Work in a store? Bitch about customers here!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ll start.

I work in a grocery store. Today I was on my way back to the registers after my break when I noticed a gift left behind by a wonderfully astute customer. This intelligent, uniquely fantastic shopper had knocked over a six-pack of bottled water. GLASS-bottled water. A couple of the bottles had shattered on the floor.

And this graceful, honest genius LEFT it there, as opposed to telling someone so that it could be cleaned up. What whimsy! A hazard for the entire store, employee and consumer alike, to enjoy by slicing their feet open and sliding on the floor! Wheee! :rolleyes:

As soon as I found it, obviously, I cleaned it up. Ambulances coming to grocery stores are NEVER reassuring to customers.

So there’s my rant. Who else out there has to deal with morons and their money?

2

Oooh, don’t get me started.

I hate people who yak on their cellphones while unloading their groceries onto the front counter and paying for their things, and then get pissed off when you motion that it’s time for them to pay / that everything’s bagged / whatever. Would it kill you to exchange one or two words with your cashier?

3

I work in a grocery store deli and to be honest, I’ve never hated customers more in my life.

-There’s the thicker/thinner crowd. “I’d like a thin slice. Little thicker…little thicker…could you get that just a little thicker? Oh now that’s just too thick.”

-Hey kids, know what’s fun? Three pounds of meat shaved falling apart without an automatic slicer. Enjoy the mean as much as I’m enjoying the shoulder pain :slight_smile:

-Can’t leave out the “made by magic elves crowd.” These are the people that think we can instantly produce sliced meat trays, rotisserie chickens, fried chicken, sandwiches, salads, etc while waiting on customers and any of the other billion things that we have to do during the day. How can we do it? Simple, we have a small army of magic elves in the back just waiting to serve.

Had one of these people on Saturday. She didn’t understand that I just couldn’t close the deli down to make her a large meat tray. This brings me to the

-“Well, If you can’t do it then I’ll just go somewhere else” crowd. Every customer service place I have ever worked was infested with these morons. You want to go elsewhere? Fine. We have more than enough assholes here, and we loooooove to share.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure I have more though.

4

I just remembered another little peevish problem.

There’s this one guy that comes into our store all the time. His rants never allow me a space to ask his name, so I just mentally call him “Soapbox.” Soapbox yells about anything wrong in the store or surrounding shopping center, no matter how pointless and mundane, from a shortage of his favorite shopping cart (we have two kinds) to cigarette ashes on the sidewalk. For some reason, even though the rants always end up incoherently babbling about the youth of today, he always manages to just bitch at me. Me as in someone fresh out of high school.

Baggers should be given clue-by-fours as standard equipment. :smack:

5

Harborwolf, about the elves, I feel your pain. I remember a store I worked in. Closed at 10:00PM. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving the folks baking the dinner rolls made three times the usual amount, because of the upcoming holiday. But still, we sold out by 9:00PM. So a woman comes in and asks about dinner rolls at our counter, we tell her they are all sold. “Well, are you going to be making any more?” She was surprised when we said no. It’s like you say, people think there are elves in the bakery. They don’t realize there’s mixing, rising, shaping, more rising, baking, cooling, packaging, etc. The customers want scratch baking too, at frozen dough prices. Grrrrrrr.

One question that annoyed me more than any other. “Is this fresh?” Honestly, lady, what do you expect us to say? No? And a customer’s defintion of fresh is different than ours. To them fresh means made today. to us it means still of good eating quality, and the time of freshness varies, depending on the product. Yeast raised donuts are stale tomorrow, but a layer cake or a pie is not.

6

My favorite was, “Well, could you check in the back?” Like we have some magic portal there, where we can produce whatever they want, just by waving our hands.

7

Note: If there’s a giant pink sign right above your fat fucking head that says, “Express Lane: 7 items or less” you do not bring $98.47 worth of groceries to that fucking lane!!! Ugh. I went to the store to pick up smokes tonight (nothing else; I got my groceries minutes before at a different store because this one sucks so bad, but their cigarettes are cheap), and it took me 15 minutes thanks to these assholes. I say “assholes” because I don’t know who pissed me off more; the customer, for being such a dumb, stupid, stupid asshole, or the cashier for allowing her to be such a fucking idiot.

I had no problems politely excusing a customer from my lane back when I worked in retail. It’s “Express”, it isn’t supposed to take all fucking day. If you have 10 items instead of 7, okay, maybe I’ll help you. But you don’t bring EIGHTEEN FUCKING GROCERY CARTS FULL OF SHIT to the fucking EXPRESS LANE.

I hate people.

8

HA! When I was at KrapMart, we were forbidden from telling anyone they couldn’t come into the Express lane, even though the sign specifically said, “10 items or less.” Don’t ask me why. I still did warned them when my managers weren’t around, but I got caught often enough. Fucking morons.

:mad:

9

Oi, I get this one too. They always ask about the rotisserie chickens. “Is this chicken fresh?” For god sake there is a dated tag on the fricken chicken (heh, that rhymed :stuck_out_tongue: ) If it has today’s date, it’s fresh. Learn to read.

