More Tales of Pathetica

[AmandaLaederich]

*leaps for the pun* Because he could have croaked from it!

Now you've done it

[Zoom]

I'm going on three week's vacation, so I won't have any new stories for a while, which means several things:

1. I might actually have time to compose the "Worst Bagger Ever" novel article.

2. As the "Drawer Probation" is allegedly time-based, it should have ended by the time I get back. (Something tells me this will not be the case.)

3. Should this thread autolock, I'll start a new one. Would you prefer it be called "Even More Tales of Pathetica", "Still More Tales of Pathetica" or "Ma and Pa Thetica Back on the Farm"?

4. Fewer David Bowie song parodies.

Resolve All Cliffhangers Now!

A few dangling subplots I haven't touched on in a long while.

•The paved hole near the store was filled up not long after I last posted about it in Thread 1. In fact, I tried to come up with something interesting to write about it, but ennui set in and it caused me to not come back here for two years. I've decided to never post about holes in concrete again. Except for this time, of course.

•The "charity" cups have reappeared in front of the registers last week, and again we were told to ask for donations to the "Hunger Drive". I'm not saying they were fraudulent, but at the Desk the sign says the money goes to one place, and on the cups it mentions a different couple of charitable organizations. Furthermore, one of them is tied to a specific religion, which, not being mine, I have moral qualms about getting donations for. Which means under NO circumstances will I ask. However, I am glad to take the contributions and have no malice towards those predisposed to give.

This time, there have been no threats to write anyone up for not asking. (Probably start on that while I'm on vacation.)

•The "plus-selling" (like they used to say in White Hen Pantry) the "special of the day" (like they used to say in soup kitchens) has returned this week. We were PROMISED to never have to ask people about it, but now they are getting around this by not calling it by the name they used ("Extreme Value Buy"). And we had a shit-load of salad dressing bottles for 88¢. I asked nobody about them either.

After my three weeks off, it'll be too late to complain about them not keeping their promises. But I will.

•I was never on this site long enough to explain the seasonality of how bad it gets at work. The last couple months have been a tremendous amount of pressure on me, and this always comes right before my big fall vacation. Since it has (probably) started, I can relax now, and the stories from when I get back will be less intense.

Just so you know-- it's like this EVERY year.

And this week, nothing of any importance happened to me or my store; the general level of backbreaking labor just increased, and all kinds of extra things were required of me, but nothing out-of-the-ordinary sucky like this site expects.

Well, a couple of new baggers are acting like trolls and bringing down the general level of intelligence of the place, but I'm going to observe them some more in their native habitat before describing their manner of beast.

One More For The Road

The scammer from "Never Look A Gift Card In The Wallet" was back!

Once again, she tried to buy a gift card and pay with a credit card which I suspected wasn't hers. This time it was for $400.

Didn't go through, as expected. Then I had to remember what I did to void out the card, bereft of being able to load this very webpage to find out.

"OK, try again, but just $200."

We got to the override part, and NMD was back. She had no recollection of the woman or this routine.

After the $200 attempt didn't go through and the scammer left, she then asked me, "Why didn't you ask her for her ID?"

I told her that I knew it wasn't going to go through. This was, of course, a lie, but it was better than saying "I was hoping YOU would recognize the woman from last time and kick her out or call the cops on her."

And there was no way in hell I was going to bring that sort of thing up while the scammer was standing right there listening!

If employees can't be empowered to deal with suckiness, we must rely upon those who are, but who get more spineless as they get higher up.

[Zoom]

Giddy Up!

Back at work yesterday. I was taken OFF my own drawer, which means I'm FREE!!! [/MrHumphries]

I was so elated, nothing else that happened seemed bad. I hope it doesn't come back to bite me in the end.

You know when bad things are happening to you, that time dilates and sometimes you hallucinate? Same thing when it's all good, but from the other side.

The Glitch Is Back

Today, however, was back to abnormalcy.

7am start, with the drawers not out yet, which is unusual if it were any other store. But here, in our early morning serenity, the "trickle" in trickle down economics applies to the volume of customer.

Except... (insert ominous clouds into anecdote... let the hallucination begin!)

I was cleaning registers and hanging around SCO while my co-worker was off doing something else (they always task him with doing things I never hear about). An occasional customer would go right past my register (R1) and into SCO.

Interestingly, one or two SCO reg's were not working, but I put it down to being early. Maybe a firmware update was taking a long time.

Suddenly, Mrs. Desk asked me from thirty feet away, "Zoom, would you ring up something? I'm trying to find out if R1 is working."

Um, OK, bang goes a pack of gum. BEEP! "It rang up all right."

"Try again."

BEEP. BEEP. "It's fine."

"OK, thanks."

Meanwhile, the customer on one of the smaller SCO terminals (R94) finished her order, and I noticed she had somehow bagged her bananas even though they had not rung up. This wasn't so bad, and I don't care if she was genuinely trying to get away with stealing them or just didn't realize they hadn't rung up. I asked to see her receipt and told her she needed to ring them up.

