I work as a cashier at a bookstore while in college. A customer comes up to me to check out. He’s on his cell phone as I am scanning his purchases.
Customer: “Hang on. I’m being checked out by a delectable young woman.”
Me: “Wow, I love being compared to a food item!”
Customer: “It’s rude to listen to people’s conversations.”
Unfortunately, I did not have a witty response to that. That was probably for the best, since I needed the job.
When I was in my early twenties, I used to be a waitress at a very popular casual fine dining restaurant. They only hired young women who could fit into a size two pencil skirt. This is only relevant because we had to deal with a lot of flirty guys and jealous, petty women.
A group of six were sat in my section: five forty-year-old men and one very rude woman.
Right away, the guys were fun. We were all joking around, and they were having fun, but the woman was going out of her way to try to treat me like a slave. I continued to act 100% unfazed and bring her everything with a smile. She kept getting more and more rude, hoping to faze me or get a reaction. I’m pretty confident and refused to let her get to me or buy into her game.
Well, until…
The entire table ordered the exact same entrée: a medium-rare striploin. The food arrived, they all tried it, and I could see smiles all around. I walked over to ask how everything tasted and all the guys were very complimentary until the woman cut them off and shrieked:
Woman: “EXCUSE ME, BUT THIS STEAK TASTES LIKE A**!”
I responded in the sweetest, calmest voice, as big and innocent as I could make my eyes:
Me: “I don’t know what a** tastes like, but I’ll take your word for it.”
Her table erupted into laughter and the woman lost it; she went into a full-on meltdown. Of course, she asked for the manager, and it was awkward explaining what had happened, but it was worth it.
My dad witnessed this incident in the late 1960s. He had gone to see a neighbour (rural area, so about a mile away) to get some peaches for my mum to can. Ben, the neighbour, was an old guy who had a small peach orchard and grew the best peaches ever. It was a bit of a hobby, and like many small orchardists (for my parents it was cherries and pears) he sold the fruit at the roadside. Dad had loaded up the peaches and was just talking with Ben when a car pulled up. Big city folks.
The car was a white Caddy convertible with Washington, US plates. This took place in Canada, so they were obviously not from around here. The couple, in their fifties, were a stereotype. The woman had blonde beehive hair, snazzy sunglasses, tight capri pants, and a tiny poodle. The man had socks and sandals, plaid shorts, a patterned shirt, a weird hat, and some attitude. He told Ben he wanted a box of peaches and demanded to know the price.
Ben was an old guy who knew a thing or two — about peaches and about people. Though a funny man to his friends, he had the ability to be stone-faced when needed (think Buster Keaton). He told the man that each thirty-pound box was (some price I don’t know, but it was probably a couple of bucks or so back then). The box was handed over and money changed hands. If that was it, then there would be no story, but…
Mr. Big City suddenly accused Ben of selling him less than the agreed-upon thirty pounds. Ben, who knew d***ed well what a thirty-pound box felt like, quietly disagreed. Big City insisted, so Ben hauled out a scale, zeroed it with an empty box, and transferred all the peaches into it to get an accurate weight. It was more than thirty pounds.
Dad said it was magical as Ben looked the tourist in the eye, and with a laconic, deadpan delivery, held his hand out, palm up, and said, “You owe me fifteen cents.” And the hand remained out until the guy fished for change and paid before quietly slinking back to his car.
I work customer calls for a retail company that has both physical and online shopping.
One day, I get a call from a lady who explains to me that she ordered a rabbit planter online that is “bad quality,” and she would like us to replace it.
Me: “I can help with that. May I have the order number?”
Customer: “I don’t have that.”
Me: “Okay, no problem. What email was it ordered under?”
Customer: “[Email #1]. You know, this planter was shown outside in photos online. I would have expected it to hold up better!”
Me: “I’m sorry about that! Hmm, I don’t see anything under that email. Is there a different one we can try?”
Customer: “Maybe [email #2]? Honestly, you people are ripping customers off with this shoddy craftsmanship.”
Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t see that one, either. What was the shipping address?”
We go through a few more points, with her ripping on the planter between every comment. I finally find her account, and something on it makes me pause.
Me: “I’ve found your order. I’m sorry, ma’am, but what did you say was wrong with the planter?”
Customer: “The paint is chipping off it! It’s advertised as being for outdoors, but it’s chipped!”
Me: “I see. I’m sorry, ma’am, but it looks like you ordered this planter in 2018; it is three years old at this point.”
Customer: “So, can you send me a replacement?”
Me: “I’m sorry, but our window for returns and replacements is sixty days.”
Customer: “So, are you saying you can’t do anything for me?”
Me: “I’m sorry, but no.”
Customer: “Well, I’ll have you know you’ve just lost a customer!”
And she hung up. To be honest, I don’t think losing a customer whose last order was three years ago is going to be much of a concern.
This story is part of our crazy-online-shoppers roundup!
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I’ve been working for the company I’m at now for seven years and I’ve had issues with one lady. Well, everyone has had or is having issues with the same lady. We’ll call her “Princess”. Luckily for me, she works in the other building so I don’t have to personally interact with her. She’s very good at deflecting and always lays down a very thick blanket of BS about how busy she is and how hard she works and how difficult her job is. The problem is that no one, not even ownership, has been able to make a list of things she actually does, and yet they still keep her around.
