Or not so much customer service, but customer dis-service.
So Lady Lacha and myself are in Dollar Tree yesterday, buying cleaning supplies and non-poisoned food for the cats outside. We’re on Register 2, not on Register 1. Actually, there’s no one on Register 1, which turns out to be a good thing.
Cashier 1 shouts over to Cashier 2: “Hey, can you watch my counter? I gotta take a pee break.”
Cashier 2: “What?”
C1: “Pee break. I gotta go pee. Can you watch my register?”
C2: “You coming back soon?”
C1: “Yeah - I just gotta pee and I’ll be right back.”
Supervisor, approaching: “What’s up?”
C1: “I’m just stepping away to go to the bathroom. I gotta pee.”
S: “Ok, that’s fine. See you in a minute.”
Oh, for the sake of fuck! Yes, yes, you gotta pee - we get it! We get it! Stop fucking announcing it! Or maybe it’s a magic word: by saying “pee” often, the sensation of a grossly distended bladder is lessened? Yes, that must be it; it’s the only explanation. I mean, how often do you need to announce to the world at large what your bodily functions are? Maybe it’s cool in the breakroom (which I doubt they have), but not at the counters, not in front of customers. And the supervisor didn’t even bat an eyelash.
OK, rant over. It was small and whiny wasn’t it? Thank heavens; I have to go take a shit.
I’d never announce something like that (hell…I don’t even like to tell my best friend I 'm peeing when we’re on the phone!). However, it doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Well, I suppose it’s good that she she didn’t have lots of customers waiting at her till, and for all I know, she might have been saving up this pee for a long time, but, yes, she does seem to have shouted “pee” quite a lot. Really far too much. Heh, if I had been a customer waiting there, I have a horrible feeling that I too would have felt a sudden need to piss off, as it were. I might not make a public announcement of it though.
Suggest to her that she should move to the U.K. and take a job in a small local shop - a newsagent sort of thing - where she will mainly sell cheap things – papers, confectionery, some cigarettes, and so on - that way she will have plenty of chances to shout out loudly “sixty PEE” or “eighty PEE”. ***** Even if the price is > = a pound, a bit of quick thinking will make sure she never just asks for, say, "that will be four pounds 53, please, "but rather “that will be N pounds whatever PEE, please”.
See? How to enhance her day-to-day working experience. (Ooh, I think I am Celyn the Career Advisor today).
And I think you should plan to return to the same shop, just to see whether she escalates to or “I REALLY need to get to the bathroom 'cos I just must change my tampon” or “I want a SHIT”, or even a long description of what she had for dinner the night before and why it was bad and why she now she really needs to VOMIT in a big way?
All right, yes, I do see your point, but perhaps she was just some idiot very young thing that had no manners but will soon have to learn some if she plans to remain employed at all in the world that is not a school? Eek, I suppose, even if that is the case, why do they employ her at all? And I regret using the word “remain” now, lest the person do it in the plural version and take to chattering loudly about corpses she has known.
Hmmm. Heck, from the sounds of things, though, at least you were there to buy cat food and cleaning materials, so not quite as bad as it would have been had you gone there to buy a whole load of lovely fine food for a very beautiful dinner party. Although, had that been the case, you might have been quite entitled to shout out loudly how much she made you want to vomit because she would be ruining your good plans for nice dinner.
And I don’t know what A “Dollar Tree” is but on first reading it, it sounds wonderful, as in dollars that grow on trees, but with my more cynical hat on, it sounds like the same thing as a “Pound Store” in Britain, that often has good bargains, but often has stuff that is not bargain at all. Annoying, 'cos I still want to find that place where “money grows on trees”. Boo, hiss, sob sob.
***** Sadly, we don’t have a unit of currency that is called a “crap” or a “shit”. Well, not officially.
That’s just the thing - she said it to a manager/supervisor, and either he didn’t pick up on it (!), or he just plain didn’t care. And she was young, but she wasn’t that young. As Dog80 pointed out, though, it was only a dollar store (exactly so - like a pound store or a Euro store [depending on your locale]), so I couldn’t possible expect Silver Service. But still …
As for your quest, try getting a specimen of Lunaria annua, the Silver Dollar plant (you might know it as “Honesty.”)
Hoo boy, that was tacky. You don’t suppose she was one of those people who insist on always “telling it like it is,” which in practice means generally using the most vulgar terms possible to describe something, and saying pee instead of piss was her one concession to decorum?
Let me be the first to say so fucking what? And I don’t mean “so what you were grossed out” or “so what you think it’s tacky”, I mean why the fuck would you have those reactions, all of you?
The only explanation that doesn’t make her look like an exact doofus is that it was an emergency-type dealie and she didn’t want people to think she was stepping out for a smoke break. But in that case, a discrete “I’ve got to go to the ladies room” would have done the trick.
Sometimes at work, when people are bombarding me with questions and it’s clear I’m heading to the bathroom, I’ll interupt them and say, “Hold it! I’ve got to pee really bad!” And then I dash away because usually at that point, I really have to go (I’m bad about waiting till the last minute). I don’t know why I do it, except that it’s funny sometimes and I like making people laugh.
But I wouldn’t do it in front of strangers or customers, if I had them.
I don’t have customers in my workspace (thank Heavens), but when I need to unplug from the phones and leave my coworkers to handle the calls, I’ll usually mutter something about needing to inspect the porcelain fixtures in the men’s room, just to make sure they’re still there…
Count me in as another who thinks you all are fucking prudes. She had to pee, so what?
On top of that, I’ve been a lot of places where if you need to leave your designated area during a shift, the only way to do it is make it known you have to go to the bathroom.
