K-Martians are amongst us....
Apr. 25th, 2003 01:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sethrakNote: The following is not meant to be an angsty rant, or an indication I had a _bad_ day. Just a really strange one. Stranger than the lady a few weeks ago who tried telling me a non-existent employee had told her to call me for permission to give her a discount....
First up, the elderly couple with the really odd accents. We do get the occasional out-of-stater in our store, but these two had accents which were completely new to me. The lady was dressed within little old lady warddrobe norms. Her husband was wearing liederhosen.
No, I'm not kidding.
Honest to God, liederhosen. Not shiny buckled, stiffly pressed, good as new liederhosen like you see strolling around downtown during German Fest. Nope, this guy was wearing ones that appeared to have been worn frequently and long. And without any apparent selfconsciousness either. Most of the costumed dancers and tourists buying the clothes for the hell of it don't quite look comfortable in liederhosen. Not this guy.
It gets better.
Their purchases consisted of a hanging potted plant, and a large wheeled garbage can with a lid. Plant had the UPC tag on it. Wheeled can had... nada.
Not on the lid. Not on the sides. Not on the bottom. The label was totally AWOL. There wasn't even an embossed brand name anywhere on it.
At this point, of course, like all my elderly customers and a distressingly high number of the middle aged and younger, they piped up with "It's $9.99..." (Or whatever the price they think it is, as appropriate.) They seem to think this will enable me to ring up their purchase. Unfortunately, I need either the UPC _number_ to enter manually in the computer, or the barcode (which has the number printed beneath it, _always_) to scan. In the case of the elderly customers, this belief is understandable. Older cash registers, years ago, could in fact do this. Ours can't. That way we avoid people a) lying blatantly about prices and losing us money and b) make sure there's a reasonably accurate tally in the main computer about what we're running out of stock on.
I attempt explaining to them, simply but politely, that the price does me no good without a UPC code. Takes me a couple tries before I can at least get them to the 'smile and nod' stage. Next they bring up the standard "It was in the paper, it's on sale!" I didn't happen to have a copy of the Sunday ad insert on hand, but in any event, without the tag, I still had to call back. This I explained, but I don't think they understood.
So. Off to the handy dandy phone, to call back to the dept for a price check. I call DYI, the usual lurking place of garbage cans. No call back. Couple minutes pass, and a few people start piling up behind the couple. It's only me and Baljit on register, and she's still gone on her fifteen minute break... -_-
Gloria, whom Tom-chan refers to somewhat unkindly as an 'old Polish lady', was on front end supervisor duty today. She asked me what I was doing a price check on. I explained. She said the garbage cans on sale were in the three day flier, not the weekly, and were not stored with the regular ones. They were back in the garden shop.
( Allow me to pause briefly and explain that I LOATHE the three day fliers. With a fine and nuanced loathing only equaled by my loathing for the little 'Sunday-Monday Sale!!' blurbs occasionally seen on the margin of the front page of the weeklies, and on really hair-tearing weeks, the inner two pages. The sale items contained therein are always trouble. Always.
Tom will call this blasphemy, no doubt, but there are times when I think those stupid two-three-day-only sales are more evil than the month of February. Because at least February only lasts 28 days, and arrives only once a year. You can plan for it. Build bunkers against it. Or even spend goodly portions of Feb. drunk to evade it's diabolicalness. These short term sales, however, can occur at any time. And they leap out at you without even a shred of warning. You can't even consider yourself safe on a Wed., because sure as death and taxes, somebody will come through your line and say:
"Oh, this was over Tuesday? But... but.... but.... this is the weekly ad!" I point silently to the easily legible print denoting this was only a Sun-Mon sale. Cue customer outrage about our 'misleading ads'.....
Or:
"What do you mean, this sale's not til tomorrow, I saw the ad in today's paper!" They release the Thurs-Sat. fliers on Wed so people know about them in time to make shopping plans. If they released them Thurs. they'd miss some of the early morning shoppers who don't read the newspaper til the afternoon. So I have been told. ::shrug:: )
So. I called William over the intercom to call me back at the front to do a price check. I had a feeling he'd end up having to come to my register to give this thing a look, anyways, because it had NO identifying marks.
