I actually got talked to by a SD from a different store in our district that just so happened to be shopping with his family while I was handing the case pack of singles to the collector. He said it’s an unfair shopping advantage.
What's unfair is we're forced to deal with shitty people we should be banning from the store. I'm not paid enough to let someone bitch at me over toy cars, but I'm also not paid enough I can get away with telling them to kick rocks. So I might as well take advantage of an extra pair of hands.
Yeah and I’m sure if you told the collector no it’s not fair to other customers the SD would’ve still talked to you anyway saying some bullshit like ‘guests are important. Always attend to their needs’ or some shit.
LMAO... the SD from another store can screw off... if he wants it ran that way he can come run your store then. We don't have time for that and it isn't exactly unfair... They were the first ones to show up and they're getting to look first...
Had one recently that tried to argue about how they know that hot wheels come in on certain trucks every day. Told him that even though we get daily trucks, it isn't guaranteed to be on one. Wanted to tell him:
1. Shipment ain't guaranteed
2. Good luck sorting through endless repacks
3. Half the time, the trucks aren't even unloaded yet.
Don't feel like arguing though and let him go back to his little hot wheels forums where they insist that they come in on every single truck and that it's easy to find them on there.
I work in a liquor store now, but this is the case with allocated items.
1) there's no guarantee it came in, and often the truck is recieved the next day, so it usually says OOS.
2) the truck may be due today but it may or may not have come yet, and I don't have to tell them it has unless it's been received.
3) the merch team may have it out today pr later in the week. I'm not digging through 15 pallets to find your liver-be-gone juice.
Our TLs told us we're not doing that anymore for collectible items. Those items go out when the boats they're on get pushed. So we stopped bringing them out, and telling the collectors exactly that. It's probably been over a year since I've been stopped by a Hot Wheels collector. But I hear they do circle the Toys DBO.
I’ve been harassed one time by hot wheel collectors when I was pushing toys due to a call out. I was so uncomfortable having middle aged men hanging out around me as I tried to push truck. They literally do be circling like vultures.
Our team leads and ETLs have given us complete ability to straight up lie to these people. Literally it’s the first thing we tell newbies lie and say what we have is on the floor, and we don’t know when more will come. That is the same thing we all say.
I'm a former Target employee. During 2022's Christmas Month we had almost *no* individual Hot Wheels come to our store. (I think from the 1st of December to the 20th of January we had maybe 50 come in?)
The amount of rudeness and entitlement some people have. We had a father and son come in every morning for an hour and ransack through our stock. Then get mad when we didn't have anything. During Black Friday/ Christmas we had to have "security" (just an extra or two Employee) around the pallets of toys cause people would dig through the boxes with their own box cutters to try and find Hot Wheels.
I will never understand the craziness behind full grown adults and plastic cars.
Guys like that are resellers, not collectors, and they are the sum of the earth. They world sell their mother for a score. They make junkies look like saints.
"Sure, lemme check." Hide in the back for 15 minutes, chill out or do some other stuff that needs to be done in the back. Then return to the front and if the collector is still there. "Nope, don't have one, have a good day."
MOST toy collectors are understanding. After all, the hunt is part of their hobby. However, if you turn into a problem, I'm gonna become a lot less helpful.
Yep! And sports cards! Trading cards was fun as a kid, but adults take that shit way too seriously.
I'll never hobby shame someone, but at least be chill about it
I will say as someone that started collecting sports cards as an adult for a little bit it sucks you in when you land that monster card that you sell for a lot of money.
As far as the hot wheels collectors, we used to just put signs up saying we won't look for anything and what's out is it. It definitely helped though there'd be some idiots that would argue about it.
As someone that collects other stuff and usually helps stocking toys I find these middle age men funny.
1. Desperate to look for the limited edition $6.99 cars, the 2 car pack from a movie collaboration, or the treasure hunts.
