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OH MY GOD ANOTHER WEEK LIKE THIS AND I'M NOT RENEWING MY CONTRACT!
I'm gonna put it here, but in all honesty, there is a mix of customer suck and work-suck here. I'm just so glad the week has ended for me now...I'm typing this as I eat dinner, but when I'm done, I'm getting washed and changed and then I'm going out! I NEED BOOZE
It has been a very miserable week for me at my new job at Orange Aprons. I'd actually started to really enjoy the job, but this past weekas has thrown at me some really shitty customers and plenty of colleague suck. The worst customer was actually from yesterday, because fuck chronology, I want exciting story-telling dammit
Some of the unpleasantness actually started last week. A summer finally came to Britain, and I got to learn firsthand what its like working in an airless giant tin can! Most of my walk to work is uphill, and couple that with the heat and my tendency to run a teeny bit late and power-walk to make sure I'm on time (because of this, I'm never late
), I would be sweating buckets, my shirt sticking to my back
There are fans in the store, but most are just blowing the hot air around, and unless you're directly underneath them, any benefit is completely lost. The only upside was when the doors would open and a light gust would float in.
I get one 15 minute tea-break, which was the only time I would get to drink any water. Since then I have been told that I can hide a bottle of water under the counter, but that was on Friday XD Back then I was getting mild heat stroke. I felt quite poorly and had a terrible headache that wouldn't go away.
The other problem that would become very much an issue this week started last week also. See, for my job at the Returns desk, if someone brings me a faulty item, most of the time, I have to phone the department it comes from for it to be inspected. Often times it can be fixed by the people who are more expert in those areas (especially when it comes to hardware or electronics etc), but basically its so they can confirm it needs writing off and tell me that I can refund it. Most of the time people are great are getting back to me, but a couple of times I have been left on a ringing phone for quite a while...
The Week From Hell
I spent the first part of the week mostly working checkouts, and it was hot and manic...but that was ok, because although I'm still new, checkouts are generally easier than Returns, not to mention most tills are the same, and I like to be kept busy. And I had water now
But the tills kept being a pain. The touch screen is so annoying, throwing me off all the time so I was having to keep correcting things (also, terrible glare on our screens!). The scanner played up and scanned something 6 times but only beeped once. The printer kept jamming. Lots of stupid annoying niggly things, but add mayhem, heat and SCs, well...thats not a party people want to go to!
Some of the incidents that stand out to my mind from Checkouts:
The Tantrum
I think this was the last customer I had on that day. A lady carrying a small boy of about 2 or 3, and her mother, came to my till to buy some stuff. Uh huh, normaly. When it comes to pay, the mother puts her credit card in her son's hand, who then puts it into the Chip and Pin Reader. Hmm, not something I'd advise, but not out of the ordinary. But then the unthinkable happened.
The card got declined.
So Mother takes her card out to replace it with another...to which Sprog's face crumpled up into something demonic and unloveable and let out the most horrendous ear-splitting screech. She put him down, where he continued to scream and now started to kick and stamp his feet and bang his hands on the side of my counter.
To which Mother only whispers "Sssh sssh, don't do that dear," and try and soothe him totally ineffectively.
She produces another card, which looks almost identical to the first, and gives it to her hellspawn, and he takes it. She tells him to put it in the reader. He continues to bawl until I try stepping in, and I say to him "Hey, its your special job to put the card in, can you do that for me?"
He stopped crying long enough to listen to me, his face even calmed- momentarily. Then just gave out an awful banshee shriek. Mother puts the card in the reader herself, and he rips it out and throws it on the floor.
The transaction was resolved in the end, but all the while neither adult attempted anything effective to calm the child, let alone contemplate some form of discipline. Such a disgrace.
Wherein Rabbit Accidentally Makes A Lairy Remark About A Manager
Oh god.
Ladies at my till, wanting to buy some tile art, insisted it was on offer. Nothing was coming up on my till. I can't leave a post (especially with this long a queue) to look for the price, so I phone the Decor Department.
Who later transpires to be the Decor Manager answers, only his line is ludicrously quiet, and the store is busy and noisy. I explain what I need, but when he speaks back I can't make out a single word. I have to ask him multiple times to speak up, and he becomes increasingly more frustrated and kinda mean.
