So, last night at work was a bit of a mixed bag. It was a
stunning shift, after I'd had my revenge on a few people. First
up was Mr DJ. He was perfectly nice to me, but then blew it for
himself. He tried to do the handover with me, despite my protests
that I actually wasn't the supervisor. He simply told me that he
didn't care because he refused to hand over to The Blonde Bombshell
after he called him a liar. Great when lower management act like
adults isn't it? So I then told him all about The Bombshell
spending an hour and a half making jokes at my expense, and how I used
the mystery letter in the office to play cruel mind games with Slaphead
and The Bombshell. He found it funny and made a joke about me
talking too much, so he was added to the silent list. Although I
broke that to get a shot in at his expense when he said "It's been dead
for the 2nd half of my set tonight" I replied with "Bless!
He thinks he's DJing! Shame he isn't wearing his dayglow pixie
shirt." This had Miss C in fits of giggles to the point where he
stormed off. I will elaborate on the said shirt. It's
flourescent yellow. It has a split from the chest down to his
navel, and it has no sleeves. Oh, and he waxes his chest when he
wears it.
The second person to get revenge on was The Bombshell. He asked
me to be silent, and I was. And it drove him nuts. Because
he can't talk to Miss C because he hates her, he can't talk to me
because I am answering in yes, no, ok or oh. And because I'm not
talking to him, I rocked. Unfortunately, I have a conscience and
when I saw him sitting on one of the tubs of magazines waiting for the
delivery with his head in his hands, I asked if he was ok and got "You
not care". So I told him about the note, and the real reason for
it, and made up with him. And then thrashed the delivery right in
front of his eyes, much to his dismay.
But then the shift turned stunning. We thrashed the delivery,
despite it being a huge delivery. Almost 400 cases and we had it
finished in 2 hours. We officially rock. I was planning to
work the milk in record time, but then Miss C came and distracted me by
talking to me. It's nice that me and her are friends again
because she's pretty much the only person who is my age in the whole
store. Slaphead is 20 years older than me, The Bombshell is 6
years younger than me, and everyone else in the store is either 15
years or more older than me, or 5 years younger or more than
me. It puts me in an awkward position socially. Fortunately
Miss C is a year older than me, so we have many common points of
interest musically, socially and in our childhoods. Depsite the
fact that she lived in a 6 bedroom house as a kid and I lived in a 3
bedroom house.
And we had a few regulars come in. James The Taxi Driver who is
huge, both in height and weight, but probably the nicest customer I
serve all night, who mused over buying 18p croissants, and opted to get
them and eat them for breakfast. And The Kid who is actually the
head chef at a resteraunt that used to be my great grandfather's
house. He was very apologetic that I couldn't deliver my stunning
customer service and get him his cigarettes before he asked as he had
already bought them. But he did say he tries to make them last
until after 11pm just so that I can do it. He said it makes him
feel special. Well, that is the whole point! My theory is
this - if a customer comes to the store enough, why not go a little
further to make them feel good and just get them their brand of
cigarettes without having to be asked. This said, I am actually
working on improving even that customer service. Pedro said that
he wants people to want to work with me. Sod that. I want
people to want to be served by me.
But then we had Mr Gin in. Mr Gin is a regular who I have been
praying for a reason to blog about since he became a regular. No
way of being polite about it - the guy is an alcoholic. He comes
in every day and storms up the counter, and says "Petrol!"
No number, no figure, no amount, just "Petrol!" Then he
points at the alcohol section and says "Gin, gin, GIN!" And the
poor newbies who have to serve him often get shouted at, because if you
don't get it right first time, you get shouted at. Anyway, Miss C
came in and he said "Gin, gin, gin..." and she said "Sorry?" She
knows him well, so she knew what he was saying. He yelled "GIN!"
and almost leapt over the counter to point. So she grabbed the
smallest bottle of Gordons Gin. This sent him mad.
"No! No! Cheap GIN!" So she grabbed the hip flask
size. "Bigger!" So she grabbed the 70cl one.
"No! Litre, litre!" Then he said "Superking black!"
So she got 10, consealed them and scanned them. "No!
20! Black!" So she slowly walked back, got 20, and scanned
them. Not actually erasing the first lot of 10. But then
came her classic move. He yelled "Bag! Bag!" So she
threw a plastic bag in his direction. I've served him a few
times, and the last time I wasn't prepared to put up with his rudeness,
so a second before he got to the counter, I turned, got a litre bottle
of our gin, scanned it, shoved it in a carrier, got his cigarettes,
scanned them and put them in front of him and told him how much it
was. He just stood there wide eyed and open mouthed. Now
you see, in my mind, that was excellent customer service.
Anticipating the need of the customer. I got a warning for
it. And it was worth every minute of the lashing I got from Queen
Chav to see Mr Gin's bulgey eyes bulge a little more, and his mouth
fall open in disbelief.
This still wasn't the highlight of the night. The highlight of
the night was The Bombshell playing with the notice board. Ala
Google, we now have a whiteboard with a marker pen beside it where
anyone can write down things. I actually want to expand this
idea, but that is another post. Now, The Bombshell got a
rollocking from The Vetran (he has many corporate medals, is knocking
on for 70, and has been there since day one) for not tidying the
canteen. Ok, so, I could have done it, but I've done it for the
last few days and I figure it's time for someone else to have a shot at
it. So The Bombshell went to the whiteboard, got the marker pen
and wrote "Afternoon shift, please clean the canteen. Love
....." His real name is withheld to protect his stupidity.
This had me and Miss C in giggles, so he decided another note was in
order. and so he wrote "Hero, please do not leave porn magazines
in the toilet. From ..." He signed it Slaphead, and I am
not putting Slaphead's real name down. Desite protests from me
and Miss C (ok, once from Miss C, many times from me) that he was going
to get fired when Queen Chav saw it at 10am, and probably from Shoe
when she saw in when she went to the office, he ignored it and left it
there. This said, it was a work of absolute genius, and hell, the
guy has balls for leaving it up there. Permalink |