Some of us older folk are dependent on public transportation, or shuttle busses from some Senior Citizen meeting place, or a friend or relative–some of us have to conform to other people’s schedules and not our own. We sometimes have no choice as to the hours during which we shop. Also, in some areas, an older person out at night is fair game—we prefer plenty of daylight and the security of being amongst lots of other people. We realize we are a burden and a trial, but we really don’t want to be either. Try to have a little patience, although I will be the first to admit it isn’t always easy.
Well, I don’t go out of my way to shop at the busiest times, but if I’m out and about running various errands throughout the day, I will be in stores at peak times eventually. Also, when my kids were smaller, there were naptime considerations, time constraints when one of them had half-day kindergarten, etc. Unfortunately for the VIPs in the world, I put mine and my family’s needs first.
Kferr’s insinuation that his time/purchases were more valuable/important than mine or anybody else’s was not only wrong, but just plain assholish.
Sheri
As a relatively healthy, able bodied, single person in her(cough) upper forties, let me say that the disabled, elderly, or any folks with disabilities should be able to shop anytime they damned well please. If they need assistance in reaching for a product they should get it. If they need help carrying out or whatever they should get it. Back in the Stone Age, when I was in college and worked as a grocery clerk, I would think “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Baker, I wasn’t talking about carrying something out to a car, that only take a couple of minutes and I’m back inside the building to help the next customer. I’m talking about spending 45 minutes or an hour helping one customer (or a couple/family) exclusively. It’s really hard to do when there are tons of people in the store and it’s IMO unreasonable to expect that level of service when you come in during the lunch hours. (And I have people get upset about this several times a week as if there should be one employee in the store for every customer.)
Jin, the guys that are hitting on you at work are more than a bit insecure. I mean how big do your balls have to be to hit on a person who is being PAID to be nice and polite to you. Let me take a guess here and say that you get hit on by these guys alot more at work than you do when you are out hitting the clubs and such.
I only have one dating rule that I won’t break but hitting on waitresses/bartenders/the girl in the drivethrough window is one of my rules that almost never gets broken. I will break it if I really REALLY think that there is genuine mutual atraction going on, but thats damn rare.
ok i have two things i want to contribute:
first, from the retail front:
- i work in a small independent bookstore. one of my peeves is when customers come in and ask me about a book. i look it up in the computer (as i do not yet have a complete books in print database in my head) and if it turns out we don’t have it in stock, i offer to order it for them. a good half, if not more, of the people need the book for that day or tomorrow for a gift or whatever. now let me ask you. you know that you husband/wife/mother/sister/etc’s birthday is coming up for weeks at least, hopefully more. yet you still look at me like we’re crazy not to be stocking the book (like we can stock all books?). yes, i want you to buy the book at the store rather than going to barnes and nobles. yes, i would like to be able to get you the book. unfortunately, i can’t make it appear just like that, it might take a week. and there’s no assurance b&n will have it either. so don’t look at me funny, ok?
second, from my experience as a server in a restaurant:
- in an ideal world, every customer would order their food, get their drinks, get their food, all chop chop, quick as can be, and the servers would have time to stay and chit chat and be cool and friendly. weekdays you’re more likely to get that. on a friday and saturday night, oftentimes that’s unrealistic. you have six tables approximately, who come in no easy order (either all at once or at least they all want to order at once).
- it’s not my fault if the bartender takes a long time getting the drinks, there’s only one or two of them for more than a hundred customers.
- it’s not (always) my fault if the food is slow. there’re only five or six cooks for those same hundred customers who all order everything on the menu.
- i’m sorry if the napkins don’t get to you right away, but frankly, sometimes making sure everyone gets their food at the same time is a priority and i’ll put the napkins in my apron to get to you when i’m passing by.
- don’t get irate if you’re a customer alone on a friday night. i had one lady come in who got all hysterical to the owner because she thought i was ignoring her because she was dining alone. when this was told to me, i literally had her meal in my hand to take out to her. i tried to give all my customers the best service possible, but i’m sorry, on a saturday night when i have two tables with ten people each, i don’t have time to stand and talk because you forgot to bring your book.