Then he said something that sounded like "Hold it up so I can see." Which I did. I looked this way and that, but could not see a fellow Orange Apron about. To which I said into the phone "Can you see me?"
To which the reply was a rather rudely said; "WHAT!? NO!"
A few moments later and some more snarky tones from his end, I see him pop up, he can see the tile art in my hand. One of the ladies went with him and I turned to the other, phone still to my ear "I don't know why he was getting funny with me!"
To which I can just about hear "No I'm not."
And after all that? They weren't on offer, the price had been permanently changed and had come up correct. To which the lady was happy. Ignorance truly is bliss I suppose.
Girls Can't Count
I was counting the money a customer gave me, a man of over 60. It was multiple silvers, and I was counting them, when he says something to me. I reply to what he said, but lost count, and said "Sorry, I lost count, I'm starting again."
Not a big deal. It was one £1 of 5ps 10ps and 20ps. I started ringing up when he said "Girls your age can't count without calculators these days anyway."
To which I replied; "I can count but when you and I talked, I lost count, I can't talk and count at the same time." That was very quickly revised from what I WAS going to say: "When you talked to me, you distracted me, so I lost count". But I didn't think it would go down well. I wish I hadn't bothered.
"Nah, you young girls can't count, you have to use calculators, or these tills do it for you."
I certainly wasn't going to admit that maths is not my strong point because in fact, that is irrelevant. So I just said "I can count money just fine. I just did."
"Yeah, but the till does all the work for you."
*twitch* "Thats just how the computers are nowadays. But I have been working with money for over 6 years and I certainly know how to count it, I can assure you."
"Sure you can."
Prick.
And now to the issue with Returns
This has actually been worse, despite the fact most of my customers have been nicer this week. But as I said before, I am new, and I'm still learning, and its just not fair what keeps happening to me. Most of my co-workers are great, and when they ARE there, they are brill...but I feel like I'm being put into very difficult positions because of a lot of them.
On one hand, its nice to know that I'm considered reliable enough to run the Returns desk by myself despite being so new. But it does need to be remembered that my training is incomplete and I am NEW. And whats more, while its one thing to leave me alone because there are no other members of staff about, one is on a break, or heck, has something to do that requires they leave me alone thats fine.
One of my colleagues rarely leaves me alone, and if he does, he makes a point of checking back regularly. He's a star and I have no complaints about him. But the other...well shes' very nice and has been very helpful, but has now gotten into the habit of disappearing completely on me. The other day, I was alone for well over an hour, and then it transpired she was leaving. An hour later, a supervisor asked me if I had had my break...I hadn't, but that coworker was supposed to relieve me during that hour before she left. It meant I had a very late break that day.
The worst thing is the phones. A few weeks ago, a long wait was rare-ish...now they are the norm. In most cases over the last few days NO ONE PICKS UP AT ALL. And then I have to try to explain to the customers why they are waiting.
This has lead to some very awkward situations for me, such as these 2 stories:
1- Sneaky Nurse
A nurse came in wanting to get a refund on a door handle. One she was keeping because she was going to match it to new ones. One was the wrong type completely. She had bought a bunch at the same time, but the barcodes did not match up between the returning item and the reciept.
Now, this was very believable and possibly even true- both types of door handles looked identical at a glance, but were in fact different. She said when she bought them, the cashier just scanned one 6 times. It happens a lot. But of course, she'd be getting a £13 refund on a £7 door handle. I believed her, but wanted to confirm with someone first. So I picked up the phone.
It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang some more.
I'm not talking like 30 second waits. I'd be on the line for minutes at a time. I tried more than once.
In the end, fed up, I decided to make a call- I believed her, so I processed the refund.
A short while later, she came back to me to buy a new handle, which i thought was odd, because you'd have thought she'd have gone to the checkouts. The plains clothes security officer was following her. It transpired that she tried to steal the handle she was now buying, and had tried to slip through checkouts.
Which leaves me wondering if I was played
2- The Reasonable Complaint
I felt so bad about this one.
A man was returning a small strimmer. He demonstrated the fault for me. But as an electrical item, I still needed an expert to look at it. So I rang the department.