Through all this Baljit's come back but more folks are piling up. -_-;;;;
Cue appropriate mild panic music.
William finally calls but says he has three customers at the garden register and it'll be a few minutes before he can go find the UPC code.
Two more minutes pass. Literally. But subjectively they felt like at least ten. My line of people was looking most unhappy. Having the self-checkouts closed didn't help. >_<
Finally Gloria tells me to go do the price check myself. I grab some paper and my pen and trot over there.
Once there, William's still got a small herd of people in his line, and tells me he'll help me in a minute. Silly me, I can't imagine why at first.... I'm wandering the indoors portion of the garden shop, trying to find the garbage can on my own. William calls over and tells me to look up.
I look up. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY up.
To the shelves at the very top of the wall racks, where a whole slew of wheeled garbage cans are nearly brushing the ceiling.
William laughs goodnaturedly and says he'll go get the wheeled ladder for me in a bit.
I, however, have to nix this nice gesture on his part.
Why?
The wheeled garbage can awaiting me at my register with the elderly couple is: Black. Slightly square in the cross section with rounded corners. The lid lifts off and on manually, and fits tightly onto the body of the can, with a ridge around the lower lip to help hold it firmly in place.
The garbage cans lined up in rows around the ceiling of the garden center are: Grey. Square in the cross section but with sharper corners. And have hinged lids.
......
Clearly not the same animal.
And the lofty perch of the sale cans means that this sweet, charming, probably European, elderly couple could not possibly have stumbled across the black can in the wrong spot and taken it in good faith for the right can.
Even better, I find a copy of the three day flier in the garden shop, and the ONLY garbage can shown there is the grey one. With hinged lid fully visible in a three-quarters-view shot.
I sigh.
I then head over to DIY, where the other cans lair, figuring I can at least get the right code quickly and easily, and with luck can persuade the customers to take the can they have already, so I can get the line moving.
I see an empty spot on the bottom shelf, and two black cans nesting inside each other, with the matching lids stacked neatly next to them. Both the outer and inner cans, upon inspection, have very large stickers on them with manufacturor, volume, and UPC code on the side.
Not hiding on the bottom. And not missing.
So just WHY in Verra's name the couple could not have gotten a marked can instead.... ::tears her hair out::
I write the UPC code down. I look around to see if there's any other sale signs in case the couple merely got two slightly different sales confused. There aren't any.
I scurry back to my register.
I tell the couple the can they have is not the one on sale, as I start typing in the code number. They fail to comprehend. "This iz za one in za paper... Is on sale!" (No, not really their accent, but best I can do...However, they did tend to forget the first word in sentences and go straight to the verbs.)
"No, ma'am, it's not. The one on sale is _grey_" ::pointing to the ad I brought along:: "And a different size, and a different manufacturor, and a different price."
I finish with the code, and the price come up maybe three bucks more than the other can's sale price. The couple gets upset. "Zere was a sign back there saying zis was the one on sale! If it is not, we should get it anyway, your signs are bad and confusing!"
"No, sir, no ma'am, there was no sign. I went back to where you did get this one from and there was no sign of any kind about a sale...."
"Yes zere was!!"
"No, I'm afraid there wasn't, the ones in the ad like this picture here were on shelves near the ceiling...."
After a couple minutes repeating this they walk off without buying the plant or the garbage can, in a real snit.
-_-;;;; Even the foreign countries have people who accuse us of having bad signage...
Deep breaths, Sethra-chan.... deep cleansing breaths....
A couple hours later, I get a late-middle-age black lady with a rather large assortment of stuff. Among her purchases are a group of four plastic plant pots shaped something like grecian urns, nested together, with their accompanying base pieces stacked together and inserted inside upside down. They all appear identical on cursory inspection, so to save time, I hit 4, quantity button, and scan the bottom urn once. Then I carry on with the transaction. The lady's looking at the items as I scan them, and about four items after the urns, she protests their price. Evidently they were on sale, 2 for $3, and came up as $2.39 individually.
