Rants of a Supermarket Employee

Weird WEIRD shift the other day!

Customers are retarded!! I mean what the hell is with these people!? I’d been at work for like 20 minutes and this guy that EVERYONE hates serving walks up to my register with his trolley. This guy’s a regular and he’s a pain in the ass! Picture an old man with really really oily hair and a fat sweaty stomach that hangs out of a shirt that I think used to be white, who smells so bad that it’s actually hard to breathe. And he has a Brittish accent. But I’m not exagerating. It is actually hard to breathe, he smells that bad. Not to mention he’s rude, and he’s been sent out of the store several times, and no matter how much you ignore him he won’t stop fricken talking!

I shall call him ‘Smelly Dude’! … Not very creative I know but it describes him well enough.

He walks up to the register, there’s a small amount of water on it from vegetables or whatever and he goes “What’s this?? This is disgusting! If we were in Holland…” Blah blah and he starts ranting about what would happen to me if we were in Holland if I had water on my register. SMELLY DUDE is ranting about MY register being dirty! I’m sorry but there is something VERY VERY wrong here!!!

I’m like “We’re not in Holland” and he ignores me, saying the belt should be made of stainless steel… STAINLESS STEEL?? WTF??? WHAT A GODDAMN FRICKEN IDIOT! Yeah! Lets make a conveyer belt out of stainless steel! (I really hope that there isn’t some weird way that that’s possible ’cause then I’ll look like an idiot. And if there is someway that it possible, I hope most people don’t know about it. Maybe I’ll get away with it).

10 minutes and like 5 or 6 customers later Smelly Dude went away.

Then later I had this other customer who out of nowhere goes “So what do you think is the best thing about working here?”

What the hell?? I swear I actually started to get worried. That’s not a normal question that normal customers ask. I’m thinking of questions like “Is this a test?” “Am I being watched?” “Who sent you?” “Do I win anything if it’s a good answer?”

Eventually I’m like “Well I’m getting paid which is pretty good”

I half extected a man in a suit to jump out from behind the next register and say in a big game show announcer voice ”Ohhhhh I’m sorrrryyyyy… The answer we were looking for was <insert suck-up supermarket promoting answer>! “Unfortunately that means you’re out of the game. You have 10 minutes to leave the store before we call securityyy!” …Or something like that.

Anyway back to the action. He goes “Not the customers?”. I say “Some customers.” He’s like “Just not the ones that ask nosey questions right…?”

EXACTLY!!!!! LEAVE ME ALOOOOOOONE!!!

“Nah, it makes good conversation”

LIEESSS!!! GET IT???? LIIIIIIIIIEEEEEESSS!!!

And no, there was no loud man in a suit. SO disappointing!

After that lot of my customers just weren’t normal. I don’t know what it was but they just weren’t. I was there for 9 hours, maybe something happened in the outside world that I didn’t know about and it messed everyone up. I swear my manager was even being NICE. Something was seriously wrong that day…

OMG I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED LIKE A WEEK AGO I HATE MY MANAGER SHE’S SUCH A BIIIIIITCH!!! I just reminded myself of when I asked my manager TWICE at the start of the year if she’d train me to work smokeshop so I can go off registers every now and then and she’s like “Yeah yeah suuuure” LIARRRRRRR

Last week I got asked to do three shifts in the smokeshop despite not being allowed to do half of the work that it involed! What an idiot!!! I asked the 2nd in charge person (what is she a co-manager? Deputy manager? Vice manager? WHAT???) if she would talk to the manager about it and she goes “Oh hang on I’ll just put you in the system” Tap tap tap on her little keyboard and she’s like “There you’re in.” and then it takes her less then two minutes to explain EVERYTHING!!

Then Bipolar walks in like “hey what’s going on?” and when the co/deputy/vice/whatever tells her her face just goes blank and she walks out. MOODY BITCH!! Then she’s talking to me 20 minutes later like “‘Sup girlfrieeend!” Ok not like that at all, but she’s acting like we’re friends or something. She’s plotting against me I just know it.

My managers leaving in a week by the way!! *Run’s around the house screaming, Lily Allen’s “F*** You” at the top of her lungs in a high pitched voice from the helium in one of the balloons blown up to celebrate*. WOOHOO!

Who the hell designed this stupid layout to have a black heading over a black pattern?? What the hell?? That’s been bothering me for ages now but I’m sitting here trying to think of what to write so my frustration is making me hate it even more. It’s so stupid!!!

Okay so now on topic. Easter is over! I know it was nearly a week ago but as far as I’m concerned Easter isn’t officially over until everyone’s stopped complaining about how much chocolate they’ve consumed and how next year they don’t want any (HAHA yeah ok).

