Twisted and funny

[amesman]

If you have any funny stories to tell about an expierience at Ames, tell about it here! :)

I remembrer this one tiem, this drunk guy was in the store, and he was yelling at an employee, then he got mad, and pulled a display case down..lol. Soda all over the place..lol :bouncing::insane:

[C. Fontaine]

Here's a classic from the old forum.  Buying super glue from Ames, then gluing the plunger to the wall and the toilet seat down in the guys bathroom.

[C. Fontaine]

Also, filling the coin slots in the payphones with mayonnaise, Bruger King green appple dipping sauce, etc... from the neighboring supermarket.  Checking up on how many finger smudges were on the phone days later and imagining the people going for their change and then thinking "Oh gross!," and then watching the Verizon guys clean it up.  And finally, before they closed, super gluing the slot shut.

[amesman]

Dude, these are awesome stories!! What else did you guys do? lol

[aireona]

:o i would sit inside the clothing racks, and scare people half to death, i wouldnt say anything , just give them a look like what? lol

[Caldor1999]

lol i deamped tha i walked into a Ames store and evrye one stoped and looked at me and the Walk Like A Egypition song comes on  and they all start doing the dace around the whole store:insane: LOL

[amesman]

I remember someone from the old forum sating that this guy at an Ames store, stuck their crap filled pants up in the ceiling tiles of the bathroom..haha.

[Caldor1999]

the last time i went to ames ther was a old guy smoking pot out side the store dont ask how i know what it was i'll just tell u i have dose stupied things in the past:yup:

[Joeyb]

While I was a Merchandise Analyst at the Home Office, I once changed the dimensions of 3 pc braided rugs so that they would go through the conveyors at the DC.  I needed to get them to the stores quickly and going non-conveyable would have taken forever!  As they put them on the belts, a bunch of boxes broke open and fell all over the floor!

[amesman]

I remember another time when I was a little kid, I wanted a Star Wars toy, so I took the one I wanted, and the whole display came down to the floor. This fat guy was like: "Hey! Get over here!!", and I ran away..haha. He was chasing after me, but I hid in the clothing racks. He never found me..haha

[dayville81]

When Ames in Middletown, CT was being liquidated and half the store was sectioned off with caution tape, people kept taring down the tape to go over to see if there was any merchandise over there. People would unscrew caps of rubbing alcohol and tip it and it would go all over the shelf and floor. People would unscrew bleach and dump it on the floor. People would take merchandise out of the boxes and throw them to the floor. People would bust the ornaments against the floor. It was crazy

[R2-Bacca]

Playing floor buffer pad frisbee in the stockroom all day on Labor Day...we all remember how busy it was that day..

[d_fife]

in the toys r us in albany ny, this guy told me I look like jerry lewis.,

[Anonymous]

:exorcist:
At the New Paltz, NY store, I was a P/T worker & student.  I would hang out by back doors, where the merchandise was boxed up.  Whenever the hydraulic box crusher was operating [great noise blanket], we would fire a pellet gun.  I would wait for an elderly customer to pass by one those big ugly $19.99 lamps, and you guessed it.   The shock, and then the denial process by the old guy to managers, was like inhaling 15 whip-its in a row.   Those were the days!  Circa 1990-1991

[powersbt]

Originally posted by R2-Bacca
Playing floor buffer pad frisbee in the stockroom all day on Labor Day...we all remember how busy it was that day..

Did you give yourself enough time to setup and play a game of Full court Basketball back there too??

Sounds like it compares right up there with MartCart Races on Christmas Eve!!

[powersbt]

Originally posted by d_fife
in the toys r us in albany ny, this guy told me I look like jerry lewis.,

Was that a Good Thing or a Bad Thing??

[shadokp]

At our store in Southampton we received a large box from another store that was full of a hundred different items.  3 bottles of shampoo, 2 tubes of toothpaste, 10 packs of razors, etc. etc.  It took us hours to go through the whole thing.  The guy stuck going through it all stuck his hand in and when he lifted it back out, it was covered with shampoo.  

Later that week we had to transfer some products to the store that sent us that box and so we threw in garbage, an empty roll of packing tape, empty candy wrappers, etc.

KP

[shadokp]

We had a coin pick up for the vending machines out front and apparently the store manager and one other person needed to witness as the pick up guy took the money.  Anyhow I was witness and the guy put the money in a bag, told us he would go get our reciept and got into his van and took off.  The manager and I just stood there staring.  The manager then said "I think we just got ripped off!!"

