Working at Food Place - A Supermarket Blog

What Became of Food Place

2009-07-25T20:58:00.002Z

It's been a long time. Too long. The reason is simple; I just couldn't find the time to keep this blog going after I started university and, on top of the time constraint, the way returning to student-hood changed my priorities and revamped my social life put Food Place firmly on the back burner.

For a while now, I've been occasionally thinking about closure for Working at Food Place. Recent events have finally provided a fitting way in which to do this. But before I go into that, I'll try and give a brief summary of what's happened in the eighteen-or-so months since I last posted.

Store Personnel Changes
Suzanne didn't last long as the customer service manager. Pressure from Terry, who never accepted anything other than perfection, combined with long-running battles with evil-bitch-from-hell-cash-office-supervisor Wendy, left her feeling constantly stressed. She disappeared onto long-term sick leave and never returned.

After Suzanne's departure, no effort was made to fill her shoes and her entire workload cascaded down to Wendy and myself - as the two supervisors. It took two weeks before I cracked and handed Terry written notice that I no longer wanted to be a supervisor. Initially, he insisted that my only option was to leave. When it came to the crunch, however, he offered me a 23-hour contract just working on the kiosk. Perfect.

While I lapped up my new working life as a kiosk assistant - apart from the return to uncomfortably close contact with Food Place clientele - Wendy drowned under the workload and clashed spectacularly with my replacement - Amanda from stock control. The pair had never got along, probably because of Amanda's well known opinion of Wendy as a lazy, argumentative old cow. Wendy lasted a month or so before sodding off to work at Poundland.

This left a vacancy for a cash office supervisor and it wasn't long before I was invited in for a chat with Terry. Would I consider returning to my old job role, but remaining as a basic-grade customer assistant, if it was promised sincerely that I wouldn't be landed with the amount of additional work I had been before. I agreed, with reservations.

Three days later and I'm right back to square one. But before I could kick up a fuss about it, Terry very suddenly disappeared and all discussion of it was banned on the shop floor. It later emerged that Suzanne had made serious allegations against him, the nature of which remains unknown to me, and he'd been dismissed. Cue Suzanne's return as customer service manager.

So, a happy team once more. Amanda and myself managed cash office and the checkouts between us and Suzanne was back to oversee things without the pressures of Terry and Wendy. And this is the way it remained.

Terry was replaced by Derek. He was previously the manager of Ellenfoot Food Place but following it's closure at the end of 2007 he was placed into 'float'. Basically, he was shunted from one store to another covering holidays and sickness leave. His management style was extremely dictatorial - yet fair and consistent. Food Place suddenly became a much stricter place to work, but that only really affected those who were too used to years of taking the piss.

Competitor Hit
At around the time I stopped blogging, rumours began circulating that Tesco had designs on opening a new store on the site of the long-closed Kwik Save store - situated virtually at the entrance to Food Place's car park. These turned out to be true and the local press reported that permission had been granted for the development in July 2008.

There was a long period of silence but just before Christmas last year, the Kwik Save building was demolished and within weeks the new Tesco store began taking shape. Twice the size of Food Place, it was evident that we had very little chance of competing with it. Derek had to attend meetings with our area manager and at the start of February 2009 we were called to an after-hours staff meeting.

Derek and the area manager gave us very frank projections of what was likely to happen when Tesco opened. From an average weekly turnover of £215,000, we could expect to fall to around £60,000. Customer numbers were anticipated to fall from 25,000 to 9,500 and, more crucially for us, the 81-strong workforce would need to be scaled back dramatically. It was made clear that this would not happen through redundancies - instead, staff leaving the business would not be replaced. However, Food Place was not to go without a fight. The area manager announced plans for a £200,000 'tactical investment' in the store. We were to undergo a small-level refit to bring the store right up-to-date with Food Place's optimal trading format.

My worries about the safety of my job were short-lived. In March 2009 I secured a paid placement working within the NHS in conjunction with my degree. The start-date was 1st June and I gave my notice to Derek that I would leave Food Place's employment, after seven and a half long years on May 23rd.

I was there for long enough to see the 'tactical investment'. It was basically a refresher aimed at making the store look new again and making just enough changes for the customers to perceive an improvement. A large area at the back of the store was temporarily filled with clearance seasonal stock, whilst the products that formerly belonged here were squeezed into the remainder of the sales floor. The intention: after Tesco's launch, this area would be walled-off and converted into office space to house the regional offices for Food Place. This would remove over a third of the sales space.

The arrival of Tesco
In mid-May the new competitor opened. It was a Wednesday and our usual turnover of £29,000 was reduced to £9,500. The pattern repeated every day and remained constant: the first full week of trade following Tesco's arrival saw us take £68,000 - three thousand pounds less than we took on 23rd December alone last year.

26 staff had won jobs in the new Tesco, reducing our workforce to 55. But this was still far too many bodies for far too little work. Overnight, we went from needing a fully manned bank of checkouts to requiring only one trolley checkout, two basket tills and a kiosk till - at the most.

My departure
May 23rd came along and my last shift passed unremarkably. I finished at 3:00pm when a staff huddle was called and I was presented with an envelope containing £100 and an enormous leaving card that had been signed by staff past and present. I went home and cried. Then got ready and took myself along to my leaving night out. Which was legendary.

And so ended my time at Food Place. How did it feel? Well, I certainly have no regrets. I learned a lot of valuable skills during my time there, made several friends for life and got one hell of a lot of experience in working with people. A painful process, as this blog confirms! Despite the bad times, my enduring memories will be the fun times.

Thanks to everybody who read this blog regularly and commented on posts - it was a lot of fun reading your responses and I'm only sorry it took me so long to get around to returning to the blog.

Sunday Blues

2008-02-10T16:54:00.000Z

What a boring day!

Sundays have gone from, pre-Christmas, being so busy we can barely move, to providing us with nothing but a steady trickle of customers. We're still taking quite a lot of money, and the store reports say we're serving more customers now - up to 25,000 each week - but it just feels dead! We seem to spend all day pottering around doing the little jobs that usually get neglected.

Today, it was scraping dried up crumbs and dust from the conveyor belts and obscure little corners on the checkouts. We blitzed the back-stock of impulse confectionery, re-laid the magazines to planagram, went on a paper and sundries ordering spree, tidied up all the junk behind the kiosk and corrected the bookstocks on cigarettes and tobacco. Oh, and I remodelled the cash office - again. Yet still we wandered aimlessly for most of the day.

And the customers weren't in particularly agreeable moods today either. Everybody seemed utterly miserable or hung-over. In fact, I'm a complete hypocrite for saying that because, by rights, I should have been miserably hung-over but, for some bizarre reason, wasn't. I normally feel rough the morning after eating a Wine Gum! So, there we all were, mysteriously happy, and we had to deal with a barrage of horrid customers who were wallowing in self-pity because they had to come shopping with a headache. Try being us lot that keep the bloody place running for you!

Robert
The cretin finally decided to grace us with his presence this week. He turned up, bright and cheery, and asked to speak with Terry. I led him upstairs and tried to poke about for a bit of information:

"So, where you been then Robs?" I ask, overfriendly, to-the-point and utterly two-faced.

"Oh, you know."

"Nah, not really, that's why I asked."

"Oh."

