It's That Awesome Time of Year Again!

Just kidding--it's not, really. Ha HA!

Good gravy (notice how timely that expletive is), it is nearly Thanksgiving. I can't believe I've withheld ridiculous customer service stories since August. Well, no time for that now! It's turkey time, and you know what that means. People are starting to fall off of their fucking nut.

Last night, a customer got rabid with one of my associates because the blue cheese she had him custom cut didn't have enough mold in it. Hey, take it or leave it, lady. He didn't do anything to the cheese, he didn't make the cheese, so I'm not sure what you think yelling at him is going to do for the cheese. I thought the wheel of Valdeon was one of the best looking, best tasting wheels we've seen in literally YEARS. Supple, luscious, creamy. I guess she'd grown to love the rank, dried out crud we're usually stuck with most of the year.

Just before I clocked out, I answered a phone call from an elderly lady. She was terribly sweet, and patient, but holy moly, I thought just keeping the old folks off of the road was enough. Silly me forgot that if you can't drive no more, the only thing left to fill the time is to call the local market and ask the same questions 50 different ways, each.

Old Lady: Hello, could you tell me what Thanksgiving service you'll have next week?
Me: Do you want to know what food we'll have on our hot bar? On Thanksgiving?
Old Lady: Yes, for take out. How much will that be?
Me: We do have seating inside the store, if you'd like. On Thanksgiving, we'll have various Thanksgiving type dishes on our hot bar. It will be for the same price as every other day, $7.99/lb. Have you been to our store before?
OL: Oh, yes. We eat at the salad bar sometimes.
Me: OK, well then you know we have the hot bar too, right? We'll have the usual Thanksgiving items, like turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. I don't know exactly what will be available, but we should have the bases covered.
OL: Will there be vegetables?
Me: Yes.
OL: And turkey?
Me: Yes. I'm not sure if we'll have dark meat, but there will be sliced turkey breast.
OL: There won't be turkey?
Me: Uh, yes. We will have turkey on the hot bar. There will NOT be a turkey carving station, so in all likelihood, the turkey will be limited to sliced boneless breast.
OL: Will there be green beans?
Me: ...most likely..?
OL: And how much is that?
Me: The hot bar is $7.99/lb.
OL: How much is it for 2 people?
Me: That depends on how much food you choose to take.
OL: No, how much is your 2 person turkey dinner for take out?
Me: That is $29.99, but the turkey will need to be cooked by you when you get home. It is a raw turkey that is included in that setup. It is not the same as our hot bar take out.
OL: OK...thank you.

Now, she was perfectly nice, as I said earlier. What makes this call particularly fantastic is that about 5 minutes earlier, I'm pretty sure her husband called and interrogated one of my co workers using the same questions. I could hear him prompting his wife over the phone during my turn. After I got off of the phone, my co worker told me that the (probably) husband? Had called her two separate times in the last 30 minutes, like it was a quiz and she might have changed her answer. For Pete's sake, people: we don't want to fuck with you, WE WANT YOUR MONEY. You don't get repeat business by effing around!

My Parting Gift from Today

I was buying milk after clocking out when the cashier at the register behind me paged for my department. So, I turned around and said to Crazy Kate (the cashier), "Hey, I'm right here, what's up?"

CKtC: Hey, this customer wanted to talk to a manager about the coffee.
Me: Sure.
Customer: I was wondering why it is so difficult to buy coffee here.
Me: ...coffee?
Customer: Yeah, I'm not allowed to mix the coffees, and apparently you have to write down a 3 digit code so the cashier knows how much to charge? I don't have time for that.
Me:
Customer: Why is it so hard to buy coffee here?
Me: Well...it isn't.
Customer: It *isn't*?? It's all priced differently! Why? I can go down the street to Fresh...Fair?
Me: Fresh Market.
Customer: Yeah, I can go down there and buy and mix any coffee I want, and it's all $8.99 a pound. I BUY KONA THERE FOR $8.99. Why don't you guys do that?
Me: We have more single estate coffees than they do, and we pay a fair price to the farms, and it costs more depending on how far it travels and how much transportation costs.
Customer: They have Kona! Do YOU have Kona??
Me: No. It's a little expensive right now and the quality isn't as good as it should be for the price they're asking right now.
Customer: I just don't understand why you don't do what they do, and just make all bulk coffee one price. I had to put this poor woman through looking through her little book there, looking for the code for this coffee because she needs it to charge me correctly. How much is this coffee?
Me: I don't know, because "rainforest" isn't a specific coffee we sell.
Customer: It said it right on the bin!
Me: Yeah...that's a separate sign letting you know that that coffee is part of the Rainforest Alliance group. There are four different coffees with the same insignia. I'd have to know which of those four you have here.
Customer: WHAT? JUST PRICE THEM ALL THE SAME!
Me: I'm sorry. We want to be more truthful about the pricing, so they are priced individually based on their landed costs. Have you considered that while you're buying Kona for only $8.99/lb, Fresh Market is overcharging you for less expensive coffees at lower quality?
Customer: I buy *Kona*. For $8.99/lb.
Me: Well...I'm sorry you have to go to Fresh Market for it.
Customer: Here.

