That one sound you never want to hear...

[repsac]

This happened at a local shopping center (I think Wal-Mart, but could have been K-mart) and it both got me tickled and gave me an idea.

Fill in the blanks:


When working in ____________________ the one sound you never want to hear is: __________________.



My story:

When working in electronics, the one sound you never want to hear is "CRASH tinkle tinkle."

I'm standing back in the electronics dept, looking for something. I forget exactly what it was, but I needed it badly and my brain had gone kaput on me when I came in the door. Thus I was milling about bored trying to remember. As I'm standing there, I hear a loud CRASH followed by the sound of breaking glass. I kid you not, I ducked. I thought that the world had come down around me, or some one was bombing us. My dive for cover would have made any marine in a fire fight proud. Coming up, I find that I wasn't the only one heading for cover. Several other employees had done the same, as well as one poor sod who I'm guessing was having flash backs to Vietnam. Kept muttering how Charlie was always after him...

So, looking around, the employees ask me what's happened, to which I respond no clue. Nobody here but us chickens. Well, they start looking around, only to have some short but very healthy (take that how you will) woman and her demonspawn come clomping up to the counter. Lady is none too pleased, and demands to see a manager. The reason was simple. One of her spawn (whom I will call Jimbo Billy Bob) was playing around in the aisles with his brand new wheely heelys. Well, Jimbo Billy Bob and his brother, Fred, decided to have a bit of a race, but Jimbo hadn't quite yet learned to stop. So he ended up running into a display rack. This in turn caused the rack to shake, and this shake dislodged a huge plasma screen TV from its mounting. Gravity took over (thank you Mr. Newton for that) and the Television did a nice half gainer off the shelf, landing with a sickening crash on the floor. Jimbo and Fred were unhurt, but Demon lady was still upset. You see, when the glass broke, Jimbo stepped in it and somehow managed to break the wheel out of the back of his shoe. (I'm guessing it was the type they didn't come out) Mumma wanted the store to repay them.


I never found out what happened, but I hope Mumma had to pay for the TV.


(And yeah, it's elaborately written. The short of it being: Some idiot kid on wheely heelys took out a display rack when he couldn't stop. This caused a huge TV to fall and shatter. Somehow the kid's shoe got damaged in the midst of this and his mother expected the store to repay them for the damage to the shoe.)

[donruss]

"No problem "ma'am", we will be more than happy to pay for that as soon as you pay us for that TV you broke."

[LoneWolf]

I now remember again why most residents on this forum found those heelies to be annoying... glad they never really became a hit here.

Don't quite understand the mother though, I'd be freaked if my kids would race around in a space with tons worth of stuff. Then again, she was stupid enough to ask for the store to pay that wheel...

I sell cell phones and other expensive stuff, I'm afraid to sneeze within 5 feet of one of the displays and then those kids race around and... and... I shouldn't even try to get the logic of that one. *sigh*

[tropicsgoddess]

From what it looks like in my area, those Heelys are dying out and the (fugly) Crocs are in. Yay!

[thegiraffe]

At least crocs don't turn kids into projectiles.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

While working CS support (my company's name for the person who does carryouts and carts and other stuff), the phrase you never want to hear is "Could you come and check out the bathroom?"

Best case scenario: There's a few pieces of dry TP or paper towel on the floor and somebody overreacted.

Worst case scenario: Somebody ruptured a bowel or was a problem aimer, and now you have a mess to clean up.

[IvorTangrean]

To the sound in the OP what is worse is being the one that caused it. I once broke the glass doors for the video games at WM. Got two cuts on the arm, one a inch long on the elbow and another about a 1/4 of an inch on my wrist.

Guess which one I still have a scar from, the little one!

[AngryCas]

When working in framing, the one sound you never want to hear is "Uh-oh."

Heard that once. Someone dropped the corner of a frame on a very expensive original piece of artwork.

It still hasn't been resolved...other than that employee was fired.

[Bright_Star]

When working in _______REGISTERS_____________ the one sound you never want to hear is: ______zzzzzzzt____________.

That meant the system went down & you had to wait for it to reboot all the while you have customers bitch at you cause the computer decided to take a coffee break. Not my fault.

[Caveat Emptor]

There is no sound associated with it, but if our Seibel database starts acting sluggish and weird, you can say "5...4...3...2...1....crash!"

[Trayol]

when working in a dairy store the one sound you never want to hear is CRASH SPLASH tinkle tinkle tinkle

About a year ago, one of the shift managers was restocking the crates of milk in the cooler. As he went to push them forward from the back he did not check to make sure there was room for them. There was still one crate at the bottom front out of sight. When he pushed fro the back, the second stack toppled over the one crate in the first row causing the top five crates to topple out out through the cooler doors into the dining area, where thankfully noone was at during the incident. We lost 30 glass bottles of milk that day. Besides for that one glaring mistake the shift manager has been and is still a good worker, unlike the other one ruled by WOW

[Broomjockey]

When you're running a theatre projection booth, the one sound you never want to hear is "beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep" because that means a film's shut down in the middle of the presentation. And it is *rarely* pretty, though it can be easy to fix. "Brain" (also known as platter control head) wraps are easy enough to fix, if a pain trying to jury rig a fix to keep it from happening again. Less fun was it binding in the gates, as the film's pretty much wrecked for a few seconds worth of film.

The sound of a ringing phone is less good though, since that means something's happened that *didn't* trigger the alarm. That usually amounts to a bulb burn-out or sound problems.

[bainsidhe]

I am just. shocked. If it were me playing the part of mummy dearest (and yes, I realize this would also be sucky) I would have grabbed little Jimmy Bob and ran for it. Growing up, when my brother was messing around and ran face-first into a display rack, the store didn't replace his eyeglasses now did they? Course that was like 20 years ago and the EWs just get worse and worse.

As an employee, I would have immediately called forth a manager to speak to this witch and maintenance to block off the glass shards and path of destruction. But I would have wanted to say "And do you have insurance, ma'am? You know, for the TV your child broke." Maybe as another customer I would've said it

[ladyklack]

When working in a __photo lab__ the one sound you don't want to hear is __click click click__

Thats the sound of the negative processing machine jamming up. Paper jams were easy to deal with, clear the jam and reprint the pictures. When the negative machine jams up, however, you can pretty much kiss the customers precious photos buh-bye. (unless you have a lot of luck and mad ninja skills)

[blas]

When working in a factory (as a trainer) the one thing you never want to hear is "Oh no!"

Usually means a trainee has *yet again* disabled/stalled a machine by not abiding safety and sticking their hands in the machine too many times, or has once again gotten product jammed in there.