of scratch cards, coffee machines, and angry people.

hello!

thank GOD it's the end of the week - i could really do with a new one.
i've got the day off today but y'know what? this week has worn me out that much i can't even enjoy it.
i've been lying on my sofa all morning watching dvds. i've been trying to wind down because this week at work has wound me up so tightly that i just feel tense, drained and horrible.
staff, customers, certain parts of my job...it's all been getting to me a bit too much.
i thought that today would be a nice day. a relaxing day. in some ways, it has been...but i just can't seem to shake off the annoyance of this weeks events.
actually, what am i talking about? thursday was actually a really good shift. even though i spent the whole time clock watching...it was quite fun.
wednesday, though, was just too much...i found myself hiding away in the toilets, face buried in my hands for at least 15 minutes that day.

i'm just really...disappionted with how things went that day. recently i've been really enjoying my work and having no problems with staying on, coming in early, coming in on days off...in my eyes i was earning money for doing something i enjoyed around people i (mostly) like.
maybe i'm just tired...this week alone i've done 24 hours on top of my normal 30. last week was quite the same, as well.
it's been easter week, as well...so all the rude and stressed people have come crawling out of the woodwork. plus, some of my colleagues seem to have been getting off the lazy bus all week.
so here i am - day off. i should be on my sofa, cup of coffee and a book/dvd.
however, i just can't get myself relaxed and out of work mode so i thought whilst work is still spinning around in my head then i'd take the time to bond with this blog.
so without further ado, here it is:

wednesday:
i was due in at 6am. my alarm clock went off at 4am. i put it on "snooze" mode so that it'd wake me up again in another 10 minutes - it didn't.
i wake up again at 5.36am and jolt up like i've just been shot in the leg.
the exact same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago...it hardly ever happened to me before so i'm either getting old or just working too much.
in any event - i am quickly trying to make myself look less of a mess than i did when i suddenly get a phone call from maizy. "colin hasn't turned up yet! what do i do?"
oh. brilliant. so here i am rushing around and the fricking duty manager hasn't even turned up yet.
"calm down, maizy, i'm just leaving now..."
when i get there, still no colin. not a problem - i'll give him a call.
it was then that i looked at my phone book and realised i'd forgotten to save his number. so, maizy had to ring dean instead.
why she couldn't have done that in the first place - i'll never know. in the end, we ring dean, dean rings colin and apparently he's on his way. well, zippedi do!
of course, we havent opened on time. and of course, we had to explain why to the people hovering around outside waiting to come in.
some of them went off and decided that we were not the only shop around and that they actually had options on where to shop.
this one guy, though, decides to hang around.
picture this - it's 6.10am, i've only been awake for around half an hour, we're stuck outside waiting for someone to turn up to open the damn doors, and we have this fat little builder who kept asking us dumb questions "so, when you open can i go staight in?" (yeah, if you want to help us to set the shop up first!) "don't any of you lot have a key to open with then?" (of course we do...we just like standing out in the cold for the sheer fun of it all)
blah blah blah...
thankfully, colin arrived shortly after that but i ended up wishing he hadn't bothered. he was in a really bad mood...no good morning, no sorry for being late...just a "f*ck, i feel rough. don't even talk to me."

well screw you, an all.

anyway, we got in...and we had to pretty much swat away the moutains of people who tried to stampede their way in.
they couldn't quite fathom that we needed to set up first - patience is obviously in short supply around my town.

however, this was nothing compared to when we got into the shop and found a slight problem.
well, it was quite a BIG problem. i can't explain fully what it was because you never know whos reading this...but it meant the shop couldn't run fully.
and it put colin in an even worse mood. we ended up having a row of sorts - it ended up with me about to explode and him utterly unimpressed.

i won't go into the whole thing here - it'd take too long. to cut a long story short, he gave me several jobs to do over the course of the day, none of which he could be bothered to explain properly so some of which i stuffed up.
he insulted me and my work several times and i wasn't having it. so i had a go at him for it.
he wasn't expecting it - especially not from me. i'm normally the sort of person that will take the insult, get pissed off by it but bitterly hold my emotions in and make voo doo dolls later on.
it wasn't even the fact he insulted me, actually...it was the laughing in my face that did it for me.
i could have been a lot worse in my tirade at him, actually...i could have said "actually, i messed this job up because you had one eye on your cigarette and the other on seeing how big a voilin you could play for yourself. what's happening in the store right now is ALL of our problem...so maybe if you took the time to explain a job i've never done before rather than just expect me to guess then things would run a lot smoother. you can't be bothered today - and THAT'S why i f*cked up. if anyone is the thick one - it's YOU."

yup, at one point he actually called me thick. and later on muttered to someone else that i was incapable. this someone else is actually a very good friend of mine who will be honest with me 100%. if i was being stupid - she'd have said so. in fact, what she said was that colin didn't explain the job properly, he was totally out of line to me, and even she didn't get what he'd said.
she said "don't you dare feel bad."
how could i not, though? he was getting at me all day...people don't normally get under my skin because i know that a lot (not all of them - but a lot) of the managers i've encountered in my time have had that semi-arrogance about them. i know when they yell at me it's to massage their own egos so i just let it roll off of my back.
colin, though, knew just what buttons to press...and he pressed them all at once.
so, i hid in the toilets at one point. and i'm not ashamed to admit it but i very nearly cried.
all i wanted to do was help him sort the crap out - obviously though he was on a mission to sort it all out himself so he could look good. sod everyone else who cared. sod everyone else who tried to help. it was all just The Colin Show.

later on, though, i was quite comforted to find out it wasn't just me who he was pissing off. three other members of staff came up to me and told me that he'd been rude to them, insulted them, or taken things too far with them.
i didn't take it quite so personal after that - it wasn't me that was a total useless twat...it was colin being an arrogant prick who thinks he's that smooth he can get away with what he wants.

the one moment that wound me up above all else was when i asked for help with something but he was too busy flirting with some random girl to even bother turning around to answer me.
then when i, predictably, messed things up...he had a massive go at me!
i just turned away from him and walked off rolling my eyes.
thank god he's not a doctor, he'd be too busy talking to the attractive relative to inject the patient with life saving drugs.