With this conversation yielding nothing, I deposited Robert with Terry in the stock-control office and hurried next door into the cash office. If you climb up on the worktop, you can put your ear to the vents in the wall and hear what's going on next door. Well, you can only hear muffled snatches of whatever is being said, but that would have to do. Here's what I caught:

Terry: "Almost can't believe *muffled* bloody cheek *muffled* say for yourself?"
Robert: *muffled*
Terry: "Oh don't fucking *muffled* that."
Robert: "*muffled* hard time mate..."
Terry: "*muffled* fucking mate me! All the chances I gave you, *muffled* fool I was to actually *muffled*"

I think you get the idea. The exchange continued in this manner for some time. Suzanne walked in at one point and, obviously as intrigued as I was, also climbed up to have a listen. Every time either of us whispered something, the other hurriedly shushed them. We needn't have bothered. There was very little to hear: Robert was sent numerous letters asking for him to get in touch, the last of which informing him his employment at Food Place had been terminated. Terry had nothing more to say and Robert left.

Terry then came into the cash office, forcing me to pretend I was up there looking for something on the top shelf, and told us everything that we'd just strained to hear; we had to act surpised. Much choice-language later, we were fully up-to-speed on what had gone on. It would seem that Robert just needed to 'get his shit together' - God I hate that expression.

So we can turn a new leaf and look forward to his replacement starting within the next two weeks. I'm not sure whether this calls for hopeful anticipation or complete dread. We might end up with somebody much worse than Robert, heaven preserve us!

My Shoplifter Heroism
As I've said before, I'm usually very lax about shoplifters. I'll only jump in and stop them if I'm 100% convinced that I've seen them conceal things and 100% certain they won't attack me. I've no desire to end up losing my job and garnering myself a criminal record, thus damaging my future career prospects, for brawling with a thief!

But this was one different. I knew I was onto something with her. I'd watched her loll her way around the store - in a random rather than organised fashion, always a giveaway, filling her trolley with all the expensive products that people tend to buy only when absolutely necessary. Typically, there was nobody else around to assist - I could have gone into the warehouse and got somebody but I wasn't taking my eyes off her. I perched myself beside the kiosk and watched. Usually, I would simply let them know I was watching because this usually results in them aborting mission. But this day I had a hunger to catch somebody.

She drifted her way over to the DVDs and began to weed out ones without electronic tags on them, filling the front compartment of the trolley with them. Gotcha!

I did a discreet call for Terry to come to the kiosk for a customer service issue and when he arrived we stationed ourselves just outside the doors and waited. There was no way on earth she was intending to pay for all that, so we knew she'd emerge. And she did, not two minutes later. Terry took her upstairs and I took the trolley.

Normal procedure when you catch somebody shoplifting is to take the goods to a vacant checkout and scan everything through the till in training mode to find out how much they were going to steal. This took me a good ten minutes and the total was a staggering £536.00! All in one trolley!

And what happens when the police arrive? Spot-fined. Eighty-miserable-quid. She was one lucky bitch, that's all I can say.

Power Cut Mayhem

2008-02-01T20:54:00.000Z

Why do people feel the need to rush out and buy enough provisions to see them through a nuclear winter every time there's a suggestion it might snow?

Food Place was absolutely heaving almost from the moment the doors opened this morning. And it the shop wasn't just full - it was full of drama queens. People fighting eachother at the shelves, jumping over trolleys to reach their desired products, stamping one another underfoot...OK, now I'm the drama queen. But, take my word for it, it was busy.

This matter wasn't helped when a member of our checkout staff phoned in sick. We're very honoured at Food Place to have the only woman in the world who's ever been pregnant working for us. If she so much as feels mildly tired she phones in sick and is always referring to herself as being "with child". Thank the Almighty that her morning sickness has passed; I was getting rather tired of her constantly telling me how awful it was, as though I'd never been ill before. I've known people deal with terminal illnesses with more decorum than she's handling this. So, anyways, the selfish, thoughtless swine chooses today to drop us right in the proverbial!

So, being abnormally busy, we didn't have enough staff as it was. I had to run around the other departments asking members of staff to stay behind and cover part of her shift on the checkouts. Some people enjoy the buzz of dealing with such emergencies - morons, that's all I can say about them. After the fifth refusal I was a gibbering wreck, saved only by the lovely Amanda from stock control offering to help out.

By three o'clock, the panic-buying reached it's height. We had every single checkout open - which was an achievement in itself as I almost had to recruit cashiers from the street outside - and queues were sprawling everywhere. The snow had been falling since lunchtime and the gale-force winds were on the go again.

Suddenly, the store was plunged into darkness. The customers all did their little gasp - they always gasp when the power cuts out - and looked up at the lights as if their collective will-power could turn them back on. I was just standing there thinking, shitting hell this is all I need! Glancing up the aisles, I could see people, unabashed by this turn of events, continuing to shop in the dark - as they always do.

The cashiers didn't know what to do. I had to quickly run along telling them all to wait a minute or so and the backup supply would kick in to power the tills so they could carry on. The waiting customers were giving me dirty looks through the darkness, obviously thinking I wouldn't see them.

Meanwhile, the managers were herding people off the shop floor to the checkouts. The emergency power supply will only keep the tills running for twenty minutes, but the customers seemed to have problems understanding this: "YES! I'm almost finished, I'll be there soon!" They're the centre of the universe you see. No concept whatsoever that there were a hundred other people to serve too. I didn't care though - let them wander around in the dark and injure themselves before arriving at the tills and finding they've gone dead. At least they couldn't say we didn't warn them.

So, once all the customers were out, thankfully before the tills died, I posted the cashiers to the entrance. It's amazing how blind customers are. No lights in the car park, no lights on the store signs, total darkness inside - and they still get themselves a trolley and try to get in. Some of them even tried to argue that they only wanted a couple of things. We've got no power you total fools!

It was around two hours before the power came back on, but by this time we were under around 6cm of snow, so nobody was bothered about food shopping by that point.

All of this will create mayhem in the cash office tomorrow morning. Although the tills were still powered and able to handle transactions, the cash office system was down, so it won't have logged the sales taken during the power-out. This will mean that every single till will be hundreds of pounds over and all the credit card transactions will need to be manually processed. Thank the lord I don't start until 3pm tomorrow!

Trading Hours Extension

2008-01-28T21:43:00.000Z

Every January, Food Place carries out an extensive and vigorous review of every single store it operates. They look at how much money each store takes, how many customers they serve and how many items they sell. They then break this down into fifteen minute time slots for each day of the week to identify when the strongest trading times are for each store.

Somebody had a eureka moment when they looked at our store's trading patterns. They recognised that we take a higher than average amount of money in our first and last hours of trading and thought: 'Ooh, wouldn't it be a good idea if we opened that store for longer!"

So, from 18th February, Food Place will be trading for an extra two hours each morning, opening at 6am, and an extra hour in the evening, meaning we'll be closing at 11pm. An idea that is incredibly stupid in my opinion.

Yes, I know the old argument. If it was my business, I'd want to take as much money as I possibly could. But they must be stupid to think that anybody is going to come to Food Place at 6 o'clock in the morning. Large hypermarkets get custom in the middle of the night because people who rise from their beds obscenely early, or are coming off night-shifts, get the weekly food shop done and dusted when they know the stores will be quiet. Food Place just won't pull that sort of custom.

We're a 'top-up shop'. Being reasonably small in size, people don't generally come to us for all of their weekly shopping needs. Just their daily bits and bobs to keep them going until they go somewhere bigger to get the majority of the food in. And nobody does that at sparrow's cough!