- servers make somewhere abouts $2.30 and hour. tips are what pay the rent. if you feel that your service was good (and i don’t mean that you can say it was a bad server because they brought your napkin five minutes late) then tip twenty percent. ten percent is not average and five percent is an insult. fifteen you can get by with, but twenty is normal. and please realize that if the food takes longer than normal, it may not be the server’s fault, it’s your fault for going out to eat on a weekend! no, but seriously, if the server makes a stop or two to apologize that the food is taking a while, then you know that they realize that it is, that they’re not intentionally forgetting you and letting your food get cold. don’t penalize them for the kitchen’s shortcomings. just don’t go back to that restaurant on a weekend.
quite enough of a rant. thanks!
sorry for the long post 
Just had time to skim this thread – I don’t want to be late for my awful cashier job at a magazine store – so apologize if anyhting’s too redundant.
Here’s a few of the real gems who come into my store:
[ul]
[li]People with “change psychosis”: A man paid me in two dollars of unrolled pennies two nights ago, while other people were waiting. Now, everyone wants to get rid of their change. I have no problem with people who get some total like $4.07 and say, “Let’s see if I have seven cents.” But it’s people who get totals of $9.99 and then look for the 99 cents that really piss me off.[/li][li]People who think I read all the magazines: We carry 10’s of thousands of titles, changing on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis in at least 6 languages. My favourite questions so far include: “There was this an article about art in this one magazine, but it wasn’t an art magazine – what magazine was it?” “Which of these magazines have ads for Absolut Vodka?” “Are the drivers on the CD that comes with this magazine compatible with Windows 98?”[/li][li]People who consider you of the untouchable caste: there are customers who will not make eye contact with a clerk. Will not let us touch their magazines. Will put the money on the counter so as not to touch you. Will not answer questions or speak, unless they have to, but will readily do so with any people they are with.[/li][li]People who pound on the door after closing, “just to buy a pack of cigarettes”: seconds after closing, the safe is open, the back office unlocked, the cashes are out, the lotto tickets out in the open. Security is nil, except for the front door. I’ve been robbed at knifepoint before, how do I know you don’t have a knife or gun? If I open that door, we lose our insurance, and I get fired. And even if I somehow managed to avoid that, it takes 15 to 30 minutes to cash back in, 15 to 30 minutes to cash back out, so if I let you in 15 minutes after closing, I’ll have to be there another half hour at least. I’m sorry, but if you want to kill yourself slowly with tobacco, you’ll have to haul your ass a block to the all-night place for your fix of your dangerous, but legal, narcotic.[/li][li]People who tell me my job is not that hard: I can serve as many as 500 customers a night, working alone. I must also keep watch of the 10-20 customers in the store to make sure no one shoplifts, and play bouncer, if necessary. I restock things running out. Every night, I take inventory of our thousands of cigarette packs and hundreds of lotto tickets. All while bundling hundreds of unsold magazines to be sent back to the distributors, noting what goes, totalling up prices, removing markup, etc. And I do all the night’s accounting. And of course I make sales. And I clean up – the store has to immaculate for the morning people. All while trying to fulfill my corporation’s Dilbert-esque policies – my favourite of which is that I’m required to “sweep the store every night before closing” though I can’t “leave the counter until closing.” I am cashier, clean-up crew, accountant, bouncer, and punching-bag to people who’ve had a bad day. I go home every night physically and emotionally drained. I work 7.5 hours without a break, I’ve worked back-to-back opening and closing shifts. I have all the responsibility for the store, but no power to go with it. My job is hard.[/li][li]Walter: deserves his own entry. Walter comes into my store once a week, throws a bag from our competitor on the counter, and says, “Look, I found this at Maison de la Presse Internationale. Why don’t you have it?” Walter comes in for hours, and doesn’t buy anything. Walter spends $10 a month at our store, and keeps harassing me for special deals because he’s “One of our best customers.” Walter wants to borrow magazines to photocopy the relevant parts. Once, just after a friend of mine died, I had to hear all about how Walter’s life was so hard, how he had suffered so long, because he was not able to buy a really good stereo for under $7000 – and of course, I couldn’t tell him to shut up, because, I’m a clerk, and have to keep smiling. [/ul][/li]
Two years working at the place, and I’ve come to think of customers as the Enemy. It takes all of my effort some days not to fall into general misanthropy. But I have to avoid cynicism – becoming cynical is how you get promoted into management at my company, and then I’d never get away.