I ask if she saw this in an ad. If so, and if it's not a rare Fri-Sat only ad, it's quicker and easier to check the flier and then do an override than to wait for a price check from the dept. Especially on a day like today, when it seemed like every price check I had, there was no one in their dept.
She said yes it was. I check. Yep, there 'tis.... However, the urns are not scanning as 1.50 each.
So I take a closer look at them, inspecting each one and matching it against the ad picture. Sometimes customers bring stuff up that's awfully close but not the right thing. Like the four cup crock pots versus the six cup size....
The bottom three urns prove to have slightly different outside detailing and rims than the ad picture. The upper most one - which did not get scanned initially because it was nested within the other three - looks exactly like the ad, and is slightly smaller than the bottom three.
I scan it. Yep.... register says 2 for $3....
I explain this to the lady.
She gets upset, and says all of them are the ones in the paper.
I point out the differences in the items to her.
She grumbles. I ask if she wishes to still buy the other urns or should I void them off. I suggest she can go get the right ones in a little bit. I figure she'll have me void them off, finish ringing the rest of her stuff up, pay, then have me keep her cart of stuff off to the side while she runs back to get the rest. Or else she'll ask me to call the dept. to have William fetch her the right urns. This is what usually happens in similar cases, and allows me to ring up the next customers.
I _needed_ to get the line moving. -_- Five people were behind her, and six more over in Baljit's line. I couldn't just send someone over to her line to speed things along.
Unfortunately, this did not occur. She walked off, and headed in the direction of the garden shop.
Without paying.
And walking at once too fast for me to call her back and beg her to at least pay for what had already been rung, and too slow for her to return with any real dispatch.
Believe me, I _tried_ calling her back.
My other customers are NOT happy.
They inquire if I can just take her stuff off my register and keep going.
I'd love to, but she's got so much stuff already rung up that I can't. I need to either finish her transaction or get a supervisor to do a total override, which requires a special key us mere cashiers don't have. The front end supervisor (no longer Gloria, she went home by this time) is stuck at the service desk with a good four people wanting to do returns and refunds.
So we all stand there. And wait. The customers fume. And fume. And fume some more...
I think it maybe took only ten minutes real time, at most. But none of us felt it was anywhere near that short a time span.
Finally she saunters back into view. Even when she's close enough to see how big the line has grown since she left, she doesn't speed up at all.
People are so well-mannered these days....
I apologize profusely to all the people after her as they come through with their stuff. Most of them are good-humored about it by the time they actually reach me, which is nice.
Third charming customer of the day is an elderly lady who's buying some clothes and some cat supplies.
One of her items is a cat litter pan, with a UPC code on the label, and a double sided catfood dish inside it, with no UPC code or label. They do not appear to fit together as a two piece set, nor is there any plastic sheeting or ties holding them together as is usual for matched sets. The food dish rattles around loosely in the litter box, for that matter.
She tells me she found them on the shelf like that, and assumed they go together for one price. I politely explain that sets are usually connected, She asks if someone could perhaps have removed the plastic. I agree this could be the case, but tell her it's not very likely, since the litter pan's label gives no such indication, and sets always do. She blinks at me innocently and repeats that they were on the shelf like that, so they 'must' be a set.
I call the dept. No answer.
I call again.
No answer.
Finally Pantry calls me back. I don't recongize the voice, but the guy clearly knows what litter pan I mean, and says even if those two pieces _were_ from a set, there's supposed to be a third one, so we can't sell it to her like that. I tell him she wants it for a cheaper price if there''s something missing, which is true. He gets flustered and tells me I have to call number 5 to get approval of that, then hangs up.
Number 5 referring to clock number five, and the person who uses that clock number to punch in and out, for you non-KMarters.
I don't know who number 5 is, not by number. Really, I only know two other co-workers' numbers, because I've switched work shifts with them before. But only managers can do price reduction approvals for broken/missing items, so I assume the Pantry guy is directing me to whoever's on duty as manager this shift. I'm hoping whoever it is won't claim to be 'not here'.
I still don't know who the heck this person is, but ___damn___ was she rude. She did respond immediately to my page, but sounded upset that she'd been paged at all, intterupted me very shortly into my recititation of what was going on, and got extremely snotty with me for bothering her with the problem, because according to her it wasn't her area to deal with this. I explained I'd been told by pantry to contact her. She didn't give a shit. Finally I hung up.
