Tuesday 7 April 2009

...I QUIT! (okay, not quite...)

hi.

i come fresh from working around 21 hours in two days and i am absolutely shattered. my eyes are heavy, my shoulder blades ache and i feel like lead.
however, despite all this, due to the request (ordering) from a certain person i will make an attempt at blogging about my week so far.
i woke up on monday morning refreshed, happy and feeling positive about the day ahead. i'd had a little plan circling my head before i set off and i knew exactly what i needed to do, how i was going to go about it, and how well the day was going to go.

however, i didn't bank on yet more staff sickness and all my plans went down the toilet by five minutes past 6.


you see, i wasn't supposed to start my shift on till. no, that was down to somebody else and i was going to go on my merry way, doing my lovely little jobs in ultra fast time and bobs your uncle, maggies your aunt...everything would be good to go.
however, after realising "shit, it's time to open up and there's no sign of trish!" i had to scoot along to the tills and open up.
after five minutes, the sickening reality hit - trish was off today due to planned time off. HOW THE HELL DID I FORGET THAT ONE?
she even told me last week about it - i really couldn't understand how i made such a shocking oversight but i did and my plans to do everything we needed doing by 7am had now gone bye byes and taking with it my dreams of an easy day.

with that in mind, i wasn't in a particually agreeable mood as my first customers started to arrive.
as if by sheer fate, my very first customer just HAD to do something to wind me up.
yes, he decided he would pay for his 30p chewing gum with a £20 note.
do people not understand how truly aggravating that is? do they not realise that at 6am in the morning we will have hardly any £5 notes, hardly any £10 notes, and hardly any patience for tom foolery?

so, he was to be punished. for once, i actually had quite a few £5 notes but he wasn't getting them.
so i gave him pound coins. and a lot of them. with an overly fake "sorry about all the pound coins...we've run out of five and ten pound notes. how awful." comment thrown in from me.
he took one look at the hoard of pound coins he had laying in state on his hand and then he looked up at me with utter, UTTER distain.
good. that's what you get for being lazy.
i even toyed with the idea that i might have felt a bit bad about taking my bad mood out on him...that was until i smiled at him and said "would you like a receipt?" and he didn't even bother replying! he just threw all the pound coins in his pocket, turned around and muttered something under his breath - oh i wish i'd have heard what it was (maybe he was secretly happy with all the pound coins. maybe he has a fetish for them but has to hide his emotions towards them in shame. maybe he was really muttering "oh what a truly julie andrews moment. i sure do love pound coins!").

shortly after mr.von trapp, i then had the truly bizarre and weirdly mute asian guy who just kept coming back over and over again.
first he picked up a multipack of crisps, brought them to my till saying nothing, gave me the money saying nothing, and then walked off saying nothing.
then he picked up a bottle of coke, brought them to my till saying nothing, gave me the money saying nothing, and then walked off saying nothing.
then he picked up some sushi, brought them to my till saying nothing, gave me the money saying nothing, and then walked off saying nothing.
god, it was doing my head in! not so much because it was down right rude, but more because it was just plain scary.
okay, so, reading that paragraph back - my little story doesn't sound too bad...but seriously...he was a big asian bloke with an intense glare who didn't seem to have a voice box and just kept on coming in and out, in and out, in and out.

after round four he finally left...although i was beginning to wonder if i'd just imagined him.

really...by 6.20 i was starting to bite my nails...and that's my sign to myself that i'm really not coping well.
actually, i was still feeling pretty positive. i still believed the shift was going to go well - i just have a serious adversion to the tills.
well, not so much the tills...more the idiots i get that come up to the tills.

don't get me wrong - i was serving some lovely people. we chatted about spring, we chatted about football, we chatted about monday mornings generally sucking.
actually, by 6.40 i think i'd stopped biting my nails and, shock horror, i started enjoying serving...

