Saturday 28 March 2009

so, introductions...

ex⋅as⋅per⋅ate

–verb (used with object):

1. to irritate or provoke to a high degree; annoy extremely: He was exasperated by the senseless delays.

yes, exasperate. one quick foray over to the world's most helpful website (dictionary.com) would be enough to tell you why this word sums up my whole working life perfectly.
however, as you're probably not as much of a geek as i am (let's face it - who is, really?) i decided to copy and paste it's meaning for you. yes - i spend eight hours a day irritated. yes, i spent eight hours a day provoked. yes, i spend eight hours annoyed extremely.

yes, exasperated. that's me alright.

as you have probably guessed by my totally subtle blog title i work in the jungle that is retail. if you've ever worked in retail then you will know, along with the good times, there is inevitably the bad times...and as they make for the most interesting reading that is what i will mostly be speaking about. so, from now on...rather than pulling my hair out, bashing my fist against several hard surfaces and/or bashing my forehead in a treacherous manner over and over and over and over...i will instead be using this blog as a sort of therapy.

so, we will begin with yesterday. the day had already got off to a frantic and hopeless start when i woke up late and i couldn't even blame my alarm clock.
no, that duely went off at the time i set it to go off at - 4am.
however, i was in one of those moods where you really can't be doing with venturing out of your nice warm bed and into the land of "if you are wearing a uniform then you are fair game." so, i turned over promising myself "just five more minutes..." and closed my eyes...

...bad move. five minutes turned into a whole hour and a half.

honestly, when i woke up again at 5.30am (i was due in at 6!) i have never moved so quick in all my life. i have never run so fast in my life.
in fact, by the time i got to work (luckily with five minutes to spare. phew!) i'm surprised my lungs hadn't burst, or my legs snapped apart. or something similar.

anyway, i walked in and said my cheery hellos and explained why i looked like i'd just done a 200 metre sprint and by the time i'd finished it was time to scuttle along to the tills to begin the joy that is monday morning opening time.

honestly, the first hour of our trading times is an utter joke. i've never seen anything like it in any shop ever. we open at 6am, right...and by 10 past 6 i will have served at least 20 customers. i'm not even exagerating for the benefit of the story, either...and it carrys on that way for the whole day in the same manner.

so, with this in mind...you can imagin that by half past 6 i am totally fed up already and in need of a sense of humour injection.
i wouldn't blame the people who get served by me inbetween the times of 6 and 7am for thinking i was a total wanker. i'm tired, i have hours of tedium ahead of me, and i really don't need some cocky, overweight builder (our main clientel in the mornings) making sarcastic comments throughout the whole transaction.
i don't know about you, but when i enter a shop...i collect what i want to buy, i take them to a till, i answer yes or no to whatever questions they ask me, i say hello, goodbye, please and thank you. i am nice, polite, and then i leave and continue with my day.
now, obviously this course of action is utter alien to the people we generally serve in our shop. especially in the first few hours.

i am about to take you through what a normal transaction is like for me in the early mornings when all the horrid little overweight workmen come in. and it makes my early morning mood justifiable.

half the time, the customer won't even bother to wait to be called over...they just waltz on over even if they see i am busy doing something that prevents me from serving them.
actually, i'm pretty convinced that if i was to collapse and was being given CPR a customer would STILL wander over and ask "are you serving?"

well, actually...i've just been pronounced dead...so what do you think?

anyway, in retaliation to the utter rudeness and arrogance i will drag out whatever i am doing to make sure they are waiting for at least a minute more. good. serves them right.
they will then tailor their outbursts to whatever i am doing/asking them next.
if i get a bag ready for their shopping it's "DONT WANNA BAG!"

actually, you rude arsehole, the correct term to use is "i'm okay for a bag, thanks." "or "no thank you. i dont need a bag" or anything that is said in a polite tone and shows appriciation.

or if i havent got a bag ready within 5 seconds of serving them it's "ER, I THINK I'LL BE NEEDING A BAG, DON'T YOU?"

yes, i would agree with you on that one...but er, i think i'll be needing some manners, don't you?