up until wednesday, i actually thought he was okay, and i thought he was really good at his job.
in fact, up until wednesday we were getting along grandly and he was praising my work and saying i should further my career there!
actually, i must admit, later in the afternoon he was very nice to me and we were getting along just like we used to.
so at the end of my shift i was the bigger person - i went up to him and i apologised for snapping at him.
i did that for two reasons 1. because i can't stand falling out with people and not sorting it out and 2. because i really, really wanted to put what happened between us down to the stress of the thing in the shop going wrong and not because he really DOES think i'm thick and crap at my job.

in fact, on wednesday i saw a side to myself i didn't think i had anymore. when i was a lot younger i pretty much used to row with people for the sake of it. i also used to take everything to heart and get really upset by it.
as i've got older, it takes a lot to upset me...people having a go at me at work doesn't really bother me much because it's not really a proper enviroment. people are totally different out of work so whatever they say to me i can ignore.
i also don't argue. ever. i hate argueing, i think it's a waste of energy and plus it just makes bad situations worse.

on wednesday, though, i did both of them and i was right all along - they DO make things worse.

in fact, i was so wound up and angry i couldn't even eat anything on my break. i just had a cup of coffee and sat there sulking.
that was until a lady came in from a company who was trying to get us to sign up for it.
we had a very long, very in depth discussion on a number of topics and she told me i sounded "very well read and highly intelligant."

ha! see! i can't be that thick, colin. :)

when she said that to me, i seriously could have hugged her, married her and cried. i think at that point i just wanted somebody, anybody, to be nice to me. and there she was.

after my break, i decided to be petty and childish and put myself on the main till. i wasn't putting myself out for anyone and so decided i was going to colin suffer the shop floor on his own.
i'm not being egotistic, but of the people he had in the shop that i was the only one there that day who had the "go! go! go!" attitude on the shop floor.
the rest of them were quite happy to just potter about and if all their jobs didn't get done then oh well nevermind.
i think he knew that, too, because he kept coming up to me and being really, really nice. and even though i was getting horrible customer after horrible customer...i still wouldn't change my mind. i only had an hour an a half left of my shift to go and i wasn't spending it stressing about the shop floor antics.
so colin could go and scratch.

and, yes, you did hear me right...in amongst the argueing, the insults, the sulking and the hiding in the toilets...i still managed to find the time to get moaned at by customers.

there was the two wankers who came up to my till with what seemed like hundreds of one product.
now, when this happens it normally means because the customer thinks that the product is on some sort of offer.
normally, the customer is right and the transaction is easy - however, in some cases, in this case...the customer is a fool who can't read.

i put the items through the till, i packed them nice and neatly...and then i told the guys how much it'll be. "so that's £20, then please..." i say...and there is a slight pause.
the older looking guy starts shaking his head in a weird side to side action and starts shaking his finger to voilently make his point
him - "NO IT IS NOT £20 THEN PLEASE. IT SHOULD BE AND THAT'S £5 THEN PLEASE!"
me - "oh...are they supposed to be on offer then?"

the older one turns around to the younger one, does one of those sarcastic "i don't believe this!" laughers and then turns back to me "are they supposed to be on offer? you tell me! you work here!"
me - "well, i really don't think that amount of [product name here] would come to £5 whatever offer it may be on...hang on and i'll go have a look."
so i turn to rob and say "can you just stay here for a sec whilst i go look for something?" and just as i reached the shelf to go have a look i notice that the older one has come thundering along the aisle to watch me. obviously, he must think i'm going to go running to the shelf just to hide the labels and con him out of money. obviously, i work on commision that way.
so, i look at the shelf and realise the the label he was looking at was for a different item THREE SHELVES DOWN.
how in god's name can anyone get that confused? fair enough if the label is just above or just below what he's tried to buy but THREE SHELVES DOWN?

my heart sinks because i realise that i am going to have to spend about eight years trying to explain this to him...and just as i thought...he was having none of it.

him - "WELL IT'S NOT VERY CLEAR IS IT!" and ANYWAY, you still have to give it to me because it's all gone through your till!"
me - "no, i don't have to because it's YOUR mistake. the shelving is clear, the labels are clear..." i then had to stop myself because i was very close to saying "you're going blind and you need shooting. now piss off out of my shop!"

in the end, i had just about had enough that day and decided to get colin to explain it to him before i caused someone actual bodily harm
of course, the old man was very nice and very polite to colin. they always are once a manager is called. it's just us wretched people at the bottom of the food chain that they insult.

the other two stand out customers from wednesday was the mother and daughter combination with weird accents who between them had me wanting to shove fireworks down their throats.

i very clearly heard their conversation in the queue just before i served them.

"mum, can you get me some cigarettes?"
"kayleigh, this is the last time. and only because it's the school holidays."
"oh, thanks mum!"

normally, i don't really care about this sort of thing. if fully grown adults want to be irresponsible and buy their kids cigarettes then that's their problem...but not when i'm serving them. mainly it's because i can't stand the kid gloating that they've outfoxed me. and other times it's because i think "shit, what if this is all a trick by the police, and they spoke in the queue loud enough for me to hear it to test me!"

i've had a test purchase done on me before by the police, luckily i passed it, but ever since then it's made me totally paraniod and totally over the top with IDing people - fortunatly i love to ID people.

well, i say i love IDing people but on this occasion i was hoping, praying that i wouldn't have to serve them because i'd had enough of people shouting at me for one day.
up they came, though, the pair of them...and then the fun began.

the mother - "and i want 20 sovereign." she crows. and i start to panic because i really can't be bothered with another argument. i was already an emotion wreck as it was.
me - "oh, well, i can't serve them to you because i heard your conversation in the queue."
the mother - "WHAT CONVERSATION? THEY ARE FOR ME!"
me - "well, as i have reason to think otherwise then i can't sell them to you."
the daughter - "BUT THEY INT FOR ME! THEY'RE FOR ME MAM!"
the mother - "GIVE ME ANOTHER BRAND AND THEN YOU CAN SELL THEM TO ME!"

sorry, what? why would i just suddenly decide to break the law because you're buying a different brand?

me - "i'm sorry...i can't sell you any cigarettes."
mother - "well f*ck ya, then. c'mon kayleigh...let's get OUT OF HERE."

