Mistaken Identity: FIRED FROM A JOB I NEVER HAD

 

C

From August, 2011, Ilia's first post as Bookstore Slave:

Hello all, you can call me Bookstore Slave. 

Now on this day, I was a fellow customer in this store. I had no uniform, no name tag, and a purse over my shoulder. I was carrying a basket of books I was planning to purchase, and stopped frequently to READ the goddamn excerpts on the inside cover.

Custy: Can you tell me where to find [insert obscure book title here]?

Me: Unfortunately I can't. I'm not an employee. You can ask them at the information desk though.

I point out the info desk, which is a whole 15 feet away.  

Custy: I don't want to walk that far! Just tell me where it is!

Me: Lady, I don't work here.

I walk away and select another book that catches my interest.

Custy: HELLO! EXCUSE ME! HELLO! HELLO!

She follows me down the aisle, yelling and banging her fist on the shelving.

Me: LADY! I don't fucking work here! Ask a goddamn employee!

The woman goes fucking ballistic and a manager arrives at a dead run, probably thinking somebody's getting murdered. 

Custy: Fire this bitch! She swore at me and refuses to help me!

The manager looks at me, looks at the customer and then says: Ma'am, this is not one of our employees.

Custy: This woman was rude to me and I won't stand for it! You fire her right now or I'm calling your corporate office!

Manager to me: You're fired.

The woman strutted off like it was her birthday and I got a coupon for the trouble. To this day I don't know whether she was stupid, or just that goddamn determined to get SOMEBODY fired that day.

--Bookstore Slave

 

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Reverse Mistaken Identity: "You don't even work here!"

 

Nametag2

 August, 2016

Former McHell Manager here, turned Manager in Training for the King.

I have a story for you, about my manager. I didn't witness this myself, but was told about it from my manager the day after it happened.

Guy came in, and ordered a couple of Spicy sandwiches. Which, for the Land of the Kings, are normal chicken sandwiches with spicy sauce on them, instead of the patties themselves being spicy.

Co-worker: Here are your spicy chickens

Guy: Can I have the sauce with them?

Co-worker: The...sauce? There's already spicy sauce on it.

Guy: No! The sauce! Ranch! I want ranch sauce!

Co-worker: Oh, Ranch! It will be $.11

(We're one of those stores that charge for sauces and have a sign up saying so)

The guy proceeds to flip the fuck out, claiming that he wanted sauce for his sandwich and he shouldn't be charged for it. Eventually my manager came into the story and tried explaining to him our policy. At that point he flips out more, claiming we don't have a sauce policy and that it's not written down anywhere. My manager walked a foot to her left where the sign was and pointed it out to him. He flips out more and says this little gem:

Nametag"You don't even work here!"

At this point, she looked down at her shirt that has a decent sized logo on it, walks to the phone and tells the guy to get out or she is calling the police. This guy apparently was raving mad over a sauce and causing a pretty hefty scene for a decent amount of time. He hightailed it out as soon as she said she was calling the police.

I love this manager, as she's one of the managers who doesn't cave in for most customers who pull that "if I get angry enough I will get my way bit"

And yes, I realize this was all over $.11 but hey, not my call.

But yeah, to this day we laugh about it and go up to her and say "Don't you know, despite wearing your uniform, clocking in, and ordering us around, you don't work here?"

--Former McHell Manager

 

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Mistaken Identity: "Well? Can I get these in a size 7?"

 

Nametag2

From Reality Pixie in Australia:

I work in a CD/DVD retail outlet in a major shopping center out in Soul-Rotting Suburbia, Western Australia. I often hang around and do my shopping before and after my shifts, still wearing my uniform.

I was in a shoe store one day, doing what you do when you look for new shoes: picking them up, trying them on and walking around, all the usual "I'm a customer and I'm looking to purchase a snazzy new pair of footwears" sort of behaviours, certainly not "I work here and am looking to serve customers" behaviours.

Anyway, after a short amount of time another customer approached me and asked if I could please find x shoes in x size her her. Nametag

No dramas, it's common mistake.

I laughed it off in a friendly way and politely pointed out that I work for a different retail store. She did the usual customer thing, acting all embarrassed and spewing apologies, so I went back to trying on shoes....but she just stood there watching me.

After a while she approached me again, this time looking a little annoyed, and said, "Well? Can I get these in a size 7??"

The rest of our exchange went something like this.....

Me: "Umm...no ma'am, yet again I don't actually work here..."

Cust: "Well can you go and get somebody who does??"

Me: "....No. I'm buying shoes."

Cust: *insert here a random tirade of how customer service is going down hill, how sales assistants never want to go the extra mile for the customer, rarararara*

Fortunately, somebody who actually worked at the store overheard her harpy screeches and took her off my hands.

But the story doesn't end there, RHU, oh no. Nametag3

A couple days later I got a call from the area manager of the company I actually work for. The same dipshit actually took note of the name and store I worked at on my name tag, and filed a complaint against me!

