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I'm having a little break from my uni work, so I thought I would post a story I've had for a while, whilst I wait for my food to cook.
B/G This happened at my last job, a shop in a railway station, when I had only been working there for a few weeks.
Cast:
Me:
CL: Crazy Lady
To set the scene, I was at work in a busy railway station shop. The kind which sells snacks, drinks, newspapers, magazines, etc. There is a supermarket nearby where you could get all the things my shop sold, but for a hell of a lot cheaper, but people seemed willing to pay massively inflated prices for the privilege of not walking for another two minutes. To make up for the aforementioned grossly inflated prices, management peppered the shop with offers, two for one on this, two for £2 on that, and so on. Perfectly simple if you READ THE SIGN which said exactly what each offer referred to, and no, two for £2 on drinks and two for £2 on some childrens magazines does NOT mean you can have a drink AND a magazine for £2 (I think you can probably see where this is going... as could I and the majority of the staff. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the level of suck which was about the hit the fan).
Crazy Lady came in with her husband (I presume) and a large and assorted selection of children who proceeded to grab everything in sight and beg to be allowed to have it. They eventually made their decisions and hauled several armfuls of snacks up to my counter. I informed CL of the charge for carrier bags (1p!) and she grumbled a little but agreed to pay, and as they had a lot of stuff, I only charged them for one bag and gave them another two or three for free (technically breaking the rules for them, but I was feeling generous, and not yet jaded by the loss of belief in human kindness).
I scanned everything and bagged it carefully, heavy things at the bottom, crisps and other squishables at the top, handles turned towards the customer. This perfection was shortly to be destroyed.
I read out the total, which was quite high, I admit, but they had several bags full of overpriced goods so it was quite predictable. Evidently CL disagreed. With a banshee-like shriek she upturned a bag and began brandishing chocolate bars in my face.
"This is two for one! And this! And this! You've done it wrong! Why is it so much?!"
"I'm sorry," I replied (foolishly. In hindsight I believe I may have suggested weakness by this inadvertant admission of my personal guilt for her inability to read), "the two offers on the chocolate are separate, you can't mix the two."
"But it says there! You will make this two for one! It says!" (Ah, the magic words, I am your humble servant and will happily allow you to take a bagful of free chocolate!)
"I'm sorry, but you may have misread the sign," at this stage I was still naive, and convinced I could rectify the situation, "It says on each one which bars can go together."
(The problem is that our chocolate bars came mainly from two separate companies, both of which were running the same offer, but each company was not willing to make up the difference on the other company's two for one)
Remember how I said earlier the shop was liberally sprinkled with these kinds of offers. CL had "misread" (read "wilfully ignored"), every single one of them. On 3 - 4 carrier bags of goods. I had to explain each one individually to her. While she screamed at me that I was wrong, the signs were misleading, the till was wrong....
I t was at this stage I began to lose the will to live.
I know what you're thinking now. I finally explained everything, she and her family sorted themselves out, paid, perhaps made some sort of snide comment or promise of a complaint to management, and stormed off in classic SC style.
You're wrong.
Guess again?
You're still wrong.
After (what felt like) hundreds of voids and rescans, the till began to look like the blog of a mad scentist on acid. Naturally she then wanted me to read out what she was being charged, item by item. This was physically impossible. Performing this mind trick was complicated further by CL screaming in my ear that I was incompetent and that she wanted to know all the prices so she could add them up herself and make sure I'd done it right. Of course we all know the customer brain, despite being incapable of reading a simple sign, is a superior calculator to a computer which is, you know, actually built to do the job.
In the end I apologised, cancelled the entire transaction, and began scanning from the beginning, assuring her that this was the simpler, and therefore quicker method. I even gave her all the carrier bags free in my desperation to get rid of her. Once again she disagreed.
It was around this point, when we had been working through the whole mess for quite some time, that she began screaming the following words, which ring shrilly in my ears to this day:
"I'm going to miss my train! I'm going to miss my train and it's YOUR fault! YOU will have to pay! You will have to pay for my family's tickets! YOU are going to make us miss the train!"
I didn't trust myself to speak so I just kept scanning and bagging at top speed, silently praying for it to stop. Until I was able to utter the words:
"That will be £XX.XX please"
Relief? No not quite...
CL: "Hold on... I have the exact change!"
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!
She wasn't.
I josh you not, after telling me I would have to pay for her entire family's train tickets due to my incompetence, she whipped out her purse and began counting. out. pennies. individually.
I could have cried.
B/G This happened at my last job, a shop in a railway station, when I had only been working there for a few weeks.
Cast:
Me:
CL: Crazy Lady
To set the scene, I was at work in a busy railway station shop. The kind which sells snacks, drinks, newspapers, magazines, etc. There is a supermarket nearby where you could get all the things my shop sold, but for a hell of a lot cheaper, but people seemed willing to pay massively inflated prices for the privilege of not walking for another two minutes. To make up for the aforementioned grossly inflated prices, management peppered the shop with offers, two for one on this, two for £2 on that, and so on. Perfectly simple if you READ THE SIGN which said exactly what each offer referred to, and no, two for £2 on drinks and two for £2 on some childrens magazines does NOT mean you can have a drink AND a magazine for £2 (I think you can probably see where this is going... as could I and the majority of the staff. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the level of suck which was about the hit the fan).
Crazy Lady came in with her husband (I presume) and a large and assorted selection of children who proceeded to grab everything in sight and beg to be allowed to have it. They eventually made their decisions and hauled several armfuls of snacks up to my counter. I informed CL of the charge for carrier bags (1p!) and she grumbled a little but agreed to pay, and as they had a lot of stuff, I only charged them for one bag and gave them another two or three for free (technically breaking the rules for them, but I was feeling generous, and not yet jaded by the loss of belief in human kindness).
I scanned everything and bagged it carefully, heavy things at the bottom, crisps and other squishables at the top, handles turned towards the customer. This perfection was shortly to be destroyed.
I read out the total, which was quite high, I admit, but they had several bags full of overpriced goods so it was quite predictable. Evidently CL disagreed. With a banshee-like shriek she upturned a bag and began brandishing chocolate bars in my face.
"This is two for one! And this! And this! You've done it wrong! Why is it so much?!"
"I'm sorry," I replied (foolishly. In hindsight I believe I may have suggested weakness by this inadvertant admission of my personal guilt for her inability to read), "the two offers on the chocolate are separate, you can't mix the two."
"But it says there! You will make this two for one! It says!" (Ah, the magic words, I am your humble servant and will happily allow you to take a bagful of free chocolate!)
"I'm sorry, but you may have misread the sign," at this stage I was still naive, and convinced I could rectify the situation, "It says on each one which bars can go together."
(The problem is that our chocolate bars came mainly from two separate companies, both of which were running the same offer, but each company was not willing to make up the difference on the other company's two for one)
Remember how I said earlier the shop was liberally sprinkled with these kinds of offers. CL had "misread" (read "wilfully ignored"), every single one of them. On 3 - 4 carrier bags of goods. I had to explain each one individually to her. While she screamed at me that I was wrong, the signs were misleading, the till was wrong....
I t was at this stage I began to lose the will to live.
I know what you're thinking now. I finally explained everything, she and her family sorted themselves out, paid, perhaps made some sort of snide comment or promise of a complaint to management, and stormed off in classic SC style.
You're wrong.
Guess again?
You're still wrong.
After (what felt like) hundreds of voids and rescans, the till began to look like the blog of a mad scentist on acid. Naturally she then wanted me to read out what she was being charged, item by item. This was physically impossible. Performing this mind trick was complicated further by CL screaming in my ear that I was incompetent and that she wanted to know all the prices so she could add them up herself and make sure I'd done it right. Of course we all know the customer brain, despite being incapable of reading a simple sign, is a superior calculator to a computer which is, you know, actually built to do the job.
In the end I apologised, cancelled the entire transaction, and began scanning from the beginning, assuring her that this was the simpler, and therefore quicker method. I even gave her all the carrier bags free in my desperation to get rid of her. Once again she disagreed.
It was around this point, when we had been working through the whole mess for quite some time, that she began screaming the following words, which ring shrilly in my ears to this day:
"I'm going to miss my train! I'm going to miss my train and it's YOUR fault! YOU will have to pay! You will have to pay for my family's tickets! YOU are going to make us miss the train!"
I didn't trust myself to speak so I just kept scanning and bagging at top speed, silently praying for it to stop. Until I was able to utter the words:
"That will be £XX.XX please"
Relief? No not quite...
CL: "Hold on... I have the exact change!"
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!
She wasn't.
I josh you not, after telling me I would have to pay for her entire family's train tickets due to my incompetence, she whipped out her purse and began counting. out. pennies. individually.
I could have cried.
Be glad you're not her.
true true
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