The Tale of Crazy Jane

CashyKat here once again after an extended period of silence. Miraculously normal custy behavior had become mediocre until today.

There is a regular older customer lets call Crazy Jane. She is known for tales of woe, misery and neediness. She also has claimed to be on deaths door from smoking but has refused to discontinue the practice.

Today appeared to be an ordinary day. She came over to the self scan in her MART cart and immediately asked for my help as she has done many times in the past.

I scan her few items of cereal, two bottles of juice, cupcakes and a mini pie and set it up to accept her food stamp card.

I go back to my self scan podium and wait for it to go through. It declines with the note of invalid pin number.

I apologize to her and inform her the wrong pin number was entered. She mutters and slides the card again. It declines it once more. I apologize to her and tell her the card is going to freeze after three or four for 24 hours tries if the wrong number is entered.

She gets a tad more agitated and tells me she has $200 something on her card and it’s the right pin number.

Crazy Jane tries it once more.

It declines it with the same message of invalid pin. I once again apologize but I believe the card is now frozen. She insists on trying it once more. It naturally didn’t work and she starts to blame me, the self scan and insists I fix this immediately. I apologize and I tell her to call the number on the card.

She doesn’t listen and looks like she is about to cry. To my relief I see the store manager at the self scan. I explain the situation to him. He tells her the same thing I just told him. She tells him she needs these groceries.

Another coworker happens to walk by and she tells Crazy Jane what the manager and I just told her. Naturally, this did not appease the situation. Crazy Jane’s hands start to tremble with the threat of tears close by. The store manager tells her to calm down which does not help. I step in and offer to call the number for her. I may not particularly care for her, but I really felt bad for her. The store manager nods his head and disappears into his office to my dismay.

Without the moral support of the store manager, I use the phone at the self scan so I could try to keep an eye on the other three registers. After wading through probably five minutes of crap I finally get a hold of a live person. I explain to the live person the situation at hand.

The live person tells me she needs to speak to Crazy Jane directly. I hand the phone to her and she tells the live person her tale of woe and bipolar disorder.

On the plus side, I notice sympathetic looks from other customers during this ordeal. I glance at the security camera with a look of “help me!” in hopes the store manager is watching. If he saw my look, he didn’t emerge from his office.

Suddenly the phone is thrust at me with Crazy Jane saying I should have reset her pin number at the register.

I tell the live person on the phone that we can do no such thing. Live person tells me she needs to talk to Crazy Jane about this situation.

I gladly hand the phone back. At some point the front end manager appeared for a situation update. However, it became too busy for her to remain with me at the self scan and had to cash.

The phone is once more thrust in my hand and the live person tells me to call the number on the card and press option 3 to change the pin number. The live person tells me the card will be unfrozen at midnight (I silently thank God it wasn’t 24 hours) and that Crazy Jane must change the pin number herself. I’m thinking “yeah right!’ but agree.

I quickly dial the number and press option 3. It asks for her date of birth, which I enter for her.

Then it wanted her social security number, which I had her enter on the phone. Then it came time for her to pick a new pin number. She enters 4111. However, when it came times to verify the new pin, she entered a completely different pin. She gets more flustered and then tries to enter some five digit number which it declined. I decide to take control and suggest 4321 as a pin number. She agrees and I am able to change her pin number. I write her new pin clearly on a piece of paper in hopes she will remember it.

Afterwards, Crazy Jane wants me to try to run her card through using the new pin. I tell her I will try, but I believe the card will still be frozen until midnight as the live person told her.

Of course the card won’t go through. Another coworker randomly appeared and tried. I apologize again to Crazy Jane, which just causes her to once more blame me and the self scan for her troubles. The front end manager arrives once more. I ask her if she could try running Crazy Jane’s order through the offline food stamp thing.

The front end manager agrees. At the end, it too failed because the food stamp card was frozen. The front end manager offers to hold her items until tomorrow. Crazy Jane disappears for a brief moment of time for a cigarette. I use that opportunity to go on my over due break.

I emerge from the break room to use the csm’s office phone to try to call my boyfriend to rant. It turned out I didn’t remember his phone number and my cell phone was at home. I emerge from the office and find that Crazy Jane had a $5 bill her hand and wants ME to help her.

I use what little acting skill I have and nicely tell her that the coworker covering my break will gladly help her. Somehow this causes me and the easy scan to once again have blame for her frozen food stamp card. I escape into the break room mouthing two bad words at her.