And it rang, and rang...oh you know.
In fact, the man actually went to the loo during this time. He came back and I apologised, and said I couldn't get anyone, but said I had decided I would just give him an exchange. Yeah. You might say I didn't learn my lesson, but what was I supposed to do? Nobody was coming. The fault was plain as day, he'd shown it to me. He said he'd go and look for the replacement, only to come back and say we were out of stock. I felt awful. I gave him a full refund.
He said very politely "I would like to know how to make a complaint. I'm not complaining about you, Rabbit. Its not your fault that nobody answers the phone or tries to help you when you're new [yeah I did mention that lol], and you can't leave your post. But its not right that I've had to go hunting for this item myself and have been kept waiting so long, and its not right that you haven't had the assistance you needed."
He was actually really nice about it. I gave him Head Office's number.
So we're having things like that happen. But then today, numbers were actually CHANGED without anyone telling me, so when I needed to get a supervisor to do some vital overrides for me, I was left panicking and wondering what to do. The phone kept ringing (again) and no help was coming. It happened twice. Both times, a long queue was starting and I was totally unable to do ANYTHING until the override was done. I almost started crying at one point (I left my Rescue Remedy in my locker, thinking anxiety is not a problem anymore >.< )
It was absolutely awful, and I swear to god, if this keeps up, if I don't quit altogether, I certainly won't be renewing my temp contract in 2 months time. On top of all this, because of a fuck up in HR I was emergency taxed £200 even though they HAD my correct tax code >.<
And now for the finale:
Showdown!
An old man comes to me at Returns wanting a refund. He tells me it was on his wife's card but she's not here, and he wants the refund done on his own card. To which I politely explain that it against the law and our policy to do so, that put a refund on a different credit card is fraud. He is argumentative from the start, but also claims confusion, so I try very hard to explain why this is the case. I give him a hypothetical scenario and try to explain that the policy and the law is in place to protect customers. He says it stupid and that its a joint account. I say that if he can prove that its a joint account, then it can be done, as a supervisor can override it, but only in that instance.
He claims he has proof, but he does not. The "proof" he has is just his own card, his photo OD (irrelevant, this is not America), and his word. Once again, I try to explain why we can't. He's all but calling me a liar and saying I'm just making it up.
So I get my colleague to back me up, and we both politely try to explain the policy. This man is so demanding and rude, and talking to us both like crap, but also stubbornly refusing to understand. We haven't even gotten as far as trying to offer other suggestions because he's calling us bloody minded liars, claiming he's "worked in the legal sector for years!" and that law has nothing to do with it >.< We tell him that it IS law, and that we are not prepared to make ourselves liable by complying with his demands to a refund on HIS card.
To which my colleague utters the magic words; "We can offer you a credit note".
Which SHOULD make him shut up. Instead he gets even shittier, to the chagrin of us, and the 3 customers queuing begin him...
He is calling us incompetent, saying that he would have accepted a credit note if we'd offered it in the first place, that WE dragged HIM through this rigmarole and that we were stupid, bloody minded liars etc etc blah blah, and how we have wasted his time-
"Why don't you just shut up! I've been listening to you harping at these 2 for 15 minutes, they are only trying to do their jobs!"
The slightly younger man behind the old fart has snapped! He basically tells the old man to sling his hook, that we ARE right, that is common knowledge what the law on credit card fraud is (THANK YOU!), and that we're only trying to do our jobs. To which the SC starts arguing with him instead! He says that we should have offered him a credit note sooner, and that by not doing so we were wasting everyone's time.
Awesome Guy: "No, YOU wasted everyone's time! And you're wasting MY time! They didn't even get the chance to offer you one, because you having a go at them and refusing to let them explain the policy!"
SC: I don't like your attitude!
AG: I don't like yours either mate!
And then...oh my god...they started squaring up!
The 2 other customers have faces torn between hilarity and horror, and I'm just so scared I'm going to laugh (SC has a walking stick and AG is younger and fitter XD), that I just look down at the counter.
My colleague started processing a credit note, and I started helping the couple...who burst into laughter the minute the old fart was gone. AG hung around for a bit, and even proclaimed what "great staff" Orange Aprons has to our supervisors.
