It’s a dreary Tuesday in South Wales. My wife and I are looking around the local town, and, having had a big breakfast, go for a late lunch at half-past two. We choose a chain pizza restaurant, known for its “express” service, as we have a 50% off coupon. They’re not busy, but it takes five minutes or so to find a host to seat us.

Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. A waitress finally arrives to take our order. Ten more minutes. I can see our drinks waiting on the bar, no staff around, so I stand up and take them back to our table.

Another ten minutes pass. I manage to flag down a waitress from another section who promises to follow up on our order. She returns almost immediately with our order, which has obviously been sitting under the heat lamp for a while. Too hungry and British to complain about it, we dig in, resigning ourselves to the fact we’ll definitely not be able to order any more drinks to go with it.

We don’t see any more staff for the rest of the meal. Diners from other sections of the restaurant walk past us on their way out, until we’re the only people left.

Twenty minutes since we’ve seen anyone, I get up to look for someone. The place is deserted. There’s not even anyone in the kitchen.

We wait another quarter of an hour, then decide to leave. We’ve got to get ready for an evening trip to the theatre, for one. So, we get up, put our coats on, and have one last check around to see if anyone wants to take our payment. Doesn’t look like it. We don’t have any cash on us, other than change.

Given the poor service and mediocre food, we don’t feel too bad about leaving. I wonder if anyone even realised when they got back to work that we’d gone?

Our store has an on-call policy where you call in at your scheduled time and see if they need you. I have been on call many times, and I always call in on time. However, I recently got a second job two days a week and changed my availability to only work morning shifts those days to reflect this. I made sure the managers were aware of why I was changing my availability when it happened.

One day, I’m looking over the new schedule and see I’m on call on one of my short days. My call-in time is ten am, and I’m only available until 12:30. I decide to call in early, around eight, so that if they do need me, I can actually go in. I tell my coworkers in my department that I will be calling in early that day. I even talk to an assistant manager about calling in early because of my availability that day, and she assures me it will be fine.

I call work at eight. No answer. I immediately call back. No answer. I wait a couple of minutes and call back. It is now 8:15, and finally someone answers. I’m told that I have to call back at ten, despite my saying on the phone that I’m only available to work until 12:30, which is why I called in early. I decide to watch TV until ten, and I leave my phone in my room.

Right before I’m about to call in, I get a call from work. Apparently, they tried to call me at 8:30 to tell me to come in. I tell them that I can come in, but I can’t stay past 12:30, because of my second job, so I would really only be there for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.

I got the morning off.

My cell phone’s camera has broken, so I call my cell phone provider to discuss getting a replacement since I have insurance on it. We are currently in month six of a certain health crisis, and a lot of call centers have their employees working from home, as am I, so I totally understand when I call them that there might be some background noise not heard in a regular office setting.

The first person I speak to is polite and helpful but has at least one dog in the background that barks every few minutes. This doesn’t fazse me at all; my coworkers also have rowdy dogs that speak up during online meetings. What does catch me off guard is the rooster who decides to chime in halfway through the call. He’s quite insistent, and at times, he’s louder than the nice lady I’m trying to have a conversation with, but she doesn’t acknowledge it, so neither do I, as long as we can understand each other and finish our discussion. 

She has to hand me off to another department and puts me on hold, and there’s a blissful minute or two of a popular song that has no animal accompaniment, before the other department’s representative picks up to help complete my transaction.

All goes well until another rooster starts chiming in from the second rep’s location. No dogs or any other animals this time — just the rooster. Again, this lady, clearly a different person, doesn’t acknowledge it, and we finish our part of the discussion.

The end result is that I have to exchange my phone at my local cell phone provider store. Hopefully, they’re not keeping any livestock in the background.

With the ongoing health crisis, doctors in my state are doing consultations by phone and having their receptionists fax or email the prescriptions to the patient’s preferred pharmacy.

One particular doctor’s surgery seemed to be having trouble with their fax machine. I received about ten copies of the cover page but none of the prescriptions that were meant to be faxed with it.

I called the practise and suggested they tried email, instead. Soon after, I received an email with an attached photograph of a pile of prescriptions.

Yes, instead of scanning or photographing them individually, the receptionist put the prescriptions in a nice, neat stack so that only the top one was readable.

At least they tried, I suppose? A day later we’re still trying to get those same prescriptions. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get lucky?

Related:
A Most Unreceptive Receptionist, Part 3
A Most Unreceptive Receptionist, Part 2
A Most Unreceptive Receptionist

Not sure if this is Not Always Right or Not Always Working. A bit of both, maybe.

I am last-minute shopping for some essentials. I take my purchase from the shelf and make a beeline for the cashier, trying to be in and out ASAP.

The cashier is sort of polite, says hi, and scans my purchase. But the moment she sees the receipt, she smiles like crazy and her tone is suddenly the overly nice one.

Cashier: “I hope you found everything just all right today! On your receipt, there will be a link to a survey.” 

Me: “Nah, thanks. Just give me the receipt; I’m in a hurry.”

I take my purchase — already paid for — and extend my hand for the receipt but the cashier sort of leans back to take it out of my reach.

Cashier: “Oh, it will be just a moment! I’ll explain it to you. I can write my name for you, so you can mention it.”

Me: “Either you give me the receipt now and I’ll just go or you’ll continue this nonsense and I’ll give you the worst review I can think of. What do you say?”

She then sort of threw the receipt at me and I left. And no, I did not leave a bad review for her.