then i have a whole list of a questions i have to ask them as part of the job i am employed to do. i know that these bone heads find it impossible to comprehend that...but really, to be tutted at, sighed at or given sarcastic irrelevant comments over my questions...really does grate on my nerves.
no i will not laugh with you and your mates at you being horrible to "the lowly servant behind the till" - it does not make you better than me just because you wear a hard hat and a florescent jacket. judging by the size of most of them...i doubt there is much manual labour going on anyway except for turning the pages of their Daily Star over.
and no, i will not humour your bad jokes about "you don't need a bag, i've got one at home called the missus" or comments about saving the planet by not taking a plastic bag.

let's set this straight once and for all - i have to offer you a bag, it's my job. i'd rather not have to. i'd rather just scan your stuff and you do whatever you please with the damn stuff. so please don't make the tedium and pointlessness even worse by being rude, sarcastic or making naff jokes i have heard 650 million times before. thank you.

anyway, i have prattled on for so long about little things that annoy me about the place that i have neglected the matter in hand - my shift yesterday.

well, i opened the doors and the first customer of any note (aside from the usual people who act like my best friend because they see me every morning and think they have the right to pass comment on every single detail about me) was the creepy whistling guy.
now, as a general rule, you can pretty much tell how a transaction is going to go just by how they walk up to you.
if they are smiling and/or walking calmly you can be sure, at the most, to get a decent conversation and a good laugh with them...and at the very least an easy transaction with no problems.
if they have a blank expression and miserable slapped arse face then you'll probably get no hellos, no goodbyes, one of my famous "DONT NEED A BAG!"s, no please, no thank you...and they will probably walk off without uttering more than 4 words to you throughout the whole transaction. and those 4 words they do utter will no doubt be something infuriating.
if they are red in the face, they pace up to you, and their facial expression is contorted with rage...you can be sure they are about to yell at you over something. even if it's not even anything to do with the shop.

...if they bound up to you at 6.30 in the morning, whistling christmas carols and squinting their eyes like they are looking at the sun through a telescope...you can be sure they are completely and utterly as mad as a box of frogs.
and that is exactly what i had to put up with yesterday and i was actually praying for someone else to come up to me instead. someone. anyone. rude, unresponsive, idiotic...anyone but this.

y'see...i've served this fella before. and everytime i do it's pure torture.
i will ask "do you want a bag?" and he will say "will it hold my car? HA HA!"
i will ask "is there anything else?" and he will say "only a token for legoland! HA HA!"
i will tell him how much he owes me and he will say "oh, don't i get my shopping for free? HA HA!"
i will say goodbye to him, several times because he just wont go away, and he will say "it isn't goodbye, it's see you soooon. and i will be! HA HA!"

by the time he leaves, i don't know whether i'm coming or going and i need a lie down in a dark room.

the next couple of hours passed me by in a haze of nothing significant...just minor irritations like people thinking they are a working class hero to charity because they've told me to put their penny change in the charity pot. except, they never call it a pot...they call it a jar like we've just washed out an old jam jar from the staff room to hoarde everyones loose change in. i know, i know...such a stupid thing to get annoyed over but you try having to get up early and put up with morons and NOT find absolutely everything they do annoying.

oh, one thing that WAS winding me up that had a decent reason (other than early morning bitterness) was that we had no big bags. every monday morning is the same. all we have left is stupid tiny bags that can barely hold a box of cornflakes let alone customer's baskets full of "off to work we go" junk.
it happens so often on monday mornings now that i have learned to adopt the same approach to every customer who appears to need a decent size bag. i will be very, very nice to them as they come to my till to be served...big smile, friendly mannerisms, cheery demeaner...before announcing the soul crushing and stone cold facts.
"i'm very sorry...we don't actually have any decent size bags this morning, we only have those really awful small ones. i can either offer you a reuseable bag for 10p or i can just seperate your shopping up into the little ones."

some people can be very lovely and understanding. most of the time they will take the reusable bag and tell me "it's all their fault really, they have hundereds of bags at home but forget them everytime."

i enjoy those customers. they not only accept the situation but blame it on themselves, too!