...that was until Mr.Racing Post came in.

i've had dealings with this little twit on a number of occasions and everytime i loath him more and more.
he's just one of those people you can't imagin anyone liking. not even his own mother.
he can't just come up to you and be served. no. thats far too much to expect from him.
my first ever experiance with him was the day our racing post paper hadn't been delivered.
he came blundering up to the queue and before i even had a chance to say "would you like to come over?" he came thundering up;

him - "GOT NO RACING POST?"
me - "no, it's running a bit late today." (that was me initially being nice.)
him - "oh, i get a great chance to get lucky today and YOU'VE stopped that from happening!!!"
me - "well, no, not really...you see i don't actually deliver the papers, myself." (that was me being deliberatly sarcastic.)
him - "are you trying to be funny with me?"
me - "no." (meaning yes.)
him - "WELL WILL YOU HAVE ANY IN TODAY?"
me - "i'm not sure to be honest" (wanting to scream "wait a minute, let me just go ring up my good friend mystic meg...")
he shook his head at me in that horrible slow "go and die" rythmn and then said
"you know what i'm going to do...?"
me - "no..." (starting to get scared...)
him - "...i'm going to go down the road, to a REAL shop, and buy a racing post from THEM."

...OoOoOoO0...how scary.
so, no longer scared, i responded with "however will i cope?"

okay, so i was totally unprofessional, totally rude, and could well have got into massive trouble if anyone else had heard our conversation.
at the end of the day, though, i go to work to earn money. i treat every customer with respect (at first...till they do something which means they have lost it) and honestly, if anyone spoke to me like that out of work...i'd be liable to smack them. but i wouldn't because i'm a wimp.
bottom line is, i don't deserve to be spoken to like a dickhead because we havent had a newspaper delivered on time.
i don't get up at 4am just to be spoken to like that.

anyway, i will bore you to death no longer...
mondays dealings with Mr.Racing Post were as follows:

me - "morning. we don't actually have any big bags today so do you want a 10p reusable bag, or would you like me to just pop it into the little ones?"
him - "ha. yeah. try and sting me out of more money for your precious [insert shop name here]"
me - "actually, no, i was giving you an option."
him - "just put it in the small bags."
me - "okay"

so, we have our little moment in total silence as i struggle to fit his shopping into the Bags Of Impossibility. the silence is broken because, quite clearly, he hasn't finished with me yet...

him - "you know, i bloody hate this shop."
i SO wanted to tell him to "piss off out of her then!" but i rised above it and ignored him.
him - "i can get better value for my money, i can get staff jumping when i say jump, i can get me newspaper, and i can actually have a decent size bag! you should try it."
as i suffer from chapped lips quite badly at the start of the year, i try not to lick, bite or do anything else to them at any cost...however i did find myself biting my lip at this point. but still, i ignored him.

suddenly he points to his cornflakes and does a horrified face;
him- "why are you putting THOSE in there?"
me - "would you rather carry them then?" (said in a nice tone.)
him - "duh, those should go in the reusable bag."

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

me - "you said you didn't want one."
him - "just because i don't WANT one, doesn't mean i don't NEED ONE."

okay, seriously, piss off now before i clump you one.

me - "okay. so that's £13.49"
him - "if it wasn't for [insert shop name here] being theives, the total should have been £13.39."

just hand me the money and then die, please.

three hours. three hours i was on that till for.

i had people wanting to buy alcohol before i was legally allowed to sell it to them. "oh go on, mate, i'll pay you a bit extra!

