easter monday fun and frolics/death to the easter bunny!

why is it when you go to pay a bill over the phone and you get put on hold...that they play the most dull music in the history of dull music.
i hate talking on the phone to strangers, so to have to wait and to have to wait whilst listening to westlife makes it even worse.
i suppose they made up for it, though...the person i spoke to was very nice indeed. mind you, i always helps that whenever i talk to cell centre staff i'm nothing but lovely to them.
in fact, i'm always like that whenever i'm in a situation where i'm the customer...i'm always very nice, very polite, and if something has pissed me off i don't go steam rollering in there because normally it's nothing that can't be solved if both parties are actually civil to each other. therefor i'm probably every call centre worker's dream.
see? working in retail does have a point. it makes you polite and very aware of the people around you and what they have to put up with.

anyway, less of the little and onto the reason i'm writing this blog...my round up of easter.

i actually started at 6am yesterday...but before i clocked in to start working i'd had two large cans of red bull, and a couple of large coffees with FOUR SUGARS each in them.
what can i say? i was so exhausted...last week (one of the busiest weeks of the year, may i add, being that it's the run up to easter) i'd done 15 plus hours in overtime alone...and the only day i had off all week wasn't really a day off because i was up early and very busy for various reasons.
anyway, not that i'm complaining...it was my choice to do all that work and a choice that i'll be highly glad of come payday.
however, i WAS tired...and the fact i had 17 hours of work ahead of me yesterday was somehow making my tiredness even worse.

thankfully, we were pretty dead for the first two hours...i think it took me ten whole minutes after opening to even serve anyone!
believe me, in our store that's a long time - normally it take ten seconds.
i must have looked a sight, though...i was sitting on my chair, with my head and arms resting on the till. everytime i closed my eyes i could feel myself sink into that "almost asleep" state so i had to keep jolting myself up...
i said to our cleaner "i feel like homer in that episode of the simpsons...y'know the one where he buys lisa a pony but can't afford it so he spends his whole life working and ends up falling asleep on the job..."
and i really, really did feel like that...i even had someone tell me i looked washed out. ha! thanks for that...at least i have an excuse for that. what's yours?

luckily, maizy was in the mood to play teasmaid. she kept the cups of coffee flowing...i don't think she could quite believe the amount of sugars i was requesting, though. she kept saying "are you sure?" YES I'M SURE. NOW GET THAT KETTLE ON! :+)


in any event, just because we were quiet didn't mean the first few hours were without it's pleasureable customers.
there is this really disgusting little man that comes in each morning and he's really, really creepy.
he talks in a really slow voice and the way he looks at some of the girls in our store is really, really vulgar.
he doesn't really bother to talk to people he doesn't fancy..so obviously my dealings with him are in total silence.
i enjoy being pointedly rude to people if they are rude to me. so, with this in mind, when he walks
up to my till saying nothing, not smiling etc etc...i decided to play copycat and did exactly the same to him.
the silent transaction was only broken when he asked for cigarettes...cigarettes he snatched out of my hand and shoved in his bag with not even a tiny whisper of a thank you.
he talks, and acts, like he's been dragged up in a cave. he's horrid and i hate him.

by 7am, i'd had four strong coffees and another one was on it's way once maizy had got off of her till...and still i wasn't feeling very awake...which is why i wasn't in the mood for Mr.TCP.
he actually smelt like TCP...but not only that...he smelt like he was using it as aftershave. it was NASTY.
i could cope with that, though, what i couldn't cope with was the fact he came stomping up...demanding to know "where are your f**cking easter eggs?"
wanting to reply with "in people's fridges being that easter is now over?" i actually said "we have sold out."
him - "WHAT KIND OF SHOP DON'T F*CKING DON'T DO EASTER EGGS AT F*CKING EASTER TIME?"
me - "well, with all due respect, we DID sell easter eggs at easter time...being that it's now easter monday, regretably we have now sold them all."

ha! i love doing my over the top posh voice on common customers.

he bumbled off, utterly defeated...and still smelling like TCP.
i do wonder about the people who kept asking for easter eggs yesterday. what did they do all day sunday? tell their kids "no eggs today, kids...but it's okay...i will get them TOMORROW when easter is over."

