Fuck you Safeway checker!

The BBQ Pit
#1

I’m at Safeway. I go through the checkout and when cashier finishes he says , “That’ll be $85. 60”. That’s about what I expected. So I write the check for $85.60. Then Mr. CheckerDoofus starts punching buttons etc and as I’m starting to walk away he says to me ‘Wait, not so fast, you still owe $27 dollars’!

Say what!? Yeah you still owe $27 dollars. I look up at the monitor, I look down at my check, which he is holding, and the amounts match. Still trying to understand I ask, How do figure?
Well, the register says it! Scanning the monitor a bit more carefully I noticed he entered the wrong amount tendered - $58.60. No problem, mistakes happen (though his shit attitude was starting to wear a little thin).

This is an easy fix I’m thinking so I point out the error. “Ah, yes” he says. “So I did. Sorry… still I need the $27 difference.” I am now starting to get a wee bit irratated but I maintain my composure and carefully explain that there is no $27 difference. See the amount owed on your screen? See the amount on the check? They match. We’re even. He then explains he is sorry again, it was an innocent, honest mistake and if I would just write another check for $27 he could finish the transaction.

I remain calm but inside I’m screaming 'You dumb motherfucker I’ve already paid you what I owe! instead I try again to explain this time touching the screen pointing at the amount and asking him to compare it to my check. Yes, he sees that. Yes, they are the same but he says he (enunciating slowly for my benefit) a-c-c-i-d-e-n-t-a-l-l-y entered $58.60 so the machine thinks it needs $27 more dollars and if I don’t pay it Safeway will make him pay it.
No, asshead, just fix your fuck-up and conclude the purchase.

Now he is really irritated with me an threatens if I don’t pay he will have to call a manager. Good! Call the God-damned manager. Whoops, no need one is already on the way - go figure that.

I let Didn’tPassMath explain his side first, which he did exactly the same way. The manager has some blinding insight - the checker just entered the wrong amount!
Yes, I know. Now fix the machine so I can go. All the while this jackass is still loudly telling the manager that he has been asking for the $27 difference. This confuses the manager so she calls for another manager.

Jesus Christ, is everybody who works here a dumbfuck? So I take this time to explain to both of them there is NO MISSING MONEY! This finally pisses of dumbfuck #1 and he actually says aloud, “Well, fuck it then!”

OK, that’s it give me my check back and I’ll shop somewhere else. Too late, manager 2 shows up. Fortunately, however, she gets it. She puts in her manager key fixes the screw up and finally lets me leave and all the while Clueless is shaking his head at me like I was beating the system or something.

And, I swear, as I was walking away he says to the person who had been behind me, “Can you believe some people…”.
No, asshole, I answer for her, I really can’t.

#2

But did you give him the $27 you owed him?

#3

His previous job must’ve been with Verizon. http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

#4

Boy, you could have really baked his noodle with this one.

#5

That’s both the funniest and the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. How do people like that manage to dress and feed themselves?

#6

I work in a call-centre so have to put up with morons every day. I do not really mind the morons. What I mind is the moron with the ‘fuck you’ attitude.

#7

Um, did you miss the point? The customer was right. The CSR didn’t know the difference between dollars and cents. That guy has to be the most patient person on earth to go through all that with Verizon and not lose his cool. The morons were the ones working in Verizon’s call center.

#8

By the way, I have a story to share. I bought some yogurt at Penguins Frozen Yogurt. I gave the cashier a twenty, and she only gave me change for a ten. Before I could figure out what happened, she had disappeared through a door into the kitchen area. After a minute of yelling and waving through the window of the door, I got the cashier and the manager to come out. I explained what happened, and the cashier denied it and insisted she gave me change for a twenty. Since the item was less than five dollars, I offered to show them the entire contents of my wallet and all my pockets to prove that I did not possess the amount of money she claimed to have given me. They refused. After much insisting by me, the manager agreed to count the register to see if it was over the correct amount. I waited 10 minutes or so for the manager to count the register in the back room. When she came back, she said the register was not over. Now, get this: I asked her if the register was correct, and she said no, it was not correct. Yet, she insisted that since it was not over by 10 dollars, that I could not have been overcharged. I pointed out that the fact that it was off showed that any number of mistakes could have been made that day, and that therefore her reasoning that a 10 dollar overage must exist if I were overcharged, was wrong. She would have none of it. So basically, that little bitch cashier stole ten bucks from me and the manager refused to give it back. Needless to say, I have never returned to that place.

