This is the weekend from Hades

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

and it's only half done.

Today was the second day of our Lowest Prices of the Season sale, and it was a madhouse again.

• My job today was to pull things from the backroom and fill them on the salesfloor. Only I didn't spend much time doing this because we had an insane number of furniture carryouts. At times we had three and four people doing carryouts simultaneously. Eventually I decided to just pull stuff so there would be no pulls in the system, so we had carts and carts of merchandise piled up in the backroom. The manager told me to have all the pulls out of the system before I left, and I managed to get them all done by 6:30. Then at 6:45, 30 more pulls downloaded. . So needless to say, I didn't get them all done (I left at 7:00), and what's left will probably not get done tonight and we'll end up on the shit list (Orwellianly-named the "autopull non-compliance list"), and tomorrow I'll end up taking the heat for nothing getting filled either.
• Sometime this afternoon, we got a call from another store asking if we had a certain kind of chair in stock for a customer. The caller did not tell which store he/she was from, and ended up handing off the call-taker at my store to three different people, all asking different questions. Eventually, the call-taker said we had the chairs in stock because the scanner showed we did (on-hands don't update until the store has closed and end-of-day processing takes place). The customer came to pick up her chairs, which we did not have because we sold them all. Guess who ended up on the recieving end of her screaming, profanity-laced tirade?
• We also had our usual bunch of carryout cretins, barstool dumbasses, and blissfully inobservant schlubs. To wit:
  1. The family that bought a kitchen table, 4 chairs, and a bench, and made us cram it into two subcompact cars. Glad you didn't just come with one subcompact car; that might have sucked! HERE'S YOUR SIGN!
  2. The lady who called up saying she had bought 4 29-inch barstools of a certain style, got them home, and discovered they were the wrong size . I had to pry the description of the stools out of her, because she didn't want to bring them back because she lived 45 minutes away. The long commute would seem to be a nice reason to measure your bar before your come in and throw money at us in exchange for barstools, no? HERE'S YOUR SIGN!
  3. The guy who asked me where the lightbulbs were--while standing right in front of them. People like this crack me up instead of infuriating me, so no sign for him.

I have to come in at 8 tomorrow morning and do it all again. Damn high school proms costing me my weekend off!

[BookstoreEscapee]

I hope you are not in the area that is expecting the deluge tomorrow. We are supposed to get all this rain, and that always brings in the SCs...especially the people who don't want to stay home and deal with their kids on a rainy day, so they bring them into the store so we can clean up after them instead. Of course, I plan to sleep.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The forecast for tomorrow is partly cloudy skies with a high of 46.

I don't notice things getting any busier at my store when the weather is bad. During the Great Deluge of last year it was pretty much a normal day.

[irateguy]

Back in my Thriftway days Id have to do carryouts for these idiots who would buy park benches or other furniture then want me to put in in their trunk. These peoples trunks would have newspapers from 1950 and other assorted garbage in there . How in the hell Am I supposed to get that in there

[Giggle Goose]

I hope you are not in the area that is expecting the deluge tomorrow.

Damn Nor'easters!!!!! I love where I'm from, but geez!!!

As for IPF, I'm sorry about your weekend and I hope things get better.

[Becks]

But...but...IPF, if the customers didn't suck, what would this site be about?

Things will get better, I promise. Maybe not as soon as you'd wish, but eventually.

Maybe.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Well, things didn't improve today.

Right after I came in, I had to answer a call for seasonal because I was the only person on the salesfloor. The caller had some "perennials" (that was the word she used) that died and wanted to bring them in for a receipt.

I wanted to put her on hold or transfer her out to lawn and garden, but I couldn't on the phone I was at, because it had no "flash" button. So instead I called out to lawn and garden on one of the cordless phones we have around the store.

I asked the lady out in lawn and garden if we had a warranty on perennials. She told me we did not. That's where the fun started:

SC: "It says right here on the tag trees, bushes and shrubs are guaranteed for one year. Your lawn and garden person must not know her job." (We do guarantee trees, shrubs and bushes for one year from date of purchase)

So I called back out to lawn and garden and got the lady working out there again. She started blabbering about a bunch of different things, like dormancy (not an issue if the others of these bushes she bought were doing fine.) I relay this information to the bizotch on the other line, and eventually she just demands to speak to a manager, so I page the manager down to come to the phone and talk to her (remember, I cannot transfer her or put her on hold).

While we're waiting, the SC tells me she's never shopping at my store again, while she doesn't really like Wally World, she's shopping there from now on because our prices are a rip off and supposedly they don't give her the run around like we do. She also promises to tell everybody she knows to steer clear of us and promises to fire off a nasty e-mail to corporate telling them how much our service sucks and how much business we're supposedly losing because our service sucks so much.

At this point, I would've hung up on her, if it weren't for the fact that she had demanded to know my name and I gave it to her. Once a person tells me they're finished with us for life, then why should I keep helping her. She can go make compost with her dead plants for all I care. I don't know anything about the warranties we have on live plants, I'm trying to help her the best I can, and all I get is Miss Thang scoffing at me and telling me how she's going to let corporate know how much of a moron I am, and then the store manager is going to have to write her a sniveling, ass-kissing letter asking her to come back and promising to deal with my stupid ass.

*SLAP! Thanks, I needed that!

And the kicker is, the service desk has all the information on live plant warranties right up there, because they are the ones who give the refunds. It would've taken the girl working the desk one, maybe two minutes, to flip through a binder and recite the policy to her, and this wouldn't have turned into such a disaster.

Oh well, tomorrow should be an easy day.