I can almost understand the logic of opening until 11pm. There, I think we will get enough trade to justify being open. But, unfortunately, it's the later closing that's causing the riots amongst the staff. Nobody wants to work until that time of night - although it doesn't particularly bother me because I'm more of a night-owl than an early-bird. In order to trade, we need at least two people manning tills (you can't leave one person on their own for obvious security reasons), two people on the shop floor - which is actually already covered because we have a night-shift), one supervisor (to access the cash office) and one manager. Spread that across 6 days and it's going to be very difficult getting people to cover it. It's not so bad with the earlier mornings, because all of our morning checkout staff are prepared to do their share of 6am starts, and there's already fresh-foods staff working at that time.

I just don't see why, when they weigh the obstacles against the, extremely minimal if non-existent, benefits they actually want to go through with this. When the late Ellenfoot Food Place started opening until 11pm two years ago, within three weeks they had an armed till-raid and were forced to backtrack because the staff revolted. I can see the same thing happening with us.

Mrs Snot and her sodding boxes - again!
The customer from hell seems to be moving house once more - perhaps the neighbourhood she just moved into was too common for her on reflection. She telephoned us again this morning asking us to ensure that boxes were reserved. But she had specifications this time: they're not to be wet, they mustn't be broken down and they should be large enough to hold a 'substantial content'. For want of something better to do, I actually trotted off to the warehouse and sought these boxes for her. Naturally, I had to tape them back together to save her the strenuous effort of doing so herself. She hadn't been to collect them by the time I left, but I hope she was duly impressed by my efforts. Now there's a sign of how bored I was today: I actually went out of my way to please Mrs Snot - what was I thinking?!

On a further note...
The people dressed like lab-technicians who insist on pitching up in our store to peddle free samples of random crap need to be banned immediately. What do they think they're playing at? Handing customers little trays and cocktail sticks for them to leave in their baskets and trolleys, along with small morsels of food waste, for us to dispose of!

Mrs Snot: Round 300

2008-01-25T22:56:00.000Z

Regular readers of this blog should be well acquainted with Food Place's resident moan-bag by now. If you haven't read about her before, try these posts: Clementines Nightmare and The Return of Mrs Snot. Put simply, this woman should be incredibly thankful that her only punishment for her bad behaviour at Food Place, thus far, has been a few blog posts written about her. My previous dealings with her have furnished me with plenty of information about her: I know her full name, address and telephone number. She needs to watch her back - one more rude, nasty comment and the shop-assistant will bite back.

There are no words that can accurately describe how much she does my head in. If it's not her condescending tone or lemon-sucking-facial-expression, it's the ridiculous things she complains about and the way she thinks the staff at Food Place are all out to rip her off. If I had a pound for every time she's threatened never to shop with us again, I'd be a very rich person. Sadly, it's all a big bluff. She's yet to disown us.

In fact, rather annoyingly, her visits seem to be becoming increasingly frequent; a state of affairs I can only suspect to be the result of her being banned from every other shop in town. None of the rest of them are stupid enough to put up with her.

Last Week's Incident
Don't you think it's unbelievably cheeky for somebody to telephone a shop and ask a favour of them if you're going to be rude about it? Cheekier still if you happen to have verbally abused several employees of the said shop on previous visits? Well, Mrs Snot apparently has no shame:

"Good morning Food Place, Andrew speaking, how can..."

"Yes, I want you to keep me some cardboard boxes. I shall be visiting your store at 1 o'clock this afternoon and I'll need them by then - can you tell me if this is possible?"

How dare you butt in when I haven't finished speaking! And what happened to 'hello', 'please' and 'thank you'? I already know who it is I'm speaking to, so I don't go for any fake politeness. I reply to her question in the same fashion she posed it:

"Well how many boxes will you need? Now isn't the best time because all the cardboard from last night's night shift has been crushed."

"For goodness sake! What sort of supermarket doesn't have boxes?"

"A one that recycles them. The best we can manage at the moment are the cardboard produce trays, but they aren't very big."

"Well when will there be more?"

"We get our next delivery at 5pm today..."

"So, if I come at 5pm I'll be able to trouble you to fulfill this extremely difficult request?"

Butting in again woman! And you can drop the sarcasm, because I've already had a skinful of you and am seriously tempted to slash your tyres as it is.

"No. The delivery arrives at 5pm. The stock isn't brought onto the shop floor until nightshift work it tonight. There won't be any empty boxes until after that."

"Well can you leave them a message that Mrs Jenkins [named and shamed at last] would like seven large boxes? I shall come in to collect them at 8am tomorrow morning."

"I'll be sure to leave a message."

"Good day." CLUNK!

I dutifully leave a message for nightshift. However, I know full well that they are incredibly busy people. They have a huge delivery to work, the entire shop to face-up, the warehouse stock to pull out and all the mess to tidy. I'm not overly optimistic they'll find time to lovingly set aside seven large boxes for a stroppy old bitch.

And surely I'm not the only retail worker who gets frustrated at this general expectation that we have cardboard boxes coming out of our ears. Yes, we receive a lot of them. But they're incredibly bulky. As soon as the stock is removed from them we break them down, cram them into a waste cage and they're quickly crushed and sent for recycling. We have a tiny warehouse and do not have room to reserve boxes for people. Besides, people generally see them lying there and crush them anyways. We have far more pressing matters to attend to.

Tip: if you go into a supermarket and ask for boxes, do so politely, take whatever is on offer, and don't moan that they've been broken down and will need taped back together. That way, everybody stays happy!

So, the next day Mrs Snot arrives for her seven large boxes. Thankfully, I'm too busy living it up as a student to be there to participate in this joyous event. But other staff members told me the scene that followed.

Mrs Snot wasn't amused that the boxes that had been left were all broken down. She was politely told that we don't have space to keep these things (they were bloomin' huge boxes) intact. This still wasn't good enough. She demanded to speak to a manager and proceeded to complain to them that, not only were her boxes not of the standard she expected, but 'every single member of your staff who played a part in handling this has been rude and incompetent'.

She's actually surprised? This is the woman who I don't think has ever uttered a single 'please' or 'thank you' in all the times I've encountered her. The woman who turns her nose up at you, and refuses to make eye contact when speaking to you. The woman who shouts at rotisserie staff because chickens aren't quite ready. The woman who was once overheard telling her daughter that shop workers are 'plebs'.

Who thinks it's high time we banned her?

No More Apologies - Just Moaning!

2008-01-22T23:56:00.000Z

This blog has taken a back seat recently for numerous reasons. Firstly, I was very busy over the Christmas holidays. Secondly, I had lots of work to do for university after Christmas. Thirdly, Food Place hasn't been a fun place to be recently. I'll elaborate more on the third point in this post, but one thing I should say before I do: I will not apologise for the infrequency of the posts on this blog any more. I'll post when I have time, or something I feel like ranting about.

So, what's been going on at Food Place?
Well, since I haven't been blogging about Food Place matters for some time, it would be very difficult now to explain everything in retrospect. So, I think the best place to begin is to set the scene by quickly running through some of the recent events that have led to such a bitter state of affairs.

- Much loathed grocery department manager, Robert, suddenly disappeared in mid-December. He failed to turn up for work one day and nobody has seen him since. He could be dead for all we know.