...another satisfied customer.


and lastly, to round off an already perfect shift, i had the guy who couldn't speak properly and spat all over the counter as he tried to ask for something.
long after he left, the spit just sat there...staring at me. laughing at me.
i had to get someone else to clean it off...i don't do bodily fluids. especially not after what i'd been through already that day.


thursday:

i went in a bit early on thursday because i'd run out of milk at home and wanted to sit down in the staff room with a nice coffee to psyke myself up for the shift ahead.
this was a bad idea because 15 minutes before i was due to start i get dean burst in and say "oh you couldn't help us out on tills, could you? it's heaving out there!"

what i wanted to say in response was this:
"actually, no. i won't get paid for those extra 15 minutes work, my coffee will get cold and i will no doubt get yelled at if i go to make myself another.
you lot are quite happy to talk to me like shit when you want to look the hardman, but you're also quite happy to beg me to start early. FUCK OFF."

but what i actually said, because i'm quite eager to please everyone around me, was "sure, dean, no problem!"

what is wrong with me? why do i let people walk all over me like that? they don't appriciate it...so why bother? i tell you why i bother...because i was more concerned for the people already on the till getting yelled at by customers than i was trying to please dean. i know what it's like having no-one to serve with you when the queue is that long it's going off out to australia...it's HORRIBLE.

anyway, so i hop on a till and my first few customers are actually really nice. one was a lady who i always chat to and she told me to "be good, and if i can't be good then be myself..." haha! :)

however, my first arsehole of the day was the guy who was PAYING WITH HIS CARD and yet still expected me to be opening my till at the end of serving him."
man - "and when you're done i want you to change me fiver into five pound coins, okay?"
me - "right, well you'll have to wait till i've served someone else because i wont be opening my till."
man- "er, to give me my change you will?"
me - "but you're paying with your card..."
man - "oh yeah. WELL THIS IS JUST A STUPID SET UP THEN!"

....ha ha ha ha. moron.

he should have got married to the women i served a few customers after him...she was an idiot who bought a kingsize variety of a brand of cigarettes, but then realised she actually wanted superkings.
for that kind of thing, you have to get it refunded through the till...but she actually wanted me to just swap it over myself and not only that...actually let her have superkings for the price of the kingsize!
i said no. i wasn't even polite about it. she wasn't being polite so why should i?
the hilarious moment was when she glared at me and said "DO IT NOW!" LOL! it reminded me of my old geography teacher...so i admit it - i burst out laughing in her face. not at her, though! however, i can understand why she might have thought that...how was she to know i was picturing her with a wig and bad teeth?

actually, i can't even remember how the whole scene ended...she accepted she had to get a refund, though...so i don't even get to have a punchline for the end of this story. quite boring, really.

anyway, hayley gave me the laugh of the afternoon.
michelle was serving a lady with a big bag of shopping, and had put the customers baguette to one side on the next till.
i was standing nearby waiting to collect the baskets...when hayley tottered up to me and started chatting away to me. she then spotted the baguette just sitting there and, i admit, it did look like it was just left there to be put back.
thinking it was just sitting there for no good reason...hayley picks it up and starts playfully beating me with it! the customer looks up with an evil glare, the colour drains from michelle's face and she says "er, hayley, that baguette actually belonged to the customer i'm serving..."

LOL!

oh my god, that was it! i had to go out the back and just die. i literally went out the back and fell on the floor. hayley's facial expression was the funniest thing i've seen this year so far...actually, i think it probably will go down as one of the moments of the year.

my shift on thursday was quite theraputic, actually. after the stress of wednesday...i needed a good laugh and thursday was full of them.

my favourite customers of the evening had to have been the really, really weird couple that kept argueing over how big they thought our till was in centremetres. the conversation made no sense, either.
he was short, bald, with a pitch black moustache. he had a suitcase and wore a greenish raincoat.
she was short, greasy hair, also with pitch black facial hair, she wore a extremely oversized coat with flowers all over it.
so, now you know how they looked...picture the scene:

man - "how big do you reckon that till is?"
woman - "not as big as the one we had in our office that time."
man - "10. i'd say 10 centremetres."
woman - "yes, but why measure it like that? you know i don't work in centremetres."
man - "10. i'd say 10"
woman - "8"
man - "10"
woman - "how about we just stop this now, eh? we have stuff to cook."
man - "shall we ask the kid at the till how big it is?"
woman - "maybe they don't know."

...i was thinking "oh crikey, don't bring me into this conversation!" and luckily they didn't. i think they decided on 15 in the end...thank god we don't sell rulers otherwise i'd have been stuck with them for ages!

after that, i had to go outside to fetch a bag full of wine someone had left outside...it must have had at least £50 worth of wine inside it. who the hell would forget that? and more to the point...i'm surprised no-one else helped themselves to it!

oh, and then i had the fear of god put into me when i served this woman who had a gaggle of kids around her.
i'm not lying...there were about five or six kids circled around her...and they were all STARING at me. all six of them, all at once, looking right at me in the eye.
god, i could have screamed...i was waiting for them all to start syncronised blinking at me. and to suddenly start bleeding from the eyes. i was TERRIFIED.

so i scuttled off to clean the coffee machine. bad idea because it just so happened that bad tempered ol' bastard with a dirty vest and hairy chest wanted a coffee.
if i'd have known he was about to make his grand entrance i'd have left it till he'd got his coffee because all i got was
dirty scumbag - "eh, how long is this gonna take?"
me - "5 to 10 minutes."
dirty scumbag - "fecks sake. i int got that long!"
me - "well, i am very sorry about that."

and i said that in a sincere tone even though it probably sounded really sarcastic. maybe because deep down i WAS being sarcastic.
then when he sodded off, i got a lady come up to me asking "have you got any chickens out the back?"
me - "well, i'm afraid i can't have a look at the moment because i can't leave the coffee machine."
her - "why not?"
me - "because hot water is coming out of it and if someone hurts themselves on it then it's my fault."
her - "FOR GOD'S SAKE IT WILL ONLY TAKE 10 SECONDS TO LOOK!"

ahahaha is she a chicken, herself? 10 seconds? to go into our chiller and look at our meats cage to see if there's any chicken on it? i think 2 minutes would be more likely. plus, 10 seconds or not...i still can't leave boiling hot water unattended!

she off she huffed "i'll ask someone else then!" and she must have done because a few minutes later bob came out of nowhere holding a chicken and with a pissed off face.
i later asked him what was up "this cow tapped me on the shoulder and demanded i got her a chicken. don't know if you saw her or not..."

