So, tonight has gone pretty smoothly. Got in and showed off my
new modded eee PC (Xubuntu, 8gb solid state hard disk, 2gb USB music
storage and Zattoo which lets me watch TV over the Internet) to Mr DJ
who in turn told me that he has got his own radio show from 8pm until
10pm BST on Thursday nights on narcotikradio.com under the name of
SteveJustin. Annoyingly his first show clashes with my intentions
to go to a gig at The Thomas Tripp to see The Dodge Brothers. I
think I will see if I can get Ubuntu to record the stream. Should
be pretty simple to do, I've seen it offered before in one of the
players I use.
Annoyingly The Blonde Bombshell is angry with me at something he isn't
letting on about. Apparently I went on my break and he went
"Grrrrrr!" and stormed through the door. Although apparently his
rage towards me extends to my taste in music. I am currently
sitting in the canteen listening to Linkin Park on my eee PC on
speakers, and I keep getting disapproving looks my way as he works the
stock in the warehouse.
Not a huge amount has happened tonight. Although I did get to do
one of my favourite jobs that mystifies everyone whenever I do
it. I got to work the freezer. I love it in there.
It's -30 and perfect for me. I actually quite often shut the door
behind me (although not fully, as the handle is a b*tch to open from
the inside) and it scares the hell out of whoever I work with. I
walk in there in just a polo shirt and a pair of trousers and think
nothing of spending 10 minutes in there filling my trolley. The
cold doesn't bother me. Thing is, in England if we get a harsh
winter, it can get down to -10. Especially at night, so I have
conditioned myself to be more suited to the cold.
However, I have had one highlight of the night. I got to help a
rather cute customer. Actually, she's a regular and comes in
maybe every other night. And if I am working on the tills, I make
sure I get a very nice little look at her. Anyway, she came up to
me tonight and queried her receipt, which was wrong because of The
Bombshell (ok, not entirely his fault...) so I told her that it was
fine and to go get a refund. She smiled and thanked me, and told
me she worked in a shop and knew how annoying it was to have
complaining customers. I laughed and said it was fine. She
even made a point of coming over to me after she got her refund and
thanking me again. I smiled and told her it was not a
problem. I did mention to Miss C that I could have used smooth
moves and told her that complaining customers weren't a problem if
they're attractive, to which Miss C burst into laughter and said
"Attractive? She looked like Dame Edna Everage, you have strange
taste in women." The Edna Everege comment was referencing the
fact that I also think Evie is cute, and Slaphead calls her Edna
Everege because he can't pronounce her full name.
So, before the delivery arrived, I took my break, drank high caffeine
tea. I love my Yerba Mate tea bags. Easily the best I have
ever tried, and AuraVita will be getting repeat orders from me for
them. 33p per tea bag, delivered, and you can easily make 2 cups
of the stuff from one teabag. It's not being stringy, it's just
how it works. Anyway, off topic. I also munched my herbs
and spices, which give me that extra kick which makes everyone a little
jealous of my phenomenal speed (or "magic" as Miss C puts it).
Except, the magic didn't get to happen. Not when I wanted it to
anyway. And this is a real problem because you see, I time when I
take my medication because if I take it too early then the delivery
isn't there and I am unbearable. Take it too late and I am as
slow as a regular person (one key ingredient is guarana for mental and
physical endurance, another is caffeine tablets, just for a little
kick). The delivery eventually turned up at 4:30am, an hour later
than we normally get it, and then it was another 20 minutes before we
finally got to work it, Which wasn't as effective as the others
hoped because I was already in full of hyperactive mode. If it
hits when I am working stock then this is great because I throw myself
into my work, but if it hits before, when I am talking, then I become
really talkative. Not good. Still, I made up for it because
at 6:30am I was the only one doing any work. Miss C was busy
chatting with Princess Chav, and The Bombshell was busy making himself
look busy for CCTV. I commented on it to both of them and both of
them said that it was almost time to go home. Ah well, CCTV never
lies, and Pedro will almost certainly be reviewing it, if not, Queen
Chav will.
Anyway, today I have decided that I am going to have what I term a
Canarian breakfast. It bears no resemblance to what the Canarians
eat, but it is what I eat in Gran Canaria whenever I go there. A
big full English breakfast (sausage, bacon, and mushrooms) and then
some pancakes. Washed down with Cava (poor man's champagne for
those who aren't in the know about wine). Then I plan to spend
the afternoon playing with Windows and the BBC iPlayer. I hate
Windows, but it's the only way to get done what I need to do. And
I seriously cannot elaborate any more than that. You see, my
plans are probably legal, but also probably seriously frowned on by the
BBC. Permalink |
29.06.08: Fires, Enjoyable Shifts, Great Handovers, Thousands
Of Customers, Odd Financials, Arguments, Lateness and Plans
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Fading Like A Flower by Roxette
I had excitement last night even before I got into work. My
father (who drives me to work every night, bless him) spotted that
there was a fire engine in the industrial estate with blue lights
flashing. Now, as I always have a few cigarettes before I start
work and I wear a dark overcoat and dark trousers into work, I decided
to hide in the shadows and take a closer look. Not that it
helped. I am still none the wiser as to what needed 2 fire
engines, except the firemen seemed to keep doing something on the
ground. And if it was an injured person, the ambulence would have
come around from the hospital on the estate, but they didn't. I'm
sure it will be in the local paper at the weekend, and if it is, I'll
keep you posted!
So, last night was....great! One of the most enjoyable shifts I
have had recently. Miss C was a joy to work with, and although I
got stuck on the tills, I didn't really care because she rocked.
She had the chilled finished in about half an hour, worked the sweets
and crisps and cakes, whilst I worked the soft drinks, tinned foods and
cereals as well as the teas and coffees. Plus we had all that and
the store faced up by 3am. We were on fire last night and
dayshift...well...I will get onto them a little later!
Saturdays are actually brilliant for us now because Teeny Tiny is great
at handing over shifts. When I got in she was facing up the
store, which is always a huge help to us, but not just that, she had
worked the alcohol, and the cages out the back as well as condensing
them for us, and she had worked the milk, meat and produce for us,
which left us just the warehouse to work. Now, despite management
and no-one at work reading this blog anymore, I have to say that Teeny
does do a stunning job. Ok, so, no-one at work will know I said
it, but hey, at least it's out there and known to some people.
Plus she is also a fantasticly nice person and I have a great laugh
with her whenever we meet up. For example tonight we were joking
about the fraudsters of old. For those who don't know the story -
long story short: Several people in management (some senior, some not)
were thieving Nectar points from the system. They stole 10,000 a
day and oddly, Nectar investigated this and the idiots lied to Nectar
and got caught. One in particular quit, and still comes to the
store looking miserable as sin. Guess the place holds bad
memories for her...
The only real downside about last night was that we had an absolute ton
of customers. Seriously, I think everyone in Lymington must have
decided to come down and buy their various bits of junk food.
This said, apparently it was heaving in the town too, so perhaps there
was something good on. Plus Chip And Pin decided to die on us on
our main till whilst it was busy, and the cashpoint also died.
Oddly, Chip And Pin only died on one till, which makes me think either
something terminal happened in the software or in the hardware.
Windows based machines so I am guessing software. This said, have
to give a shout out to Shaun fron The Fazers who came in
last night. Little guy, big ambitions. And a nice guy to
boot. Always says hi and asks how I am and we discuss him and his
band. I am going to say something controversial about The Fazers
though...great studio band, not so great live. They have a really
annoying habbit of making the guitar volume louder than Shaun's mic,
which means you can't hear the lyrics so well, which is actually the
point of a song. If they fixed this, they would be going way
further way faster. Not that they are doing so badly right now...
I found something odd at work last night too. As this blog is
shrouded in secrecy, I feel I can get away with this. Namely
because nothing can be concretely proved that this is about any place
or any one in particular. Nice huh? So, someone left a copy
of the weekly financial breakdown. Normally boring stuff, but I
am into stats so I read it. And found something really quite
strange. Almost from a thriller of some sort. Our
photocopying and fax service is taking £5,000 a week.
Phenomenal. I mean, can you imagine how mny photocopies and faxes
we must be processing a week to generate that much income? But
wait! We don't have a photocopying and fax service. So
£5,000 is beig shoved in the accounts every week under something
we don't actually have. Now, if you want to go further down the
rabbit hole, our weekly breakdowns are posted on the wall every week,
albeit in a far smaller and simpler way for our simpler members of
staff. No-one except me realised that "Dummy Department 1" took
£249 last week. Strange things are afoot in the financials
people...
Now, one of the perks of my job is serving customers. You might
not see why this is a perk immediately, but it is. I get to hear
arguments, and arguments in shops are not normal arguments.
No. Arguments in shops are a howto on humilating your significant
other. Add alcohol into the mix and you have something which
rivals our comedy greats. First up, we had a guy and girl come
in. The guy was plastered, but the girl was sober as a
judge.
Girl:"Have a drink if you're thirsty"
Guy:"What do they have? Oooohhh...Coke!"
Girl:"Not at that price. Have a Frijj"
Guy:"Frijj isn't a drink, it's a pudding"
Girl reads label: "...and for those too hungry to think straight"
Guy:"Yes, I was right. Yes, I went to Cambridge, and yes you owe
me an apology!"
Girl pays for the stuff: "Ok, this way moron"
Then we had a couple who were both sober but had just the most stunning
argument. I can't do this kind of argument, when me and Ale
argue, it is all out war, but this was just a masterclass in control -
self and mind.
Girl:"What is it?"
Guy is silent
Girl:"Was it those girls in the club?"
Guy stays silent
Girl:"What have I done?"
Guy says nothing
Girl, now growling: "Why aren't you talking to me?"
Guy pays for his stuff
Girl grabs his stuff and leaves with it
Now, I do the silent treatment really well. I can keep it up for
days. Have done it for a week and a half once. The only
person who gets me so angry I have to argue back is Ale. No-one
else can get to me like she does. And I love her for it.
But that was just a beautiful example of how to mess with someone's
head. They annoy you, you don't tell them why or how, you just
stay silent. Poetry in motion.
So anyway, last night was pretty boring workwise. Like I said, we
had everything finished by 3am, by which time I went for my break, then
Miss C went for her break, then we spent an hour and a quarter
gossiping. Well...it was more than that because when we faced up
the store we did it as a pair and gossiped all the way around the
store. Mostly about Big Brother and kids TV from the 80s.
I should also mention that Rickaaaay is playing a really dangerous
game. He was supposed to turn up at 7am for his shift. He
didn't. I left at 7:30am and he still wasn't there. Now, he
has no protection from Mummy because Mummy is off on a romantic weekend
with her husband (shudders) which means tomorrow he will have to face
the wrath of Pedro all on his lonesome. Although the odd thing
was the The Vetran wasn't in either. He was due to come in, but
just didn't. Very odd because The Vetran is almost always 20
minutes early for his shift, and very often starts work 10 minutes
before he is supposed to. This said, he is on holiday for the
rest of the week and it wouldn't surprise me one iota if Queen Chav had
screwed up the rota. When I told Shoe that Queen Chav had messed
up my hours she gasped and said "She messed up your hours? I'm
shocked. She never does that!" in a hugely sarcastic tone.
And tonight should be a lot of fun too. Last shift before I have
2 days off, and I am working with The Blonde Bombshell and Miss C, who
I found out tonight still hates The Bombshell. And for those
worried that I might not blog for most of this week because I have most
of this week off - never fear, I have plans for stuff to blog about! Permalink |
28.06.08: Lack Of Blogging, Holidays, Australians, Americans,
Break Ins, Manipulation and Gossip
So, I haven't blogged for a couple of days because I have been
attending my grandfather's funeral. A slightly upsetting time for
me, but I am gradually getting over it now. Hopefully throwing
myself into my work and my blogging will help me get over it.
This said, it isn't helping much that my parents are constantly arguing
over small, stupid things like what features our new bathroom is going
to have.
Last night was a night from hell. One saving grace is that I have
most of next week off. Queen Chav has screwed up my holidays and
given me 3 days off instead of 2, and also given me my 2 regular days
off, giving me 5 days off in total. Not quite sure what I am
going to blog about next week as I don't really want to take almost a
week off from blogging. I do have a few ideas with what to fill
this blog with, but I will go into that as time goes on.
So, first up The Blonde Bombshell insisted on checking up on everything
I did. I chose to work the soft drinks, and when I told him that
I had finished working them, he immediately went into the loading bay
and scoured every single cage there, and found 3 or 4 cases of drinks
that I had missed. I just let him get on with it and continued
working everything else. But then I got another slap in the face
after he worked the pet food and was told that I should have worked it
because I had worked the racking.
Then I had to deal with a couple of moronic Australians. First,
one of them came up to me and said "Excuse me, do you have a bread
aisle?" and I told him we did. He then asked me if it had bread
in it. I ignored him and showed him where it was. Then his
friend asked me if we had cheese. So I showed him where it was,
and had to deal with him squealing "I can't see it, I can't see
it!" So I showed him it was right in front of his eyes, and
considered getting the hammer from the loading bay. And then I
heard "Do you have grated cheese? Oh, no, you don't." So I
pointed at the bags of grated cheese. And then they came up to
the counter, squealing and comparing their shopping trip to Supermarket
Sweep because one of their boxes of eggs was missing an egg, so one of
them asked where the eggs were. At this point I was getting
really annoyed with them so I told them they were underneath the big
sign that said eggs.
We also had some Americans in. Now, I actually like serving
Americans because they are normally very polite and great to
serve. The ones I served last night were no exception. They
were amazed that we sold Marlboro lights in smaller packs than 20s, and
they were really surprised that I gave them a choice over which size of
matches they could buy. And bless them, they must have just
missed the sign which said "Lymington" outside the store when they
asked me how to get to Lymington.
Plus we had excitement! A group of drunks somehow managed to get
up onto the railway, and we have a disused station above our
store. It's disused because people used to leap off it into the
path of incoming trains to kill themselves. So the people who
owned the station spent millions securing it, making sure that no-one
can get to it from our side. Big spikey security fences, barbed
wire, and the most high tech of all - fast growing plants which now
cover the entrance. So, we heard them kick the wooden gate open,
then crashing through the plants, and then stopping. I really
thought they were going to try and climb over the fence, which made me
burst into song. I grinned and sung to myself "Someone call the
ambulence, there's gonna be an accident!" from Infra Red by
Placebo. Slaphead asked me what I said, so I sung it at him which
made him laugh.
But the real kicker of the night was The Blonde Bombshell telling me
that I couldn't have my break. This was after he called me and my
family monkeys. And called me stupid and told me that I can't
think. So I stood up to him, he thinks he's the alpha male of the
store simply because Pedro told him he's supervisor.
Unfortunately he learnt that it takes more than just someone telling
someone else that they are in charge to lead people. You see, I
play a very subtle game. I study mentalism, psychology and
persuasion, have done for getting on for ten years now, and I know how
to influence people. I don't use it very often because as I said,
I play things subtly. Slaphead asked if I was having my break and
I told him I wasn't allowed to, that The Bombshell said we could have
our breaks when we finished the ambient. He stormed over to The
Bombshell and told him I was going on my break and that he would take
over what I was doing, and then he was going on his break and then
simply walked away from him and told me to go on my break.
Anyway, tonight I am working with Miss C, which should be good as we
have a lot of Big Brother gossip to...well...gossip about! I'll
let her serve the customers and I'll just work all the stock in my
whirlwind manner. Then we can get the store faced up in double
quick time, and then we can stand around and gossip until our heart's
content. Permalink |
25.06.08: Revenge, Mindgames, Age Differences, Regulars, and
Notices
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Roxette - Spending My Time
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 |
24.06.08: Cliques, Customer Comments, Hypocracy, and Mindgames
Tonight has been another bad
night. Kind of to be expected, I am working with Slaphead and The
Blonde Bombshell. Seperately, they are both really nice people,
but when they work together, they are very cliquey. They have
private jokes they won't let me in on, and they'll talk about things
then suddenly stop when I come over. That or I'll be sent away
whilst they continue talking to each other. A prime example of
this is what happened literally 30 seconds ago as I typed this.
Slaphead walked past the canteen, and I smiled at him, he gave me a
look of absolute daggers and said "shut up" then continued walking off
whistling to himself. It's nights like tonight that make me run
away inside myself. It's what I've been doing all night
actually. Well, I guess I asked for a return to the old days, and
now I have it.
We have been given some nice
advice from head office. We shoud now actively seek out customer
comments on the customer comments forms. Well, the thing is I did
this about a year ago. A customer wanted to make a complaint and
has Dyslexia, so I helped him fill out the form and helped with the
wording of it. For all my help and assistance I got a formal
warning from the deputy manager for wasting time. Somewhat ironic
that the thing that got me said warning is the same thing that we now
have to do.
Now, I don't like constantly
b*tching about the same person, but as with the above comment, I do
feel the need to point out hypocracy with the people I work with.
Like The Blonde Bombshell. A couple of weeks ago he screamed in
my face for not working the multipck crisps with the single pack
crisps. But yet tonight when he worked the single pack crisps, it
was fine for him to ignore the multipacks.
I've also been brought right
down by the pair of them. Always fun. It started because
Slaphead asked me if the store was faced up. I told him it was
and he laughed and said "glad I'm not doing the store walk in the
morning". So I asked him what he meant and he said that the store
was faced up to my usual cr*p standard. He disappeared out the
back and then a few minutes later The Blonde Bombshell came out and
asked if the store was faced up. I told him it was, and he told
me that he would check it before I was allowed to go to lunch.
And that was it, that kicked my depression into gear. I asked him
if he could hurry up as I had an appointment to hang myself in the
warehouse. He laughed and said that I was being ridiculous, I
looked him in the eye and said "seriously? 50/50 whether I do or
not". He looked at the time and said "ok, go to your
lunch".
But this is the thing that is
really grinding me down in this place. The standard of the facing
up has suddenly become all my responsibility. And I have no-one I
can talk to within the store about how deeply unfair this is.
Plus, the other thing that really gets me about this place is that I
have been told not to interupt people when they are on their
breaks. But, it's perfectly ok for people not to just interupt me
on my breaks, but to reprimand me, physically stop my break to make me
do work, and to pass the canteen and make snide comments at me whilst I
am trying to relax. Yes, that's fair. I can't interupt
their breaks but they can do pretty much whatever the hell they like to
mine. And of course the best part is, if I complain, I get
accused of being melodramatic or blowing things out of
proportion... Ok, rant over.
And then the delivery
arrived. I was on fire last night. I worked pretty much the
entire ambient delivery. By the time The Clique finished chatting
and messing around with the chilled delivery, I had about a dozen cases
of stock left for them to work. Now, in most places, finishing a
task way ahead of time gets you praise. Not in our place.
No, The Bombshell came over, looked at a pile of wet cardboard and said
"You break something again?" So I turned around and said "Nope"
and then continued working my stock. He asked if I needed any
help, so I said "Nope" and continued working. Then he said to me
"Why are you angry?" I simply told him I wasn't, just focused,
and he laughed and said "Yeah, right, grrrrr, focus!" That was
the beginning of a huge downward spiral. He got annoyed that I
was on a mass efficiency trip, putting stock out that he had missed,
doing his job for him in recording the temperatures of the chillers,
and then taking the cages over to the compound. So he told me
that I should go back to school, starting at year one. I have an
IQ of 190 and two A Levels in Computer Science and Computer Studies, so
when he told me that, it was a massive kick in the teeth, and I always
take comments like that personally. Slaphead leapt in and said
that I often spoke a lot but I didn't have any brains to back it up.
