Anatomy of a Carry Out

[Rocko]

This is not based on any particular carry out I have done, but rather it contains bits and pieces of all of them from the almost two years I've been there.

So a customer comes up and says they want to buy a piece of furniture, let's say, a computer desk. Here is how the carryout will most likely go.

1. Find a pallet jack. This means you must walk all the way across the store to recieving, where they are located. The quick way is through the back room.

2. Upon procuring pallet jack, try to go back the same way you just came. Find the way blocked by softlines clothing racks, have to go out onto the floor to go the rest of the way and fight through the crowds around Electronics

3. Wrestle incredibly heavy desk onto pallet jack.

4. Wrestle incredibly heavy desk off of pallet jack because the box has a tear in it, wrestle box that was underneath it onto pallet jack instead.

5. Take customer over to Sporting Goods register because it will be much quicker than waiting in the lines up front. After ringing them up, watch as five more customers descend on you like vultures on a dead horse wanting to be rung up. This will take another 15 minutes

6. Start pulling jack with desk on it towards the front of the store as customer follows, asking why you can't build it for them.

7. A customer asks you to open up the video game cabinet because they are sick of waiting, tell them you are busy and can't help them.

8. A customer demands you help them look for a blender, tell them you're busy and can't help them.

9. Stop and almost smash your foot with the pallet jack because eight-year old demon spawn on heelies glides around the corner.

10. Find out that "Excuse me" has changed meaning from "Could you move please?" to "Please stand in my way and stare at your own fingernails" Watch as customer finally gets the idea to move, and moves, a quarter of an inch forward. Resist urge to just go past and run over their feet

11. Resist urge to yell "Get the FUCK out of the way" to another dumbass that decides to block the aisle

12. Finally get to the front end. People are everywhere and space is tight. Tell customer that demands that you jump on a register that you are busy and can't help them.

13. Get through the crowds and to the front door. Wait for customer to fish through impossibly full purse to get the reciept. Reciept is found and you start heading outside. Tell customer to meet you at the loading zone.

14. You wait ten minutes for customer to pull up. Resist urge to go on profanity-laden rant when customer pulls up in a Ford Escort

15. With help from a cart pusher, try to cram desk into the trunk at customers insistence. The box does not come close to fitting. Instead almost crush your hand trying to cram it into the back seat.

16. Finally shove desk into back seat at a cost of your lower back hurting. Customer gets in car and drives off with barely a thank you

17. Go back inside the store, walk all the way to the back to drop off pallet jack, go on profanity-laden rant in the back room as amused coworkers laugh. Go out onto the floor, and have a customer ask for help carrying out a treadmill

[Ringtail Z28]

That pretty much sums up just about every carry out I've ever done. It is a proven fact that customers who need carry outs never seem to own trucks.

[powerboy]

I hated having to do carry outs when I was at Walmart & OfficeMax. The part about almost crushing hands, hits so close to home for me.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

1. Find a pallet jack. This means you must walk all the way across the store to recieving, where they are located. The quick way is through the back room.

At my store we don't get to use the pallet jacks for carryouts. We have to use flatbed carts (which makes for heavy lifting from the cart to the customer's vehicle) or the one hand truck that works decent (the other one's tires never stay inflated for long)

7. A customer asks you to open up the video game cabinet because they are sick of waiting, tell them you are busy and can't help them.

8. A customer demands you help them look for a blender, tell them you're busy and can't help them.

I hope these customers don't turn out to be secret shoppers. I've posted about the secret shoppers my company hires and they like to approach people doing carryouts to ask them for help. When the employee doesn't help them the way corporate policy dictates, the store gets marked down on service.

9. Stop and almost smash your foot with the pallet jack because eight-year old demon spawn on heelies glides around the corner.

Why stop? I'd keep going. The little booger machine can stop. The employee dragging a heavy load cannot. It's like a train approaching a car stopped on the tracks.