...ah, well, now you come to mention it...


not much else happened after that...i was really tired and kept clock watching because i wanted to go home. clock watching is the WORST thing to do...no matter how many times you do it...the time always stays the same - or so it seems.
however, it was a good night...i had fun which is what it's all about for me. and i left work feeling a lot better about myself and about work in general.



i went home, had a ham and pineapple pizza, and watched hells kitchen...after a hard week at work...you can't get much better than that.



oh! before i go, one thing i forgot to mention was the black man who came up to me. i had half an hour to go and really couldn't be arsed with going out the back to look for cheesestrings or anything equally as pointless...
man - "excuse me, does this win mean anything?" he had a lottery scratchcard. i took it from him, utterly uninterested, took a look at it and my jaw dropped...
me - "does it mean anything? just a bit! you've won £10,000!"
him - "oh, really? sweet!"

...is that it? sweet?

oh, i should have lied and said "no, you've won nothing. i'll throw it in the bin if you like..."
however, karma bites, folks...so i was honest and can sleep better for it lol...but wow, £10,000? why can't i win anything like that? in fact, why can't i win anything full stop?

anyway, that's my round up for the week....after a bad start it all worked out in the end...and i'm happy if a little tired. :)

until next time
xx

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

i died on the cross, as well...

i know, i know...my lack of blog action recently has been DISGUSTING.
however, as it's been easter week...it's been really busy and the shifts i've been doing recently have been going into double figures.
thursday night i did 10 hours, yesterday i did 16 hours...and in the few days inbetween i've done another 16 or so hours...so i am exhausted.
however, i have had loads to say...just no energy to say it!

things i will mention here now, though:

1. people registering their disgust yesterday and on good friday that we had no easter eggs left. well, don't you think that the day AFTER easter is leaving it a bit late?
2. the fact that easter is our busiest time of the year, even above christmas...isn't it lovely people want to come and celebrate the ressurection of jesus by shopping with us?
3. the cretin that wanted to buy friday's newspaper with a voucher for saturdays paper. NO. YOU CAN'T DO IT SO LEAVE ME ALONE!
4. people going so slow they almost stopped. they wouldn't move their bags so i could pack more on the counter/they were taking a whole ice age to get their money out of their pockets/they wouldn't leave after i'd given them change and their receipt which resulted in me having to literally sling their shopping at them before they bothered to even move. this wasn't just one customer it was about five or six. WHEN WILL PEOPLE UNDERSTAND I HAVE NO PATIENCE FOR DITHERING CRETINS!
5. some joker thinking it was funny to leave the taps on in the sink in the toilet and to wedge tissue paper where the plug should go.


i left at 2pm on Bad Friday...and went straight to bed to lay down in a dark room.
okay, thats a lie...i actually went SHOPPING!
i know, i'd finished at midnight the night before after ten hours in a shop, i then got up at 4am and arrived at work at 5.15 to do another eight hours in a shop...and then i go SHOPPING.
but, i needed to buy some alcohol and a small amount of comfort food (lol!) because i had a feeling over easter i was going to need it.
as it happens, my little adventure into yet another retail jungle was very interesting because all the customers were jolly and helpful and polite...

...so it's either OUR shop they hate...or just me.

(blog about yesterday will be up later, but now i must leave to go pay my electricity bill. joys.)

until next time...xxx

guess what?

...today i had the acid from a 9 volt battery leak all over my hand. yeah thanks for that.

i should have known i was doomed to a day of mishaps when before we even opened i was attacked by a swarm of diseased killer flies.

okay, so i'm going a bit over the top there. what really happened was i was working the produce and after i opened a box of bananas this really massive odd looking fly buzzed out of the box.
i've never seen anything like it before in my life - and so my imagination went into overdrive and in my head i had images of it being packed up in the carribbean especially for me to find.
i had this whole little scene playing in my head where, whilst being trapped in the box flying on the plane, the poor little fly was tapping on it over and over saying "aaagh! let me out! i'm claustraphobic!"

i was that engrossed in the story of the insect from del monte that i didn't even notice that we'd opened. rob ringing the bell was enough for me to snap out of my little coma and reality hit as soon as i served my first customer.
they were quite pleasant, actually...even if he told me i looked like i needed a strong coffee.
i couldn't tell if he meant because i looked drunk, or just tired. as it happened, i was just tired but wishing i was drunk once i served this bunch of carers.
honestly, i have serious doubts over the staff the care homes around here employ. i don't know if they are caring for sick people, or old people, or whatever...but we serve a lot of them, and the whole lot of them are the most miserable sacks of shit i've ever encounted.

i know their jobs are probably bloody depressing...but they don't even have that "aura of warmth" carers are all supposed to have. i've never even seen one of them smile.

the one that gets on my wick the most is the one who stands in the queue eating her food before she even buys it.
normally, that wouldn't bother me...but the first time i noticed her do it she was so arrogant that she was destined to forever be in my line of hatred. i'd never seen her before in my life (thank god) and was stunned when she came up to me, threw the empty wrapper at my scanner, wagged her finger in front of my face and launched into "before you mention anything, darling, i've been working for 16 hours straight and i'm hungry. so don't even bother mentioning it."

what the hell? do you think i really care? well, yes i do now actually. go choke.
and then i visualised the glorious moment in my head - her falling to the ground trying to cough up a slice of chicken.

anyway, since that day...everytime she comes in i've made it a little game of mine to watch her in the queue and try to make my eyes force a bit of her food down her wind pipe.