- To cover his sudden absence, our Customer Services Manager, Lorraine, was shunted into his role and dairy supervisor Suzanne was hastily promoted to Lorraine's old job - making Suzanne my new line manager.

- I'm very happy with Suzanne's appointment as I think she's perfect for the job. However, she has little experience of the front-line nature of the Services department and requires full training in checkouts, checkout supervision, kiosk and cash office - as well as all the back-office tasks such as staff schedules and attendance management.

- I set about freeing up time to take her through these things, supporting her as much as I can. Wendy, my co-supervisor on Services (remember, the one who's obsessed with cash office and thinks that's her only job) doesn't support at all. She leaves all the gritty tasks to Suzanne and expects her to automatically know everything.

- Suzanne eventually finds her feet and, taking one look at the current supervisor schedules, decides that Wendy isn't pulling her weight. She has shifts that suit her, and she refuses to work weekends and late nights, leaving these undesirable shifts to be covered by me and other supervisor trained (but not paid) store staff.

- Suzanne changes Wendy's hours. Nothing drastic. She is now expected to work just one late-finish and one weekend in four.

- Wendy reacts bitterly and launches a campaign of hatred against everybody. She takes great delight in telling anybody who will listen that she's been wronged and is going to any extremes to try and get out of working these new shifts.

- Suzanne and myself become fed up of getting the cold shoulder and a meeting is called to talk the problems through.

- Wendy says Suzanne and me have formed a little clique and have turned against her. We reassure her this is not the case, and point out that we've spent a lot of time together through Suzanne's training. Things seem to be partially resolved...

- But it doesn't take long for it to become clear that Wendy is still not calmed. She continues to be cold and distant when spoken to and goes out of her way to cause problems. For instance, granting four holiday requents on the week she's on holiday without making arrangements to cover it, leaving Suzanne and me struggling.

- Wendy returns from holiday and moans to Terry (the boss, lest anybody has forgotten) that the place fell apart without her. Terry retorts: "Well maybe that's what you had in mind when you let all those staff have holidays? Suzanne coped extremely well under the circumstances you left her in." Wendy is not amused.

- The hate campaign deepens. Wendy rips down some photographs I had pinned up in the cash office. Doesn't sound like much, but it really, really bothered me. What justification did she have to do that? The only good thing it did was banish my suspicion that it was 'all in my mind'.

Stupid isn't it? All this ill-feeling and resentment over something relatively minor that could have been settled so easily. But the result of it all is that Suzanne has been left doubting whether or not she wants to keep this job. She's brilliant at it and has so much respect from her team (with the obvious notable exception) and she shouldn't be made to feel like this over a bitter old sow who doesn't like it when things don't go her own way.

And just what am I supposed to have done to deserve what I'm getting at the moment. Wendy is refusing to alter her hours to cover my forthcoming holidays - which has led to me having to agree to work part of them. She can't even be bothered to say hello or goodbye to me.

The only consolation I have is that the Services team are, in general, supportive of me. They kindly report back to me the things that Wendy has been saying behind my back. They stubbornly refuse to co-operate when she tried to get them to bitch about me.

All in all, the atmosphere has been terrible recently. Absolutely nothing on the relaxed, casual and fun way of working we had only a short while ago. Everybody got along, even if we did get on each other's nerves from time to time, and work wasn't really such a bad place to be. Now that Wendy has almost totally withdrawn from speaking to anybody, I can't see that she'll last much longer - she's a reasonably proud woman and I doubt she'll stick around when people are beginning to laugh at her. No doubt she'll claim constructive dismissal though.

Other Issues
This hasn't been the only saga going on at Food Place. A huge fuss-and-nonsense errupted just after New Year when it became common-knowledge on the shop-floor that extra-marital shananigans were going on between two married colleagues - one of whom's wife also works in Food Place. I've well and truly kept my distance from this one, but things get complicated. You aren't quite sure who is on who's side and every conversation in the canteen is frought with politics.

A long-serving colleague was suddenly dismissed last week when it transpired that they'd been passing boxes of high-value stock through the back gates. It's reckoned that the losses the store incurred because of it run into the tens of thousands of pounds. It's left us all completely shocked because nobody had even the slightest notion that they were the type to do something like this - it only came to light because a customer who lives back-to-back with the service yard passed comment on what they'd observed to one of the cashiers.

So, that's the miserable post done. I've actually sat down and attempted to write something about it all several times, but I get depressed just thinking about it. The next post, I promise, will be about the customers!

As Promised: The Herald Angel Must Die!

2007-11-13T23:09:00.000Z

Would it hurt to keep Christmas in December?
Food Place have been exceptionally kind to us this year. They delayed the onslaught of Christmas carols and pop songs until 8 November. That's a whole week of delay that we don't usually get. We're usually straight into Christmas after Halloween.

When I think about it, working at a supermarket helps you to divide the year up into chunks. Boxing Day marks the arrival of Easter with a short respite in early February for Valentine's Day. On Easter Monday we set about changing the ransacked seasonal aisle for the next 'event'. Gone are the cute yellow chicks hatching out of giant eggs, in is Mr Sunshine. Yes, it's summertime. At the end of August, the summer stock halves to make room for Back to School, abruptly followed by Halloween with Christmas hot on it's heels.

Maybe this is the reason it feels like I'm on the fast-lane to being an OAP? And talking of old-age, I notch another year soon. On Sunday the 25th, I turn 22. How depressing. Well, probably considerably less depressing than being 45 and realising you're probably north of the halfway mark (which means I'm, most probably, more than a quarter of the way through my life). Or, worse still, being 75 and knowing the million-year-nap could commence at any moment.

How did Christmas carols lead into old-age and death? Well, let's continue with the theme of death for a little while.

The death, by brutal means, of: Santa Claus; reindeer; herald angels; choirs of children singing their songs who've practised all year long; cheap lousy faggots and old sluts on junk (they've failed to censor Fairytale of New York again); spacemen travelling through the sky; the Wombles of Wimbledon (just what is that all about? Are we in 2007 or 1974?); and Cliff Richard.

What I mean by this gibberish is this: if I hear one more Christmas song, I may not be responsible for my actions.

That's not to say I don't like them. But surely they're suited to a particular, and special time of the year? Christmas perhaps? I mean, come on. It's not even the middle of November, it's still autumn, there's no sign of snow and most people (by this, I mean me) haven't even thought about Christmas shopping yet. So why do we have to listen to this endless stream of seasonal cheer? To get us into the mood? Well that's all well and good. I do, perhaps, have momentary lapses into the Christmas mood. But then I remember that there's still six weeks left.

The solitary exception to this grumble is Elton John's Step into Christmas. I'd quite happily drape myself in tinsel and sing along to that one in mid-April. Oh, and there's Stop the Cavalry. But I'm sure I read somewhere that it wasn't intended as a Christmas song, so we'll discard that one.

And it's not just the songs. The store has already been embellished with tacky decorations and huge banners advertising Christmas food. We've even got the obligatory tinsel draped around the checkout poles (you know it's cheap and nasty, I know that too - but the customers like it).

What's the point in moaning about it? It's all around me and I might as well just start bopping along to all these 'timeless classics' and live for Christmas Day.

Any other business?
Given that I've just rambled on about Christmas and death at length, you've probably guessed that Food Place is not offering anything exciting to blog about at the moment. As I've mentioned, it's probably down to me only being there part-time now. I only work during the busiest times. I go in, do my tasks, and go home. There's very little time for gossip, dumb customers or stupid colleagues.