When I first started, my understanding was that [Princess] was supposed to be Human Resources and handle invoicing. She was supposed to have everything ready for me when I started and be able to answer any questions I had. After being here for about three months, I would tend to email her asking a question every couple of weeks about things such as PTO (paid time off), vacation, holidays, and so on. After that three-month point, she asked why I hadn’t been reading about this stuff in the employee handbook. I told her I didn’t know the company had one, so she finally got me a copy. As you can see, she’s not really good at her job, whatever it is.
Fast forward four years. The company gets an actual HR lady (who is just as worthless as [Princess], but that’s another story). She doesn’t like the payroll system we use and wants to change it, and [Princess] agrees. Before the end of the year, the worthless HR lady gets let go and the company starts working on finding a different HR person. However, that doesn’t stop [Princess] from finding a new payroll company to go through, so she says she’ll handle it all.
The new payroll system is set up at the start of the New Year and there are bugs to be handled. [Princess] says she knows about the issues and is working with the payroll company to hammer them out.
Several months into the new year, another new HR lady is hired (she’s so lazy, she lasts about six months and gets let go) and the new payroll system has been activated. However, people are not getting their PTO added to their paychecks. Others have been having ongoing issues with their hours not being reflected correctly and getting shorted. Others have been having ongoing issues with a complete day or two being missed on their paycheck. There have been constant issues with the new payroll system, or at least, we thought it was the payroll system. Every complaint has to be brought up to [Princess], and she’ll “fix” the issue the following week by adding on missed pay or adding on PTO that was missed.
I know of these missed paid hours/PTO issues, and I inform my supervisor of an upcoming day I need off in a few weeks. She approves it verbally, and I log into the website to request the day off. My supervisor accepts it and it is approved in the system. A couple of weeks go by, and my day off is coming up at the end of the week. I check in the system and it shows that I have no PTO, which is incorrect. I should have two weeks of PTO. I email [Princess] and copy my supervisor about the issue of the system not showing PTO being available even though I have two weeks. [Princess] emails back saying she’s aware of the issue and not to worry about it.
My day off comes and goes. The next week goes on, and my paycheck comes in and it’s a full eight hours short. My wife and I are kind of paycheck-to-paycheck right now, and I have the mortgage due and now I’m short. I’m pissed.
I email [Princess] and copy my manager.
Me: “Why is my paycheck short eight hours? I see that my PTO wasn’t applied. You knew about the PTO issue, and now I’m short money and I have bills to pay.”
Princess: “It’s an issue with the payroll system. Even though we know you had PTO, it wasn’t automatically applied. I can add your missed PTO to your check next week.”
Yes, she says, “we,” as if it was the company’s and/or payroll’s fault.
Me: “Why didn’t you manually add in my PTO to payroll before it was submitted, since you knew it was an issue? And the week prior, I emailed you about PTO not showing up for me in the system. I know you can manually add PTO or adjust hours as needed, so why wasn’t it done? Because now I’m short money for bills.”
Princess: “I wasn’t going to hold up payroll for an entire company for one person because of a bug in the system. You’re not the only one not showing PTO in the system when it should be, and it’s a known issue I’m working on.”
Me: “The issue has been a ‘known issue’ for almost four months. Weekly, I’m having people from the floor complain to me about missed hours and PTO not getting applied to checks. I have to constantly tell them I have no control over payroll and they need to talk to you or at the very least speak to [HR Lady]. This issue with payroll since you switched us over has been a problem for a lot of people — a lot of people in a similar or worse financial situation that depend on payroll to be correct. It hasn’t impacted me until now and I’m pissed.”
Princess: “I’m extremely busy and I haven’t had time to get to everything. No one has told me about other payroll issues; this is the first I’ve heard about it. I can’t get to your PTO to manually add it to the payroll before it’s submitted because of how busy I am and how much work I have to do.”
I snap in my next email response to her.
Me: “I don’t want to hear about how f****** busy you are, and I’m tired of you deflecting issues. I don’t want to hear about your ‘woe-is-me’ bulls***. You were made aware of my PTO, and you just admitted to not wanting to do it because you’re busy. I know you’ve been aware of payroll issues because everyone is telling me they’ve been having you add on missed hours/PTO to their next-week checks for them, so you need to stop lying.”
Princess: “You have no right to talk to me like that! I’m very busy and I won’t continue this conversation any further.”
Me: “I will talk to you how I see fit because you’ve failed to do your job, and the payroll issues continue to be a company-wide problem since the change over almost four months ago. If you don’t want to get spoken to like a child or treated like crap by everyone, then you need to stop with the lies and do your job. If you want, you’re more than welcome to forward this email chain — and my original email from three weeks ago about PTO hours not showing up in the system for me — to ownership so they can be involved in the whole payroll issue we’ve had since you wanted to change the payroll system.”
I never heard back from her on the issue.
The very next day, all missing or incorrect PTO in the payroll system was fixed. I had my missing PTO pay written out in a check and on my desk. Also, an issue with HSA funds taking two to three weeks to be transferred to the HSA accounts for all employees was also fixed.
How [Princess] still has a job and still works for this company is beyond me. Thankfully, my interactions with her are almost nonexistent since I had to yell at her, so at least I have that going for me.
