206 "Yeah, i just came down to the lobby to use the microwave, and the door is locked"
Me (Imagine that.. was wondering why I used those keys) "Yes, sir. We lock up the lobby at 10pm every night."
206 "Well, i need to use the microwave, so unlock the door for me."
Me "I'm sorry sir, the doors are locked for security reasons."
206 "What was that motto again.... OH YEAH. 'A perfect stay, every time'....."
Me (My, my.. a dramatic pause. But at least he can read the key card) "I understand this, sir, however, I do not unlock that door for anybody. Its for security."
206 "Look, I'm a guest here. I'll show you my key, and you can let me in to use the microwave"
Me (Yeah, like I trust people just because they have a key.) "Sir, I dont even let my wife in this door after 10pm."
206 "Well, what am I supposed to do? Eat cold food?"
Me "Well, sir, we do have rooms with microwaves and minifridges in them, and they only cost 5 dollars more per night"
206 "Look, I just need to use it for 2 minutes"
Me "Sir, its a security thing. I'm sorry."
206 "I DONT CARE, I NEED A MICROWAVE!"
Me "In that case sir, you should have spent the extra 5 bucks on a room with a microwave."
206 "Look, asshole, just unlock the door, and let me use the microwave"
Me "Yeah.. I'm thinkin... No."
Now, he hangs up on me, and I figure I'm done with him til morning. How wrong I was. I look out my window, and there he is, holding a plate. his cold food, getting colder. What a shame.
206 "Look, man, just let me in."
Me "Sir, as I told you on the phone. I do not let anybody in this building at night. That means anybody, guest, family, anybody. The only exception i make, is for Police. I let them in to egt a cup of coffee. But then, I know the police are not going to rob me."
206 "So you discriminate against people who arent cops?"
Me (Oh my god... wish I had a gun...) "No, sir. I dont consider giving a cop a cup of coffee a risk. I do, however, consider letting a person I have never seen before, has never stayed here before, and has displayed a rather impressive temper, to be a security risk."
206 "Look, bro.. my food is getting colder, and I dont have my shoes on. Its fucking cold out here, man.. just let me in and let me use the microwave?"
Me (28 degrees, and windy... cold? NO WAY. And wtf is with this 'Bro' crap? What happened to asshole?) *Stares at jackass blankly*
206 "I'LL HAVE YOUR FUCKING JOB FOR THIS, ASSHOLE!" *Storms off*
Me (Ahh, there we go.. back to asshole)
Now, what lesson have we learned tonight?
Customers suck. Customers are the lowest form of life. They are MIND NUMBINGLY STUPID. I mean, really. I waste 10 minutes on the phone with this guy, telling him no. So he walks down BAREFOOT to try and get me to let him in? What the fuck was he thinking?
He's also paying 5 bucks less than the standard rate. For no apparant reason. So, not only is he a jackass, he's the WORST KIND OF JACKASS. He's the guy who argues his way to a discount he doesnt deserve, then demands more than what we offer in service.
After checking the computer, I find that he has been here for four days, and has caused a problem EVERY day. From demanding long distance phone charges be removed, to demanding extra EVERYTHING. Towels, pillows, blankets, shampoo, soap, shaving cream, razors, toilet paper, kleenex, if we have it, he wanted it, and more. Like that guy on that commercial, who asks the stewardess for extra peanuts, then steals that other dudes bag of peanuts.
I FUCKING HATE THESE PEOPLE!!
I was baking cookies, tho..
Customer: "There are several adult pay per movies on my account that I didn't order, I'd like them removed."
Me: "No. Is there anything else I can do for you today?"
Customer: "What do you mean no?"
Me: "I mean I will not remove them."
Customer: "..."
Me: "..."
Customer: "But I didn't order these!!!"
Me: "You are responsible for any pay per views ordered on any of your recievers by anybody, I'm afraid. If you like I can show you how to set up a password on your reciever to prevent this from happening in the future."
