RE: bodily waste.
When I was working at Best Buy, one department and only one department was trained in the cleanup and disposal of bodily wastes and blood. There was a week of special training and they were the only ones allowed to do it.
Thanks, D_Odds, I will heed your advice.
I don’t think he’s a real doctor, anyway. From what I understand, doctors are supposed to be compassionate.
One more thing…
FilmGeek, those in LP (security) are supposed to be the ones who rid the area of human waste. And they often do. But just as often the cashiers/floor associates/whoever’s handy are called in to clean up, especially when it’s just urine. Mmm, wet paper towels…
Curiously enough, we probably aren’t the board for you. I’m sure you can find something on usenet more fitted to your, shall we say, interests and capabilities.
Bye, now.
TVeblen
Pit mod
Harborwolf, Baker, are both of you either by chance, me? I’m not sure if that’s possible, but everything you guys mention rings true for me.
I got my job at a grocery store deli around 5 months ago, and it’s really wearing thing. It’s Winter, the snowbirds are coming down and we have more customers than ever, we’re understaffed and will continue to be understaffed untill the store my manager is fired, and not only do we have more customers, it seems 1/5 of the clowns we get want very small orders all of a sudden. I’ve never been so repulsed by people in my life, and yearn for a job with less customer interaction. I don’t mind the labor one bit, but you can’t even have you damn thoughts to your self when your dealing with one customer after another, after another, after another, after another, for hours and hours on end. It’s very stressfull. I’m asking for a transfer to another department soon, but I’m not sure if I’ll get it. As much as I dislike my job, and esspecialy the people I serve, I’m very good at it. I’ve become very cynical lately, and assume the absolute worse about almost everyone as far as intelligence and maturity goes.
Fuckin’ A! I can show a customer a hunk of meat I opened today, and they look at it funny and sprout "eeew…it doesn’t look fresh. And then they want me to open up a new package. So then we have two open packages of the same damn thing, and there’s a good chance one of them is going bad before we can slice it all. There goes $40 just because of some ass clown that thinks he has some inkling as to what “fresh” is. Unless of course I tell him/her that we can’t open a new package, then they just walk off in a huff.
Since I am asking for a transfer, what was your favorite of the three departments? I’m shooting for meat department, but I may end up with produce or bakery, assuming I get transfered at all.
All all out of hijacking material, so it time to gripe:
Customers who do any of the following deserve a swift ass kicking:
Customers who tell me they’d like a sub “with everything”, and then promptly walk away. Hello? You have options you waste of space. White bread? Weat bread? Sunflower bread? Does your definition of “everything” include mayo and mustard? Because it sure as hell doesn’t for half the people who ask for everything on the sub. Same goes for oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and oregeno. What brand of meats and cheeses would you like? What kind of cheese? Unfortunately, I can’t ask a customer these questions if they walk away. I have to wait for five minutes so they can come back, complain they don’t have their sub made yet, and then whine for a handfull of minutes. BITE ME!
Customers that tell me they’d like “everything”, except lettuce, tomatoe, onions, mayo, mustard, olives, meat, bread, etc, etc…
Alright, this is reasonable if you’re excluding one or two things, but please, just ask for what you want if you only want a few things on your sub. I swear, 90% of my customers like to believe they enjoy hogies with “everything”. I don’t know what else it could be. Why ask for everything, minus everything, if they can’t boast that they enjoy a sub with a wide selection of vegetables in front of someone?
Anyone who asks for more than one pound of a shaved meat, esspecialy when we have a lot of customers. Shaving pounds of meat requires a lot of time, and is a pain in the ass to clean up afterwards. Hell, cutting regular meat requires enough time. Why make the poor bastards behind you wait any longer than they have to? I still shudder thinking of the time a customer wanted me to shave an entire roast beef. Ye Gods that took a long time. I felt like ringing the ladies neck by the time I was through.
