Can I use your phone?

[SpyOne]

Company Policy is that customers cannot use our phone. There are payphones right outside. We don't get a cut of their take: we provide them as a public service. We will make change.

I save myself a lot of whining and pleading by responding to requests to use the phone by saying, "Our phone doesn't call out." I can clarify that to, "Our phone can't make outgoing calls," if they insist. It's a lie, but it's what I call "the functional truth", which is; it's no different from the truth on your end: no you can't use the phone.

Saturday night, this lady comes in. I remember her from the previous Saturday, so I know exactly what she's going to say.
"I left my cell phone in my friend's car, can I use your phone?"
Well, that's original. Last week, you'd 'run out of minutes'. "I'm sorry, but our phone doesn't call out."
"Oh." And she walked over to the soda fountain with the cup she'd brought it.

I thought that went surprisingly well.
When she came up to the counter, she had a quart of chocolate milk and had filled the cup with ... well, it was clear, but it did appear to have bubbles in it. I decide to give her the benefit of the doubt (because I'm a nice guy, and she took the 'no' for the phone so well) and call it water, which is free
"That'll be $2.02" *Which is convenient,* I think, *because now you'll have change for the phone.*
She digs out a wad of bills, with at least ten ones and at least one twenty in there, counts out two one dollar bills and hands them to me, and then says, "Can I have two cents?" to .... well, me I guess, since nobody else was standing nearby.
"Um, .... I don't ..." I say, trying to keep the words "How much nerve have you GOT, lady!" out of my mouth. The milk is clearly priced, soda refils are $0.85 with tax, so you knew you'd be spending close to $3. I give you an inch and you ask for two cents more.
So she turns and asks a stranger if he can give her two cents. Then, realizing she's clearly holding a wad of ones, she adds, "I can't break this 'cause I need the bills ....."
God bless him, he's just as creeped out as I am and says no.
So she gives me a third one, and takes her $0.98 change (which, remember, is plenty for a phone call), then she goes outside.

She then asks a customer who was entering the store if she can use his phone. When he says no, she follows him back into the store to ask me if she can use my cell phone, because she, "left her phone in my friends car, and their number is in my phone, and I tried calling my phone but for some reason it's off." I told her I don't have a cell phone. My co-worker said her phone was dead and she didn't have her charger. So the lady went outside to annoy more customers.

I've thought about it quite a bit, and the only explanation I can come up with that fits all the facts is this: her drug dealer won't take calls from a payphone. And that's really not my problem.

[bendertiger]

The only time I've ever used a businesses phone was to call the police, other then that, I always find a payphone unless they offer. Then I give them the money it'd cost to make the call anyway.

[aurelemsrealm]

Don't some people just make you believe that Forrest Gump was right, "Stupid is as stupid does."? I swear I've met some so retarded that my IQ drops when they set foot on the premises.

My store has policies about usage of the company phone, too. However, no one follows these policies. The assistant manager and one of the other cashiers are two of the world's worst for personal calls while on the clock. I don't care, personally, but truth is truth. I'd rather not mess with the phone because we get plenty of idiots in person. I usually just hand it to them if I'm near it when it rings. Plus, we have several regular "customers" (moochers is a more appropriate term) who come in to hang out with the assistant manager when she works because she gives in to them. They come in when she works and always want to use the phone, bum money or cigarettes, or expect some other kind of hand out. She's more generous with them than I'd be. I do have to give her credit, though. When I first started working there, one of them tried to give me a hard time because I wouldn't let him buy beer because he'd left his ID at home. She told him that he could either apologize to me for being rude and disrespectful, or he would be banned until she decided he learned his lesson.

[mattm04]

Our policy is that the store phone can only be used by customers for emergencies only. Sadly some employees don;t know how to dial out. They could not grasp that you had to press 9 + the number to dial out. As for employee personal calls as long as they are not long or multiple times each day, the company doesn't care. One of our employees would have her son call her at work each day when he go home from school. The call wet along the lines of "hi mom i'm home" mom made sure he was safe and that was the end. No more than 30 seconds. We did have one employee get a suspension fir excessive personal calls. Twenty min on the phone each day w/ your BF didn't go ever very good with management.