<insert the usual; "I'll have your job", "I'm going back to cable", etc. etc>
My favorites are the people who seem to think pay per views can "accidentally" show up on an account without anyone having ordered them - yeah, like charges show up on credit cards without anybody having made a purchase.
God I'm glad I never have to go back there.
ring ring
"McDonald's, can I help you?"
"You mother fucking cocksucker-"(What kind of mental midget immediately says something like that to someone they want something from who is not in any way shape or form obliged to actually give it to them? At least say, "Hi, you mother fucking cocksucker,")
click
ring ring
"McDonald's, can I help you?"
"Don't you fucking hang up on me you-"
click
ring ring
"McDonald's, can I help you?"
"I'LL HAVE YOUR FUCKING JOB IF YOU FUCKING"
click
ring ring
"McDonald's, can I help you?"
"FUCK YOU! IF YOU FUC-"
"I don't know who the fuck you think you've been talking to, but you've got me confused with someone else."(My favorite line to people mouthing off to me! Unfortunately, I have to use it all too often at work)
click
ring ring
pick up
hang up
ring ring
pick up
hang up
ring ring
pick up
hang up
After the third time of that she didn't call back. 
Did I mention this is the same lady who called the police on me because I kicked her out of the store for cursing at the employees and the other customers? She told the police I was violating her rights because she had a right to be at McDonald's. She peeled off all of a sudden after she hung up the phone, so I assume they told her if the police came down she'd be arrested for tresspassing. I was hoping they'd show up to investigate what happen and then haul her away after she was the one who called them in the first place.
Cust 1: I want you to get me a Leather Manager's Chair.
Me: Sorry, out of stock, sir.
Cust 1: But there are tickets for it!
Me: The tickets aren't linked to our inventory.
Cust 2: Sell him the floor model.
Me: We aren't allowed to sell the floor models.
Cust 1: You fucking have this chair on sale but don't have any?
Me: Its a good sale, people bought them.
Cust 2: Fine, give him a raincheck.
Me: I can raincheck the instore sale, but not the rebate.
Cust 1: Why not?
Me: Because while we can change prices at the register, we cannot force the manufacturers to give you money.
Cust 1: So I'm screwed?
Me: You could order it from our online store. It has 1-3 business day delivery, and is free shipping for any item over 50 dollars.
Cust 2: But you just said then he couldn't get the rebate!
Me: No, I said that if I rainchecked he wouldn't get the rebate. He can get it fine from the online store.
Cust 2: You should give him a different kind of chair at the same price.
Me: I don't have the authority to do that, sir.
Cust 1: Fuck it. The Staples went out of business, you're going next.
Me: Actually, they moved down the road to a new building.
Cust 1: Fuck you. <walks out>
Cust 2: You cheated my friend. <walks out>
quote:Indeed. More!
It's KaLourin Season!
I love Snoota stories
"Yes, my name is [random branch manager] at [random branch], I'd like to have the Linux system placed on all my desktops here at the branch. Could you please call me back to arrange a time to set this up?"
We have 2 Linux servers on our network (running MRTG), which has about 1500 computers on it total.
Pesco got to call him back. He was told no. 
-Tok
Then some crazy old lady grabbed my nuts.
Other than that, I liked all my customers.
quote:
Toktuk wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
We got a call on our Helpdesk voicemail the otherday..."Yes, my name is [random branch manager] at [random branch], I'd like to have the Linux system placed on all my desktops here at the branch. Could you please call me back to arrange a time to set this up?"
We have 2 Linux servers on our network (running MRTG), which has about 1500 computers on it total.
Pesco got to call him back. He was told no.
-Tok
Would have loved to hear Pesco handling it.