I tried going back to my register and explaining to the lady that she couldn't get them all for one price, but she, like most customers wanting such special deals, did not understand why on earth not. While trying to make her see reason, someone from Pantry, but not the person who'd called me before, came up to my register with the right cat supply set, showed it to the lady, and told her the price. I assume somebody on the service desk had noticed my line and decided to get Pantry's act together. The lady sniffed indignantly, said she'd really only wanted the litter pan anyways, and if she couldn't get it _and_ the food dish for the pan's price she didn't want either one.
Seriously wierd.
What was up with the supervisor/manager I called for the litter pan issue? What was up with all these people having exceptionally unusual price checks, substitutions, and questions?
Is it full moon tonight, or what????
One thing that _did_ annoy the hell out of me, instead of merely making me scratch my head, was the issue of how late I was supposed to work there today.
When Gloria was tstill on duty, and right after I got back from my fifteen minute break, she came up to me and asked if Sue had seen me. I said no. Gloria said Sue had wanted to know if I could stay til 7:30 pm.
I blinked. I was supposed to leave at 4:30.
I work at Gilles' Monday through Friday, 6pm-10:30pm, every week. The only exceptions are when I request days off in advance. I sure as hell don't request off from one job for the dubious privilege of working at the other. The really nice thing about Gilles' is their predictable shift schedules. That's precisely why I told HR back when they hired me that I can't work past 4:30 pm on weekdays. As it is, that leaves me _barely_ enough time to get to Gilles in time to change uniforms. I even have to end up eating my rather belated lunch while waiting for each of my two buses, in stages. Not sitting down in a chair and finishing the meal in one sitting. Messing with any portion of that tightly organized hour and a half puts me at risk for being late to work or going hungry, or both. No, I can't simply change clothes at K-Mart and then catch the buss. The route 60 doesn't run very often, and missing one bus seriously throws everything off kilter.
Instead of getting into details, I simply told Gloria I had to work at my other job tonight and couldn't stay late. She asked if I could stay even a little bit later. I said nope, wouldn't work, I'd be late or miss my shift.
She sighed and went over to Baljit to ask the same thing. Evidently my replacement called in sick and Baljit's replacement would have to work alone most of the evening if they couldn't get a fill-in.
I figured the subject was closed.
Nope.
Around three Stephanie comes up to my register with the schedule in her hands and asks me when I want to take my lunch.
"_What_ lunch?"
Five and a half hour shifts only get fifteen minute breaks, and I'd already had mine.
"You're staying til 7:30, so you get a break and a lunch."
"No I'm not, I'm scheduled til 4:30."
"This says you're here til 7:30."
"Like hell. I saw it this morning, and the larger one for this week in back says the same."
"Well, it's penciled in here....."
"Gloria asked me earlier, but I told her I couldn't possibly stay. I did NOT agree to this. I'm sorry, but I do have a second job to get to after this...."
Stephanie rolled her eyes and stalked off to the phone to call management and explain I wasn't going to play along.
This is the thing that really pisses me off.
They won't give me even close to fulltime hours, which would enable me to quit Gilles.
They won't schedule enough people on the floor in the departments to handle price check calls, UPC checks, customer requests, and keep the place looking reasonably neat.
They won't schedule enough people to work on registers to handle busy days like today properly. Not once today was there meant to be more than two people on the main registers. And all the self-serves were closed for lack of a supervisor.
They made it clear when I was first hired that staying even ten minutes past my scheduled time to help shorten lines was NOT allowed without express managerial permission. Breaking the rule meant getting my pay docked. So I no longer try staying late to help my friends when they're frazzled and have huge lines. And I'm downright ruthless about refusing to take further customers once the time comes to turn my light off.
They won't even schedule enough people so that _one_ damned person calling in sick won't disrupt their ability to stay in business.
But they expect me to drop everything and revise my day around their emergency.
God.
No wonder they're in trouble.