Customers who remark “Ya know, I used to in a deli much like this one” right after bitching about something incredibly mudane, or being a pain in the ass. then they sympathize "It sure was a tough gig! I’d hate to have your job. Funny how the most sympathetic and empathetic customers tend to be the biggest pain in the asses. Well, that might be a gross generalization…it’s just that the ones who are the pain in the asses are the ones that stick out the most.
Customers that won’t allow me to help them unless I call they’re number. I promise you, there’s people who go to a deli soley to have a number called out, and by God, they’re not leaving untill you call it. Even if there’s no one in line, I can tell people grabbing a number isn’t neccesary, tell them I can help them immediatly, promise them no one will get in trouble for skipping the whole number picking-calling procedure; it makes no difference. I’ve actually had people walk out because of this. One day two ladies were in line, standing beside each other, so I asked which was first. I figured they’d tell me with no problem. That would have been too easy:
Lady one: Wait…aren’t you going to call the numbers?
Lady two: Aren’t you supposed to do that?
Me: Normally, yes, but you’re the only two in line. It’s really not neccesary…so who was first?
Lady one: I thought you were going to call numbers…
Me: looks back and forth Well…does either of you know who arrived first?
Then, both ladies stared me down
Me: Alright, now serving number 27!
After that, one lady couldn’t seem to find her number after rummaging through her pcokets, and the other just left.
I was stunned
And my most loathed customer, those that think me looking at them in the eye means “May I take you order?”. Listen fuckshit, there’s 5 people ahead of you, I’m slicing turkey with one hand, cleaning a slicer with another, and wrapping a block of cheese with my foot. Just because I accidently look you in the eye doesn’t fucking mean I can help you. Are you stupid? FUCKING LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW GODDAMN BUSY I AM! Your number hasn’t been called, you’re near the back of the line, and even if you weren’t, I’m obviously helping someone. Get bent.
I’m not sure if any of this is coherent of even reasonable right now. I’ve had a tough week with no day off, I’m crashing and burning in one of my classes, and it doesn’t look like work conditions are going to improve untill after Christmas.
I once had someone call me at a shoe store I worked for. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Kleban’s shoe store.
Customer:Yes, I want brown shoes like those black ones.
Me:Ok, what style of shoes are you talking about.
Customer:The black ones. I want them in brown.
Me:What style of shoe? Are you talking about dress shoes?
Customer:The black ones.
Me:Sorry, we don’t have any.
Customer:Oh(click).
Joeski, I hear ya. Must be something about the deli that equals “mandatory understaffing.” Our manager won’t even hire a new person or give the deli manager more hours to schedule with. We’re down to three deli employees for the entire day.
Here’s a few more I have. Good think I worked the other day, or I’d have forgotten.
-the pick o’chick crowd: We serve fried chicken in the deli, Big hot case filled with thighs, legs, wings, and breasts for sale individually or in 4 piece increments (4,8,12,16, etc.) Once a day somebody says “I want that one there, and that one. No not that one. THe other one. Okay, now give me that one.” Doing that for one specific piece is fine, but when I have to go through half the damn hot case to get you eight specific pieces of chicken, I get a little cranky. We’ve thought about getting a hot case/magic claw machine so our customers can pick their own piece.
“Go ahead, stick in a dollar and get that big piece of chicken. Ooops. You got a wing. Too bad.”
As for shaved meat, I have one gentleman in particular that bugs me. He always orders 2lbs of meat shaved and then gets huffy with me when it takes a long time to do it. You know, it takes a while to pile up two pounds when I’m doing it with meat shreds instead of slices. If you’re in a rush, get a two pound slab and shave it yourself.
And I just know one day I’m going to snap. When someone asks for some shaved turkey, I’m going to pull out a can of shaving cream and a razor and tell them that if they add a haircut it’ll cost em two bits.
And ahhh, the people that give you their order and walk away when you are already helping a customer. Then they return angry that you couldn’t remember their order or don’t have it done.