Okay so working Easter Saturday I didn’t think would be hard. I thought it would just be heaps and heaps of customers panic-buying because we’re going to be closed for a whole day. “OH GOD NO! We don’t have enough junk to last us that long!”

I didn’t anticipate being put on the one register out of 17 that is nicely located between the MASSIVE Easter display and the crappy little merry-go-round with only three seats that most shopping centres have. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, except that it was the day before Easter…

It was like the kids version of those crazy sales in clothing stores that you see on the news but don’t dare to experience, but with a nice repetitive wiggles soundtrack with lyrics you can’t understand because of the crappy quality of the machine.

Add to that a bunch of kids screaming, crying, climbing, fighting and whatever else kids do to entertain themselves and that all makes for a pretty fun 8 hours. Well I did get a one-hour break but it didn’t count because I was being haunted by the music from the merry-go-round.

I just don’t get why on earth (Capital ‘E’?) so many parents bring their kids with them to the supermarket the day before Easter! Why??? I mean you know that you’re not going to give them what they want, and you know that they’re going to cry about it, and you know you’re going to get angry…

Oh wait, it’s because you know that there’s always a friendly check-out chick that you can pin the blame on.

I swear this stupid bitch gives me a huge Easter egg to price check, and when it’s too expensive the little girl starts crying. So what does mummy say…?

“The lady said you can’t have it. No! Don’t look at me like that, the lady said no.”

Then I have this 5 year old girl crying her eyes out at me and holding onto her mum. The poor thing was afraid of me! Great start to life mum. At 5 she’s scared of service cashiers, by 15 she’s living in a bubble because she’s terrified of the rest of the world! And it will all go back to the day that the check-out chick wouldn’t give her an Easter egg.

For the record I like kids, just not when they do anything mentioned above.

And btw, in the comments, feel free to rant about your own jobs because it makes me feel better about mine. Lol kidding. Sort of =P (That’s one of the very few smilies I can do!). It’s always fun to hear stories about stupid people that try to make your job harder. Plus, as Julie said, ‘free therapy’, so go nuts.

<<<WARNING>>> May be very boring because I need to vent and I’m not concentrating much on making it interesting.

Told off a customer for the first time last night and I am damn proud of myself. The stupid bitch comes over at like 9:25 after I’ve closed off and starts unloading her basket while I’m trying to clean the conveyer belt thingo. I just told her that the register was closed and like all customers do when they feel stupid the bitch blames me.

“Well you’re supposed to have a ‘closed’ sign!”

WELL YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO NOTICE THAT THE GODDAMN LIGHT IS TURNED OFF!!! DIEEEE!!!!! WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SHOPPING AT 9:30 PM ANYWAY?????????

Yeah that’s not what I said because that wouldv’e gotten me fired and I wasn’t in the mood to get fired last night. I said to her “Pretty hard when THE BELT IS MOVING!” Very lame comeback but I did yell the last part, which made me feel much better since my superviser was being a bitch all night. But more on that later.

The customer sticks her nose up at me and walks away because God forbid the moron admits that she’s WRONG!!

Then I get called to another register to go find a carton of eggs with a barcode because this person had to pick up the one carton there that didn’t have one. And guess who the customer was. It was the stupid bitch complaining about the sign. Karma hates me!!!! 10 minutes after I tell this woman off I have to go get her a carton of eggs, when I’m supposed to be going home…

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That’s how pissed I am. My anger doesn’t fit on the page.

And the bitch snatches them from me. Rude much??????????

Anyway, bitchy superviser. For the sake of keeping people anonymous, let’s call her ’Bipolar’ because one minute she’s nice and fine and then in a second she’s CRAZY EVIL SUPERVISER BITCH! Every dirty job that had to be done that night was given to me! What happened to good old fashioned eeni-meeni-myni-mo? Wow I’ve never once thought of the spelling for that till now. I’m probably way off.

I won’t bore anyone that’s made it this far through the post (if you have… why? It’s not very interesting) by talking about everything she made me do but basically I came home with dust all over my uniform and sticky slimy smelly stuff all over my hands from god knows what. Reading over that again that sounds bad, but you get what I mean. I hope.

Anyway 5 minutes before I finish Bipolar’s telling me off because I apparently didn’t clean the registers properly despite giving me 5 minutes to clean 10 registers!!! And then 1 minute later she’s all “Bye, thanks so much for all your help, have a good night!”

WHAT????????

Yeah more nicknames are probably going to come up every now and then because it just makes things easier.

And I just realised that the times on my posts are wrong for whatever reason. Great…

Heard a radio report last night saying that the supermarket chain that I work for has had to recall stuff. BIG SURPRISE!!!