I got my chance to get my own
back on The Clique. Princess Chav asked me what the letter I left
for Queen Chav was about. I looked at The Clique and said it was
a couple of things that management needed to know about. She
asked what things, and I asked if Pedro had looked at the letter.
She said he did, and I told her that it was a good thing because he
needed to know those things. The Bombshell snorted and said I'd
told them nothing. I told him there were a few things that I had
told Pedro and Queen Chav, and he turned pale, before grabbing a knife
and saying "Yeah, sure, you tell to them anything and I kill
you". So I laughed and said "See? He's threatening me with
a knife, you see why I needed to write to them?" So he yelled
across the store "You shut the f*ck up!" And then came over and
called me a Jew. I told him this was exactly what I meant, that
just in that time he had threatened me with a knife, sworn at me via
shouting across the store, and then insulted my faith. Slaphead
laughed and said I'd done nothing, and I told him he wasn't faultless
either, as he had called me a Gypsy a few minutes earlier. So The
Bombshell told me that he'd tell Pedro things too. I laughed and
told him I'd simply tell Pedro that he frequently threatens me with
violence, has wild mood swings, is frequently racist, and that he
rarely completes paperwork properly. He went pale and
quiet. Of course, the letter to Queen Chav was simply to tell her
I needed Thursday off to attend my Grandfather's funeral. But I
do so love playing mind games with people. It gets things done
far better than physical violence, and is so much harder to detect on
CCTV. Permalink |
23.06.08: No Right Arm, Fights, Bruising Male Egos, and
Upcoming Improvements
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Spending My Time by Roxette
So, apologies to those who have been expecting to read my blog over the
last few days. The problem was that I wrote my blog article for
Friday and then had a small celebration party with my best friend over
a joint venture we're launching elsewhere. And when very very
drunk, I decided to put my eee PC, mobile phone and USB drive with all
the files for my blog in a safe place. Now, imagine how annoying
a safe place can be if you forget where you put it. I had
absolutely no memory of even putting the laptop, phone and USB drive in
a safe place, let alone where said safe place was. Now, I could
have resurrected the blog from the files on this server, but it's
actually more complex than it sounds due to the blog being a custom
made thing rather than a default and ready made creation. Plus I
have things like the commenting code on the USB Drive as a seperate
file. Fun. Anyway, I stumbled across it yesterday, so my
blogging resumes!
And work started with a bang! Or more a thud. A couple of
kids came into the store and tried running off with a pack of
beer. The Blonde Bombshell was not having any of that so he ran
after the guys, grabbed the beer back and got punched in the mouth for
his troubles. So he ran inside and asked me whether or not he
could fight the guy. I told him not to, but then the guy shouted
something in Polish at The Blonde Bombshell. I have no idea what
it was, but it really annoyed him and he stormed into the back area,
and came back without his shirt on (I swear I am not making this up)
and stormed out onto the forecourt and yelled something in Polish,
looked around for the guys, then came back in and spat blood on the
floor. Miss C called the police, despite The Blonde Bombshell
protesting that he wasn't interested in reporting it. She ignored
him and got the police called in. He had a small tantrum over
this, and later made it obvious by all his protesting and tantruming
over the rest of the night that actually his male ego was far more
bruised than his face.
Now, I am not a big believer in the male ego. Things like not
crying because it's not butch, or doing things like snuggling with your
girlfriend because it's not butch is just BS in my opinion. So,
given the chance to fully trash his ego, I decided to plot with Miss C
to do such a thing. She agreed and our plan was to finish our
part of the delivery before he finished his part of the delivery.
He was less than impressed when we achieved it, and Miss C bounced over
to him and asked whether he wanted us to help him. Apparently he
snorted "I almost be finished, do bread!" Which she did, and then
he came over to make sure that we had actually finished. Again,
he wasn't impressed to see that we had actually finished and
tidied. He came over and said "You take all this to warehouse
now" and stropped off. I did tell Miss C that maybe we should
take him at his word and take everything, including empty and cardboard
cages into the warehouse, but then we decided he would be really angry,
so decided against it. This said, when he took me off my break
just to tell me I should have taken some trays off the shop floor
before my break, and asked how many times he had to ask me to finish
what I start, I bit my tongue and didn't say "And how many times have
you been told not to stop shoplifters?" He actually got a written
warning for it once after taking a bottle of wine from a girl, and when
she pushed him, he pushed her to the ground until I told him to leave
it or I'd restrain him.
Lastly, there should be a few improvements coming up to this
blog. Some may be obvious, some may not. I bought a package
of ebooks online today about improving your blog and blogging, so,
there should be a few things coming this blog's way. I'm also
going to apply a few of the technologies to an more experimental blog
which I run and don't promote here or anywhere else. It's more
experimental than either of my two main blogs, and I kind of use it as
a testing ground! Permalink |
19.06.08: Smashed Lights, Customers Can Be Abusive To Each
Other Too, Slow Nights, Hold Ups, My Budget, Stupid Builders, Arguments
and Relaunches Of Blogs
Tonight has been another really slow night. I've been working the
warehouse, so I haven't had a chance to serve any customers.
Well...I say I've been working the warehouse. Actually, I've been
working the warehouse as much as I can. You see, someone (or
something) trashed the lighting system in the loading bay. And I
mean seriously trashed it. The light is hanging by a cable from
the girder it used to be attached to. And the lightswitch has
been smashed to hell too. My theory is either Rickaaaay or Crack
Baby tried swinging from it. I'd say that Crack Baby could
probably get away with it, but Rickaaaay is built like his
mother. BIG. As for the light switch, I have no idea how
the hell that got smashed up. Probably Rickaaaay or Crack Baby
moving heavy cages far too fast.
The only customers I have seen so far are actually arguing
customers. A couple decided to have a domestic in the biscuit
aisle. Apparently he had come in to buy a packet of biscuits, she
came in to do what he termed a mini weekly shop. And that set all
hell loose. She told him that if she didn't buy those things,
she'd be hungry, and he told her it might be a good thing because then
she'd lose some weight (a**hole, be proud of your podgy girl!)
It's funny, there are a lot of things that I tolerate at work.
Rude customers, drunks, drugged up kids, and I let all those things
just wash over me. But guys who are rude to their girlfriends
really make my blood boil. Thing is, they kissed and made up a
few minutes later, and then when they got to the tills and got to the
part where they need to pay he said "well, this is mostly your sh*t,
you can pay for it" then laughed. The most nauseating part of
this story is that the guy wasn't drunk, he was stone cold sober.
He was just an arse.
So, tonight is yet another dull night, and it shows no signs of getting
any better. We have a small delivery, it's midweek so there are
no customers, and a lot of the things that we do have been done by the
dayshift. Evidently they had as much to do as we did. That
or they are just making us look bad. And having worked at the
company for 5 years, methinks it's the latter considering that sales
are up £60,000 this week compared to last week, and up by about
£75,000 compared to last year. And then people ask me why I
am so interested in the business world.
One thing I did do tonight, purely for a laugh and to see the reaction
was to go up to The Blonde Bombshell with my fingers in the gun
position and aimed at him and said "gimme your money" as he did a safe
drop. He laughed and said "yeah, right" So I did sad puppy
dog eyes and said "pwease?"
And right now I am really struggling for material to blog about,
although, I am not entirely certain that it shows yet. I guess
one thing that is kind of relevant in the current climate is my
budget. I've been doing this for a couple of months now, and it's
really easy. All I do it limit myself to £10 per day to
include cigarettes. Sometimes I go over, but, here is the
interesting thing - I value money far more now. I picked up a
magazine the other day, a Linux mag with a few distros with it, and
went to buy it, then looked at the price and put it back. It was
£6.50. Now...here is the thing. Before the budget I
would have gone "meh, I can afford it" and bought it, but I looked at
it and was disgusted. Then went and bought a cheap coffee at a
local coffeeshop.
However, there were a couple of very interesting things that happened
last night. First off we had the John Pyatt guys in, like we have
every day. Anyway, they're stupid but shrewd. They've
already figured out that if they have a large cup and say it's a
regular coffee in a large cup then they can sometimes get it for
less. And now they have a new trick, they say the coffee is cold
in the hope that they can get a free coffee. They even make a few
as “proof” unfortunately, as I mentioned before, they're stupid and
left them on the side. So I stuck my finger into them after they
left and yes, ok, it didn't burn my finger, but it wasn't cold
either. Fortunately the one who complained decided that paying a
little less for it was better than not having a coffee. I cannot
wait for them to try it again tonight. I'll be waiting.
Then there was the argument between The Blonde Bombshell and
Shoe. The Bombshell wanted to swap a day with me, and I had no
problem with that. So, he asked Shoe if it was ok, and she
decided that because it was 16 hours before the swap she was going to
say no. He went off the deep end. He shouted at her that it
was ridiculous and stormed off the shop floor. So she grinned and
said “Guess I'll be doing the store walk on my own then”, and when she
came back she said the store looked fantastic, which made me feel good
inside because I faced up 90% of the store myself. I told her
that he was probably sulking in the loading bay, just as he came onto
the shop floor and told her he was coming in tonight and I'd stay
home. She told him that he wouldn't get paid and he'd be getting
me in trouble. So he yelled it was “f*cking stupid” and that so
she was she and went back to sulking in the loading bay. Then at
7am he came up to me and said “I go to home now” and left. So
when I was buying my cigarettes for the day Shoe said to me “Has he
gone home?” and I told her that he had, and she said “Well, he can't be
in a good mood with me then, he didn't say goodbye”. I told her
that he was like this all the time, and she grinned and said “He's got
two choices, like it or quit”.
Lastly, I just wanted to tell you all that the old blog is coming
back. And it will be more or less the same, just not work
focused. Many thanks to Franklin for the idea! Permalink |
18.06.08: Drag, Great Customer Service, The F Word, Anti
Fraud Says Queen Chav Is A Fraudster!, Did Lewis Hamilton Visit? and
The Blonde Bombshell has modest and charm
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Listen To Your Heart by Roxette (The start of the Roxette Season,
because this is going to take FAR longer than a week!)
Free MP3 Of The Day:Be
You by Tanya Morgan
Tonight has been one of those nights that just drags and drags.
It's because we have so little to do. The warehouse has been
worked, the chiller has been worked, even the store has been faced up a
little. It's just quite a tedious night. We're not even
busy. I think we've had about 20 customers all night. Dull
dull dull.
Anyway, of the customers we have had, I think my favourite has been the
guy who first off took a paper from me when I was bringing them in at
11pm, then was queuing whilst The Blonde Bombshell used my till.
So I opened another one and used it. The guy couldn't have been
more helpful. He packed his own bag, paid with the correct money,
and then thanked ME for being an excellent cashier. I love
customers like that. They're helpful and then they thank you for
being great.
So, this evening I watched The F Word with my mother. We're both
Gordon Ramsey fans and at the end he yelled that people who want to eat
on The F Word should apply for tickets. So I did.
Unfortunately the site threw it's rattle out of the pram, so at the
moment I can't apply for tickets, but when I can, I will. And
then try to use The Law Of Attraction to bring those tickets to
me. I already got my mother a lottery win. Ok, so £10
was a little less than I was aiming for...
Now, whilst at work, we use a lot of computers. We have to,
pretty much everything goes through them. Even the tills are
Window PCs (WHY?) Anyway, this includes receipts for goods we get
in. And we still have to sign them, but on a little
digitiser. This is due to the unique way that the company doesn't
understand the 21st century and real digital signatures. I
digress. So, the computer has an anti fraud scheme built in, so
you can't just write a squiggle and pass it off as the store
manager. Now bless queen chav, I don't think she has been asked
to do this very often, because she wrote her name on the digitiser,
and...the anti fraud scheme rejected it as illegible! But what
makes it even better is that I am well known for having terrible
handwriting. My cursive writing is literally illegible. And
still the anti fraud mechanism recognises my signature as a signature.
But the funniest thing I have heard all day was about the most moronic
crash you can imagine. On the forecourt. A woman was
filling her car up with fuel when someone in a 2 week old brand new
Mercedes drove into the back of her car which sent it shooting forwards
and tore the fuel nozzle away from the hose. And then forwards
into a metal barrier we have in front of the pillars which hold the
cannopy up. I mean, you just couldn't make it up. Plus,
seconds after the fuel nozzle was ripped from the hose, the water tower
errupted (in a small way) and shot water over the forecourt, which
apparently some customer thought might be petrol and ran into the store
to report that petrol was just spilling out everywhere. Which
then sent the guy in charge into a panic as well.
Lastly, we were doing the store walk this morning, and Shoe was telling
us how amazing we had been overnight (seriously!) and we were
discussing many things, but the store walk ended with Shoe's comment of
"Well, this is just stunning" to me. I was quietly quite chuffed
because I did 99% of the facing up and Slaphead and Miss C constantly
tell me that my facing up is terrible. Apparently not.
Anyway, The Blonde Bombshell smirks and says "Yes, I know" so I glare
at him and say "And you're so modest as well" which caused Shoe to
burst into a fit of giggles. Bless! Permalink |
17.06.08: Stalked, Record Paperwork, Idiot Children, Shell
Tanker Drivers, Grazers, One Upmanship and Meetings And Offers
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Sweet About Me by Gabriella Cilmi
Tonight has been pretty pants so far. First off I got stalked by
Slaphead. We were driving to work and this car came up behind
ours, then followed us all the way until there are two ways to go to
the store. Dad dummied going one way, but went the other, and
fooled the car behind us. It was only when I got to work that
Slaphead asked me if I knew my dad had a taillight out. He then
explained that he was going to give me a lift into work. Not that
I really wanted him to, nor needed him to, although I suppose it was a
nice offer of his.
I also did the paper returns in an incredible 19 minutes.
Normally they take half an hour to 45 minutes, although often more if I
need to serve a lot of customers. 19 minutes has to be the record
though. And it included serving a fair few customers. Not
that I actually got off the tills at any time before midnight, because
the customers seemed to be playing tag teams. As one left,
another arrived, and did for about 40 minutes solid. Whilst I
admit to liking customer service, when it's like that, I could rapidly
go off it.
Then we had some, as I term them, idiot children come in. These
are kids that are in their early teens and don't have the sense they
were born with. I mean, how hard is it to use a coffee machine
that has literal step by step instructions written on it? Adult
manage it. Kids always take 2 or more attempts to make their
drinks. Well...kids and builders. Plus they did the hugely
annoying thing of putting their stuff on the counter, and wandering off
to fetch other stuff, except, because there were three of them, two
stood by the tills and held up the other customers whilst the densest
of the trio looked gormlessly at the sandwiches trying to decide which
one to buy. And when he got the hurry up from the two others, he
yelled "I don't give a f**k if they're waiting, I can't decide what to
buy!" Moron. Seriously, if they were kids of mine, I would
be appalled. My kid are never going to grow up without manners,
or not being able to operate the simplest of technologies. This
said, my kid are also going to know how to use a computer, rather than
just have Bill Gates hold their hand (private joke).
However, easily the biggest thing which affecting the store at the
moment is the Shell tanker driver's strike over their pay. Now,
as I don't drive I don't really care about this dispute, but apparently
it goes something like this. The drivers are paid £32,000 a
year, but their pay is made up in different ways, they want this to
stop so they are on strike. Guess they can afford it when they're
on £32,000 a year. The other reason this doesn't worry me
is that our drivers aren't Shell drivers, they are from a private
company, so we are doing a roaring trade. Especially as the local
competition ran out of diesel 2 days ago.
Hahahahahahahahaha. Anyway, we have had pretty much every other
customer asking "are you ok for petrol?" I'm actually getting a
touch sick of smiling and saying "yes, we're supplied by a private
company" and then getting into a conversation about how we both wish we
were on £32,000 a year.
One other thing that really annoys me lately is grazers. Not sure
if you have heard of this trend, but from our point of view it's hugely
annoying. Especially for someone like Miss C with no customer
service skills whatsoever (she'd rather insult them or be cold to them
than try and inject personality) Anyway, grazing is when you buy
stuff (or not) whilst you are wandering around the store. We had
a woman come in tonight who had a box of fairy cakes and was eating
them as she went around the store, then handed me the half empty
box. Thing is, you're never sure whether or not they want you to
bin it or scan it! Anyway, she really annoyed me as I had to scan
all her shopping (basket and a half) and then discover she actually
didn't have any money on her, so she had to go back home and get
it. All the time I was wondering whether or not she was going to
return. Turns up that she did, and actually was a really nice
person who just moved to the area today, but still...annoying that she
grazed!
Lastly, I got to do a little one upmanship on Slaphead. You see,
he is supposed to be my supervisor, which I don't really care about,
anything that takes responsibility away from me is a good thing.
Lets me focus on other things such as listening to music in my
breaks. I digress. So, first thing, on my first break I was
sat in the canteen busily writing this article on the eee PC, and he
rushes in and asks if I can help with the broken Pay Point
machine. Turns out that it isn't actually broken, he just needed
to retry the transaction. I did, and it worked. Then the
delivery came in and I noticed a blue bag with the produce, which he
didn't notice. This is significant because if he didn't send our
blue bag back with the returned cages, we would have been fined.
And here is my point about niceness. People misunderstand
me. Yes, I make barbed comments about people. Yes, I can
sometimes be cruel to people. Yes, I am bitchy. But I am
not nasty. Nasty would have been cheerily allowing Slaphead to
not see the bag, letting the driver drive away, and making Slaphead
carry the can for our fine. But I'm not a nasty person. I
told him as soon as I saw it and even rushed into the office and got
and zipped up our blue bag for the driver. I also fixed the eGRN
computer for Slaphead. Sort of. The printer itself still
wasn't working when I left, but what I did do was leave the eGRN system
in a usable state, if convolutely. Which I think makes me a nice
guy. I could have feigned not knowing what to do, claiming it was
a Windows system therefore not my speciality, but I didn't.
And that pretty much sums up my night. Today should be
interesting. Having yet another meeting with myself over the
direction of this blog and the old blog (planning to resurrect it in
some way due to offers I can't ignore any longer...) Permalink |
16.06.08: Age Related Training, Is The Bombshell A Waxer,
Ganging Up, How To Waste Time Efficiently, and New Shoes
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Just Close Your Eyes by Waterproof Blonde
"And if you close your eyes your life may begin to reveal, that you
never live and scars never heal. In the darkness I will take you
to the other side. And find me waiting there, you'll see, if you
just close your eyes" - amazing if possibly misheard lyrics Free MP3 Of The Day:Now
That I'm Gone by Charles Bradley
Last night was a complete opposite of the night before. We had
very few customers, and when I got in I was told that I needed to
retake my Age Related Training. Yay. What a waste of
time. Basically it's to make sure that we still all know how old
you have to be to sell things to people of a certain age so that the
store doesn't lose it's licences. Ok, so, they make it sound like
they are protecting us ("We don't want you to get a fine or end up in
court") but we all know that when it comes to business, the welfare of
the workers is not the primary objective. And we all know how
popular alcohol is (it's our second biggest seller next to petrol) so
losing our licence would be a pretty big deal. Financially for
the store anyway. However, for the last couple of tests, I have
my own way of dealing with it. I gain an unfair advantage.
To call it cheating would be technically incorrect. I take a till
slip into the room, and I make notes as the video plays. Then
when we're tested, I have the notes, and just refer to them as I need
to. Now, there is nothing in the rules which says I can't do
this, therefore it's not cheating. And I only needed it for one
question.
Being the genius that Queen Chav is, she left all the other results
papers beside the computer the test is run on. So, I got to flick
through them as the guy was droning on about Lottery Sales and noticed
two people who failed. The test is actually pretty tough,
anything less than 100% is a fail. Rickaaaay failed because he
didn't know you had to be 16 to buy party poppers, and The Hero failed
because he didn't know how old you had to be to buy a lighter.
Funny considering The Hero is in charge of the tobacco
department. Even the Newbie failed because he didn't know how old
you had to be to buy a knife. And Newbies are given cards to
remind them of ages. I'm sure being a Newbie he would have been
allowed to take it into the test!
Most people who work have a laugh with their workmates, but I am sure
that night shift humour is way different to any other humour.
Tonight was a prime example. I told Slaphead that I thought that
The Blonde Bombshell looked like a man who waxed, who in turn asked me
to ask him whether he was a waxer. Don't ask how this
conversation started, you really don't want to know. The reaction
was priceless after I explained what a waxer was. He stormed over
to Slaphead and yelled "Oh! You are so funny old man, maybe
someone is wax your head, yeah? You want the fight with
me?" Anyway, so begins an hour of waxing jokes. And then
later, after sniggering from Slaphead and commenting "You dirty little
waxer", The Blonde Bombshell storms over to the door and yells into the
warehouse "Ok, is fine, maybe you want some die?" To which
Slaphead replies "No, I'm done with dye. Used enough when I was a
punk." I still insist this is why Slaphead is going bald, because
is hair is rapidly receding, but, down the centre his hair seems
fine. I think it's too many mohican haircuts, and his hair has
decided that a mohican is the default state.
However, not everything was fun and games last night. I've
noticed a curious thing when working with Slaphead and anyone else on
the same shift. Slaphead will be in a really good mood, but also
push me out of the social circle and be far more friendly, jokey and
generally interested in the other person than me. Now, at first I
put this down to the theory of mine that he and Miss C are attracted to
each other. But it happens when he works with The Blonde
Bombshell too. And in the end the pair of them ganged up on me,
making me feel really out of the team. First, they chatted and
laughed when they were alone during the delivery, but when I came
around everything became serious and they didn't want me joining in
with the jokes when I tried to. But then something really dragged
me down. Slaphead asked when I was going to have my break, and I
said later, so he told me to take it then to make sure I got it.
I told him I didn't want it yet, and they could take theirs
first. He repeated that he wanted me to take it there and then,
so I told him I knew where I wasn't wanted, at which point The Blonde
Bombshell yelled in my face "Take your f**king break". I sloped
off to eat many Oreos and smoked 3 cigarettes. In 15
minutes. Well, I needed something to give me a little
comfort. I certainly wasn't getting any warmth or friendliness
from either of those two.
However, I did get to spend half an hour in the sunshine with both of
them, smoking and drawing pictures of stickmen doing disgusting things
on Slaphead's car. Why? Because we finished everything with
an hour to go before the end of the shift. Well...almost
everything. Mr DJ lied and told us everything in the chiller had
been worked, which it hadn't, so The Blonde Bombshell told me to get
the missing produce from the chiller and work it. So in the end
we did that, then began drawing on Slaphead's car. As I said,
efficient use of wasting time.
Lastly, I got my new boots today! And they are Version 2
boots. The old boots were basic, to say the least, but these
actually look really comfortable. There is padding pretty much
everywhere, and the only modification I am going to make to make is the
usual inner soles. Now, I have Size 13 feet. Pretty
big. So big that I have to buy my shoes from specialist outlets,
and normally have to scroll down a bit on the Nike site when buying
trainers (not a brand junkie, Nikes are just indestructable). So,
The Blonde Bombshell and Princess Chav are in the office as Princess
Chav gets my boots. She opens them for me, and The Blonde
Bombshell laughs and says "You no have new boots, they send wrong
size. They send you massive boots!" To which I turn and say
"Yeah, same size as the ones on my feet" then take one out and
demonstrate a size comparison. He takes a deep intake of breath
and goes "f**, you have the massive feet!" I grin and say "Yes,
and you know what they say about men with big feet? Big
socks." He says "Yeah, I think you want to say something
else." I look at The Chav Princess, then back at him and say
"Yeah, but she'd slap me if I did." The Chav Princess then looked
at me sternly and said "Yeah, no bragging in here about sizes of body
parts other than feet, alright? Got it? Great, now p*ss off
both of you!" Permalink |
15th June 2008: Mass Rushes, Broken Equipment, Many Staff,
Poor Customer Service and Breakfast With The Missus
So, last night was kind of a haze. I spent the first part of the
shift just serving a never ending queue of customers! To put it
into perspective, we serve about 250-300 customers a night. Last
night I served 75 customers in the first hour. The only advantage
to this is that Miss C left me alone. She was in an odd mood, not
talking to me unless I talked to her, but when I spoke to her, she was
perfectly nice to me. Anyway, she's off for a week, The Blonde
Bombshell is finally back, and things should hopefully be getting back
to normal. I even tried bribing Miss C by telling her that she
was a good supervisor. Which she sort of is. The problem
is, she goes off and chats to Mrs DJ or Slaphead or Tiny Teeny (who
isn't a teenager). Which leaves me without any backup whatsoever.
Anyway, apart from the hoardes of customers, last night we pretty much
rocked at everything. At least considering that Miss C insisted
on working the chiller. She is so incredibly slow. But we
still got everything in the chiller worked, the cages in our warehouse
worked, and the warehouse itself all worked. Although not the
alcohol as that side of the warehouse racking is broken. I tried
fixing it to no avail. Well...I tried deactivating the broken
safety mechanism, which did nothing. Hurrah! So, no
alcohol, no cigarettes, it's going to be a fun time to be Queen Chav.
But a few things annoyed me about last night too. And incredibly,
it only happened after Queen Chav turned up. Well...Queen Chav
and her many minions. You see, Queen Chav had Blondie, Lallan,
Tiny Teeny, Mrs DJ, Me, Miss C and...someone else who I am struggling
for a nickname for! 5 members of staff not including me and Miss
C. And still she got me and Miss C to do really stupid little
tasks. Not one of her minions. She got them to compile the
newspapers (the rubbish that gets put inside the weekend
editions). But what made me so angry about all of that was that
despite having THREE people working on it, when I left at 7:30am, there
wasn't a single damned paper out in the stands.
What made it far worse, and far more annoying was that she then got me
to face up the chilled food section. She even admitted it would
only take me 10 minutes. But this was at quarter past 7. So
I did it in record time, and then I told her I'd completed it, and she
got me to do the job that she had actually stopped me from doing just
to get me to face up the damned chilled. Why couldn't she have
got the newbie to do it? Why couldn't she have done it. Oh,
wait, she's management, they can't lower themselves to do the job of a
common checkout person. Actually, it's so funny when she serves
on the checkouts. She constantly berates all of us for our
customer service, but she has none. She stands on the tills
looking really angry, arms folded, pacing, which is bad body language,
she doesn't say please or thank you, she doesn't engage them in
conversation if they initiate it, and all in all she gives them a
really bad experience. I know. I've been on the end of
it.
Anyway, at least I had a nice morning. Because work had dealt me
a low blow, I decided that I would take advantage of the 2 maple and
pecan plaits for £1 deal and bought 4 of the 6 which were out,
hot and delicious. I have to admit, I have a huge weakness for
these things, and despite being full of fat and sugar, they're probably
better for me than my other preferred breakfast via work of 2 sausage
and bacon rolls. So, I ate my breakfast, went home, played a
little Wii to let off steam, then called my girlfriend and woke her up,
which we had planned before anyone comments that waking my girlfriend
was cruel! Next sunday should be better actually. We're
planning a very couply sunday. And right now I am listening to
metal and rock, and plan on watching some film later. Not sure
what. Maybe Prince Caspian, or maybe Hulk. This said, I
really, really want to watch Sex In The City. Perhaps not quite
what people expect of me, but it's true. Loved the series, and
can't wait to see the film... Permalink |
13.06.08:
Friday Karaoke Song: (it
returns!) Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi
Or click here for
a very funny alternative! (stick with it, the end is hilarious!) Free MP3 Of The Day:Soul
On Fire by Spiritualised
So, last night Miss C was actually...nice. Now, I have yet to
figure out if she was being genuinely nice, or whether it was fake
nicety, since she did come out with the quote that Shoe is probably two
faced since “The nicest people are two faced, that's how they get away
with it in the first place.” Very interesting. I'm always
interested in what people say, because nine times out of ten, they will
let slip something really deep and hidden.
Apart from that it was a really dull shift. One of those that my
herbs and spices kept me going through. Them and my MP3 player on
the my Nokia N800. Ok, so, we had two drive offs, but neither of
them were while I was around, and since I'm not in charge anymore, I
don't really care. We get the money back one way or another, and
if it goes to court we get more, so, meh.
Since Miss C was on the tills, I didn't even get any interesting
customers to serve. This said, because it was a Thursday, I did
have to appear big and scary to some of our more...light fingered
customers. Worryingly, I actually enjoy this part of the
job. And I don't know when it happened. It has certainly
become a part of me over the last year or so. I guess it's
because I know the odds are in my favour. Strange as that may
sound! But...I have had people come up to me with bottles and
knives, and they've never used them. You find most people are all
talk and no substance. I suppose it does help that I'm 6 foot
tall and have no problem staring someone right in the eyes.
There is one very satisfying thing about not being a supervisor
anymore. I no longer have to worry about whether or not I am
going to get a phone call from Pedro. I know I won't, because I
am not in charge in any capacity. If anything goes pear shaped,
the other person I am with will get the blame. Nice. I do
so love it when other people carry the can for things in the bigger
picture. And the thing is, whilst what I am doing at work might
not be hugely important (stacking shelves) I am working with computers,
as I always wanted via this blog, which in turn is due to my “real”
job, and I get to do creative stuff due to the colleague circle!
