I think I'm gonna get an asswipe in trouble. . .

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I didn’t put this in the pit because there’s not enough vitriol or hostility there.

Here’s what happened:
There’s a liquor store right down the street from me. It’s right next to the supermarket I shop in. That’s very convenient.
Therefore, even though their prices are generally somewhat higher than the liquor store I like that’s 7 miles west of here, this particular store gets more of my business because it’s closer and more convenient.

I drink wine. I like wine. My hubby likes Scotch, whiskeys, and vodka. I probably spend a couple hundred a month there. Not a ton, but still. . .

Every so often (several times a year), this store offers free wine tastings. They had one this past Friday night, and another one on Saturday night.

The Saturday night tasting featured wines from: http://www.folieadeux.com/. I’ve had one of their wines and somewhat enjoyed it, was looking forward to sampling more.

Around 6:30 (the tasting was advertised from 5 til 8), my oldest daughter (21) and I walked in. The guy conducting the tasting was very nice, and knowledgeable about wine, and I had a wonderful time talking to him.

Between my daughter and I, we probably had a total of five samples, ate maybe three cheese cubes and a couple of crackers.

After about a half-hour of this, the guy behind the counter looks directly at us and says “So, are you guys gonna buy something, or what?” The meaning was clear: if we weren’t there to purchase, get the hell out. As it stands, I was there to buy a Chardonnay and a Pinot Grigio to go with our Thanksgiving feast; and daughter wanted a bottle of champagne she had enjoyed on a previous occasion.

So, for the dickhead, several answers occurred to me (concerning the “Are you guys gonna buy something or what?”)
One: Well, we were, but now I think we’ll take our business to Liberty (Liquors), where the clerks are never assholes"
Two: “Yes, as a matter of fact we are! We’ve been searching for the liquor store with the biggest dick of an employee to buy our wine from, and you win!”
Three: ::sniff:: “certainly NOT!”

So, this morning, I was at the supermarket picking up some last-minute stuff for the holiday, and I decided to duck into the liquor store and discuss the sitch with the guy in there who knows me.

I described the scene to him, and he said “That must have been Craig; Mike was doing the tastings, and he’s really nice”, so I said, yeah, must have been Craig. Then I said “So, is he always an asshole, or was he just having an off night?”
The regular day-guy says that Craig is pretty much always an asshole, but adds that Mike actually told him about the incident (apparently, it raised his eyebrow, too), and while it’s OK for him to be an asshole to the other employees, it’s absolutely not OK for him to be rude to customers!

So, Brian (the day guy) is definitely going to tell the manager about the episode. He might get in trouble. I kinda hope he does.

I was pissed. He shouldn’t treat customers that way!

2

So’d you guy any wine from him last night?

3

Guying wine sounds kinky…

4

I think that’s where you don’t pull the cork, but just shove it back down the neck of the bottle.

5

Besides being rude, that’s just bad business. I’d guess that showing that kind of 'tude is more likely to drive away a potential good customer than it is to get somebody to make a purchase.

6

in those situations i always go with the “or what” option.

in answer to rude guy’s question, i would have said “or what” and left.

7

You did exactly right by going back in and talking to someone who may actually have some authority. It tells the management that you like the store enough to at least give 'em a second chance – that may not have been uppermost in your mind, but it had to have been somewhere in your mind or you would have just blown the whole thing off and never gone back. But what you did was give the store the chance to win back your loyalty. If they have any brains at all, you’ll get treated like royalty, at least for a little while. If not … well, how far away did you say Liberty is?

8

My neighbor used to shop at our neighborhood liquor store. Real nice place; nice owner etc. He bought at least a case of wine a month, along with his Scotch and other hard liquor (neighbor has a brandy manhattan every night–neighbor is like someone out of the 50s).

He used to buy all that–until he asked Chuck (not his real name) if he could put a sign in the window announcing his great niece’s benefit (she has a rare genetic disorder of which I forget the name. She got to about age 2 and has started regressing physically, mentally etc. She’s at the point now where she cannot hold her head up or swallow her own saliva. It’s horribly, horribly sad, and their medical expenses are insane). Chuck refused and was quite churlish about it, despite the fact that he has put up other announcements and IS a neighborhood liquor store.

So, Neighbor took his not insignificant business elsewhere and Chuck knows about it. He knows because he called Neighbor to ask him to come to a wine tasting, “I haven’t seen you in here in awhile.” Neighbor told him why. Apparently there was no forthcoming apology.