Fortunately the area manager thought it was hilarious. Oh, but still, the story goes on.

Not only did Ms. Dipshit complain to my company, but to the manager of the shoe store. Apparently she was quite upset when she was informed that the manager there could not take disciplinary action against staff from other stores....

God I have so many of these stories. I have rather distinctive shoulder length dreadlocks and wear purple-framed glasses, so I'm pretty recognizable. Unfortunately the shopping center is also my local, so I'm constantly getting customers come up to me when I'm doing my shopping on my days off (so I'm obviously not in uniform) saying "Hey! You're that chick that works in -----, aren't you? Is it your day off? Oh, could you help me with this anyway?"

Short answer? I will break your fucking neck.

--Reality Pixie

 

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Mistaken Identity: The Walmart Look

 

Nametag3

From  December, 2009:

DepotDemon speaking to you all about the age old question that is the bane of all retail...

"Do you work here?"

We all know that this question does not end well, but for once it does.

I am one of those people who shops at Wally World, way more often than I should, but what can I say? I'm cheap. :/ I never wear a blue shirt near the place, but still I get asked if I work there.

I work another job as a security guard...wait, officer (eye roll inserted here) and the uniform is a white dress shirt, and dark grey dress pants. Al long as memory serves, those colors come nowhere near blue and khaki, in any dimension.

To top it off, I have a heavy winter coat on.

I'm standing in mens wear looking for gloves, and this obnoxious fat lady turns to me, and asks very loudly and gratingly (is that even a word?) "Do you work here?"

To which I look down at my outfit, look back up, and say "Are you kidding me? Does it look like I fucking work here? I mean I know white looks like blue but I'm sorry I don't."

As she walked away, I heard a grumble about "the manager" or something.

I suppose I could have been nicer, but I did just come from Depot and there was 3 years of repressed Depot anger and I just didn't give a damn.

So for once, I got to say what I really felt and it felt AWESOME!!!!!! Bwhahaha!

--DepotDemon

 

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Mistaken Identity Hell: DEMANDING SERVICES UNRELATED TO ANYTHING THE COMPANY DOES

 

Nametag2

From Triple Letter Receptionist, November, 2010:

Hello RHU!

I was inspired by MouthyMaven's tale of terror in a magazine clearing house to share my own stories of customer service hell in a corporate environment.

I'm a receptionist for a company that's basically synonymous with "My car broke down! I'd better call (insert company name here)."

Let me state right off the bat that I love my job. My coworkers are (mostly) awesome, the management actually cares about us, and I get crazy things like sick time and vacation time (what, you mean I can go on vacation? Seriously?)

My office is a combination of retail space selling travel-related products like suitcases and carry-on safe bottles, an insurance agency, and a travel agency.The whole space is open to the public, so even though we spend a certain amount of time hunkered down in our own cubicles, we constantly have customers coming through too.

My job is to greet people and give out free maps to members while also answering the switchboard for the office. My desk is adjacent to the travel store, so people constantly ask me to ring up their purchases even though I don't have a cash register or even a log-in code for the registers, which are all of five feet away, but we all know customers don't read signs.

Now I'll get into the meat of my story.

My office is sandwiched between a very wealthy suburb and an interstate, so we get a nice mix of mostly polite, intelligent customers and tourists who saw our logo from the freeway and need directions. 98% of customers are kind, and I really enjoy giving them lots of maps, guides, tourist magazines, and brochures to make them excited about their trip.  RHSEPT 497

Nearly everyone is at least kind of happy when they come into our office (that's the great part about working in the travel industry), and I like to think they leave as happy or happier.

Except, of course, those special customers.

I realize that road service, insurance, and travel planning services maybe don't seem to to have a lot in common to the average consumer. (Hint: They all involve cars or other ways of getting from here to there.)

I also understand that a neighboring state's offices provide DMV-type services like car registration, which we can't do in our state. This seems to lead to a certain segment of our customer base thinking that we can do absolutely anything at any time simply because they pay their membership dues.

For example, an older couple with German accents blew up at me and a few of my coworkers because we wouldn't weigh and add postage to their package.

The wife kept saying, “I JUST want you to weigh it. We are your customers!”

WTF? How did she get the idea that we were the post office? Does she also go to the grocery store and ask them for upholstery?

The real award in this category goes to a lady I'll call Redhead Bitch.

Redhead Bitch was an attractive, well-dressed woman in her mid-thirties. She looked totally normal. She came to my desk and said calmly, “I'd like you to print my airline tickets.”

RHSEPT 530At first this seemed only kind of weird. We have a call center (only a call center, no walk-ins allowed, which pisses some people off) that handles domestic airline reservations. The call center is located more that eleven miles from our office and we don't have any access to the reservations they make.

“Do you remember the name of the agent who helped you?” I asked, thinking that maybe I could get one of our travel agents (who only handle international travel and cruises—I know, it's confusing) to call her airline agent and maybe our travel agents could access her reservation and print it.