...fools.

still, straight after him i did have a very humorous very elderly man who wanted to pay with his gold card.
he gave me the card, said "oh i left my glasses in the car" couldn't see the numbers on the chip and pin pad so TOLD ME HIS PIN NUMBER to enter it for him!
who the hell let this guy have a gold card? i could have been anyone...let's face it, you don't need a schooling career at Eton and a clear criminal record to work in most retails shops. i could have been anyone, capable of anything, and here i was being given the pin number of his gold card.
luckily for him, i believe in karma so wasn't about to steal his bank details. i also declined to enter the number for him...i wasn't going there. it can open up a whole can of worms so i made him go and get his glasses...
the worst thing about it all was that he LEFT HIS CARD in the chip and pin machine. the only reason he got it back was because i made maizy go and chase him and give it to him.

honestly, what the hell do the banks think they're doing with people like that? i tell you what they're doing...making a lot of money very quickly. unfortuantly, what they're NOT doing is giving a damn about the people they push these sort of cards onto...
giving a man who doesn't look any younger than 85, who obviously isn't all there, something like that is truly disgusting.
in fact, everytime i go to the bank just for something simple like putting some money into my account they always try and molest me into getting a credit card. NO.

by 8am it started to pick up and get busier...which in some way i was glad about because i was still in need of a good waking up.
it also gave me plenty to laugh about like the stumpy waste of space who was determined not to let me finish serving my customer.
the customer i was serving was actually a pretty sweet lady who was telling me about the easter egg hunt she did with her kids the day before...she was just popping her reciept into her bag when this horrible fat man with bad BO came bounding up behind her.
"20 BENSONS!" he screamed over the top of the lady.
me - "er, excuse me, i havent finished with my previous customer yet..."
him - "she looks pretty finished to me!"
me - "she's just organising her bag, and then i'll be with you..." this was said with gritted teeth and a slight "fuck off and die slowly" tone.

the poor lady looked pretty scared, thanked me meakly and walked away. i felt really bad for her as she was so bubbly and chatty before this arsehole came along....with that in mind i wasn't about to promote a "caring about my customers" attitude towards him.

me - "sorry, what ones did you want?" (i knew what he wanted - he'd shouted it loud enough. i just wanted to piss him off.)
him - "twenty.bloody.bensons." (wow, i never knew that brand excisted...)
so, i get him his "20 bloody bensons" and scan them...well, actually i didn't even get a chance to scan them before he snatched them from me.
me - "sorry, they didn't quite scan through...can i have them back, please?" (see! i said please! i can do civil!")

he literally threw them down on the counter and gave me the most horrible look anyone has ever given me in my whole entire life.
i can't even explain it...but it was horrible and sent a shiver down my spine. i can only describe it as evil.

people like that really do make wonder about the human race. why was he so angry? why couldn't he have waited 30 seconds for the poor woman to zip up her handbag?
maybe the dole queue gets long on mondays...he looked the sort that lives happily off of the rest of us. scum bag.

i wasn't angry for long, though...because maizy offered me another coffee and this time i asked her to "fill half the cup up with coffee beans and give me five sugars please"

i paid for that, later, though...because my heart started beating really fast and i started to feel quite voilently sick and dizzy. so, let that be a lesson for you - roughly 7 coffees with around 25 sugars and hardly any milk in the space of a few hours is a VERY BAD IDEA if you like your heart beating in any sort of normal rythem.

oh, and whilst i was dealing with the heart beating through my chest sensation, i had this silly fool who went to pay for his newspaper with a £2 coin...i went to reach for it out of his hand...he pulled his hand away and laughed "tricked ya!"

oh go get stuffed.

seriously, why would you find that funny to do? it's so childish...especially to a shop worker you've never seen before in your life. okay, now i'm sounding like i'd had a sense of humour bypass...and actually, yes i was in a pretty bad mood when the fella did that to me.
i was still reeling from Mr. Twenty.Bloody.Bensons and was also starting to think i was about to have a heart attack...so i really didn't have time for idiots who think they're tommy cooper.