but yes, the carers. they're all so bloody rude and lifeless. just like the paramedics that come in. they're all bloody miserable and ice cold, too. especially the tall lanky woman that comes in. i'd hate to ever need eletric shock pads on my chest if she's around...she probably laughs manically everytime she has to do it whilst shocking her own chest soon afterwards. i swear she has bolts running through her neck. she's horrid.

anyway, i'm straying from the path somewhat...probably because this morning didn't really have much going for it. nothing really happened. at all.
i'd done all my morning jobs i always do and not only that but done it all before 7am! i know! what the hell was going on? no early morning crisis? no being stuck on the till for ages whilst the person on the main till dithered? no milk exploding randomly on the shelf? no bombs being discovered underneath the baskets?
even maizy was doing some work for a change...it was all madness. madness i tell you.
it was probably because rob was on the main till and he's a "no problems" kinda guy.
he stays on till all day, he keeps himself to himself and he only rings the bell when he absolutely has to. i like rob.

i even went on a break before 9am. that never happens. ever.
there is normally far too much to do, or thousands of people need serving, or a delivery needs taking in, or someone drinks car oil thinking it's coca cola and you have to shove their mouth under a tap...(okay, i made that one up...)

in fact, the only things that are worth mentioning from this morning are the constant mishaps i was having all morning and the fantastic deaf guy i served who thanked me in sign language and when i did it back to him, whilst mouthing "thank you" to him, he smiled at me and gave me the thumbs up.
he likes me because i always make an effort to interact with him. i feel for him because it must be awful living in a world with no sound (although for my friends, that would probably be a blessing when i'm around).
when i relayed the moment to rob he said to me "how did you know he was thanking you?" which i thought was a bit odd...i thought everyone knew how to say thank you in sign language. maybe i was wrong.

and as for the mishaps i was having...

my stupidity number 1: whilst filling up the coffee machine, i got the little tube stuck, and whilst pulling it unstuck then proceeded to let go of the tub the milk goes in and woops...down she goes, captain. all over the floor.

my stupidity number 2: i was making myself a well deserved coffee, but instead of being clever and pouring it into my cup...i turned around because maizy called me and poured the hot water all over the side instead, which then dripped down onto my shoes.

my stupidity number 3: throwing cardboard into the cage, i decided that i didn't want the heaviest one to go in the cage at all...no, i decided i would throw it in a particular way that it would bounce off the cage and onto my head instead.

my stupidity number 4: after i finished serving a customer, i shut my till...without moving my hand and nearly took a chunk out of my fingers.

my stupidity number 5: filling up the bread, i was obviously piling the ones on the top shelf a bit too high...i found this out when 4 loafs fell on my head at once.

...so you see, i'd obviously left my brain in bed. which, may i add, i really struggled to leave this morning. i could have cried when my alarm went off at 4am this morning. i could hear the rain battering against my window, and my bedroom was so very cold. it was awful, i literally slithered out of bed due to the fact my duvet was so lovely and warm i swear i microwaved it in my sleep.

anyway, back to today...after my break i had to go and take rob off the till for his break. i didn't mind, really...it was absolutely dead. i think it was due to the school holidays - no school run, no mothers coming in after dropping the kids off to school, no nothing.
just the usual few elderly people pottering about, and a few people here and there.
in fact, i loved just sitting on the till. the peace and quiet was lovely.
it became a bit TOO lovely, though...so i decided to work some of the cigarettes that had just come in off the delivery.
the thing with putting cigarettes out is that you have to have your back to the till and so you have to keep turning around to check there are no customers waiting. you do it so often that the people around you start to think you have a nervous twitch.

i was only on the till until rob finished his break and then he went back on there. it was duller than usual, because it was so dead i didn't even get yelled at once. how boring.
i did have two stand out moments, though...
the guy who bought tin foil, claimed he was about to smoke some heroin and told me - "if you're ever going to do jack up on some H, don't hit your veins too much otherwise they become too bruised to stick the needle in. okay?"

eh? why are you even telling me this? you're blatently buying the tin foil to wrap your packed lunch up...i don't find you even slightly hardcore. in fact, i find you more than slightly pathetic. now get out of my face.

after him was the slightly less ghetto elderly gentleman who wanted a top up but didn't know who for. or even why.

him - "do you do top up?"
me - "what, for your phone?"
him - "i think so. marge sent me in for it, you see."
me - "riiiight, well, yes we do. what network is it for?"
him - "aiy?"
me - "what network do you want?"
him - "no i want top up for marge's phone."
me - "i know that, but to top up a phone, i need to know what network its on."
him - "oh, it's for this..."
he then takes out a card from his coat, i take it from him hoping for this whole thing to start making sense but no...
me - "that's actually your liberary card."
him - "aiy?"
me - "the card you just gave me is for the liberary down the road."
him - "oh. right. well...can i have a top up for the telephone then instead?"

....kill me now.

so on and on this went...i actually think it went on for about 5 minutes, which is a hell of a long time to be stood at a till when all you wanted was a phone top up.
in the end, i told him to go and ask "marge" what network the phone was on (praying rob would be back by then)...and back him came. before rob did. and this time with (who i presumed to be) marge.

me - "oh, hello again..."
him - "which one was it you wanted again, woman?"
marge - "for my phone!"
me - "i think he means the network. which one did you want?"
him - "yes. the network. we need the network." (and i needed a noose by this point...)
marge - *sighing* "virgin!"
him - "virgin."
me - "okay, how much?"
him - "she wants virgin..."
marge - "i want virgin..." (at your time of life...?)
me - "yes, but how MUCH money do you want on it?"
marge - "oh. five pounds please."

WHAT?!?!? ALL OF THIS CHAOS FOR FIVE MEASLY POUNDS?