10

I got bitched at once in a grocery store (she wasn’t even polite about it) because I went into the express with 2 items over the limit. I did it because every other cashier was horribly busy, and I needed cigarettes. See, you can only get cigarettes at the express counter, so I thought I was doing the store a favor by saving the cashiers from having to run over there, interrupt the express cashier’s transaction, get the cigarettes, come back… I guess I was wrong.

Still though, there’s an extreme difference between 2 items more, and items totalling nearly a hundred dollars. If I were you, I would have made my managers come and explain to the irate customers why, when they only had 3 items, it was taking them an hour to get through the express line. There’s nothing worse than getting bitched at for something you can’t control. I mean, I’m sure there’s something that’s worse, but it still sucks.

11

Ooooh, the fresh thing… there’s a guy who works in the same facility as the restaurant/fast food place I work at, and he always always always buys coffee, and he always always always asks us which one is the freshest. My co-workers and I have told him (at least five times each) that it doesn’t matter because they’re made at pretty much the same time, and the pots only hold about six cups. Despite repeating ourselves every day, he still asks!!! My co-workers have even expressed out they’d like to stab him in the eye the next time he aks them. :eek:

I was sent over to work at the gift shop that’s owned by the same owner as the restaurant, and it’s pretty much a free-for-all when I’m over there because I work alone, and I get to sit and dwaddle, and ring stuff up for people when they wander up, otherwise I sit and read magazines or do whatever. There’s a radio there, and the owner has left it up to the discretion of the person working to choose the station. Since I’m young and prefer not to listen to “soft rock” or “elevator music”, I turned it to the pop/rock station. Lady comes in and heads straight towards the magazine rack. After about ten minutes of reading the magazines, she looks up at me and says “This music is driving me nuts.” I shrug, and help the customers. Then fifteen minutes later, shoves the magazine back onto the rack and huffs out complaining about how the music was giving her a headache and she couldn’t read properly. Thing is… I’ve seen “customers” like her enough to pick them out once they waltz in. They never intend to buy anything and goes straight towards the magazine rack to read the magazines to kill time. Sometimes, they even get in the way of my closing the store down for fifteen minutes so I can take my break. :mad:

12

Conversations between the deli person and me:
"I’d like a half pound of that peppered roast beef right there point sliced moderately thin. "
“This look about right?”
“Sure.”

As long as he’s not cutting it a half-inch thick, I really don’t care. I can use more thinly cut on my sandwich, or less thick cut. I really don’t even get why people care.

13

“I want to buy X.”

“We don’t sell X here.”

“Yes you do. I bought it here last time.”

“Well, we’ve never carried X, but we have Y, which is similar, would you like a look?”

“NO! I want my X! Where’s your manager? Look, I have the bottle right here and it clearly says… (looks at logo on bottle, up at store name, back at bottle, turns very unbecoming shade of red)… Oh.”

14

When I worked in a store (Stock replenishment) There were few people I could pit.

One is the old guy who prodded me in the back once to get my attention. He must have hit a nerve because that prod almost made me smash a coconut over his head.

Another is the guy who thought we didn’t notice him slyly munching on the grapes every other day.

Thirdly was my superviser who talked to me as if I was some spotty underachieving urchin despite all evidence of my work efficiency. He’d point obvious things out to me knowing full well I had an above-urchin level of common sense.

15

I haven’t worked in a store for a long time, but can I bitch anyway?
Hey, you! Yes, you, the girl holding up a huge line at the salad bar at lunch hour. Did you know you can use the tongs to pick up a whole clump of (whatever) at a time? Really. Trust me.

You DO NOT have to pick up a single leaf of lettuce, turn it over and back a few times so you can inspect it for, what, beauty? symmetry? on all sides, and then deposit it into your bowl. And then repeat the damn leaf by leaf inspection for 134 more leaves! Just snare a reasonable size clump, dump it in your bowl and MOVE ON.

Ditto for the onion rings, the radishes, the olives, the chunks of cheese, etc, etc.
DOUBLE DITTO for the cucumber slices! You DO realize, don’t you, that like every slice in that bowl came from the VERY SAME cucumber. I.E., they are all of the same degree of freshness and almost certainly taste the same! Grab a halfdozen at once and move on.

I dunno. The women who have to indulge their ‘princess and the pea’ sensitivity at salad bars just plain drive me nuts. IF YOU TAKE A HALF HOUR ASSEMBLING YOUR PERFECT SALAD, IT MEANS ALL OF THE PEOPLE BEHIND YOU EITHER CAN’T EAT THEIR SALADS OR GET BACK TO WORK LATE.
You better start scooping & dumping with speed or I will grab the squeeze bottle of cataline dressing and write the word “SLOWPOKE” in dripping red letters across the back of your lovely wool coat.

And I ain’t kidding.

16

Attention Sears customers:

The fitting room is not a toilet.

The main aisle is not a toilet.

