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The Day of the Grumps

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  • The Day of the Grumps

    1) Customer comes through my line, I ring out her moderate number of items. I scan her rewards card. Register flashes a notice: system is offline. I sigh. This means that the customer will get any rewards points they are "owed" for that day's purchases, but can't use any points towards the purchases. Normally this "offline" problem resets itself in a few seconds.

    Normally.

    Me: "I'm sorry, but I can't access your points. The system has gone down."

    Customer: "But I need my points to pay for my groceries!"

    Me: Not a good plan, lady ...

    I keep tapping the relevant keys, hoping the system will re-set itself. No such luck. I call over a supervisor to ask if there is anything we can do. Supervisor says nope, and reiterates to customer that the system is down, and that it does happen occasionally.

    Customer: "But I need my points to pay!"

    Supervisor: "Do you have another card [customer had been holding a debit or credit card as well as the rewards card], or cash?"

    Customer: "NO!"

    Supervisor says she's sorry but there is literally nothing we can do at this point.

    Now, IMO, the sensible thing for Customer to do would have been to put back stuff until she COULD pay for whatever was left. Admittedly I have no idea how much, or how little, money she actually had available to her on her debit or credit card ....

    Instead, she stomps off in a huff and leaves everything behind.

    2) A woman comes through with a few items, including two packages of pork ribs.

    Customer: "Those should be $1.99 a pound ..."

    Now, for some ridiculous reason, we have prices based on per pound, but when you look at the labels on the foods, they are at prices per kilogram. And I absolutely can NOT do the conversions in my head.

    Luckily, I don't have to; we have several pages' worth of charts in a little binder at each register doing the conversions for us. So I look it up.

    Me: "Um, ma'am, this is coming up at $8.99 a pound ..."

    Customer:

    Customer: "No, no, it should be $1.99 a pound ... unless I read the flyer wrong."

    Me: *EEEEBIL mental cackle*

    I check the flyer, and sure enough, in the small print, it says [Store Brand] ribs, $1.99 a pound. She has [Name Brand]. I explain this to her. Her expression sours. I call the meat department. For some reason which I cannot now remember, we no longer have any [Store Brand] ribs (not delivered? ran out? I dunno).

    I tell her I can write her a rain check and do so. She pays for her other items (I had to get a supervisor over, because voiding out those ribs put me over the limit for unauthorized voided items ) She took her groceries and her rain check and walked out ... still looking sour.

    3) This wasn't so much surly as "whaaaat ..."

    Guy comes through with two items, both with 50% off tags on them: a prepackaged hunk of meat and a carton of eggs. I ring them through.

    Customer: *squints at monitor* "HOW much is the meat??"

    Me: "It was $18.99, it's down to $9 and change."

    Customer: "No, no, no, that is too much!" He'd apparently thought the original prices was $11 or so (I have no idea why) so he'd be getting it for $5 and change.

    Sorry, buddy.

    He left with only the eggs.

    4) This has nothing to do with the customers but I'm putting it in here anyway. About half an hour into my shift, the sound system went completely berserk. The volume went to window-breaking levels. I thought somebody was playing around with the system. Nope.

    The sound went down.

    The sound came back up.

    Lather, rinse, repeat.

    At one point I gestured angrily at it to the HR person who was monitoring the lines, and she snapped back, "They're working on it!"

    Well, tell them to WORK FASTER.

    Or better yet, just shut the damn thing off!

    Eventually they seemed to gain control over it ... by switching to another station. That had Christmas music. Well, at least it was at a tolerable level.

    Although the song "I'll be Home for Christmas" seemed to be more than a bit ironic at this point in time.
    Last edited by Pixelated; 11-25-2020, 09:43 PM.
    Customer service: More efficient than a Dementor's kiss
    ~ Mr Hero

  • #2
    My callers were surly and cranky today, too. God forbid that anything, such as shipping physical objects, should not be instantaneous, that I cannot work with info not sent to $Employer regarding accounts, or that there be actual wait time when attempting to call a busy department* that others need to talk to too, or that the person from a different department you're now speaking with cannot magically jump you past the peasants waiting their turn in queue!

    * I do concede that hold times in the department in question are so flat-out atrocious that one caller who's tried to reach them several times asked me point-blank if that department had any actual staff. I pretended not to hear that so I didn't have to engage in discussion of this, but I did have to privately admit there was a point there.
    "Crazy may always be open for business, but on the full moon, it has buy one get one free specials." - WishfulSpirit

    "Sometimes customers remind me of zombies, but I'm pretty sure that zombies are smarter." - MelindaJoy77

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