[Lace Neil Singer]

At the garden centre, the phones could only be used by employees to call out; we all had knowledge of the special preliminary code that was dialed in before the number. Without the code, the phones were internal only. I lost count of all the customers who asked to use the phone, were refused then after the staff member walked away, were seen picking the receiver up and trying to use it anyway. I used to take 3 steps, then turn round and right on schedule is daft customer. XD Used to make me laugh when they'd throw down the receiver in frustrated anger cuz they found they couldn't make an external call.

[draggar]

I work in a wireless phone store. People are always in the store using our demo phones making personal calls (never buying anything). When people want to look at that phone, the people on it, obviously on a personal call for a very long time, get annoyed.

Gee, you're NOT a customer, you're NOT going to buy anything, why are you using up OUR phones? If you like our service that much, SIGN UP.

[Kyree]

I work in a wireless phone store. People are always in the store using our demo phones making personal calls (never buying anything).

With demo phones that actually call out...that's like a beacon for SC's

[Tigress]

One of my younger "friends" was sitting outside the bookstore, talking on her cell phone. Then a gaggle of "preppy" girls, whose parents could have easily afforded to give them their own phones, stopped and asked if they could use her cell phone. She looked them up and down and said, in her infinite maturity, "I don't lend my phone to preps." The girls walked away, with the youngest (10yo) talking trash about people were so selfish and "who does she think she is?!" I told her the better way to handle it was to point her in the direction of the nearest pay phone inside the mall.

The irony is that she's now in high school and has become a de facto "prep" herself. I find it pretty funny.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I worked both cell phone retail and title insurance, the phone was an eternal bane of my existance because my co-workers would make personal calls on the company phone all the time. Then when the manager said something, they'd merely whip out the cell phones and continue the conversation. Then they'd whine about how much work they still had to do at the end of the day.

Geez, priorities much? My relatives would love to talk to me, but they know that I am at work to, y'know, WORK. I'm being paid to do my job, not gab on the phone all day. If you want to be paid to do that, I hear that the local 900 "chat line" is hiring.

And we had "demo phones" at my cell phone store, but they didn't work. It's a good thing, too. They were stolen on a regular basis.

[Glutton4Punishment]

With demo phones that actually call out...that's like a beacon for SC's

My favorite was the 3 punks who decided to use my stores demo phone to make prank calls to their friends. :rant The look on their face was priceless as I walked up behind them and "politely" informed them to get the hell out.

[Kyree]

Yeah....I remember my friend worked at a store that had demo land-line phones. Some guy tried to steal one of the non-working phones...by stuffing it down the front of his pants. Because that didn't look unnatural or anything.

[EmiOfBrie]

There have been a few times where I've seen demo phones receiving incoming calls *heh*

One person actually thought I was lying when I answered the phone saying they had called a demo phone in a Sprint store. I had to call an employee over to talk to the idiot.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Most of the phones in my previous stores did call out, but a few didn't...oddly enough, the info desk in the children's department does not call out, which makes no sense to me, since most people looking for kids' books go specifically to the desk in that department (go figure) and if the employee doesn't have a portable on them for some reason and they need to call another store, they have to walk all the way out to the main info desk.

[mattm04]

Just this week they changed the phones so that you need to know a two digit code to get an outside line. Customers figured out the press 9+ number and started making personal calls fro the sales floor phones marked "employees only"

[draftermatt]

Just respond: "Sure you CAN, but you MAY not"

[greensinestro]

I used the phone in a place of business maybe once or twice. One time I recall was when I was at a used auto parts dealer, picking up something for my dad's pick up truck. I called him at home mainly to be sure the part I had was the correct one, and the owner of the place did not mind at all, as long as it was a local call. This was before anyone could afford a cellular phone though. Nowadays, the owner of the establishment might give you a strange look, but still would allow you to use his phone. I think he let me do it because I was buying from him, and not just some hood off the street panhandling.