WTF? If you can't follow simple instructions, I do not know what to do with you, it's official.

TWO Posts in One Day?!?

Yes, it's hardly fair of me to skip posting for 3 months only to post more than once in a single 12 hour period.

But now that I have a semi-decent camera on my new-every-two phone, it is too hard to resist showing you what I see on a daily basis. This, my friends, is why that surly retail clerk was so surly:

Do you see the shrimp carcass? This is how people treat their surroundings at my nice, clean, cared-for, retail establishment. Nevermind that we have 14 trashcans stationed around the store. Nice, shiny, chrome bullet cans. You can't miss them. This person couldn't be bothered to walk another two feet, though. I wonder what their house looks like--do they just stash wrappers in their bookcases? I mean, assuming that people like that actually bother to read? Or maybe when they finish something, like a carton of milk, they just shove it back in the fridge even though the garbage can is right behind them.

And let's not even get into how there was nobody demo-ing shrimp in the store today. This fucker felt entitled enough to grab one of the serve-yourself steamed shrimp off of the seafood bar. Probably used their hands. Hopefully after another of the skanky masses used *their* hands and touched that particular shrimp.

I hope they get the Mexican pig flu.

Of Course You're Invited

Earlier this week, I was part of a tour group made up of people from work. We were congregating out on the sidewalk of one of the area stores, waiting for the last stragglers to arrive. Since the tour was going to be outside, we were all dressed like civilians, and looked much like our average customer base. As we were waiting, a customer walked into the middle of our group and asked, "Are you going on a tour?"
"Yes," a few of us replied enthusiastically.
"Oh, how nice! What kind of tour?" she inquired.
"We're going to a local dairy farm," Mike said, smiling. "It's going to be cool."
She paused for a moment and then turned her head away from him.
"Hmm...not interested," she sniffed as she went into the store.

I'm sorry, but...YOU WEREN'T INVITED. What the fuck, lady?

Seriously, who does that? Passes judgment, invites themselves and then declines the non-existent invitation? I almost wish she had been interested...I would have charged her $50 for the ride out. Sheesh.

Observe the @sshole in a retail habitat

We have a self serve coffee station in the store. There are 4 steaming hot urns of coffee going at any given time. Today, this happened:

Customer: Excuse me, you're out of ______ coffee. Is there more?
Coffee bar guy: It's almost done brewing. I'll get this empty urn out of the way.

CBG reaches over the counter and lifts the urn. Unfortunately for him, Customer had left his half-full cup of steaming hot coffee on the spill guard of the urn. As CBG brought the urn and the unseen hot cup of coffee towards himself, the cup tipped and drenched CBG with very hot coffee. CBG did sustain very minor burns from this, and his shirt and jeans were drenched. He had to go home to change. But CBG told me, that wasn't the worst of the whole deal. This was:

Customer: That looks like it hurts. Is the other coffee ready yet?



I wish I was embellishing. What in the hell is wrong with people?

Tell me--when you buy an iPod, is part of the price giving up your manners?

Friday night, a fellow walked up to the cheese counter and caught my eye. We stood there, looking into each other's eyes--not in a romantic way, but because a) I can't look away when a customer makes eye contact like they are about to ask a question, and b) this man obviously wanted my attention. I nodded and smiled, yet he didn't make a move or a sound. Why?

I'll tell you. He was wearing an iPod. He had both ear buds planted firmly in his ears. OK, when someone walks up to you like that, what do you do? I figure, the iPod must be on. So, I'm not going to do much beyond give a visual cue that yes, I can see you and yes, I am available to you for assistance if you would only take those cocking things out of your ears. Finally, he spoke. "Hi. I need some wine help." OK, then. We walked over to the big wall of wine. He told me he was looking for red wines that still retained some sweetness. He did not remove his ear buds. Not even one. For fuck's sake, it's an iPod. It's not like you're going to miss anything if you turn the fucker OFF to give someone a polite level of attention.

So I shouted every single recommendation to him, for fun.