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So after I bragged to everyone that I wasn’t going to have to deal with SCs this holiday season, I went and volunteered for a shift. I know. And OF COURSE, it had to be the worst days of SCs in months.
But before I get into that, I want to curse out an employee of mine. Her shift starts at 6 am. At 6:15 I’m getting a little worried. At 6:30 I decide to text her and see what is happening. She texts me back and says her babysitter didn’t show up and could I find someone to take her shift? Um, no. Not my job. YOU find someone to take your shift. Of course, she does not. Later managers A and J come in and want to know what was going on with that employee. Apparently, they both got texts this morning at 5:30 asking if they were at work and the MOD. They both said no. So she just ignores the situation. She can’t figure out who the MOD is, so she ignores it. She doesn’t pick up the phone and call the store or anything. No, that would be crazy. Clearly, she tried her best.
After this happens, I get an SC that makes me cry for some reason. I still don’t know why. He didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before and I’ve definitely heard worse, but for whatever reason it just got to me. Seriously, the last time a SC made me cry was when I was pregnant and hormonal and that was the only time a SC made me cry. This worries me a bit after making that connection, but ANYWAY. He comes through the drive thru. First thing that establishes him as an SC is that while he was waiting for his food he rolled his window up. This alone didn’t make him an SC. Its cold out, I understand. However, when I am handing his food out I have to wait a full THREE MINUTES for him to notice me and roll down his window. Then what really skyrocketed him into SC status was his phone call where he complained about his food being wrong. For comparison, most of these calls take a minute or less. His call took 10 minutes, after which is when I cried. I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I don’t want to go into the complete details and type it out word for word, because it’s one of those moments at work that you just suppress and don’t want to rehash. However, for the sake of entertainment, I will summarize.
SC “Hi, yes, *introduces himself by full name for some reason* I came through the drive thru about ten minutes ago and *lists his order*.
Me “Oh yes, I remember that order. What can I help you with?”
SC “Well, I ordered steak bagels and you gave me bacon bagels and at the window I asked you to make sure my order was correct and you listed everything that you put in the bag and you said steak, but you gave me bacon.” (Note: the bagels are wrapped in the same wrapper, the only way for me to distinguish the two is to open up the sandwich and poke through it. I asked the cook if they were steak and she said they were)
Me *apologizes profusely*
SC *interrupts me, goes on a RACIST rant about how we hire a lot of Hispanics and they can’t read English and they always get the orders wrong and shouldn’t be working there* (Note: we do have Hispanics working there, but they all speak English. They can read an order just as well as I can)
SC *continues on to say that if I can’t trust my workers that I need to watch them and make sure every order that goes out is right, 100%, and I should be watching over their shoulders (yes, EVERY employee, I should watch over at all times)
Me *apologizes again, asks if there is anything I can do or offer him to make it better*
SC *continues rant about how I am a horrible manager and how he will be calling the owner’s office about me personally, demands my name, and demands to know when my store manager will be in for the day* (He also knew my store manager by name, which I thought was weird, because I never know the store manager’s name of places I shop, but whatever)
Me – I tell him all the information he requested and ask again if there is anything I can do
SC “I’m not looking for free food. I don’t want you to give me anything. I want you to get orders right in the first place. 100%. No excuses. There is no reason an order should ever go out wrong.” He then continues to berate me and tell me what a crap manager I am for letting an order go out wrong. He explains again how he will be calling my boss and my boss’s boss about me.
I tell both of these bosses what happened and they both say not to worry about it. Then he doesn’t even call either of them. So apparently, he didn’t want any resolution, he just wanted to call and bitch at someone for ten minutes and say increasing personal insults to someone who cannot defend them self. Nice.
ANYWAY,
At one point our credit card machine went down. Not too huge of a deal, we just have to restart it and 9 times out of ten that solves the problem. This takes about 30 minutes and during that time we only accept cash. We warn people ahead of time, so no one can scream foul play at the window. Note that this also happens EVERY night at the 24 hour stores (at least in our region), because when we do the close out of the system, this restarts the credit card machine and so for 30 min. in the middle of the night we are cash only. The only difference is that this time it was later in the day so a few more customers were affected. In our greeting we did not tell anyone that anything was broken , we simply said :
Greeter :Welcome to *store name*! For the moment we are only accepting cash, can I take your order?
SC: Well, I have cash, but fuck this! FIX YOUR SHIT! *drives off*
Fix my shit? That hadn’t occurred to me. Thank you SO much for your suggestion. Clearly, you took business classes at an Ivy League to come up with that brilliance. I never would have thought of that! Up until this moment, I thought that when things broke, that was the end. No more accepting credit cards ever! We are a cash only store now! Last week, a light bulb went out and everyone has just accepted this, but NOW, with your brilliance, I can fix this issue! That’s it! I’m changing that light bulb! I am empowered!
Moving on, this story happened to manager A, but I overheard bits and pieces of it. I didn’t hear the complaint from start to finish, but I can over hear this lady laying down gems such as these:
“I used to work in fast food for FIVE years, so I know.”
“It’s really not that hard.”
“It’s just such a shame you guys don’t care about your customers.”
