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Oh boy. First day where our registers have the chip reader enabled. Thank god I don't work front end
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Aug 9, 2016 12:15
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I answered the phone today: Me: thank you for calling <my store> this is Lord Bude, how may I help you? Customer (deep adult male voice): There's a charizard in the back of one of your freezers, do you think you could let me go in there so I can catch it?
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Aug 9, 2016 12:25
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The Lord Bude posted:I answered the phone today: "I'm sorry, that area is for employees only, but I'll take your phone back and catch it for you for a low service fee of $20."
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Aug 9, 2016 14:59
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No sir, I can't tell you the exact difference between these two flush valves. They are the same types and say the same thing on the box and are just manufactured by two different companies. No I don't know why they are priced differently. No sir, I don't have extensive personal experience with all of our toilet flappers.
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Aug 9, 2016 15:06
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Pumpy Dumper posted:Oh boy. First day where our registers have the chip reader enabled. Thank god I don't work front end Literally the only thing I hate about working front end. I cannot wait for the day everyone has a chip card and every store has the readers so that I can stop giving the instructions on how to use them. Ahahaha who am I kidding, people are retarded. On an unrelated note, week before Labor Day is a guaranteed 40 hours 
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Aug 9, 2016 15:07
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Faerunner posted:"I'm sorry, that area is for employees only, but I'll take your phone back and catch it for you for a low service fee of $20." I was actually tempted to do that in exchange for him buying 5 raffle tickets for our store raffle (since if you didn't know any better you'd be forgiven for thinking that fundraising was management's no 1 priority, stores are hyper competitive with each other, the bantering between store managers and the area manager is at crazy levels) but in the end I decided it wasn't the best use of my time. (And I was iffy at the idea of taking someone's phone somewhere out of their sight.)
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Aug 9, 2016 15:12
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Kilonum posted:Literally the only thing I hate about working front end. I cannot wait for the day everyone has a chip card and every store has the readers so that I can stop giving the instructions on how to use them. We still haven't activated the chip reader at our store because apparently the software is a buggy mess and also has an issue with double charging people if we hit enter too fast on some of our screens 
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Aug 9, 2016 15:17
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The Lord Bude posted:I answered the phone today: Oh my god this made my loving day. The Lord Bude posted:I was actually tempted to do that in exchange for him buying 5 raffle tickets for our store raffle (since if you didn't know any better you'd be forgiven for thinking that fundraising was management's no 1 priority, stores are hyper competitive with each other, the bantering between store managers and the area manager is at crazy levels) but in the end I decided it wasn't the best use of my time. (And I was iffy at the idea of taking someone's phone somewhere out of their sight.) gently caress the raffle tickets. gently caress them hard. Store managers are out of their goddamn minds trying to outdo each other, to the point I'm nearly convinced there is a bonus scheme of some kind designed by corporate to push the ticket sales. They are straight up rabid. My front end manager, who by now you should all know is a fuckwit, got her poo poo verbally kicked in today to the point she was in tears and went home early "sick". The reason? The front end didn't sell as many tickets as the store manager wanted them to, yesterday. The day she only worked the close. In a smallish town, where it is 99% impossible to sell a fundraising ticket for something after 1 and a half weeks, because by then literally every single person in town will have been asked to buy a ticket at least twice and will be officially tired of having them shoved down their throats. So while I want to enjoy the moment of her being torn a new one, I can't because I feel like in this case it's not her fault (for once). Christ knows there is plenty of things that she needs a kicking over, but ticket sales isn't one of them.