KP

[shadokp]

Some other short little tales.

I was puching a handtruck packed full of stuff and couldn't see anything in front of me.  I slowly pushed through the doors out into the store and hit something.  It felt like a bump so I backed up slightly again and pushed harder, still nothing.  I looked around and saw a kid just standing there looking at me, not sure what to do.

One of the loudest noises ever heard at my Ames was when I put a chair up onto a shelf and knocked over almost the entire line of furniture on the other side of the aisle.  thankfully no one was around.

One of our assist managers was fired because he brought in a gun to show some people.

A shoplifter broke free from our security and jumped through the open window of a moving car (i didn't see this one).

Even after telling people we did not have something in stock they would insist I go out back to look.  I would go back there and do nothing or talk to some girls for a few girls and go back out and tell them I couldn;t find anything.  One time I did this I went back to the stock room and saw a box of the items they were looking for.

One day I went to work and 5 people had been fired because one person stole some trivial pusuits and gave them to fellow employees stating that he had extras.  All of those people were fired of course.

I have plenty of shoplifter and customer stories if anyone is interested.

KP

[nostalgio]

  I must confess...this may have little to do with Ames, because the Ames local to where I grew up was formerly a Zayre department store. If memory serves, I know for certain that the color scheme for Zayre was orange. When Ames bought the store, (late 70s - early 80s) the colors used were orange/brown (yech). Employee uniforms were these cheap bright orange vests worn over whatever regular clothes the employee wore. But on to the story...

My friends and I came across one of these vests. It was bright, like a safety vest, and stuck out like a sore thumb. Being young lads, we were in the habit of daring each other to do all kinds of stupid things, one of which was who dared climb higher on a local radio station's transmission antenna tower. To prove that someone "outdid" another's climb, we tied this vest to a C.B. radio magnetic antenna base and the climber would affix the Zayre/Ames flag higher up the totem pole, as it were.

It wasn't long before the climbable apex was achieved, so others proving their mettle would merely relocate the flag to another side of the tower. But that Zayre/Ames flag sure flew high for a long, long time, though from the ground it just looked like an orange rag caught at the top of the tower.

Like I said, a threadbare tie to Ames itself, but a fun memory nonetheless.

[C. Fontaine]

My friend and I we're pranksters back in the day, when it came to Ames. Hehe.  Years ago we used to take those little white Sensormatic strips off of stuff in the Electronics and throw them down the hollow framing on shopping carts, so like every other shopper set off the alarm!

[DoubleC83]

Those electronic strips were the best.  We would put them in our fellow associates vests or pocket books so the alarm would go off, it eventually caught on though and they got me back for it.

I remember working one day with a couple buddies and I placed a "Kick Me" sign on the back of his vest.  Now it may seem childish but we got so many laughs from customers for that...def a blast!

[AmesNewington1]

I truly miss simple little Ames! I remember how my store was always remodeled and they would change the department locations constantly until about 1998/99 and they kept the "A+" design until they closed. I will never forget taking an Ames cart and walking around the whole store millions of times in one shopping trip. My mom would go shop on her own and I'd go on my own just looking. It would be like a "small city". Each department was a store (I had and still have a wild imagination). I also remember running up and down the aisles.

I also remember how the Electronics department had the alarm and once you entered the department with your cart you  had to pay there. By the last few years, I always would sneak in to the next department which was next to the entrance that had seasonal items and food. It worked!

When my store closed, I went there on the last day (10/19/02), and basically all that was left was laid out near the registers. The rest of the store was empty and blocked off. I was so upset. I snuck around to the back of the store to look at everything for the last time, and when I got back my mom told me someone was yelling at me to come back to the front of the store because there was "nothing to see" in the back. I didn't care about that. I didn't regret going back there.

From what I remember from the last day, ammonia or bleach was spilled on the floor in the middle of the store, no music was playing (hadn't played since the GOB sale began), people were laughing, which I thought didn't fit the occassion, and the credit card terminals on the registers were starting to come apart. I remember the cashier saying "Don't worry about that, we're closing anyway". I was holding back from crying the whole time, which was hard. When I walked out of the store, I looked through the window and then just broke down. (Honestly). I was miserable for the rest of the day. Hey, people like what they like and I liked Ames. It was hard to say goodbye to a childhood memory. I miss Ames and all the other great old stores, but I have learned to accept it. Unfortuneatly, I have walked through too many "closing" stores and have watched the inventory go from fully stocked to completely empty.