I suppose one thing worth mentioning is that Terry forbade me to leave the cash office or step down out of my supervisor role. Instead, I was promised the earth: "There will be no more bitching, backstabbing, ill-feeling and you'll get all the support you need." So far, so good. But just wait until the next time I, accidentally, ruffle the feathers of a cash-office colleague.

Revenge on Customers Amongst Other Things

2007-10-26T16:41:00.000Z

OK, it's gone past a joke now. No posts in twenty days! What is the world coming to? I'll tell you what - exhaustion. My university has seen fit to schedule all but one of my lectures in a 9.00am slot, and I think I've mentioned before that I'm crap at mornings, and the one day I don't have a lecture to get up for, I do a 7:00am start at Food Place. So, what with that and doing all my private study, when I get a spare moment all I can think about is my warm, cosy bed.

But today, in the midst of reading week, I've decided to set aside some time to get something published on this blog. My archive is cluttered up with half-finished and barely-started posts that I've optimistically set about writing in study breaks and after Food Place shifts. I suppose I'll finish them off sooner or later, but for now you'll have to settle for a mish-mash of work-related ideas that I've got running through my mind.

Revenge on Customers

Whilst helping out on the kiosk yesterday, I got talking to Debbie about scoring cheap victories over nasty customers. The conversation made me realise what a fairy I've become. Since becoming a supervisor, I've forgotten how fun it is to be subtly, or even pointedly, rude to stroppy customers. I'm far too nice to them; maybe I should return to the glory-days of being a not-a-care-in-the-world-part-timer who didn't give a toss about pissing off the nasty people.

Here's just a couple of things the conversation turned up:

When a customer places cash payment onto the desk rather than into your hand. These days, I think to myself "how rude" and proceed as normal. In the olden days, I'd get irate and slam their change onto the counter in return. Sometimes I'd even omit to thank them for their custom.
When customers sneakily bring 50+ items through the '10 items or fewer' tills. Nowadays, you'd be very lucky if I so much as offered a polite reminder of the item-limit for next time. Too scared of causing offense. Back then, I'd get revenge for their deliberate ignorance by hurling their shopping through so fast that we'd run out of space in the packing well before giving them the smug "this is why it's a ten-items only till" lecture.
When customers ask stupid questions. I've become far too patient and tolerant of their idiocy. In yesteryear, if a customer asked where the frozen chips were I'd have said "well you could try over there in the freezers." The fairy-queen me of today would say, "oh, frozen chips just over this way, follow me, are these the ones you want? There's crinkle cut ones here too!"
When customers lie. They do this a lot. In the past, I'd have came out and called a shovel a shovel. "No, you didn't ask for x, I clearly heard you, and you asked for y" or "you did not pick this up from the Buy One Get One Free Display because I watched you take it from the shelf over there!" Now, I go for the easy life and kiss their ass. "Oh, I'm so sorry I must have misheard you."

See what being a supervisor has made me? It's turned me into a customer-is-always-right freak! Well, not exactly. It's turned me into the type of shop assistant that holds it all in and blogs about it.

Food Place Catch-up

I'm not seeing nearly as much of the place, and I already feel a little cut-off from 'the crack'. I never seem to find out what's going on anymore and I don't even manage to catch the nasty customers.

About the only interesting event to note is the music-system malfunction. It usually does a very good job of playing a nice variety of tunes and not looping them round too often. But last week it decided to start playing a particularly long version of 'Kelly Watch the Stars' on a loop. For five days. Just when I was one more play away from learning every single note of the song, it unceremoniously launched into 'Whatever Happened to Corey Haim' and hasn't gone back to old Kelly ever since. Perhaps the system was updating itself ready to start throwing Christmas songs at us next week? It's bound to happen. It's usually on or around November 1st. So the next post I write is likely to be titled 'Stick the bloody partridge and it's pear tree where the sun don't shine!'

The cash office politics have flared-up once more. I'm once again in the position of being afraid to make mistakes, lest somebody else go poking through the paperwork looking for them. That isn't the worst part - I freely admit to making mistakes. It's only natural that the odd procedure goes tits-up when I'm rushing to get back to supporting the checkouts. What really bothers me is that certain individuals are taking their findings back to Terry and trying to make me look incompetent. I know it's unlikely he'll think any less of me for it. He's told me numerous times that he likes having a cash office supervisor who would rather be on the shop floor than locked in a lime-green-cell upstairs. All my mistakes ever amount to is money being in one place when it should be in another. And it's usually a case of one till being £10 down and another till £10 over. It's not as though I'm losing hundreds of pounds!

For a long time I thought our store was different. Other Food Places have their cash offices staffed by old Margarets and Joans who bicker and argue all day long and spend hours doing what can be achieved in 20 minutes. I always liked the way the cash office was a small-job in our store. All it ever amounted to was a couple of hours a day following laid-down procedures and it was operated entirely by younger staff and -unusually - three out of four of them were male. But now, people have left and bickering old women are back on the scene. You can imagine the rest.

I'd probably feel a lot better about things if I'd taken the time to vent some steam by blogging about it. As it is, I've bottled it all up and feel pretty depressed about work again. I'm thinking about speaking to Terry to find out whether he'll allow me to work my hours just supervising the checkouts. I don't want any of this cash office hassle now. Either that or I wait until there's a vacancy for kiosk staff and ask to be demoted.

Cashier, In the Canteen, With the Lead Piping

2007-10-06T23:59:00.000Z

Internet Woes
If you’d been wondering why I’ve been quiet over the past few days (not that long periods of time without posts is anything unusual for this blog), then please look to my internet ‘service provider’ for an explanation. What I mean by this, I’m sure you’ve already gathered, is that they haven’t been providing a service to me. At all. I’ve had green ‘LINK’ lights blinking at me for several days. I’d given up hope and was playing a game of Solitaire – face it, what other uses does a PC with no internet connection have? – when my anti-virus software unceremoniously launched it’s web-update function. A connection, at last.

Back to Food Place...It's probably not such a bad thing that my internet deserted me this week because, quite frankly, until today there was nothing to write about. Another week of everybody behaving themselves and no real problems emerging.

But today was something else.

Ringing Bells
Every now and then, the checkout staff at Food Place will take it upon themselves to have a bell ringing day. They ring for extra change, they ring for product replacements, they ring to say they've broken their till, they ring to say they can't send a pod, they ring to say they've dropped their pen on the floor and could I pick it up please. These days invariably coincide with days when I have a lot of other things to be getting on with.

There's nothing worse than trying to do the wages and being interupted every three seconds by a cashier ringing for your assistance. What could they possibly want? I ask myself. I've given them all change and left my keys with the front-end runner. How can they need me? Still, I'd better go down and see what they want...

"Andrew, I think I've just short-changed somebody," a dopey cashier informs me.

"Who?"

"A customer."

"NEVER! I mean, which customer?"

"Oh she's gone now."

So you really thought this was such a huge emergency that you needed to call me away from a very pressing task to tell me all about it!? As a matter of fact, you haven't even told me about it, all you've done is given me a vague outline of the events. Do you even know how much you've messed your till up by? Probably not. Because you're away with the fairies, as per bloody usual!

I tell the fool she'll have to wait until the end of her shift to find out. No way am I interrupting my long list of tasks to pull the drawer off and spot-count it.

