wednesday fun and games.

good evening!
i am writing to you on this fine april evening fresh from yet another gruelling day at work.
well, actually...i'm lying. it wasn't really gruelling at all...i was working with my favourite person ever, my complete and utter soulmate, and all was fine with the world.
it's been sunny, lovely, and best of all...it's my favourite month ever now. i just love april.
so, i was quite happy, myself...it was everyone else around me that had the problem.
this morning, it only took me two minutes after opening before i was greeted with stupidity.

customer - "can i have some swan, please."
me - "right...matches or filter tips?"
customer - "swan, please."
me - "yeah but do you want swan matches, or swan filter tips?"
customer - "just swan."

head. wall. bang. head. wall. bang. HEAD. WALL. BANG.

finally, we reached a conclusion when he actually told me he wanted matches. apparently...he gets confused easily. nah, like i couldn't tell that for myself...

i should have known then that after that would be annoyance after annoyance after annoyance.
like, the regular customers you think you have sussed that turn around and completely change their routine. they don't normally want a bag, so the day you don't get them a bag...they turn around and want one. or they usually buy fags so you get them ready for them and they turn around and ask why on earth you've tried to force something on them they dont wish to buy.

oh for the love of god...JUST STICK TO YOUR ROUTINE YOU INCONSIDERATE FOOLS!

if it wasn't people playing mind games with me, it was people standing directly behind me as i'm filling a shelf.
i had a whole list of jobs to do this morning that was as long as planet earth and i really didn't appriciate when i'm trying to do backstock that this guy was standing behind me just staring.
if you wanted me to move, then just ask! don't just stare at me and hope to develope a sudden onset of x ray vision. because you won't.

aside from him, it was the usual random idiots, like the guy who couldn't seem to get his pin number to his credit card right...and then after he'd tried it so many times that he locked the pin...he got himself into a right mess "oh my god, oh my god...now what will i do? the bank will think i'm a fraudster! i can't remember the number and i'll never use it again!"
then he realised he was entering the number to get into his office.

what.a.twat.

the only thing that this time wasting tom foolery achieved was me getting further and further behind on my jobs and so i had little patience for kids who wanted to know where tomato puree was, or old people who wanted to know if we sold shoe polish.
try taking a look around you, for once! it's not even like we operate a massive store...it'd take you literally less than 2 minutes to walk round the whole of our store so, really, i am quite dismissive when people want me to go treasure hunting for whatever crap they want to buy.
well, in my head i am dismissive...on the surface i am helpful and happy to be able to be so.

i do a lot of that at work...pretending to be one thing when the reality is very different.
yes, sure, i will go around the whole shop looking for a purple glove you have lost (that was two weeks ago and it turned out she'd just put it in her handbag!).
yeah, i will go and paralyse myself trying to get coffee beans down from the very top shelf just so you can have the coffee machine filled up.
you want to know where plums are? you really can't see that big sign that hangs from the ceiling saying "FRUIT AND VEG?" okay then, let me just waste more of my life showing you that as well.

would you like me to hold your basket around the shop while i am at it? i'll even take the whole damn shopping home for you if you like...

the worst bit of faking i do is when there are no customers left and i am just about escape from the till when suddenly, out of nowhere, a customer appears.
you have to beckon them over, all smiles and joy, when really you want to throttle them for thwarting your escape route.
what's more annoying is you won't have anyone around for ages, and then as soon as you go to leave the tills...a customer comes sprouting out from the ground.

anyway, i finally got my jobs done after a while...which is just as well because i was well and truly stuck on the till by 8.30am...and there i stood for what seemed liked forever.
actually, this morning i think i witnessed the most miserable queue in the history of shop queues. ever ever.
i was fully aware that it was early morning and they were probably on their way to work (so why WOULD they be happy?) but honestly, i've never seen such a sorry lot. you'd think they were on their way to get hung in the gallows.
none were even talking. it was just an eeirly silence hanging in the air.
in fact, the silence was only broken by some crazed woman screeching about how our delivery driver had trapped her car in and NOW SHE WILL BE LATE FOR WORK!
oh boo hoo. plan your time a bit better and such eventualities can be avoided.