That’s all for now, but I have to work today so I may have more.
I’ve worked some major league shit jobs before, and I can say with all honesty that the grocery store was the worst.
I did meat, dairy, produce, and front end.
JoeSki, the place will not get better. It never does. If that job is screwing up your schoolwork like that, find one that involves a little less bullshit.
Ah…the grocery store. Low pay, a bitch fit every time you have to call in (because they neeeeed you), yet they make sure whenever they’re annoyed with you that they’ll replace your worthless ass without hesitation.
-Joe
Can I come to your store and make you happy. I’m the guy who says “Peppered ham, please. Six slices at number three.” If it’s cheese, it’s “about a pound of your three year old smoked Bavarian” and I don’t care if it ends up being four ounzes out either way. It’s cheese, I’m going to eat it anyway.
That’s a tough call. Like trying to pick your punishment in hell. One thing I liked about deli and front end was doing closing duties. You could get stuff done without being bothered by people. Also, there was that pathetic feeling of satisfaction at actually completing a task instead of processing an endless string of customers.
If forced to choose, I think I’d go with front end as the interaction period is shorter and if you’re a bagger you can walk around in your job. Keeps the knees from getting too sore.
As much as I complained about people leaving carts in the lot, I have to say that clearing the lot was actually not that bad. Nobody else wanted to do it and it meant far less customer interaction.
I still don’t know why I spent a year working at Blockbusters. I spent the previous 5 years working in bars/clubs, and i’d prefer any day of the week dealing with drunken idiots rather than sober idiots giving me shit about videos. To wit:
That Price Promise thing they did: fucking hell did that do your head in.
“Do you have East is East?”
“Let me check dropbox…yes”
“I get that free don’t I?”
“No, you get it free next time if its not in. It’s in. £3.50 please”
“It wasn’t in when I asked”
“It was. I just didn’t have it behind the counter.”
(customer comes up beside her, same question)
“Well give it to him, and then i’ll take it free next time.”
(another customer comes in, hands back copy of East is East)
“I have two. £3.50 please, if you want it.”
“I’m going to go get my husband”
“Whats that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see when he comes in”
(losing rag finally)“Well tell him to come in. (sarcastic baby voice) Waaaa! I want East is East! It’s a crap film anyway love, you’re not missing out on anything.”
Woman storms off. If her husband did come in, he didn’t deal with me.
“I’d like to say I hated this film (She’s all That) and I want my money back.”
“I’m sorry Madam. I wrote, directed and produced that film as a culmination of 4 years hard work.”
(blank look) “Who’s in charge here”
“I am.”(No managers work on a nighttime, leaving you to deal with all the arseholes) Cue screaming and shouting.
Plus the people who don’t understand that we don’t have a database of every single BB customer at each store. Or that you take the fucking empty case from under the cover title to the desk. And why did you come in at 10.58pm? Once that overnight till thing starts running, I can’t sell you shit, no matter how many times you ring from outside the door.
Where I used to work, we had arguments about who got to get the carts 'cause we could smoke while we were doing it.
About the fresh meat thing (referring to raw meat here, not deli meat), at the grocery stores where I grew up, some stores sold frozen-but-thawed meat, some sold never-been-frozen meat, and a few sold both. “Fresh” was used to refer to the latter, even though obviously both were “fresh” in the sense that they weren’t rotten. I was always careful to buy only “fresh” if I was buying a lot to freeze for later, since I was always told that twice-frozen raw meat can make you pretty sick. One store even got in a good bit of trouble by the health department when it was discovered they were sticking a “fresh” label on previously-frozen meats.
So when I moved to a different city, I had no reason to assume that things didn’t work the same way. I was pretty surprised the first time I asked whether the meat was fresh or not and the clerk said, as if I was the dumbest thing to ever live, “Duh, you think we would sell rotten meat?”