I can’t reveal what the item was without revealing the store that I work for but let’s just say that a certain item from a certain brand (only sold from this supermarket) was recalled for having METAL SHAVINGS in it!!! Oh yeah… easy mistake. I make that mistake all the time!

Yeah that was still a little obvious wasn’t it? SHHH! You didn’t hear it from me!

Buy your groceries and get out. I am not getting paid to hear your life story. I do not want to hear you bitch and complain about all the work you have to put into a party your having that night or the next day unless I’m invited, ok? But don’t invite me, because I’ll probably just laugh at you and then most likely have you removed from the store. Check-out chicks have stalkers too you know, just like regular people. I’ve heard the stories…

Every saturday (if I’m lucky enough to have a shift… or unlucky, depends on how you look at it) I get at least one customer saying “I have soooo many people coming over tonight/tomorrow and it’s gonna be really fun and really awesome but then I have to do the dishes, how stupid is that??” …Oh you poor thing.

Here’s a tip people. When I say “Hi, how are you?” It’s because they pay me to. Please, for the love of God, don’t answer honestly. If everyone answered honestly I would have to start pulling my hair out. Or yours, don’t mind either way.

I don’t want to hear about your sinuses, or your aching knees, or whatever disease you picked up on Saturday night (stole your joke Julie!). “I can tell it’s raining outside because my left elbow hurts!” Really? I can tell it’s raining because the man standing next to you is soaking wet. Gee I must be special too!

Ok, people complaining about their aches and pains I can deal with, but I’m pretty sure telling me about your SEX LIVES is crossing some kind of line. Some big, fat, flourescent line, ok???

This story is 100% true (well all my stories are but I can’t emphasise it here enough). A couple of months ago a customer asked me where something was so I told her and she went to go get it and then came back to buy it. She says “Sorry, I don’t usually shop here, I’m just visiting my sister.” I smile and go back to scanning and she proceeds to tell me a story that she thinks will brighten my day. Long story short, the ex drops by, one thing leads to another, and then GAHHH TOO MUCH INFORMATIONNN!! I did not sign up for this shit. There were details that I do NOT want to go into. It was so inappropriate that the other customers were giving me these disgusting looks as if to say “make her stop!”

Just smile and nod. Grin and bear it. BLAH!.

Why do people think that because we work in customer service, we must be morons? Last night I go to work (my only shift this week, god I love being casual) and I go onto my register and below the screen is a bright red laminated piece of paper saying “Polite, Conversation, FULL ATTENTION…”. It’s great to know that they’re thinking of us. Not only are they reminding us to pay attention to the customers, they’ve even added “full attention” in caps for those of us whose attention is already wavering as we struggle to get through the sentence. Gosh they’re so thoughtful!

I really wish this thing had emoticons so I could make one with a vein popping out of it’s head.

So eventually I’m nearly finished. The store’s almost empty and I get asked to go put away chewing gum. Easy enough. Before I even get to pick up a box a nightfill lady I don’t recognise is flailing her arms at me and panicing, going ”YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!!!!” and she takes the box from me. Ok well she didn’t panic but she looked really nervous. It took 5 minutes for her to show me that the blue ecipse tins go with the other blue eclipse tins and the packets of green extra go with the other packets of green extra and under no circumstances is the orange 5 to go in the red 5 box. It was like in the movies when they say “Whatever you do, do not press the red button!” …So of course I pressed it. At some point today one lucky customer is going to find a packet of blue 5 mixed in somewhere with the greens.

I’m so badass.

Hi, and welcome to my first blog entry on www.ihatemyjobtoo.wordpress.com. I was originally going to go with ihatemyjob.whatever but apparently that’s already taken. So here I am thinking “Oh crap! What the hell am I going to do??” when my very helpful buddy here suggests “i hate my job too!” and I’m like “Damn straight! You’re not the only one! POWER TO THE PEOPLE WITH CRAPPY JOBS!”

I really like this name because it doesn’t have an ‘it’s all about me’ feel to it. It’s more like ‘OMG ME TOO!! OMG WE SO JUST BONDED’

The point of my blog basically is to empathise with other people out there that have crappy jobs but can’t leave or can’t be bothered leaving and to let them know that I feel their pain… and also to let people know that as awesome as you are or think you are, the second you walk into a supermarket all that is gone and you become another customer. I’ll prove this to you by telling you about random situations with customers and some of my fellow employees that occur during my shifts. All stories will be true, just slightly dramatised to keep it entertaining.

Ok so I just went onto ihatemyjob.wordpress.com, just to check out the standard that I have to live up to, and it turns out the lazy person made it back in 2006 and never wrote an entry. That’s a name gone to waste! For shaaaaame!!!