Wage Slave Stories

[Naza Sutera]

In light of the current situation, I thought it would be a good idea to start a topic for a couple cute kee-kees and lighten the mood.

What I want to talk about are stories we have about the hot mess moments working our part time or full time jobs, or maybe a story you heard from someone else that resonated with you and/or you thought was funny. 

Anyway, to start off, I want to share a story, actually told to me by a friend. This one to me was just too funny, because when she told me, I just had to get my tea cup and sip slow!

So anyway, my friend works at a big membership-only big-box warehouse clubs that sell groceries and home essentials in bulk. One day, it was unusually busy. The line to customer service/membership was really long, as was this line leading out the door where an employee checks peoples receipts and purchases before letting them leave. So, my friend gets this one guy, and she could already see from the expression when he reared his ugly-ass Halloween pumpkin. But when she saw him, she smiled and greeted him, to which he responded by paying her in dust.

Okay... That's fine, because she did her part by politely greeting him. If he doesn't want to respond, that's on him.

He was on his phone or whatever. But she still asked him if she could scan the large items first. The way she tries to do it is ring the big items up first. If you try to do the small stuff first, they will be in the way of the big stuff as you are trying to scan them, and you have to move them out of the way, while moving more stuff into the way, and it just makes a big annoying mess because there is an easier way to do it. But like I said, she looked him right in the face, as he did her, when she asked him if she could scan the big stuff first. Again, he paid her ass in dust. What's more, he decided to load the small stuff on the conveyor first.

Okay... That's fine. She will just deal with it.

So, she does the small stuff first. To at least try to ease the nightmare of working around the small items to get to the cases of soda, she tries with him one more time to see if she could make the checkout process run smoother. She asks him how many cases of soda did he have. Working in retail, you learn that when you have the same item more than one time, you just scan the barcode on one of them however many times you need to, depending on how many of the same item there are because they all have the same inventory or SKU number. But lo and behold, he comes at her all sadiddy and snide, like "I dunno. >_> You count them."

Okay... 1, 2, 3's the charm. 1, 2, 3 strikes you're out.

So, my friend counts 10 cases, "accidentally" scanning an eleventh. So she complete's the transaction, and counts the items to make sure the number of items matches what's on the reciept. And wouldn't you know it:

"Oh, I'm sorry sir," my friend says, "it looks as though I charged you for an extra case of soda. You will have to go to the customer service desk to get it taken care of." Might I remind you that the customer service line queued up from here to Timbuktu?

"What? Let me see." He snatches the receipt and sees the extra case of soda. And he also notices something else. "What?! You also charged me for taxes?! I'm supposed to be tax-exempt!"

And she was just repeating to him: "I'm sorry sir, I can't do anything about it, you will have to go to customer service to take care of it."

He took his miserable carcass to the long-ass customer service line. He stood there, arms crossed, looking stone-faced like one of those Easter Island statues, for about five minutes before he left the line to go complain to her manager. The manager tells her that she had recently started and it had been less than ninety days. Because of that, when new employees make "mistakes" like that, they aren't (formally) punished because they are still in training. Unhappy with that, he gets back in the customer service line where he has to wait until old age before he can get the "mistake" on his purchase rectified.

After the girl in customer service helps that jerk, he happened to be her last customer before she clocked out for her break. So while on her break, the girl goes up to my friend and says he didn't hold back when telling her about my friend: "Oh, she is a bad face for the company, she is totally incompetent, this, that, and the fourth--", to which my friend explains exactly what she did and why. The girl from customer service also tells him that the tax thing was his fault. You see, the tax-exempt information is supposed to be on customers' membership cards. He apparently had more than one and used the incorrect one, so that bonus was his fault. I dunno, I wasn't told, but I am inferring that  to get his tax-exempt thing, he would have had to do something of a complete return of all items of the reciept, then re-purchase them using his correct membership card. That's just what I am guessing though, but I don't know if he did that or not.

But yeah. Because this guy was being a jack-ass, my friend set his ass up. Moral of the story: don't be a jack-ass to people in the service industry who are just trying to help you, because (1) you came to them because you needed their help, and (2) you never know what a bitch has in store for your monkey ass.

[Redeemer]

Hahahahaha, ah the general public. What a bunch they are.

I once had a patient who was blind, deaf and had alzheimers. One evening I was feeding him his dinner and he picked up a slice of bread, cleaned his nose with it, and then picked up his tissue and put it in his mouth. This guy was always full of surprises - he was always the pessimist when he was still clear in the head but as with most people with alzheimers, he had a couple of moments where he seemed to be clearer in the mind. One day, during lunch this time, he held up his hand to stop my hand which had the spoon in it. He looked at me, well in my direction, and raised a finger very matter-of-factly, hesitated for a good thirty seconds, then raised his eyebrows quite frankly with a "not bad" face and said "well shit". I was like rolling around in my chair, expecting some kind of deep speech or piece of wisdom from him but instead getting that. One of my favourite memories.

 

Edit: I just realised that this topic is about mess/stress moments from work and not so much funny ones. Well... the same patient used to detach his colostomy bag all the time and required cleaning up and reapplication all the time, at least once a day. That was always a moment where I was like "well my day just got more complicated, goodbye hometime".

 

... Does that count?

[Naza Sutera]

Lol that's fine. You're good, Red. It's not always about the hot messes we have to deal with while being if service to people. There are just as many positive experiences. Which reminds me, there was a situation where a miserable client came for my wig, and another customer put her in her place. But I'll wait a couple of posts before I get into that.

Meanwhile, lemme edit the thread title...