Sorry, we can’t do that.
I could spend hours scouring the list of things that piss me off most. Sitting right at the top is - you’d never guess it - work. It’s taken over half of my Christmas break, which would have otherwise been relatively carefree. Don’t get me wrong, working is absolutely fine… unless it’s really ruining something for me. Then I hate work. This past week, I have worked at least six hours everyday. Normal for a full-time employee. Nauseating for a simple high school student.
You know what? I don’t think I actually want to complain about work right now. Rather, I want to complain about retail. Yeah, retail. Where you have to deal with the public.
Excuse me while I shamelessly rip a Digg comment on this exact topic:
Funny thing is, this happened to me while I was working on Christmas Eve as a Courtesy Clerk at Safeway.
Some douchebag guy came up to me like he had a dildo lodged in his rectum. He tapped my shoulder and said “We have a problem here.” Naturally, I was already stressed with the fuckloads of people shopping at this time, and was trying to keep all my pent up rage nice and locked away. So I said “What’s the deal, sir?”
He responded by saying “There are no carts in your parking lot or inside the store, and I need one now to do my shopping.”
I was getting a little irritated at this point and said “Well, if there are no carts in either of the places that you mentioned, that must mean people are using the carts… doesn’t it?”
At this point he got extremely angered and said “I want a fucking cart now so I can do my damn shopping.”
After hearing that f-bomb I was pissed as hell too, so I followed by saying “What do you want me to do, pull it out of my ass so you can do shopping you should have done a week ago?” He asked to speak to the manager, and luckily an assistant manager who I am friends with handled the matter and came up to me laughing his ass off after the guy ran out of the store because of his rage at the lack of carts.
Anyone who has worked in retail understands clearly that the public has it’s ups and downs. There are those people who try to be nice and are incredibly easy to deal with, whereas there are others who feel like they can use you like a doormat, because you are the one behind the counter and therefore you must bend over backwards to meet their demands. Nothing brings my piss to a boil like some bitchy, inconsiderate woman who makes ordering pizza more convoluted and stressful than it needs to be.
I’m probably making this sound like it happens all the time (in fact, at Papa Murphy’s this is a fairly uncommon occurance, which I am thankful for). I suppose I should also be gender-neutral, but let me be honest for one moment: How many times do I see men do this? Once in a blue moon. Not very often at all. Sorry to say this, but it is usually the women who are negative nancys and use you to their advantage. This ranges everywhere from younger, haughty, annoying soccermoms, to older ladies who are grumpy and who manage to create all types of inclusions, exceptions, and special requests on their pizza.
Then there are those people. Yeah… those people. I’m talking about the people who walk up to the cash register, and start everything off by saying “Oh, I forgot my coupons.”
These people make up a large fraction of the customers who make purchases at Papa Murphy’s. So… you forgot your coupons. What do you want me to do about it? Do you want me to run back to your house so I can grab them for you? Or - like the man in the anecdote above - pull a coupon out of my ass and give it to you?
I remember one night I recieved a call from a woman who wanted to place an order, and she said her husband would actually pick up the pizzas on his way home from work. The woman then proceeded to acknowledge that she did, in fact, have her coupons with her. But that’s the problem. She wasn’t the one picking up the pizzas. Rather, it was her husband who was driving home from work to pick them up, unfortunately without the coupons in-hand. “Will you still honor them?” Sorry, lady, but we can’t just give you a discount because you supposedly have a coupon sitting somewhere at home. See what kind of problems this would create? Do you see the loophole that may occur? FYI, at Papa Murphy’s we are a little nicer than that (I think I still gave her a dollar off or whatever), but simply, we cannot always take invisible coupons. Unless you get down on your knees and suck my balls.
We actually do keep a few miscellaneous coupons underneath the counter. It’s just a matter of employee’s discretion, you know, to actually hand them out to people.
But not to you. Because you have the time, money, computer, and internet connection to be reading my blog entries. Surely you can afford another dollar on your pizza order.