Unbelievable.

9

:slight_smile: Well, Liberty is about 6-7 miles away. BUT, it’s in the same shopping center as another “Martin’s”, (supermarket I like) and the Gabriel Bros. and the pet store I buy feeder crickets for my daughter’s tarantula from.

I’m hoping that, by talking to an employee who knows me, the asswipe who “chastised” me for not buying stuff will get into the expected amount of shit!

10

Yeah, that’s the kind of crap I’m talking about. Not that I have a kid/relative that has some horrible disease. BUT I do a lot of business in that store, and asswipe should have never taken the attitude he did with me.

The day guy, who I talked to earlier today, said “Well, sometimes people in here come in for nothing more than a pint of vodka” (wave of his hand), but even if was them, we are supposed to be respectful of and cordial to, all of our customers".

So, hopefully ‘day guy’ is going to report asswipe to management, and bad stuff will ensue. I don’t know that they’re going to start giving me 10% (or whatever) off my orders for the next couple of weeks.

I’d settle for knowing that asswipe suffered some kind of consequences.

11

If I spoke to a guest (I work at a hotel, that isn’t some stupid code word for customers) like that I damn well would be in trouble! I hope asswipe learns a lesson from this. Customer service jobs can be a real pain in the ass, but that’s no excuse for being an asshole no matter how bad a day you might be having.

12

Oh, believe me, I’ve worked in customer service industries before, and I know you can have days where one jerk of a customer after another gets on your nerves, until you don’t have any nerves left. And I know the employees in that store don’t make much money (I’d never ask, of course, but one day my 8YO was in the store with me and I got talking to Brian, the day guy who knows me some, and my daughter blurted out: “so, how much money do you make here?” and I told her it wasn’t nice to ask that, but he answered anyway, $10.00 an hour), but you know what they say: if you can’t handle the heat, get outta the kitchen.

13

You have a pet tarantula in your house? This is the topic for another thread I think :smiley:

14

Didn’t realize it was that unusual. The tarantula (Fred, by name) is my 8YO daughter’s pet. Her grandfather got it for her for Christmas a couple of years ago. Fred is a Rose-Haired tarantula, but in spite of the name, may in fact be a girl. :wink:

15

Probably. Hopefully :). Males have a much shorter lifespan.

16

Man, you’re really licking your chops over this. Would it be enough if they gave you a crown to wear while you shop?

17

Nobody likes an asshole especially one who pretends to be offering free wine for a tasting. Anybody who thinks wine tastings are not about selling wine are naive though.

I have a casual flirtation thing going on with a local liquor store owner and I always make it a point to go to her wine tastings, yeah I know she is just trying to push the wine. So?

I do agree that the moron who asked if you were going to buy something probably should find another line of work.

18

Running a business means you want people to come there and feel welcome and comfortable. Being a jackass to customers is a bad move. You want them to come back and hopefully suggest that their friends come there to buy things.

While the workers in this incident had nothing to do with it, there was a store I almost stopped shopping in because of it. There was a liquor store I used to frequent when I worked at the Pentagon. I was staying in MD at the time and itb was a 3 minute walk from where i lived with a relative for awhile. There was a young guy, in his 20;s hanging out in front all of the time. If I stopped on my way from work to buy something he always begged for money and sometimes would attempt to wash my windshield and then ask for payment, even when I told him not to.

It pissed me off because there were several stores with HELP WANTED signs in the windows. And this guy used the line I found famous in my time there. “Let me talk to you when you come out”, which means “I want you to give me your change”. This guy went the extra mile though telling me constantly how he’d join the military if he was able but he had a criminal record. (I was always in uniform when I saw him, but at that point I had not been a recruiter). I finally got tired of it and told the manager of the store that I was going to just buy my booze on post instead of coming there so I didn’t have to deal with the guy outside. The next day he wasn’t there. The manager told me he had called the cops on the guy because he was losing business from him being out front.

19

Even a rhinestone tiara would be acceptable. :smiley:

Oh, I absolutely understand that wine tastings are about selling wine! However, I’d only been there half an hour, and sampled three of the five available wines, and eaten maybe three cheese cubes. I came in with the intention of buying a magnum each of Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. If I’d had the energy to drive to the neighboring town, I’d totally have left there and bought my wine in the neighboring town.

20

How close was the nearest Class 6 store?