I don't want to see your boobs! Plus other fun tales (squicky)

[ShinyGreenApple]

There's a running gag at work now, and the gag is that I am the official store bra/boob/gross shit lady.

Creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize y'all's neighborhood!

Older woman comes up to the counter on a busy Saturday afternoon, clutching a ziploc baggie, which she thrusts in my general direction. The ziploc contains a BRA.

"Hey, I been wearin' this all day but it's itching really bad, can you tell me what them things thar are? And don't tell me it's lint like the last person did, I already showed it to someone in the garden center. It's NOT lint, lint don't move!"

Upon closer (but careful, keeping my distance!) inspection, I notice that there are indeed small black flecks on the fabric, they kind of resemble really dark cigarette ashes. And yes, gods, they ARE moving. I told her I didn't know what they were and didn't even bother summoning the pharmacist, I was 99% sure he wouldn't know what they were and decided he deserved to be spared this experience. He later confirmed my suspicions that he's clueless about identifying bugs.

Look lady, common sense should tell you that if your CLOTHES are infested with bugs, the rest of you is, too! But then again, she brought her bra into Volde-Mart thinking some hourly peon could identify her creepy crawlers . . . Don't bring your used underwear to Volde-Mart for us to see. Just don't.


"Well, Mr. Gump, I'd like to see that!" One of the techs is thoroughly grossed out early one morning, the reason being a customer came to drop off a prescription at the window, and felt the need to peel back the bandage on his arm to show her a swollen, open, festering, oozing cancer wound. Then when he picked up his meds, he showed it to me, too.

Hooters: Baby Boom Edition
Not two weeks after the bra-in-the-ziploc incident, I have just arrived at work, we've just opened the gate, and I'm hanging prescriptions up that have been filled in the last hour. An older woman is sitting on the bench with Rxs in her hand, but doesn't approach me. It's been about five minutes and I'm just about done hanging the first scripts when she finally comes up to me.

"Oh, you're not ready for me yet, are you?"

Me: "Actually yes, we've been open for a few minutes now. Do you need to drop those off? You can take them right down there to the drop-off window and B will be happy to get them going for you."

"Oh! Ok. Well it's my fault, I should have had the doctor call some stuff in this morning, I'm all broke out. See?"

Now, it's one of those things that you see happening in your mind's eye. You know exactly what is about to happen, but are unable to grasp the correct way to respond or stop this event. I was struck with horror before it even happened.

This woman proceeded to lift up her shirt and treat me to the sight of her braless tits and stomach, covered with angry red bumps. Actually 'covered with angry red bumps' is an understatement. We'll just leave it at that. At the time, I wasn't trying to think of a way to describe it, I was probably thinking more along the lines of "Come on, Cheerios, you really do want to stay in my stomach, don't you? I promise it's safe in there. Trust me, you DON'T want to be out here right now." I directed her to the drop off window, explaining that I'm just a cashier and can't accept scripts at the pickup counter.

Also, SERIOUSLY?! She had the prescriptions for the cream already in her hand, why did she have to show me that shit?! And for the record, she showed the tech at drop-off, too. We've spoken with one of the floor associates who stocks our OTC drugs and she's pretty sure this is the repeat offender who keeps coming up to her randomly in the aisles to treat her to the magical red dots, too.

And then our tech-turned-intern asked me if I had "Show me your bras and boobs" tattooed to my forehead. Now, I may be a heterosexual female, but I can appreciate a nice boob or two, even if I'd rather not see them and don't go out of my way to do so. But if I must look at tits, I'd prefer if they didn't have parasites or rashes on them, and also if they didn't belong to someone old enough to be my grandmother.

The last story I can't even think of a half-assed title for, it just is what it is. Needy, one of the techs has just gotten off a phone call and informs the pharmacist to put a certain RX on hold because the patient isn't allowed to pick up here anymore. He's one of our regular parking lot bums and had been arrested last week doing third party alcohol sales to minors and was banned from the property for a year. Not ten minutes later, he shows up.

Needy: (to me) "That's him! Tell him it's not ready, tell him it's not ready, tellhimitsnotready!!!"

Feeling nervous and a little scummy at this point, I told him his medicine wasn't quite ready yet, but to have a seat and the pharmacist would have it out in a few minutes. Meanwhile, Needy has borrowed the maintenance guy's walkie and called our newest manager, who arrives in short moments and starts in on Banned!Patient.

"You've been trespassing here?"

BP: "No!"

NM: "Get out of my store! I'm giving you five seconds to leave before I call the police."

BP: "But I need to get my meds."

NM: "Not kidding, you have five seconds to leave. Oh, now you have four."

BP: "Fine, call the law. I ain't going anywhere till I get my stuff. Can't I pick it up?"

