What's the Most Annoying Thing You've Rung Up?

[EricKei]

Kind of a reversal, from when I used to work at...*ahem*...GameStore. Some people would come in with -- literally -- a duffel bag full of used, crappy old games to trade in. as in, forty-plus games. Bonus points if the games were all just a stack of discs, no boxes or anything. Super Special Awesome Bonus Points if they called ahead to ask what the trade-in value is on each and every game in advance, easily taking up 15 minutes on the phone that we could be using to help customers actually IN the store. We usually cut them off after 5 or so...Anyhoo, they would bring these things in, invariably half of them would look like they had been dragged over gravel driveway, and they would object to us giving them less Credit due to the fact that they obviously were not resellable in that condition (but we had to take them anyway; they got sent in to corporate as Damaged). Their favorite excuse was "well it works just fine at home". Suuuure it does. I think I even got that excuse once when someone tried to trade in a disc that was BROKEN IN HALF....

[cinema guy]

The old lady who wanted tickets for every single film in the forthcoming season of films for seniors, with specific seats for every show, and told me exactly which of her friends was coming and who wasn't and why not. All the while a queue formed behind her.

[KabeRinnaul]

And a reply to the actual topic now.

Most annoying I can recall from this job was either this woman who used to be a regular, and wanted everything double bagged in paper and never too heavy. "Too heavy" in her case meant more than maybe 6-8 soup cans in one bag. She always got a lot, and would generally deplete a register's supply of paper bags all by herself.

More recently, I got an extremely disorganized pair (I don't know if they were a couple or mother/adult son because I can't remember how old each looked that clearly). The woman insisted on having everything done in a particular order, to the point that she was handing me items one by one out of the cart. But she also wanted them bagged in a certain way, so she'd run down to correct whatever bit of bagging the guy had done, then run back and make sure I'd rung everything up right. She also wound up going around behind me and often leaning over my shoulder to watch what I was doing. Her order took somewhere in the realm of half an hour, and she was throwing out demands and trying to direct everything I did the whole time.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And - pray tell - just WHY weren't you allowed to use the quantity key? Did it not work? Or was this some phenomenally stupid rule?

My guess is it was for inventory reasons. Some items will look exactly the same as another item and be priced exactly the same, but the two will have different SKUs or UPCs so you have to ring them up separately so the system registers that you sold a blue scarf and a red scarf (just as an example), instead of 2 blue scarves or 2 red scarves.

[Automan Empire]

Weigh the kid.

Okay, ma'am......that's 30 lbs, at .79/lb......

Mike

Haha... what is the tare weight on THAT apple?

[Kiwi]

When I worked at the craft store they had big big bins of everything

joggle eyes, bells, pompoms, pipecleaners, wooden beads, moudling for doll houses, cupie dolls, you name it they sold it but...

they wouldnt allow any kind of container for customers to put these in as it "encouraged stealing" never mind that our bulk bins were at the VERY BACK of the store where no staff member could see

so we would constantly have customers come up with cupped hands and then they would spill their thousands of 2mm joggle eyes, or 3mm beads all over the counter

we also had curling ribbon for 5cents a metre.... so I would get these woman in who would buy 50 metres of 10 colours.... it could take well over half an hour for a freaking $10 sale... or our cellophane for 50 cents a metre.... were people would get 50 metres and then ask for it to be cut into metre legnths.... I don't think so!

of course after I left.... they stopped selling in bulk and changed over to prepackaged everything gee thanks a lot! Inventory was actually worse than customers. Inventory usually took 3 days and it took two people to do nothing but count out our bulk section....

[bluepolokhakipants]

Dog food bags weighing 40 or more pounds that are thrown into the customer's buggy so you can't get to the UPC without lifting it. And they just stand there and watch you struggle with it. I also hate when a customer buys several dozen cans of every kind of cat food we sell and doesn't sort it by flavor and brand. Then ask why I can't just ring up one can and use the quantity key. It has to be rung up that way for inventory purposes.

[TehShush]

Ah, my lurking days are over as I'm compelled to come foward with my itty bitty annoyance...

I worked at deli in a certain grocery store, popular in Florida, for a while. We had the Boarshead selection, which customers can pick and choose from if the want a certain type on their sandwich. Instead of getting the presliced ham, turkey, (bottom) roast beef, and cheese combo we usually had ready... he wanted Virginia baked ham, cracked pepper turkey, top roast beef, and Muenster cheese. Basically, he wanted the four messiest things we offerred, and none were presliced so they had to be sliced each time he came up to us. He wanted them on a sandwich, often when there were other people waiting, and at night when we only had one or two slicers even open (they each had to be cleaned and shut down to prepare for closing).

So, a 5 minute sandwich order took around 30 minutes.

[RichS]

Two words - Rug Doctor.

Ringing up one rental takes up 15 minutes, on a customer that knows the procedure. Worse if they don't, a lot worse.

I get chills when a customer stares at that display...

[flybye023]

Weeeeellll, I don't know about Flyebye, but back in my first retail job, we were discouraged from using Quantity because customers had a tendency to mix items of different prices but similar packaging. Of course, they always managed to put the cheapest item or 2 on top.

Bingo, baby! Loss prevention at its finest My worst quantity key order? 300 1"x2"x10' lumber. The customer reduced me to tears on that one with continual verbal harassment and abuse, name calling, swearing--for the whole 15 minutes it took me to ring up.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Two words - Rug Doctor.

Ringing up one rental takes up 15 minutes, on a customer that knows the procedure. Worse if they don't, a lot worse.

I get chills when a customer stares at that display...

We do Rug Doctor rentals at the swamp, and quite a few of them I might add.

It probably takes a similar amount of time for the service desk people to do those as well.

Geez people, buy your own carpet shampooer already! We mark them down all the time!

[Summerfly413]

I definitely hate hangers. I usually only have a small space to put scanned items before I bag them and the big packs take up a lot of space. And when I try to bag them, I can only fit about 2 bunches comfortably, without the bag being too awkward.

[Digitalpotato]

A massive order at Subway whereupon the person tried to use coupons for EVERYthing.

[Andara Bledin]

Weeeeellll, I don't know about Flyebye, but back in my first retail job, we were discouraged from using Quantity because customers had a tendency to mix items of different prices but similar packaging. Of course, they always managed to put the cheapest item or 2 on top.

You'd love me. I regularly hit up the book store for a dozen books at once, and I always put them in order by price so that when they're running the "buy X# and get X# free" the free one is always the least expensive of each group, but gives us the best discount.

Bingo, baby! Loss prevention at its finest My worst quantity key order? 300 1"x2"x10' lumber. The customer reduced me to tears on that one with continual verbal harassment and abuse, name calling, swearing--for the whole 15 minutes it took me to ring up.

Yikes. Five minutes and I'd have called up a manager. I don't know that you could pay me enough to put up with that without totally going off on such a raging assmuncher.

^-.-^

[HorrorFrogPrincess]

Groups of about 15 who all want wristbands, and want to buy them separately.

Ditto with groups who want X number of tickets per person, all paid separately. And with coupons. Who argue about the price. And also want pizza, no, don't hold it. We'll eat it now, what do you mean the wristbands end after one hour?

With coupons.