I can’t wait until I have my teaching certificate sometime next year, and can get a job meant for human beings. People used to think all the really bad jobs --like cashier – would be done by robots by the twentieth century. But getting humans and treating them like machines has always been cheaper. I know that having wiorked two years at this place, I will never again mistreat a clerk.
Hamish, you might want to remind Walter what he’s asking you to do is considered copyright infringment-not to mention plain ol’ theft. (photocopying magazines!)
Hehehe…
Is there a Trader Joe’s on the other side?
Heh. My boss already nixxed that one. Walter tries to convince all the new employees that my boss lets him do it, so she warns them right away now.
'Course he’s not the type to care about theft.
He actually came into my store and spent more than ten dollars tonight. I was shocked. Of course, he also had me lug his grocery bags from place to place around the store, so I can add “porter” to my job description. 
I am hearing impared. I once had a customer ask if I was deaf or just stupid. When I told him, his wife grabed his arm and hauled him off. Asshole.
Oh my. My my my.
I don’t go to clubs; I don’t like music too loud, crowds, smoking, and I hate alcohol and I don’t dance under any circumstances. I sit at home and do my accounting stuff, paint, research advertising, get together packages, answer mail and do other boring businessy stuff like that most of the time. I like movies, but those aren’t exactly the best place for someone to come around and start chatting you up.
No one hits on me at all away from work. I have definitely never been asked out to coffee or dinner. As a matter of fact, strangers usually don’t talk to me at all (if they do, it’s out of curiosity about my clothes or artwork, not desire to pursue something romantic with me.) Which I like. And also makes it all the more annoying when I have to put up with that sort of thing at work. I guess part of it could be my own problem. But it still doesn’t mean I should gave to just grin and try to put up with it.
2 memorable retail moments:
70+ yo patient telling me (19yo receptionist) how kissable my lips looked.
My best friend finding a used pregnancy test and jar of urine in the isle of the safeway she worked at.
The closest I’ve ever gotten to retail is being a pizza delivery driver, where I was a rolling cashier. Pizza delivery drivers can rant forever, and quite often do, so I hope I don’t get that started in this thread, but I must share.
The best way to be the kind of customer a pizza delivery driver hates is to order right before closing, be way out on the outer edge of the delivery area, not be home when the delivery driver shows up, and try to pay with a $100 that makes the driver have to use the money in his personal wallet to make change for you. Oh, and if you don’t tip any, that’ll make them real happy too.
Gah! I keep on saying, some people are raised by wolves!
:eek:
I was in retail hell for a while. There were the usual: people who treated you like you had nothing else going on in your life, and that you actually lived under a rock in the parking lot of the store. I also got sick of the “But it’s on sale” crowd (when it clearly wasn’t on sale—though I was patient with those who were understandably confused by vague signage). I also got the ones that would return $0.50 items, and make a big stink about it. (The ones that made the biggest stink were usually the richer types—figure that one out.)
The incident I remember most vividly didn’t happen to me, but some coworkers (but I witnessed). Some woman made a loud stink, wanting to return some buttons (I worked at a fabric store). She insisted that we sold her these buttons, but we didn’t carry that particular brand, so we kept on telling her that it couldn’t have been us. But she kept on insisting, getting louder and louder. Then she found her receipt. It was for a competetor’s store. Didn’t make any difference—she kept on screaming and yelling until the manager gave her a refund. All for some buttons that maybe cost $2.00. What a piece of work. I’d think that she’d be too ashamed to show her face in the store after that, but oh no. She came back, all smiles, expecting the clerks there to be real warm with her. I was just professional—never anything more. It’s hard to forget someone who is capable of being so unreasonable and so nasty.