i can even stomach the ones who tut at me, turn red with rage and tell me it's ridiculous they have to pay for a decent size bag just because we've run out.
actually, i do agree with those customers. it IS "ridiculous they have to pay for a decent size bag just because we've run out."
i have actually suggested to the "powers that be" that we just give them a reusable bag without charging them, especially as it seems to be happening frequently (try every monday morning for size), but no...i have been told (warned) that under no circumstances do i give out reusable bags out for free.
fine. okay. i will just tell the customer this unfortunate news and ignore whatever rage and spittle i encounter because at least i know if they demand to see a manager over it then i will be backed up without having to worry about being overuled by the manager and humilated by the customer.
all this i can stomach...
...what i can't stomach is what i put up with yesterday.

me - "who's next please?"
a very nicely dressed (i.e posh looking) customer walks over with a heavy basket that is practically overflowing at the sides with shopping.
my mind starts to work overtime because she doesn't look like the sort of woman that will take kindly to her morning plans being ruined by the small matter of me not having anything to actually put her shopping into. she already looks stressed, harrased, and totally ticked off with the morning...and i was about to make things ten times worse for her.


great stuff.

me - "hello there"...(i help her to land her basket onto my counter...our eyes meet, and i already knew by the lack of smile or muscle movement in her face that she wasn't in any mood for social interaction.)
her - "yes, what time do you start selling alcohol?" (i was thinking "oh god, she's that stressed she already wants a drink!")
me - "oh, 8am. you want a drink already? that can't be good news!" (yes, that was intended as an ice breaking joke, one that would lighten up the mood and set me up nicely for telling her about the fatality in our plastic bag department. just so you know...the joke failed.)

she ignores me, and i scanned four items before realising i could no longer put off the inevitable...

me - "i'm really sorry, but we've run out of big bags this morning...we only have the really rubbish little ones..." (i then go on to give her the choice between the reusable bags, and the little ones.)
her - "WHAT?!"
me - "yeah...i know. stupid or what." (i then start to do a little countdown in my head and see how long it takes her to explode, and take off...10, 9, 8, 7, 6...)
her - "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE NO BIG BAGS?" (i thought i made it quite obviously, but clearly not...)
me - "well, over the weekend we must have run out and..."
her - "WELL WHY DIDNT SOMEONE BUY SOME MORE?" (what, is she stupid or something? we don't just scuttle down to the shop next door and say "can i buy some of your finest plastic bags because we've run out? hi de hi!")
me - "i'm afraid all i can offer you are the options i've just given you and..."
her - "THEY ARNT OPTIONS! WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY FOR YOUR inability" (if you interupt me one last time, bitch...and don't you dare make this personally MY fault.)

i was in no mood for this backwards and forwards game. i told her the options, i apologised and i'd already taken a mouthful of her bile...now she was carrying it on. no more mr.nice guy.

me - "do you want a reusable bag or not?"
her - "oh i havent time for this crap. what do (insert my employer's name here) even pay you for? to make my life harder? to take away my right to a plastic bag? to make ME pay YOU 10p to probably go into your tip jar!"
me - *gritting my teeth at this point* "do.you.want.a.reusable.bag?"
her - "well, i guess i'm going to have to arnt i or else i'll be left with 100 tiny bags because you don't know what you're doing in ANY area of your job!"

okay, number one...my company do not allow us to take tips, and even if they did...i'd hardly lie about not having plastic bags just for the grand total of 10p. number two...yes, i clearly have NO idea with what i'm doing in any area of my job.
i have only been doing this job for three and a half years so you are quite right.

and that was the extent of our exchange. the rest of the transaction was done in complete silence...something i usually feel awkward about but was quite thankful for in this case.
she practically tossed her twenty pound note onto the till, and then proceeded to snatch her change and receipt from my hand before i even had a chance to extend my arm out by more than 3 centremetres.

luckily, the next customer was a friend of mine, who had witnessed the whole scene and then went on to berate the bitch behind her back. this made me feel good.