i never understand that, actually...the amount of people who stand in the queue demanding we hurry up because they WILL BE LATE FOR WORK!
well, why go to a shop when you've only got 10 minutes to spare, anyway?
it's very rare i go anywhere before i have to go to work...mainly because i fail to see the point but also because i hate hate HATE being late and don't want to chance it.
obviously this is a course of action unfamiliar to the rest of the world because it's just so amazing how many people i get each day yelling at me that they WILL BE LATE FOR WORK!

i don't take any notice, though...i just go even slower to proove a point.

anyway, other main highlights of the morning rush was the black man who couldn't understand why his orange squash was £1.07 and not 65p.
whenever i am presented with a customer who decides todays fun game will be to challenge the price that appears on my till...before i even bother ringing for a manager to rectify it i will go and take a look at the label.
now, 9 times out of 10 it's normally an offer that has ended but someone has forgotten to take off the label so as it's our fault we have to refund it.
i hate hate HATE doing that...because, even if you're the nicest cashier in the world about it, somehow the customer always seems to be really smug about getting their own way and acts like they have just successfully protested in a change of the law.
sometimes, however, it's because the customer plain can't read. and this was the case today.

one quick look at our juices section and i realised that he'd actually been reading the label for fruit barley. that was the bottle that was 65p.
so, in this event, i pointed this out to him.

me - "oh sorry, you were looking at the fruit barley label. that's 65p. the one you picked up is £1.07."
him - "NO. LOOK. 65P! THAT IS WHERE I PICKED THE JUICE UP FROM!"
me - "well, if that is the case then i can only imagin another customer just put it there rather than find it's correct spot."
him - "NO."
ME - "yes. i'm afraid so, so therefor there's nothing i can do about it as it's a customers mistake and not ours."

i think i handled that quite well...but only because i'd had a few minutes to think of my response before he followed me to the juices. normally i will just stutter and made up some bull that isn't even relevant.

in the end he bought the orange juice...but not before moaning some more about how it was "our fault."

actually, a few hours later i had the same sort of experiance. this time with another fella.
the thing was, he had a really, really broad accent and i was having major trouble understanding him.
he had two 2 litre bottles of a diet drink, and one two litre bottle of another drink.
i priced up his items, told him how much to pay and was met with "fnwfbfbwbwfbwbfshouldbeonofferfwbfbwfbfbdietdrinkonofferwbhfbhwfb"
i think i was a bit rude, actually...because i get really frustrated, really quickly when i don't understand people and say "what??!?!?!?" instead of pardon and other such similar expressions.
well, in the end i gathered that he was of the idea that these three drinks where in some sort of offer...so i scooted over to the drinks shelf and had a look.
yes, they were on offer...but they were in two different offers. the diet drinks where in one offer, and the full sugar variety was in another...even a monkey could understand this. it was very well explained on the labels next to it.
still, i pointed to this and he was having none of it.
well, tough luck for him because neither was i. there was no way i was disturbing the management when i understond the mistake myself. the only problem here was the idiot that wasn't listening to me.

me -"if you want those two, i can get you a third and that will make the offer work."
him - "iwabdhbdwhbfwhfbwfbhbwfbfwbfbutiwantthosethree."
me - "unfortunatly, they are not in the same offer though...so if you want those three you will have to pay the price the tills give me."
him - "cancel it then."