Working and shopping at a flea market/swapmeet one gets to see both sides of how buyers and sellers can be assholes
I worked for a lady that sold used videogames… she fixed them cleaned them up ect
She had a business licensee with the city and we were well known and the like been in the same place for 6 years and everything and had a permant setup
First Thing one would ask is “'do they work” They’d ask this even after wed explain we had a 30 day guarnatee
The bad side to this is everyone else selling broken games/machienes that didn’t work and the like so I could see the point of this but after the 90th time …
Other people id learn to hate as time went on:
Check writers: 70-80 percent of the time we got a check it was bad … and the people writing them knew they were bad …
Thieves: no explanation needed
People that ripped us off … like the ones that figured out how to switch the chip in a nes game and sold us 30 copies of smb1/duck hunt in other cartridges
Or the guy that when his wife/so asked him when he was buying the game if he was spending the phone bill money he said “no”
Next day when she made him bring it back because (suprize)! He lied and he even he scratched the CD on purpose so we couldn’t resell it … and wanted his money back!
After that We slowly eased off from cash refunds.
Dicks like these people is why I retired from something I liked doing
I’ve had a few similar customers.
One was fairly nice about it, but she couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t give her a refund on a used long-distance telephone card she had bought at a competitors store.
One was a regular customer, very spacey, who kept trying to return a magazine with someone else’s price tag on it, without the receipt. Another was some guy in a Teamster’s jacket who threatened to hurt me if I didn’t give him a cash refund on some batteries we don’t sell.
The worst though, was Barry, one of our newer regulars. This was the first time I’d seen him.
He was a supposedly groupe-loto customer – basically, ten people sign a sheet for ten chances to win, and pay $1 each – the prize is split ten ways. When a ticket wins, we keep it, and put the prize in envellopes for the customers. When a ticket loses, we just toss it, and make a note in a book.
Barry came in with a groupe-lotto ticket, and checked in our book and told him sorry, it didn’t win – we would’ve noted it down. He demanded to see the losing ticket, and I told him we didn’t have it anymore – whoever worked Thursday morning would have thrown it out.
Barry insisted it was his right to see the ticket – first his moral right, then his legal right. I kept informing him that we no longer had the ticket, so I couldn’t show it to him. He said that’s not how we did things, and I told him that’s how we’ve always done it, in the year that I’d worked at that branch. There just isn’t room to keep all the dozens of losing tickets.
I thought I was being pretty nice about the whole thing. Even 15 minutes into his shouting, I stayed polite. Then he came out with this:
“Sir, I have a right to see that ticket. This is the United States of America, and what you’re doing is illegal!”
“Sir, this is Canada, not the United States of America.”
Barry blinked twice.
“Well, Canada’s a free country isn’t it?”
Barry spat his gum on the floor at this point. My last customers – the rest had been driven away – pointed to it as they walked out, and said, “Sir, you dropped your gum.”
And Barry said, “You can’t prove I did that.”
He kept insisting that that I, personally, had signed the ticket for him, but I was absolutely sure I had never seen him. He was describing buying the ticket, and then I noticed it – his ticket, and the procedures he was describing, were different than at our store. He’d brought this groupe-loto somewhere else.
I told him this. And he said, “Now you’re accusing me of lying. That’s disrespect. Now you’re disrespecting me. I know that’s illegal.”
So I said, “Sir, my father’s a constitutional lawyer. I know there wouldn’t be a law against disrespecting people because it would violate the provisions for freedom of expression in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
So, Barry threatened to call my manager, and I gave him our store’s number, and the hours she works. And that’s the last I ever heard of it. Barry comes in from time to time, but he doesn’t seem to recognize me. 
Quote by Hammish:
I can’t wait until I have my teaching certificate sometime next year, and can get a job meant for human beings.
Oh my God, Hammish. Are you in for a rude surprise.