The bells continued to ring in very much that fashion all day. Stupid questions, dumb mistakes, false alarms. By the time I'd finished the wages it was a miracle I had any hair left. More so that none of it had turned grey. I was seriously ready to batter the next idiotic cashier to ring a bell to death. Brutal murder at Food Place.

Robert
You may recall that some months ago - God it feels like yesterday - we got a new department manager. He immediately got on everybody's nerves, rattled cages left, right and centre and showed himself to be nothing but an arrogant fool.

Now, I can't remember whether I bothered to blog about the enormous improvement in his attitude and conduct. I probably didn't since this blog tends to focus on negative (more interesting) things. Basically, he was given a stern telling-off by Terry and he immediately bucked his ideas up. He started taking an interest in all of the store functions. Asking people about their jobs, watching them at work, asking for training and then, finally, offering to support us. It was actually beginning to become quite a pleasure to work with him.

Well he's gone and stamped over all of that now.

For the past week, he's done nothing but interfere, poke his nose in, complain and, generally, get in the way. Every corner I've turned he's been there, ready to criticise everything I'm doing. Most notably, he keeps banging on that I'm "relying too heavily" on his staff to cover checkouts at busy times.Well excuse me. I thought we were all a team here? Since when do any of us belong exclusively to one department? Since never. We're all there to run a supermarket - whatever that entails for us, be it serving on tills, baking bread or putting out stock.

Perhaps I should tell the checkout staff to stop filling and facing the cosmetics section? He forgets about things like that see. The cosmetics aisle is part of the grocery department, and should be replenished the same way. But no - "the lads on shopfloor" now don't do toothpaste and shampoo. When Terry came to Food Place, he put a lot of work into breaking down the old divide of "lads on the floor, lasses on the tills". Robert is now stamping all over that. He thinks fiddling around trying to balance tiny boxes of headache tablets is beneath the dignity of his "lads" (never mind the seven women who work primarily on grocery). If it's lighter than a 24 pack of lager, it's not hard enough 'graft' for them.

The man is just grating on me - badly. It was so bad on Sunday that I couldn't face getting him to sign off the weekly accounts. The duty manager has to do this - basically it's confirmation that a manager has viewed the cash sheet, checked for discrepancies and given it their approval. I just could not bear the thought of inviting him into the office. He'd stay there all day and droan away about a load of crap. And I'd end up killing him in cold blood.

Well that just about sums up Food Place at the moment. I'm preparing a post about the dumb things that customers do. Nothing fresh, I hear you saying. But I promise they'll all be hitherto unmentioned antics. Things that really make my blood boil. Stay tuned.

"I know my rights!"

2007-09-29T20:59:00.000Z

Oh, I really should never get going about this type of customer. You know them, the kind that, upon failing to get their own way by kicking and screaming, will resort to inventing their own consumer protection laws.

It's a subject that can arise at any time. We often get customers who will attempt to play the legal card for the smallest of problems.

Wrong Price, Wrong Label
A very good example of this occurred last week. A gentleman had picked up a bottle of wine - one of the more expensive ones we sell - and taken it to the till. It scanned at £10.99, which resulted in a huge tantrum.

"The shelf said £6.99!" he protested.

Cue supervisor calls and checks being made. We located the item on the wines section and it was merchandised next to a price label that clearly stated the name of the wine in question and said £10.99. It wasn't long before the man came stomping up the aisle, pointed at an empty space, three shelves along, and insisted: "This is where I got it from. Look. The ticket says £6.99!"

"Yes, but that space is for the Hardy's Stamp variety, as it says on the label there. I can only guess that somebody has picked up the bottle you took and put it back in the wrong place. The price for the bottle you have is stated over here where it belongs - £10.99," I explained patiently.

I wasn't being a jobsworth. If there had been a whole case of this particular wine merchandised against the wrong price tag, I would usually admit that it had been a replenishment error and refund the difference in price. But when there clearly hasn't been a mistake made by the staff, I won't give refunds willy nilly.

"BUT IT WAS NEXT TO A TAG THAT SAID £6.99!" the gentleman roared in my face.

I calmly explained that the name of the wine that is £6.99 is stated on the label - and it wasn't the one he'd picked up.

"But you have it on the shelf at that price, therefore you are legally obliged to give it to me at that price!"

Oh my bloody God, not this again. You may recall I was reduced to tears by an evil customer whilst having the exact same conversation some months ago (here). As soon as somebody gets it into their head that they're legally entitled to something, they won't budge. Never mind the fact that they're completely wrong.

I remained as diplomatic as I could be: "If the ticket next to the wine you picked up bore the name of that wine, I would refund the difference. But it doesn't. The ticket says that £6.99 is the price for another wine. This one is £10.99. Would you like to chose a different one?"

He continued protesting that I was breaking the law and promised to call Trading Standards about it. I don't really know why I bothered putting up such a defense, because if it gets back to Food Place HQ, they'll only back down and shower him with gift vouchers to apologise for his trauma.

Electrical Goods
This post is being written thanks to an incident today that involved an electrical appliance.

This is, by a long way, the worst product category for producing angry, refund-demanding customers. I've seen it all - people demanding that they're legally entitled to a refund on a product despite having absolutely no proof of purchase, people demanding refunds for toasters that broke when they 'fell off' their worktops. Yes, I'm sure your toaster jumped onto the tiled floor! One man, upon being refused a refund for a DVD because it wasn't faulty, proceeded to remove it from it's box, right in front of us, and run a scratch down it with his car key! He actually thought that would help his case?

Today's incident was less dramatic, however. A lady brought back a small kettle, not boxed, and informed us that it had stopped working. OK, I thought, this should be nice and straight-forward.

"Do you have your receipt with you?"

"Yes, it's just here," she said, pulling out a slip of paper. As soon as I saw it, my heart sank. It was a yellowed, tatty slip of paper that had clearly been printed on our old impact-receipt-printers - when the store was operated by its previous owner. Knowing that we'd had thermal printers for at least three years, I knew right away that this product was far too old to be refunded as faulty.

"OK, when was this purchased?"

"Er, will it have the date on the receipt? I can't see, you look." She handed it to me.

"Right. You bought this kettle on the 6th October. Two thousand and one. Six years ago."

She looked at me, waiting for the refund. That she certainly wasn't getting.

"I'm afraid we only guarantee electrical goods for one year from the date of purchase."

"WHAT?"

"We will only refund items in store that were bought less than a year ago. Any faults that develop beyond that are covered by the manufacturers guarantee - which is usually just two years as standard."

"But I've paid you for this kettle! It doesn't work! I want my money back!"

"Well I'm not arguing that it doesn't work.." - it didn't look too healthy - "...but it has been in working order for six years. That's a bloomin' good life for a kettle in my experience." Particularly one that only cost you four pounds and ninety-nine-bloody-pence!

She wasn't amused: "Get me the manager! Trading Standards need to know about this!"

Terry was called. He told the woman exactly what I'd just told her. The product had clearly reached the end of its working life and needed replacing. He even offered to show her the ones we have in now. But no. She continued to demand her money back. By the time she'd finished ranting I was ready to grab a new kettle, throw it in her face and scream "THERE! Take it you tight-fisted old vulture!"

Once again, she promised, Trading Standards would be hearing about us!