to be honest, on reflection...i have nothing but pity for the woman. all she did was show herself up (i was actually being quite professional during the whole exchange. for once.) and raise her blood pressure to a dangerous level.
i hope she went home and in hindsight felt ashamed of herself. in a time where some people are being bitten to death by the credit crunch and can barely afford a pint of milk...here is a woman who pulled up in a BMW, had a lot of very nice looking rings on her fingers, and didn't look like she shopped at primark, argueing over a couple of 10p bags with a shop worker who isn't even earning £6.20 an hour yet.

obviously, she won't feel bad though. her type never do.

anyway, moving on to the rest of the day...it was just more of the same. no staff wanted to show up so i was tortured for hours on the till...however, i suppose it gave me plenty of material for this blog.
such as my little list of how to piss me right off when i am serving you that i constructed on a sheet of blank receipt paper in quiet periods.
everytime i served a customer and they did something that made me want to slam dunk their face onto the barcode scanner i quickly scribbled it down on my piece of paper so i could sit down on my computer and recite it right here, on blogspot.

as you can imagin...the list got very long, very quickly...but here are a few of the highlights.

How To Piss Me Off When I'm Working:
1. when i am finished serving you, i will hand you a reciept. if you do not wish to keep the reciept, either tell me so i can put it in my bin or take it and chuck it in the bin outside. however, if you wish to highly irritate me...then please take the damn piece of paper and then chuck it straight back at me and into the basket next to my counter. and walk off.
2. if you have a lot of shopping to get, we have these strange contraptions called baskets and trolleys. it may be a good idea to use one of these in the event you are planning to buy more than 5 items. you can then place the basket nicely into the space next to my counter and things can run smoothly. alternatively, you can pile all your shopping into your arms, cradle it round the shop like its a baby and then you can throw it all down onto my scanner. then when the results of that means stuff has scanned already before i then re-scan it...don't come back whining that i've overcharged you when the reality is that you overcharged yourself. fool.
3. if you have children with you, can they please refrain from scanning everything themselves. they always manage to scan everything about three times, or they can't scan it at all and start crying. they hold up the queue, want to steal everything from the till because it's "shiny" or they forbid me from scanning their chocolate donut therefor wasting my time, and everyone elses. just go away.
4. if i have just finished serving a customer, but i havent called you over after half a minute or so...the chances are i'm either counting money from my till or doing something that requires me not to be serving you at that present time. if you really have some strange incurable impulse to walk over to my till and wait till i'm done even though there are 3 other tills open and all in action...then by all means, stand there and stare you freak. just don't tut, sigh, cough loudly or look at your invisible watch on your wrist and expect me to just leave over £200 just sitting there so i can serve you your fricking custard creams.
5. if i am going to the trouble of packing your bags for you, then can you please try not twitching the whole way through the transaction. you know who you are - everytime i lift an item to place into your bag...you keep having weird spasms with your hands and pull that "oh don't put them in there" face. well, here is an idea...PACK IT YOURSELF. if you're so troubled by where your cucumber sits in relation to your bread...then why don't you co-ordinate the damn stuff yourself?
same for you people who stand there dictating to me where to put stuff...
"oh, if you put the radish in there, then you can put the onion the other way....NO! don't put that in there, for god's sake! the newspaper will squish the milk!"
you know who you are, so just stop it. we don't look up to you for being so dictorial. we just resent you. so how'd you like that?
6. if you have a lot of shopping, and end up having a lot of bags, please don't just stand there expecting me to be able to click my fingers and they will just fly through the wall and into your car boot. the tills are very small, and not actually designed for a lot of shopping to be done in one transaction. therefor, once i have finished packing one bag...i will need you to take it from me. not just expect them to line up one by one like soldiers. they WILL fall off the till and on your feet. and you WON'T have the right to moan at me for it. so just take your hands out of your pockets and take them from me. thank you.