anyway, 9am comes and our manager dean (who has been really ill recently) came along and told me he was taking over from me and i was taking over from HIM!
actually, i wasn't too worried at the time...i thought all i was doing was breaking down the cages of the fresh food delivery and getting the others to work it. that's fine, i do that practically every morning anyway...but...

sorry, what? i'm just shop scivvy. and here i was...being handed the bloody shift!
mind you, recently he's told me that he's trying to develope me as part of his own managerial regime...so maybe this was him well and truly throwing me into the deep end.
predictably, in the midst of me trying to sort out the delivery, i had two other deliveries turn up together. whoppee!
so, i sorted them out...and then went back to trying to make sense of the fresh.
unfortuantly, for me, i had gillian in.
now, if there was an annual awards ceremony for "the world's worst retail workers" then gillian would be nominated year after year after year.
she's just AWFUL.
she hasn't a clue what she's doing, and when you give her a job she will just stare at it for ages before decided she doesn't understand it.

what on EARTH is so hard about putting a trolley full of stock onto a shelf? each shelf has this thing called a label on it, which tells you what item is supposed to go there - IT'S EASIER THAN A GAME OF SNAKES AND LADDERS!! why oh why is she so useless at it?

i can't quite work out if she really is that stupid or if she just can't be bothered...either way i just wanted to get shot her. she was no use to me. in fact, the contents of the cleaner's cupboard was of more use to me than she was.
with this in mind, i wasn't holding out much hope of getting much done...and then dean suddenly appeared from nowhere!
thinking to myself "yes! he must have got gillian to take him off so he can take over from me and i can get on with putting the stock out..."

but NO. i find out he's put the one decent worker we had (michelle) on the till and me and gillian were to work together to get the delivery done.

no.no.no.no.no.
not only that, but he also gave me a list of other jobs i had to do at the same time so i was well a truly about to explode with pressure.
with this small fact in mind, excuse me if i didn't find the time to answer the bells...i left that to gillian seeing as she was doing sod all else.
you'd think seeing me rush around like a nutcase would be an indication to gillian that i really needed a hand getting things done i.e ANSWER THE BELLS AND SHUT UP.
maizy had gone home by this point, and no-one was due in till 12pm so we were one staff member down. dean was doing his work, i was doing my own work and a bit of dean's, michelle was stuck on the till...so it was all one big nightmare. i really needed gillian to just get on with her work...but no, when i went up to michelle to ask her for a pen what do i find out from her?
"gillian has been bitching about you not backing up the bells..."

excuse me? EXCUSE ME? gillian is as much use as a paper aeroplane...and she has the nerve to bitch about what I'M NOT DOING?

honestly, i was seriously ready to go up to her and ram her head into the trolley i'd given her that she wasn't working. here i was, doing my own job with next to no help, and also trying to give dean a hand with his labels, doing change with him and taking deliveries off for him...when would she like me to find the time to serve, too?


i played nice, though...i went up to her and said "sorry i havent been getting the bells, gillian. dean told me not to bother as i have a list of stuff i have to do..."
that was a down right lie, dean would never tell me not to get the bells...but she wouldn't know that. i doubt she even knows her own name half the time.

and do you know what she said to me? "oh, thats okay, it's just michelle was moaning about you, thats all..."

oh go get run over by a tree, you lying old goat. michelle would never, ever say anything about me. i know this for a fact (i can't explain why on this blog as it's far too specific) and especially not to you, gillian.
christ almighty. i knew she was lazy...but now i know she is also two faced and a LIAR.

ironic thing is, for all her laziness...before yesterday i actually quite liked the woman - not now. not after lying through her teeth to me about stuff she doesn't understand.


anyway, at least dean was off of the till and everything wasnt soley down to me anymore...i know i only did it for an hour or so but it's something i have no desire to do, and something i bet dean will never admit to the other managers, anyway.
so i didn't even bother mentioning it to Ollie, our store manager, when he waltzed in.

no, i just got on with trying to do my list of jobs...something not easily achieveable due to the high amount of attention i was getting from customers.
by this point, the store was now heaving...and i was, once more, having to fend them all off with a bit of broken stick.
okay, slight exageration...but they just wouldn't leave me alone!

