I wet the (floor under the) bed last night. Not sure if it was me or the pup (probably me) but when I went for a drink this morning, the travel mug, with the lid, was lying on it’s side…empty & there’s a big wet spot under the bed. Not sure if the lid wasn’t on tight or the slider wasn’t closed but somehow it all ended up in the carpet overnight Luckily it’s only water but still, it’s a bit hard to blot as it’s under the bed.
A very mini mini-rant: I got some baklava from a place that usually has the best baklava in town, but not this time. It was stale and soggy and possibly several days old. Very disappointing.
Yesterday, I took my wife to the station. On my way back, the low tyre pressure warning flashed up.
I pulled over as soon as I could, but they all looked okay, so I carried on at a much-reduced speed to the nearest garage, where I paid 50p to put some air in. All was fine for about a mile and then the warning came back.
Back home I checked again and used a gauge, but they are all fine so I suspect the sensor. Unfortunately, the warning doesn’t say which tyre. Grrr
I lost one of my regular bookmarks. It’s just a pasteboard rectangle with no special meaning, but it’s annoying when you’ve used something for years and one day it’s gone. I can’t stop looking for it. 
Well, it’s April First… so…
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“Good News, Mr. Trump! Joe Biden has agreed to pardon you…”
< pause >
“April Fools…!”
I usually find my bookmark in the last place I’ve booked.
mmm
Years ago I bought some plastic bookmarks at Borders. They were wide clips with a pointed end so you could indicate where on the page you had stopped reading and were sold in 2-packs, with two different colors in each pack, so I ended up with six of them. This was nice because I could use one for my bedside book, one for the paperback I kept in my jacket pocket for when I was running errands on the bus, one for the book on the table next to the sofa, etc.
Somehow in the course of my last move all but two of them disappeared.
Sounds like you might have to make ‘a run for the Borders’.
Believe it or not, some Borders stores do still exist… but they are in other countries. On the up side, They Are Fighting Sharia Law…! ( True story )
Gee, I’ve never been to Kuala Lumpur. 
I haven’t tried to search to see if they’re available anywhere else. I’m sure they are, but somehow I suspect a search for “plastic bookmark” would be too wide, and I have no recollection of any brand name they were sold under.
They’re most likely in one of the boxes I still haven’t unpacked. Or inside a book which I shelved after I read it without checking to see if the bookmark was still in it.
Well, I know it isn’t sailing on Lake Michigan, but I’ve heard that the food is out of this world!
ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hcBCFpJdqs&ab_channel=hornyemuproductions
( Just kidding! Still, I’m sure that you could pick up some books for the flight back. Besides, think of the cool passport stamp and how you could impress people with it.
“Not a lot of people know this, but I was on the innermost circle of President Trump’s Top Secret I.B.S. force… Team Ah-Oogah Nine…” /s )
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( The link is to a Bugs Bunny gif; I broke it so the post would accept it )
Note to customers:
If you don’t want to be mistaken for a thief then don’t act like one.
Also:
Asking to confirm certain things is NOT accusing you of being a thief, but go ahead and make that accusation anyway - it will definitely attract attention from our Asset Protection department.
Amateur! I’d’ve lost that in a week, along with a pen, dark glasses, and two different socks.
Advice from an experienced loser:
It’s just paper, don’t waste time looking. Cut a piece off your cereal box (I’d love a Weetabix book mark!).
I’ve walked out of stores with merchandise (that I brought in to try to match), and done other suspicious things, and NO ONE EVEN NOTICES.
I’m tired of being harmless.
How are your artistic skills? Draw the bookmark on a nice clean sheet of unlined white paper. Then do a picture search online for it.
I’m gonna piggy back on this one, just because I can…
I love baklava.
I’m allergic to to walnuts.
Not the where’s the Epi-Pen, call an ambulance level, more of why did I gargle gravel?
Springboarding off this one too. My daughter bought a Toyota C-HR and later found out that finding out which tire is low requires an annual subscription. That rates right up there with paying to activate heated seats.
Same thing with my daughter’s Prius.
I’ve heard that sometimes the spare tire can be the culprit. Idk if that’s correct, though.
Paragraphs like this make me content with my 20th Century pickup that never had heated seats to begin with and no tire pressure sensor other than me getting out of the truck and testing each tire in turn with a hand held gauge, which definitely lets you know which tire(s) is low.
Bringing in an item to match with what you’re looking for is common as dirt, and most of the time people let us know what they’re doing with that. That’s not acting suspicious.
We also know that sometimes that bottle of ketchup is forgotten on the bottom of the cart, or sometimes we fail to catch that case of beverages on the bottom of the cart (a cashier or bagger who keeps missing stuff on the bottom is the one who gets in trouble, not the string of customers getting free Gatorade). That’s not being suspicious, that’s being human, and we’re not going brand you with the descriptor “thief” for that. Unless you make a habit of it, but that’s very rare because thieves usually want more than a weekly bottle of ketchup.
But if you’re paying for a pack of gum with a $100 bill do not bitch when we test that bill for authenticity. Yes, it’s a valid way to break a $100, but it better be a real $100.
What I’m thinking of involved monetary exchange with a customer who wanted us to do something contrary to long-standing store policy, claiming “I always do this”. No, you don’t. You really, really don’t. I know this, because as one of the cash office people I’m one of the people called on when someone asks for this, and the only way we make an exception is if a store director makes that call.
Which is why the cashier turned to me and said “can we do this?” and I said “no, it’s against store policy”. But, because I happened to be bagging for that cashier the assumption was I’m just a lowly peon and junior to anyone else. Which is when the customer glared at me and spat out “I don’t talk to racists, you be quiet”. At which point the cashier, who happened to be black, rolls her eyes. Customer turns back to the cashier and demands that she do what the customer wants. Cashier turns back to me and says “What do you think?” I said I thought we should get a manager to make the decision. Customer says why are you talking to her? You don’t need a manger, I do this all the time.
Cashier goes to find a manager. Customer goes back to glaring at me and stating over and over “I do this all the time. All the time.” I remain silent, because I try to accommodate customer wishes (she did tell me to be quiet).
Manager says no can do, against store policy. Customer gets louder and louder, stating AGAIN that “I always do this”. While the customer is going on the manager gives me a questioning look because she knows I’m in the cash office half the week and know the policies. I shake my head no and shrug. Manager states again that it’s against policy.
Customer had just realized something was communicated but not quite sure what happened. States again she does not speak to racists (manager also happened to be white) and tries again to get the cashier to break policy after the manager leaves.
Cashier looks at me “any ideas?”
Customer looks about ready to explode.
I propose an alternative that would conform to corporate policy but it’s going to take some time and the line is getting longer and longer. Customer protests again and says “you don’t want to hold up that line.”
Well… no, we don’t want to. But we do want to keep our jobs. And we’re trying to accommodate you, because we’re here to sell shit and even assholes need groceries.
So… the whole thing held up the line 10-15 minutes (and normally we clear a transaction in about 2-4 minutes). And after she was gone and we were apologizing to the customers who had been waiting behind her they said we had had a lot of patience to handle Ms. Angry and were good sports about it all. Nobody was happy about the delay, but normal commerce resumed.
What was suspicious?
1. Divide and conquer - many thieves work by causing a distraction. Bringing race into the matter wasn’t as distracting as the time a team of shoplifters set off three fires in the store (that was a very effective distraction) but it’s a common tactic. And lest anyone think this is just a tactic of black thieves or that I am racially biased here let me hasten to add we’ve had white thieves try that exact same thing when this cashier and me are teamed up, but with the reverse - they snap at her to shut up and try to pressure/sweet talk/whatever me. We’ve had Hispanic thieves conversing and discussing their plans in Spanish thinking no one working in the store knows that language, and assuming that a blond haired blue-eyed Anglo doesn’t know any Spanish, then trying to enlist the sympathies of the the two managers who are of Mexican descent (doesn’t work - both of them really, really have a hate-on for that sort of thing, being honest folks). We know that we have racist customers who prefer a cashier that matches their ethnicity, but most of them are civil when they can’t get that and don’t play the divide and conquer game. If you start stirring up trouble among the staff that raises suspicions.
2. Insisting that you “always do this” when you very much do not, because everyone working here either knows it’s against corporate policy, or it’s unusual enough that the new people are going to ask a manager. Sure, you might get away with it now and again (I know people do, because in the cash office I have to document and try to resolve the resulting problems) but you aren’t “always” doing it. Unless you have a Special Buddy among the staff, but I sure as hell ain’t your Special Buddy and neither is the cashier you were pressuring yesterday. We do have a certain number of customers who get to deviate from the norm but those people are well known to us, have gotten standing permission from the store director, and don’t get pissed because a particular employee isn’t familiar with this exception and goes to find a manager or store director to make sure it’s OK.
3. Protesting “I’m an honest person” and “I’m not a thief”. Honest people don’t usually have a problem us asking to confirm something, or check something, or saying “Sorry, we don’t make the rules but the rules say…” Honest people understand why we do things like check high value bills for authenticity and I really do do that for every 50 and 100 I handle as a cashier regardless of the color, clothing, religion, gender, or national origin of any customer. Protesting that, or balking when we ask for ID, or asking that your credit card match your ID for a large purchase, is going to raise suspicion. Keep repeating “I’m an honest person” and “I’m not a thief” and you keeping ratcheting up our suspicions.
4. It didn’t go so far as this in the incident I refer to, but asking us to break the law is really going to put us on guard. We realize that not everyone is familiar with the nuances of, say, liquor sales, especially as we are near a state border so the rules change if you go 5 miles west of our store. Our state imposes a legal limit of how much beer, how much wine, and how much hard liquor you can purchase per day. (The beer limit is 864 ounces, don’t recall the limits for wine and liquor but our registers know it and will simply not allow those limits to be exceeded). We are regularly asked to get around that. Nope. None of us wants the legal consequences. Stop asking/begging/pleading/threatening. Especially do not threaten us, we will call the police and you will be leaving the store without your intended purchases. Yes, we really can legally deny you service. Go ahead and sue us, our corporate legal department will see you laughed out of court and they like the employment security. Go ahead and take your business elsewhere, good riddance, we don’t need the aggravation.
5. Asking us to make change without a transaction, or just after a transaction. This may seem innocuous, but there are short-change artists out there and the last time one came through it cost us close to a thousand dollars because these people are good. We can not open our drawer to make change for you outside of a transaction. Saying “no one will know” doesn’t work because we are on camera the entire time we are at the register. Saying “but I do this all the time” doesn’t work - see #2 above. Once the drawer closes, if you hand us a bill and say “can you make change?” does not work because, as I said, we are not allowed to open the drawer outside a transaction. I actually had a short-change artist try this on me - he asked for $50 cash back, which he got, then he hands me back a bill after the drawer closes and says “can you change this $20?”. Well, I didn’t have any 20’s, I had given him his 50 in tens, and indeed he was handing me a 10. So I said, “sorry sir, I can’t do that once the drawer is closed, and by the way, that’s a 10.” At which point he has the grace to look embarrassed and a little fearful, then scurries out the door without another word. How do I know he was a short-change guy and not some confused old man? Next time he was in the store the local police cuffed and perp-walked him out the door of the store, apparently he had quite the rap sheet and we and several other stores had lots of video of him duping cashiers. And our tills started balancing again, which was less paperwork for me in the cash office. OK, then how do you get change in the denominations you like? When you’re handing over your money/swiping your card/tapping your watch/handing over your check say “Could I have this back as X number of Y’s?” before I dive into the drawer and if I have that configuration of money I can do that. If you want $5 in quarters it would be a kindness to do it when there aren’t 10 people in line behind you, but I did that on one occasion (and I don’t always have that many quarters). Want $50 in fives? I can do that (usually - don’t always have that many 5’s). Want your $50 as a solid 50? If I have one in the drawer I can do that. But it has to be part of a transaction.
And that’s another long, rambling post by me. Happens sometimes when it’s my day off and I have the time to ramble.
I think “Time To Ramble” is a perfect reason to look forward to a day off. And that was educational and fun to read.
So what was the issue with the “customer who wanted us to do something contrary to long-standing store policy”?
My Jeep Wrangler has a full sized spare. When I get a low pressure warning, I chack all five tires and fill as needed. It has been the spare.
Paying in rolled coins. Specifically, rolled quarters.
Here’s the issue:
We have no way to be sure there’s actually $10 in that roll short of either weighing it against a known standard (I actually do this in the cash office at times) or physically counting all the coins. Which takes time.
It’s not always a matter of dishonesty - once or twice a week I find a roll of coins from the bank is off - usually over or under a coin. This also applies to what YOU get from a bank. A few months ago one of our from-the-bank rolls of nickels had a foreign coin in the middle (think it was Hungarian - very similar but not identical in size and weight to a US nickel). It happens.
But for the dishonest - sometimes they’re testing the store. The first couple rolls might be legit, but if they find those are regularly accepted they might start handing you rolls that are coins only on the ends and otherwise filled with worthless stuff. Which you won’t discover until you crack them open, which may be long after they’re gone.
Same with counterfeit money - the first couple times they buy a pack of gum or breath mints with a $100 it’s legit. If they find no one is checking then they start passing out the fake stuff.
Not only that, they’ll target individual cashiers. This one is diligent about money rules, but that one over there is sloppy/lazy/careless? Guess who will suddenly get funny money in the drawer.
We do have 1, and only ONE, customer who frequents the gas station and is allowed to pay in hand-rolled money. He’s a long term customer, he’s known to us, and he’s invariably accurate. I still don’t like that they allow this, but I can’t control the gas station part of the store. Again - we know who he is and this has been cleared by management. Nobody else gets that privilege just walking in the door, and that’s also why I know this lady didn’t “always pay” with rolled coins.
Add in the belligerent attitude and it raises suspicions because that’s how thieves act before they actually start cheating you. We have had other folks ask if we’ll take rolled coins, but they don’t usually get hostile if we say “no, sorry, we don’t.”
And that’s why her transaction took so much longer than usual - we had her crack open the rolls and we hand-counted all the quarters. That is the ONLY way that could happen - she was counting on a busy Sunday afternoon being too busy for us to take the time. We still took the time.
During covid and all the coin weirdness we actually take coins from customers, even loose coins. But they were required to go to the service desk, hand over the pickle jar or whatever, I would stop what I was doing in the cash office and count out the money (I have a mechanical coin separator/counter), and then inform the desk about how much money was in there (also return items like rings, a battery, a couple pairs of earrings - really, it’s crazy what gets into coin collections). The customer could then either have cash or apply it to their purchases. However, that only worked between 8 am and noon because of the cash office hours and the other needs of the store. We aren’t doing that any more.
Appreciate you taking the time for us. I’ve long followed your (and others’) tales of retail. It’s made me think twice about my dream of retirement and having a job stocking grocery shelves… what if they put me on a register? Yikes!
It’s also made me much more empathetic with cashiers. Even just thinking of stories like this as I say “Hi, hope it’s not too bad today” will hopefully communicate that I understand a bit.