and those are just some of things that annoyed me in the space of a few hours. and that was just "i'm stuck on the till" annoyances!
by 12pm, more staff arrived and i was off the till and thought i was safe from idiots....i was wrong. and when i thought the afternoon would be without it's annoyances...i was wrong once again.
i got the job of reducing stuff. a job i enjoy, actually...it's quite a solitary job and is one for the people who want to unwind from the other hectic jobs you could be given.
it's very important and needs to be done properly and not rushed but that's another reason i enjoy it. this may sound really snotty but i don't find serving customers all that fufilling and i certainly don't feel like i'm contributing much when i'm just sitting on a till asking the same questions over and over and batting off queries on how much the apples cost, or having to work out why "THESE GRAPES WERE MARKED BUY ONE GET ONE FREE BUT IVE BEEN CHARGED FOR TWO!" honestly, i just can't withstand the anguish these poor people have to go through. it really hurts to see them all in so much turmoil.
all these years i never bothered to get worked up over 59p but obviously that is the wrong thing to do. obviously the right thing to do is make people out to be as bad as people who burn their pet dog with candles and roll around on the floor crying until you get that whole 59p back.
i also don't really get all that excited over stock replenishment, either. don't get me wrong, it's better than tills...but when i do the reductions i actually feel like i'm doing something important that helps the store achieve it's goals.
which is why, when i am doing it, i like to have peace and quiet and not be troubled too many times.
okay, i accept i'll have to jump on the tills when it's busy and then come back to my job when the queue is down...but really, in an ideal world, the person doing reductions should be left alone as much as possible so they can concerntrate on doing a job well done.
reductions are a serious business.
which is why it really doesn't help to be accosted by customers every five minutes...which is exactly what was happening to me yesterday afternoon whilst i was trying to do it.
it wasn't the fact that in 45 minutes i'd done less than five items on the list that bothered me. it wasn't even the questions the customers where asking me that bothered me.
no, what bothered me was the fact that had three other people on the shop floor they could have asked for help...one who was filling the milk, one who was filling the crisps and one who was putting out the last bit of our chilled delivery.
instead, they ask the poor git that had the pen tucked over their ear, had a device in their hand and was scanning stuff with it, and a printer that was printing out barcodes.
really, if you were a customer...who would you bother the question "where are your eggs?" with? the person sitting on the floor leisurely filling up crisps and chatting to someone, or the harrased looking person with the pressing job and a thousand things going on at once. because not only was i doing reductions, i was also listening out for the bakery ovens going off so i could take out the stuff someone else had put in there before getting stuck on the tills.

of course, all of this must have looked simple to achieve to the outside world because up they came to me, all these customers, with all their little questions:
"do you have any forks or spoons?"
"have you any 6 pint green milk out the back?" (try asking the person who is, right this minute, filling up milk!)
"can you show me where your frozen sweetcorn is?" (try the freezers?)
"do you sell batteries?"
"have you got any proper coke?" (on further probing...i realise what they mean by "proper coke" is the red, full of sugar variety. which happened, on even further investigation, to be at the very bottom of a cage from our latest delivery. so i out and out lied to them. okay, i confess. i lied and said we didn't have any.)

...so, after two hours of trying to do my favourite job in the whole of my working life (i'm not even being sarcastic, either) i hadn't even managed to reduce 10 items. by the time it came to the end of my shift i still had practically the whole thing to do and had to hand it over to someone else which i HATE doing.
nothing looks more lazy than handing over a half finished job and saying "i'm off home, you do it."
okay, so my colleague volenteered to take over...but thats not the point. i still feel like an utter useless tool at times like that.

so all in all, yesterday was little more than a frustrating day. there is nothing worse than coming into work pumped up to work your arse off and ready to take on every last challange it has in store for you...only to find there is no staff in and you're going to be stuck for hours just clearing queues.
i enjoy speaking to people, i enjoy helping people (this may not come across very well in this blog entry but it's true lol..) and sometimes when i've done 24824824 shifts on the trot i do like to just sit on till and serve.
most of the time, though, all i want to do is blitz delivery after delivery, see how quick i can get my list of jobs i'm given done, and to take pride in the shop floor.
so, when days like yesterday come along, you can't contribute much and you get next to nothing done...it's very, very frustrating.

anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. wednesdays are my "shop floor" day because everyone else on wednesdays seem to want to marry the till. and thats fine by me, i can be the priest.

until next time
xxx