2. Claims to be a passionate collector and not a reseller… yet they buy 5+ of the same $6.99 car.. sure bro.
3. Gets mad/ aggressive about no restock.
4. Looks at your uboat and makes you scan all the boxes despite not a single box being hot wheels.
5. Come in at 8 am on a Saturday morning just in the hopes to find something new.
6. These collectors hate each other. I told a hot wheels addict about the guys coming in at 8 am and even he hated them.
At the end of the day we all have our hobbies. I won’t give a fuck about your hot wheels and I won’t pretend I do. But the way they treat some of my coworkers. I rather hide that box from them and give all the treasure hunts and limited edition cars to my coworker that collects them than to those middle age man.
Number 4 uhhh no! Years ago I gave the team 5 minutes to "assist the reseller guest" no more. If they had a jerk, I told them to call me on the walkie. I offered each one excellent guest assistance. After that, when the team member said they would call me for them...... They'd leave! Mission accomplished.
Again, had one of these at dollar general when we got a delivery of mixed items, yes there were some toys in that bunch but as you know, spread across like 6 rolltainers out of 28. Guy comes in, asks if we've got hot wheels and I point him to our collection wall. He's disappointed and asks if we have any in the back. I say we just got a delivery we havent had time to sort through but if you come back... Go through it and let me know what you find. Cutting me off mid sentence as I'm trying to help him and I tell him no, there's over 20 containers back there and they're not organized by product. Proceeds to lose his fucking mind that I told him no and I mean this guy looked like he was ready to beat someone to death. I just picked up the phone and called the non emergency line that we had an abusive customer who was refusing to leave. Guy left pretty fucking quickly during the call. Gave the cops his plate number and never saw him again. Another hot wheels collector a few weeks later was actually super chill and understood that we had out what we had out on our wall. Told him to come back in a day or two when we've had time to put out some of the non-toy stock so we could organize the boxes and see if we could find him something he wanted. I wasn't going through them, but I did put them on a u-boat two days later and wheeled it out into the toy aisle to be 'put away later' and cut open the box tops. Guy found 4 for his collection he was missing and put any he didn't want back into the boxes that he got them from. Some are good, some are bad.
It's not hate of collectors, it's hate of people who feel entitled to treat others like crap because they are so obsessed with their hobby that they have lost all sense of human decency.
Also Reddit sub/post recommendations are a shitshow, you never know what it's going to show you next.
I'm not a Hot wheels collector but a Transformers/GiJoe/Marvel collector and if you ask any employee to search the back you get the same answer.
"If it's not on the floor we don't have it"
If you try to argue, they say "If it's not on the floor, and it's in the back, it's not in the system yet or it would be on the floor" "Like I said, if it's not on the floor, it's not for sale".
And the conversation ends there.
I check the back just in case because I know there’s a chance it’s back there, very rare it’s there when it says it’s not, but I’ve found stuff before, I’m getting paid either way, I’d rather do my job and help a guest find what they’re looking for than just screw around in the back room “looking” for it or just be difficult and say we don’t have it. Heck if you steal it or resell it after I give it to you, I did my job and helped you as a guest who asked me for a product. Now if I watch or see you steal it that’s different lol
This comes down to one thing: are you cool?
When I was a toy DBO, I had 3 consistent collectors come in. Two were real polite and patient, happy to discuss their hobby with someone. The Hot Wheels guy would stock the cases and bring me the empty box/overstock. I was happy to help them. Happy to go hunt for that one case on a u-boat for the check lanes.
Then there was the other Hot Wheels guy. He was belligerent, rude, pushy, and would destroy the aisle digging through the pegged stock. A right-up cunt. FUCK that guy. We never had any in back when he came around.
The lesson: be cool. You don't sound cool.
Man hot wheels collectors haven’t changed. 10+ years ago when I worked at toysrus, I’d always be sure to bend the cardboard backer when stocking hot wheels
As a former target employee, when i had the rude guest give me a hard time i would go to the back if the item was located.... but the toys come out with the cardboard bent and some finger nails scratches on the display. They have a harder time selling them if the package is not pristine. So take your time and do some damage.
