More Bitchin' and Moanin'

Pulled a double the other day at the store. Happened like this: I thought I had to be in for 11, but it tuned out I was on schedule for 6. So, feeling like a total spazz, I changed back into riding gear and was on my way out, when my boss stopped me and asked me if I wanted to work. Turned out that two people had not shown up at all, and the store was really busy, and so, I went back upstairs and re-dressed, and worked 12 hours, with an hour for lunch, in the middle. The first half, I worked in the main store, and the latter, in the liquor department, my old haunt.

It was intense. We were so busy that I got one chance to run to the toilet and no break for almost six hours. A horde of the most imbcelic and insane customers descended upon me like, uh, locusts or something: perhaps cicadas.

Okay. When I go to the store, and I buy stuff, I pretty much know two things: (a) how much the stuff I am buying actually costs (this may easily be ascertained by reading THE FUCKING SHELF TAG, YOU MORON) , and (b) how much money I have to spend for it (you can look in your pocket or at the balance coloumn of your checkbook or CALL THE FUCKING BANK INSTEAD OF DISCUSSING THE BITCH YOU FUCKED LAST NIGHT OR THE LATEST SHADE OF MAKEUP YOU HAVE ON ON YOUR CELL WHILE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CONDUCTING BUSINESS, YOU DICK/AND/OR CUNT!). Gawd, that felt good! Mental defecation is good for the soul.

So, I get this extremely well-dressed black lady in her 60's, the kind that you would think would be a wonderful customer, only she has the sale paper in her hand, and she's in for the sale, only there is an issue with the cost of, um, like, every other item. The first was BOGO (q.v.), only she had two different items, from the meat department. So, I had to call J., from the meat department, and he explained it to her in great detail, but she either failed to grasp the concept or was a good scammer, because he finally said "just give it to her", which meant I had to do a POS coupon on it. Okay, that crisis averted, she hands me a "rain check" ticket for orange juice, only the coupon is a year old. I bring to her attention that there is (written on the coupon) a 30-day expiration date, and she gets huffy, so I have to get J., the manager on duty, who tells her the same thing, and finally, exasperated, tells me to honour it. Think it's over now? Oh, no. No such fucking luck.

The third item rings at $1.59, but she claims it is $.99, because the tag said so. So, I summon a third person, this time from grocery, who checks the item and comes back and tells us that the item next to it is the one for $.99, so she doesn't want it, and I have to void it off. Still ain't over.

Next thing, she has ten items that she says are "10 FOR 10" (q.v.), and produces her sale paper, which is two weeks out of date, and the items are now for the regular price. So, once again, I summon a manager, J., again, only, this time, he's had as much of her as I have, because he has plenty of other things to do, and, he tells her, we can't honour it, so, I have to void all ten of the items off, and he has to stand there and validate it, and I have to write every item down, individually, on my Cashier's Report. Finally, she leaves. It took me two minutes to ring her items, and twenty more to sort out HER mistakes, and EVERY ONE WAS HERS. The four people behind her were remarkably patient, and very kind to me.

That was the other day. So, Sunday, I have to open the liquor department at 11, which is the earliest you can sell alcohol in Baton Rouge. I've got my till and stuff, and I'm waiting for C., the manager for the morning, to open the department for me, and this crack whore, waving money, is in front of us, demanding the door be opened. Of course, before I do any business, I have to count my till and sign the paperwork, because I am responsible for the money that I am "sold", every time I take a till. So, while I'm counting my money and doing my paperwork, she runs to the back and grabs a bottle of Wild Irish Rose, which is this awful sweet wine that only stone alkys drink, and puts it on the counter, and, I tell her, "I'll wait on you in just a moment; I have to count my till." She can't wait, and she puts her money down, $4.11, and rushes out.

So, I look up, and she has left not only the money, but her wine, too. And that's why you shouldn't do crack.

My last customer is so impatient that he swipes his credit card right after I ring his first item, and, when I tell him that it didn't go through, that he did it too quickly, argues with me that it SHOULD work faster, and it's MY fault.

And that's why I should do crack: just to get in tune. Oh, well: it's my day off, and I have nothing better to do than write, drink wine, and liten to music all day. UB40 now. I'm chillin'.

BOGO and 10 for 10 Blues

There is this plague upon the retail world called "BOGO". It stands for "Buy One Get One Free". It totally sucks from where I stand, which is behind a cash register in a grocery store. Basically, if you buy one item, you get another of the same item free. Sounds simple? Stupid, fucked up things always do, until you really have to deal with them on a personal level. Actually, BOGO (when it works, which it doesn't a lot) can mean one or more of the following:

Buy one of the same item and get one of the same item free.

Buy one item of a group of items and get a second similar item free.

Buy two of the same and/or similar items and get both at half-price.

Complicated enough already, is it? Factor into this that the average cashier has the mental capacity of a nesting hen and that the average customer has the intellect of a free-range chicken, and that the average customer is incapable of reading the advertising in his or her hot little hand, nor any shelf tag, even the big red and yellow ones that accompany said sales, or comprehending such phrases as "limit one" or "with $50 order or greater", and you already have a disaster in the making. But that's not all (as television commercials always shout at you)!

10 for 10 seems straightforwards enough: you buy 10 of any of the "10 for 10" items, and you get them for $10. Easy enough, huh? It usually is. What it really means is that most of the items actually cost you $1, but, some items (and no-one knows which ones they are, until you ring them at the register) you actually have to buy ten of to get them for $1, and some you can "mix-and-match", and some you cant ... get my drift? Try explaining all this to the customer when even you don't really understand how the system works.

This seems bad enough, right? Well, it gets worse. There are two people in our Scanning Department. Scanning deals with those funny little bar-codes on everything that you purchase (except produce, which has its own PLU (Price Look-Up) codes, which have to be manually entered). When prices change, like for our Sale From Hell, most of the price changes are downloaded into the store's computer system via satellite downlink. The Scanning Department receives a printout of the items and the price changes and the UPC (Universal Product Code) for each one. All they have to do is to go around the store with a marvelous little hand-held computer that is WiFi'd into the store computer system, which includes a laser scanner (called a "960"), zap the barcodes for the various items, and adjust for errors, which can be done, for the most part, from the 960 itself. Afterwards, you can run a printout of all of the changes you made and compare them to the list, to see if you missed any. Not hard, you say. It is definitely beyond the capacity of our Scanning Department.

So, many, many, many of the 1,613 items advertised for our Sale From Hell are improperly entered in the system. This means that the customer, who is already confused, finds his or her grand programme to save a fortune stymied at the register. And who do you think they blame? The Scanning Coordinator (they don't even know that there is such a person)? No. They blame ME. Now it becomes the job of the cashier and the front-end staff to figure a way to make the item ring at the proper price and in the right department (woe be unto you if you mistakenly credit or debit the wrong department!) and satisfy the customer without making a mistake which loses the store money.

And the Scanning Department? They are full-time and get benefits, and they work 9-5, with week-ends off. Nobody yells at them. Nobody knows they exist. When there is a fuck-up at the register, it is my fault. If I become unhinged and throttle a customer, it is I who will lose his job and go to jail. And that sucks.