My first high school job was working as a Sales Associate at Ross Dress for Less. My best friend Dave also worked there. It was the best job in the entire f*cking world. Remember the movie Mannequin, where Andrew McCarthy just hangs out with a magic mannequin come-to-life in a department store all night? Well it was a lot like that, except without the magic mannequin, and the store was way crappier. The job wasn't hard, but it was really, really boring, and Dave and I would constantly have to find ways to entertain ourselves, just to keep from going crazy. Consequently, we came up with a few fun activities to get through those rough 4-hour Tuesday night shifts:
The Vending Machine Blitzkrieg
Vending machines suck. They're full of candy and snacks, but the only way you can get to them is by putting money in. At least that's what I thought before I started working at Ross. It turns out that if you get a friend to help you lay the vending machine down on its face, the candy will just fall to the front of the machine. Then, when you stand it back up again, all the candy will slide down to the bottom and you can scoop it out with ease. This is what I ate for dinner for nearly 8 months as a Ross employee: free candy. Don't be fooled by their stature, either; two high school kids can easily tip a vending machine that's not bolted down.
Christmas Clothes Diving
Like most department stores, our Ross got double or triple shipments of inventory around the holidays. At about 8pm every night, a huge semi-truck would pull up to the cargo door in the back storage room. A guy would open that truck and just start throwing piles of clothes into the store's back room, and we would have to pick up those clothes and put them on a huge table to be sorted and prepared. After the truck left, the pile of clothes on that table would be about 10 feet high, and we had to sort all of it. As high school kids, we saw this as an insurmountable task that we didn't really care about surmounting it in the first place, so we did what any apathetic kids would do: we figured out how to have fun with a 10 foot pile of clothes in a storage room. It turned out that the easiest way to do it was to climb thirty feet up on some nearby shelving and dive into the massive pile of clothes. In order to do this, we had to strategically dive through some hanging flourescent light fixtures and some weird pipes, but this added a little bit of danger to the mix, and made our acrobatic clothes-diving more fun, until we got caught by the Assistant Manager. Luckily, she was a cool stoner chick. She took one dive herself, and then told us never to do it again. She did not catch us the next time we went Clothes Diving.
Shoe Department Strategizing
I worked in the Men's Department of Ross. It was super easy. All I had to do was hang up clothes that lazy people threw on the floor, and occasionally clean some shit off the walls of the fitting room. No big deal. My friend Dave worked in the shoe department, though, and the shoe department at Ross Dress for Less is an absolute nightmare. For some reason, people can't try on a pair of shoes without just throwing shit everywhere and destroying everything within reach, and it was Dave's responsibility to clean all that shit up. At the end of the night, he had to put all the shoes back on the shelf and pair them up correctly, which was a horrific task. If Dave had an extra shoe that he couldn't find the pair for, he would get in trouble for it, but we quickly realized that if that shoe disappeared, there would be no record of a mis-matched pair of shoes at all, and everything would be fine. Consequently, our mission every night was getting rid of a few lone shoes so that Dave wouldn't get in trouble for losing its pair. Luckily, we found a storage room with some shelves that allowed us to reach a loose wall vent, and everytime we ended up with a mismatched shoe, we would just drop it down into the wall where nobody would ever find it, and nobody ever did find it...until a few years later, when they tore that Ross Dress for Less down. I drove by one day during the demolition and saw this:
So if you ever shopped at a Ross Dress for Less in Tempe, Arizona, between 1997 and 1999, there's a really good chance that I plummeted thirty feet into your clothes, dropped that other shoe you were looking for into the wall, and had to clean your shit off of the fitting room wall. I'd say we're even.
shoe pile--- the story says one shoe that had no match would be dropped down there.... all the shoes i see in that pile has a match closely by... i hate liars....
after years of tossing lone shoes, eventually you'd have to find the other and toss it as well? Unless of course theres an international org of single shoe bandits out there.
My dad represented the family of a kid who crushed his stupid ass to death while trying to tip over a vending machine. Incidentally one of his eye balls was found eight feet away next to a water fountain.
i have a hard time believing a ghetto store like Ross would have name brand chips/candy in their vending machines as pictured.
the only employers i have had that permit vending machines on site have been crammed full of stale ass disgusting borderline edible no name brand crap. still had to eat it don't get me wrong, but come on....name brand shit? at ross??
i live in mesa, arizona, but im pretty sure ive been to that ross, or what used to be that ross. awesome story, felt personal, you know? i came a little, in my pants... only a little. maybe i'll return them, they've got an awesome return policy at ross.