I love these stories. I remember when I worked at the convenience store and asshats would come in wanting something. Cigarettes were one of the two big battlegrounds:
Kid walks in, and I do mean KID. This KID was MAYBE 16 years old. If that. He was dressed to look older (sort of stuff college kids and wannabe gangstas wear), but I was 18 at the time and he looked younger than my 15 year old stepsister. So he's wandering around the store, taking his sweet time, doing all these things that I guess he thought made him look older (checking the prices between the name brand and generic chips. At a gas station convenience store. They cost the same thing, numb nuts...anyway he was also doing shit like checking the brand of wine. At a gas station convenience store. Dressed like a hood...yeah). I'm EXPECTING that he's probably getting ready to try and shoplift; kids who are going to steal tend to get real nervous, hanging around longer than they have to. Let me tell you...if you're in a convenience store twenty minutes (not including time you're in the toilet or something), attendees are going to start to wonder what's up. No one hangs out at the convenience store except people who work there. And occasionally drug dealers outside if we don't run them off.
Anyway, this kid's floating around the store, trying to act tough, and I'm sizing him up. Approximate height, weight, build, hair color, eye color (kid's dressed like an extra from a Nelly video...he's whiter than white. Snow looks at him and says "Damn kid you're looking pale"). Then he struts up, grabs a pack of Skittles, and says...in this horrifically fake deep voice..."Yeah man, these an' a pack of Marlboros in a box."
<Adam> Sure. ID Please.
<Kid> What?
<Adam> ID please. Can't sell to Kids under eighteen.
<Kid> I ain't no kid.
<Adam> That's fine. ID Please.
<Kid> How about a blunt then. (Blunts, for the record, are stubby cigars popular with weed smokers, I'm told, because they cut them open and fill them with marijuana, re-roll, and smoke; also very popular with the wannabes)
<Adam> Any tobacco product, I need to see ID.
<Kid> How about some Skoal.
<Adam> Tobacco product. Can I see your ID?
At this point the kid's stuck. He's been caught, he knows it, he's sweating and he's embarrassed. He's like one of the nervous guys who comes in to buy an issue of Oui or the incest letters mag or something (yeah there's a porn letters mag about incest...it IS the south after all). All he really wants is to get out of the store, but he's young and he also wants to act tough. And then it happens.
<Kid> DAMN IT! Just sell me the damn pack of cigarettes!
Not that uncommon. Except the kid's voice cracks. Not once, not twice, but three times. So it sounds more like "dAMn iIt! Just sell me the dAMn pack of cigarettes!" I started laughing so hard. I couldn't help it. He left the skittles and ran out of the store.
Cigarettes are also fun in the middle of the night. The store is, broadly speaking, open 24/7. But there's a sign on the door that says that we close for an hour in the evenings, for restocking purposes. So I'm working graveyard as usual and the post-bar crowd has come and gone (more on them later), and there's people who come at like 3:30am to this out in the middle of nowhere (it's not like there's bars nearby, and there's a 24 hour a day supermarket a block away and it's like right where the town area meets the rural area) locale and want cigarettes. The sign says "Closed" as I'm in the cooler stocking drinks.
I'm hanging bottles of Mountain Dew on the rack, and I hear this faint "scree screee" sound. Sounds like something on glass. Okay, I'm curious, so I walk out of the cooler and look around. There's a guy there, tapping his keys on the glass door, and it's making this squealy-glass sound. I tell him we're closed; if he needs gas, he can use the self-serve credit card pumps (they won't turn on unless someone's swiped an accepted credit card after 11pm). He says "Hey man I need to buy a pack of cigarettes!" I say "Sorry we're closed for an hour for stocking."
He replies "Hey I really just need some cigarettes, can you let me in?" and I reiterate the fact the store's closed for at least another half hour til stocking's done. This is a store policy, not mine. Sooooo he says he'll wait. I shrug and go back to work. Not my business if he wants to blow half an hour. So I go back into the cooler.