Merchandise is not a toilet.

Merchandise is not trash. When in the fitting room, please do not throw items on the floor and step on them.

There are several signs in the fitting room politely asking you to put all unwanted items on the rack provided. We regret that so many of you are illiterate, as you seem to have trouble with this simple concept.

It is not my fault that an item is not on sale. I don’t set the prices.

It is not my fault that your credit card was declined. It is the decision of Sears Credit Central, not mine.

When you bring back a blouse with lipstick stains, buttons torn off and smelling of smoke, do not be surprised if we will not take it back, especially if you have neither a receipt nor a tag.

People here work hard to keep the racks neat and orderly. Please do not simply throw the item over the rack instead of putting it back on the hanger.

I will not watch your child while you run into the fitting room or restroom. That is not my job.

I am a cashier, not your personal shopper. I will be happy to assist you, but I cannot neglect other shoppers to stay by your side the whole time, especially if you are an able-bodied young adult.

Please do not leave your trash/empty bottles/used feminine napkins/prosthetic limbs in the fitting room.

Please do not talk on your cell phone while I am ringing you out. I need to ask you several questions while I ring you, as I am required to do so. Do not glare at me when I am trying to ask you those questions.

The shopping carts are not diaper bins.

Please do not steal from us, you filthy thieves.

Whatever bug is lodged in your rectum that day, it is not my fault. It is wrong for you to take your anger out on me.

Thank you, and thank you for shopping at Sears.

17

this website sums up my feelings about customers

what I really hate are shoplifters, we had two punk kids steal a couple of iPods from the store, they had accomplices in a getaway car and everything, they got away, punks like that need a good tire-iron to the kneecaps

personally, i think shoplifters should be shot on sight, nothing lethal, just a good kneecapping, then crush their hands so they can’t steal ever again

don’t give me that “oh but it’ll ruin their lives” crap either, the decision to shoplift is a concious decision, if they didn’t make the decision to steal, they wouldn’t need to be pounded into a pile of goo

18

Ah yes, I remember working in retail.

Customer: My <product> is broken, and I want a refund.
Me: Do you have your receipt?
Customer: Right here. [hand me a receipt]
Me: Ma’am, this receipt is from <Retail Chain X>. This is <Retail Chain Y>.
Customer: But you carry <product>, too, so can’t you just give me an even-exchange or something?
Me: No. Next, please!

And I can’t forget to mention Ms. Selectively-Illiterate. Ms. Selectively-Illiterate was only capable of reading numerical data plus % $ and ¢. Thus, a sign on a counter that said “<Product A>, 10% off” would be interpreted, simply, as “10%”, resulting in the customer claiming that they were overcharged for <Product Z> because “Everything on that counter is 10% off”. I once, and I kid you not, had a Ms. Selectively-Illiterate claim “This shampoo is supposed to be 33% off!”, to which I replied, “No Ma’am, the bottle is labeled ‘33% more free’, which means that it contains 33% more shampoo than the standard bottle at the same price”.

But my very favorite customer was always Ms. Shop-From-Home (oddly enough, there was never a Mr. Shop-From-Home). Ms. Shop-From-Home always seemed to know what the busiest time of day was, and would always call to ask “What kinds of <product> do you sell, and how much are they?”, where <product> was always something with a vast number of different models and widely varying price ranges. Any attempt to force Ms. Shop-From-Home to commit to any subset of <product> would invariably fail, as she would always want to be informed of every possible combination of features and prices.

I always get my deli meat shaved. It’s impossible to screw up shaved meat: if it’s still coming off in whole slices, it ain’t thin enough. My main problem is with employees who can’t remember more than one data point at a time. I tell them that I’d like “Half a pound of <Brand> smoked turkey, shaved,” and the employee locates the turkey and then asks me “How much would you like?” “Half a pound,” I reply, vainly hoping that they at least remembered how I wanted it cut. No such luck. “And how would you like that cut, sir?”

Although I was quite impressed by the Wendy’s drive-thru (Og, I hate that bastardization of “through”) employee the other day. In my quest for efficiency, I related to the speaker-box that I required a “Number 8, biggie-sized with BBQ sauce, and a Sprite to drink”, and in response I was blessed with the sight of my entire order appearing flawlessly on the little screen they have under the speaker-box, along with the query of “Will that be all for you?”.

I think that next time I’ll try adding “…and that’s all” at the end of my order and seeing of I can avoid any further questioning at all.

19

Which limbs are most frequently left behind? :confused:

20

Lady, no matter how many times you make me take you from the crafts section to the framing section and back, we are still not going to have the size paper you want. If it ain’t there the first time I check the labels on every. single. paper tray, it ain’t gonna be there the second. Or third. Or fourth. Or the fi–…Jesus, woman, are you expecting me to perform some sort of ancient craft store magic to make this stuff appear out of thin air? Last I checked, my nametag did not read “Scrapbook Fairy.”
…Erm, it’s been years since I worked at that craft store, but the memories are still so very painful.