One man's error is another man's success

 

Skullies 3

From The Key Oracle:

On the desk in my home office are two phones. One phone is the family phone and often receives calls from friends and family. The other phone is used for other things (outgoing faxes, etc.) and rarely receives legitimate calls. The other phone rings and when I answer there is a 10 second wait followed by someone speaking in a slight Southeast Asian accent so I already know where this is going.

CB: Is this Mr. ????????

ME: Yep, that’s me.

CB: This is Computer Bullshit and I am calling you to let you know that your computer is sending out errors into the internet.

ME: That’s great. I have spent the last week programming it to do that. Thanks for letting me know that I have been successful.

CB: I am here to help you fix your computer so that it will no longer be sending out errors.

ME: Why would I want it to stop after spending so much time and effort to get it to do that?

CB: But your computer is sending out errors.

ME: Right, isn’t that fantastic?

CB: I am here to help fix it.

ME: It is not broken, it is doing just what I want it to.

CB: Ok, bye.

(Hangs up)

-- The Key Oracle

 

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Retail Hell Memories: Ilia - When A Company Runs On D-GAS

 

This story was originally posted on August 24, 2011

 

ILIA1What's D-GAS?

Don't Give A Shit.

Bookstore Slave again with a story from the days when she was a Scrubs Slave.

This job lasted about 9 months, and those months astounded me. It was a small in-mall store tucked in a distant corner. This is a long one so please forgive me. It is all important.

On my very first day on the job (literally, my interviewer told me to appear on Wednesday for my first day of work), the two employees looked at me, looked at each other and said that the one manager in the store, also my interviewer, had quit on Monday. Fascinating, because I had called Monday morning and she had confirmed my start date.

My paperwork hadn't been processed. I was not in the system. The employees were muddling along as best they could with no manager, because calls to the nearest store a few cities away resulted in nothing. With some effort, we got me input to the best of our understanding.

Training consisted of whatever my fellow employees could teach me on the fly. Well, I got folding done fine. I could do cashier work just fine. I could close out the till, take it to the deposit ATM and lock down the store. Cool. Awesome. Bare minimum knowledge, but heck, it kept the place running. On Sunday I learned the process of submitting hours. Awesome. Paycheck on the way, right? Nope. Read on, and abandon all hope.

Turns out I was employee number 5 for the whole place, which, granted, is small enough that we can handle it. Joy. Well, we're all manager-less, our calls to the nearest authority figure are still being ignored or forgotten, and we're all just being one tight knit co-worker community because, damn it, we're all that's there.

With phone calls and a pow wow, we figure out our own scheduling, breaks and coverage needs. We, the untrained minions, have figured out how to keep everyone's breaks covered while juggling availability. Let's hear a round of applause for the poor untrained slaves.

Carolanne boobsSo why did Manager 1 leave? Because she discovered that the company planned on firing her for "Stealing." Now keep this in mind because it's important.

Two weeks go by, no paycheck. A call to the nearest store results in a "I'll get right on it." Translation: Shut the fuck up, you're being ignored already.

1 month, no paycheck, the General Manager appears on a routine tour of the store, and I bring up that my paycheck hasn't come in yet. A quick and simple fix reveals an un-dotted i or an uncrossed t somewhere in the system, the hours are submitted and I get all my missing pay promptly from there on out.

Two months later, we get a note, Employee 2 is Manager through internal promotion. No manager training results.

One month later, Employee 2 quits. Why? "Stealing."

Employee/Manager 3, rinse lather repeat. Quits before being fired for "stealing." See a mysterious trend? I can vouch for 4/5 days closing till with all of these managers that the till was never off by more than a few pennies, and that was usually over due to declined pennies.

By now we have two complete newbies that we had to hire because, well, our ranks were dwindling. We are struggling to train through osmosis, essentially.

Technical difficulty #1. A pipe cracks in the ceiling, resulting in frantic store rearrangement, a plastic bin being dumped out on the floor and placed under the crack. We place a call to the mall repair who could hear the pattering of water and sent a repair man right away. Problem fixed. Simple, relatively painless.

Technical difficulty #2. The fluorescent lights start going out. A call again results in a veiled STFU from Useless Manager. No way to contact the General Manager and not a problem important enough to pass on to her from UM. The light gets progressively dimmer in our store as they go out one by one.

Eventually customers start having to change in the dim stalls, coming out and using a mirror outside because they can barely see for shit.

When a customer (surprisingly they were all at abnormal levels of being patient and understanding) FINALLY sought to complain, I said "Please do!"

Cue shocked expression.

Coworker: I think you broke the customer."

Customer was sent with an itemized list of complaints and the only phone number we could offer, which was, sadly UM's number. I can only assume the customer complaint was shunted like everything else.