So, I think that's pretty much it. Tonight, depending on whether
the weather holds out, I may be having a BBQ at mine with friends, or
it may be a pizza in front of the TV with friends, watching the first
eviction from Big Brother and then the Isle Of Wight festival! |
Permalink
12.06.08: Short Posting, Rude Customers, Talkative Guy, and
Submissive Antheo
This is going to be a shorter blog entry than usual, purely because I
woke up far later than I wanted to, giving me far less time to write an
entry! But as much as I can, I am trying to write in my blog
every day, because it is important to me to get my thoughts and rants
out there!
So, last night was just a night of rude customers. First off was
a guy who was complaining about the state of the bottle of suntan
lotion he wanted to buy. First of all he complained that the
bottle was sticky, then he complained that the bottle wasn't new.
I explained that we hadn't received a lot of summer stock this year,
and then he criticised me for not having the business sense of have
bought the lot at the end of the season and sold it back to the store
at full price just before the summer season. Which is of course
how the retail business works, we always buy stock from private sellers
rather than companies who can give us the stock at a decent price so we
make a killing on it.
Then I had a woman who was incredibly rude to me concerning the chip
and PIN system. So, she asks me if she can pay by card, which I
tell her she can. She puts the card into the machine, enters her
pin and her card gets declined. Now, I am always vigilant that a
declined card upsets people, so I try to break it gently to them.
Most of the time it works. Not this time. She demanded to
know why her card was declined. We don't get to know this, most
people don't believe us, but honestly, most of the time it just says
"Declined. Reason: Declined." The only other time that it
tells you a reason is if the card is stolen, and then you get £50
from the bank! Anyway, after causing a scene about her card being
declined, she then looked at said card and said "Oh! It's my old
card! Here is my new card." And carried on as if she hadn't
been the customer from hell!
And the talkative guy came in again last night. He has decided
that coming and annoying me is the highlight of his day. He's in
for a shock tonight then! Anyway, he came up to me and said that
because some of the prices were wrong, I had to get in touch with the
EPoS person. EPoS is Electronic Point of Sale. Then he
begins complaining about the fact that he can't always find the things
he wants because we keep moving them. I explain that we
replanogram the store every 2 weeks. I'm amazed that he knows
retail terminology.
Lastly, we had Antheo come in last night. Antheo used to work at
our store, but got fired for stealing Nectar Points. Well...she
may have left, my memory is a little sketchy over those details.
Anyway, she is one of the hardest people I know. The only time
she ever shows emotion is when she's drunk, and cries over the fact
that she's single. Not that she is conventionally
attractive. She's a very podgy redhead, and even pushes my
limits! Anyway, she has never been especially nice towards me,
and she always shows me the least amount of emotion possible.
Except for last night. Now, I am into the more alternative side
of life, which extends to every aspect of my life, including the sexual
side of things. And I could have sworn that Antheo was acting all
submissive towards me. Hung head, very innocent looking eyes,
soft tones, and pleases and thank yous. And nothing at all like
behaviour she normally shows towards me. She's normally so
assertive and confident. It was quite odd, although quite
interesting... Permalink |
11.06.08: Late Editions, Should Robbery Be Reported?, I
Am Untrustworthy, Irregular Regulars, and A Rant About Speed
Streaming Song Of The Day:
There's Only Me by Rob Dougan
Today's edition of the blog is a little later than usual, for reasons I
don't entirely want to get into (it involves money and phone calls to
irritating call centres).
Last night was a bit of a pain as well. At the moment it seems
that I cannot do a damned thing right at that place. A part of me
wants to run and get away from it all, but a bigger part of me is far
more stubborn and says that I have been there longer than the people
antagonising me, and therefore they are the people who should go, not
me. It started badly, and then got worse. I arrived and
Totem Pole asked me whether if he had the registration number of a guy
who stole a £10 bottle of wine, he should report it to the
police. I calmly tried to explain to him that this would be a
good idea, and was met with the reply that he thought so but wasn't
sure if the police would be interested. Robbery that is easy to
trace? No, why would they be interested in that?
And then I had the guy who talks to himself come in. What a great
mood he was in! First of all he wouldn't shut up. Not so
much inner monologue, more like inner autobiography gone
external. And yet again he complained about our prices and told
me that I was conning a pensioner. And yet again he bought
cigarettes just to try them. He also put some stuff on the
trolley I was using and told me not to touch his stuff or move the
trolley, then when he forgot where he put it, blamed me for moving
it. But apparently this abuse was nowhere near enough, after
reminding him where his stuff was, adjusting the price of his
cigarettes because they were in a price marked pack, and being as nice
as possible, he then asked for a receipt and told me that he didn't
trust me because he knew I was trying to steal his money. Nice.
Now, I have wanted to tell my readers about this regular for some
time. For the purposes of not letting rotund blondes find this
blog, I shall call her Mrs B. Mrs B comes in and buys 2 or 3
packets of cigarettes a night, every night. Always has for about
3 or 4 years now. She buys them in 10s because, well, to be
honest, I think she gets lonely and wants someone other than her mother
to talk to, and we are around. Bless. Actually, she's a
pretty nice woman, and always asks how we are and tells us to have a
nice, easy shift. Except last night...she was odd. She
didn't buy her cigarettes at all, and she didn't tell me to have an
easy shift. She just told me that she wished me luck for the
day. Every so slightly creepy!
But here is what really made me angry. Slaphead. His mood
swings are becoming more and more bizarre. First of all he didn't
talk to me. Then he was chatty. Then he had a go at me for
my facing up not being good enough. Then he was nice as pie to
me. And then he delivered the mother of all insults. You
see, the night before, he had told me I was slow and said he wasn't
going to mention it to Pedro because he wanted to tell me first.
So I decided to do something about it and slightly modified my
combination of herbs and spices I take. And then last night,
after working 136 cases in an hour (a personal record and 100 cases
more than the company average) he told me again that I was slow.
I was so angry. The thing that really got me angry is that at the
most he can have only worked 90 cases in an hour, which is very
respectable, but he was complaining that I was slow when I did almost
half as much again as he did? So I questioned it, and he claimed
that he was concerned about me, that he thought maybe I was ill and
that he still thought that I was working hard. Uh huh.
Working hard, just slowly. I've always been well known for being
the fastest person on night shift at working stock. To the point
where we had one supervisor who when I told him that I had cleared my
fourth cage yelled "No! Is not possible! How are you doing
this?" The Blonde Bombshell has also, in the past, begged me to
slow down because I was going to get everything done and leave us with
a long time with nothing to do. But then he really rubbed it
in. He got me to get off the tills and come into the canteen for
a meeting. When I asked him what he wanted, he asked me to come
in and close the door because he wanted a chat. I went in and he
told me that he thought I had worked really hard and that he wanted to
let me know that. It still left a nasty taste in my mouth
considering that he had spent the better part of half an hour disecting
why he was so worried about my sudden lack of speed, and that I
normally work the stock like a tazmanian devil. Maybe I'm not so
outwardly fast, and maybe I've learnt control. The point he
entirely missed is that we had almost 200 cases of chilled stock in
last night and when he began working it, of the three cages we got in,
only half of one was left for him. And I still helped him on
it. I also cleared 2 cages of dry stock and served pretty much
every customer last night. But apparently that isn't enough
effort. Well, that's fine. You see, for reasons of safety,
I normally add a low dose sedative to my mix of herbs and spices,
because without it my moods can become a little unpredictable.
But tonight, I will go without, and add a little more stimulant to the
mix. If he wants fast, he is going to get it. The downside
being that when Queen Chav looks at the CCTV tapes, she is going to see
me far and away outclassing Slaphead when it comes to work. Now,
this may seem a little obsessive to some, but, look at it from my point
of view. For the last five years I have been the fastest person
on night shift, and I love that reputation. And now someone
claims that I am slowing down? I have to protect my
reputation. As a businessman once said "A good reputation is hard
won, and easily lost." Permalink |
10.06.08: Shaded Blogging, The Return Of K, The Hells Angels
Have Gone Down In My Estimations, Liars, Vandalised Toilets, and I Am
The Saviour Of Technology!
Streaming Song Of The Day: Nothing
At All by Rob Dougan
Once again I have the pleasure of blogging outside. Yes, it's
another hot summer's day in the UK, but we have a 7 foot hedge in our
garden and it is providing me with the most glorious of shade. I
am cool, the laptop screen is perfectly visible, and I disconnected the
wifi adaptor so I can take my time over this entry. And also so
that the battery life won't suck on this machine.
K came back today! Only as a customer but it was still nice to
see her again. K is one of those strange people you work with,
that when you work with them they annoy the absolute hell out of you,
but when they leave, you miss them. Anyway, she came back, and
did pretty much everything on the list I wrote a few days ago of things
that annoy you when you are serving someone. I believe this to be
coincidental, since she's not exactly computer literate, or at least
she wasn't when she was at work! And as always she shared far too
much, telling me that she was off to bed with her husband, then having
a shower, then going to bed with her husband again. Bless K, I
think she has a heart of gold, but she really does tell everyone way
too much about her private life!
And then we had a Hells Angel come in. Complete with beard,
shaved head, and Hells Angels Dublin t-shirt. He was gruff, rude,
very alpha male, and exactly what I would expect from a Hells
Angel! So I decided to see what he was riding, because I hadn't
noticed a Harley or any other loud motorbike coming onto the
forecourt. So I looked out and saw only cars. And then
stayed to see where the Hells Angel was going. He went to a very
luxurious BMW. It shattered my illusions of the Hells Angels
there and then. I get it that sometimes a motorbike isn't
practical, but come on, a BMW? Hardly rebellion on 4
wheels. Not quite sticking it to the man. More, seeing what
the man has and actually quite liking it. So, yeah, kind of
shattered my illusions of the Hells Angels being rough, tough guys
riding their machines everywhere they go and being generally
rebellious.