Five minutes later, I hear this "Thunk thunk thunk" sound. I go out, look, and there's someone at the other door! She says "Hey I need to buy some cigarettes" and I tell her the same story, go through the same routine, and go back in the cooler. Five minutes later, another person's there. It's like a bunch of morons decided that quarter til four in the morning on a Friday night is an ideal time to come out to bumfuck middle of nowhere and buy cigarettes. I'm starting to get a little creeped out, as my imagination runs wild. It's like Night of the Living Dead with the cigarette zombies. These people LOOK like the undead. Any second now I expect them to start moaning "Smooooooookes....SMOOOOOOOOOOKES...."
Anyway, I come out at 4am just as I'm restocking when I hear a tapping at the glass. It's one of the local cops. I go over, open the door, greet him by name, and he asks me if there was a problem. Seems like he rolls up in the squad car to get gas and some coffee and this small flock of four or five people at the door all take off. Soooo customers are weird.
The other major battleground is over beer and the blue laws. In the state of North Carolina, you cannot sell beer between the hours of 2am and Noon, or couldn't at least when I worked at the convenience store. You aren't allowed to sell to people who are obviously drunk. You aren't allowed to sell to people who are obviously under the influence of something else (drugs or whatever). If the person looks under the age of 27, you have to card them (store policy). And for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER you can deny someone the sale of alcohol (or pretty much anything else in the store, but alcohol and smokes are the things emphasized). If I sell to someone drunk and they get in a wreck and someone dies, I can potentially be charged with accessory. In the very least, I can be (personally) fined for $200 dollars, and the store can be fined for up to $5000 dollars for violating the state laws. The store has signs up about it all over. But you still get idiots.
One time, my favorite story, I'm working graveyard. Now, as I said you can't sell alcohol after 2am. Most bars close then around campus, and since that accounts for 95% of the bars in town, pretty much everyone who was bar hopping is now left with nothing better to do. Soooo usually around 2:30 (takes about half an hour for people to leave the bars and get to where I am) we get a wave of customers that usually peters out about 3am, 3:30 at the latest. They want alcohol. We can't sell it to them, for assorted reasons. Hilarity ensues.
So I'm working graveyard as usual, waiting for the inevitable wave of customers. And this chick rolls in. I don't know for certain if she drove or someone else drove, but they were driving sloppy. Obviously had a double for the road, as they about drive into the ditch trying to pull into the parking lot. But they make it. She gets out of the car (I assume someone else was driving; the engine was still running), and stumbles over to the locked door (store has three doors to the outside...emergency fire door in back, and two glass doors up front, after 11pm we lock the one glass door for security reasons). She pulls on it.
"Other door!" I call to her. I have a pretty good idea what she wants, but it's always fun to see drunk people trying to be cunning.
She waves to me, goes to the other door. She pulls on it.
"You have to push!" I call to her, as I think of the "School for the Gifted" Far Side cartoon. She waves, looks at the door, then disappears. I wonder if she decided it was too much trouble. Then I hear her at the first door again.
"Other door!" I yell again, and she comes around, and when she gets there, I make a pushing motion and yell "You have to push!"
This time, the chick comes in. And she's obviously had a few. First off she's in her fifties, skin like leather, bleach blonde hair coming in black and gray, head lolled to the side, walking like a marionette in this shuffling gate. She's wearing a loose little dress, and the one strap is off her shoulder. Now...there are some women in their fifties who carry the age well. Then there's ones who've lived a hard life and don't carry it well. She didn't carry it well. This will be important in a moment.
She slurs something out loud, and gives me a wave. I just kind of nod, and watch her. Sure enough, she makes a beeline for the beer case. I holler, "It's past 2am, ma'am, I can't sell you any alcohol!" and she waves. Like I said hello or something. So she gets to the back, and opens up the case.
Now, she's seriously weaving. I'm placing bets with myself as to whether opening the door will toss her off balance and stumbling into the pork rinds display. Or worse, she could fall to the floor, which is always bad because if they hit the floor they can't get up easily and end up pulling something out of the shelves. Absolute worse case scenario, she reaches the floor and decides to pass out, in which case I have to call the cops to take her to the drunk tank and pray they get there before the inevitable puking.