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Aug 9, 2016 16:07
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princecoo posted:Oh my god this made my loving day. Our ASM has been known to call hourly at nights to see how we're doing. We constantly have sausage sizzles to try and get extra raffle sales. At one stage she was trying to convince staff to come in on their day off and volunteer to man the BBQ. (when this started happening I had a chat to our shop steward - I get that plenty of people are totally ok with volunteering their time for charity, but it's still not quite right as far as I'm concerned, and she was being really pushy. My understanding is that our shop steward politely told her to gently caress off) My front end manager on the other hand is pretty chill about it, as long as we stay in triple figures each day, which is easy since we have a number of staff who are super into it, so they compete with each other to see how many they can get (and you'd better believe they get more shifts than the casuals who don't bother asking). We also tend to give big boxes of chocolates as prizes to cashiers who sell a ton of tickets - our best result this year has been a lady who sold 94 in a 5 hour evening shift. I end up spending at least a grand a year on those things, because when I'm running the front end It's easier for me to prop up our numbers on a bad night by just buying a bunch myself. At least the wall tokens are tax deductible. I'm aware of front end managers in other stores being fired because the pressure of fundraising was so high they actually stole money from the tills to make extra donations. It's weird though because when we aren't doing a raffle, I keep trying to check sales of the tickets, and I miss the thrill of updating the sales every hour.
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Aug 9, 2016 16:28
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We do terribly on those things ever since the one girl who had a knack for getting guys to buy them in a futile attempt to impress her transferred to a different store because the old store manager (later fired for favoritism) hated her
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Aug 9, 2016 16:30
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Today I had a customer ask me if we had Napoleon ice cream.  Sankis posted:Saw this at work the other day. My old store had sign ups for community service, all the time. Baked goods for charity sales, volunteers for events, blood drives, etc. Most people in the store didn't have full time. Many of them made minimum wage, or not much more. You're nuts if you think I'm doing free labor in the name of your company. You pay me nothing, you steal my time, I'm not going to help you get a tax break. Take a long walk off a short pier.
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Aug 9, 2016 17:31
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Today I had a customer ask me if we had Napoleon ice cream. This is me, at 29 I still can't get it right. 
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Aug 9, 2016 18:14
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Today I had a customer ask me if we had Napoleon ice cream. I would get so disproportionately, unreasonably irritated when customers used to ask about our Valentimes Day cards.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:52
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sweeperbravo posted:I would get so disproportionately, unreasonably irritated when customers used to ask about our Valentimes Day cards. I don't think it is unreasonable for this to annoy you
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Aug 10, 2016 00:57
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Walking home from work one night I passed a gorgeous blonde who was stumbling down the sidewalk in heels and a little black dress. "Happy Valentimes Day!" she slurred at me. I'm still surprised at how viscerally disgusted I was. "Jesus" erupted from my mouth uncontrollably, and the look on my face turned hers into a near-tears expression that in the moment was deeply satisfying.
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Aug 10, 2016 01:02
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I'm not sure whether this makes it better or worse, but the lady I remember it the worst from was a woman we used to get coming in literally every month, this really big lady with a tiny husband, and a tiny dog she told us was a service animal but would never produce paperwork for. Sometimes the husband would come with her, but I only saw him like one time. It was a portrait studio and she would just come in every single month to get "the special" with a million prints of one pose, of the tiny dog posed with all of our seasonal props. We had a no pets policy but made exceptions if it was a service animal, and there was also a rule that people needed to be in at least some of the pictures, but the lady always insisted she didn't want to be in any of them, and she wasn't really nasty or anythign about it, but I think we all kind of felt bad for her so no one ever really pushed her on it. Maybe once or twice her husband took a picture with the dog. Idk, I can't really remember, there was a lot going on in that store. I can't imagine what she was doing with all of those pictures. She told us the dog was also a model and that these pictures would go in his portfolio but even given that there was still a gently caress ton of pictures, like "the special" would give you something absurd and unusable like multiple 10x14s, 8x10s, something like 4 sheets of wallets. I just imagined being this lady's family member and constantly, regularly, monthly, getting a new wallet picture of that tiny dog, every single time the store ran "the special" again. You were only allowed to get "the special" once per special, so she would just dutifully come in each cycle for a new set of pictures. I saw her like 3 times, I think I took the pictures for her at least 2 of those times, no one else wanted to take her because we all kenw she was just going to buy "the special" and it would tank your sales average. (Pay wasn't tied to sales but you could get in trouble if you were performing below average, but by the time I started seeing the lady, I already was actively trying to get them to fire me so I would gladly take on all the families that you knew weren't going to buy poo poo and I would dote the gently caress all over them like as if they were big spenders, the vast majority of our customers were actually good people who deserved to be treated kindly). Eventually corporate caught on and either the store manager or possibly the region manager told the lady she couldn't come anymore because she didn't have the paperwork and was abusing the store and its specials. As much as she was kind of annoying (valentimes) I felt bad for the lady because she was obviously struggling in a lot of ways, and it seemed like she didn't really have a lot in her life except for her kind husband and tiny photogenic dog. I always wondered why she didn't just take pictures of her dog herself, using her own camera or phone, but I think maybe she didn't have a lot of opportunities to get out and be around people, so the socialization aspect was probably important to her.