NO. unless you're willing to pay my rent each month after they sack me - just NO.

i had people wanting to be left off paying £4 off of their bill because they "only came out with ten pounds! i didn't expect to get this much but it's all stuff i really need!"
yes, because you really need a snickers bar...
i had people giving me sarcastic comments when i checked their notes. if i lifted it up to the light i got "yeah, i made it this morning." if i felt for raised lettering i got "once you've finished man handling my money i'd like my change, please..." and if i did anything that remotely suggested i was checking to see if it was fake or not (like any good shop will tell it's staff to do) i got some sort of sarcastic comment.

honestly, by 8am i had so much negative energy that i was ready to start whipping animals in sheer rage.
it didn't help that (thanks to the government's waste of time initiative to put people off smoking) everytime i reached the shelf to get a packet of cigarettes for a customer i was met with a lovely picture of a corpse lying in a morgue.
i think someone was trying to tell me something about the day i was in for because there are a selection of different pictures you can get on cigarettes.
everytime i picked a damn packet up, though, there it was. that head again. colour drained from it's face, sheet over it's eyes, mouth wide open.

i managed to have ONE thing go my way, however. i managed to avoid catherine cookson.

okay, obviously not the author catherine cookson - because she's dead.
she's a lady that comes in who i have given that name to because everytime i serve her she hits me with a new chapter from her life story.
it's not even interested stuff about the time she went to australia and had to kamacarzi (i have no idea how to spell that word!) from the plane and then rode to the shore on the back of a shark.
no, it's always about how she bought a packet of crisps from WH Smith but it was out of date and they wouldn't give her a refund. or about the time her great aunt josie had to have her hip replaced on the same day the queen mother had hers done.

i do everything i can to avoid the woman - i really can't cope with it all. her life is far too exciting for me to handle at half past seven in the morning and it just overwhelmes me.
so, i'm serving a regular customer and we're nattering away about everything. the arsenal-man city game. jade goody's funeral. the weather.
i look up, smiling because i really like serving this customer, but my face drops when i notice she's joined the queue.

oh no.

by the time it becomes apparent that she's the next one to be served, i look over helplessely to see what maizy is doing and see that she's serving a big basket full of shopping.
i, on the other hand, have a bunch of flowers, a packet of grapes and a daily star.

desperate times call for desperate measures!

what can i do...what can i do...oh, i know! i'll pretend my scanner has broken!
so i tap it all in manually. and very slowly. and then screw it up on purpose so i have to start all over again. twice.

luckily, my customer was very patient (helps that they were a regular and seem to love me) and success! off she pops to maizy's till with the opening line "i bought a garden knome over the weekend and..."

obviously i regretted my decision to avoid her...the suspense of not overhearing the rest of that conversation almost killed me.

anyway, i started to perk up a bit when i realised it was only half an hour till someone else would be in and relieve me from my suffering.
this, and the fact that the guy who comes in dressed up as a sailer had just walked in, made me want to sing, dance, clap and star jump across the tills.

yes, you did read that right...there is a man who seriously comes in dressed up as a sailor. he's very old, and obviously is re-living some sort of calling from his youth...it's quite sweet how he walks around thinking he's roy schneider or something. personally, i think he looks more like captain pugwash.

the last half an hour of my till experiance was, thankfully, pretty much free from stress inducing blockheads.
in fact, the only people worth noting was the posh woman who went straight to the coffee machine, got her coffee, and then jumped the massive queue, threw her money down on maizy's till saying "i'm paying for this now. okay?" and walked off.
maizy just LET HER DO IT. all she said was "ok!" and scooped up the money and put it in her till.

obviously, maizy and i work in totally different ways. i never, EVER let anyone get away with that.
the rows i have had over people wanting to push in - i've been threatened, i've been yelled at, i've been insulted. i don't care if you're late taking your kids to school, i don't care if you're late for a doctors appiontment. i don't care if you're having life saving brain surgery in 5 minutes time. you queue like everyone else has to.

also, can i add, that the customers were being very considerate and not having much shopping either. that was good times all round because i really couldn't stand another day of repetative "hi. do you want a reusable bag because we have no big bags?".

