Why in the hell do people think it’s OK to wander into my office, ask for a report, then start pawing through the stuff on my desk before I have a chance to answer?
It’s even better when they’re a Low Talker or a Mumbler: “Do you have the E[mumble mumble] report?”
EPILOGUE: I have been denied promotion due to the “inconsistency” in my metrics that resulted from taking an LSAT expert and making him into an MCAT teacher.
Holy cow. Cat Whisperer is right, that’s a whole lot of bad. Good look on your job search.
Whenever a legal entity gets sued, the person in charge of the records gets subpoenaed. I’m that person, its part of my job. Its not personal, its a demand for documentation under my control.
I’m so used to it that I don’t think twice before accepting it and sending it off to legal.
All that being said, there is a right way and a wrong way to serve a summons.
The right way is to show up during business hours, ask for the Records Manager, tell her who you are and then hand her the papers. If the Records Manager happens to be out of the office, her minion will sign for them and pass them on to legal.
The wrong way is to lurk in the parking lot, wait for the Records Manager’s minion to walk out and then run up shouting and shove papers in his face. Of course he was frightened and lashed out, the people who saw the whole thing thought that the idiot process server was a mugger as well.
Server got smacked, then? Too funny.
Of course, if they get in court they’ll be asking minion if muggers regularly wave papers in people’s faces as they mug them.
I think minion could legitimately claim to be too freaked out by the “run up shouting” part to notice the papers.
Server got his clock cleaned. Minion used his fist to punch the server in the mouth. I do need to talk to minion about that. One should never use their hand to punch someone in the mouth, human bites get septic faster than cat bites. Minion should have punched in him the nose or throat, it wouldn’t have hurt minion so much.
I’d guess that muggers use distraction often. “Look at the papers while I punch you in the stomach and steal your stuff.”
Also a bad idea to hit someone where there’s lots of bone the hitter could get hurt on. My mother got a sprained wrist punching someone in the face once.
Yeah, but getting punched in the mouth hurts a lot.
Very minor grumble: when you call a store and a live human being answers, is it not reasonable to assume said store is open? 
Lost count of the number of calls I answered today from people inquiring as to whether the store I work at was open, and I’m pretty sure I don’t sound like an automated answering system. 
Maybe not. The last restaurant I called had a human pick up during what turned out to be after hours.
Seems odd to me that someone would answer the phone outside business hours, but then I’m more used to office settings. I’d also think that callers would figure no one would be there at all had we been closed for the holiday, but I certainly never rule out the possibility I’m wrong.
That “waving” can look a lot like you’re being punched. One time as I was shuffling boxes around in the flat I’d just moved to, there was a ring on the bell. I opened, and a fist holding what at first sight looked like an envelope shot up right in front of my nose. “I am looking for Margarita Jimnénez!” The envelope was actually one of those “tear down the sides to open” forms and the dude behind the fist was shorter than my 5’4". “I’m reasonably sure that I am not Margarita Jiménez; I am neither a Margarita nor a Jiménez”, said I, gingerly pushing said fist to one side with a finger. Dude looked forlorn, asked to see ID, admitted that yeah the only similarity between my name and that of Ms. Jiménez was that both have vowels and consonants and took his judiciary summons away but damn, if my reflexes hadn’t been on vacation he would have gotten a faceful of claws. Other people who made the mistake of startling me can show scars (none on the face, though).
A lot of the business a store or restaurant does is done outside business hours: receiving materials, prepping, cleaning, taking reservations.
I hope you called the law firm that sent this idiot, and complained loud & long. And point out that because of all the trouble caused, the papers were never actually given, and so your company was not validly served.
Well, as someone who tends to call to see if a store is open if there’s any possibility that they might not be (I hate making useless trips), I sort of don’t know what to say when someone answers the phone and I wasn’t really expecting them to. It’d be rude to just hang up, so my default usually is “hi, just checking to see if you were open today…” which sounds lame but what else is there? Sometimes I follow up with asking what time they close, just to make the call a little more worthwhile or something. 
I’ve had a number of cases where the store person has then said “Oh, we closed an hour ago.”
No, I don’t reply with “Well, then, what the hell are you still doing there? Go home!”
Keep in mind that just because they are closed to customers doesn’t mean they’re not working. Our retail outlets have 24hr shifts at least 2 nights a week for receiving, cleaning, inventory, product switchovers etc. It makes scheduling IT changes in store a real pain in the butt because they’re not standard days so whenever we’re doing a store rollout we need to have someone call each store to determine the schedule.
One thing that I found enlightening back in my Advertising days, is that people were so stressed that asking them what they’d rather be doing proved very cathartic.
I still remeber asking one “Super Type A” Account Manager. He leaned back, closed his eyes and told me all about stocking grocery shelves back in high school. “I’d shoo the customers out, lock the doors, and then I’d have four hours of complete silence and utter solitude…”
There are days…
Put this on a T-shirt. I’m buying one for myself, and one for … everyone I know!
“Hi! I was wondering what your store hours are for {upcoming day}?”
Purple made the suggestion I was going to make. I usually ask, “What are your hours today/tomorrow?”
Today in a meeting it was reiterated that employees and supervisors MUST sign a certain form.
Today I reiterated in that meeting that said form does not, in fact, have a place for employees to sign it, or any indication that they should do so. It has a an approval signature place for supervisors, but only for supervisors.
The form is dated 2009. Apparently, for five years, someone has been sighing and wishing we’d get employees to sign it, without noticing there’s no place for that nor any instructions to do so.