I need a drink...or 12....
I'm gonna put it here, but in all honesty, there is a mix of customer suck and work-suck here. I'm just so glad the week has ended for me now...I'm typing this as I eat dinner, but when I'm done, I'm getting washed and changed and then I'm going out! I NEED BOOZE
It has been a very miserable week for me at my new job at Orange Aprons. I'd actually started to really enjoy the job, but this past weekas has thrown at me some really shitty customers and plenty of colleague suck. The worst customer was actually from yesterday, because fuck chronology, I want exciting story-telling dammit
Some of the unpleasantness actually started last week. A summer finally came to Britain, and I got to learn firsthand what its like working in an airless giant tin can! Most of my walk to work is uphill, and couple that with the heat and my tendency to run a teeny bit late and power-walk to make sure I'm on time (because of this, I'm never late
), I would be sweating buckets, my shirt sticking to my back There are fans in the store, but most are just blowing the hot air around, and unless you're directly underneath them, any benefit is completely lost. The only upside was when the doors would open and a light gust would float in.
I get one 15 minute tea-break, which was the only time I would get to drink any water. Since then I have been told that I can hide a bottle of water under the counter, but that was on Friday XD Back then I was getting mild heat stroke. I felt quite poorly and had a terrible headache that wouldn't go away.
The other problem that would become very much an issue this week started last week also. See, for my job at the Returns desk, if someone brings me a faulty item, most of the time, I have to phone the department it comes from for it to be inspected. Often times it can be fixed by the people who are more expert in those areas (especially when it comes to hardware or electronics etc), but basically its so they can confirm it needs writing off and tell me that I can refund it. Most of the time people are great are getting back to me, but a couple of times I have been left on a ringing phone for quite a while...
The Week From Hell
I spent the first part of the week mostly working checkouts, and it was hot and manic...but that was ok, because although I'm still new, checkouts are generally easier than Returns, not to mention most tills are the same, and I like to be kept busy. And I had water now
But the tills kept being a pain. The touch screen is so annoying, throwing me off all the time so I was having to keep correcting things (also, terrible glare on our screens!). The scanner played up and scanned something 6 times but only beeped once. The printer kept jamming. Lots of stupid annoying niggly things, but add mayhem, heat and SCs, well...thats not a party people want to go to!
Some of the incidents that stand out to my mind from Checkouts:
The Tantrum
I think this was the last customer I had on that day. A lady carrying a small boy of about 2 or 3, and her mother, came to my till to buy some stuff. Uh huh, normaly. When it comes to pay, the mother puts her credit card in her son's hand, who then puts it into the Chip and Pin Reader. Hmm, not something I'd advise, but not out of the ordinary. But then the unthinkable happened.
The card got declined.
So Mother takes her card out to replace it with another...to which Sprog's face crumpled up into something demonic and unloveable and let out the most horrendous ear-splitting screech. She put him down, where he continued to scream and now started to kick and stamp his feet and bang his hands on the side of my counter.
To which Mother only whispers "Sssh sssh, don't do that dear," and try and soothe him totally ineffectively.
She produces another card, which looks almost identical to the first, and gives it to her hellspawn, and he takes it. She tells him to put it in the reader. He continues to bawl until I try stepping in, and I say to him "Hey, its your special job to put the card in, can you do that for me?"
He stopped crying long enough to listen to me, his face even calmed- momentarily. Then just gave out an awful banshee shriek. Mother puts the card in the reader herself, and he rips it out and throws it on the floor.
The transaction was resolved in the end, but all the while neither adult attempted anything effective to calm the child, let alone contemplate some form of discipline. Such a disgrace.
Wherein Rabbit Accidentally Makes A Lairy Remark About A Manager
Oh god.
Ladies at my till, wanting to buy some tile art, insisted it was on offer. Nothing was coming up on my till. I can't leave a post (especially with this long a queue) to look for the price, so I phone the Decor Department.
Who later transpires to be the Decor Manager answers, only his line is ludicrously quiet, and the store is busy and noisy. I explain what I need, but when he speaks back I can't make out a single word. I have to ask him multiple times to speak up, and he becomes increasingly more frustrated and kinda mean.
