green apron freebie emporium, pit stop and faxing service

[chainedbarista]

just when i thought i'd seen the limits of people's shamelessness when asking for services, a new low is reached.

a couple comes in, asking my boss if we have a fax (they make no purchases at all) and if they can use it, giving them some story about needing to send some paperwork to their insurance company.

i'm thinking, "wtf? this isn't kinko's or the postal annex, jackass..."

but, with our wonderful policy, and our boss being a nice guy, he offers them the use of our fax machine. i get the feeling this isn't a one time deal...

two days later, i'm proven right; the husbad calls, tells me who he is, and that he needs us to receive a fax for him. he then asks if this is ok and he's willing to give us a couple of bucks, what is our fax number, and my name. again, i'm thinking the same thing, "wtf...blah blah."

cursing him under my breath, i get the number, tell him what it is, give him my name (at this point, i'm DARING this asshat to call corporate with a complaint to see where use of company property for their personal convienience falls within their policy...), then hang up.

my boss comes in and i relate this information; he's irritated with this couple for their ballsiness at thinking we're here to provide secretarial services, offer to pay not withstanding.

they come in, all happy, thinking they just dumped their headache on us, when my boss informs them (politely, which is more than what i'd have done, considering they were expecting us to perform something that falls WAY outside our services) that we cannot allow them to use us as a receiving sending site.

they're not happy, but they leave; i'm annoyed at their gall for even asking in the first place, and my boss is annoyed for even agreeing to help them.

my bet is that a complaint will be sent to corporate against both of us.

[BaristaTrav]

hah.. your boss is more acommodating than mine. No chance he'd let a customer use the fax, unless they were maybe a personal friend of the boss himself. Then again, I live in a place where freeloading is an art form, so it goes without saying doing that here would inevitably end up with the situation you just described.

[GolfCart34]

Our bank offers a faxing service for the low low price of $5 a page. And that's the price for customers. We don't fax things for non-customers.

Needless to say, not many people take us up on that service.

The only exception to this is if a customer is working on a loan with the bank or something and needs something faxed to the loan department. Usually the CSR working on the loan will fax the docs for the customer so we never have to deal with it.

[Becks]

just when i thought i'd seen the limits of people's shamelessness when asking for services, a new low is reached.

What does it average now...once a week or so?

[Polenicus]

Wait, let me make sure I understand...

You are working at a COFFEE PLACE. A place which serves coffeenated beverages, both hot and cold, and occasional foodstuffs which go well with coffeenated beverages.

Where on earth would someone get the idea that this is a good place to send and receive faxes? Even I know better than that! If you're gainfully employed, Kinkos or similar copy place generally has a service for a nominal fee, and they'll ensure the confidentiality of your faxes. If you're not employed, most job centers I know of will happily do some limited sending and receiving of faxes for you, as long as it's employment related (Insurance would likely fall into that category).

But the local Timmies?

The sucky part is, your boss just MIGHT get into trouble... for letting them use the fax the first time. God knows there are probably liability issues with that... if it's not covered in the procedures, chances are someone has found a way to sue for it. :/

[justZu]

That sounds like something that happened at my old job. I used to work at a place that sold handmade crafts and we had a computer that we used to ring up purchases. This computer also had ALL of the business info on it, as well as a dial-up modem.
One day a lady calls and tells me that when she comes in to shop later that day, she needs to use our computer to check her flight information(she was visiting from out of town).
Um,...no. I'm sorry but it is not for public use. Hell, some of our employees were not even allowed to touch it.
She got very demanding and adamant, then became wheedling and whiny when I held my ground. Finally she got pissed off, announced she would not shop with us and hung up.
I was really hoping she would call to bitch at the owner about my refusal to help her. Owner lady was very paranoid about people touching the computer and she would have really gone off on the little entitlement princess.

[chainedbarista]

no, becky; i have an already abyssmally low expectation of humankind (due to the types that live in our area), but this was a bit much.

i realise company policy is supposed to make us more customer oriented, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. personally, i would have pointed this wretch to a kinkos and told him to have a nice day (in hell, mentally).

we've had people ask to use the phone, phone book (which gets stolen shortly after we get it in), bathrooms (which they do scary things in), personal things like cigarette liters, the microwave (which doesn't happen anymore no that we have our spiffy new oven) and other crap that i'd rather not recall.

we do get some normal people in, but not as often as i'd like, god help me.

i get the impression the insurance matter was of a personal nature, not business related, but still...

[Becks]

we do get some normal people in

Ew. Normal people. :shudders:

[mattm04]

we had a guy ask to use our in-store pharmacy's fax machine. we told them to consult the UPS store next door. They said they called them but were told their is a fee. They decided to try the Grocery store because they did not want to pay. The Pharmacist told them no.