Before anyone says anything else, I'd just like to make a little speech. GO AWAY!!!

[Lace Neil Singer]

This is the closest I ever came to a meltdown at work. We had four people who had forgotten their money, so I had four forms to fill out while my colleague Sara dealt with the ten million (slight exaggeration) customers who all suddenly decided at that moment, "We must all get petrol at once!" With the constant beep of the pumps needing authorisation, along with the apparent allergy to pay at the pump and the queue getting ever longer as I scribbled frantically, I was tempted to just throw the forms up in the air and take a walk. Or use the tannoy to yell the title. XD

Eventually, I got the forms done and we managed to get thru the queue, but it was the most stressful time I've ever had at work. What stressful moments has everyone else had that made them want to scream?

[CyberLurch]

What stressful moments has everyone else had that made them want to scream?

How much time ya got? lol

[MoonCat]

1978 to now.

What, too short? XD

[Lace Neil Singer]

Just the really really extreme ones. XD

[Slave to the Phone]

Some people come in to our office mad. We don't get to pick and choose, we just take the next one in line and if we happen to get a screamer or crier or someone who needs a translator and also has at least 97 people in their case who all change jobs every month, that's just the luck of the draw. Toss some mental illness into the mix and it can get interesting.

This week, the dice have been rolling wrong for me and I've gotten the entire offices share of all of the above people. Its actually become a big source of office gossip because I just seem to get them all and they have already started making so much of a fuss that at least 1 sup and 1 armed security guard has been hanging around to listen to their sides of the phone calls.

Today I had to have a f2f interview with some poor abused sobbing woman who's case got closed down because she refused to take personal responsibility for her own life. She's getting punished because someone she trusted didn't do what they promised to do and now her children are starving (living in her parent's house rent free) and they all have developed serious and urgent medical issues during the month that they didn't have insurance, and life is just so unfair and its not her fault.

Its been so bad that people who work all on the way on the other side of our cube farm are sending me im's because they heard about my suffering.

I've already been approved for a mental health day tomorrow. The only thing that will make me go back on Monday is to remind myself that this has an end date. 1011 days left.

[raw1989]

1011 days left umm then what do u do?

[Dreamstalker]

I think for me it was Snowpocalypse 2013...or whenever we got over 100 inches total. The night before, Shithead had 'asked' me to come in at 7AM; it took me 30 minutes to get two blocks (our street had yet to be plowed, I couldn't use the back door as it was blocked by a fallen tree). Must have been at least 4 feet of snow. After I clocked in I collapsed in one of the chairs in the office and just cried for five minutes, I was that exhausted/stressed from just getting there. Something like that has never happened to me before or since.

I was one of three part-timers who made it to work (came THISCLOSE to being killed by a plow crossing the street, I had my blaze orange coat on but visibility was that bad), and Bad Suit wanted me to stay til closing at 11PM. I was expected to stay on a register (why? the SCOs were open and watching them is my job anyway), and the only break(s) I got were when he wasn't watching. F took one look at me at 8PM and said "Go home, I don't even know why nobody called you and said don't come in." (apparently everyone except the three of us who lived within walking distance got told the night before not to bother showing up).

I did call in 'sick' the next day. My thanks for working a nightmare shift when nobody else would? Bad Suit threatening to write me up for leaving before the 'end of my shift' (a shift which was only in the system as noon-7PM). P apparently told him diplomatically to go himself, and everyone thought that the three of us who were basically keeping the store open ('essential service') should have gotten quadruple overtime hazard pay.

[Slave to the Phone]

Retire. I can't wait for that frabjous day.

There are good things and bad things about being an old fart.

I have to walk with a cane. People hold doors for me.

I'm not the hawt sexy thing I was 30 years ago. Neither are the men, so its better that us old women see men through different eyes that usually need better eyes because our glasses just aren't cutting it.

We are so old and creaky that it takes at least 10 minutes just to get out of bed, but we know that there is an end date to having to get up and get to work before its light and/or getting home after its dark.

In 1011 days, I am going to sleep until I wake up and then I'm going to eat leftover retirement party food for breakfast and wear my fav pajamas all day.

I'll figure out the rest of it later.

[EricKei]

Now THAT sounds like a good plan ^__^

[Shyla]

I am always surprised that 1) people forget their money for the gas station and 2) you still let them have gas and just fill out forms!! Four of them at a time is just taking advantage. Do you have to do this by law or is your owner too nice?

[Lace Neil Singer]

I am always surprised that 1) people forget their money for the gas station and 2) you still let them have gas and just fill out forms!! Four of them at a time is just taking advantage. Do you have to do this by law or is your owner too nice?

It's the way it works in England. We take down their details and car details, and if they don't return, the bailiffs go round their house and break their legs.*


*Actually, they get the money there, either by getting it on the spot or taking items to auction off for the money. There's also the fee that the bailiffs charge on top of whatever they owe us, which can make a simple tenner's worth of petrol into nearly a hundred pounds. Most people come back within days.

[XCashier]

Eventually, I got the forms done and we managed to get thru the queue, but it was the most stressful time I've ever had at work.

: offers virtual hot cocoa with shot of Bailey's : Customers do seem to have that kind of ESP, don't they? They seem to know when a CS worker is having difficulty, and that's when they arrive in droves and proceed to cause more trouble!

What stressful moments has everyone else had that made them want to scream?

Oh, I've posted them before. Halloween Eve and the Bitch Queen, from my last job, were two recent ones.

All I can say is, thank heaven for these boards! Every day one works in retail is yet more proof that this site is a vital necessity!

[HotelMinion]

Just last weekend it was crazier than I've ever can remember. I'm still recovering.
To paint a picture: me. Alone. By myself. 5 Housekeepers were cleaning the 70+ rooms that were to be ready for the 50 checkins. The day before I got NO sleep becuase I knew it would be hard so I was trying to prepare myself. Failed. In total, I was up 24 hours, the most I've ever been, and my double shift just started. I nearly fainted twice. No time for bathroom breaks. No meal break. I nearly cried when ,y relief came in. Never doing it again. Afterward my body has put on so much stress that it was shaking like I was being given shocks every 20 seconds I KID U NOT.