Then he said something that sounded like "Hold it up so I can see." Which I did. I looked this way and that, but could not see a fellow Orange Apron about. To which I said into the phone "Can you see me?"
To which the reply was a rather rudely said; "WHAT!? NO!"
A few moments later and some more snarky tones from his end, I see him pop up, he can see the tile art in my hand. One of the ladies went with him and I turned to the other, phone still to my ear "I don't know why he was getting funny with me!"
To which I can just about hear "No I'm not."
And after all that? They weren't on offer, the price had been permanently changed and had come up correct. To which the lady was happy. Ignorance truly is bliss I suppose.
Girls Can't Count
I was counting the money a customer gave me, a man of over 60. It was multiple silvers, and I was counting them, when he says something to me. I reply to what he said, but lost count, and said "Sorry, I lost count, I'm starting again."
Not a big deal. It was one £1 of 5ps 10ps and 20ps. I started ringing up when he said "Girls your age can't count without calculators these days anyway."
To which I replied; "I can count but when you and I talked, I lost count, I can't talk and count at the same time." That was very quickly revised from what I WAS going to say: "When you talked to me, you distracted me, so I lost count". But I didn't think it would go down well. I wish I hadn't bothered.
"Nah, you young girls can't count, you have to use calculators, or these tills do it for you."
I certainly wasn't going to admit that maths is not my strong point because in fact, that is irrelevant. So I just said "I can count money just fine. I just did."
"Yeah, but the till does all the work for you."
*twitch* "Thats just how the computers are nowadays. But I have been working with money for over 6 years and I certainly know how to count it, I can assure you."
"Sure you can."
Prick.
And now to the issue with Returns
This has actually been worse, despite the fact most of my customers have been nicer this week. But as I said before, I am new, and I'm still learning, and its just not fair what keeps happening to me. Most of my co-workers are great, and when they ARE there, they are brill...but I feel like I'm being put into very difficult positions because of a lot of them.
On one hand, its nice to know that I'm considered reliable enough to run the Returns desk by myself despite being so new. But it does need to be remembered that my training is incomplete and I am NEW. And whats more, while its one thing to leave me alone because there are no other members of staff about, one is on a break, or heck, has something to do that requires they leave me alone thats fine.
One of my colleagues rarely leaves me alone, and if he does, he makes a point of checking back regularly. He's a star and I have no complaints about him. But the other...well shes' very nice and has been very helpful, but has now gotten into the habit of disappearing completely on me. The other day, I was alone for well over an hour, and then it transpired she was leaving. An hour later, a supervisor asked me if I had had my break...I hadn't, but that coworker was supposed to relieve me during that hour before she left. It meant I had a very late break that day.
The worst thing is the phones. A few weeks ago, a long wait was rare-ish...now they are the norm. In most cases over the last few days NO ONE PICKS UP AT ALL. And then I have to try to explain to the customers why they are waiting.
This has lead to some very awkward situations for me, such as these 2 stories:
1- Sneaky Nurse
A nurse came in wanting to get a refund on a door handle. One she was keeping because she was going to match it to new ones. One was the wrong type completely. She had bought a bunch at the same time, but the barcodes did not match up between the returning item and the reciept.
Now, this was very believable and possibly even true- both types of door handles looked identical at a glance, but were in fact different. She said when she bought them, the cashier just scanned one 6 times. It happens a lot. But of course, she'd be getting a £13 refund on a £7 door handle. I believed her, but wanted to confirm with someone first. So I picked up the phone.
It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang some more.
I'm not talking like 30 second waits. I'd be on the line for minutes at a time. I tried more than once.
In the end, fed up, I decided to make a call- I believed her, so I processed the refund.
A short while later, she came back to me to buy a new handle, which i thought was odd, because you'd have thought she'd have gone to the checkouts. The plains clothes security officer was following her. It transpired that she tried to steal the handle she was now buying, and had tried to slip through checkouts.
Which leaves me wondering if I was played
2- The Reasonable Complaint
I felt so bad about this one.
A man was returning a small strimmer. He demonstrated the fault for me. But as an electrical item, I still needed an expert to look at it. So I rang the department.
And it rang, and rang...oh you know.
