#retaillaw

[fuck-customers]

Ah, spacebars. No, not the one on your keyboard. I mean the magical little bars that are used to separate orders on a belt when you're in a grocery store.

How I love these little spacebars. They make it so simple, so easy to ring people out. Oh my dear spacebars, you make my work almost effortless. 

But oh, spacebars, how I desire to pick you up and use you to beat some sense into some customers when they don't use you....

.....so you know how sometimes people are pretty careless with putting stuff on the belt, so even if they have a few items it can be scattered across the entire length of your belt... and sometimes it's hard to tell if people are together or not? 

Well.... today there were a couple packages of meat on my belt, spaced apart but no bar. My customers are a woman, with the first package, and a man, behind her. What am I to assume but that they're together and just put their stuff up carelessly?

So naturally I ring the first package and reach for the second one when the guy behind the lady goes, "NO NO NO NO NO!!"

Ok.... must be separate orders then. If only there was a magical item that conveyed that to me so I didn't have to be shouted at like a bad dog....

Oh wait, there is.

So what did my own petty little self do but take my two spacebars and... THUNK! one in front of his meat and... THUNK! one behind it as he watched. 

I mean you could assume your cashier is paying attention or knows what's up but better yet, don't.

Reminds me of another time when I was waiting for a customer to pay and I heard one girl around my age ask her friend what the point of the spacebars even was.

"I don't even get what we have to use these for. What's the point?"

I wanted to run to the roof and leap off for even having to fucking listen to that with my own two ears but instead I just looked at her with dead fish eyes and said, "actually it's to separate orders so we don't get confused and just scan everything :)"

I get that not everything in life is obvious but really? Really, motherfuckers? You think this is some bizzare random social expectation people participate in when they go grocery shopping? 

I know these are customers I'm talking about here but, common sense, motherfucker, do you have it?

[fuck-customers]

Get out of my store, ma'am

Where I used to work we did one of those points rewards programs, and sometimes we’d have coupons in our flyers (spend X amount get X amount of points type of things.)

People were really bad for coming to customer service after they had paid and asking if they could use those coupons. We had a way of overriding the system, but our policy was if it wasn’t presented at the time of transaction, we wouldn’t override it. We would do it for people who weren’t aware of our system, though.

So one lady comes in asking exactly this, and I’ve never seen her before, so I assume she doesn’t know. So I put on my best smile and said, word for word, “Normally if it isn’t presented at the time of purchase we won’t, but I’ll do it for you this time.” (I was TOLD to always tell people this.)

Lady gives me an incredibly offended look and says, “I really don’t appreciate the implication that I’m trying to double dip coupons.”

My smile drops a notch. “Sorry, I’m not sure I follow?”

And she leans over my counter to get in my face and says, “I do not appreciate the implication that I’m trying to steal these points.”

I’m kind of shocked by this; lady had come in all smiling and happy and was now getting in my face over something I’m told to do. I put the smile back on and said, “Well I apologize; that’s not what I was trying to imply.”

“Well you did.”

“…. again, I apologize, that’s not what I was trying to do.”

“I doubt that very much considering that what you did.”

It went on like this for a solid 5, 10 minutes until she finally asks for a manager. I call one over, lady starts bitching about how I implicated she was stealing because I told her we normally won’t do it and even LIES saying that I had flat out called her a thief and refused to do it for her.

My AWESOME manager actually hears her out, then says, “Ma'am, I don’t know if you’re aware but these girls are trained to tell customers that to discourage it from happening and to familiarize new customers to our system. She’s just doing her job and she’s been with us for two years; I seriously doubt she was trying to imply anything like that.”

Well this bitch LOSES her SHIT. Slams her hand on the counter and says, “It isn’t my problem if you don’t know how to train your employees! I do not appreciate giving you my business and then being called a liar!”

My manager smiles politely and says, “Well ma'am, I’ll certainly look into it for you, but considering she’s never had an issue of this kind with any customer in the two years she’s been here I can only go off the facts I know, which are that she has never had an issue like this come up…” he pauses and looks at the override card I had in my hand that I’d grabbed from the locked drawer behind the desk at the very start of this interaction. “And that she clearly was in the process of doing this service for you.”

