When they made my badge at this one job, i whipped out these huge dark sunglasses, like a movie star trying to hide, and had my badge made. Nobody even noticed.
Way, way back, my mother told me she worked in a local government office where you had to sign in before the due time in the morning, with a reason for lateness if you signed in after the supervisor had drawn the red line in the book. One junior (who later became quite a well-known artist) was frequently late would write in things like “Cow on the line” and “Fog in the Channel”. I rather think he didn’t last long.
I worked in a convenience store for a while; we had a little book under the counter. If anyone wanted to return any item, we had to record the details in the little book, including getting a name and address of the person. We were supposed to do this even if it was something like someone getting nearly to the door then realising they’d got the wrong type of milk, so they just wanted to swap for a different milk type.
We used to just tell them that we couldn’t actually ask for any ID or anything, when people inevitably questioned this policy; I definitely did a return for Tinkerbell from Neverland on one occasion. She might have looked like a builder, and was a lot less sparkly than I was led to expect, but who am I to question?
We also had to write down in the little book anything bought by a staff member, as part of their stupid theft prevention rules (which just encouraged the brighter staff to come up with easy ways around it- a regular topic of discussion on the late shift, when all the management were gone). I took great pleasure in insisting the area manager filled it out in full every time he came in- he always bought a packet of gum even time he visited. The first time he was all ‘Oh yes, well remembered! I am staff, so I should fill out the book! Good job! Hahaha’ but by about the 10th time, I think he realised I was basically trolling him…
I work in a school district and, believe me, there are WAY more “pointless administrative tasks” now then there ever was before, at least in education. It is due to the fact that government is way more involved in education than it was years ago, and anything “government” involves a bureaucratic mountain of crap.
I remember a lot of stores (ie Best Buy, Home Depot etc) doing something like that. At some point I, and I’m guessing others, realized that they didn’t actually verify any of this info and, lets be honest, if there was some issue with my return, I’d prefer them not to know how to be able to call/mail me.
The only reason I can see for a c-store doing this is a half-assed attempt to create (or continue) a chain of custody since it’s food. But I doubt that’s the case. There’s a lot of things we do because we feel like we’re supposed to do them even though we don’t know why. At least some of the time those things get phased out as the store has new generations of managers. I know when I started the position I’m still at, there were quite a few things that, even if they had good reasons to be done at one point, they didn’t any more and we’re only being done out of inertia. It took me years to convince the powers that be that some of these things weren’t just pointless, but a waste of money.
They most likely weren’t doing that to be able to contact you. There are services that large stores subscribe to that keep track of returns* and which will recommend that the store not accept the return based on the customer’s return history and I’m sure that there are some stores that don’t subscribe to a service but just keep track themselves. I can’t imagine why a convenience store would do this - I doubt they get a whole lot of the sort of returns that are a problem, like buying clothing for a particular event and then returning it afterward or a tool that is returned after using it for one project. But I’ve never worked in a convenience store , so I don’t know for sure.
* in my memory, the big stores didn’t simply ask you for your name/email when returning something - they either wanted to see ID or the credit card used for payment.
When I first got my current job 12 years ago the “Cell Phone Policy” was that you had to leave your cell phone in your car or your locker. You were then supposed to give the number of the front desk to anyone in case they needed to contact you during emergencies. In really really big emergencies you were supposed to give the cell phone number of your supervisor (only person authorized to have a cell phone on the floor) who would write down the message and then come find you to give you it (as long as they “Approved” the message). Every single new supervisor I got since then has talked less and less about this policy until finally 2 years ago my new supervisor basically said “I know we have these arbitrary rules about cell phones on the floor that haven’t changed but I’m not taking messages about emergencies so just take the call and leave if you absolutely have too”.
I’m not sure I understand how that would work. If I go to Home Depot to return something and they’d give me a little form to fill out with my name and number (and maybe address) but didn’t do anything with it while I was standing there, how would that prevent a return? I could understand if you had to wait while they looked it up, but I never saw them do that. They never even asked me to clarify something I wrote and my penmanship is just barely legible.