If this keeps up I think I might quit. It's not like I'd be completely unemployed. Gilles at least staffs enough people so that chaos doesn't ensue from _one_ frigging sick day, or an unexpected influx of customers. And pays a good $1.50 more an hour....
First up, the elderly couple with the really odd accents. We do get the occasional out-of-stater in our store, but these two had accents which were completely new to me. The lady was dressed within little old lady warddrobe norms. Her husband was wearing liederhosen.
No, I'm not kidding.
Honest to God, liederhosen. Not shiny buckled, stiffly pressed, good as new liederhosen like you see strolling around downtown during German Fest. Nope, this guy was wearing ones that appeared to have been worn frequently and long. And without any apparent selfconsciousness either. Most of the costumed dancers and tourists buying the clothes for the hell of it don't quite look comfortable in liederhosen. Not this guy.
It gets better.
Their purchases consisted of a hanging potted plant, and a large wheeled garbage can with a lid. Plant had the UPC tag on it. Wheeled can had... nada.
Not on the lid. Not on the sides. Not on the bottom. The label was totally AWOL. There wasn't even an embossed brand name anywhere on it.
At this point, of course, like all my elderly customers and a distressingly high number of the middle aged and younger, they piped up with "It's $9.99..." (Or whatever the price they think it is, as appropriate.) They seem to think this will enable me to ring up their purchase. Unfortunately, I need either the UPC _number_ to enter manually in the computer, or the barcode (which has the number printed beneath it, _always_) to scan. In the case of the elderly customers, this belief is understandable. Older cash registers, years ago, could in fact do this. Ours can't. That way we avoid people a) lying blatantly about prices and losing us money and b) make sure there's a reasonably accurate tally in the main computer about what we're running out of stock on.
I attempt explaining to them, simply but politely, that the price does me no good without a UPC code. Takes me a couple tries before I can at least get them to the 'smile and nod' stage. Next they bring up the standard "It was in the paper, it's on sale!" I didn't happen to have a copy of the Sunday ad insert on hand, but in any event, without the tag, I still had to call back. This I explained, but I don't think they understood.
So. Off to the handy dandy phone, to call back to the dept for a price check. I call DYI, the usual lurking place of garbage cans. No call back. Couple minutes pass, and a few people start piling up behind the couple. It's only me and Baljit on register, and she's still gone on her fifteen minute break... -_-
Gloria, whom Tom-chan refers to somewhat unkindly as an 'old Polish lady', was on front end supervisor duty today. She asked me what I was doing a price check on. I explained. She said the garbage cans on sale were in the three day flier, not the weekly, and were not stored with the regular ones. They were back in the garden shop.
( Allow me to pause briefly and explain that I LOATHE the three day fliers. With a fine and nuanced loathing only equaled by my loathing for the little 'Sunday-Monday Sale!!' blurbs occasionally seen on the margin of the front page of the weeklies, and on really hair-tearing weeks, the inner two pages. The sale items contained therein are always trouble. Always.
Tom will call this blasphemy, no doubt, but there are times when I think those stupid two-three-day-only sales are more evil than the month of February. Because at least February only lasts 28 days, and arrives only once a year. You can plan for it. Build bunkers against it. Or even spend goodly portions of Feb. drunk to evade it's diabolicalness. These short term sales, however, can occur at any time. And they leap out at you without even a shred of warning. You can't even consider yourself safe on a Wed., because sure as death and taxes, somebody will come through your line and say:
"Oh, this was over Tuesday? But... but.... but.... this is the weekly ad!" I point silently to the easily legible print denoting this was only a Sun-Mon sale. Cue customer outrage about our 'misleading ads'.....
Or:
"What do you mean, this sale's not til tomorrow, I saw the ad in today's paper!" They release the Thurs-Sat. fliers on Wed so people know about them in time to make shopping plans. If they released them Thurs. they'd miss some of the early morning shoppers who don't read the newspaper til the afternoon. So I have been told. ::shrug:: )
So. I called William over the intercom to call me back at the front to do a price check. I had a feeling he'd end up having to come to my register to give this thing a look, anyways, because it had NO identifying marks.
Through all this Baljit's come back but more folks are piling up. -_-;;;;
Cue appropriate mild panic music.