Lady goes red in the face, and I swear to god she was ready to slap my manager. I’m grinning from ear to ear; the managers there were normally not very good for sticking up for us. This was a VERY rare exception.

Finally she says in an incredibly snobby voice, “Well I’ll be taking my business elsewhere after I get my points if this is how you treat your customers. I’ve never been treated this ridiculously whenever I come here to have this done.” And she throws her rewards card onto the counter at me.

My manager actually grabs it, hands it back to her and says, “We will do it for customers who were not aware of our system. You just said so yourself you’ve already been told we normally will not. We can’t do this for you today. Now I’d appreciate if you left my store and stopped harassing my employees over policies they have to follow.”

Surprisingly, she actually left without screaming or yelling more (although she did loudly bitch on the way out.) My manager asked me if I was alright, I said yes, and he returns to his duties. I found out much much later that this lady would always do this at other stores around town (it was a small town) and I guess decided to try here. But it was the first and only time a manager had stood up for me like that. More managers need to do shit like this.

[fuck-customers]

Tl;dr woman pouts over waiting in line, refuses to tell me whats wrong with her peanut butter

So..... I dunno if my long ass rants about the express lane at my work ever went through, but I'm here again and boy let me tell ya

For those that don't know or don't remember, my two express checkout lanes are one horribly designed mess of a counter. It takes the typical express shitacular experience and like.... quadruples it.

Anyways. I got stuck there again today... I woke up in an awful, truly terrible mood, I guess my subconscious could smell the express shift coming from hours and miles away... ANYWAYS

So I ended up on a register that someone else had been on, and that person needed an audit (counts the drawer to make sure everything's all gucci). So while it's slow, in order to do the audit, I sign off the register, the one being audited logs on, the audit happens, and then we go back.

So I'm standing around waiting at the other, unmanned till and people keep passing the drawer being audited to come up to me to be checked out. So it was super annoying but I was just like "yeah I'm sorry I'm not open over here right now :)"

Everyone fucked off... everything was fine. Well, the audit gets completed so I log back on, and the first guy I turned away is at the register behind me so I was like "Hey I'm up and running again, if youd like to come over!"

So he does, of course. Only instead of walking the "correct" way around the registers where the line forms, he walks backwards (the wrong way) up by whats usually the bagging area on the full registers. Again, idrgaf because there's no one on the other register and I have no line, we all know what's going on soooo... whatever.

 Well, as I'm ringing him up i notice a woman standing at the other register where the man had walked up... usually people do this when they have a question or find something wrong with their receipt. You know.... cause the way the store is set up and the lines are formed it's super easy to figure out that that's not the way you line up to be checked out or dealt a return.

Well, I'm sure you can see where this is going.

So, she has a bag in hand and reciept. Obviously a return (which are handled at the registers). Meanwhile, at about the same time, another woman queues up where she's supposed to and starts putting her things on the counter.

So as soon as I'm done with the guy, I turn to the woman trying to queue the wrong way and tell her reasonably politely that if she needs to do a return, she has to get in line. She looks at me and tells me she did that (queued that way) because the guy I just had had come to the register from that direction.

The things going through my mind at this point.... a). it's fucking obvious as shit that that's not how the lines work b). I recognize you. I know you're a regular. I know you know how this works. c). what the fuck

But on the outside I just tell her that's (him coming from the wrong way) because I called him from another line.

Well, she queues the RIGHT way. Keep in mind that all she did was get behind the other lady in line. In my EXPRESS lane. Yeah. One person behind in line. It took me like a minute and a half TOPS to get to her.

Anyways, when I apparently FINALLY get to her she's pouting. Im asking all the usual questions, like why are you returning this, is it open, etc.

Me: "so why are you returning this?"

Her, curtly: "I changed my mind."

Me: "so it's not open?"

Her, annoyed: "it is."

Me: "so why are you returning it? Didn't like it?"

