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Sucky customers plus MiM.
Friday night a woman was in to buy a laptop and spent quite a bit of time discussing it at the tech counter before finally leaving nearly half an hour after closing time.
In and of itself this is bad enough, but her four children were wreaking havoc over in the copy center in the meantime.
I didn't realize that this was happening at first because I was running myself ragged trying to get the place straightened up, but I suddenly became aware of the sound of staplers going off one after another. I went up to the copy center to investigate and found these 4 punks shooting staples at each other.
The youngest was just under 10, the other three were mid to late teens, and all were definitely old enough to know better.
Moreover, they knew full well what they were doing was wrong because when they caught sight of me, they started calling out "NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!!"
Under other circumstances I might have said something, but for some reason I was in an exceedingly foul mood that night (so bad that Focker had to tell me to cool it earlier int he night, which is highly unusual for me) and knew that if I said something I was going to go off on them so hard that I might end up losing my job. PLus it was right about then that their mother finished up and called for them to came back over to her because it was time to go.
The next night I was sorting out tags when the woman came back in - again with the 4 kids - and asked to speak with the tech she'd spoken to the night before. At first I didn't realize this was the same crowd, so I simply directed her to BS as the tech she asked for had the night off.
Moments later the youngest kid came running full tilt past the service desk and over to the copy center self serve area.
Me: NO RUNNING PLEASE!!!!!
Of course I was ignored. The kid made a beeline straight for an open pad of sticky notes, tore off about half the pad, then grabbed the paper cutter and started feeding notes into it and slicing them to bits.
Well, seeing as this kid was under 10 I couldn't let him do that. It was far to dangerous, not to mention a huge liability for the company (though that didn't occur to me until later) so I marched over there and took the paper cutter away from him and told him I could not allow him to play with it, then went back to what I was doing.
Youngest Kid: Excuse me?
Me: What?
YK: Can I play with the scissors instead?
Me:
I'd prefer you didn't.
That of course, didn't stop him. He started chopping up the stickies and making an unholy mess of the table over there.
I paged Focker.
Me: Can I chase that kid out of the copy center?
Focker: No.
Me: Why not? He's trashing self-serve!
Focker: Jackass can clean it up later.
Me: Seriously? So it's ok for people to let their kids trash the store? There's no reason for that!
Focker: He's not hurting anything.
Me: He's making extra work for us, not to mention creating a liability. If he cuts himself you can bet his mother is going to blame us.
Focker: Don't worry about it.
Right about then the kid stopped, so I dropped the issue. Focker went back to whatever he'd been doing before.
Then his three older brothers drifted over there.
It was then that it clicked and I realized that these were the same four punks that had the stapler fight. I knew it, and one of them made eye contact and I he knew I knew. I held eye contact with him while he slowly reached for a stapler, unfolded it, and shot a staple at one of his brothers.
Me (immediately): DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN!!!
I think I might've actually scared them into behaving because they just took out a deck of cards and started playing, all while nervously glancing over at me.
A few minutes later I started putting out the price tags I'd been sorting, and when I came back for more they suddenly had a bag of pretzels and a bag of beef jerky from our junk food rack and were munching away.
And as I had not seen them or heard them being rung up, I strongly suspected they weren't paid for.
I asked for permission to challenge them for a receipt and did not get it. This was especially frustrating when it was later confirmed that the food was in fact stolen.
When they finally left (again, well after close) I asked for permission to ask the 3 older kids to open up their bags, and again did not get permission.
Then I found out that they'd strewn most of the beef jerky all over self-serve.
Yeah, I was not a happy camper, and it didn't help that Focker and Dale were giving me shit for having "laid the smackdown" on those kids by yelling at them for shooting staples.
Unfortunately, because of the tech issue the mother was having it's highly likely that we're going to see them again. They weren't in tonight, but I wouldn't not be surprised if they were to come in tomorrow. They had better not, because I am completely out of patience with them.