During that time the store manager came in and told me of a time Crazy Jane didn’t have her i.d for cigarettes and since corporate says to i.d everyone, he refused to let her purchase some. The rejection had caused her to call him every bad name in the book which didn’t faze him.

After I came back from break, the front end manager also told me to let it go. She said Crazy Jane lacks the ability to reason and that she would have had the same problem at the regular registers (which I knew) but it was nice to hear.

So what caused this 45 minute ordeal to occur?

Crazy Jane not being able to enter the simple pin number of 1234.

--CashyKat

Comments

[The Last Archimedean]

*sigh*

Why can't people be rational? If crazy lady can't remember a 4 digit number, she should write it down somewhere. And what good is yelling at you going to do? None. Why hasn't she been banned from the store?

[LaughingBarista]

What I've learned is that people will blame the employee for their problems, even when their is NO way it is your fault. I remember about a month ago a customer blamed me for his services being interrupted. The guy hadn't paid since April and it was now July. He told me that I was the one who shut off his services because who else would have done it. I informed him that no person does it but that the computer does, and that services are restored the same way. Long story short, he spent 20 minutes trying to argue that he did not owe any money, even though he full well knew that he hadn't paid in three months.

[LaughingBarista]

It also is laughable when customers think they should get credits to their cable accounts when they lose power. You know, because cable companies control the weather. Sigh.

[NC Tony]

*facepalm* Her pin was 1234? What's that line from "Spaceballs"?

Dark Helmet: So the combination is... one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

[The Last Archimedean]

I was thinking that too, NCT!

But if you still can't remember your PIN with 1234, I don't know how to make it any easier to remember.

[Karebear]

In today's world, alot of things require a pin number. Debit, food stamps, voicemail. Even some people have to remember numbers for the work. If you use different ones, it can be overwhelming to remember.

However, this gives no one the reason to blame it on another person if you forget the number. Its why it's your personal pin number, only your person should know it.

For me, I try to make it numbers I have to remember anyways. Birthdays, certain years, last numbers of phones, etc. However, if it's really important, I tend to try to make pictures out of my pin numbers. *shrug* each their own I suppose. Can't remember 1234 though?...yikes!

[DXKramer]

@The Last Archimedean: only way it would be easier would be if it was 1111.

[WMDKitty]

Eh, Tony beat me to the Spaceballs reference.

[Mollywobbles]

President Skroob: "The code is '12345'? Amazing, that's the same code that's on my luggage!"

Just thought I'd continue the Spaceballs joke, as it's the second part that really makes that joke stick. =3

[NC Tony]

Thanks Molly! I couldn't remember exactly how the next line went.

[Sick of it All]

Some of the most ableist shit I've read in awhile. It's super fucking offensive to refer to someone with mental issues as "crazy." Get the FUCK over yourself. Mental illness is a real and serious issue. So is hunger. It's not a big deal to you that she couldn't get her groceries, but try to imagine if that was the only food in your house. It also appears that she DOESN'T UNDERSTAND how the system works. Is it annoying that she couldn't remember a simple pin? Yes. But seriously, quit your fucking ranting and be grateful that you're not in that position. If helping someone is too fucking inconvenient for you, get a fucking data entry position where you don't deal with people. One day on this site and I realize that this website has some of the most racist, sexist, ableist shit I've seen in awhile.

[Zyffyr]

Dear "Sick of it All" - Go fuck yourself. The problem isn't that she couldn't remember the number. The problem is that she places the blame for her own inability to type in a 4 digit number on utterly blameless people who are in fact trying to help. Next time read past the first quarter of the post before flying off the handle, you brainless twit.

[Skittles]

@Sick of it all
Having worked in mental health as a residential counselor for the last eight years, and teaching independant living skills to dual diagnoses clients, I can safely say you are an idiot. People like you are far more of a problem than the rest of the folks on here. You know what happens when you spend years and years telling someone they can't do something and that others will do it for them, they stop fucking trying, and feel like they are useless. Yes some people have disabillities and they can not no matter what do specific things, however telling someone that because they can not do A they should never try to do B is ridiculous. Take it from me, this lady probably can learn how to use her card. Also to be quite frank if using a debit card is too dificult then she probably needs to be in a higher level of care for her own safety.

[TechTiger]

To add to Skittles above; take a look at the top left of the site, in the title bar...