First ever SC encounter?

[Lace Neil Singer]

So, what was the story of your very first SC? Mine would be an SC who I delivered papers to, on my very first job as a papergirl. The SC owned a horrible miniature Yorkie which looked and acted like a plague rat, cept for the colour.* Most of the time, it would be hurling itself against the window barking at me when I pushed the paper thru its owner's door. One day, however, for some inexplicable reason, the SC decided to let the plague rat out the door just as I was walking up the path.

Note: I am thirteen years old, and this idiot thinks that it's funny to set her nasty dog on me. It ran up and sank its teeth into my ankle; I reflexively kicked out and sent it hurtling into the air. It hit the ground, yelped and ran back inside. The owner then started shouting at me cuz I'd kicked her little precious. I shouted back that she should shut up, cuz if I went and told the police, the plague rat would be destroyed. She shut up but said she was going to complain. I just shoved her paper at her and walked away.

She did complain, but my boss at the time ignored her complaint cuz of the small fact that she'd set her vicious dog on me and it bit me before I kicked it. I told my parents, and my mother went round there and gave her an earbashing. Funnily enough, I never heard the plague rat again the next time I delivered the SC's paper.


*I have nothing against miniature Yorkies, just the ones who are spoiled and badly trained.

[KellyHabersham]

I don't recall many of the details because this must have been over ten years ago..... but this woman wanted help with one of the children's computers, and made a snippy comment about "I thought you guys were supposed to know everything!"

Frustrating thing was, there wasn't a good way to have explained that those of us on the shelving staff were very limited on what we were/were not allowed to help customers with.

[thehuckster]

It's hard to say who my first true SC was. I was 16 at the time (around 2000), so perceptions were probably different. I can say on my first day, when I was under training, some guy came up put money down on the counter, said "Thank you!" and then waited for me to respond. The supervisor, who was temporarily distracted, said the guy comes here regularly and wanted his regular brand of cigarettes. I'm glad he came during training because had I been on my own, I'd be clueless as to how to handle it. The fact he thought a brand new clerk would know what he was talking about probably qualifies as SC, but it's mild compared to others I had since.

I'd say the first really CS-worthy SC was someone who I wrote about a few years ago that was sloshed on Christmas Eve with his buddy, and was hard pressed to find a gift for his wife, which I'm sure she'd appreciate after he came home drunk after midnight. That happened near my two-month mark working at that place.

[Mr Hero]

Since I worked food prep during high school, I didn't really get my first SC until after high school. I was a brand new missionary for my church still in the training center. For a period of about 2 weeks, we worked as volunteers at a call center taking orders for the various freebies you see advertised on TV.

I got one caller who called up and got me on the line. He asked if we're the type that finishes high school, then hung up.

This oh so creative prankster called again, only this time he got someone else nearby who asked him the same thing.

[notalwaysright]

Hum, I seem to have blocked out the really awful ones. When I was brand new all the little old ladies would demand that I ask someone else, instead of believing me. "Well, can you ask her?" Or even better, they would act all sweet and walk right over and ask my CW the same exact thing. After a while I started being more assertive, and they don't do that as much.

Also had a lot of people pissed because I didn't know all the brand names, or references. Sugar and Cream, toile, Aida cloth. Or I didn't know to ask what type of product they're looking for. For example, if someone asks for felt I ask if they want squares or by the yard. If you don't ask, and you get it wrong, SCs act like lunatics. "Noooooo, I don't want thaaaat much felt, I just need a little, where are the pieces of felt?!" Just the other day I heard a lady ask a new CW where the tulle was, and the CW told her. She huffed over to me and asked "where's the tulle that's on sale in the ad????" She was talking about the spools of tulle, but didn't tell that to the new girl, and the new girl didn't know to ask if she wanted by the yard or the spools. *sigh* It's a steep learning curve.

[Kogarashi]

My first SC was 15 years ago. I had small jobs before then (babysitter, housekeeper for a family friend), but it was all one-on-one with people I knew so I didn't have SC moments then.

My first (really notable one, at least) was when I was working as a brand new retail associate in the toy department at our local Walmart. Sure, we had people who played hide-n-seek with the merchandise or kids who would rip open Pokémon boosters and hide the wrappers around the department, but the one that really stuck with me was this one woman. I'd just finished organizing the diecast Harley Davidson models while she was browsing not three feet away, occasionally glancing my way. As soon as I moved down the aisle a bit to work on another section, the woman swooped in to the Harleys and began pawing through them, setting them all over the place and creating massive disarray everywhere. When she was done digging through everything, she simply turned and walked away.

I know she saw me organizing. Saw it, and chose to leave chaos in her wake nonetheless.

[Racket_Man]

my first set of SC's occurred back about 37 years ago. I worked a couple of summers in my hometown's Zoo.

My first summer At the Zoo I was assigned to a one person soda/slushie drink/chip selling stand.

Now there is a contradiction to follow.

The Zoo had a rule (a good one if you look at it on the surface) where they would NOT give out regular straws with regular soda. The reason was (and I assume still is) because a lot of people (like the slobs they seem to be) would either just drop the straws on the ground (making for a big mess for the groundskeepers) OR throw them at the animals, fish, apes, sea lions, bears, etc. Said animals not knowing any better would eat or chew on said straws resulting in a sick or dead animal. Just like throwing ANY food at the animals and them eating said food could make them ill or die.

Now the contradiction: WE did however give spoon straws out with the slushie drinks. see the picture below



Most of the workers got bitched at multiple time daily over this contradiction

NO straws with a regular drink
STRAWS with a slushie drink.

[Aragarthiel]

I'm not sure if this counts, but I helped out at a deli in a grocery store a few years ago, mostly doing dishes and helping with stock. The deli was owned and operated by an older gay couple, who had constant issues with a rather bigoted old man who worked in the meat department across the store (with Hubs) but insisted on getting his lunch at the deli every day. I was the only "employee" they had (I didn't officially work there, it just gave me something to do during the day). One day, we discovered that Bigoted Old Man had been telling his customers that he found a pubic hair in his lunch from the deli.

The truth? It was a LONG dark hair, and it had to be mine because one of the owners was bald and the other had short blonde hair. Nobody likes a hair in their food but it's not like it never happens (no clue how it did in the first place, I was washing dishes that day and nowhere near the food, but it is what it is), and he nearly ruined the reputation of two of the nicest men I'd ever met. The fact that it was MY hair that had caused the issue sent me home in tears, and Hubs had a good talk with the store owner about BOM's behavior. BOM didn't get fired but he was warned that if he ever pulled something like that again, he would be.

[April]

I KNOW I've had more before this incident, but honestly, I can't remember them. There were jerks that I remember, but no one 100% sucky until these old people. It was my first day at Target on the register by myself. An older couple came up with single boxes of Kleenex. They wanted 6 single boxes of Kleenex for the price of the six pack that we were out of. I politely told them we couldn't do that, but I could offer them a rain check. they declined. They yelled. I got a manager, who told them the same thing. They then threw a box of Kleenex at me and stormed out.

They came back later that day and complained to the SAME manager that witnessed them throw a box at me that I was rude and that I needed to put on a bra (I am well endowed and I WAS wearing one)

[NMaxis]

Working for the Big Blue Box (my first job ever), had a customer come in and buy a display model table (already built) and wanted the merch team to put it into his car.

Failed to mention he brought his entire family (wife and kid) and his car was a mid-size sedan. Obviously table did not fit and would not fit no matter what Tetris like configuration we tried. Wanted us to tie it to the roof (we didn't do that) then in frustration kicked the table and scratched it on his door lock.

Blamed it on us of course.

Here's the kicker, guy was a professor of geometry or something at one of out local big universities. Would think that he could tell he didn't have enough space.

[Cooper]

The woman I babysat for, who was aghast at the idea that I wanted to be paid above minimum wage to care for her kid, then when I "couldn't get someone to cover me to leave work early" (because I wasn't going to leave work early for a one-off job I was doing as a FAVOR for her parents that I barely knew--they didn't have time to find another babysitter) I had my sister watch the kid until I got out of work, something they knew ahead of time might happen.

The house, in a cell phone dead zone, had no landline. I gave my sister my cell phone, and said: "tell her, when you arrive, that you have my cell phone. She doesn't have to worry about multiple numbers." The woman tried to bully a phone number out of my sister anyway, until my sister broke down and gave the house phone. Of course, the cell didn't ring in the house. When I got there, I got screamed at for not picking up the phone. I did a verbal shrug and said something equivalent to "Guess what? Phones don't work on the lake."

When they got home--two hours later than they told me they would--I listened to the mother bitch about how incompetent my sister was, until I decided to pull my trump card. Fight SC fire with SC fire. "Well, you know, my sister is on the autism spectrum. My parents were told she was never going to be able to talk. She is pretty high functioning now, but when she described the conversation to me it sounded like you had boxed her in, and stressed her out so much she couldn't figure out how to communicate to you."

She got a shocked look on her face, sputtered a bit, and gave us a huge tip. I split the tip portion unevenly, towards my sister, for dealing with the worst of the woman. (The rest of it was split per hour.)

[BrenDAnn]

I'm sure i had a few before it, but the earliest true sc i recall happened on my first Christmas Eve at the bigger C-Store I used to work for. I've told the story here before, but it ended in the guy tossing a disposable camera at me and my assistant manager at the time. Thankfully, we weren't hurt, but that night will forever stay with me.

[Lace Neil Singer]

The woman I babysat for...

Oh, I remember my years of babysitting. The good... one super couple I loved to sit for cuz their kids went to bed and stayed there, they had satellite TV (a rare thing back in the day!) and always left me Coke and cake. The bad... the woman who was a single mother and came back home with a different man every time I sat for her. Luckily, she had the decency to leave him alone til I was paid and out the house. The ugly... the couple who swore that they'd be back by ten at the latest, but who weren't. I phoned all the numbers they left me and got nothing. Eventually, I rang my mum who came with my dad in separate cars. My dad took me home while my mum waited for the offending couple to come home. They eventually rolled in pissed as parrots at three am, and my mum made them pay me triple plus extra for the five hours over, as well as informing them that I'd never sit for them again.

[MoonCat]

Ha, would you believe I can remember some SC's from waaay back....been at this job nearly 37 years now. One that I recall was a guy placing an ad to sell his car. It was a Lexus, which at the time I'd never heard of, and I asked him how to spell it. Guy went off on a rant about how I should know this, and did I expect him to go out to his car to check the spelling? Like that would be some major hardship. He never said he couldn't walk or anything like that, just that it was such big deal that I couldn't spell Lexus. Not the worst SC, just one of the first ones.

Also remember a guy who used to place a memoriam for his friend every year, and every year he'd give us a hard time about the billing info we needed. It was like pulling teeth to get his name, address and phone number out of him, and then he'd start griping: You want my shoe size too? We were taking this info on typewriters, it's not like we had any way to look it up the way we do now.

I know there were worse ones but I can't remember a lot of them, for which I'm grateful

[Kanalah]

I remember working at my mom's shop when I was 8 or 9 years old. Customers in the shop would always give me weird looks. I remember being pushed and shoved out of the way when I was restocking during the beanie baby craze.

At Really Big Craft Show I'd have people call me retarded and stupid just for saying hello to them.