Friday night a woman was in to buy a laptop and spent quite a bit of time discussing it at the tech counter before finally leaving nearly half an hour after closing time.
In and of itself this is bad enough, but her four children were wreaking havoc over in the copy center in the meantime.
I didn't realize that this was happening at first because I was running myself ragged trying to get the place straightened up, but I suddenly became aware of the sound of staplers going off one after another. I went up to the copy center to investigate and found these 4 punks shooting staples at each other.
The youngest was just under 10, the other three were mid to late teens, and all were definitely old enough to know better.
Moreover, they knew full well what they were doing was wrong because when they caught sight of me, they started calling out "NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!!"
Under other circumstances I might have said something, but for some reason I was in an exceedingly foul mood that night (so bad that Focker had to tell me to cool it earlier int he night, which is highly unusual for me) and knew that if I said something I was going to go off on them so hard that I might end up losing my job. PLus it was right about then that their mother finished up and called for them to came back over to her because it was time to go.
The next night I was sorting out tags when the woman came back in - again with the 4 kids - and asked to speak with the tech she'd spoken to the night before. At first I didn't realize this was the same crowd, so I simply directed her to BS as the tech she asked for had the night off.
Moments later the youngest kid came running full tilt past the service desk and over to the copy center self serve area.
Me: NO RUNNING PLEASE!!!!!
Of course I was ignored. The kid made a beeline straight for an open pad of sticky notes, tore off about half the pad, then grabbed the paper cutter and started feeding notes into it and slicing them to bits.
Well, seeing as this kid was under 10 I couldn't let him do that. It was far to dangerous, not to mention a huge liability for the company (though that didn't occur to me until later) so I marched over there and took the paper cutter away from him and told him I could not allow him to play with it, then went back to what I was doing.
Youngest Kid: Excuse me?
Me: What?
YK: Can I play with the scissors instead?
Me:
I'd prefer you didn't.That of course, didn't stop him. He started chopping up the stickies and making an unholy mess of the table over there.
I paged Focker.
Me: Can I chase that kid out of the copy center?
Focker: No.
Me: Why not? He's trashing self-serve!
Focker: Jackass can clean it up later.
Me: Seriously? So it's ok for people to let their kids trash the store? There's no reason for that!
Focker: He's not hurting anything.
Me: He's making extra work for us, not to mention creating a liability. If he cuts himself you can bet his mother is going to blame us.
Focker: Don't worry about it.
Right about then the kid stopped, so I dropped the issue. Focker went back to whatever he'd been doing before.
Then his three older brothers drifted over there.
It was then that it clicked and I realized that these were the same four punks that had the stapler fight. I knew it, and one of them made eye contact and I he knew I knew. I held eye contact with him while he slowly reached for a stapler, unfolded it, and shot a staple at one of his brothers.
Me (immediately): DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN!!!
I think I might've actually scared them into behaving because they just took out a deck of cards and started playing, all while nervously glancing over at me.
A few minutes later I started putting out the price tags I'd been sorting, and when I came back for more they suddenly had a bag of pretzels and a bag of beef jerky from our junk food rack and were munching away.
And as I had not seen them or heard them being rung up, I strongly suspected they weren't paid for.
I asked for permission to challenge them for a receipt and did not get it. This was especially frustrating when it was later confirmed that the food was in fact stolen.
When they finally left (again, well after close) I asked for permission to ask the 3 older kids to open up their bags, and again did not get permission.
Then I found out that they'd strewn most of the beef jerky all over self-serve.
Yeah, I was not a happy camper, and it didn't help that Focker and Dale were giving me shit for having "laid the smackdown" on those kids by yelling at them for shooting staples.
Unfortunately, because of the tech issue the mother was having it's highly likely that we're going to see them again. They weren't in tonight, but I wouldn't not be surprised if they were to come in tomorrow. They had better not, because I am completely out of patience with them.
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