leave.

[Ljt09863]

a couple minor annoyances. nothing major, but it annoyed me anyways.

i know you want to leave,but...

so last night, five minutes to close, a customer comes in. we had two other customers in the store as well. my manager has me go see if they need any help, so we can get them out. at 5, i make the closing page. the couple comes to check out immediately. the other lady....well, she doesn't.

first she wants a facial cream with Alpha Hydroxy. so i grab the one i know has it in it, and she takes it. i think its all good...until she walks down the hair color aisle. im getting irritated at this point. my manager is at the end of the aisle, so i go to him to ask him for his keys.

Me- hey, manager can i have your ke-
SC- I know you are closing, but im looking for a hair color that is close to my hair color that covers grays.

she grabs a box and says its the one she used before, and asks if it covers gray. i look at the box, and see big words that says, 100% GRAY COVERAGE. i say yes. she keeps rambling on, and grabs another random box, and asks if it covers gray. without even looking, i just say yes, and walk away.

i go back up front, and make another page, "Attention customers, the time is now 5:05 and we closed FIVE minutes go. PLEASE bring your purchases to the fornt so we can check you out. again we closed FIVE minutes go. PLEASE come to the front register!" any work capitalized, i put extra emphasis(sp?) on.

so at 5:10, we finally get her to the registers. but instead of checking out, she starts browsing the magazines. enter Coworker S.

Me-so, S, what are you going to do WHEN you get home?
S-Watch the Grammys. what are you going to do WHEN you get home?
Me- play with my SON. he is going to be one soon. i love going HOME to him.
S- too bad we don't know WHEN we are going HOME.

SC was within hearing range. she didn't get the hint. i got fed up, and walked up to her.
Me-Ma'am, we closed TEN minutes ago. i have to ask you to check out now.
SC- ok. im going.

then she wrote a freaking check.....

what really annoyed me aboutr this, is my manager knew she wouldn't leave, and wouldn't say anything. my store manager, and the other manager is upset about this. they both feel that he should have said soemthing, not me. they aren't mad at me for saying it, but when it comes down to it, i did the managers job, when he was prerfectly able to do it. he just wouldn't.... they are happy i told her to leave though!

i don't want to use a cart...

again, she wasn't horrible, just annoying. a lady came in today, and grab a few items. she wanted to do more shopping, but couldn't fit more in her arms. so instead of grabbing a hand basket, or a shopping cart like a normal person, she sets it all on my counter. my extremely small counter....pretty much, when somebody else tried checking out, i had to keep shoving her stuff back since it kept falling down.

i kept getting annoyed, cause she would get more and more, so finally, i went and grabbed a hand basket, and threw all her stuff in it, hoping she will get the hint. she did....just not the way i wanted her to. when she saw what i did, she said," i can't carry all that around, its way too much."

so after she went to grab more stuff, i went and grabbed a cart. and put all her stuff in there, again, hoping she will get the hint. she did! she finally took the cart and walked away to get more stuff.

she came back over to check out, but after i rang everything out, she decided she wanted more.....so she had to go get more stuff. now, i am not able to suspend orders. our registers just aren't able to do that.... so i just kept hoping nobody came over. i got lucky....

but she was kinda...different. she was saying how she took all these meds, and some were "the kind that man from brokeback mountain who died took"(yes, thats what she said), so she is really watching it, and she takes the tylenol arthritis and it really helps, and she sometimes take the tylenol p.m., but not always, because she "seals her eyes shut with the eye patches".

she kept tryng to tell me all these stories, when i really didn't have time,since we are prepping for our DM coming tomorrow, and i got saved when another customer came over to ask a question.

again, not too sucky, just annoying and kinda weird.

[Listerfiend]

Your second story reminded me of this one...

I was in a frenzy dealing with a call, a line, and a customer with a huge, complicated, confusing order. He was doing an exchange or something--all I remember is that there were tons of frames of his strewn around in addition to a bunch of floral returns that had yet to be put away, on top of some paperwork I was dealing with. Needless to say all of the available counter space was packed and I was incredibly busy taking care of this customer. This other customer came up to my counter and basically shoved her way in front of the other customers and declared that she was going to set her items down because she was tired of carrying them. I quickly told her where the baskets and carts were, assuming she'd get the hint. Evidently she didn't like my tone (I'm sorry that I was really busy and upset by her entitlement issues), because she glared at me and simply said, "I'll just set these right here" and put them on top of the returns I was working through. The guy I was helping had the "wtf" look on his face and his jaw dropped a little. I excused myself for a second to put her items on the other counter to get them out of the way.

Long story short, one of the floor associates came up to get returns and assumed her items were also returns. Customer was gone a total of about five minutes and of course freaked all the hell out, but it was sooooo worth it. Best mistake ever.

[bainsidhe]

Regarding the closing page, I'm not sure if you work off of a script, but our store used to say "The time is now 5:05 and our store is closed. Please bring your final purchases to the cashier at this time as the final registers are closing". Didn't work 100% of the time because you would always have those hangers-on that KNEW you wouldn't throw them out. But usually saying the final registers were closing would result in a mad rush, as if we hadn't been paging we were closing all along.

[Ljt09863]

after reading over my post, i realized that after ten minutes, it may seem like its not such a big deal, since others have had customers who wouldn't leave for 30 minutes, and longer,after closing.

the reason it was a big deal that day, was because it is our short day, and on our short day, we close at five, and we have to leave at 5:30. normally, we have one hour after closing to get everything done. on this day, only 30 minutes. and we need every minute. so her doing this, left us with only 15 minutes(her checking out and writing her check took about 5 extra minutes, so she was there 15 minutes after close). so we had to scramble to get everything done.

[marasbaras]

Wow, stores are nice. If I ran a store, I'd have a nice rule: not checked out or at least in line by closing time, we're not going to ring you up. We're CLOSED.

[Cyphr]

my favorite get people out had to be a store a friend worked at. apparently 5 minutes after closing they would kill lights and play really loud rap. considering it was mostly senile seniors that got them out real quuick. One had the gall to complain about the music my friend calmly replied "Ma'am the store is now closed so if you plan to be in here any longer you will need to deal with our night shifts choice of music." She got flustered and left without buying anything

[Finduilas]

At the library I work at, we close at closing time (8:30 weekdays, 5 weekends). Ten or so minutes before closing, we go around and tell the patrons that we're closing in five minutes.

On Wednesdays, the chess club plays from 7-8:30 and often gives us trouble getting out on time. Often, we give them extra reminders of closing time, but they usually wait until after we start flicking the lights on and off to leave.

I love my boss's attitude about it, though. She has us shut the computers off exactly at closing, and if chess club people or other stragglers have books they want to check out, we can offer to hold them for them for tomorrow.

[CiggyStoreClerk]

Ugh, the worst is the late customers.

My boss told me that I'm allowed to close the store 10 minutes before we actually close. However, since I don't have to do inventory (this is very rare, and I'm extremely lucky) I usually end up shutting off the "Open" sign at 9:57 (we close at 10) at which point I put the money in the cash box and I sit and wait for my taxi.

A lot of the time, the taxi's late (I hate small town taxi "companies") and I'll be sitting there until 10:10. At 10:05 I'll get people wanting to buy cigarettes!

You'd think that the TWO open signs and ALL other outside lights being shut off would mean that we're CLOSED, and I don't want to hear about how badly you need to buy these cigarettes.