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Aug 10, 2016 03:32
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Kilonum posted:Literally the only thing I hate about working front end. I cannot wait for the day everyone has a chip card and every store has the readers so that I can stop giving the instructions on how to use them. Half a year later, I still need to tell people what to do half a goddamn year later 
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Aug 10, 2016 05:14
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I still can't believe the US is so far behind in debit and credit card technology. We were dealing with chip card crap 5 years ago. This year, it's all about the tap. Everyone loving sucks at it. They hit their card too quickly, or in the wrong spot, or violently slap it multiple times, or wave it around like they're preforming a magic spell. And then it fails and they're forced to use the chip, and that's somehow our machine's fault. Just gently hold your card on the wifi symbol for one full second! That's all it takes!
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Aug 10, 2016 06:00
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sweeperbravo posted:I would get so disproportionately, unreasonably irritated when customers used to ask about our Valentimes Day cards. Vamlumtimes is serious times!
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Aug 10, 2016 06:19
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Picnic Princess posted:I still can't believe the US is so far behind in debit and credit card technology. We were dealing with chip card crap 5 years ago. This year, it's all about the tap. Everyone loving sucks at it. They hit their card too quickly, or in the wrong spot, or violently slap it multiple times, or wave it around like they're preforming a magic spell. And then it fails and they're forced to use the chip, and that's somehow our machine's fault. Just gently hold your card on the wifi symbol for one full second! That's all it takes! It is completely insane! "Hmmmm, do you guys not have Paypass?" "Nah we do, just don't hold your card 10cm above the EFTPOS machine" Or the old "press it against the machine so hard that the card itself bends" It's the easiest possible way to pay for goods and services and people still manage to gently caress it up.
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Aug 10, 2016 06:28
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I had someone use Apple Pay for the first time today, and with an Apple Watch no less. First time I've ever seen someone wearing one.
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Aug 10, 2016 07:08
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Picnic Princess posted:I still can't believe the US is so far behind in debit and credit card technology. We were dealing with chip card crap 5 years ago. This year, it's all about the tap. Everyone loving sucks at it. They hit their card too quickly, or in the wrong spot, or violently slap it multiple times, or wave it around like they're preforming a magic spell. And then it fails and they're forced to use the chip, and that's somehow our machine's fault. Just gently hold your card on the wifi symbol for one full second! That's all it takes! Ha ha ha ha.  Like 75% of the people I deal with are like, 50+ in age and nearly every single one of them struggles with tap. And whenever I suggest trying it again, oh the machines are finnicky no worries this happens to everyone, try holding it for a second longer, they just immediately give up and go to using the pin. The machines, of course, work absolutely fine. It'd be frustrating if it weren't for their age. Or there's the triple whammy where, they can't understand the tap, they mess up the chip, and go to try and swipe but because of the tap it immediately fails because it tries to tap and gums up the systems reading before the swipe goes through. Just awful.