15. With help from a cart pusher, try to cram desk into the trunk at customers insistence. The box does not come close to fitting. Instead almost crush your hand trying to cram it into the back seat.

I've told this story many times before, but it bears repeating because it is such a wonderful example of an SC being asinine. WHile I was loading a customer's item into their vehicle, I lost my grip and the box came down on my finger and squashed. I let out an "S" bomb, not too loudly but audible. The customer complained to the manager and I got a talking-to. How dare I be a human being! I'd like to see that moron get his hand pinched by something heavy and see if he doesn't let slip a couple swears.

[draftermatt]

That pretty much sums up just about every carry out I've ever done. It is a proven fact that customers who need carry outs never seem to own trucks.

Because those of us that own trucks are told that we suppot terrorism by our "gas guzziling vehicles" Not really, but I'm sure that sums up a lot of people's reasons for not having one. Me personally, if I don't currently own one I borrow my Dad's or my friends.

[Shironu-Akaineko]

Ooooh, guilty! I once bought a chair I thought would fit into my car but the poor clerk hadda wire up the thing in my trunk.

No more tho. Now I got an '07 Caliber with collapsable seats!

[Ringtail Z28]

Because those of us that own trucks are told that we suppot terrorism by our "gas guzziling vehicles" Not really, but I'm sure that sums up a lot of people's reasons for not having one. Me personally, if I don't currently own one I borrow my Dad's or my friends.

I dunno, there're plenty of SCs with SUVs who insist that they are as good as trucks. Which is totally false, they're little more than bloated station wagons with doors that are just as wide as a regular passenger car. Making carry outs just as hard if not harder because the soccer moms tend to have their brats and all their junk along with 'em.

[COMINATCHA]

I hope these customers don't turn out to be secret shoppers. I've posted about the secret shoppers my company hires and they like to approach people doing carryouts to ask them for help. When the employee doesn't help them the way corporate policy dictates, the store gets marked down on service..

What if you stop to help the possible 'mystery shopper,' but then it turns out the person you were originally helping is actually the mystery shopper - and they aren't impressed that you stopped helping them? Hey? What about that then? Or i'm just stuck in the land of 'what if's'

[tollbaby]

I have a Chevy Aveo..... that's NOT a big car, folks. I need to do some shopping at Ikea, which will definitely net me a bunch of large boxes *sigh* Do I shell out for delivery (ran into problems with them bringing me the wrong parts last time) or shell out even more to rent a truck? *sigh* On the plus side, delivery to my area is only about $55, but UGH. If I go and buy one piece a week, I can fit them in my car I think that's what I'll do. EARLY. on saturday MORNINGS before the rest of the world is awake. (like Shironu, I have collapsible back seats, extending my hatchback trunk to just behind the driver's seat).

[Tanasi]

I have a five ton truck, with me it's not so much as something not fitting on the bed but being able to lift it high enough to get it on the bed. Now days I don't have too many things delievered I go get it and then have my boys wrestle it off the truck.
I do know how you feel, at the grocery store I had a family of four adults buy 3 buggies of groceries including two fifty pound bags of potato sets and two twenty-five pound bag of dog food. I was to put them and all these groceries in a Chevy Chevette. You couldn't get all that stuff in the car if you greased it. I told the boss it was like putting 10 pounds of $hit in a 5 pound bag.
One more F&B mgr at a local hotel order 5 cases of whole fresh chickens and showed up to haul them in a Corvette. The last part of that conversation was, "If you want those chickens in that car then put them in there yourself, I'm not ruining that car."

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

What if you stop to help the possible 'mystery shopper,' but then it turns out the person you were originally helping is actually the mystery shopper - and they aren't impressed that you stopped helping them? Hey? What about that then? Or i'm just stuck in the land of 'what if's'

That is a "what-if" I don't even want to contemplate.

What I would do is take the second customer to their product if it is along the way to the first customer's product. If it isn't, I would take the first customer to their product, ask the second customer to come along, and then help the second customer. If the second customer is not a complete goofball, they would understand.