"do you have anymore easter eggs left?" i was asked this around 50 times in 4 hours.
"where's your custard, mate?"
"do you have any yorkshire puddings in your stock cupboard?" huh? why would we put something frozen in a cupboard?!?!?
"where's your mince?" well, it sounded like mince...but when i showed him where it was he laughed and said "no, i said mints!"
"where's your sliced cheese pasties?"


that final question was the story i made sure i remembered to put in the blog above all else.
it really was such an infuriating scene...she asked me the question, and i showed her our pastry section and said "they're not sliced or anything...they're just cheese pastries. or there are some with onion in it, too..."
i thought i was pretty helpful, myself...but obviously she disagreed. she rolled her eyes at me and said "is that it?"
me - "yeah, sorry..."
she did the loudest sigh i've ever heard, then turned on her heels and walked off...

between her, other rude people and gillian...the whole shift was playing on my last nerve, and i was actually starting to feel my temper coming out. i don't really have a temper...i get annoyed, spiteful, pissed off and wound up quite often. but never angry. generally i think anger is an ugly emotion and so it's always a sign of how bad things are getting when i start to feel really angry.

in light of this, when the cheese pastry women walked away from me with the attitude she gave me...i walked down the aisle muttering a sarcastic "well, thank you very much for your help. thats okay, thats what i work here for...."

at that moment, another lady who was shopping down the aisle i was muttering down actually turned around... "oh no, this is all i need...she thinks im being sarcastic about HER..." i thought to myself...but in fact, she turned around, chuckled and said to me in a very broad liverpool accent "well done you for not lamping her. i worked in retail for years and had to put up with rude crap like that all the time...bloody ungrateful bitch she was!"

LOL! :+) :+) :+)

honestly, i cracked up laughing, patted her on the back and said "thank you, you just made a very bad day turn good."
i ended up serving her later, as well. i told her if it was up to me she'd have got her shopping for free! :) fantastic, fantastic woman...

did i mention that earlier that morning a whole cage of yoghurts fell on top of me when i opened it up? so i was walking around looking like i hadn't washed my clothes in weeks - no wonder customers were talking to me like a tramp.

so, the afternoon had arrived, we were all stuck on tills and the customers seemed have all been told they had a terminal illness.
well, maybe not, but they were all in bad moods.
i served an old couple who decided they wanted four plastic bags for there shopping. i was to scan their items and then be dictated to which bag the item was going in.
"that bag's for nelly, that bag's for sal, that bag is for barbara, and that one is for sharon..."
after two minutes of "no! the apple goesin barbara's bag! the salmon is for nelly..." i just couldnt cope anymore and literally pushed the bags towards them with a "sorry but do you mind if i scan it, and you pack it as you know where it's all going?"
surprisingly, they were quite agreeable to the idea...well, the old man was. the old woman was really, really arsey and a total control freak.
he kept giving me an apologetic face that also looked like a "yeah, i can't stand the old bat, either..."

when they were walking away, i could hear her moaning at him STILL. and she made him carry all four bags. what a cow!

it's always the same with old couples; there is always one that's a bit away with the fairies and one that's a total piece of work. i can't really blame them, though...what is there to look forward to when you get old? it's just afternoons down the bingo hall, having to use a comode instead of a toilet, and going to bed each night wondering if you're going to actually wake up the next day...
actually, i take back every insult i've said ever said about rude old people i've encountered - if i was them...i'd be rude, too.

old age - it just aint worth it.

i also had the really messed up foreign guy who comes in every now and then.
he looks a bit like that politician with the beard. i forget his name...i think he's blind, though?
anyway, he looks like him. he also stares a lot.
i first noticed that he was about to pay me a visit when i looked out of the window and saw him staring in. he does that quite a lot.
he then came in, waddled up to the till, and asked me for "half a ton of cigarettes."

who in god's name would ask for "half a ton of cigarettes?" maybe it's a thing from wherever he comes from - but obviously i had no idea what he meant. or even what cigarettes he wanted.
on the fifth time of asking "what do you want and how much do you want of it?" i finally deciphered that he wanted 100 richmond superkings.
so, i get them for him...and he paid with his card.
he then wanted me to change up a ten pound note for him...i asked him what he wanted it changed into and he said in his weird little accent "well, money would be good."