...so she gives me the phone card, i put it all through, and finally...it's all over.

honestly, the whole scene was totally ridiculous. it was like a comedy sketch. i seriously wonder how those two live their lives day to day. how they even get dressed in the morning.

shortly after that, rob was back...and i could get on with my day free from crazy old people trying to attack me with their liberary cards.

a few hours later, and i got the leaky battery and before you ask, no it wasn't marge coming back for seconds...it was actually quite a pretty girl who just happened to not be able to notice all that stuff oozing from the end of the battery.
she wanted to know "do you do these?" and dropped it into my hand.

yes, we do do those, thanks...i presume you want one that doesn't leak, though?


and that was the sum of my day today. nothing that shocking, nothing that eventful...i didn't even get a death threat for something terrible like having no coffee lids! or tic tacs!

delivery was late but we all mucked in and got it done quick, lunchtime wasn't as busy as usual, no-one really annoyed me, no-one called in sick and to top it all off...i went home on time!
all in all, i had a good (if a little calamity filled) shift.

sorry for the really boring entry...tomorrow i will be sure to tick people off enough to need several facial stitches before the day is out.

until next time xxx

P.S i think i'm in love.

...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

sunday bloody sunday

...i have absolutely nothing positive to say about today.
it was awful. it was so many different types of hell that i feel like i've died and gone there and back.

to be honest, it was that awful and busy that i didn't even have time to stop and jot down what was pissing me off.
this was my first sunday shift in over a year and a half (after a delayed break, i am back on them permantly.) and MY GOD have times changed.
it used to be a nice, quiet shift...well it used to perk up after about 11am...but before that it was as dead as a dodo.
but no, not now...from the moment i came in at 8 till i finished at 4...it was mad.
we also had the delights of having no big bags (again!) and so i had to keep offering 10p refusable bags. this was because nobody was considerate enough to get a small amount of shopping...no, they had to have baskets that were spilling out at the sides, or even worse...trolleys that were spilling out at the sides.
actually, most people were greatful for reusable bags...but no, one of the stand out moments of the shift was this black woman who obviously wanted a bag but didn't want to pay for one. this was the dialouge:

me - "we don't actually have any big bags at the moment...so you can either have loads of the little bags, or you can buy a reusable bag."
her - "i dont want to buy a bag."
me - "okay, i will give you a few little bags then."
so i start attempting to pack her stuff into the impossible minature bags of doom and she interrupts!
her - "how are you going to get it all in there? how much exactly are these reusable bags?"
me - "10p."
her - "show me one."
i trundle off to get one, smiling away to myself because i just KNEW this woman was going to be awkward about the whole thing.
i walk back to the till with the bag in my hand and lift it up whilst doing a sarcastic little smile that said "this good enough for ya?!?!"
she then decides she doesn't want it because "she isn't paying for a bag when she has loads at home!" (a comment i always find deplorable - it's your fucking fault you left them at home, not mine! either buy a new one or shut up when i hand you over 65 little bags!)
so, yet again, i attempt to pack her stuff into small bags, and yet again, she interrupts.
her - "how are you going to get it all in there?!!??" she screams once more.
me - "i'll give it a go" (said in a cheery tone to hide the fact she was seriously getting on my wick by this point.)
she then decides she will have to concede this fight and buy a bag. i can't remember the exact wording of the rest of the conversation...but it was very evident that she was going to try and argue the toss until i said "oh, here you go...have it for free!"
well, i wasn't giving in. especially after the "i have bags at home" comment. well piss off home and get them, then.

rar. people like that seriously break my soul. if they are after a free bag, at least have the foresight to think that maybe being cheery and polite is the way to go about it.
not talk to me like a dick.
oh, also, she was the same person who 10 minutes earlier asked me where sweetcorn was.
now, i went round the shop and showed her every possible variety of sweetcorn we do.
"we have it frozen?"
"no. dont want it frozen."
"well, we have it on the cob..."
"no, i hate cob."
"okay, well we have it tinned?"
"no, hate it tinned. it makes my teeth play up."

WELL HOW OTHER WAY CAN YOU BUY SWEETCORN? seriously, am i just being stupid or is there another way to purchase sweetcorn? because i seriously love the stuff and have never seen it in any other way other than those three. well, at least, my shop don't stock any other kind.
so after the little tut and sigh they always do when they don't get their own way...she decides to buy peas instead. frozen.

WTF?!?!?!

i don't really remember much else about the day...because it was so tedious that it all blurred into one horrid block of memory.
all i remember is that pretty much every customer was either rude, arrogant, stupid or plain weird.

there was the old man who couldn't seem to comprehend what shower gel was.

him - "wheres the shower gel? don't tell me you don't bloody stock it?"
me - "yes, of course we stock it. hang on a sec, and i'll show you."

the reason i said "hang on a sec" was because i was already dealing with another customer who wanted to know if we sold "diet pepsi rather than pepsi max" and because i am of the same opinion that diet pepsi is much nicer than pepsi max i felt they deserved my full attention and sincere apologies for our lack of stocking it.
anyway, after i'd finished with my first customer...off i went to go and help out mr. shower gel.

he was standing at the health and beauty section, staring at it with wild eyes.
him - "well?!?"
me - "there you go...it's just there" (said whilst pointing at at it so obviously i was almost prodding the damn bottles.)
him - "eh? WHERE?"
me - "just there. look - shower gel, shower gel, and more shower gel." (i said whilst this time actually touching each different brand of shower gel as i went along.)
him - "oh, it all looked like bubble bath to me."

WHAT??!?! doesn't the label that reads "shower gel" give it away at all?

i also got the joys of serving him at the till which was even worse.
he didn't bother taking his items out of his trolley even though i asked him, too so i had to lean over and get it all out myself. he kept changing his mind what batteries he wanted.
he'd ask for double A, so i'd go and get double A. he'd then decide he wanted triple A, so i'd go and get triple A.
actually, in fact, he wanted 9 volt! so, after grabbing what seemed like 4749795795 different types of batteries...he wanted the ones i went and got last - i swear it was all just a twisted game to him.

then there were the pikey girls who decided they wanted to pay for all their stuff together but have it all in different bags.
fine, no problem...but when i explained it would have to be in little bags because we had no big bags they responded with "can't we have a big bag?"

oh.my.god. do you have ice cream instead of a brain?!

why was i surprised, though? one was dressed like they'd bagged a bargain at oxfam, the other one was in pjamas, and the other one...i don't even know what her clothes were. they were just HORRIBLE. their hair didn't even looked remotely brushed, i couldn't tell whether their faces were dirty or just tanned. they smelt. and they left their manners at the door.
so after i explained for the second time "we have no big bags at the moment, sorry..." the head pikey rolled her eyes, turned round to the other two and said "dhya fink we should just leave it, babes?"