I have a gross retail story too. I wouldn’t normally put a TMI warning on this in light of some of the other icky bodily-fluids posts in this thread, but I know some people are particularly sensitive about certain things, so consider yourself warned.
I used to work at a lingerie store, where we did allow people to try panties on, over their own. One woman came in and described to me in detail the peculiar unpleasant discharge she’d been having and wanted me to recommend some panties. Not as unusal as you might think (though most people would not have described in so much detail) and I showed her some specific cotton ones that tended to breathe really well.
She took them into the change room, and then scooted her old panties out underneath the door, saying “See? Check out that discharge on there!”
I ran away back onto the sales floor until she came out, so I could pretend I hadn’t even heard her ask me to look at her discharge, and so I wouldn’t be asked to hand her those panties back.
Unfortunately, she didn’t buy what she had tried on, so we ended up having far more opportunity than we would have liked to “check out that discharge” as we disposed of the panties she’d tried on, obviously not with her own on underneath.
I think that’s the most awful thing I’ve ever read…
One thing (of many) that pissed me off at the office supply store I used to work at was that as closing time approached we were NOT allowed to make any announcements that the store was about to close. According to the suits (most of whom I presume had never worked a day in any of the stores and perhaps had never even been in any of their own stores) felt that such announcements might make the customer feel unwelcome. The customer shouldn’t feel pressured or rushed and should be allowed to shop at his or her own leisure and deserves to have as pleasing of a shopping experience no matter what time of day it is. :rolleyes: Good Christ! What a load of shit this policy was! It’s not like any of the higher-ups were ever there at that time to make sure we were not making annoucements. The most we could do is just strongly hint at the fact that we were closing by asking the customer if we can help him or her find anything. Sometimes I’d talk loudly to my co-workers in the next aisle over from where the customer was shopping and say things like, “Hey guys, since we’re CLOSING we need to make sure everything on this aisle is organized and stocked!” Not only were we not allowed to make annoucements, but if there were any customers in the store at closing we had to leave the doors open, which meant other customers could still get in as well. Once the last customer was gone we were to leave the doors open for an additional five minutes (please, get real!). Fortunately none of the managers adhered to this part of the stupid policy and would close the doors as soon as the last customer was out the door. They wanted out of there and wanted to get home as soon as possible just as much as the rest of us did.
As for my complaints about stupid customers, I had too many to list. One of the most common problems was when someone would come in and need an ink cartridge for a printer. When I would ask the person which brand and model they’d give me that deer-in-the-headlights look. “What? Gee, I don’t know, uh, I supposed I should have checked, huh?” (Uh, yeah, that would help, now wouldn’t it? :rolleyes: ) Sometimes they’d actually know the manufacturer, but would not know the model. “You mean there’s more than one?”
And then there were the dozens of idiots who should have at least taken a basic course in Computer Literacy before buying a computer! I swear, they should require training and licensing for people to buy and use computers. It would have made my job much easier. “RAM? Gigabyte? Software? Hardware? Modem? Gee, all this new-fangled terminlogy is soooooo confusing!”
Our store carried hundreds of software titles. There’s no fucking way I could be expected to know which ones do what without reading the information on the damn box! Christ! Did these people think we actually had time to install and run every application we sold and could try them all out on some system we had set up in the back while on break?!
Lastly, there were all the people who thought that our store was a tech support center as well. Since we sold it, we must also use it and know everything about it, right? People would buy something and then take it home or to their office and then call to ask us how to install or run their software, how to set up their printers, etc. Again, nobody in the store had the time or the training to deal with such issues! The first thing I would tell these people is to contact the company’s tech support. “But I don’t wanna be on hold for an hour!” Too bad. Some of them actually thought I could somehow get them through faster by calling some special number for them. Yeah, like even if I could, what makes this moron so fucking special that he should get preferential treatment? Then there were the ones who claimed that they could not get help from the tech support line and decided to call the store, thinking we could somehow help them more.
