Everyone's got a sob story...and I don't care

[Jester]

I get sob stories and all kinds of other stories from customers as a cashier...

but I'm a cashier not a bartender...

HEY!!!

We don't want to hear their sob stories either. Especially when we're slamming busy and/or they're trying to get out of paying their tab.

[MelindaJoy77]

HEY!!!

We don't want to hear their sob stories either. Especially when we're slamming busy and/or they're trying to get out of paying their tab.

True! Sorry I think I've seen too many bartender scenes in the movies

[Firecrackers Not Included]

HEY!!!

We don't want to hear their sob stories either.

I was SO waiting for that from Jester.

[RealUnimportant]

I've had a shitty year+. It's got to the point that I can't even make the usual pleasantries around the social nicety "how are you today?"... In fact, I was joking about this with a cashier just this afternoon.

But that's the thing. I was joking about it, not using it as leverage to get my groceries free, carried to my car, and the gas tank topped off at no charge while they were at it. Life has handed me a shit-ton of lemons, and I'm no good at making lemonade. But if they're all I've got, then I'll just have to eat them plain and learn to like it. And as it happens, I do enjoy a nice bit of lemon...

Tragedy strikes everyone. It's no excuse.

[Ben_Who]

Am I a bad person for automatically assuming that each one of those is a complete fabrication?
I hate people that make that shit up. There's enough bad things happening to good people as it is.

Look at it this way: at its absolute best, their stories are irrelevant to the transaction at hand. This isn't the Big Impersonal Company being a meanie, this is a case of the customer entering into negotiations with a corporate entity and subsequently - for whatever reason - being unable to hold up his or her own end of the bargain. I'm not going to go to the fast food place and demand a free burger if my grandma just died, because my circumstances are irrelevant to the transaction. Yes, it's a tragedy, but that is not one of the privileges of suffering it.

Credit card companies are given some flexibility in this regard, and occasionally management can waive a fee for retention purposes, but some customers have to try it everywhere, just to see if it works. Imagine what a company would look like if tragedy really did confer preferential treatment. You'd need entire verification departments just to determine whether the customer is making stuff up on the spot.

[Jester]

True! Sorry I think I've seen too many bartender scenes in the movies

Oh, it's cool. And don't get me wrong, a lot of times that is part of the job, to listen to people and their tales of woe. But when it's due to them trying to get out of paying their tab, I lose all sympathy. Fuck these losers.

Life has handed me a shit-ton of lemons, and I'm no good at making lemonade. But if they're all I've got, then I'll just have to eat them plain and learn to like it. And as it happens, I do enjoy a nice bit of lemon...

That's what vodka's for.

Imagine what a company would look like if tragedy really did confer preferential treatment. You'd need entire verification departments just to determine whether the customer is making stuff up on the spot.

Reminds me of the time I almost killed a manager of mine. I was working at a restaurant in college, and my grandmother had just died. Knowing I might be flying off to New Jersey, and also knowing that I'd be in no shape to work my next shift, which I think was the next day, I went in to my job to tell the boss. As I'm talking to the boss about it, this one idiot manager was standing there, and when I said my Grandma had died, this wench said very sarcastically, with a "yeah, right" look on her face, "Oh, did she really?" I wheeled around on her with fire coming out of my eyes and said something like, "Do you want me to bring in the fucking body?" My boss could see I wasn't fucking around, and even the idiot manager could tell that this wasn't some lameass excuse to try to get out of work--which I did not in any way have a reputation for, thank you very much--and so the idiot manager quickly backed down and apologized, and the boss did what they could to unruffle my feathers...probably because they didn't want to have to deal with the paperwork a workplace homicide would undoubtedly entail. Yeah, I was pissed.