Bite me!

[pltkcelestial18]

So where I work, the manager's office and desks are upstairs, above the cash registers at the front of the store, along with the break room and a conference room. It's also open to the rest of the store so you'll sometimes see us hollering at people up there. Customers are generally not allowed up there.

Well today I was on a register and I hear someone from up there say "bite me". I look up and it looked like a customer saying that to a manager, but I didn't know what was going on. Didn't think anything of it until a few minutes later, the same customer decides to check out in my lane. The manager he told "bite me" to, walked by and I could tell she wasn't happy.

I started ringing him up, and he goes into length about how easy it must be to get a job here because you don't have to do anything and we're so understaffed and super busy that we can't be bothered to help anyone properly. He goes to the end of the register to sack his groceries cause...ya know...we're understaffed. One of the newer baggers come over to help him and the guy shoos him away and tells him he should go help the manager at the next register and starts going on again about something. The manager tells him to shut up then and quit complaining. I also tell him I don't want to listen to him complain.

*We really are a really busy grocery store. We're almost right off the interstate and we don't really have much competition. Hiring is also done at a district level, so the store tells the HR manager at district what we need, and they do the hiring so we can't really control when we'll get people or if they'll work out.*

Towards the end of the transaction he calls the same manager a bitch. I told him that I thought she was quite nice. He looked at me and asked "Are you sure? Have you actually talked to her?" I told him that yes I have talked with her frequently and found her to be very nice and pleasant. He didn't say much else but I could tell he wasn't happy that I said that.

He goes to leave and I tell him to have a nice day like I do all my customers and he said that he wouldn't be because he just got done shopping at my store. I said in a very happy and chirpy voice "sorry!" I don't think he liked me very much by the end but didn't say much.

I found out later from the manager that he didn't like the way the plants looked outside and that because they were dying, that was why prices were rising in the store. All I could think was "WTF?" That makes no sense. I've seen the floral department water the plants outside regularly, but even then you can't always guarantee they'll last, and secondly, the store doesn't control the prices. That's controlled at a higher level, corporate would be my guess.

[MoonCat]

So if your employees don't have to do anything, how come you're super busy? He was just nuts.

That said, there's a K-mart here that used to not do a very good job watering their plants. Stuff would be sitting there all dry and wilted. But I'm sure that had nothing to do with the prices, they probably just didn't have enough people to do it regularly.

[thehuckster]

The plants outside were dying... ergo the prices in the store were rising.

Well, this customer's economic rationale still makes more sense than the pundits on cable news.

[pltkcelestial18]

yea the whole situation just made me giggle a little inside, partly though because I knew I could've probably said anything I wanted and gotten away with it because the manager wasn't happy with this customer.

She even told me that when he started in on the complaining about the store and it's employees, I should've just told him "Never mind.", put his stuff back in the basket and voided the whole transaction.

I'm far too nice for my own good.

[raudf]

No, no. See, you made him even angrier and more unhappy by going ahead with the transaction. If you had refused to serve him, he'd have felt vindicated that it was "all the manager's fault." You denied him that, making him so unhappy that he might well not come back!

*snort* I guess he has never worked retail in his miserable life, otherwise, he'd have learned the word "shrinkage." And that most companies plan for a certain amount of it to occur, especially those dealing with fresh foods and plants and set prices for those items according to that and what they pay for the items themselves. Wait, doesn't matter anyways, because that requires logic and apparently he's got about as much of that as he does tact.

[pltkcelestial18]

No, no. See, you made him even angrier and more unhappy by going ahead with the transaction. If you had refused to serve him, he'd have felt vindicated that it was "all the manager's fault." You denied him that, making him so unhappy that he might well not come back!

One can only hope he won't come back.


wait.....oh yea I forgot where I was

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

That said, there's a K-mart here that used to not do a very good job watering their plants. Stuff would be sitting there all dry and wilted. But I'm sure that had nothing to do with the prices, they probably just didn't have enough people to do it regularly.

Either that or the people watering couldn't be arsed to do it the right way.

You soak the plant at the roots until water starts running out of the pot. Shrubs and trees will take longer. If you have a lot of plants close together on a pallet or a rack, it will take longer.

What you don't do is drizzle the tops by passing the nozzle over the plants a few times, which is how a lot of the kids working out in the swamp's garden center "water" plants. The plants will just be dry and crispy again in no time.

With as many plants as we carry, watering them all isn't a quick job. It's probably not even possible to water them all in a day, what with the other tasks you have to complete out there.

The plants outside were dying... ergo the prices in the store were rising.

Well, this customer's economic rationale still makes more sense than the pundits on cable news.

Because the plants are dry and crispy and dead, they get thrown away and the store eats the cost. Which can, conceivably, lead to prices in the store being raised to make up for it, but that's a piss-poor way to handle it. Those price hikes are probably driven by higher costs for those particular products.

[Sleepwalker]

Having worked in a greenhouse with both indoor and outdoor plants, some of the water hogs can be soaked to the roots in the morning and need another soaking by afternoon, during high summer. I highly doubt most grocery stores have enough people solely dedicated to watering to keep their more delicate plants unburnt.

On the other hand, the sturdier plants can perk back up in less than a minute. It's like magic, you can see the stalks unwilting and standing up again before your eyes.

[emt_cookies]

My grocery/retail store had a vendor for the plants. The profits went something along the lines of a credit system. If we had 40 plants but 10 died, we would trash the 10 and scan the bar codes. The 10 that died we were not charged for and we would get more in.

There were some plants that were the regular system where if they died, we ate the loss. Those plants we could mark down. Otherwise, the plants are trashed into the garbage with no markdown what so ever.

It pissed people off when we had to tell them that we weren't allowed to mark down the plants/whatever broken down merchandise. They would be like "you're losing a sale!" And we'd say, "we'd lose money on that sale!"

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

My grocery/retail store had a vendor for the plants. The profits went something along the lines of a credit system. If we had 40 plants but 10 died, we would trash the 10 and scan the bar codes. The 10 that died we were not charged for and we would get more in.

I believe the industry term here would be "scan-based trading." At one time the swamp's entire garden center worked like that for the live goods. Or maybe it was just certain things. I forget. I just know I heard that term thrown around a lot with regard to the plants.

It makes inventory super easy. No counting 54,387,420 four-packs or landscapers' flats two or three times because the computer says we should have 54,387,421.

There are certain other things in the store that work this way. I think fireworks are one of them. Some of the plants out in the garden center may still be replenished in this manner. I'll find out for sure in two weeks when we do inventory.

[rose_metal_nz]

Wow. What a flaming nut job
Here's hoping he won't come back. As if