I am *so* going to get out of retail, if it means throwing myself in front of a bus. I have 2 sites that I used to love to read, written by retail workers, for retail workers, about all the craziness that happens in the retail world. I used to laugh, I used to sit with my jaw on the floor in amazement. Now I want to cry. It just never occurred to me I guess, just how far down the evolutionary scale we've slid. Most of my stories make you want to shake you're head, but I do have some few that just make you wonder where the world will be in the not so distant future.
4 *very* quick stories...
I've explained the u-scan before. The items have a weight that is entered into the computer with their bar code and price. The scanner is a scale, the bag area is a scale, and all the #'s better match, or you have to wait for the attendant to see why they don't.
A woman comes up with an armful of things, she starts scanning, and then her small child starts leaning on the bag scale. When she *finally* looks up to me, I explain the whole scale thing, and she says, "Oh, that's a scale?! So sorry!" and pulls her kid off the scale, (no I'm not kidding here) when she stood back up from that, she frikken put her purse on it! And had the nerve to *ask me why it wouldn't work!*
A guy places his few items through the process, then puts his bag on the floor. The weight needs to stay the same on the scale, I told him so, and he said... "I guess the camera didn't catch the fact that I put the stuff in a bag." "Scale", "camera" ... um?
Then the people that just plain make no sense at all.
Like my little old Russian guy. Speaks about 5 words of English. He comes in and spends a fortune on scratch offs, and he's *SO SLOW*! it takes him, literally, 20 minutes to put his money in the machine, choose his 5 or so tickets, and scratch them off. But he has no idea if he wins. He doesn't read enough English to know if he did. So he brings his entire pile for us to scan into the lottery machine, because he doesn't believe us if we just throw the ticket away. What is the point of scratching them off? If you don't know if it's a winner or not, just buy the ticket and have us scan it for you. (not that I enjoy that either!)
The store I worked for does a gas promotion. Every $1 you spend on grocery items is a point, every 100 points is .10 off each gallon of gas, and each promotion lasts 8 weeks... 6 weeks to earn points, 2 weeks to use them up, and then it all zeros out and starts over. To make it easier, it's just like every other sale, it always starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, and your points, and the dates of the promotion are on all your receipts, plus the dates of the promotion are on every door, register, circular, and gas pump.
If I had a nickle for every time I heard, "What a rip-off!" "How was I supposed to know when it ended" and "Why does it have to be so difficult to understand?!" I'd be a really, really, wealthy woman.
I think I'm burnt out. I never wanna be on the other side of another register for the rest of my life.
As usual...
Thanks for Noticing me!