#9

:eek:

I would be very, very worried about my job if I acted like that at work. I get away with saying some amazing stuff at work sometimes (I once called a male manager Monica over the radio and then played it off by saying that Monica was a pretty name for him and he should keep it :smiley: – then I turned around to see the real Monica with her jaw hitting the floor :smiley: :smiley: ) but I can’t imagine ever feeling confident enough in my job security to pull that off, without even getting into how much of an asshole it would make me to even consider treating a customer like that.

#10

You really need to send a letter to Safeway’s regional and national offices over that one. I’d send it pretty much as you posted it in the OP. You’re owed an apology(and if I were the manager the clerk would have been fired on the spot for no more reason than saying “fuck” in front of a customer. Mistakes are by definition unintentional but rudeness is deliberate. When I am elected (and subsequently abolish free elections as an act of national salvation and cosmic irony) customers will have the right to castrate, brand or perform medical experiments of their choosing on any person who is both rude and incompetent; rude and incompetent managers will have a right to firing squad.

#11

:eek:

Considering how much more often the cashier has to face down the business end of asshole customers’ ignorance rifles…you know what? Holy shit, I can’t even talk to you about this. Nevermind. I just wish I didn’t have to work retail to pay for my textbooks and ramen and I could choose to spend my time fantasizing about their brutal executions if I wanted to. Wow. Just…wow.

#12

Oh, rude customers also would be flogged and fined into penury in the ideal system.

But, having worked in the front office of hotels (a job that has one of the highest “dealing with rudeness for poverty line wages”) and many other customer service jobs over the years I stand on my statement: there’s never an excuse for non-retaliatory deliberate offensivenss and or rudeness in customer service, never, ever, no exceptions, and those who demonstrate such should be fired. The Safeway clerk in the OP deserved to be fired (and again, I’d have fired him for the “fuck” alone).

#13

Yup, the cashier should have at least gotten a write-up for the attitude.

Mistakes happen, that’s what the “void transaction” key is for. It sounds like the second manager did something like that with her key.

I’ve made mistakes like entering the wrong amount, and if it required a head cashier to handle it, I apologised to the customer and called a head cashier to come help me ASAP. I never got any guff from a customer for it either. Maybe because I didn’t treat them like they needed to fix my mistake.

#14

I would have lost it MUCH quicker than you did, and called him on his stupidity loud enough for all the others in line to hear. There is a point when politeness ends, and TRUE jackassery is needed. Make him WORK for his “Can you believe some people…”.

#15

I disagree most wholeheartedly. Don’t shop there again, but under no circumstances should you fuck with someone in a minimum wage job’s ability to earn a living.

Just remember, one day it might be you in the shitty job with someone with an over-inflated sense of entitlement calling for you to be fired for what- to most people- is a relatively minor, or even irrelevant infraction.

That’s not to say that the case outlined in the OP was “minor” or irrelevant, or that the OP was displaying an over-inflated sense of entitlement, but personally, I’d just make a note not to patronise that store again and leave it at that.

#16

The clerk tried to get the OP to pay an additional $27 when the full amount had already been paid. That is a shocking level of stupidity. The store is not a charity. It should not be expected to pay even minimum wage to someone who cannot do the job. Flipping burgers might be a better job for the cashier, so long as all cash registers are kept safely away.

#17

I’m not saying that they should leave a cashier who can’t do the job on the checkouts, but an angry customer complaint is more likely to get the cashier fired, instead of transferred into, say, Nightfill or Produce or something better suited to their abilities.

#18

But how do they know the cashier can’t do the job unless someone complains?

#19

I’d say this cashier’s mistake translates into two bigger problems: Failure to pay attention to details, and, more importantly, Failure to take responsibility and own up to one’s mistakes. Either of these traits is bad enough. But the two together can be expensive, and I can’t see many private business wanting to deal with that.

In any event, I can’t see anyone making a good argument in favor of transferring this moron to another department of the store. This mistake was pretty bad on its own, but if he’s such an idiot that this isn’t the first time he’s made this mistake, or if he’s likely to do something similar in the future, Safeway might do him a favor by firing him. If nothing else, a firing is a wakeup call.

Robin

#20

The OP reminds me of three guys who wanted a hotel room, but there was only one left so they decided to share it and split the cost…

:smiley: