Your most embarrassing loud speaker moments

[TSAEMP]

Those of us who work in stores with loudspeakers what are your most embarrassing moments on the intercom? This happened to me today I was paging someone to the phone and when I started talking I began to stutter really bad. I could not get any words out. Then I decided to put my hand over the mouth peice to take a deep breath and start over. Bad mistake because it made a very loud feedback noise which startled me and caused me to scream and drop the phone. I just wanted to run to the back room and cry. I may never get on the intercom again.

[Ljt09863]

i am so sorry that happened,TSAEMP, but i have to find it funny......

anyways. this wasn't me, but a girl i worked with that doesn't work there anymore. anytime somebody wants a cigar out of the cigarette case, we need to call a manager, cause only they have keys.

well, she needed to page a manager for a key. heres how it went," manager to the cig-BLAH! manager to the cigar case please, manager to the cigar case!"

i thought it was hilarious....

we also had a horrible employee(horrible for other reasons) who said,"attention walmart customers..." the bad part? we are walgreens.

[hecubus]

This reminds me of a scene from the old "Bob Newhart Show." Bob was in a grocery store, and the announcement comes over the loudspeaker, "Attention shoppers. Announcing a special in our meat department. Meat. Thank you."

I always wanted to work in a place with a public address system, just so I could do that joke.


(I know, I have no life)

[Crosshair]

Since I am one of the few people bothers to empty the bailer I get suck doing that alot even if it isn't my job. (Hmm, how often do we all have that happen. ) Anyway, the bailer is right next to the back doors. I need them unlocked to get the bale out. So I go over to the recieving phone and page for a manager to recieving to unlock the back door, then I hang up. I walk back to start making the bale. Enter Stan.

Stan is best described as an "Old Salt". Older man, works as an unloader and does a good job of it. However he likes to curse so much that it will take paint off the walls. Usualy he just yells/curses at people who don't do things "His way". I learned, long after this situation, that you just swear at him back and he goes back to unloading. "F*ck off Stan. I'm taking care of it." works 99% of the time.

What I did that was "wrong" in Stan's mind was the bailer wasn't 100% full. It was more like 95% full. Of cource the unloaders have to set pallets in front of the bailer because they run out of room and then we CAN'T empty the bailer. So I was basicly taking care it before it became a problem. Stan sees me starting the process of making the bale. He walks over to me and says, as near as I can remember, "What the hell do you think you are doing with that f*ckin thing? There's plenty of f*ckin room in the godd*m bailer to fit more cardboard. Why the hell do you always unload the godd*m thing before it's f*ckin full. (Yes that is how he talks when he is mad, it's funny to watch him when he is yelling at someone else.) I start arguing with him, not swearing, that it is going to be blocked in if I don't empty it and then overnights are going to be mad. Suddenly a manager runs into receiving and tells us to be quiet.

Now, remember when I made that page earlier. Well, it turns out I didn't hang it up properly and the whole conversation was being broadcast through the whole store. I hung up the phone properly, the unloading crew is laughing and Stan is even more pissed. Ah, fun times.

[tonydanza]

My first (and last) time making the closing announcement for my store telling customer's to get out, I messed up so bad my manager made fun of mr for like 3 days. I didn't think it was that bad, it just wasn't "kiss customer assish."

It went along the lines of, "Good evening michael's customer's, the time is now 10:00 and the store is now closed. We open tomorrow at 8:00."
and I hung up the phone. I didn't think it was that bad, but whatever.


However we got a new lady that's having a difficult time understanding the way the store works, and one day I heard her pick up the phone over the intercom and say "hello?" It was hilarious.

[lordlundar]

I used to work at the greeter stand in our store, and it was basically answer phones, page for staff to pick up, check items, etc. No biggie.

This particular day, I had tons of callers and kind of went into automatic. So when I needed to page someone one time, I went on the PA. "Thank you for calling...ahhhh!" <click>. Then I paged the proper one. I'm sure my face was beet red on that one.

Fast foward a couple of hours, and one of our managers approaches with a customer for an item checkout. (we have tills all over the store for our sales staff to use, but all items need to be confirmed by a CSR as sold before they leave the store) After the customer left he remarked about that mis-page and started laughing.

I was in a good mood about it, so I say to him "Which would sound better? Ahhhh, or AW ! He said good point and we laughed about it.

[Retail's Bitch]

It was a monday... I wasn't completely with it... Hangover perhaps? I don't remember. I was making a PA and completely blanked in the middle of it.

Like staring at the handset and thinking. "Why am I holding the handset? What was I doing a minute ago?"

so I said something along the lines of . "Oh.. Umm wow... Mondays are not good days to make PA announcements... I'm going to hang up now." Over the PA system throughout the entire store. ;-)

[Becks]

All I'll say is verbal dyslexia.

[wagegoth]

All I'll say is verbal dyslexia.

Perfect.

Now, imagine messing up a page in a law firm. That is your picture of me.

Nothing extreme, but a couple of times have ended with me choking out a laughing, "I'm sorry," then calming down and paging again. Happily, I only fill in and don't have to handle this on a regular basis.

[MadMike]

Sometimes a manager or another employee would page someone to call them at a certain attention, and the person they paged would dial the number for the intercom instead, purely out of habit. Most of them realized their mistake as soon as they heard their voice being broadcast throughout the entire store. The exception to this would be "James", the fuckup coworker I posted about previously. I wasn't there that day, but I hear it went something like this:

"Hello?" (pause) "Hello? (longer pause) "Did someone page me? Is anybody there? Oh crap! I'm on the intercom!" (click)

I never did anything like that myself, but one time I was about to page someone, when I dropped the phone, which made a loud clattering noise all through the store. Then when I picked it up and tried to speak, I cracked up laughing, and had to hang it up and take a moment to compose myself.

[Girly]

We used to do the darth vader star wars stuff.

Old, I know, but it was funny at the time.

[Kiwi]

when I first started working at the craft store we had free call over the intercom that was until me and a couple of other young co-workers thought that paging "Dr Gunge to ER please Dr Gunge to ER" was the funnyest thing ever (Gunge was one of our assistant managers)

after that the page had to be written and signed off my a dept manager unless it was calling a manager to the dept

the store manager once when to answer the phone and hit the intercom button instead of line 1 and said over the entire store "company name, office, J speaking how can I help you?" then realised what had happened and dropped the phone, intercom STILL ON and the store heard her laughing and falling over

the staff including myself were in stitches laughing so hard

[draftermatt]

Anyone know someone that just shouldn't make pages? At the local Wal-Mart the woman that does it has a grating nasal voice. (Almost Fran Drescher like). It makes me jump when she pages something.

[Jpurple]

It went along the lines of, "Good evening michael's customer's, the time is now 10:00 and the store is now closed. We open tomorrow at 8:00."
and I hung up the phone. I didn't think it was that bad, but whatever.

Oh god, Michael's closing announcements.... For some reason, I was good at doing the sales pages and closing announcements, so I always ended up doing them. Then came the time when I was working as a substitute teacher and part time at both Michaels' and a local computer store. The computer store was so small we didn't have a paging system, but somehow I got screwed up (excessive tiredness?) and over the Michaels' intercom said 'Good evening this is *computer store* how can I help you?' It took weeks to live that one down.

[Becks]

Anyone know someone that just shouldn't make pages?

At the store, we have the chronic stutterer (I sincerely hope they ban him from making pages SOON) and the few who talk really slow so it takes five minutes to have someone come to a department or call an extension.