9am came and i was off the hellhole and back where i belong - on the shop floor.
however, more doom was to follow because we had a massive delivery and maizy was in a "i can't be bothered mood."

for a change.

the good times were just not rolling because, apart from the person running the shift and gertrude the admin, maizy and me were all the staff we had in to work the shop floor.
me and maizy. maizy and me.
let me tell you about maizy...
maizy doesn't like doing any work. maizy will stop at nothing to dawdle and waste as much time as possible before she finishes her pointless 4 hour shifts. maizy is a lovely person but a complete nightmare to work with because maizy doesn't actually want to work. so therefor, maizy doesn't work.
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!

however, we did have a shocking event occur...gurtrude actually came out of her safe little box she likes to sit in all day doing nothing (also known as the office) and actually helped us. and helped us BIG TIME. in fact, i will hold my hands up and say if it wasn't for gurtrude...we'd have been fooked.

i don't think i paused for a single minute from the moment i left the main till to the moment i finished my shift.
i worked, worked, worked until the whole delivery (apart from one last bit) was done.
i was actually pretty proud by the time i'd done. not just of myself, but of the person who was actually running the shift for coping so well in a total crisis (she has a cool head and an amazing attitude that i can only dream of), but also of gurtrude (a girl i sometimes want to asphyxiate but ultimately she's an okay kinda girl deep down) for pulling us back from the brink and setting us up to be able to do our jobs. we did bloody brilliant and without the pair of them i just wouldn't have managed. i'd have fallen apart.
as it happened, despite it's many setbacks, monday was a roaring success.

it wasn't without it's problems, though. it seems the busier i am, the more people want to harrass me.
i was batting off customers left right and centre. i almost asked for a sword and shield. it just didn't stop.

"have you any bread yet?"
"where are your crusty rolls?"
"is that all the milk you have?"
"do you sell cans of coke?"
"do you sell super glue?"
"can you perform CPR on my great grandma nelly as i think she's stopped breathing."

okay, so that last one i made up...but some of the questions i was asked were in that vein of ridiculousness.

i left at around 3pm and had strawberries, cream and sugar for dinner. and they were very nice, thank you very much.

as for today, you know what? it was LONG. the amount of hours i did today went into double figures. i had a good day, though...in fact, so good i only have these few things to report;

me - "who's next please?"
customer - "sell bar bar reebs?"
me - "i'm sorry?"
customers - "shop sell bar be reebs?"
me - "bar be reebs?"
customer - "REEBS!!!!"
me - "reebs?"
customer - "yes, REEBS!"

...he was foreign. he wanted BBQ ribs. he didn't get them because he was abrupt and by the time i worked out what he wanted i just could not be bothered to walk all the way down to the freezer and get them for him. so i lied.
i found the whole thing strange actually because i'd only just put some in the freezer this very morning. weird. it was almost like he was watching me do it this morning through the back of the freezer or something.

more highlights included -
the strange person who i don't even know that randomly hugged me. the fact i was reunited with an old colleague for a few hours. the person who huffed at me because i couldn't provide them with a shower cap. working with the love of my life. and finally (how very trevor mcdonald...) this conversation;

customer with the quietest ever - "excuse me, just so you know i tripped over that box just now..."
i waited for the abuse. i waited for the shouting. i waited to hear what she wanted me to do about it. but she just walked off to the queue.
it was quite absurd. the "box" was actually a stand that had something placed on it...it was pretty noticable in size AND colour...(a black stand against pale tiling?" so she must have been in dream land to have tripped over it.
in any event, the fact all she did was tell me and then walked off lead me to believe she wanted me to exert myself into giving it some kind of punishment...

you bad, bad box! *slaps it around a bit*

she wasn't done with me yet, because five minutes later she came back...

her - "i told you about that box over there some time ago and how i fell over it with quite some force..."
oh stop being so dramatic...it's not like i found you sprawled out across the floor unconcious...

me - "okay..." (waiting for her to carry on...)
her - "and it's still sitting there." (and carry on she did.)

then she walked off. again, no anger, no insult, no shouting...just one quiet voice and melodrama.

oh sod it, i'm not going back tomorrow...

...I QUIT!

until next time... (and there will be one. i won't really quit.)

xxx









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