Gawd, we can really relate to the shoe department fiasco at Ross!We could never find shoe matches and besides, they don't carry many shoes in women's size 11 so I go to Payless. I'm cheap. Bite me.
Here's an inside information for the customers. You can return anything at Ross. All you have to say is the item is defective. For example, the straps on your shoes break off a few months later. You just go and return the shoes. Ross said they have to stand by their products.
ahaha. i work at o ross now and i've been forwarding this to all my fellow employees. even the managers are getting a kick out of it.
and we have name brand things in our vending machine so not really sure what the hell that one guy is talking about...?
our vending machine really does look exactly like the one in the picture, but im too afraid to try setting it on it's front, i'm the least cordinated person alive and i bet there's too many people out there who would not be surprised that i died by being crushed by a vending machine :)
They make you work like saves. Cutting hours and employees. Corp. has 23 Vice Presidents. They have a number of Law suits, because they treat employees very bad!
(24 Comments)
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Holy Taco Goes to the Bahamas
November 3rd, 2009 at 04:19 pm
i have nipples on my balls
November 3rd, 2009 at 04:44 pm
Sensual
November 3rd, 2009 at 04:46 pm
this ladies and gents is the ultimate "first" comment
November 4th, 2009 at 11:01 am
shoe pile--- the story says one shoe that had no match would be dropped down there.... all the shoes i see in that pile has a match closely by... i hate liars....
November 5th, 2009 at 10:13 am
after years of tossing lone shoes, eventually you'd have to find the other and toss it as well? Unless of course theres an international org of single shoe bandits out there.
November 3rd, 2009 at 05:01 pm
And with the single stroke of the enter key, he changed the game forever. Hats off to you nipple nuts... may you lactate cum and cum milk forever
November 3rd, 2009 at 05:42 pm
My dad represented the family of a kid who crushed his stupid ass to death while trying to tip over a vending machine. Incidentally one of his eye balls was found eight feet away next to a water fountain.
November 3rd, 2009 at 05:59 pm
Were there nipples on it?
November 3rd, 2009 at 06:22 pm
okay... that just made me laugh out loud. pretty loud, too.
November 3rd, 2009 at 06:15 pm
I love how you guys are obsessed with Ross, keep it coming.
November 3rd, 2009 at 06:18 pm
What the fuck, you nest of retards?
May i say, cool story bro. Serial.
November 3rd, 2009 at 07:15 pm
shoe pile photoshopped faggots
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
ur gay
November 3rd, 2009 at 07:39 pm
i have a hard time believing a ghetto store like Ross would have name brand chips/candy in their vending machines as pictured.
the only employers i have had that permit vending machines on site have been crammed full of stale ass disgusting borderline edible no name brand crap. still had to eat it don't get me wrong, but come on....name brand shit? at ross??
November 3rd, 2009 at 08:05 pm
Are you a dumbass? Do you know how vending machines work? Go kill yourself by having one fall on you.
November 4th, 2009 at 02:37 am
Ross Dress for Less........for losers
November 4th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Ah, the Edgar Allan Poe of the 21st Century strikes again.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:53 am
i live in mesa, arizona, but im pretty sure ive been to that ross, or what used to be that ross. awesome story, felt personal, you know? i came a little, in my pants... only a little. maybe i'll return them, they've got an awesome return policy at ross.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:04 am
last
November 5th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
FAIL!
December 21st, 2009 at 03:49 pm
Gawd, we can really relate to the shoe department fiasco at Ross!We could never find shoe matches and besides, they don't carry many shoes in women's size 11 so I go to Payless. I'm cheap. Bite me.
December 22nd, 2009 at 01:11 am
Here's an inside information for the customers. You can return anything at Ross. All you have to say is the item is defective. For example, the straps on your shoes break off a few months later. You just go and return the shoes. Ross said they have to stand by their products.
December 24th, 2009 at 07:18 pm
ahaha. i work at o ross now and i've been forwarding this to all my fellow employees. even the managers are getting a kick out of it.
and we have name brand things in our vending machine so not really sure what the hell that one guy is talking about...?
our vending machine really does look exactly like the one in the picture, but im too afraid to try setting it on it's front, i'm the least cordinated person alive and i bet there's too many people out there who would not be surprised that i died by being crushed by a vending machine :)
December 25th, 2009 at 09:27 am
They make you work like saves. Cutting hours and employees. Corp. has 23 Vice Presidents. They have a number of Law suits, because they treat employees very bad!
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