RAR! just stop wasting my time!

the queue was massive by this point...i went back to my till, voided the transaction and went to put the drinks back on the shelf because it was practically empty and we wouldn't be selling the items if, er, they wernt on the shelf to sell.
however, some snotty looking woman saw me come back to the till and automatically presumed i was serving. fair enough.
i didn't notice her, though, as i wasn't actually at my till...i had my back to it because i was in the process of gathering up the drinks.
i heard this tut and sigh, though...and out the corner of my eye so the woman looking highly impatient.
so i turned to her, smiled, said "won't be a sec." and went on my merry way to put the drinks back.

okay, so that was petty. yes, i probably could have served her and THEN returned the drinks to the shelf...but i didn't call her over, she was being rude and impatient and so therefor i wasn't bowing down to her needs.
the drinks needed putting back. the drinks were being put back. the drinks were put back.
...then i served her, being so friendly and polite it was almost intolerable so she had no choice but to say nothing. :+)

anyway, getting back to the early morning fun and games...i didn't really have much to write down on my little reciept paper of "moments to mention in the blog."
in fact, all i managed to put down were minor annoyances such as:
the woman who kept trying to scan the same thing over and over so she could put it in her handbag. she didn't seem to realise i was also trying to scan the rest of her shopping at the same time and everytime she tried scanning it it would cancel out what i was trying to scan. considering i had 20 items to scan against her one item to scan...it was obviously not me with the problem here but for the love of god...
...it was obviously me in the wrong because SHE scolded ME:
her -"get your bloody fingers out the way of my scanning."

woah!

normally in such cases i will get angry, be sarcastic and try to annoy her even more...but there was something in her tone that told me to back down from this one.

she got to scan her item.

there was also the strange woman who obviously has an adversion to people handing her things, because when i passed her the packet of cigarettes she asked for...she practically jumped out of her skin and handled the fags like i'd just placed a hand grenade into her palm.
she was then followed by the woman with (what seemed like) a thousand flowers and wanted me to peel the label off of every single one of them.
such a trivial matter but something i truly hate doing.
no matter how many times you've peeled one of those things, no matter how good you are at it....there will always come a time when you well and truly mess one up.
it wont peel off for love nor money and just makes the flowers look tacky and horrible.
this leads to yet more customer confrontation when they hollar at you "LOOK! YOU'VE MESSED THEM UP NOW! I CAN'T GIVE AUNTIE BERYL THESE NOW!"

well, good, maybe that teaches you for being so damn lazy that you thought you could get out of doing it.
anyway, to bring as back to reality...maybe this lady didn't have a thousand flowers...but she had at least four. and as you have probably guessed...i made a right mess of one of them.

customer - * loud tut* "can't get anyone to do anything simple, these days..."

yes, i agree...especially when it comes to customers.

when it became time for my break...i think i could have kissed the floor and done a merry dance.

my mind was full of angry, contorted faces and actually came away from that till feeling like i'd actually done something bloody awful to someone.
see? that's what working in retail does to you. you breeze in full of the joys and you come away feeling as guilty as the oklahoma bomber for denying someone a half price lemon.

coming back off my break, fresh delivery was sitting there out the back screaming at me to be worked...but not before i had to shove load of pound coins into the end till.
our change in the tills was abysmal yesterday...and it doesn't help when customers insist on paying for a 30p paper with a £20.
anyway, in the till i was using happened to be a whole bag of the stuff so i shoved them all in the end one.
obviously, this means there will be a hold up in serving people...but only for about two minutes.
most customers understand this and will wait patiently but no, not one woman.
she's quite notorious in our shop for being one of those types that just slows down the whole process of life. she faffs at the till, she stands there carrassing her reciept thus preventing me calling anyone else over to be served, she can't find anything, she wants to talk about how much she won "down the bingo hall" whilst i'm trying to work something important out.
she's pleasant enough, but she's just ANNOYING.
if she could stand in the road and stop the M1 from flowly freely...she would.

well, anyway, me and denise were sorting these coins out for her till...it means you have to concerntrate on how much coinage you're putting in because obviously the same amount in notes has to be put back into my till from denise's till.
so there we are, trying to count this massive bag of coins, and up she comes.
"hello!" she screams.
me - "sorry, we won't be a sec, we're just counting out some coins..."
her "okay."
and that was the end of that...or so i thought.

she kept talking, and talking, and talking...and everytime she spoke i ended up losing where i was and having to start again. and when we didn't respond to her...she STILL wouldn't get the hint.

her - "i have my own bag today!"