William finally calls but says he has three customers at the garden register and it'll be a few minutes before he can go find the UPC code.
Two more minutes pass. Literally. But subjectively they felt like at least ten. My line of people was looking most unhappy. Having the self-checkouts closed didn't help. >_<
Finally Gloria tells me to go do the price check myself. I grab some paper and my pen and trot over there.
Once there, William's still got a small herd of people in his line, and tells me he'll help me in a minute. Silly me, I can't imagine why at first.... I'm wandering the indoors portion of the garden shop, trying to find the garbage can on my own. William calls over and tells me to look up.
I look up. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY up.
To the shelves at the very top of the wall racks, where a whole slew of wheeled garbage cans are nearly brushing the ceiling.
William laughs goodnaturedly and says he'll go get the wheeled ladder for me in a bit.
I, however, have to nix this nice gesture on his part.
Why?
The wheeled garbage can awaiting me at my register with the elderly couple is: Black. Slightly square in the cross section with rounded corners. The lid lifts off and on manually, and fits tightly onto the body of the can, with a ridge around the lower lip to help hold it firmly in place.
The garbage cans lined up in rows around the ceiling of the garden center are: Grey. Square in the cross section but with sharper corners. And have hinged lids.
......
Clearly not the same animal.
And the lofty perch of the sale cans means that this sweet, charming, probably European, elderly couple could not possibly have stumbled across the black can in the wrong spot and taken it in good faith for the right can.
Even better, I find a copy of the three day flier in the garden shop, and the ONLY garbage can shown there is the grey one. With hinged lid fully visible in a three-quarters-view shot.
I sigh.
I then head over to DIY, where the other cans lair, figuring I can at least get the right code quickly and easily, and with luck can persuade the customers to take the can they have already, so I can get the line moving.
I see an empty spot on the bottom shelf, and two black cans nesting inside each other, with the matching lids stacked neatly next to them. Both the outer and inner cans, upon inspection, have very large stickers on them with manufacturor, volume, and UPC code on the side.
Not hiding on the bottom. And not missing.
So just WHY in Verra's name the couple could not have gotten a marked can instead.... ::tears her hair out::
I write the UPC code down. I look around to see if there's any other sale signs in case the couple merely got two slightly different sales confused. There aren't any.
I scurry back to my register.
I tell the couple the can they have is not the one on sale, as I start typing in the code number. They fail to comprehend. "This iz za one in za paper... Is on sale!" (No, not really their accent, but best I can do...However, they did tend to forget the first word in sentences and go straight to the verbs.)
"No, ma'am, it's not. The one on sale is _grey_" ::pointing to the ad I brought along:: "And a different size, and a different manufacturor, and a different price."
I finish with the code, and the price come up maybe three bucks more than the other can's sale price. The couple gets upset. "Zere was a sign back there saying zis was the one on sale! If it is not, we should get it anyway, your signs are bad and confusing!"
"No, sir, no ma'am, there was no sign. I went back to where you did get this one from and there was no sign of any kind about a sale...."
"Yes zere was!!"
"No, I'm afraid there wasn't, the ones in the ad like this picture here were on shelves near the ceiling...."
After a couple minutes repeating this they walk off without buying the plant or the garbage can, in a real snit.
-_-;;;; Even the foreign countries have people who accuse us of having bad signage...
Deep breaths, Sethra-chan.... deep cleansing breaths....
A couple hours later, I get a late-middle-age black lady with a rather large assortment of stuff. Among her purchases are a group of four plastic plant pots shaped something like grecian urns, nested together, with their accompanying base pieces stacked together and inserted inside upside down. They all appear identical on cursory inspection, so to save time, I hit 4, quantity button, and scan the bottom urn once. Then I carry on with the transaction. The lady's looking at the items as I scan them, and about four items after the urns, she protests their price. Evidently they were on sale, 2 for $3, and came up as $2.39 individually.
I ask if she saw this in an ad. If so, and if it's not a rare Fri-Sat only ad, it's quicker and easier to check the flier and then do an override than to wait for a price check from the dept. Especially on a day like today, when it seemed like every price check I had, there was no one in their dept.
