GTFO my business, bitch: Godawful Customers

Penguin wrote:

I KNOW IT MUST SUCK TO SIT BEHIND A CASH REGISTER FOR EIGHT HOURS WITH LUNCH AND SMOKE BREAKS

LOL, where do you live? Usually I get a 30 minute break for an eight hour shift and that's it.

LOL YOU GET BREAKS

YEAH WELL YOUR PATELLA DOESN'T RANDOMLY POP OUT ON THE RUNWAY.

SO.....THERE? ...I got nuthin.

theweirdkind wrote:

Black Friday Retardation

My Black Friday experiences could be summed up as "Store is Magnet For People Who Don't Know How Black Friday Works."

The last one I worked, our hot items were a $100 laptop and a $200 30 inch HDTV (the latter of which was an absolutely shitty product and blatantly a Black Friday special because a distributor somewhere couldn't pay people to take them; we didn't even normally stock TVs of any kind.)

We had five and ten of each, respectively, and they went to the first fifteen people in line when the doors opened at 4am. Twelve hours later, we were still getting phone calls and people in the store asking us to get them the cheap laptop or TV. Many of us were threatened with violence for not having them at five in the afternoon, although that went to the employees of the nearby Walmart that year.

Ok, so this is not nearly as bad as some of the stories I have, but it still irked me plenty tonight.

There's a huge basketball tourney in town, and we happen to have a few rooms left, all second floor. One room called, complained about the heat, at 2.30 AM. I apologized profusely, and offered to either get her some blankets or move her rooms. I hate doing that, but there's no freaking maintenance at 2.30 in the morning. She was like, "Noo... I grabbed the blankets from the other bed, and they aren't doing any good." So, I reoffer to move her rooms, and she's like, where is it. I tell her the second floor. She's like, "Well, can someone move my stuff."

To put this a bit more into perspective, it's one of the busiest weekends of the year. We do have security, but they are currently dealing with a passed out kid and some vomit and other icky stuff. The phone is ringing off the hook, so there's no way I can help her, and the bar just shut down, so it's like... mainstream traffic here.

I apologize (again) but say unfortunately, we are a bit busy at the moment, which I hate saying, but I'd rather say that than give some BS about "Oh, it'll be five minutes" and an hour later it gets done. I would have gone on to say that we could help her move when we became available (ie, kid was arrested, puke cleaned, etc etc), but I felt that would be a complete lie because... well, I have no idea when we would be free to help. In years gone by, I'd be busy all night. I felt bad, but jeez...there was not really a lot I could do.

She hangs up on me. I'm like, "Oh, whatev" and start waiting on another customer. A half hour goes by and she strides in. I again interrupt here to say that it says on her res. "MUST BE GROUND FLOOR", so I assume she was handicapped. This lady who threw the keys at me was not. I'm all like O.O and she says, "I'm checking out of this god damn place because I'm FREEZING TO DEATH and I'm going to DRIVE TWO HUNDRED MILES HOME just to get out of this GOD DAMN PLACE." And she strides out.

So, of course, I'm bewildered until I check the keys and they are to this lady's room. Then I'm all like, "WTF did she need help moving if she can walk just fucking fine?" She was fat, but hey, so am I, and I can move washers and dryers around without much of a problem. Big fucking whoop with some luggage.

I think the thing that burns me is that she came down for this special event, which everyone knows is horribly busy. She expected us to drop everything to help her move to a non-existent first floor during the busiest weekend of the year... when she wasn't even paying for the room. That's right. It was a free fucking room.

Alhazred wrote:

theweirdkind wrote:

Black Friday Retardation

My Black Friday experiences could be summed up as "Store is Magnet For People Who Don't Know How Black Friday Works."

The last one I worked, our hot items were a $100 laptop and a $200 30 inch HDTV (the latter of which was an absolutely shitty product and blatantly a Black Friday special because a distributor somewhere couldn't pay people to take them; we didn't even normally stock TVs of any kind.)

We had five and ten of each, respectively, and they went to the first fifteen people in line when the doors opened at 4am. Twelve hours later, we were still getting phone calls and people in the store asking us to get them the cheap laptop or TV. Many of us were threatened with violence for not having them at five in the afternoon, although that went to the employees of the nearby Walmart that year.

We are still getting calls about the iPad. We had about fifty iPads, one day last month (it happened to be the one Thursday I had off), for about five minutes. That's it. We advertised "Limited supplies, one-time-only event, limited to store stock," you name it. And still, a month later, they keep asking when we're getting more in.
I didn't even know we had them (because, like I said, I was off that day) until I answered a call the next day asking about iPads. I asked, and was told that we had them for five minutes, they're gone, and we won't be getting more.
I didn't even ask how much they were. Wouldn't have mattered, anyway, as employees weren't allowed to buy them.