Nasty Ass ThievesFast Forward to 5 months into my job. GM comes wandering in, looks around and goes "Good lord, it's dark in here."

I bit my tongue till it nearly bled to hold back a loud and emphatic "DURRRRRP!" What followed is a brisk lesson in ordering and installing the lights (the mall told us it was OUR problem to replace the lights) and how to receive shipments (because we had no idea where the doohickey to scan new shit was or how to work it so we were forced to just open the boxes and put it out to keep the shelves from going bare.

No Inventory correction was done.

We lost an employee shortly after that due to school.

So. New employee. Now our tight knit community has been surviving on mutual support, so not only did we work together as best we could, but we also assisted one another for transportation and covering breaks.

However, this new girl never got the memo. This was a real, honest to god Thief.

Another employee was a single mom with five kids. Having no one to take care of all of the kids all the time, Single Mom would bring her eldest in occasionally so she could keep an eye on him. Now this was an angel, not a hellspawn. He helped out around the store, listened to mom, helped shelve scrubs that we folded and all around acted like the kind of kid you almost never meet in the retail business. Again, keep this in mind, as the following paragraphs will reveal important info.

The first clue was money disappearing from MY purse, and Thief with a cheap meal at a mall store, after complaining that she was starving and had no money. "No I meant that I didn't have any money for TOMORROW." mmmhmmm...

Once again, a complaint was ignored. "It's not [company's] responsibility to handle employees stealing from one another." Still no contact information to the GM despite us asking for it when she had been here.

So, I took a trip to Wally World, bought a toolbox and a padlock, and locked my stuff inside. Later that same day, Single Mom confronts me, saying that Thief said that I was locking my stuff up because HER KID was suspected of stealing. WHAT?!

I had to straighten it all out, touting her kid as a wonderful helper and that I would have hired HIM if he'd been of age. I had to explain that Thief had taken money from my purse while she was the only one in the back room and the kid had never left anyone's eyesight except to trot across the hall for the public bathroom.

After my purse had to be locked up, the till suddenly became exactly $5 short every time Thief worked. Every. Goddamn. Time. UM acted all concerned when we reported the till being stolen from, which was ultimately the COMPANY'S fucking money, but if you've noticed the trend, you know what was done about it for two whole weeks. That's right. abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

Jason beerOn the plus side, we got a hallelujah from the back room, because GM's number was magically unearthed in some mysterious corner under a bunch of product boxes. Thief was promptly fired. Our lack of manager was FINALLY noticed and we got a brand spanking new manager, who I'll call Racist Bitch (you'll see why). Now she was not Caucasian, something that would normally not bother me. Over the course of working here, we had workers of all colors, and I got along with all of them save for Thief.

Now RB decided that the store needed to be whipped into shape and proceeded to do so.

Her: "Now I know you all know what you should be doing so I don't see why you haven't been working according to company standards."

Us: "Um..."

Her: "I know you read the handbook."

Us: "Handbook?"

Her: "This."

She pulls out a key, unlocks a drawer that has been locked and inaccessible since I started and pulls out company handbooks, which should have been part of the hiring process.

Cue blank stare.

Her: "And you should have seen the company video."

Blank stare, then I say: "How?"

We do not have a tv or a vcr except for a recordable vhs collection and a monitor, which are part of the bloody security system that we use... mystery of mysteries... to record security tapes 24/7.

Sooo, we are all "trained" by a "proper" manager, who had to eject the security tape and play the company video on the monitor.

My hours, despite having no other job or school at the time were suddenly reduced to 4 hours each for three days a week. The math resulted in paying more for gas than I got in a paycheck every week. The reason? "It's a competition now. If you want more hours, you all need to work harder in order to earn them." She even wrote me up for not working harder, which served as an excuse for termination if I dared made a stink about it.

Yeaaaah fuck you.

1) I am the only employee whose hours were reduced right now, instead of balancing according to store needs.

2) I'm not working harder for less hours because YOU reduced them.

Skullies RHU3) I worked my ass off for the 8 months BEFORE you ever came to this store, and

4) I helped save this store's ASS not only in money but in manpower to keep this fucker from shutting down completely.

I gave up and quit after only a month of her presence. Passing by on a later date, I glanced in and saw that all of the former employees had been replaced. Running into another former co-worker, I found that Racist Bitch had served everyone the same treatment "work harder if you want more hours" and then writing them up so that it was documented that she had "made an effort to correct the behavior."

All the while, she had been cutting back on hours until the employes had to find other employment to pay their bills. Each and every employee that replaced the hardworking mini community was hand picked by RB, and each and every one of them was the same ethnicity as she was.

5 years later, RB was STILL manager, and over the course of time, every single employee in that store has only ever been one particular ethnicity.