She said yes it was. I check. Yep, there 'tis.... However, the urns are not scanning as 1.50 each.
So I take a closer look at them, inspecting each one and matching it against the ad picture. Sometimes customers bring stuff up that's awfully close but not the right thing. Like the four cup crock pots versus the six cup size....
The bottom three urns prove to have slightly different outside detailing and rims than the ad picture. The upper most one - which did not get scanned initially because it was nested within the other three - looks exactly like the ad, and is slightly smaller than the bottom three.
I scan it. Yep.... register says 2 for $3....
I explain this to the lady.
She gets upset, and says all of them are the ones in the paper.
I point out the differences in the items to her.
She grumbles. I ask if she wishes to still buy the other urns or should I void them off. I suggest she can go get the right ones in a little bit. I figure she'll have me void them off, finish ringing the rest of her stuff up, pay, then have me keep her cart of stuff off to the side while she runs back to get the rest. Or else she'll ask me to call the dept. to have William fetch her the right urns. This is what usually happens in similar cases, and allows me to ring up the next customers.
I _needed_ to get the line moving. -_- Five people were behind her, and six more over in Baljit's line. I couldn't just send someone over to her line to speed things along.
Unfortunately, this did not occur. She walked off, and headed in the direction of the garden shop.
Without paying.
And walking at once too fast for me to call her back and beg her to at least pay for what had already been rung, and too slow for her to return with any real dispatch.
Believe me, I _tried_ calling her back.
My other customers are NOT happy.
They inquire if I can just take her stuff off my register and keep going.
I'd love to, but she's got so much stuff already rung up that I can't. I need to either finish her transaction or get a supervisor to do a total override, which requires a special key us mere cashiers don't have. The front end supervisor (no longer Gloria, she went home by this time) is stuck at the service desk with a good four people wanting to do returns and refunds.
So we all stand there. And wait. The customers fume. And fume. And fume some more...
I think it maybe took only ten minutes real time, at most. But none of us felt it was anywhere near that short a time span.
Finally she saunters back into view. Even when she's close enough to see how big the line has grown since she left, she doesn't speed up at all.
People are so well-mannered these days....
I apologize profusely to all the people after her as they come through with their stuff. Most of them are good-humored about it by the time they actually reach me, which is nice.
Third charming customer of the day is an elderly lady who's buying some clothes and some cat supplies.
One of her items is a cat litter pan, with a UPC code on the label, and a double sided catfood dish inside it, with no UPC code or label. They do not appear to fit together as a two piece set, nor is there any plastic sheeting or ties holding them together as is usual for matched sets. The food dish rattles around loosely in the litter box, for that matter.
She tells me she found them on the shelf like that, and assumed they go together for one price. I politely explain that sets are usually connected, She asks if someone could perhaps have removed the plastic. I agree this could be the case, but tell her it's not very likely, since the litter pan's label gives no such indication, and sets always do. She blinks at me innocently and repeats that they were on the shelf like that, so they 'must' be a set.
I call the dept. No answer.
I call again.
No answer.
Finally Pantry calls me back. I don't recongize the voice, but the guy clearly knows what litter pan I mean, and says even if those two pieces _were_ from a set, there's supposed to be a third one, so we can't sell it to her like that. I tell him she wants it for a cheaper price if there''s something missing, which is true. He gets flustered and tells me I have to call number 5 to get approval of that, then hangs up.
Number 5 referring to clock number five, and the person who uses that clock number to punch in and out, for you non-KMarters.
I don't know who number 5 is, not by number. Really, I only know two other co-workers' numbers, because I've switched work shifts with them before. But only managers can do price reduction approvals for broken/missing items, so I assume the Pantry guy is directing me to whoever's on duty as manager this shift. I'm hoping whoever it is won't claim to be 'not here'.
I still don't know who the heck this person is, but ___damn___ was she rude. She did respond immediately to my page, but sounded upset that she'd been paged at all, intterupted me very shortly into my recititation of what was going on, and got extremely snotty with me for bothering her with the problem, because according to her it wasn't her area to deal with this. I explained I'd been told by pantry to contact her. She didn't give a shit. Finally I hung up.