I stopped at a roadside strawberry stand today. From the customer in line ahead of me:

Customer: Why didn't you bring me some strawberries when I honked?
Seller: You were parked in the right turn lane.
Customer: There's no other place to park.
Me: There's a mostly empty parking lot across the street.
Customer: You can't expect people to walk that far!
Me: I did.
Customer: (grabs strawberries, stomps off in a huff, spilling several berries in the mud)
Seller: I wish could sell common sense along with strawberries.

Is it some new trend to use a retail store's cash drawer as your personal ATM, and then act all huffy when they don't have quite as much as you demand? That's been happening a lot lately. It's bad for business to say, 'Hey lady, I don't have $100 to give you because my money just got collected; if I try to cobble it together for you I'm going to come up short and have to pay for it out of my own pocket,'--so I can't say that. It sucks.

So much ranting... please indulge me.

If you buy a prepaid phone from another store, WE DON'T REFUND IT. That store purchased the stock, not us. Yes it says "such-and-such company", but that doesn't necessarily mean it's our phone. We can send it away for repairs, but outrightly just giving you money out of our own pockets? I will give you the o__o face and think you lack both common sense and knowledge of simple economics.

When it comes to repairs, we can only send phones away if we can replicate the problem. If we're not able to replicate it, I can't send it away. It could have simply been a passing glitch, the user pressing the wrong buttons, or the person may just possibly be trying to scam a new phone out of the company. Regardless, if I can't find a problem and send it away and they can't find it either, it wastes their time and mine.

And for that matter, if we do need to send your phone away for repairs and want a loan phone in return, that'll be $50 for the bond. It doesn't matter if you're a business customer with 20 phones, or even an employee of the store, it's just something we have to do. It doesn't matter if you promise to return it, that $50 also covers anything that may happen to the phone whilst in your care. If you lose the charger, or you accidentally drop the phone - that means we get to keep part of your money in order to fix it back up because goodness knows you're not the only one who's going to be using this thing. If we didn't keep that money, you'd simply fling it back at us in any condition and run away. Oh, and also... delete all your porn off the phone before you hand it back. I think I've learnt more about human anatomy working in this job than anywhere else.

Sheba wrote:

Is it some new trend to use a retail store's cash drawer as your personal ATM, and then act all huffy when they don't have quite as much as you demand? That's been happening a lot lately. It's bad for business to say, 'Hey lady, I don't have $100 to give you because my money just got collected; if I try to cobble it together for you I'm going to come up short and have to pay for it out of my own pocket,'--so I can't say that. It sucks.

Huh... I never see that here. Weird. I only ever see people withdraw from either supermarkets or the main fast food places.

Years ago, before i was born, my dad worked at KFC. They did not take checks. Whenever somebody would ask if they took checks, Dad would tell them

Quote :

We have an agreement with the bank. We don't take checks and they don't sell chicken.

Then there's the tiime my uncle was working at Jack in the Box. It was a Friday night and the drive-thru stayed open late for the after football crowd. And back then there wasn't much open late, even on weekends. And the football games were very popular. Only thing to do in town on a Friday night.
So he's working the drive-thru and it is busy. Cars backed up into the street busy. And some damn fool decides he can't wait and climbs in the window and eats all the french fries. And my poor uncle, who was just a teenager at the time, can't cook anymore. There are no more fries. So he has to tell car after car of hungry people they can't have fries.

If you are a parent of a small child, and that small child says they need to go to the potty, once you are in line to check out, do you:

A] Ask the child if they can hold it, and hope they can.
B] Take the child to the restroom and leave the cart near the restrooms.
C] Ask the cashier to hold your things so you can take the kid to the bathroom.
D] Tell the cashier, "My kid needs to pee," and do absolutely nothing else.

In the event that you have chosen A or D, and your child pisses all over themselves and the floor, do you:

A] Help clean it up, because it's only polite.
B] Not help clean it, but are extremely apologetic.
C] Dash madly out of the store, because it's soooo embarrassing.
D] Scream at the cashier, then throw something at her head, because this is HER FAULT.

We had a customer last night who picked D both times. It's good she had shit for aim. She threw one of the really thick lollipops so hard that when it hit the register, it shattered. My fellow cashier was the one with something thrown; I had to clean up the pee.

It says something about working retail, when you think, "Oh, yey! It's just pee!"

The same night, we had Butterfly Lady. We did not have butterflies that were brightly colored enough for her. She flipped the fuck out, and also nearly cried.

And then a woman who had a cartload of stuff for a Bible School project, which she changed her mind on, right on closing. Stuff that all has to be put up before we can go home.

Oh. My. Fucking. God. I had this customer today, who reminded me of absolutely everything I hate about retail. I wanted to punch this dickwad so hard.