I could go on, but I think I’ve written enough for now. It’s been four years since I worked there and I still have nightmares about it.
Then You’re gonna love this, Midget,
As a bagger I had to clean the bathrooms. I hated it but it was part of the job. I tell you that with a couple years experience at it I learned that the womens bathroom was almost always hideous no matter how often I cleaned it. It was almost always much, much worse than the mens room which usually only had a few dirty foot prints.
With that in mind, I once had to clean the mens room after a man detonated in it. I don’t know how to espress it more clearly than that. A customer came up to me and said that there was a bad smell near the mens room. So I grabbed to mop and bucket. When I got within 50 feet of the room (I was in the middle of the meat department. Yum.) I was almost knocked over by the reek of SHIT. Yes, the capital letters are appropriate. My God, it was like the man had climbed out of a freshly filled cesspool and then threw himself around the stall. It was on the walls as high as my head.
I found out afterwards that the (old) guy had been in earlier with his wife and literally lost his shit up at the front end. The early shift had basically cleaned up the front end and the trail leading to the mens room. They left the mens room for whoever came in later. Bastards.
Sorry, I’m going to disagree with you on this one. If I need two pounds of shaved meat, then I’m not going to visit the store when it’s convenient for the deli to cut it for me. I’ll go when it’s convenient for me. I am not concerned about the other customers. If I need two pounds of shaved meat, I need two pounds of shaved meat. (Not that I’ve ever bought two pounds of shaved meat or hit the express lane with a cartful of groceries. But the point remains…)
When Ivylad was in the Navy the Exchange had a great idea that I haven’t seen implemented elsewhere. You got a slip of paper and wrote what you needed on it (a pound of provolone, sliced thin, a half of pound of Virgina ham, shaved) then did the rest of your shopping. They would announce your name when they got your order together, then you could swing by the deli and pick it up.
May I suggest if someone asks for a large order, that you suggest they start their shopping, and you’ll page them when the order is done? That way you can whip out the quarter pound of this and that for the other customers and not keep Two Pounds of Shaved Meat waiting.
My experience has been the opposite. My department gets really slow about an hour before we close, so I get all of MY cleaning done in advance, while the cashiers are still counting their drawers down and the other departments are waiting for the rest of the customers to leave. Therefore I get volunteered to be the garbage and toilet girl. The men’s room is four times as disgusting as the ladies’ room in my store. I also find really strange things in there, like a nylon mesh “trucker cap” IN THE URINAL. And even though we have a urinal, men like to go in the stall and piss near the toilet. Not in it, just near it. The women’s bathroom is always clean - the worst mess I ever had to clean up at this location was a pile of paper towels on the floor, from some kids playing with our automatic towel dispenser - and it smells fresh and neat because nobody’s broken off the ceiling-mounted air freshener yet.
Although once somebody pissed in the garbage can in the ladies’ room, at another location I worked for. I still haven’t figured that out - it must have been a guy, because the can had one of the bullet-type flip-front lids, and the opening was several inches above my waistline - and I’m 5’7.
Wish I could say I had that experience for cleaning bathrooms. But it wouldn’t have helped since I had to clean both bathrooms anyway.
This led to another little peeve: people who cannot grasp the obvious. You are a lady. You go to the ladies room but there is a big yellow mop bucket and several “wet floor” cones holding the door open. there is a young man holding a mop who has obviously just stopped doing something. What could possibly be happening here?
That’s right! He’s a pervert! This 21-year-old gets off listening to a 62-year-old woman pee.
It couldn’t possibly be that he was mopping the floor and stopped to look up when you indignantly asked what he was doing in there.
I hate it when people pick something from the shelves, decide they don’t want it, and then just leave it in some random spot. A couple of times people have done this with Ice Cream, which was melted when I found it. :mad:
And you know those coffee dispenser thingies? I hate it when people spill coffee beans all over the floor, and I have to sweep it up.