I tried going back to my register and explaining to the lady that she couldn't get them all for one price, but she, like most customers wanting such special deals, did not understand why on earth not. While trying to make her see reason, someone from Pantry, but not the person who'd called me before, came up to my register with the right cat supply set, showed it to the lady, and told her the price. I assume somebody on the service desk had noticed my line and decided to get Pantry's act together. The lady sniffed indignantly, said she'd really only wanted the litter pan anyways, and if she couldn't get it _and_ the food dish for the pan's price she didn't want either one.
Seriously wierd.
What was up with the supervisor/manager I called for the litter pan issue? What was up with all these people having exceptionally unusual price checks, substitutions, and questions?
Is it full moon tonight, or what????
One thing that _did_ annoy the hell out of me, instead of merely making me scratch my head, was the issue of how late I was supposed to work there today.
When Gloria was tstill on duty, and right after I got back from my fifteen minute break, she came up to me and asked if Sue had seen me. I said no. Gloria said Sue had wanted to know if I could stay til 7:30 pm.
I blinked. I was supposed to leave at 4:30.
I work at Gilles' Monday through Friday, 6pm-10:30pm, every week. The only exceptions are when I request days off in advance. I sure as hell don't request off from one job for the dubious privilege of working at the other. The really nice thing about Gilles' is their predictable shift schedules. That's precisely why I told HR back when they hired me that I can't work past 4:30 pm on weekdays. As it is, that leaves me _barely_ enough time to get to Gilles in time to change uniforms. I even have to end up eating my rather belated lunch while waiting for each of my two buses, in stages. Not sitting down in a chair and finishing the meal in one sitting. Messing with any portion of that tightly organized hour and a half puts me at risk for being late to work or going hungry, or both. No, I can't simply change clothes at K-Mart and then catch the buss. The route 60 doesn't run very often, and missing one bus seriously throws everything off kilter.
Instead of getting into details, I simply told Gloria I had to work at my other job tonight and couldn't stay late. She asked if I could stay even a little bit later. I said nope, wouldn't work, I'd be late or miss my shift.
She sighed and went over to Baljit to ask the same thing. Evidently my replacement called in sick and Baljit's replacement would have to work alone most of the evening if they couldn't get a fill-in.
I figured the subject was closed.
Nope.
Around three Stephanie comes up to my register with the schedule in her hands and asks me when I want to take my lunch.
"_What_ lunch?"
Five and a half hour shifts only get fifteen minute breaks, and I'd already had mine.
"You're staying til 7:30, so you get a break and a lunch."
"No I'm not, I'm scheduled til 4:30."
"This says you're here til 7:30."
"Like hell. I saw it this morning, and the larger one for this week in back says the same."
"Well, it's penciled in here....."
"Gloria asked me earlier, but I told her I couldn't possibly stay. I did NOT agree to this. I'm sorry, but I do have a second job to get to after this...."
Stephanie rolled her eyes and stalked off to the phone to call management and explain I wasn't going to play along.
This is the thing that really pisses me off.
They won't give me even close to fulltime hours, which would enable me to quit Gilles.
They won't schedule enough people on the floor in the departments to handle price check calls, UPC checks, customer requests, and keep the place looking reasonably neat.
They won't schedule enough people to work on registers to handle busy days like today properly. Not once today was there meant to be more than two people on the main registers. And all the self-serves were closed for lack of a supervisor.
They made it clear when I was first hired that staying even ten minutes past my scheduled time to help shorten lines was NOT allowed without express managerial permission. Breaking the rule meant getting my pay docked. So I no longer try staying late to help my friends when they're frazzled and have huge lines. And I'm downright ruthless about refusing to take further customers once the time comes to turn my light off.
They won't even schedule enough people so that _one_ damned person calling in sick won't disrupt their ability to stay in business.
But they expect me to drop everything and revise my day around their emergency.
God.
No wonder they're in trouble.
If this keeps up I think I might quit. It's not like I'd be completely unemployed. Gilles at least staffs enough people so that chaos doesn't ensue from _one_ frigging sick day, or an unexpected influx of customers. And pays a good $1.50 more an hour....
