ben

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2005, 11:06 PM »
I had some great "shopping karma" today.

I did my duty to improve US-Canada relations by picking up a set of #57-63 for a Canuck, and karma rewarded me with finding Holo Emperor at the local TRU.

Thanks, Karma!   :)

"Do good things and good things will happen to you." - Earl



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Offline Jesse James

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #13 on: October 27, 2005, 02:41 AM »
Good thread to bump... 

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Offline Ben

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Re: How's your shopping Karma?
« Reply #14 on: October 27, 2005, 02:51 AM »
I saw a MisterPL at the Art Asylum forums a while back. He's a mod there.
don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk