Unfiltered Story #208804

I work in a grocery store that has started offering online ordering. As we’re one of the first stores to use the system a few things like online payments and home delivery aren’t up yet. Though we are intending to add them soon.

When a customer places their order they choose a time frame of one hour that they can come get their groceries. We are only letting people choose times between 7am-7pm with the last wave ending at 8pm. This is because we are there getting ready for the first wave at 4am and leave at 8pm. To keep orders fresh we don’t pick them until 3 hours before the customer picks up and we need every second of that time.

Today I came in for my shift at 5am to be greeted by a note. Apparently one of our customers had not picked up their 8am order yesterday and they were going to pick up then. One of the rules we have is that if a customer is going to pick up at that time we need to have at least one employee in the room. So I have to stay in there and wait for them to show up. Needless to say they don’t.

The fact that one of us had to effectively sit still for an hour put the team a bit behind for our 7am order. Thankfully today was a slow day so when the last totes came in at 6:58am we had the ability to try and ensure the order was perfect.

At this point I see a car in our reserved spots. Only one of our lanes is open and they all have cones around them and a number that those with orders should call to let us know they are present. Wait for a bit and we don’t get a call so I think that this person is just someone who really wanted our spaces. Unfortunately we get a lot of people who just sit in our spots without a order. So I go out and move the cone to open up another spot for our 7am.

While I’m out there I look at who’s in the car. It doesn’t seem like this is our next order as the name is for a female and the person in the car is a man preoccupied with his phone. All the windows are rolled up and we are on a time crunch now so I rush back in and check the order.

While going through the store I find the person that was in the car. He then stops me saying he has a order for 5am (just two hours late now). I was a bit surprised at this and let him know we can take care of him when he gets to his car again. This seems to appease and he said he would be out soon.

I finish up what I’m working on and once I’m back in the room we hear a call over the intercom to pick up someone on hold. Apparently this guy got all the way to self check out then started complaining about not having his order to the employee there. He was once again told to go to his car for this as the idea behind the service is to not have to leave it. Along with that he is told he doesn’t need to call as we know he’s there.

Finally get him at his car and the others grab up his freezer and cooler items that we didn’t have out to avoid them thawing. During this he apparently sees the number and calls anyway to let us know he’s there. I pick up and reassure him they will be out soon.

I finish up the 7am and wait to see if they come in while the others take this out . Apparently he didn’t like the one substitution we made (180 pieces of plastic silverware for the same price as the 150 he ordered) and yelled at a employee because she wouldn’t take his credit card back and run it without him there after editing the transaction. He tried to rush them through the whole process apparently and even wanted to storm off after signing before the transaction even went through.