NM: "NO!"

BP then starts getting panicky and asking how long his medicine will take and the pharmacist tries to calm him and says it'll be about ten minutes. At this point NM is in the pharmacy on the phone with the police department and BP realizes he means business and disappears. Almost immediately there is a cop at the drop off window and our newest security guard is right behind him, offering to go with him because he knows what the guy looks like. They disappear and we assume the guy got away, laugh at our "That's a typical night at Volde-Mart!" moment, and kind of move on. About 15 minutes later, the officer calmly approaches the pick up counter, BP following meekly behind him.

Cop: "Okay, can we see about getting this man's medicine so I can get him out of here and do what we need to do?"

Pharmacy Manager: "Oh sure, sure! Intern, go ahead and fill it, it's sitting on the shelf 'cause I returned it so all you have to do is label it."

BP then decides to chat up the cop and us as well with small talk, asking how the night is going.

Not sixty seconds has gone by and the guy's refill has gone from being in filling to in his hands and paid for. He was incredibly amiable and civil about the whole thing.

Cop: " . . . Okay, guys, now that I KNOW you guys do it this fast, I'm going to need to know when exactly all of you people here tonight are working when I come in, and don't give me this stuff about 45 minute wait times!"

Everyone

In the end, I felt bad for the poor guy even if he did break the law. I still see him hanging about the median strip and local restaurants, he's just not allowed on Volde-Mort grounds for a while. He's also still free to fill his medicine here, provided someone else picks them up for him.

And now, for a day off.

[rose_metal_nz]

Cop: " . . . Okay, guys, now that I KNOW you guys do it this fast, I'm going to need to know when exactly all of you people here tonight are working when I come in, and don't give me this stuff about 45 minute wait times!"

Everyone

awkward!

[depechemodefan]

"Hey, I been wearin' this all day but it's itching really bad, can you tell me what them things thar are? And don't tell me it's lint like the last person did, I already showed it to someone in the garden center. It's NOT lint, lint don't move!"

Ugh, I wonder why people think we are doctors. Reminds me of a patron who called twice. She responds to our greeting, "something is coming out of my butt." When she calls back (because various cws tell her, "we don't answer those type of questions/we don't answer prank calls") she says she wants to knwo what it could be. We repeatedly tell her, "Go to the emergency room." Finally, cws will look in one of the symptoms books, tell her, "we are not doctors, we can't diagnose, go to the ER; but it could be a parasite." People go to the emergency room every month, just to get a refill for the bp meds, why not go for something like that?

Though could be a prolapsed rectum.

[Marmalady]

Upon closer (but careful, keeping my distance!) inspection, I notice that there are indeed small black flecks on the fabric, they kind of resemble really dark cigarette ashes. And yes, gods, they ARE moving.

Probably body lice. You were very wise to keep your distance.

[EricKei]

Creepy crawlies: Consider yourselves lucky that she didn't take the bra OUT of the bag! Your whole store could easily have become infested.

Something similar happened at my old GameStore once -- this was maybe 6 months after Katrina, we have a a brand-spanking shiny newly-redone store (HAZMAT dealt with the remains of the old one, if that tells you anything)...Thus, it was clean, no messes, strict controls on any food brought in by workers, watching custys with food like hawks, etc.

Then, one day, a dude wants to trade in his old, dusty, filthy XBOX (Classic). Naturally, no bag, no nuthin. He just set it on the cash wrap counter and we watched with dismay as a fairly large amount of what appeared to be dust flaked off, some on the counter, some into the air, some onto the floor, you get the idea. None of us wanted to TOUCH the thing, but we had no choice, so some poor soul among us tried to hook it up to the monitor to test it. (The guy SWORE it worked just fine at home). The resultant heat did not serve to power up the unit to the point where it was usable. What it did, however, was to wake up some of the numerous *families* of tiny roaches that had been using it as a gigantic nest...And which then immediately gained the honor of taking up residence throughout our previously nice clean store. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH
As for the bathroom, where, of course, they settled in hardcore....? We just gave up and let them have it. I don't recall whether we were simply not ALLOWED to have bug spray, or whether we simply DIDN'T have it. It was never big enough to use as a bathroom anyway, so this simply settled its fate as the storage room for the (shrinkwrapped/sealed) trade-in game systems. Their numbers did drop after awhile, tho >_> Not sure if it was from spraying or simply not having anything more appetizing to eat than cardboard. Never totally got rid of them tho.

[ShinyGreenApple]

Ugh, that's not the first time I've heard of roach-infested game consoles/electronics. How can people afford to get this pricey stuff yet NOT afford a few cans of Hot Shot and some baits/traps?