After she left I asked A what that was about. Turns out, when employee S was handing out the lady’s food the lady drove off in the middle of getting her food. S had the bags of food hanging out the window and tried calling out to the SC when she started driving away. SC would not acknowledge S, just drove off without part of her order. Then she came and bitched about not getting her whole order. So for her great show of intelligence she is rewarded with a refund. (And before ANYONE says anything about A being spineless, she didn’t have a choice. If she hadn’t done it she would have been in trouble with the higher ups for not pleasing the customer. It is our owner that is spineless. So. Just. Don’t.)
Exactly two seconds after this lady, the least intelligent child I have ever met walks up. He first talks to manager J about exchanging his toy. I am standing right next to her so I hear everything. She shows him the two toys that we have currently and he goes over to the display and points at a different toy and asks for it. She explains that we do not have that one and that we are ending those toys and getting new toys soon, so we only have the toys that she has shown him. (Does that make sense? I don’t know. Trust me when I say that it made perfect sense the way she said it to him.)
They then go through 4-5 more rounds of this before he gives up and walks away. Is that the end? Ah, hell no! He then walks up to me and asks me.
Me “No, I’m sorry, we only have the toys that she has shown you.”
Child SC “But I want this one.” *points to display*
Me “I’m sorry we don’t have that one.”
I will spare the next few minutes of your life by saying that he repeated this a few times.
CSC “When do you get the new toys?”
Me “On Tuesday. If you keep that toy in the plastic you can exchange it for one of the new toys.”
CSC “Even for one of the new toys?”
Me “…yes.”
CSC “But I want this one.” *points*
Me “We don’t have this one.”
CSC “When you get that toy in on Tuesday, can you save me one?”
Me “We aren’t getting that toy on Tuesday. We are getting new ones.”
CSC “Ok. Can you save me one of those?”
Me “One of the new ones?”
CSC “No, this one.” *points*
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
Me “No, there are no more of that toy. At all. Ever.”
CSC “Well, I asked them and they said you would have it.”
No, I don’t know who them is and I didn’t really want to ask.
Me “I’m sorry, but we don’t.”
KID FINALLY WALKS AWAY.
Also should mention – this kid isn’t 3 or anything excusable. Kid looked to be 11 or 12. Yeah.
Fuck, kid. This toy isn’t going to magically appear no matter how much you want it. Go play in traffic.
Can you tell that today upset me a little bit? Just a little.
Also, sorry about huge blocks of texts. After reading through this I can see that it is kind of hard to get through, but I hope you did. When I am feeling less snippy, I will congratulate you on your hard work. But in a nice, reasonable, normal me way.
But before I get into that, I want to curse out an employee of mine. Her shift starts at 6 am. At 6:15 I’m getting a little worried. At 6:30 I decide to text her and see what is happening. She texts me back and says her babysitter didn’t show up and could I find someone to take her shift? Um, no. Not my job. YOU find someone to take your shift. Of course, she does not. Later managers A and J come in and want to know what was going on with that employee. Apparently, they both got texts this morning at 5:30 asking if they were at work and the MOD. They both said no. So she just ignores the situation. She can’t figure out who the MOD is, so she ignores it. She doesn’t pick up the phone and call the store or anything. No, that would be crazy. Clearly, she tried her best.
After this happens, I get an SC that makes me cry for some reason. I still don’t know why. He didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before and I’ve definitely heard worse, but for whatever reason it just got to me. Seriously, the last time a SC made me cry was when I was pregnant and hormonal and that was the only time a SC made me cry. This worries me a bit after making that connection, but ANYWAY. He comes through the drive thru. First thing that establishes him as an SC is that while he was waiting for his food he rolled his window up. This alone didn’t make him an SC. Its cold out, I understand. However, when I am handing his food out I have to wait a full THREE MINUTES for him to notice me and roll down his window. Then what really skyrocketed him into SC status was his phone call where he complained about his food being wrong. For comparison, most of these calls take a minute or less. His call took 10 minutes, after which is when I cried. I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I don’t want to go into the complete details and type it out word for word, because it’s one of those moments at work that you just suppress and don’t want to rehash. However, for the sake of entertainment, I will summarize.
SC “Hi, yes, *introduces himself by full name for some reason* I came through the drive thru about ten minutes ago and *lists his order*.
Me “Oh yes, I remember that order. What can I help you with?”
SC “Well, I ordered steak bagels and you gave me bacon bagels and at the window I asked you to make sure my order was correct and you listed everything that you put in the bag and you said steak, but you gave me bacon.” (Note: the bagels are wrapped in the same wrapper, the only way for me to distinguish the two is to open up the sandwich and poke through it. I asked the cook if they were steak and she said they were)
Me *apologizes profusely*
SC *interrupts me, goes on a RACIST rant about how we hire a lot of Hispanics and they can’t read English and they always get the orders wrong and shouldn’t be working there* (Note: we do have Hispanics working there, but they all speak English. They can read an order just as well as I can)
SC *continues on to say that if I can’t trust my workers that I need to watch them and make sure every order that goes out is right, 100%, and I should be watching over their shoulders (yes, EVERY employee, I should watch over at all times)
Me *apologizes again, asks if there is anything I can do or offer him to make it better*
SC *continues rant about how I am a horrible manager and how he will be calling the owner’s office about me personally, demands my name, and demands to know when my store manager will be in for the day* (He also knew my store manager by name, which I thought was weird, because I never know the store manager’s name of places I shop, but whatever)
Me – I tell him all the information he requested and ask again if there is anything I can do
SC “I’m not looking for free food. I don’t want you to give me anything. I want you to get orders right in the first place. 100%. No excuses. There is no reason an order should ever go out wrong.” He then continues to berate me and tell me what a crap manager I am for letting an order go out wrong. He explains again how he will be calling my boss and my boss’s boss about me.