Personal Property
We've had a lot of cases of customers telling us we're liable for damage to their property. None more unpleasant than the lady who had her bicycle stolen from the racks outside the store (which are on the street and have nothing to do with the store). She ranted at us for about twenty minutes whilst waiting for the police to arrive, insisting we pay her £300 immediately. She tripped herself up, in mid-rant, by admitting that she hadn't put a chain on the bloody thing!

Once again, though, she was absolutely convinced that we were liable for any damage to her property. We're not. There are signs all over the exterior of the store and around the car park, that vehicles are left there at the risk of the owner. Now I can't be sure of the legality of these notices, but I'm pretty certain Food Place wouldn't put them up if we were in fact liable for such theft or damage.

You Can't Throw me out!
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that they have an automatic Human Right to enter Food Place and do whatever they like. A few years ago, a middle-aged woman was heard, by several people, making racist remarks about one of our cashiers. A few people complained to the duty-manager and the woman was asked to leave the store.

"You can't tell me to leave! This is public property! Make me!"

What? Public property my arse!

In the end, the police were called, the woman was escorted to the office and issued with a life-long ban on entering any of Food Place's stores. She continued protesting, and began repeating her racist insults, in front of the police, and ended up being prosecuted. Turns out she was a council worker and ended up losing her job, as well as being plastered over the local newspaper.

Bet she wishes she'd kept her big mouth shut now.

Fame at Last

2007-09-25T20:13:00.001Z

Well, hardly. I was mentioned in the Guardian's blog roll. Big thanks to Al for pointing this out to me as I hadn't noticed - I actually read the Guardian on that day too! It was only a small mention, but in the three days since there's been an extra 100 visits per day. Not bad. So, to any new readers, welcome and I hope you enjoy what I've got to say about working at Food Place.

Which isn't a great deal at the moment...

The most boring week ever?
Perhaps it's because I'm not spending much time there recently, but Food Place has been such a dull place over the past week. The customers have all been perfectly well behaved, none of my colleagues have got on my nerves - though that's definitely got a lot to do with spending less time in their company - and Food Place haven't moved the shop around or installed new equipment.

To add to this tedium, I haven't had any stressful days. I've gone to work, got on with my daily tasks and routines, gone home again. No staff sickness, no workload of fiddly, time-consuming admin tasks that everybody else considers themselves too important to do. Even the wages were a doddle this week - not one person forgot to swipe and virtually everybody worked their flat contract - no overtime to process at all. Hitherto unheard of. I know I don't like stress when I'm experiencing it, but it does, at least, give me something to blog about.

So, no crack (as we say in these parts).

Time Management
You may recall my post that dealt with the new, and extremely unfair, attendance management system that Food Place is introducing across all of its stores next month (here). I'm pleased to announce that my prediction was, predictably, correct. There was mass-outrage and a never-ending stream of hypothetical scenarios were put forward by store managers that rubbished the system. What if there's a queue at the swipe machine? What if somebody is late for a genuine reason? What if somebody is at work on time, but is harassed by a customer en route to the swipe machine?

As a result of this, Food Place have backed down on the original proposal to force staff to swipe at very precise 15 minute intervals. We will now have a three-minute leeway. So if we swipe at twenty-seven minutes past, we'll be paid until half past.

A result.

Yet Another Catch-Up Post

2007-09-11T22:05:00.000Z

It's been a while since I last posted and there are several reasons for this. First and foremost, I've started my university course over the last couple of weeks, so I've been settling into that. Another reason is that I've been ill. I was struck down (how dramatic) with a sickness bug - the sort that leaves you with bad chest pains caused by overly energetic vomiting. The other reason is, I've been so sick to death of Food Place that I completely lost my sense of humour about working there. But that's, hopefully, buried now, so I can get back to normal.

The frequency of my posts might well decline from now on. I've got my degree to think about and I'm still, rather foolishly, trying to cram in 27 hours of Food Place a week. I'm actually feeling a lot more confident that I can cope with this now that I've got started with it. My university timetable is pretty forgiving and, considering that I can work the majority of my hours over the weekend, I can still get another three shorter shifts in through the week and still get a day-off from both education and work - although it's probably going to end up being my 'frantic independent study day'.

So, back to Food Place...
The atmosphere at work has improved dramatically. Whether it's because I haven't been there as much or whether it's to do with people calming down, I'm not sure. I'm just happy that things have settled onto an even keel.

The first point to note: the powers that be have decided to make yet more changes to our store. Not content with doing a full refit early this year, installing new freezers in March, removing the deli and installing new checkouts, they now have deemed it necessary to install a 'queuing system' at the kiosk.

Now, I'm not denying that this particular addition is more than welcome. Customers are notoriously useless at organising themselves into orderly queues - particularly at the kiosk. You get five people queuing at one side and three at the other; you get people barging to the front regardless. Well not any more! Next week, they're installing railings around the kiosk with 'impulse purchase' racks in the middle. And we'll be able to press a little button from any of the tills that will cause a robotic voice to herald:

"Next customer to cashier number two please!"

Very Post Office. I'm actually finding the whole prospect quite amusing. Ever since Peter Kay mocked the little voice you hear in Argos, I can't think of it without giggling. I can only imagine how bad I'm going to be when it's actually installed.

Bakery Disaster
On Sunday I was called upon to help on the bakery as Margaret had phoned in sick. It was all going to be so simple. I'd been left a list of exactly what I needed to put into the ovens, which setting to use and what times I should do it. I wasn't overly thrilled at the prospect, probably through the certain knowledge I was going to burn myself, but I nonetheless thought I'd cope.

The burn scenario popped up much sooner than anticipated. As I was removing the first batch of crusty rolls, I pulled the tray a little too forcefully and it shot right into my forearm. Ouch. My reflexes pulled me back quick enough to avert a major blister situation, but it still hurt.

And then I got burned again. I'd taken out the wholemeal bloomers, wrapped them all with the cursed sealing machine and placed them back onto the tray to take to the shelves. I prodded the tray to make sure it wasn't too hot and it didn't appear to burn me. So I picked it up with my bare hands and set off. It was fine at first, but at the very moment it was too late to turn back the thing suddenly became intensely hot. By the time I arrived at the shelf it was as though I was carrying a red-hot poker - I've never dropped anything so fast in all my life! I now have very red fingers.

Things passed without further catastrophe for an hour or so. At one stage I actually felt like I was on top of things. I had the shelves fully stocked with every single product line, it was all selling, quite literally, like hot cakes and I had my next batches in the ovens. Alas, sadly I hadn't timed things very well. When a load is ready to come out of the oven, a very loud siren sounds and refuses to shut-up until you open the oven door. All four ovens blasted off within five seconds of each other - it sounded like the Germans bombers were on their way - and I handled this sudden emergency very badly. I tried to get the sodding pastries out as quick as I could (the time between them being fully baked and turning black is roughly eight seconds) and ended up dropping a whole tray of Very Berry Muffins. Cue much swearing and further panic about getting the other trays out.

I muddled my way through it all though in the end. Considering I hardly ever work on there, my sales figures for the morning weren't bad at all. So I was, at least, praised for that. I got a nice little thank-you mention on the board for my efforts.

Still, I won't be doing that again in a hurry.

Office Politics

2007-09-02T21:36:00.000Z

Malicious Bitching
The past couple of days at work have been particularly unpleasant. So much so that, for the first time in a long while, I've felt like I don't want to be there. I won't go into too much detail about what's made me feel like this. There's nothing more dull than listening to somebody droan on and on about the intricate details of their working relationships.