CLOWN!


okay, so now he's being sarcastic he is going to have to wait.
officially, you're not really supposed to randomly open your till up without a manager okaying it but sometimes i do anyway to save time due to the fact no-one ever seems to mind me doing it as they know i can be trusted not to put all the money from my till into my fleece pocket.
i could have quite easily opened the till for him and sent him on his way - but no-one is sarcastic to me without me getting some sort of payback. i can be petty like that. :)

amusingly, i didn't serve anyone paying with cash for ages. it was all just cards. so therefor, i couldn't change his note up for him for a good while. ha.ha.ha.

he then walked away out of the shop, and stood in his little spot by the window staring in. and there he stood for five minutes.
he's not even waiting for anyone, either - weirdo!

anyway, by the time i'd been there for 10 hours i was in serious need of some more coffee...i went into the staffroom and hayley was in there waiting to start her shift. gillian was also in there, having her break (yes, unfortuantly she does still get one despite the fact her whole shift is a break.).
or was gillian going home...i can't actually remember. being that she never looks busy she could very well be starting her shift and i would think she's about to leave.

i got a large coffee cup from the coffee machine and proceeded to pour the jar of coffee into it.
hayley gasped and said "why the hell arnt you using a spoon?" to which i replied "because if it was up to me i'd just fill the jar of coffee with water and drink straight from that"

gillian, being the mastermind she is, remarked "are you tired then?"

no, gillian, not at all. i just like to eat coffee beans for dinner, that's all.

anyway, thank GOD for hayley. i love hayley. she's so funny and random and lovely that the shift just whizzed by when she started work.
in fact, once the all the night staff turned up then the shift became decent.
there is a massive difference in the day and the night staff...the day staff act like it's a funeral parlour they're working in...whereas the night staff are a bloody good laugh.

denise was in, bob was in, ian was in, hayley was in...it was just brilliant. we got all our work done, and in actual fact...we were just pottering about doing random bits of backstock. the stuff we did have left to do couldn't be done until later on so we were literally just twiddling our thumbs for ages.
before i knew it...it was 11pm and i could go home, finally.
but not before we (me, bob, hayley, ian...) all had a random and in depth conversation about bob's sex life. it all started because he said that "when i do it, i put something on it..."
honestly, it came out of nowhere...we were all facing up the shop and it just came out of his mouth.
so this ended up leading to a very long conversation about it all...it was so, so funny...i can't even repeat any of it here. it was SICK.
then, an hour before i left, i was denise's relationship counseller...apparently, i'd make a good therapist. i don't know about that...i certainly need a good one, myself, though! lol!

oh, and how could i forget...apart from, yet again, getting yelled out because we hadn't got any easter eggs left (this was at 9pm on EASTER MONDAY! fools!!!!) i also have one small undesireable customer incident to mention.

two pikey girls come up to my till dressed like they are desperate to pull. they didn't bother achknowledging me so i didn't bother acknowledging them, either.
however, i WAS listening very carefully to their conversation and it went like this (imagin this to be in a really common pikey tone, as well...)

pikey girl 1 - "so yeah, dave said that he'd have a go on me..."
pikey girl 2 - "will he be there tonight?"
pikey girl 1 - "if he is, he is so going to get some..."
pikey girl 2 - "did you know i had him a few months back?"
pikey girl 1 - "yeah i heard, whats he like?"
pikey girl 2 - "well good."


....so, i had to stand there and serve them pretending i hadn't just heard them announce that they are two slappers who are quite happy to share the same guy...

pikey girl 2 - "also, he has a piercing..."
pikey girl 1 - "oh i dont like that! i int having none of that!"
pikey girl 2 - "what if he wont take it off?"
pikey girl 1 - "he can do me a tit wank instead."

...at this point, i had to break into their wonderful conversation to tell them that "that's £13.55 then please..."


god, yuck. i then replayed the whole conversation to ian...he wasn't quite as disgusted as i was.

then i went home, had some chips, watched hells kitchen which i had recorded on my Sky+ box, then finished off the last of the eggs i'd recieved.
and that, my friends was my easter...

...thank god it's all over for another year!

until next time xxx