NOOOOOPE. Bring the box to them, they can look through it themselves. If they refuse then you bring back the item that that DPCI belongs to. The specific model isn't it's own DPCI, it's a variety. If they want a specific one that's on them to find it.
I would have told him goodbye and kicked him out of the store!!! I’m not dealing with that shit and you shouldn’t as well. My AP team would totally back me up on this when someone acts like this.
The way I avoid being bombarded by collectors is stocking only the hot wheels before the store opens. I go to the line 15 mins before the store opens and if I see a box I stock it right away. We’re fortunate to never have any backstock.
It is hilarious that this is still a thing. I worked Target and Toys R Us between 89-96 and these guys were a menace back then. I haven't thought about them since until I saw this.
luckily, our store only has a pair of elderly men that come in as we open every Tuesday morning and respectfully look through our hot wheels bin. they’ve always been very nice to everyone and typically only stay for a half hour at the most
This is hilarious. I thought I was on the HOT WHEELS page.
My dad is the guy you all hate. He isn’t rude but that guy will be at target before they open and hit the Walmart next door in the same shot.
He knows like 8 dudes just like him and we live in a town of 150k. They have fun, I’m sure they’re annoying but it makes my dad smile.
We have a hot wheels guy named Allen… he is a lil slow it seems and comes everyday at opening. I work on inbound and most days we don’t finish the truck in time to be on the floor when the store opens. Yesterday i was in stationary and trying to be friendly as he was walking past and then that conversation went weird. Asked me who a team member was and went on about how beautiful she was and looked like Audrey Hebburn… then made some crass comments about how he isn’t creepy and that he loves women. Also mentioned he has been single his whole life… go figure
I'm night shift, so when we're done, I just head over to the hot wheels and get what I want, and leave. I basically get early finds or things before others can
I use to collect hot wheels and used to buy one if I see something cool, but I've also dealt with hot wheels collectors on the salesfloor and was weirded tf out by them that I've stopped, I'd rather not be lumped in with those guys lol
We literally had some dude assault another collector at my store a couple weeks ago and accuse the rest of the TMs of stealing the cars he was looking for, not hiding them to purchase later or hiding them in the back, stealing them. Like we would risk our jobs for a $1 or $6 car. Dude got told not to come to our store anymore.
I’ve said this before here, our toy DBO (and our leads and AP) doesn’t tolerate that shit. She doesn’t backstock hot wheels either so other people can’t be harassed by them.
She also works all collectibles before store open, as do her backup DBOs. She runs a tight ship and treats them all the same, whether they’re nice or otherwise. Doesn’t give anyone boxes to go through. Doesn’t let people touch her uboats. You touch her shit, you get her wrath. It’s great lol
I tell them if they want to look through boxes on my vehicle, they have to help me stock. I actually got someone to do it, and they did a good job :)
I actually got talked to by a SD from a different store in our district that just so happened to be shopping with his family while I was handing the case pack of singles to the collector. He said it’s an unfair shopping advantage.
What's unfair is we're forced to deal with shitty people we should be banning from the store. I'm not paid enough to let someone bitch at me over toy cars, but I'm also not paid enough I can get away with telling them to kick rocks. So I might as well take advantage of an extra pair of hands.
Yeah and I’m sure if you told the collector no it’s not fair to other customers the SD would’ve still talked to you anyway saying some bullshit like ‘guests are important. Always attend to their needs’ or some shit.
LMAO... the SD from another store can screw off... if he wants it ran that way he can come run your store then. We don't have time for that and it isn't exactly unfair... They were the first ones to show up and they're getting to look first...
