8/28: One-On-One With Customers, ATMs
I’ve been on a customer kick as of late, so I might as well keep the trend going. Now normally bitching about stupid customers is what many former customers service representatives remember during their time at these go-nowhere jobs, but that isn’t always the case. I think one problem many customers have is that they always seem afraid to admit when they’re wrong or when they fuck up. One of my favorite customer exchanges came while working at the Quickie Mart. The store had an ATM and one afternoon a middle-aged woman went to use the services of this machine, which was one of those that you only had to swipe your card through rather than insert it into the machine. For some reason I caught the end of her transaction, and once her receipt was spit out she stood there in bewilderment for a few seconds. She then turned around to me and said, “The machine ate my card!” I replied, “No it didn’t.” When she asked, “How do you know?” I answered, “Because it can’t” and pointed to her one hand. It was at that time she looked down and saw that she was holding her ATM card. Now while many customers would probably get pissed off at this point, seeing how the lowly cashier had just “dissed” them, this lady just busted out laughing and did a variation of the “whoosh” gesture with her hand and the top of her head and left. If only more customers were like that. We all do dumb things every now and then, and if you can’t laugh at yourself then you can’t laugh any other people.
On the flip side of this spectrum are the asshole regular customers. There were many at the Quickie Mart, but one that really sticks out was “One and One Man.” This miserable old bastard always came in and would order a small coffee and a newspaper. Since a small coffee and newspaper was something like one dollar and change he would always walk by a register, say “one and one” and toss the money on the counter and proceed to make a fucking mess of sugar and creamer juice by the coffee station. Now all of this was tolerable enough, but one time he pissed me off for what he did to a co-worker of mine. To say that this kid was portly would be an understatement; he was a big boy. However, he was a nice guy, but for some reason customers always gave him shit; probably because of his girth or something equally lame. Well one day One and One Man came up to his register with just a coffee, and this kid asked him, in a polite and courteous way, “Did you already buy your newspaper today?” One and One Man snippily replied, “Did you eat?” which I managed to hear. This pissed me off, and the stare I shot at him from the time he said that until he walked out the door made him aware that I heard what he said. For the next week or two I was a bastard (well, at least more than I usually was) to One and One Man. I didn’t say anything to him, but rather I would just accept his money and return change in the same manner he would behave toward us who worked at the Quickie Mart. One Saturday morning he threw his money at me for his “one and one,” and I proceeded to throw his change right back at him, turn my back and walk away in one swift motion. He then began screaming and my co-worker (a different chick from my 8/28 entry) had to play damage control, which was nothing new considering she was the “good half” to our morning tandem. Of course One and One Man would return and return again, and I don’t think I ever said anything to him. Hopefully he’s dead by now.
• And now for the Dr. Laura Call of the Day (or whenever I feel like doing this): Some lady phones in and wants to know … actually, I don’t really know the reason for her call. All I was listening to was how she was unemployed and that she never gets along with the upper management at any of her places of employment. The problem, according to her, was the lack of support her bosses gave her when it came time to “back her up” with the employees she was supposed to supervise. You go girl. It sucks having to supervise people you had no part with during their hiring process. And yes, most upper managers are spineless, but that’s why they make the big bucks. However, when asked how many jobs she had worked the caller replied, “Three jobs in four months.” Goddamn, even I’m not that big of an insubordinate.
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