So, it turns out that Miss C is a bit of a liar! She told me that
she was leaving, and I mentioned this to Slaphead, and he told me
tonight that she told him that she was offered a job, but turned it
down and that she wasn't going anywhere. I know why this
is. She gave me misinformation so that she could find this
blog. Silly girl. I like to think one step ahead of people,
and I guessed she might try that one, and I don't think I gave enough
information on the blog to make it a viable search from Google. I
do understand search, I've been using Google for 7 years. Back
when all it did was search. But hey, if she finds it she finds
it.
Our toilets got vandalised yesterday too. I can't believe someone
would smash up a petrol station toilet. I mean...why? It's
actually more pointless than the people who smash up phone boxes.
And the smell in the toilets is inhuman! Leave it at that I
cannot smell smells unless they are really strong or really
close. And by really close I mean right under my nose.
Literally. But this I could smell a few seconds after I went
in. Not quite as bad as one customre put it "Everything is
smashed and the toilet is full of blood!" Two streaks of blood in
some poo.
Lastly, I am the saviour of technology in the store! And
modest. Despite the insistence of the IT bods using Windows
rather than Linux, leading to many crashes, Blue Screens Of Death and
slow computers trying to process advanced web pages, I still managed to
rescue three technological breakdowns last night! First up was
the stock ordering computer. A really simple Access Database
driven thing, and it locked up on Mrs DJ. So, I used Ctrl F4 and
shut it down, and Ctrl F4'ed everything else that was running and not
essential, then reloaded the Access Database. Working as smooth
as a baby's butt. Secondly thing was that Slaphead couldn't make
the GRN computer work. So I went in, and 2 minutes later his GRN
slip was printed. Then came the biggie. All non essential
systems went down. Slaphead had a small panic, wondering whether
we could still trade, Evie panicked and pointed at the lights and said
"No power?" And I casually strolled to the fusebox, opened it up
and came back and said "You'll have power in 10 minutes." Five
minutes later I strolled back to the fusebox, untripped the non
essential power fuse, and power came back for the rest of the
shift. How good am I? I was even nice enough to tell
Slaphead and Queen Chav what I thought the problem was, although not
nice enough to tell them how I was fixing said problem. Well,
Slaphead and Miss C are supposed to be supervisors now, and I think
restoring power to a broken store is under their remit.
Especially not under my remit as a lazy, stupid, arrogant, big mouthed
cashier, as some rotund blondes believe... Permalink |
09.06.08: Bad Days, Public Humiliation, Being Bipolar,
Tonight's Music Shall Be..., and University Talks
Streaming Song Of The Day:
Furious Angels by Rob Dougan
Well, all in all I am having a pretty bad day. First, I woke up
half an hour later than I wanted to, which meant I didn't have time to
write and print the minutes from the Colleague Circle meeting.
Then I had to walk to the meeting in absolutely red hot weather.
I believe I have mentioned once or twice that I really hate the
heat. And then when the Colleague Circle meeting took place, I
got it in the neck for not printing a poster for a funday nobody wanted
to take part in anyway, and for not printing or e-mailing the
notes. But what I saw whilst I was waiting for Pedro to attend
the meeting was what got my blood boiling. This time Queen Chav
has crossed the line.
On the wall was a notice informing people that they're doing well with
the new clocking in system, and reminding people who aren't clocking in
that their pay will be affected if they don't clock in properly
(seriously, try messing with my wages). But then I read the
bottom of the notice. It singled me out as the one person in the
store who is clocking in the worst out of everyone. Named me by
name. There is one thing I cannot stand is public humiliation,
and that is what this amounts to. And so, I will be forced to
seek revenge. On a side note, I love the mental image I get for
the word "revenge". It's all burning and flames with a sinister
face grinning in the middle. Anyway, Queen Chav is going down for
this. Big time. You see, banks and IT places have the right
idea, ban camera phones from your work place. There are a lot of
things a camera phone can take a picture of these days, and not all of
it is good. I mean, you can take pictures of memos on the wall at
work. Memos that publicly humiliate one of your staff
members. And then if someone accompanied that with a copy of a
list of false accusations made by the same person and e-mailed the
whole lot to HR...well...that could be very destructive to a person's
career...
Then when I got home, I decided to celebrate my success in the
Colleague Circle meeting with a bottle of my favourite smoothie and a
pack of my favourite cakes. It's getting too hot to sit in cafes
with coffee and have my regular meetings with myself over the direction
of the blog, so, I settled on smoothies and cakes. And then when
my folks got home, I told them how 3 of my 3 ideas submitted to the
meeting got accepted. Much to Pedro's annoyance. I think
soon he will realise than when it comes to creativity, I have it in
spades, and that it is a valuable and (at our store) rare
commodity. So, a staff outing is happening, and a staff barbecue,
and we have sorted out the music situation (a one disk CD player that
sucks but we get freedom of music choice so, meh).
And my parents were so supportive of my success at getting my ideas
accepted, that they tore them to shreds. They managed to pick
holes in every single idea that I had, which they somehow fail to
realise has brought me down just a tad. Hence my sitting in the
garden with the laptop, deliberately alone, chain smoking. In
fairness, few people realise how stunning the differences between the
ups and downs of being bipolar are. When you're up, you are
literally unstoppable. Every idea is great, doable, and all your
energy is focused on that one idea, and making it happen. And
when you're down, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's like
drowning in a sea of darkness. And as with the ups, that every
idea is great, with the downs, every idea is dark and you just want the
entire world to get out of your way and leave you alone.
So, tonight I have no idea who I am working with, but I will be
bringing packages of CDs with me. If the CD player is there to be
used, used it shall be. And I really hope I am working with Miss
C, because my music is very important to me, and I like it loud, dark
and where possible, depressing. Which oddly actually does nothing
in either direction for my mood. You'd think it'd bring me down,
but it doesn't. And if I am working with Slaphead, then there
isn't an issue at all, because he likes his music loud, dark and
depressing too. Funnily, we're both fans of both Morrissey and
The Smiths...
Anyway, tonight I have an evening of watching university talks ahead of
me. With good reason. One of the people who does the talks,
who I actually dislike as a person has a knack of being ahead of his
time. By quite a few years. Example - he was discussing RSS
in 2006, which isn't anything particularly huge, except he was
discussing how to distribute media automatically via RSS, which was
being discussed on Diggnation about 6 months ago about how you would go
about doing that. I am also back to listening to the Programming
Tag Radio on Last.fm. I like the mix of music it throws up.
You can have electronica and then the next song might be The
Beatles. Or Kenny G. You're never entirely sure what is
coming next, and I like that. It's like a real radio station,
except I can skip the songs I hate. Permalink |
06.06.08: Breakdowns, Chap Man, Abusive Kids And
The Aftermath, Pedro and Blackouts!
Wow...what a night. I was actually on course for a really good
night, except, of course, it never ever turns out that way.
Especially not when I have a busy three days off ahead of me. I
think that it's the curse of Miss C. Whenever she works with me I
always get something bad coming my way. And last night was a
great night for bad things. So, the delivery according to the
computer was small. Which relieved me. Miss C is nowhere
near the fastest on the shift, infact, until Ponytail left, she was the
2nd slowest. Thank god she is leaving in less than a month.
I cannot wait! I really and truely cannot!
So, the night was kicked off by a guy being asked for ID. Nothing
new there, except, he drove home to get his ID, then came back with the
ID and bought his cigarettes. And then broke the ignition of his
car. Which meant our work was disrupted every few minutes by the
guy coming in and asking for stuff. First cigarettes, then a
lighter, then a phone to make a call with. Now, I have no issues
with people using the phone if they are desperate. So I let him
use the phone. Then Miss C asked him if he wanted a coffee, which
of course he did. Summer nights in the UK are often cold late at
night, especially if they are accompanied by really hot days (today is
hot as hell). So I made him a coffee, by which time I had just
finished my break. Yes, that's right, Miss C expected me to make
the guy a coffee on my break. Now, I actually didn't mind this
because I make killer coffee. No-one who tastes my coffee (with
the exception of Miss C) ever refuses a second cup. So I made
this guy his coffee, then came back from my break, at which point Miss
C went off on her break, leaving me alone with this guy. Who
actually ended up telling me he is a friend of my brother. So we
ended up talking about my brother.
And then we got my least favourite customer. I call him Chap
Man. He uses the damned word like it's punctuation.
"Alright chap?" "Ounce of GV chap" "Cheers chap" "See
ya later chap". Arrrrrrgggghhhhhhh! It drives me mad!
It makes me want to hit him every time he says it. The best bit
is, he thinks I like it! He makes a point of saying it every
damned time! This is something which should have made the list
actually. Don't call us mate, chap, buddy, pal, or make out
you're our friend just because you've seen us a couple of times.
Especially if you want a favour like being let off the 1p you went over
on your fuel. Familiarity really does breed contempt.
After having my first cigarette break disrupted by Miss C, my lunch
break got similarly disrupted. Just as I was about to go and eat
my poor excuse for a sandwich I bought (Ham and cheese, so exciting)
she asked me to stay on the shop floor with her because a group of
drunk kids had come into the store. Now, these kids could barely
pass for 16, let alone 21, so they got IDed when they asked for
cigarettes. And the guy got angry when Miss C asked him for ID
and he came up lacking. "Oi, no, f*ck this. I come in 'ere
all the time. Sell me cigarettes! You have before!
You know what? F*ck you! B*tch!" Miss C is stunning
when it comes to abuse. First comes the stony faced silence, and
if that doesn't silence them, she argues with them. Now, I am
great at arguing, but I always lose in arguments with her. But
this is not where this story ends. No. Because when they
finally left, I decided to go for a cigarette and make sure they were
really gone. They left the site, but not the area. The guy
who had been abusive to Miss C was now shouting and arguing with a
girl, who seemed to be doing pretty well herself, pushing him back and
shouting and arguing with him also. I left them to it, as she
seemed to be handling herself pretty well. This said, if he had
hit her, I would have gone over and laid the guy out. Can't stand
seeing guys hitting girls...