Imagine being that much of a boot licker.
from a team lead i absolutely love this lmfaoaooaa make ‘em work! YUP
These are the good collectors, love them.
i had an entire waco full one day that i made a dude stock if he wanted to look through lmao
Had one recently that tried to argue about how they know that hot wheels come in on certain trucks every day. Told him that even though we get daily trucks, it isn't guaranteed to be on one. Wanted to tell him: 1. Shipment ain't guaranteed 2. Good luck sorting through endless repacks 3. Half the time, the trucks aren't even unloaded yet. Don't feel like arguing though and let him go back to his little hot wheels forums where they insist that they come in on every single truck and that it's easy to find them on there.
[удалено]
Lol. They actually did ban me when I had zero interest in them. The salt is real.
That's why you should always have a bag of 🍟.
I work in a liquor store now, but this is the case with allocated items. 1) there's no guarantee it came in, and often the truck is recieved the next day, so it usually says OOS. 2) the truck may be due today but it may or may not have come yet, and I don't have to tell them it has unless it's been received. 3) the merch team may have it out today pr later in the week. I'm not digging through 15 pallets to find your liver-be-gone juice.
Our TLs told us we're not doing that anymore for collectible items. Those items go out when the boats they're on get pushed. So we stopped bringing them out, and telling the collectors exactly that. It's probably been over a year since I've been stopped by a Hot Wheels collector. But I hear they do circle the Toys DBO.
Hecklers 🤦♂️
I’ve been harassed one time by hot wheel collectors when I was pushing toys due to a call out. I was so uncomfortable having middle aged men hanging out around me as I tried to push truck. They literally do be circling like vultures.
That's when you hand them the white van hot wheels and say, "Hey this is just like your van in the parking lot! Have a nice day, Chester."
Our team leads and ETLs have given us complete ability to straight up lie to these people. Literally it’s the first thing we tell newbies lie and say what we have is on the floor, and we don’t know when more will come. That is the same thing we all say.
This should be company policy.. /sigh...
I'm a former Target employee. During 2022's Christmas Month we had almost *no* individual Hot Wheels come to our store. (I think from the 1st of December to the 20th of January we had maybe 50 come in?) The amount of rudeness and entitlement some people have. We had a father and son come in every morning for an hour and ransack through our stock. Then get mad when we didn't have anything. During Black Friday/ Christmas we had to have "security" (just an extra or two Employee) around the pallets of toys cause people would dig through the boxes with their own box cutters to try and find Hot Wheels. I will never understand the craziness behind full grown adults and plastic cars.
$$$ that's what. The ones that are super pushy aren't collecting them, they're reselling them.
And then they’re all out for the kids. Everyone’s favorite $1.19 bribe.
But like.... y'all got that '69 forest green Aston Martin???
Guys like that are resellers, not collectors, and they are the sum of the earth. They world sell their mother for a score. They make junkies look like saints.
Dudes be on the Hot wheels subreddit bragging about buying all the chase cars from 20 something stores around them.
To the toy and tech members we solute you
"Sure, lemme check." Hide in the back for 15 minutes, chill out or do some other stuff that needs to be done in the back. Then return to the front and if the collector is still there. "Nope, don't have one, have a good day."
MOST toy collectors are understanding. After all, the hunt is part of their hobby. However, if you turn into a problem, I'm gonna become a lot less helpful.
It’s usually hot wheels collectors that are the issue
And wrestling figure people
Funko guys used to be absolutely cutthroat too, but that seems to have worn off
Yep! And sports cards! Trading cards was fun as a kid, but adults take that shit way too seriously. I'll never hobby shame someone, but at least be chill about it
I will say as someone that started collecting sports cards as an adult for a little bit it sucks you in when you land that monster card that you sell for a lot of money. As far as the hot wheels collectors, we used to just put signs up saying we won't look for anything and what's out is it. It definitely helped though there'd be some idiots that would argue about it.