I always assumed it was so they could shove the form with the return and contact (or attempt to contact) me if they later found that the return wasn’t eligible for whatever reason.
ETA, or just a scare tactic to try to stop people from returning things they probably shouldn’t be returning (like something you broke when it fell down a flight of stairs).
I’ve definitely had stores get authorization for a return, but it only took a couple of seconds. Or if it was long ago, maybe HD had a paper list of people who can’t make returns right there at the customer service desk, like supermarkets used to have lists of people who can’t write checks.
But they apparently use a service now
RETURN TO STORE We require a valid driver’s license or government-issued photo identification for non-receipted returns and returns generated from purchases made with Store Credits. The Home Depot uses a third-party refund verification system. All returns are subject to verification system approval.
When i was very new to billing for Medicare, there were these huge, massive policy manuals, they were held in big metal mounted binder sort of stands on the desktop. Updates came all the time and had to be put into the correct spot. IE section A policy B Subsection C written as A.B.C you had to turn to the correct place, unhook the big metal anchors and take the old one out, put the new pages in, then reanchor them. The repeat until the policy manual was up to date. Of course nobody could keep up, the gov’t changes shit all the damn time, so its only by having a good memory that you knew you were doing anything accurately. Thank goodness they finally simplified and automated, but it was that way for YEARS.
This is now rather than in the past. . .
At my school, we need to measure the kids’ temperatures and record them daily. Of course, the thermometer isn’t accurate and always is several degrees in C lower. When it’s my week, I get so bored that I make up only odd temperatures on odd days and even ones on even days, etc. No one has ever come back to ask why.
There were very common at auto parts stores as well as dealers. That’s where all the part numbers were.
There was a humorous story about a bored clerk in the Army who made up a form for “fly kills at the mess hall”. It had a place for a sketch of the mess hall, which was supposed to show the location of each piece of flypaper - and the form was supposed to be filled out with number of flies captured on each piece of flypaper (every week?). The bored clerk just started making up the information and sending in this form along with his other paperwork. After a few weeks, a clerk from another unit came to see him and asked “Do you have any of these flypaper forms? We’re catching heck that we’re not turning them in.” He responded. “Sure, here’s a stack, take all you want.” The story ends with the first clerk (now out of the army) wondering if the Pentagon is still collecting the form.
There used to be a similar thing called a “Phonalog” (Phonolog?) which was a paper list of all of the recordings currently available, indexed by song, artist, etc. My local library had a copy. Updates were a regular thing.
When I started working for Social Security all the operating manuals were the same way. The first week of training class was spent assembling your manual from stacks of updates, some of them years old. A lot of what we were doing was replacing the same sections over and over and over.
I dealt with procedures like that - but we replaced individual pages in loose-leaf binders. You wanted to do it when you were pretty sure you wouldn’t be interrupted, because if you lost your place you’d get in trouble. Reading through the binders was odd, because you’d have a few pages that hadn’t needed change in a long time and were thus yellowed, and new pages that were fresh white.
Oh, and sometimes the replacement pages were different colors. There would be blue pages for interim policy changes (some of which would stay in effect for years) or pink pages for informational notes to explain the purpose of policies.
Back in the late 90s we had to fill out a form for every fax that was sent. You had to fill out the time you sent the fax, the number you sent it to, and the reason for the fax. Every entry had to not only be filled out, but you also had to write your initials on each entry. After initialing three times you finally had to sign your name. The office secr…, er, admin assistant would get completely bent out of shape if the initials were missing. Rules is rules.
I started to initial my signature, hoping that it would become a requirement too. Apparently three initials were enough to avoid a fax scandal.
I remember getting fax approval - if my boss wasn’t available i had to fo ro bosses’ boss. Oh joy
At one time we used the fax so much, getting or sending stuff, we would run out of paper roll every week or so. The boss we had, at that time, wanted everyone to sign in in the morning, and then the sign-in sheet had to be faxed to multiple fax numbers - I remember you could program the fax machine to do that with one key.
Now, I cant recall the last time I faxed anything.