I mentioned the blog to Miss C (not the address or details of any
worth, just rubbing it in that she can't see it) and she mentioned
something quite amazing to me. Apparently Pedro used to read the
old blog every week. He went to the blog once a week and read
what I'd posted the week before. Might explain him being at a
loss with how to deal with me. I guess if you have insights into
the mind of someone for that long, and then it is suddenly ripped away
from you, you're not going to be able to adapt to their new
mindset. And I do have a new mindset... Speaking of the old
blog, I am so tempted to reinvent it somehow. It seems that since
I shut it down, advertisers cannot get enough of it! I even got a
$40 job offer today in my e-mails, which is really irritating, because
I badly want to accept that money, but I can't. Suggestions
welcome! This said, I have considered reviving it as a news blog
because I really enjoyed that for the short period the old blog became
a news blog. Anyway, off subject. Now, I also have an
insight into Pedro's parenting skills. Very hands off.
Apparently both him and his wife work within SF, and she is higher than
him in the company (that's got to suck when you have an ego the size of
his) and they have agreed that they will send their kid to creche 5
days a week, 8 hours a day. Incredible. I mean, how the
hell is that kid going to know who it's parents are?
Lastly, in the last couple of hours we had a power cut. Not a
natural one, a fuse tripped out. The problem was, the damned
thing wouldn't untrip. I called our helpdesk, who were as helpful
as a chocolate teapot and gave me a reference number, and then didn't
call back. Eventually The Chav came in, flicked the trip switch
and all the power came back. Way to make me feel stupid.
Thing is, I had tried that a few times, and it didn't work. I put
all the meat into the chiller, because apparently Pedro worries about
the meat, and incredibly he didn't call me. That was what I was
worried about. You see, Pedro has a thing about calling people
even when their shifts have finished to bawl them out. I simply
ignore the phone until I go to bed.
So, not sure how often I will be blogging over the next few days.
I have a hectic few days planned. Tonight, weather depending, I
may have a barbque and drinks and a party with a friend, and tomorrow I
am going with my dad to the 10th aniversary Linux User's Group
meeting. I've only been going for a few months, but already I
feel so at home there amongst them. And of course, having access
to a car means that I can bring the heavyweight gear, not just the
lightweight stuff I am normally forced to take. Then Sunday I am
going down to my local to listen to a band play. Busy busy
busy! Plus I have to watch the Canadian Grand
Prix. Permalink |
05.06.08: The 2p Sausage Debate, Dull Customers,
New Features and Six Things That Will Annoy Your Checkout Operator
Streaming Song Of The Day: Will
You Follow Me by Rob Dougan (The start of Rob Dougan week!)
Last night was actually pretty dull. Not a lot happened apart
from us keeping an eye on the customers to make sure that the blonde
from the night before didn't show up and try to force herself on
us! Methinks Slaphead is complaining too much about girls wanting
to foist themselves on him.
So, as I don't have a huge amount of work based stuff to talk about
today, I think I will mention something which was dominating breakfast
TV yesterday. the 2p sausage. Well, not exactly but that
area. You see, Asda (boo! hiss!) have brought out a packet
of sausages which work out at 2p per sausage. Nutritionalists
complain it only has 36% meat, but here is the thing. And I
really never thought I would be leaping to the defense of the retail
world. Things are getting cheaper. Don't believe the mass
media, I am a customer too, and I know. Example, I adore jam and
cream doughnuts. Have for a long time. Now, when I was
unemployed, a pack of 2 cost £1.20. I've been employed for
5 years now. Now, our store is expensive, yet a pack of 2 jam and
cream doughnuts costs 80p. Not on special offer, that's just how
much they cost. And for desert today, I had chocolate eclairs
which cost me 86p (ok, less, I used my discount card) but they used to
be expensive. This is what riles me about the mass media, and
hence why I am so passionate about blogging. Ok, mybe wheat and
rice are getting more expensive, ergo things like pasta become more
expensive, but don't make out every single food item is more expensive
now. And don't whinge on and on about how food costs so much,
then slam retailers when they come out with a solution. It might
not be the best sausage in the world, but you know what? People
with limited incomes don't care. It's like we do frozen steak at
our store. £2.50 for a pack of 4. No, they aren't 21
day matured 100% aberdeen angus sirloin steaks. But they are
steaks. And for people on a budget, they are not going to knock a
62p steak. Especially not when they can have a few 2p sausages
with it...
Out of all the dull customers I had last night, I did have a few rather
attractive girls wearing rather tight clothes, and I would particularly
like to thank the short, slightly podgy redhead who was wearing
unfeasably tight black velvet trousers with an equally tight white
lacey top and skipped up to the counter (almost spilling out of said
top) and then skipped out of the store after paying for her
petrol. You made my night and I was called a perv by
Slaphead. Now, I also had the guy who has no internal
monolouge. He asked me if I had any price marked packs of Pall
Mall. When I said no, he asked if I was hiding any. Because
that is obviously what we do. Then he argued that he thought he
should be allowed them at £3.19. No, you shouldn't.
And then after complaining that he had no money, he bought 2 packets of
cigarettes, one just because he wondered what they tasted like.
Now, slow work days come rarely, but they do come. Like last
night. Although I worked like a demon, I doubt you really want to
read about how I worked really hard and got lots of stock out.
Doing it is reasonably boring, so I guess reading it would be more
so. Another problem is I have chronic writers block today!
So far I have wasted an hour doing anything other than writing.
I've smoked, downloaded some videos, watched said videos, contemplated
writing outside, and now I have settled for blogging in bed. And
rambling seemingly! Anyway, as an antidote to slow work days, I
have decided that I am going to write lists/guides. They aren't
going to be a regular feature, more of a space filler for when nothing
overtly exciting happens at work!
Today's list/guide is things that are guaranteed to annoy your checkout
operator.
1: Walking up to the counter, handing over money and then walking
off. We are not psychic! Just because you know what it is
for, doesn't mean that we do! The worst offenders for this are
the people who do it when the petrol station is full. Just
because you filled up with £10 of fuel doesn't mean that nobody
else has! This also leads me onto number 2:
2: Walking up to the counter and saying Diesel. This is just as
annoying as number one for a few reasons. One, we're still not
psychic. Several people might have diesel. And also, we
cannot see who has what unless we press buttons. If there is a
queue, we will make sure we press every button, whether or not we find
your diesel, namely because it wastes your time, and the people behind
you will hate you for holding them up.
3: Walking up to the counter, dumping stuff, and then walking off to do
more shopping. Oh, seriously, you have no idea how irritating
this is. I've heard people say to me "That must be a real pain in
the ass". Doesn't even touch it. We then have to wait
around for you to finish what normal people do anyway. And then,
we have to explain to the customer behind you that has decided you have
dumped your stuff and left the store that actually, no, you're a moron
and can't get everything at once. Which leads me onto number 4
4: Complaining that I voided your items when you walked off to get
stuff. Tough. Did I not mention you had one minute to get
back? Sorry. Next customer!
5: The phrase "I pay your wages!" Uh huh. I actually get
this frequently from one particular customer who I have since stopped
speaking to other than to tell him how much his cigarettes cost and how
much change he got. If you come in and buy a packet of cigarettes
every day, you aren't paying my wages. We make like 10p on a
packet. If you come in and buy £50 of petrol every day,
you're still not paying my wages because we make like 1p per litre, and
you just bought 50 litres (actually, less than 50). Now, if you
bought perhaps £50 of coffee a day from our machine, then you
might be closer to paying my wages, because actually, the coffee you
pay £2 a cup for costs us pretty much nothing to make. And
actually, head office pay my wages, not you. Sorry for that rant,
but it's the one phrase that makes my blood boil. So humiliating.
6: (A store specific bonus): "Where are the eggs?" I will get
this at least once a day. I don't care how polite you ask me, I
am still going to be angry if you ask me this. We have what I
call the breakfast t-junction. Bacon, eggs, milk, bread,
mushrooms, sausages and black pudding all within 2 metres of each
other. Beans are a little further away. Now, not only this,
but the entire top shelf of the section opposite the milk is
eggs. Nothing else, just eggs. And for those that cannot
recognise an egg carton, we have a half metre black and white sign with
a red arrow saying "Eggs". I'm not kidding, it's that much of a
problem that they especially made the sign just for our store.
And still people ask. I have actually suggested that we encase
the sign in neon. Pedro said no and to stop being so silly.
Pedro also hides in the office from customers... Permalink |
04.06.08: Roundhouse Upselling, Abusive Customers,
Pranks, Irritating Customers, Sexy Phonecalls, We Rock and Rotas
Confuse Chavs
Streaming Song Of The Day: Connection
by Elastica (As used in a presentation I created for the Government
eons ago for a scheme which is now nationwide, and I get nada for!)
Free MP3 Of The Day: Ease
Back by Amos Lee
This is slightly off topic for this blog, yet related. Yesterday
I ventured out of the house up to town to buy some Guarana tablets and
get some lunch. Then as I walked past my local computer store,
Roundhouse Computers, I saw they had an external CD Rewriter for
£42.99. Not cheap, but about the same as one would cost
from Amazon including next day delivery. So I went in and asked
what their cheapest external CD Rewriter was. And the guy behind
the counter did the most extraordinary thing. Decent salespeople
will show you the thing you want, but then explain that something a
touch more expensive will benefit you much more. I've had this in
Gran Canaria by experts, and it worked (1gb iPod Nano clone 10 euros,
1gb iPod Touch clone 15 euros, I bought the 2gb version). But
Roundhouse Computers really screwed their sales patter up. Now,
considering the CD Rewriter was in the window with the price tag on it,
and that I asked specifically for CD Rewriters...the guy showed me
external DVD Rewriters. Costing as much as £90, although he
also offered me a £70 drive.&