I tell both of these bosses what happened and they both say not to worry about it. Then he doesn’t even call either of them. So apparently, he didn’t want any resolution, he just wanted to call and bitch at someone for ten minutes and say increasing personal insults to someone who cannot defend them self. Nice.
ANYWAY,
At one point our credit card machine went down. Not too huge of a deal, we just have to restart it and 9 times out of ten that solves the problem. This takes about 30 minutes and during that time we only accept cash. We warn people ahead of time, so no one can scream foul play at the window. Note that this also happens EVERY night at the 24 hour stores (at least in our region), because when we do the close out of the system, this restarts the credit card machine and so for 30 min. in the middle of the night we are cash only. The only difference is that this time it was later in the day so a few more customers were affected. In our greeting we did not tell anyone that anything was broken , we simply said :
Greeter :Welcome to *store name*! For the moment we are only accepting cash, can I take your order?
SC: Well, I have cash, but fuck this! FIX YOUR SHIT! *drives off*
Fix my shit? That hadn’t occurred to me. Thank you SO much for your suggestion. Clearly, you took business classes at an Ivy League to come up with that brilliance. I never would have thought of that! Up until this moment, I thought that when things broke, that was the end. No more accepting credit cards ever! We are a cash only store now! Last week, a light bulb went out and everyone has just accepted this, but NOW, with your brilliance, I can fix this issue! That’s it! I’m changing that light bulb! I am empowered!
Moving on, this story happened to manager A, but I overheard bits and pieces of it. I didn’t hear the complaint from start to finish, but I can over hear this lady laying down gems such as these:
“I used to work in fast food for FIVE years, so I know.”
“It’s really not that hard.”
“It’s just such a shame you guys don’t care about your customers.”
After she left I asked A what that was about. Turns out, when employee S was handing out the lady’s food the lady drove off in the middle of getting her food. S had the bags of food hanging out the window and tried calling out to the SC when she started driving away. SC would not acknowledge S, just drove off without part of her order. Then she came and bitched about not getting her whole order. So for her great show of intelligence she is rewarded with a refund. (And before ANYONE says anything about A being spineless, she didn’t have a choice. If she hadn’t done it she would have been in trouble with the higher ups for not pleasing the customer. It is our owner that is spineless. So. Just. Don’t.)
Exactly two seconds after this lady, the least intelligent child I have ever met walks up. He first talks to manager J about exchanging his toy. I am standing right next to her so I hear everything. She shows him the two toys that we have currently and he goes over to the display and points at a different toy and asks for it. She explains that we do not have that one and that we are ending those toys and getting new toys soon, so we only have the toys that she has shown him. (Does that make sense? I don’t know. Trust me when I say that it made perfect sense the way she said it to him.)
They then go through 4-5 more rounds of this before he gives up and walks away. Is that the end? Ah, hell no! He then walks up to me and asks me.
Me “No, I’m sorry, we only have the toys that she has shown you.”
Child SC “But I want this one.” *points to display*
Me “I’m sorry we don’t have that one.”
I will spare the next few minutes of your life by saying that he repeated this a few times.
CSC “When do you get the new toys?”
Me “On Tuesday. If you keep that toy in the plastic you can exchange it for one of the new toys.”
CSC “Even for one of the new toys?”
Me “…yes.”
CSC “But I want this one.” *points*
Me “We don’t have this one.”
CSC “When you get that toy in on Tuesday, can you save me one?”
Me “We aren’t getting that toy on Tuesday. We are getting new ones.”
CSC “Ok. Can you save me one of those?”
Me “One of the new ones?”
CSC “No, this one.” *points*
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
Me “No, there are no more of that toy. At all. Ever.”
CSC “Well, I asked them and they said you would have it.”
No, I don’t know who them is and I didn’t really want to ask.
Me “I’m sorry, but we don’t.”
KID FINALLY WALKS AWAY.
Also should mention – this kid isn’t 3 or anything excusable. Kid looked to be 11 or 12. Yeah.
Fuck, kid. This toy isn’t going to magically appear no matter how much you want it. Go play in traffic.
Can you tell that today upset me a little bit? Just a little.
Also, sorry about huge blocks of texts. After reading through this I can see that it is kind of hard to get through, but I hope you did. When I am feeling less snippy, I will congratulate you on your hard work. But in a nice, reasonable, normal me way.
I really, really don't care about the toy, though. 
But I wouldn't ask for another one or anything.
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