they spent a minute or two deciding whether they actually wanted to go ahead with it or not...by which time i was rolling my own eyes and started staring out of the window in apathy.
finally, they decided "actually, ya. we'll have the tiny bags innit."
thanks for that, girls. you now owe me five minutes of my life back.

the horrible little creatures kept snatching the bags off of me everytime i passed them a newly packed one, and they didn't even say thank you or goodbye.

god, i hate rude people like that. especially rude people like that who can't get themselves dressed in the morning.


oh! a few more points of annoyance that i can remember -

1. being stuck on the till for 45 minutes more than i should have been because the lead swinger who was supposed to be taking me off delibrately kept making up jobs they had to finish off and dawdling so i they didn't have to go on there.
2. people who let me spend five minutes packing their stuff in a bag and then AFTER i finished doing it took it all back out again whilst telling me "i don't need a bag."
3. the fact it took me a whole hour and a half to tidy up one fricking cage because it was so busy. i hate not being able to finish a job off for ages. especially one that should take you 10 minutes at the very most.
4. the little kid who came up to me as i was filling milk, with a half eaten, half trod on ice cream that we don't even sell. "i don't want this anymore." she says, handing it to me and walking off.
oh, and i do? i chucked it away with a shudder...i hate saliva. especially child saliva.
and where the hell were the parents, anyway?

and that's about it, really. it was an awful, awful day...the weekend customers are so different from the week day customers. they are a totally different breed.
i think in the whole eight hours i only served 4 or 5 nice people. thats not very much at all if you consider how many people i actually serve in one day.
however, it did go quick...and i suppose it's not all bad - i do get paid a bit extra for the pleasure.

anyway, i'm on the early tomorrow...i enjoy my monday shifts. plus, after what i went through today...i doubt i'll be moaning much about the customers - at least the rude people and the nutters will be the ones i am used to. come back weekday weirdos; all is forgiven!

until next time xxx

it's just another manic thursday...

evidently, yesterday was cashback day.

so, i started at 1.30 in the afternoon yesterday and, obviously as that is slap bang in the middle of lunchtime, my first job was to go help out on the tills. so, it all begins like this...

customer - "do you do cashback?"
me - "no. sorry."
customer -"ugh. forget it then. just forget it."

and they leave all their items at my till and walk off.
what they didn't understand was that it didn't bother me one jot because, as a lot of the items were chilled or frozen, it just gave me an excuse to trundle off my till and put it all back. by the time i came back the queue had vanished. good times.

my first job of the day was to do milk...which i quite enjoy. in the summer it's nice because it cools you down...and also, i don't know, i just like it. i'm easily pleased like that. :)
well, i say i like it...but yesterday i had the quite frequent problem of every goddamn time i tried putting some milk out...a customer would park themselves right in my way and stand there forever trying to decent which one they want.
now, it's very much a case of...they can see what i'm doing...so if you MUST get in my way...why take so long about it?
so i just lean against the milk dolley and tap my fingers against them as if to say "i'm waiting!" but still they just don't get it. still they stand there.
another thing they do is, instead of taking milk off of the shelf, they will literally rip the bottle of milk i am about to put on the shelf out of my hand and say "oh can i just grab that quickly...?"
well, i can hardly say no when it's in your hands already, can i?

i've decided, if i was ever to leave my job, on my last day i would so shock people like that. when they take it out of my hands, i will rip it back off of them and say "no, stop messing up our frigging rotation and take it off the damn shelf!"
or if they stand in my way, i will just move the milk dolly and wedge it in front of them. god, that'd be so funny....it makes me want to resign just so i can spend eight hours pissing customers off.

anyway, i got half way through my milk and had to help out on tills again...and seriously, i'm not joking, EVERYONE was asking for cashback. and they were all moody fuckers about it.

customer -"yeah, and i'll have £10 cashback."
me - "oh, sorry, we don't actually do cashback."
customer - "i've got it here before!"
me - "no, really, you must be mistaken because we've never done it!"
customer - "yes you have. how would you even know?"
me - "because i've been working here since it opened?"
customer - "oh. it must have been another shop then."

well, yes, it obviously must have been.

i actually love it when customers try to tell me they've had something from our store before. they obviously think i look stupid (maybe i do? maybe that's why they try it?) and will just hand them over what they want. they don't realise anyone would still be crazy enough to stay employed in the same store for over three years...which is what makes defeating them so satisfying. no, you havent been given £300 for buying a box of tic tacs before...now piss off.

oh, the only other cashback story worth noting (most of them all blurred into the same incident. do you do cashback? no we don't. oh i don't want to buy these then. that sort of thing.) was the old tart who refused to queue for the cash machine. it actually quite juvenile.
she was rude throughout the whole transaction, actually...she was that in a hurry to get her basket done that she didn't bother to notice i had my hand there.
yeah, thanks for that you twit. now i have an angry red mark on my hand.

she didn't even apologise...so i made a point of saying how much it hurt to one of my colleagues next to me and still she stood there, stoney faced and unapologetic.
anyway, so i scanned her stuff seriously quick because i just wanted her out of my face...but no, the gods of good/bad fortune didn't want the woman to leave my side today.

her - "and i'll be wanting some cashback."
me - "oh, yeah, sorry we don't actually do it."
her- *strained laugh* "and i'll be wanting some cashback."