Then CW got back, my signal to reopen on R1. However, he walked away for a second, and the next customer (on R93 this time, one of the bigger ones) was motioning me over.

"What's up?"

"I rang this up-- and--" She motioned to the screen which said it was resetting.

"What the-? Well, this happens sometimes. You can ring it up over here on 94."

CW came back and explained that "they've been going up and down a lot this morning." Already? The store's only been open 90 minutes!

The Last Major Lull of the Day

Nothing to do, so as we just leaned back for a minute, I mentioned to CW, "If your reg's are going to go down this much, I'm gonna be real busy." He grunted.

By then 91, 93, 94 and 95 all were down.

Our major lottery customer came in inquiring what the problem was, but as the machine was still working, and he wasn't buying anything, he and CW still got the chance to chew each other's ears off.

Our complainy-mouthed grumbler (whom I'm about to nickname Gramma Grumble, or Dear Crabby or something like that) was caught in the ONLY SCO. Because she absolutely HATES me and refuses to go in my line (nobody in my line either). But she needed CW to stop talking to Mr. Lottery and press the approval button. Too bad!

No Sale!

Then all Gehenna broke loose.

All five SCOs were down. After two more orders, R1 bit the dust as well with an amusing Windows XP "This application needs to close" window which we couldn't click on because, um, they didn't provide our registers with mouse devices.

So I:
1. Had to reset the register, which can only be done by:
A. Going to the other side of the register.
B. Pulling loose and then off a side panel, revealing filthy computer components. (For those of you who have ever seen a habitual smoker's computer, this is much, much worse.)
C. Pressing and holding the OFF button and waiting for it to shut down.

I thought I had pressed it long enough, but what happened instead of a quick shutdown was a "This window is trying to shut down..." window, which I also couldn't click on. So, repeat step C.

D. Then, press it AGAIN to turn it back on.

Meanwhile, however, I had to go to R2 and try that out.

2. Sign onto the next register and-- Oh, I couldn't do that either, it still had me as signed onto R1 even though it was OFF. Which precipitated calling for another checker# and password.
3. ???
4. Profit! (I guess #3 was "Ring up groceries".)

Now, since R2 was no problem, and R1 had reset, I made the mistake of signing off and going back on R1 (and I'm glad for this level of freedom again-- if I was still on drawer probation they would have made me do bagging or something!), and sure enough, within another fifteen minutes the exact same crash happened.

Well. back to R2 again.

Now it was starting to get crowded. Mrs. Desk came out-- I noticed she was wearing a neck brace, wonder why? Maybe she had to go to court that afternoon and bear false witness against her neighbors or something.

She made CW help a couple of SCs that were complaining about the SCO not working properly (still intermittent at the time). The only recourse was to re-ring the orders on R1. I kept telling him, "It's going to go down on you, ANY MINUTE now! *big grin*"

*Um, I don't know why this footnote is here.

Anyway, he got some SC's complaints resolved, and I think it went down while he was on the last one. I was so busy that I couldn't pay attention to how badly things were going for him. (Too bad.)

After that D. arrived. She went back and forth between bagging for me, and working R3, which had no problem. But after that, I stayed on R2 while everyone else went on and off R3 or R4 as willy-nilly dictates.

Then it got worse. SCOs stopped working entirely. R2 went down, and I was forced to go back to R1, which somehow didn't go down. I had a very long line of angry customers. Me, D, Kim and Mrs. Desk were all checking as much and as fast as we could until I got off work.

Match Results

Apparently there was some sort of bad firmware update, but there seemed to be no way to correct it. ALL of the Pathetica stores were affected.

When R2 went down and I was forced to relocate to R1, Mrs. Desk told me that a workaround was to not scan the Patheticard until the end of the order. Nice! Because that was the last thing I just scanned on the very order in which R2 went down.

Bad Coding: 3
Executive Mismanagement: 5
Checkers: 0
Computers Without Mouse Devices: Disqualified. Someone dropped a rosin bag in all that filth.*

*Baseball reference, sorry.

Don't Press My Buttons!

Once again they had us going so fast, that my new vest got caught on the bag holder handle, and it tore my button off. That's the second button in... well, it was six or seven weeks, but seriously! They shouldn't have given us a Highlander vest! (i.e. There can be only one).

The vest is so accident-prone, that by the end of 2012 the Mayan prophecy will be fulfilled on its ass.

Enjoi You're Cayke

Once again ruthless spelling gremlins have gotten into the cake batter. Apparently it's spelled Haloween now.

This, of course, still doesn't rank up there with when they wished customers a Happy Birxday.

The misspellings will continue until more ale improves.

[mharbourgirl]

Besides the usual items, I saw...

...a bunch of Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Were they left over from Easter? (Blecch.) Or are they out early for Halloween?

They weren't orange and black, so I dubbed them Labor Day Eggs and moved on.

Nah, those are the 'new' Hallowe'en eggs. Screme Eggs, they're called, 'cause the white goop is green. They've even got a series of TV commercials along the lines of stop-action zombie eggs hunting down and gooshing the regular eggs, which I think is hilarious, but I'm watching way too much TV right now while I'm job-hunting.