We have a little sign at the beginning of the cue saying 'Please wait here for the next available cashier.' Our registers are all along the wall, with a single cue, so we don't have 5-6 separate lines. It keeps things moving more smoothly, when people are able to figure out how to follow a simple fucking sign. This guy? Couldn't. He walks past my register to another register. His friend is still down near mine and tells the lady behind him to go ahead, since he, like me, apparently thought that Dickwad was going to wait at register 2.

No sooner than I have scanned one of the woman's items, dude runs back, and scans his item himself, going, "I'M NOT LETTING ANYONE LINE HOP." Me, the woman, and Dickwad's friend all look at him like he has lost his goddamned mind. His friend points out that he TOLD HER to go. Dickwad is ever so slightly apologetic. I finish her order, then Dickwad and Friend start their order. At first it's ok, till we get time for him to use a coupon. He does not understand how coupons work. Namely, you have to bring the fucking thing with you. He keeps telling me to just give him one, and is saying shit like, "Don't tell me you don't have a coupon every week. Just give me one." Um. No.

He gets ultra-bitchy, finally pulls up a coupon on his phone, but it 1] does not start till next week and 2] is for a very specific item, which is not the one he is buying. He starts going on about how he should go to our store in , and asks if we have one there. I don't know if he's talking to me or his friend, so I answer, "Yes, we do have one there. But they do have the same requirements."

He tells me, "Shut up. I wasn't even talking to you." When I give him his change back, placing it neatly in his hand, he flips out to his friend, "DID YOU SEE THAT SHE THREW MY MONEY AT ME."

If I had a second job? I'd have probably gotten fired on the spot for going off on him. As it is, I was swallowing frogs. fjdak;laslfkdjfjdkl;a

Ah, the wonders of retail. Some people are just determined to get pissed off, whatever it takes.

My daily life could easily pad this thread. Sometimes, I hate work so much.

However, today it was a slew of Japanese tourists, with the tour guide only barely knowing English, DEMANDING I open the breakfast early, just for them. It wouldn't have been so bad except that the littered coffee cups and sugar packet wrappers all over the lobby, and would interrupt me while I was helping other customers just to demand the breakfast be opened.

I've been back at work 2 weeks, and I already had enough cranks call for an amusing youtube video:

Quote :

"Hello housing department."

"You're refusing the offer of a house we've made? Why's that, then?"

"Because it's in a Council Estate?"

"Well where do you expect the Council to have houses?"


****


"Hello housing department."

"I see, and what property is the Anti-Social Behaviour occuring at?"

"That's not actually a Council Estate. We have no houses there, so we can't do anything."

"Well you could try going down to the Police Station and asking them about it, couldn't you?"


****


"Hello housing department."

"Okay, what's your address?"

"The file says that our carpenter's due to visit today, has he called yet?"

"He's been?"

"And you told him not to fix the windows? What do you want done then?"

"New windows? Well you'll have to get those yourself."

"Yes, we know your current windows don't close properly. That's why we sent the carpenter around to fix them."


****


"Hello housing department."

"Well, we don't have a house available for you at the moment-"

"Yes, we know you're homeless. You're homeless because you keep beating the shit out of your wife and she got a barring order against you."

"Well, I guess you'll have to stay in the YMCA hostel for another while. Alternatively, there's a nice bridge you can live under..."

That's not including the old bitch living in a hovel that I wouldn't use as a dog house who has refused four houses from us because she's only paying €5 a week to live in the hovel whereas we'd charge her €35 based on her income. And of course it'll be our fault when she dies of fucking pneumonia. I don't see why we can't just send a social worker in there to have her dragged off to a home...

I fucking love Public Service...

At the convenience store I work at, we get all kinds of crazies. There is one guy that makes me want to shoot him every time he walks in the door. He's one of the guys who lives under the bridge into Richmond just behind us. He stinks. Like, stinks like shit. The other homeless who live there at least attempt to keep themselves clean. This guy just doesn't care.

He's also a thief. He's stolen several cases of beer from us, been arrested and was released a week later. He wears jeans four sizes too big with a real belt that he never cinches past the fourth hole. So he holds his pants up by sticking one hand in his pocket when he walks so that it looks like he's either holding a gun or trying to steal something.

He's also an entitled little fucker. He has money. Wads of cash in his pockets and change just weighing his pants down. Does he spend it on food? Of course not, that would be practical!

Instead, he uses ALL of his money to buy beer while trying to beg the customers for money to buy food. He's starting to piss the customers off because he literally loads himself down with food and expects the customers to just fork over money. It's like he think's that anyone with a job is somehow rolling in money. He's gotten yelled at several times because of this. In the store, right in front of me, and he looks at me like I am supposed to make the customer buy his junk.

Then... when the customer leaves, he tries to steal more food by piling it in his pockets. He did this right in front of three police officers. He just stares at them while he's sticking candy in his pockets. I happen to be talking to these officers and tip them off that this guy is about to try to steal half the store.