Cashiers up front have had similar experiences with the cloth shopping bags that most stores have now. They open them up to put the customer's groceries in, and roaches or spiders come swarming out Then the SCs get pissy that the cashier refuses to use anymore of their bags from home or even touch them. The majority are covered with pet hairs and crud, anyways. How they're not too embarrassed to bring these things in and share with the world what sties they live in, I have no idea.

We've also had a little kid puke on the floor, but hey, it's a pharmacy. Most people who come here are sick anyways. The mother was also incredibly apologetic, did most of the clean up, and asked if she could borrow the trash can because it looked like he wasn't done yet. He wasn't. But as gross as that was, I just felt really bad for the kid

[XCashier]

We've also had a little kid puke on the floor, but hey, it's a pharmacy. Most people who come here are sick anyways. The mother was also incredibly apologetic, did most of the clean up, and asked if she could borrow the trash can because it looked like he wasn't done yet. He wasn't. But as gross as that was, I just felt really bad for the kid

At least the mother apologized and helped clean up. Kudos to her for that. It's the ones who bring in lice/roach/etc.-infested items and are insulted when you cringe from their stuff that baffle the hell out of me. What, you're proud of all your six-legged dependents?!

[ozcatbug]

Then, one day, a dude wants to trade in his old, dusty, filthy XBOX (Classic). Naturally, no bag, no nuthin. He just set it on the cash wrap counter and we watched with dismay as a fairly large amount of what appeared to be dust flaked off, some on the counter, some into the air, some onto the floor, you get the idea. None of us wanted to TOUCH the thing, but we had no choice, so some poor soul among us tried to hook it up to the monitor to test it. (The guy SWORE it worked just fine at home). The resultant heat did not serve to power up the unit to the point where it was usable. What it did, however, was to wake up some of the numerous *families* of tiny roaches that had been using it as a gigantic nest...And which then immediately gained the honor of taking up residence throughout our previously nice clean store. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

I see this on a daily basis, and I still can't understand it. Just reminding everyone I work as a trade in tech for huge games store. If we find a console that is infested we grab the masking tape and cover every join, port, slot, basically anywhere a bug or the bug dirt can get out of the console. Then it is labelled. Personally I've used "Roach Motel", "Roach Hotel", "Roach Inn", "Roaches be here", and in one case "WARNING: LIVE ROACHES". It is unusual for us to find a live one as the consoles have been to the stores, then are sent to us at head office where it could be waiting for a couple of weeks before we look at them. The day I found the live roaches, 3 other people found live ones too. And this was 3 different consoles, Wii, PS2 and two PS3's. I've also found an ants nest in a DS Lite. Luckily all the ants were dead.

But it's not just the bugs. The dust and dirt we find. Then there are notes from the store that customer says console won't read some discs. When we open them, the consoles insides are coated in what looks like soft drinks. I could understand spilling drinks on a handheld console, but a Wii or PS3? It is not a drink coaster people. Spilling drinks on your console is a sure way for it not to work, especially since the motherboard is rusted or at the very least the laser is coated in a sticky mess.

But just last week I was totally amazed. I picked up a Wii to work on and I could already tell it was probably going to be written off. From a distance it looked like a gold coloured Wii. I originally thought it might be a limited edition, or maybe someone had tried to paint their white console. As I picked it up I realised it was coated with orange dirt. So I started cleaning it. A cleaning cloth will usually last me one to two days. This day it lasted one console. I finally got the outside looking slightly off white, which was a major improvement, then tried to test it. Surprisingly it turned on, but wouldn't read, so I opened it up. The white plastic inside the console was orange, and there was so much orange dirt that I was shocked it actually turned on. The fan was packed with dirt, the ports were packed with dirt, the drive was full of dirt, it was everywhere. I commented to my coworker that it looked like someone had tied their Wii to the back of their car and dragged it through the outback. Shockingly, I wrote it off. I couldn't in good conscience send that out for some unsuspecting customer to buy even if I could get it working.

[crazylegs]

I'm glad that it wasn't me personally that attracted the crazy (I used to work for a national pharmacy chain in the UK). Unfortunately manners don't really come into the equation here either.

The worst day I had was when the pharmacist didn't turn up (locum pharmacist) and I had to stand on the front door telling people who were picking up their methadone that they couldn't...

[ShinyGreenApple]

The worst day I had was when the pharmacist didn't turn up (locum pharmacist) and I had to stand on the front door telling people who were picking up their methadone that they couldn't...