In fact, the man actually went to the loo during this time. He came back and I apologised, and said I couldn't get anyone, but said I had decided I would just give him an exchange. Yeah. You might say I didn't learn my lesson, but what was I supposed to do? Nobody was coming. The fault was plain as day, he'd shown it to me. He said he'd go and look for the replacement, only to come back and say we were out of stock. I felt awful. I gave him a full refund.
He said very politely "I would like to know how to make a complaint. I'm not complaining about you, Rabbit. Its not your fault that nobody answers the phone or tries to help you when you're new [yeah I did mention that lol], and you can't leave your post. But its not right that I've had to go hunting for this item myself and have been kept waiting so long, and its not right that you haven't had the assistance you needed."
He was actually really nice about it. I gave him Head Office's number.
So we're having things like that happen. But then today, numbers were actually CHANGED without anyone telling me, so when I needed to get a supervisor to do some vital overrides for me, I was left panicking and wondering what to do. The phone kept ringing (again) and no help was coming. It happened twice. Both times, a long queue was starting and I was totally unable to do ANYTHING until the override was done. I almost started crying at one point (I left my Rescue Remedy in my locker, thinking anxiety is not a problem anymore >.< )
It was absolutely awful, and I swear to god, if this keeps up, if I don't quit altogether, I certainly won't be renewing my temp contract in 2 months time. On top of all this, because of a fuck up in HR I was emergency taxed £200 even though they HAD my correct tax code >.<
And now for the finale:
Showdown!
An old man comes to me at Returns wanting a refund. He tells me it was on his wife's card but she's not here, and he wants the refund done on his own card. To which I politely explain that it against the law and our policy to do so, that put a refund on a different credit card is fraud. He is argumentative from the start, but also claims confusion, so I try very hard to explain why this is the case. I give him a hypothetical scenario and try to explain that the policy and the law is in place to protect customers. He says it stupid and that its a joint account. I say that if he can prove that its a joint account, then it can be done, as a supervisor can override it, but only in that instance.
He claims he has proof, but he does not. The "proof" he has is just his own card, his photo OD (irrelevant, this is not America), and his word. Once again, I try to explain why we can't. He's all but calling me a liar and saying I'm just making it up.
So I get my colleague to back me up, and we both politely try to explain the policy. This man is so demanding and rude, and talking to us both like crap, but also stubbornly refusing to understand. We haven't even gotten as far as trying to offer other suggestions because he's calling us bloody minded liars, claiming he's "worked in the legal sector for years!" and that law has nothing to do with it >.< We tell him that it IS law, and that we are not prepared to make ourselves liable by complying with his demands to a refund on HIS card.
To which my colleague utters the magic words; "We can offer you a credit note".
Which SHOULD make him shut up. Instead he gets even shittier, to the chagrin of us, and the 3 customers queuing begin him...
He is calling us incompetent, saying that he would have accepted a credit note if we'd offered it in the first place, that WE dragged HIM through this rigmarole and that we were stupid, bloody minded liars etc etc blah blah, and how we have wasted his time-
"Why don't you just shut up! I've been listening to you harping at these 2 for 15 minutes, they are only trying to do their jobs!"
The slightly younger man behind the old fart has snapped!
He basically tells the old man to sling his hook, that we ARE right, that is common knowledge what the law on credit card fraud is (THANK YOU!), and that we're only trying to do our jobs. To which the SC starts arguing with him instead! He says that we should have offered him a credit note sooner, and that by not doing so we were wasting everyone's time. Awesome Guy: "No, YOU wasted everyone's time! And you're wasting MY time! They didn't even get the chance to offer you one, because you having a go at them and refusing to let them explain the policy!"
SC: I don't like your attitude!
AG: I don't like yours either mate!
And then...oh my god...they started squaring up!
The 2 other customers have faces torn between hilarity and horror, and I'm just so scared I'm going to laugh (SC has a walking stick and AG is younger and fitter XD), that I just look down at the counter. My colleague started processing a credit note, and I started helping the couple...who burst into laughter the minute the old fart was gone. AG hung around for a bit, and even proclaimed what "great staff" Orange Aprons has to our supervisors.
I need a drink...or 12....
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