Her: *ignores me*

Me: k lol

So I'm like ok fuck you too bitch..... But I process the return. Now, our machines won't give refunds back on debit cards, which is what she paid with. I usually explain this before or after asking if cash is okay, but since she wanted to be a bitch I didn't explain, just asked.

She said, "I guess."

I ask her if she wants her original receipt back, she just stares off in front of herself so I just stare at her until she says "obviously".

So I finish everything up, count out her change, and go to give it to her.. she holds her hand out but keeps it low and to her body, I'm having to stretch to place it in her hand.... So she pissily says "just put it on the counter" so I'm like whatever and kind of toss the bills and reciept before moving onto the next customer.

On the duplicate receipt we have to print we have to give reasons for returns (hence why I fucking asked her WHY SHE WAS RETURNING IT) amongst other things, but given how she acted, all I could put on the receipt was, "customer pouted because I told her she had to wait in line for a return, so she refused to tell me what was wrong with it."

Sorry booboo, the world doesn't revolve around you and your $7 peanut butter.

[fuck-customers]

Is it normal for restaurants to not allow employees to take a lunch break even though they are working 8/9/10 hours? i live in a state that doesn’t have laws about breaks btw, and i usually work from 6am-3pm or 8am-5:30/6pm. my manager said that we can take little bits of food if we’re hungry, and we can eat before and after our shift, but the problem is that (a) unless we ask the kitchen to make something for us, our options are basically limited to donuts or muffins, which I usually can’t eat, and (b) that means that we don’t get to sit down at all during our entire shift. Also, if the owner saw us doing that he would freak out! my manager said that he’s never managed a restaurant that allows breaks, but idk it seems super unethical imo

[fuck-customers]

Update: The $100 that was actually a $10

1) I'm sorry that my previous submission was considered misogynistic by some (the lady who gave us a fake 100), and apologize if I offended anyone. I myself am I woman who lived in Aussie for quite some time, then moved back home to the US. I forget that the words I commonly use are not common to some. 2) I however do not feel the slightest regret for calling her a c*nt. Because she was incredibly rude AND a liar about the situation as a whole. This woman was spouting nonsense about how she was a accused of being a hooker and some other crap. Weaving lies from thin air she had a list of reasons as to why we were awful employees. She screamed at my coworker enough to make her cry later in the bathroom and my manager give her the day off. SHE. WAS. AWFUL. I had tried to keep it short to not veer off the original story. UPDATE: Turns out the woman was INDEED, in on the fake money. Our manager had filled us in on the details duting our meeting this week as corporate requires us to do. This happens anytime someone comes in with fake coupons that work for any product, fake money, false ids, etc. Essentially anything that raises a red flag. She later admitted to where she got the money from, and confessing she knew it was fake. They're now banned from the store, not that she can exactly come back right now though as there's an ongoing investigation. My coworker and manager are going to be included as "direct" witnesses to the event. (i literally have no idea what that means just what the officer told the three of us when they cuffed the woman) I'm glad my coworker caught it, but also now they're making us hold these small "black boxes" up front with blacklights and magnifying glass in them so we can examine any $20 bill or higher. It used to be just $50's or higher but after this incedent everyone is worried about it being possible we've accepted these before and accidentally put them into circulation. As the woman was a frequent customer. So far people have been understanding but I'm waiting for everyone to get upset at us when we examine every decently sized bill we recieve.

[fuck-customers]

Hey cupcake girl again. I remember once standing at one of the side counters at my kiosk, writing an idea I had in a notebook. A woman came up to me and asked if I worked there. I was the only person inside the kiosk and I was wearing my uniform which was a tshirt with the company logo. I'm pretty short so I stood on my toes so she could see the logo as I said that I was. I do admit I was a bit too casual in my response. "Yes, I am. What's up?" She looked shocked. "What's...up? Wow okay?" She said, like I had just asked her the most offensive question in the world. She said, "Nevemind," and walked off. I admit, it wasn't very professional. But not enough so that she could walk away so appalled. And then when she walked by with her husband later, she smiled at me. Which made me hella nervous like she had complained about Fuck mall jobs