(i couldn't tell whether she was laughing at me, or something else entirely...so i decided to play nice just in case.)

me - "sorry, we don't do cashback."
her - "well, do you seriously expect me to go and stand in that queue? look at it! i'm not standing in that!"
me - "well, we don't actually have any sort of facility to provide you with cashback."
her - "don't you think that's a bit silly?"
me - "er, i haven't really given it much thought to be honest."

oh, what a naff response. the thing is, when you're on the tills, the customer can snap so quickly at you that you just don't have time to think up anything good to say back. so you just stammer out some crap that just makes you look even more stupid.

her - "well, you work here. you should put more thought into it!"

yes miss! when i go home, i will be sure to go and sit in a quiet corner and think about what i have done and how i have wronged you.

anyway, i spent the next half an hour or so pottering about in the backyard in the sunshine loading up our delivery onto trolleys. and then i spent the next half an hour after that working the delivery on the shop floor.
i was in an amazingly good mood...i love doing stuff out in the backyard in the sun. or on the shop floor by the windows. i could gladly work all day if the sun is out and i'm not on the till.
it didn't even feel like i was at work, all it felt like was i was filling shelves whilst having random discussions with ian. random discussions i'm afraid i can't repeat here. :+)

alas, my spell of good fortune was broken when it was time for one of our girls to go home and much to my dismay i was nominated for till duty.
oh joy of joys. there is honestly nothing more dull than being on the main till in the late afternoon.
it's just school children, their stressed out parents, and old people. none of which ever make sense. especially the elderly people. the elderly people who are deaf;

me - "anything else?
old person - "no, no i don't think i'll be needing any batteries today."

or elderly people who have speech impediments;

old person - "yes, uh, i, ugh, would, yes, ugh, um, ughhh dwuydfniqnifnwxqvn"


so yes, there i was...3pm and stuck on till. not only that, but apparently i was in a game called Queue Wars.

sometimes, customers can be stupid. sometimes they can't read the big sign that says "PLEASE QUEUE HERE." and they decide to divide themselves up into two queues.
the thing with it this time was that correct queue had about 4 people in it, and the other queue had two...one of the people in the wrong queue noticed and went to the back of the correct queue...but the other woman stubbonly decided to stay put.

so i ignored her.

she finally got the hint when me and ian both ignored her, but for some reason she decided to join the middle of the other queue.
i wasn't saying a word, i learnt my lesson last time...and it soon became clear that the reason she joined the middle of the queue was because that's where a friend of hers was standing.

how did i know this? well, because i could hear them both moaning away to themselves about me.
"blah blah blah, whats the point of ignoring me when i was standing there first? blah blah blah" "yeah i know, people in this shop always do that blah blah blah" "blah blah i don't why why we bother coming here blah blah blah..."

they obviously thought i couldn't hear their mutters. i could.
so, i thought i'd play a little game with them...try a different tact and completely freak them out.

they both came up to me together (obviously they decided to save time and pay for it all together) and i was so nice and cheery to them it was sickening.

me - "hello!" said in a really happy, bouncy tone.
moaning bitch number 1 - "oh, hi..."
me - "how are you today?!" said in an even more happy, bouncy tone.
moaning bitch number 2 - "fiiiinee..." okay, she sounded really freaked out now. job done haha.
moaning bitch number 1 - "yeah, fiiiinnee" and so does she mega LOL
me - "ah thats good, you're fine, i'm fine. we're all fine."

wow, you had to be there to appriciate it. but it was a classic i promise.

anyway, off they scuttled and after that it all went a bit boring. just the usual monotony of people asking "what was the total again? £10.05? do you want the 5p?" after you've got all their change in your hand and have shut the till. or the men who think they're funny when they keep going "boop!" after you've scanned an item and it makes the little noise it makes.


bob finally came in at around 4.30pm and he kindly took me off the till...i could have kissed him there and then.
it was just as well really because just before he took me off i had two idiots/freaks in a row to serve.

the first one was a girl who looked about 13 and she asked for "ten maaayfaiiir superkings, please."
i'm not sure if i managed to describe her tone by prolonging the mayfair...but christ, she was common.
anyway, i asked her for ID. i love IDing people. it's one of the perks of the job.
especially when the customer causes a scene.

me - "have you got some ID?"
her - "no! i'm 18!"
me - "okay, but i need some ID."
her - "BUT I'M 18! ASK MY MATE!"

her "mate" was a gangly lad who looked even younger than her...he didn't even look like he was listening.

me - "well, i need some ID or i can't serve you."
her- "oh mate! what the hell is this? i'm 18 innit! I COME IN HERE ALL THE TIME!"
me - "well, i still need some ID."

if you can imagin the most bored, apathetic tone in the world...then that was the tone i was using in the whole of that conversation. she could have been 38 for all i cared. i wasn't serving her.

the thing is, when i'm on the till, i have this strange habit of having songs stuck in my head. i think it's a defence mechanism to help me cope. all day monday it was "empire" by kasabian. that was highly amusing when i'm dealing with irate customers.
but yesterday it was "somewhere beyond the sea."
so, imagin this...there is this pre-teen girl dressed up like she's going up west and argueing with me because i want serve her cigarettes...and all the time i have "somewheeeere, beyond the sea, somewheeere waiting for me..." playing around in a loop in my head.

okay, so to you maybe it's not that funny...but to me it was HILARIOUS. also, the girl threatened to come and "sort me out." i just laughed and thought "that's going in my blog no question."

anyway, the person straight after her was harmless but a total fruit loop.
she kept talking to me and telling me how all of the items in her basket were going to belgium.
so then she proceeded to name the products i was picking up like i was from belgium myself and had no clue what they were.

"oh, thats a lemon!"
"ooh, a lump of cheese."
"now thats a bottle of wine."
"prawn cocktail crisps, they are!"

i kept laughing away...geniune laughing. bad move because it just encouraged her to continue doing it not realising i wasn't laughing with her...i was laughing about how much i was going to enjoy explaining all this in my blog.

anyway, off the till i came at half past four...and after that i have literally nothing to say about the shift.
i actually had a really productive evening. it was so easy and stress free that i felt like i just wondered around doing nothing.
got reductions done with ease, then spent half an hour sprawled out on the warehouse floor blitzing the waste,i got fresh backstock done, i worked the produce and even managed to fit in my half an hour break.

honestly, i had to keep pinching myself everytime i was on the shop floor.
what? no customers taking up my time wanting to know where the cucumbers were?
no-one complaing to me that i've overcharged them?
no drunken idiots bashing into me and clattering into the beers and wine section?

what the hell was going on?

so, i went home at 9pm thoroughly pleased with myself and looking forward to my day off.
and then it all begins again sunday morning...

until then....xx