“Oh, I booked it through Alaska,” Redhead Bitch said, not bitching yet.

Here, my natural desire to be as helpful as possible—I really take pride in holding up the company image, since they've treated me so well, especially coming straight from Old Slavery as I did—hit a wall with what I could imagine my boss saying if she found out I let someone behind my desk to access their personal booking, which they didn't book through us.

You know, a potential corporate security type of thing. I said, a little uncertainly, “I'm sorry, I don't think we can do that for you. If you'd like, I'd be happy to get you a local map and show you how to get to the library where you can use their printer.”

Redhead blew up. “I don't WANT to go to the library. I want you to print my tickets! Is that so hard? Can't you just print them?”

“I'm really sorry, I just don't think—”

“Fine, whatever,” she said, and changed track suddenly. “I need to renew my membership.”

“Straight back, under the 'membership/insurance' sign,” I said, pointing. She walked off.

From down at the other end of the office, I could hear her dinging the bell for service and then telling the agent who came up to meet her, “That girl at the front desk wouldn't let me print—”

I went over to the cashier desk to tell one of my buddy coworkers what just happened.

“She wants us to print her Alaska tickets that she booked through Alaska?” I whispered. “Isn't that like going into Gap and demanding that they print your Nordstrom receipt?”

We were whispering and giggling a little over it—well, what else can you do?

Then Redhead Bitch seemed to be done with the membership department and stopped at the travel agency. I could hear her saying, “I just need to print my tickets!” and one of the agents saying, “Did you book them through our Air Express line?” RHSEPT 447

“God!” Redhead Bitch yells. “I just want to print my tickets! Why is that so hard for you people? I JUST WANT TO PRINT THEM.”

I scuttle back to my desk. She storms by, leans on my desk, and snarls, “I heard you talking about me with your little friend. I'm not going to forget this.”

And she storms out. She said it so intensely I felt like she was putting a gypsy curse on me or something. It was kind of terrifying, the kind of thing that makes you wonder if she'll be back with a flamethrower to torch the building.

As soon as the door swung closed after her, the whole office erupted in howls of laughter. Coworkers came over to congratulate me on withstanding the brunt of her rage attack.

It's been over two months since then, and I haven't heard anything from her since then. I still want to know how she heard me talking about her, since we were out of her sight at the time and whispering more than thirty feet away while she was yelling at the membership agents.

RHUers, have you had custys demand services that not only you can't provide, but which have nothing to do with your entire company? [read answers here]

--Triple Letter Receptionist

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Retail Hell Memories: Mistaken Identity - You may Not Work here, But I Still Expect You To Help Me

 

This story was originally posted on  

 

Uniform JasonFrom Reality Pixie in Australia:

I work in a CD/DVD retail outlet in a major shopping center out in Soul-Rotting Suburbia, Western Australia. I often hang around and do my shopping before and after my shifts, still wearing my uniform.

I was in a shoe store one day, doing what you do when you look for new shoes: picking them up, trying them on and walking around, all the usual "I'm a customer and I'm looking to purchase a snazzy new pair of footwears" sort of behaviours, certainly not "I work here and am looking to serve customers" behaviours.

Anyway, after a short amount of time another customer approached me and asked if I could please find x shoes in x size her her.

No dramas, it's common mistake.

I laughed it off in a friendly way and politely pointed out that I work for a different retail store. She did the usual customer thing, acting all embarrassed and spewing apologies, so I went back to trying on shoes....but she just stood there watching me.

After a while she approached me again, this time looking a little annoyed, and said, "Well? Can I get these in a size 7??"

The rest of our exchange went something like this.....

Me: "Umm...no ma'am, yet again I don't actually work here..."

Cust: "Well can you go and get somebody who does??"

Jason humphMe: "....No. I'm buying shoes."

Cust: *insert here a random tirade of how customer service is going down hill, how sales assistants never want to go the extra mile for the customer, rarararara*
Fortunately, somebody who actually worked at the store overheard her harpy screeches and took her off my hands.

But the story doesn't end there, RHU, oh no.

A couple days later I got a call from the area manager of the company I actually work for. The same dipshit actually took note of the name and store I worked at on my name tag, and filed a complaint against me!

Fortunately the area manager thought it was hilarious. Oh, but still, the story goes on.

Not only did Ms. Dipshit complain to my company, but to the manager of the shoe store. Apparently she was quite upset when she was informed that the manager there could not take disciplinary action against staff from other stores....

God I have so many of these stories. I have rather distinctive shoulder length dreadlocks and wear purple-framed glasses, so I'm pretty recognizable. Unfortunately the shopping center is also my local, so I'm constantly getting customers come up to me when I'm doing my shopping on my days off (so I'm obviously not in uniform) saying "Hey! You're that chick that works in -----, aren't you? Is it your day off? Oh, could you help me with this anyway?"

Short answer? I will break your fucking neck.

--Reality Pixie

 

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