The Useless Manager was useless, the GM only ever did the bare minimum she could get away with and it took them 8 damn months just to hire a new manager for the store, resulting in my leaving the company after 9.

Complete and total D-GAS.

--Bookstore Slave

 

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Dumbass Nasty Ass Thief Encounter

 

Dumbass18

From Fed Up Retail Sut, August, 2009:

So here I am again Slaves!.. I know you guys are getting tired of me and my complaining but this one is a good one.....

So I'm working my big 3 hour shift(man I spent more in gas getting to and from than I made), and one of my fellow co-workers walked up to me laughing.

So, silly me I asked what she was laughing at. Her reply was as follows:

Me: What's so funny?

Her: We had a shoplifter.

Me: Are you frickin serious?

Her: I think she left her keys in the pocket of the clothes she left behind!

After further investigation we discovered that she sure as shit did! This dumb bitch had left her CAR KEYS in her old clothes!

So we told her when she came back for her keys we would trade her old clothes and keys for our new clothes that she took!! Can you in=magine the look on her face??? I bet you can't!

NAT--Fed Up Retail Slut

 

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Scams And Scammers - I Know The Owner!

 

This story was originally posted on May 23, 2013

 

SCAMMERSHello there! First time poster Dreeby here. This incident happened a few years ago, back when I worked in camera and phone repairs in an electronics shop.

The store is a small establishment, and only had six or so employees at the time. I rarely had to deal with custys (unless I’d failed to do my job and had to explain my failure), but I was in the room right next to the shop itself where all the custys came in, and heard pretty much everything while remaining unseen.

My boss, who was also the owner of the establishment, was absolutely amazing. A really nice guy who had no tolerance whatsoever for crustys who threatened, yelled, made impossible demands or tried to pull scams. His motto was “the customer is barely ever right” – and he has successfully run a business for at least 15 years. He refunds and gives new products when it’s legit, and never for any other reason. Add to this that he’s a huge, muscular guy. I will call him Gringo, for reasons that would take too long to explain here.

We openly and honestly dealt in b-stock, which is used merchandise that has been repaired, looked over, and comes with a new warranty, in this case issued by us. If the item purchased at our store had a fault, we fixed it, refunded or replaced it. We got our fair share of people who haggled and argued about the prices, as well as some pure crazies. This story is about a favorite crazy.

I’m going to call him Basket Man, for reasons that will soon be obvious.

Carolanne cigar 2Basket Man comes in, wishes to purchase a 32’’ TV. Gringo is currently at the counter acting cashier. He gives Basket Man the price, which is, by the way, already clearly advertised on the item.

Basket Man: No no, that’s too expensive. I will only pay [XXX] amount!

Gringo: No, the price is [XXX], As is says right there.

Basket Man: No! I know the owner! He promised me a discount!

[Gringo, boss and owner of the store, raises an eyebrow.]

Gringo: Did he, now? And you say you know him? So you know the owner [makes up a name at random]?

Basket Man: Yes, yes I do! [Random name] promised me a discount!

After Gringo tells him he will have to have the boss present (!) to give a discount, Basket Man gives up and pays full price. But it doesn’t stop here. He returns about a week later to complain about his TV.

Basket Man: My TV is broken! I want a new one!

Gringo: Well, bring it in, and let us have a look at it. It may be a quick and easy fix.

Basket Man: Bring it in?

Gringo: Yes, so we can have a look.

Basket Man: But it’s broken! You don’t need to see it! It’s broken! I just want a new one! I left it at home because it’s broken! Why would you need to see it? Do you think I’m lying?

Needless to say, there’s no way he’s getting a new TV without letting us have the old one. We’d already caught him lying once, and this is probably one of the saddest attempts for a scam I’ve ever seen. However, the man does not give up and begins ranting, which is hilarious at first, but slowly becomes tedious.

It carries on for a good 20 minutes. He rambles something about how “you put too many buns and cans in a basket while walking and then the basket breaks which means you have no more buns” or something like that. Yup. Basket Man.

In the end, my boss loses his temper entirely and tells the crusty that he wouldn’t even sell him poop. Or, more precisely:

Gringo: I wouldn’t sell you as much as a pile of steaming poop, even if you asked me to! If you don’t leave now, I’m throwing you out!

The crusty got instantly banned from the store, and spent some time standing outside the entrance yelling and asking other customers to purchase another TV for him, as he was not allowed in the store. He never understood he’d been talking to the owner the whole time.

I do have many more stories from this place, but I thought this would be a good start.

Happy retailing!

--Dreeby

 

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COUPON HELL: NASTY ASS THIEF ENCOUNTER

 

Couponhell

From May, 2011

Hello my darlings - Ms.E here. First time posting but avid reader.