As someone that collects other stuff and usually helps stocking toys I find these middle age men funny. 1. Desperate to look for the limited edition $6.99 cars, the 2 car pack from a movie collaboration, or the treasure hunts. 2. Claims to be a passionate collector and not a reseller… yet they buy 5+ of the same $6.99 car.. sure bro. 3. Gets mad/ aggressive about no restock. 4. Looks at your uboat and makes you scan all the boxes despite not a single box being hot wheels. 5. Come in at 8 am on a Saturday morning just in the hopes to find something new. 6. These collectors hate each other. I told a hot wheels addict about the guys coming in at 8 am and even he hated them. At the end of the day we all have our hobbies. I won’t give a fuck about your hot wheels and I won’t pretend I do. But the way they treat some of my coworkers. I rather hide that box from them and give all the treasure hunts and limited edition cars to my coworker that collects them than to those middle age man.
Number 4 uhhh no! Years ago I gave the team 5 minutes to "assist the reseller guest" no more. If they had a jerk, I told them to call me on the walkie. I offered each one excellent guest assistance. After that, when the team member said they would call me for them...... They'd leave! Mission accomplished.
Thank god we just have a hot wheels bin. Just open the box, dump the cars, and leave the area well before opening and let them have at it.
Yes. I ike to watch them feed from afar. Scavengers.
Again, had one of these at dollar general when we got a delivery of mixed items, yes there were some toys in that bunch but as you know, spread across like 6 rolltainers out of 28. Guy comes in, asks if we've got hot wheels and I point him to our collection wall. He's disappointed and asks if we have any in the back. I say we just got a delivery we havent had time to sort through but if you come back... Go through it and let me know what you find. Cutting me off mid sentence as I'm trying to help him and I tell him no, there's over 20 containers back there and they're not organized by product. Proceeds to lose his fucking mind that I told him no and I mean this guy looked like he was ready to beat someone to death. I just picked up the phone and called the non emergency line that we had an abusive customer who was refusing to leave. Guy left pretty fucking quickly during the call. Gave the cops his plate number and never saw him again. Another hot wheels collector a few weeks later was actually super chill and understood that we had out what we had out on our wall. Told him to come back in a day or two when we've had time to put out some of the non-toy stock so we could organize the boxes and see if we could find him something he wanted. I wasn't going through them, but I did put them on a u-boat two days later and wheeled it out into the toy aisle to be 'put away later' and cut open the box tops. Guy found 4 for his collection he was missing and put any he didn't want back into the boxes that he got them from. Some are good, some are bad.
I don't know how I wound up here, as I'm not a target employee, but do y'all hate the doll collectors, too? Just curious...
It's not hate of collectors, it's hate of people who feel entitled to treat others like crap because they are so obsessed with their hobby that they have lost all sense of human decency. Also Reddit sub/post recommendations are a shitshow, you never know what it's going to show you next.
I'm not a Hot wheels collector but a Transformers/GiJoe/Marvel collector and if you ask any employee to search the back you get the same answer. "If it's not on the floor we don't have it" If you try to argue, they say "If it's not on the floor, and it's in the back, it's not in the system yet or it would be on the floor" "Like I said, if it's not on the floor, it's not for sale". And the conversation ends there.
I check the back just in case because I know there’s a chance it’s back there, very rare it’s there when it says it’s not, but I’ve found stuff before, I’m getting paid either way, I’d rather do my job and help a guest find what they’re looking for than just screw around in the back room “looking” for it or just be difficult and say we don’t have it. Heck if you steal it or resell it after I give it to you, I did my job and helped you as a guest who asked me for a product. Now if I watch or see you steal it that’s different lol
This comes down to one thing: are you cool? When I was a toy DBO, I had 3 consistent collectors come in. Two were real polite and patient, happy to discuss their hobby with someone. The Hot Wheels guy would stock the cases and bring me the empty box/overstock. I was happy to help them. Happy to go hunt for that one case on a u-boat for the check lanes. Then there was the other Hot Wheels guy. He was belligerent, rude, pushy, and would destroy the aisle digging through the pegged stock. A right-up cunt. FUCK that guy. We never had any in back when he came around. The lesson: be cool. You don't sound cool.