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Aug 10, 2016 07:49
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Speaking of paypass I had someone try it the other day and I would have sworn our registers were enabled for it, but the SPOS system at the design desk didn't want to take it so we finally gave up and he used his chip card instead. It was all very smooth and he was very patient, but it was so completely out of the ordinary for someone to not only be aware of the tap tech but want to take advantage of it... most people treat the card readers like some kind of alien tech they've never seen before. "Which way do I slide the card? What button for credit? No I don't want my receipt emailed can't you just print me one?"
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Aug 10, 2016 20:28
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For once it's 100% our fault here, if you want to do credit with a debit card on our reader you have to hit the yellow "cancel" button. It doesn't indicate that anywhere on the screen or on the pad. I don't think they're going to change it, so that's going to be an annoyance for the rest of time.
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Aug 10, 2016 20:33
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Our button is red, not yellow. I get that this is an impediment, because of the lack of directions. It'd be nice if POS software was a little less randomly designed. Some stores you have to tell the cashier credit vs debit, some stores you just swipe and it asks on the reader, some are like ours and give no directions but default to debit, and so on. It does irk me though that customers seem to take it personally when they're used to one way and run into another, as if the cashier is doing this to slow them down or something.
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Aug 10, 2016 20:44
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For payments, I would say 90% of my store's customers use cards, 9.99% use cash, and the remaining 0.01% use checks (I've processed a grand total of 3 checks, and 1 was a personal check) Except yesterday. For some reason it was closer to 50% cash. I needed 3 pickups in a 7 hour shift (for reference, the POS will tell us when there is more than $400 in the drawer, necessitating a pickup). One cash transaction the customer handed me a $2 bill. Kicking myself right now because I didn't swap it out of the till for the $2 in quarters in my pocket  .
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Aug 10, 2016 22:58
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We do a ridiculous amount of cash transactions but that still doesn't stop the rules from saying NO LEAVING PACKS OF MONEY FOR YOUR REPLACEMENT UNDER THE DRAWER despite this being the most useful thing Like just $100 in $20s is beyond convenient because our starting till is $100 and you are super hosed if someone rolls along with a $50 or $100
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Aug 10, 2016 23:01
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Shugojin posted:We do a ridiculous amount of cash transactions but that still doesn't stop the rules from saying NO LEAVING PACKS OF MONEY FOR YOUR REPLACEMENT UNDER THE DRAWER despite this being the most useful thing The worst is starting your day with $100 in the till and you're very first customer of the day uses their debit card and requests $60 cash back. Very inconvenient to have to ask a supervisor or manager for more money because you can't make change for the next person who pays with cash.
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Aug 10, 2016 23:25
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I think I was the reason someone no longer desires to work retail. Went to Sprouts before work today, so I was in marked uniform and couldn't be a full rear end in a top hat. They had melons on sale, 50 cents each, and with tortoises at home who can eat a whole one every few days, I decided to stock up. So I got about 10, plus some other food, and waited in line. Two registers open. My luck, the lady ahead of me has an elderly woman with her who has left the line to grab a few more things, so the line has stopped. Finally old lady comes back with a bag of a single pear. Order is total, card swiped once, twice, nothing happens. The cashier tells her to keep trying, and finally realizes her monitor has frozen. Cashier has a minor freak, yelling to the other cashier about this, and she's told she has to restart it. So the cashier turns to me, already having unloaded my cart and put the drat thing away while the single pear was located, and the women with their bags set aside, that we need to get in the other line because she has to restart her computer. I ask how long that will take, and like a broken Chatty Cathy doll, all she repeats is that she has to restart her register. The other line is now 7 carts and 4 people without carts deep. No other registers can be opened. I have 10 minutes left before I need to get on the road to work. So I snap. I told the cashier I'd be back later, and walked out, leaving everything on her belt. I wasn't about to reload the loving cart and wait in line and then be late to work because, gasp, I know technical poo poo happens, I have been the brunt of it many a time when the shipping system craps out, but there are ways to deal with it that doesn't involve "I need to restart my register" five times in a row.