Oh geez, that's never fun. We've had our pharmacists running late before. Once because Rajeesh (not his real name, obviously) forgot about the clocks going up, once because the manager thought he was closing when he was supposed to open, and most recently, on the 4th of July. We didn't open until 10 that day anyways, and this was right after our area being heavily flooded from TS Debby. It turns out the road that the Cranky Pharmacist™ had taken a few days previously had flooded when the rivers crested and he got detoured. He did call the CSMs up front, but they didn't bother telling us and it was only by happenstance I decided to run to the ladies' room and one saw me and told me

Either way though, people were NOT understanding in any of these situations, at least most of them weren't. We were ready to strangle the ones who thought it was 'unacceptable!' that TCP was late because of being detoured off a flooded road. I mean jeez, how DARE he . . .

We saw so much suck come out during that time. You'd think the humanitarian would come out in people, but no. Shockingly, the people who were nicest to us at that time were the ones who lost everything, while the ones who were inconvenienced because of road closures and power outages were the biggest assholes.

ETA: For us it's the Tramadol addicts who give us problems about not being able to pick up. We have one nitwit who would call EVERY day and ask for Rajeesh by name to ask him if she could have her Tramadol filled yet. It got to be a bad morning joke routine.

R: "No, you cannot get that for two weeks! I told you this yesterday."

We've caught her doctor/pharmacy shopping and there was one instance where she got over 600 tablets filled in a month at different pharmacies and written by different MDs, so now we have to call the doctor and confirm it's a legit Rx every time she comes in. Worst part is, she has a one year old baby

[Lovecats]

What, you're proud of all your six-legged dependents?!

Oh, I love this! And talking about the reusable bags, I've been lucky that in all the years I've been cashiering, I've never had any live creature (six-legged or otherwise) come crawling out of them. Some have smelled a bit though (Are you sure you want me to put your food in this?)

[Merriweather]

But it's not just the bugs. The dust and dirt we find. Then there are notes from the store that customer says console won't read some discs. When we open them, the consoles insides are coated in what looks like soft drinks. I could understand spilling drinks on a handheld console, but a Wii or PS3? It is not a drink coaster people. Spilling drinks on your console is a sure way for it not to work, especially since the motherboard is rusted or at the very least the laser is coated in a sticky mess.

What cracks me up is the "OMG, how did that get in there? I had no idea!!". Ok, so maybe you didn't know your computer tower had become Club Med for roaches - but it shouldn't have come as a surprise, cause no way in hades am I going to believe that you can have that many roaches in a small metal box and not have any, anywhere else in your entire house. Nope, if your electronics are that infested, that's not the only place theyre finding to hang out at in your place. And if you've seen them in your house, it can't surprised you that they find a nice, dark, warm spot and take out a long term lease.

As for the sodas and other beverages - how can you not know that you've spilled a soda on something like that? And how can you not know that it can't be good for it, and should at least be opened and wiped out, even if it still works? Geez.

As for dirt & dust. Ok, I'll come clean (sorry). I would not like to have a tech open up my computer tower at the moment, nor at most times. It sits in a lower cabinet at my desk, cords come in thru holes in the back - taking it out of it's narrow little cabinet means unplugging everything, taking it out & opening to clean (and I have static electricity problems, so I'm always paranoid about opening the darn thing up anyway), then the worst part, crawling around under the desk attempting to get everything hooked up again when the cords won't run far into that little narrow space, and you can't get round the little narrow space ot see where you're plugging things in..... At my age, with bad knees, well, let's just say the whole ordeal doesn't happen near as often as it used to. I think I need to find a new desk, where I can keep the thing up farther from the floor so it collects less dust, and out in the open so I can easily unplug & replug, open up, etc. With no more crawling aorund on the floor.

I've thought about migrating everything to my laptop, and giving up a desktop altogether, but I do work with graphics at times, and really need the option of the larger screen.

[Andara Bledin]

As for the sodas and other beverages - how can you not know that you've spilled a soda on something like that? And how can you not know that it can't be good for it, and should at least be opened and wiped out, even if it still works? Geez.

One word.

Kids.

Kids will spill crap all over, then do their best to clean it up and pretend it never happened.

As for the orange dirt.... that's probably not dirt but ash. My ex was a smoker, and the sticky orange ash got into everything and coated it with a foul-smelling coat of crap and dust.

^-.-^

[Shironu-Akaineko]

I second andara's comment, that's exactly what happened when I inherited my smoking grandpa's Commodore 64.
I had no idea any of the components were meant to be gray, until I scrubbed them good.

[Merriweather]

One word.

As for the orange dirt.... that's probably not dirt but ash. My ex was a smoker, and the sticky orange ash got into everything and coated it with a foul-smelling coat of crap and dust.

^-.-^

Could be, I never saw orange, but I know anything that was in my Mother's house for any length of time had a thick icky tanny beige covering from her smoking. I have a few keepsake items that still smell vaguely of smoke, and she's been gone over ten years now.