The officers confront him and he starts this act where he claims harassment and discrimination and racial profiling even though one of the officers is black and the other Hispanic. He then tries to intimidate the officers. Like, threatening to physically harm them.

All this does is amuse the three and one of them grabs his arms while the other fishes all the stuff out of his pockets. Did I mention this guy stinks? Well, I may not have impressed upon you how much he stinks. All the stuff that spent no less than three minutes in his pockets smells like it came right out of his ass.

So now, the guy is being handcuffed, read his rights all the while he's spitting and howling about how he's a "14th degree black belt" and will "kick them so hard their balls will land on the moon," while customers are staring at him slack jawed.

And her I am, with a pile of shit smelling candy in front of me. The manager comes over, takes one whiff of the stuff and just spoils it all. There is no way anyone will buy something that smells like it's taken a bath in a sewer after lingering in a leper's ass for a month.

I hate retail. There is no day where I really wish I had another job to go to that did not entail me trying to talk down crazy people from blowing their lids.

Until quite recently, I worked in a call center, answering phones for a popular car-sharing company. I also answered emails.

The client company does have its problems, and I'll admit it. Some of them are the members.

For example...the people who are five hours late, and claim it's our fault because "Well, you let people reserve back to back! You should know people will run late!"

Emails asking "Where my money?" and nothing else.

More spellings of the word "ridiculous" - in both agent notes and member emails - than I had previously seen before, even on various "Misspellings" threads here and other versions of the forum.

The man who stole the keys to two of our Audis (and, you could argue, stole at least one of them until we retrieved it), and wanted to know why we wouldn't then give him another car.

Whoever left sequins, feathers, underwear, and glitter in one of the cars in Toronto. Yes, that was an actual report of a car's condition.

Stupid git: "The windows in my front door have been broken for the last week."

Hot Cancer: "The window panes are normally the tenant's responsibility."

Git: "Well yeah, but I can't afford to fix them. Can you do it for me and I'll pay it back through the rent?"

Hot Cancer: "You already owe us quite a bit of rent arrears. Won't be doing that."

Git: "Well I'll be going to the local papers about this then!"

Hot Cancer: "Okay, do that."


That was 3 weeks ago, no mention of it in the local press.

[Scene: Bookstore]
[A small child of seven or eight is behind the counter fucking about with the lightswitch. The lights in the store are literally going on and off. I pick up the child and move him.

Then, later, it happens again, and there the child is, this time with his mother. I make a move for him, and this happens:]

BITCH: Hey, what are you doing? Don't touch my son!
ME: Ma'am, he is disrupting other customers who are trying to select and purchase books.
BITCH: No, it's okay. He's learning about day and night (again: seven or eight), and this is helping teach him. It shouldn't be long now.
ME: [Makes another move for him. Bitch grabs me]
BITCH: DON'T TOUCH MY SON YOU BASTARD!
[She picks up a stack of those stupid boxes that have calendars or little trinkets in them and begins throwing them at me]

Long story short, bitch was escorted out with her son. I got sympathetic looks for the rest of the day, and a crazy story to tell.

i totally believe that this really happened

absolutely

I woulda thrown shit at you too.

Seriously if I tell you don't touch my kid I mean don't touch my damn kid.

Mr.Doobie wrote:

I woulda thrown shit at you too.

Seriously if I tell you don't touch my kid I mean don't touch my damn kid.

If the kid is turning off the lights in the goddamn store, and you seem singularly uninterested in fucking doing anything about it, I'll touch your kid whether or not you like it. If you insist on starting a fight over it, I'll end the fight.

Just because the little shit has your DNA doesn't mean no one is ever allowed to stop him from being a disruptive pain in the ass.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

I woulda thrown shit at you too.

Seriously if I tell you don't touch my kid I mean don't touch my damn kid.

If the kid is turning off the lights in the goddamn store, and you seem singularly uninterested in fucking doing anything about it, I'll touch your kid whether or not you like it. If you insist on starting a fight over it, I'll end the fight.

Just because the little shit has your DNA doesn't mean no one is ever allowed to stop him from being a disruptive pain in the ass.

I hope you like jail and/or being broke. The only thing you can do is take it up with the parents, and then kick them out if they won't control their kids. That's it. You touch him? 15 minutes with a lawyer and a cop and you're an attempted Xerrofoot.

Quote :

If the kid is turning off the lights in the goddamn store, and you seem singularly uninterested in fucking doing anything about it

You throw my kid and myself out and don't lay a goddamn finger on them. You're a grownass person Jesus...

Oh man I'm so sorry not everyone is thumbs upping a strange grown man physically pushing their kid around.

You'd think I was asking that someone be the adult in the situation or something that's insane, right?