Thankfully, she gets the door open, weaves, but catches her balance. I say again, "Ma'am I can't sell you any alcohol!" I'm starting to think that "alcohol" is probably a few syllables too much for her well-pickled brain to process. (In the darker reaches of my sarcastic Yankee mind, I'm thinking that most NCers in my area are monosyllabic morons anyway, and I'm probably stretching my luck using two-syllable words.) But she waves again, and I'm starting to get amused. At least she's a friendly drunk.
She grabs a 24 pack of beer. Women in NC, in my nearly 15 years of experience, are all on the small side. Many barely break 5 feet. They're skinny little willowy things. And this lady isn't any different, save that she's got a little extra age padding. So a 24 pack would unbalance most ladies her size, and she's drunk off her rocker to boot. She starts up from the back of the store towards the counter on what I know to be a fool's errand. I was working part time and was making $120 a week, and there was no way in hell I was going to effectively lose two weeks pay (and probably my job) selling beer to someone who amused me.
And she's weaving. And wobbling. And lurching, and drifting with the inevitable grace of an iceberg into the aisles. Clatter! there go the toothbrushes and feminine hygiene products. Fipfipfip! there goes a half-dozen Mr Goodbars. Her dress strap is falling and I'm praying this gets resolved before her dress goes any farther. I have no urge at all to see a 50 year old boob.
She reaches the front section of the store, about ten, maybe fifteen feet at the outside, and the Smell hits me. It's worth the capital letter. It's mostly the smell of cigarettes and booze. Lots of both. But it also has the acrid scent of a urinal. And sweat. Lots of sweat. It's a physical wall of a scent, and as she gets nearer, it gets worse. My eyes run. My nasal passages betray me and clear out and I get an even better whiff. I swear my earwax was melting. Foul Ole Ron from Discworld would have found his match.
So here I am, nearly gagging, as she reaches the front, and manages to edge the case onto the counter. She slurs something. Now let me tell you. MOST southerners have a rather pleasant southern twang to their voice. An almost musical lilt or cadence to emphasis of word. It's pleasant to hear, even if people joke about it. Unfortunately, some people are tone deaf and never develop the more cheerful side of it. Add to that a voice you can only get by chain smoking for years, and you get this low, gravelly female voice sounding like she's possessed by Zuul or a dying vacuum cleaner, and you get this slurred sort of utterance that's unintelligible. When she came in earlier she wasn't quite loud enough to pick up the harmonics, plus I wasn't paying THAT much attention to her voice.
And it begins.
I tell her I can't sell her any beer at this hour. She responds in a confused growl. I explain the laws to her, and she says something to the effect that she's not 27. I explain I can't sell to anyone after 2am, or, I politely add, to anyone who's tied a few on already.
Never try charisma on a drunk. They think you're coming on to them. And what's worse, they sometimes think they're canny enough to play the game back to you. And horror of horrors, they sometimes mean it. This lady opens her (mostly toothless mouth), and gives me what I guess in her drunken mind was a saucy grin. I almost wilt...dunno what she's been drinking, but it's definitely on her breath. I take a step back and explain to her that I can't sell to her, and she starts flirting with the "c'mon darlin'" talk.
Thank god someone came in. Wasn't her ride (if she had one). It was a 3am cigarette zombie.
I deal with the zombie and when I'm done she's left without her beer. Thank heavens.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
quote:
'Reko Tokah Fang impressed everyone with:
--SNIP--
you work at office depot? [ 12-11-2003: Message edited by: Blindy Claus ]
I know your pain, I worked at the 287 store in blue ash from 1998 to 2002.
...My bathroom still smells of puke. Jesus, why do people go out drinking during the week of finals? Isn't that just the DEFINITION of a bad idea?
Bleah.