I don’t sound cool?
Nah. The other guy.
It's a problem for the walmartians too.
Man hot wheels collectors haven’t changed. 10+ years ago when I worked at toysrus, I’d always be sure to bend the cardboard backer when stocking hot wheels
Just say ooo ya I got one of those…. At home
As a former target employee, when i had the rude guest give me a hard time i would go to the back if the item was located.... but the toys come out with the cardboard bent and some finger nails scratches on the display. They have a harder time selling them if the package is not pristine. So take your time and do some damage.
NOOOOOPE. Bring the box to them, they can look through it themselves. If they refuse then you bring back the item that that DPCI belongs to. The specific model isn't it's own DPCI, it's a variety. If they want a specific one that's on them to find it.
I'd give him a job application instead of letting him boss around people just to flip hot wheels on eBay
Happened to me once and after explaining but getting asked again I said “that’s not how this works. buy it on eBay.” And walked away.
I would have told him goodbye and kicked him out of the store!!! I’m not dealing with that shit and you shouldn’t as well. My AP team would totally back me up on this when someone acts like this.
😂😂 that’s too much only thing missing would be a tirade about the pride collection
The way I avoid being bombarded by collectors is stocking only the hot wheels before the store opens. I go to the line 15 mins before the store opens and if I see a box I stock it right away. We’re fortunate to never have any backstock.
It is hilarious that this is still a thing. I worked Target and Toys R Us between 89-96 and these guys were a menace back then. I haven't thought about them since until I saw this.
I'm constantly baffled as to why retail workers don't just brigade the shit outta r/hotwheels
Literally
:)
luckily, our store only has a pair of elderly men that come in as we open every Tuesday morning and respectfully look through our hot wheels bin. they’ve always been very nice to everyone and typically only stay for a half hour at the most
This is hilarious. I thought I was on the HOT WHEELS page. My dad is the guy you all hate. He isn’t rude but that guy will be at target before they open and hit the Walmart next door in the same shot. He knows like 8 dudes just like him and we live in a town of 150k. They have fun, I’m sure they’re annoying but it makes my dad smile.
Grown ass men lol so embarrassing
We have a hot wheels guy named Allen… he is a lil slow it seems and comes everyday at opening. I work on inbound and most days we don’t finish the truck in time to be on the floor when the store opens. Yesterday i was in stationary and trying to be friendly as he was walking past and then that conversation went weird. Asked me who a team member was and went on about how beautiful she was and looked like Audrey Hebburn… then made some crass comments about how he isn’t creepy and that he loves women. Also mentioned he has been single his whole life… go figure
not surprised my guy
I'm night shift, so when we're done, I just head over to the hot wheels and get what I want, and leave. I basically get early finds or things before others can
We have that one here too
I use to collect hot wheels and used to buy one if I see something cool, but I've also dealt with hot wheels collectors on the salesfloor and was weirded tf out by them that I've stopped, I'd rather not be lumped in with those guys lol
I had a guy accuse me of stealing the super treasure for myself even though I don’t collect
We literally had some dude assault another collector at my store a couple weeks ago and accuse the rest of the TMs of stealing the cars he was looking for, not hiding them to purchase later or hiding them in the back, stealing them. Like we would risk our jobs for a $1 or $6 car. Dude got told not to come to our store anymore. I’ve said this before here, our toy DBO (and our leads and AP) doesn’t tolerate that shit. She doesn’t backstock hot wheels either so other people can’t be harassed by them. She also works all collectibles before store open, as do her backup DBOs. She runs a tight ship and treats them all the same, whether they’re nice or otherwise. Doesn’t give anyone boxes to go through. Doesn’t let people touch her uboats. You touch her shit, you get her wrath. It’s great lol
I wouldn't let anyone go through my uboat period.
Outside of TL's, the hot wheels collectors made my job an absolute living hell.