I currently slave away at the same place as Jit, (K-Barf) but hopefully am leaving soon.
Something happened today that simply infuriated meI work at customer service - so I have to run a sales register, refund register and a bunch of extra machines simultaneously.
 
We were backed up today so I opened my sales register. This lady comes up with 50+ items - all pet related too. into my line. I'm thinking ugh this is going to suck, because I have to hand scan each item ( no register scanners. MEH.)Buttttt I put on my kiss ass smile and cheerfully say "Hi how are you today? Do u have your rewards Card."
 
BitchAssCustomer: 347 -
 
Ms.E One minute mam let me cue up that screen >>>>>  - please don't spew out ur number to me. I cant cue it up the second you start talking. I'm a human. Greet me back please.
The number mam?
 
BAC: ####......
 
>>> So I'm scanning...scanning...scanning.....bag. Bag. Bag.
 
Ms.E: Ok so that'll be 3xx.xx for today.
 
BAC: But I didn't want those Denta Bones.
 
*note she never said anything to me regarding them, she placed them on the counter and watched me scan/bag the 8 boxes.
 
Ms.E: I'm sorry mam. Just wait one minute I have to have a manager override and void out the total since its more than 2 items.
 
BAC: That's fine...
 
Carolanne 069*Call for override. I tell her I'm going to take a return while we wait. She says that's fine.
 
Cue in Dynamite - awesome manager.
 
Dyna: Sorry about that ma'am, here you go she'll go ahead and ring you up. EXIT.
 
Seeing as how all the items are bagged I start to type in the UPC numbers, but no. No that's simply unacceptable.
 
BAC: No you can't do that.
 
Ms.E: I'm sorry mam?
 
BAC: I want new bags. Those are dirty now.
 
*The bags are all neatly in her cart. Which I put in there since she won't do anything to help/be nice.
 
Ms.E: I'm sorry mam?
 
BAC: Well I work for the humane society and they all need to be clean.
 
Ah yess....because animals exposed to dirt and the elements is unnatural. So I swallow it.
 
Ms.E Well would you like to use your tax ID so that the company doesn't have to pay tax?
 
Bac: No.
 
So she wants to pay the 30 something $s in tax...suspicion. Anyways..Re do the ENTIRE transaction, reringing and bagging her items per her request.
 
Ms.E (Big smile for the finale) Your total for today is $3xx.xx
 
BAC: I have coupons.
 
Jason 038This bitch takes out a fucking fistful - I kid you not - a mother fucking fistful of coupons from her purse and throws them on the counter.
 
HIT 4.
 
FUCKING A.
 
Proceed to scan all coupons and hand her back the ones that aren't eligible. (expired/different product)
 
BAC: Cant you just see if they scan?
 
Ms.E: No mam, the store looses money if we accept expired coupons.
 
BAC: mhmmm.......
 
So bitch keeps up with her nonchalant attitude while I'm scanning and growing a returns line.
 
FINALLY DONE.
 
Ms.E: So the total is $1xx.xx (total bitch. great savings but total bitch)
 
So BAC pays. I say bye have a nice day bleh bleh bleh and I go to the return line, turning my back to her ridiculousness.
 
BUT IT'S NOT OVER!!!!!
 
She waits there, I work through my line, then hesitatingly turn to her and ask her if there is something else she needed
 
BAC: Id like to return these.
 
Ms.E: What in particular mam?
 
RHSEPT 501BAC: All of it (SMILES for the first time since she came)
 
And I get the full amount before coupons back.
 
OH HELL TO THE NO.
 
While it's true that the computer doesn't automatically deduct the coupons it's up to the service person to alter the price to the correct amount.
 
Ms.E: Ma'am that's entirely fraudulent. If you no longer want the products I'll be happy to return them for you but you aren't getting any more back than what you paid.
 
BAC: OH FUCK NO!
 
Bitch proceeds to have a temper tantrum. Ripping her RE BAGGED bags all over the floor. I'm calling security when an ASM comes up: Lets call him Push over *hint hint* and asks what the problem is.
 
BAC: She won't give me my money back!!
 
I patiently explain the situation to PU and he comes back with//
 
PU: I'm sorry mam, we'll go ahead and give you the full return.
 
DUMBASS SAY WHAT??? I'm fucking pissed.
 
He can tell. "Do the full amount Ms.E."
 
He watches me do her fucking return and makes sure I give her the full amount back.
 
So BAC leaves - up 200.00 and a fat smile on her face. I'm fuming.
 
Ms.E: PU why did u let her have the full money back?
 
PU: Because 200.00 is not worth loosing a customer over.
 
WTF?? I'm sorry but since when do we want scammers to come back?
 
WER fhjuierghuiertgh we4hki ftghybherhfhertbghv (angry pounding at key board)
 
--Ms.E

 

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