...silence.

her - "it's not a very big bag, mind."

...silence.

her - "it holds a few bits, i suppose, though..."

...silence.

well, you get the idea.
by the time i DID manage to finish counting...i was a total gibbering wreck. i had pound coins flashing in front of my eyes and was panicking that i took enough out of denise's till.
i swear to god, if i found out later that my till was down by £10 i think i'd have throttled the woman with that bloody bag of hers next time i saw her.

fresh delivery wasn't getting anywhere by this point, either. two people were off sick, and even gertrude from admin wasn't around to help. we just didn't have the staff to manage the queues and it was all one big stress headache.
days like that are no-ones fault, though...i couldn't fault a single one of them that was in. we were all working hard...it's just so were the customers; working hard at making our lives hell.

sometimes i wonder if when i talk it comes out in an anglo saxon dialect. i ask this because no-one ever seems to understand what i'm saying even if i make it perfectly clear;

customer - "CAN'T YOU RING YOUR BUZZER THING FOR ANYONE ELSE? I'VE BEEN WAITING HERE AGES!"
me - "unfortuantly, this is all the staff we have...i can ring but no-one will be there to answer."
customer - "WHY NOT?"

ohmygod ARE YOU RETARDED? i thought that when i said to you "this is all the staff we have" then that would make it pretty clear why me and denise were not bothering to ring our "buzzer thing"!

well, we did have one other member of staff but she had literally 10 minutes before she was due to finish and if she came on the till at that point...it gets so busy she'd never have got off again. lunchtime sucks.

seriously, though, do they really think if we had anyone else around that we would just allow the queue to go all the way to the bottom of the shop? no. funnily enough, we don't want to fail our mystery shopper and forfeit our bonus. if someone else is around to go on the tills with us - WE GET THEM ON.

from then on, we battled veinly to get our fresh delivery out...but alas...once lunchtime hits then we are pretty much screwed. it seems that we live in a little isolated village where we are the only shop around for miles and miles and therefor everyone comes to us.
thats not true at all, the surrounding area around our shop is chocka with other shops...it's just no-one ever seems to us them.

i must have been busy, because i spent a whole hour without noticing anything significant to write on my "to go in the blog" paper.
maybe i was just so numb to it all by this point that i just gave up. i was still in a pretty good mood, though...the weather was beautiful and i was working with some of my favourite people. maybe i just switched off from stupid customers...or maybe i just didnt have any. i forget.

anyway, by the time my home time came...i only had one more thing worth noteing. and that was something that happens all the time and really pees me off.

right, one of the basic rules at shops is that when you want to pay for something - you join the queue. if i notice you have jumped the queue i will politely direct you to the back of it.
most of the time, the next customer i serve is grateful and thanks me because "some shops just let people push in and it's bang out of order."

i agree and so do 99.9% of our customers. that's why when we don't notice someone has pushed in and we serve them first...we get a mouthful from the next few customers and that's fair enough.

however, what annoys me is when you have stopped someone pushing in, and they go to join the back of the queue and the customer at the front of it stops them and says "it's okay, love, you go first...i'm not THAT petty." and they eyeball you as if to say "unlike that cretin over there!"

it happened three/four times to me this week and everytime it gets more and more aggrivating.

i give up. next time...you can fight it out for yourselves. see if i care. fight basket to basket. trolley to trolley. and i will just watch. and laugh. and say "i told you so."

i have a night shift tomorrow...those are always packed full of hilarious incidents to tell about - but now i've said that it will probably be utterly boring and i'll have nothing to talk about.

until next time.