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Aug 11, 2016 04:57
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Kilonum posted:One cash transaction the customer handed me a $2 bill. Kicking myself right now because I didn't swap it out of the till for the $2 in quarters in my pocket If it's $2 bills you want, then the next time you are at a bank and it is slow ask the teller if they or any of thier coworkers have 2S. Bank tellers HATE $2 bills because it is easy to gently caress up your nightly count with them if you aren't careful.
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Aug 11, 2016 08:35
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We've got a guy working at our store who literally calls out of work every second shift he's assigned. They will not fire him. Tonight they got mad at me for refusing to come in on my day off to close because he called in again. God drat.
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Aug 11, 2016 11:16
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UZworm posted:We've got a guy working at our store who literally calls out of work every second shift he's assigned. They will not fire him. The best part about this scenario is that: 1. There's often more than one person at the store that does this constantly, usually on a Friday or a Saturday. 2. You're on time every single day you can make it to the store, but you still hover between twenty and thirty hours a week and only approach forty when something fucks up.
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Aug 11, 2016 15:52
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:The best part about this scenario is that: To be fair to my place of work, I do work full time every week and never go below 32-36; this would have counted as overtime for me. Still, gently caress that poo poo!
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Aug 11, 2016 21:04
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So....my mom works for a call center (inbound thank the gods) but with the recent buyout by another larger company, everyone is on pins. One of her coworkers got fired a few days ago for "spreading rumors." Now of course rumors are bad and all, but one such rumor is that one of the other workers in their department has been coming to work high, and also has been bringing a loaded gun to work and been overheard, in the bathroom, muttering about shooting "that bitch." I told my mom to report this poo poo. There has to be some anon line, but she's too scared to because "the managers will know who told me." IE the girl that got fired. And the managers are aware of it, in theory. So it is possible this girl is lying to cause havoc. But my mom does admit she has seen the druggie acting weird and spacing out. Jesus loving Christ there could be a shootout at your loving job and you need to tell someone!
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Aug 12, 2016 02:08
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gently caress, I'll give her the anonymous reporting line for my store and she can call and warn them, too! There is 0 excuse for letting that kind of behavior go un-noted or un-investigated unless they are already doing an investigation and just want everyone to shut up about it so as not to spook the guy... but it doesn't sound like that's what they're doing. If it's that bad and she can't get a number to call to report him internally, I think I'd rather call the cops and file a report on the coworker rather than let him go on being weird and dangerous - sure, she'll probably get fired anyway but imho I'd rather be fired than shot. 
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Aug 12, 2016 02:20
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This week I've been flagged to do some frozen food conditioning. I've heard it sucks. How bad does it suck? How do I make it suck less?
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Aug 12, 2016 04:36
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It does not suck at all. Wear gloves.
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Aug 12, 2016 04:48
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Dealing with freezers is the best! It's like your own little frigid world in there, safe from calls over the intercom and co-workers wanting to get near you and talk.
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Aug 12, 2016 11:46
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The freezer I worked in was designed to accommodate a double row of skids down the middle with room on both sides to access the racking. Inevitably, the grocery overnight would slam them all up against one side and block off an entire half of the freezer. Crawling over skids of ice cream to access a case of cocktail shrimp was so much fun 
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Aug 12, 2016 12:24
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We were shorted 11 cases of bakery goods on yesterday's truck, which means going into the weekend, I have only twenty-four loaves of store brand bread, which is our biggest seller, and not even enough artisan bread to cover today! I've also only got one oven to work with today because deli needs meat, which means I'm half through my shift and only half done baking. So I'm gonna be here late getting everything packaged up because, oops, we still don't have a bakery clerk! And for the cherry on the poo poo sundae, there's no spoons in the break room for me to eat lunch with.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:39
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