No exactly a funny story, but the memories are.;)

[patk]

heres mine
the day of the GOB announcent me and my mom were driving and the radio DJ was saying that ames is closing all stores. wen i herd that my arm hare was stading up (im not jokeing) then we went right to ames. :(

[DoubleC83]

I remember Christmas Eve 2001 at Ames.  For some reason they scheduled all part time stock boys(which I'm sure was the case in other stores).  Not a whole lot of people came in, so we set up a race in the stock room which included jumping over the U-boats, climbing up shelves that went from housewares to the shoe dept.  We would run to the shoe dept. shelves down the stairs and the first one down would be the winner.  Every time a couple of us were in there that day we would  run it.   A buddy of mine worked there who wore nice clothes was in the race climbed up the shelves and ripped his shirt and got very upset about it.  I'm sure I have some others stories...get back to you soon...

[beachgal26]

This is not a new story, but here goes.  When I lived in Kissimmee, FL in the mid-80's I worked for a small security company that had the local Ames as one of their clients.  Imagine my surprise when I came into work one day to find that one of the guards who was supposed to be watching the loading area was really watching as some of his friends were loading new TV's, etc. into the backs of their cars!  Needless to say, the guard was thrown (literally) out the front door and we lost the account.

:insane:

[DoubleC83]

I was very good friends with a young lady that worked at our Ames store back in 2002.  It was about 6 months before closing and we were working the night shift, I was on stock and she was at the service desk.  Her name was called to report to the office a little before closing that night and I remember her looking at me with a sort of scared look.  Next thing I knew she was taken into a police car outside and they drove away.  That was the last night I spoke to her.

The store manager called me in and told me what happened because she knew how close we were.  Apparently she had purchased some items with her credit card and put the money back on her card without actually returning the merchandise.  It was pretty shocking to me and it hurt for a while to know what she did.

A funny part of the story is when they had her on camera returning merchandise under someone else's name, they were also checking to see if I assisted her by distracting the employee while she was logged in.  They found out however, that in the midst of this I was pushing the hanger rack to the stock room with the electronic shopping cart.  They got a good laugh out of it and took me out of the possibility of the theft.

[TRJ22487]

I never worked at an Ames, was just a freshmen in high school when the chain went under, but one thing that always makes me laugh when thinking back on Ames were the generic WWF shirts in the late 90's I always used to flip through in the boys department. I don't know who Ames was getting these WWF shirts from, but they were always really 3rd party type shirts, nothing you'd actually see sold on the WWF website or anything like that. One time in the West Lebanon store I found an actual fake leather vest just like the kind Stone Cold Steve Austin used to wear. It made my dad literally laugh just to think someone might buy it. I remember it being pretty expensive like $35-$40


When I was a little kid back in 1991-1993 I put a Rolo candy bar into my pocket at the Springfield, Vermont location unaware that was a wrong thing to do (I really remembering just not wanting to carry it around, and as a little kid figured it was no problem to just use my pocket)

Well I forgot about it and walked out the store with it, then went to the Sunoco back in Chester so my mom could get something done to her car, good ol' '91 Corsica haha. Well we're sitting there and I dig into my pockets to whip out a Rolo bar. I just remember my mom immediately flipping out because obviously somebody didn't just give it to me. She asked if I stole it at Ames and I lied and said I put it in the cart at the register

How odd 15+ years later I remember that so well and feel a tinge of guilt. It's as if it's my fault Ames went under :rolleyes:

As a kid I also liked hiding on my mom in the center of the circular clothing racks in the womens department.

Another time I lost this stuffed koala I used to carry with me everywhere, and it turned up at the front of the store and I remember it being announced over innercom

I also have plenty of semi-repressed early 90's bathroom experiences from the Springfield location.

Ohhh and the annoying beep when you'd enter and leave Electronics! I totally had forgotten about that

[Ames#1171]

Originally posted by TRJ22487
Ohhh and the annoying beep when you'd enter and leave Electronics! I totally had forgotten about that

Oh God, that drove me crazy!!  I heard that thing it seems like thousands of times every night I worked!  

That and the EAS System at the doors.  I sill remember the "speech" it gave every time it went off.  "Pardon us, please return to the nearest sales associate.  Apparently we failed to remove the inventory control tag from your purchase.  Thank You"

I miss my days at Ames!

[riickyyyspaaaaniiiish]

Does anyone have any more bangers?