The whole situation has arisen because one supervisor got into trouble for poor job performance and, rather than accepting this and pulling their socks up, is attempting to drag everybody else down with them. They started with obvious targets like Ed - somebody who wouldn't know an honest day's work if it slapped him in the chops. But I didn't think for one moment the mud-slinging would extend to me.

There have been accusations made that my work in the cash office is "sloppy and full of mistakes". What makes it harder to take is that these slurs are coming from somebody who I'd previously respected and thought a great deal of.

My first reaction to hearing that I'm "sloppy" and "mistake-prone" was anger. How dare somebody accuse me of being incompetent at a job that a monkey could do - never mind somebody who's studying for a degree and has five A-levels. All the cash office entails is entering numbers into a computer, counting things and extracting information from printed reports. To even suggest that there's a level of skill involved, or more than a minimal level of concentration required, really annoys me.

My next reaction was to give tit-for-tat. Fight back and defend myself. Of course I'm going to make the odd whoopsie with the cash procedures -I'm the first to admit to it - when I sandwich the job in between running about doing so many other things. In my mind, if the checkouts are busy, I need to be down there supporting them. That comes before sitting upstairs doing admin jobs. But other supervisors who operate the cash office think differently. When the door swings shut, they're in the office and won't move from it. They spend an hour doing something I'd cram into twenty minutes.

My final take on the issue was influenced by my subsequent chat with Terry. As far as I'm concerned, I'm now satisfied that I do the best I can and I'm happy with that. If somebody else wants to go nit-picking and scouting for my mistakes, then let them. I'm not perfect.

But I remain very disappointed with the person who's said these things. It feels like a betrayal.

Loo-Roll Woman & Tricia

2007-08-29T14:17:00.000Z

Yesterday a lady came storming into the store, went to the kiosk and demanded to speak to a manager at once. She was carrying an opened pack of Charmin toilet paper, with one roll missing, under her arm and looked like she really meant business.

Gina didn't argue with the lady and called a manager to the kiosk. I happened to be nearby when Robert arrived to handle the situation. When I heard what followed, it made me very glad that I hadn't jumped in and tried to help...

"I was in here doing my shopping last week and I put into my trolley a 12-pack of Andrex bathroom tissue - the one I always buy."

"Uh-huh," Robert went along with the story.

"As I did so, a man in a shirt and tie approached me and said, 'do you know that the Charmin is on promotion? Same size pack, half the price' and proceeded to force me into putting the Andrex back and buying this!"

She was clearly referring to Terry. He's always stalking the customers, watching what they buy and talking them into getting the special offers.

Robert continued to nod along whilst, in the background, I made an effort to look busy so I could listen to the rest of this encounter.

"Well, I got it home, used it and I was very annoyed to find it's the shoddiest variety of bathroom tissue I've ever had the misfortune to use!"

I was already smirking away to myself at the way she said 'bathroom tissue' rather than loo-roll. Perhaps she felt better about standing in the middle of a supermarket ranting and raving about the stuff if she didn't refer to it as bog roll.

"Oh I see," said Robert, "What appears to be the problem with it?"

"It has a very rough texture and it's flaked everywhere, all over my bathroom!"

I ducked under the kiosk counter to have a good giggle to myself. I mean, honestly! If you were so peeved off about a pack of loo-roll, you'd return it and pretend the sheets were splitting or something; save yourself at least some embarrassment. She might just as well have brandished it in Robert's face and screamed: "It's like wiping my arse with sandpaper!"

Tricia
When I first started at Food Place, there was a lady on the checkouts called Tricia. I didn't really see much of her - at the time I worked around my school hours and she mostly worked mornings. I'd actually completely forgotten about her existence until Susan, the new woman on the tills, mentioned her today.

Susan said: "do you remember that woman on the tills here that used to be so unbelievably slow, it looked as though she was about to stop?"

I had a think about it and Susan helped me along with a description before I finally placed this woman as Tricia. Susan was laughing away to herself as she did humorous demonstrations of how Tricia used to work. By the end of it I was peeing myself laughing - but I think that had more to do with me being extremely tired. I tend to react quite hysterically to the slightest amusement when I'm tired.

Basically, Tricia was so slow that it could only have been deliberate. Nobody could ever work at a pace like that naturally and she certainly didn't dawdle around when it came to home-time.

She would turn to the conveyor belt. Examine the items nearest to her. Carefully select one. Inspect it very intently, taking so long that she almost had time to read the complete ingredients list of the product. Turn the product around to look for the barcode. Grip the item with both hands. Present it to the scanner. Shake it around a bit if it didn't swipe first time. Listen for the bleep. Carefully pass the item to the waiting customer. Repeat the process.

It's very likely that readers won't see the humour in this. You have to have seen this woman in action to realise why she was so funny.

It was partly to do with her mannerisms and facial expressions. Her eyes were always narrowed to slits and she would move her gaze, slowly of course, around the area. She would always be chewing gum - but very very slowly. Grinding it in her mouth - combined with her general lack of haste, to look at her you could almost believe your vision had switched to slow-motion mode. And she never laughed. If a customer made a small-joke to her, she would stick on a wide grin and loll her head from side to side - as though simulating laughter.

Not content with reminiscing about this character, we proceeded to do impressions of her. We all sat ourselves on tills, dying for the next customer to arrive. Just so we could serve them Tricia-style. I found it impossible - I just could not go that slowly! And I ended up bursting out laughing in a customer's face and having to spend the rest of the transaction apologising and murmuring that "something tickled me earlier".

That's what the monotony of working at Food Place does for you.

Timesnatchers!

2007-08-24T20:19:00.000Z

This is a landmark post. It's going to be the first blog entry I have made that directly criticises Food Place management. I'm perfectly aware that if the Food Place mafia (the security staff) ever read this blog entry, they'll know instantly that this blog is about our company. But I'm confident that I've been vague enough about my location that it can never be traced to me.

Anyways...

The New Time Management System
On September 23rd, a new system will 'go live' in all Food Place stores across the country that manages the working hours of staff. It's, basically, an upgrade of the system we already use that will tighten the grip the company has on how much it pays us - and when I say tighten, it beggars belief just how strict they are proposing to become. And I predict mass outrage about it.

The current system involves staff swiping their clock-card on a reader at the start and end of their shifts. The times these swipes are made are then used to calculate our pay. But it's changes to the 'rounding rules' that are going to cause major problems.

At present, we're paid in fifteen minute intervals, which means the system is already rounding-off our swipes. At the moment, the watershed is the midway point. For example:

You're supposed to work 12:00 - 16:00. You swipe on at 11:53 and swipe off at 16:08. The system will recognise you as having worked four and a quarter hours. In actual fact, that's exactly what you have worked, but the system calculates it slightly differently - you don't get paid for the fifteen minutes between 11:45 and 12:00 because you worked less than half of it. But because you worked more than half of the fifteen minutes between 16:00 and 16:15, it will pay you for that.

You can't say fairer than that really. Sometimes you're very slightly short-paid, but other times you're very slightly overpaid. So the overall effect on your take-home pay is minimal.

The new system
The rounding rules have been tightened in such a way that, using the above example, you would only be paid for four hours - despite the fact that you actually worked exactly 4 hours and 15 minutes.

Allow me to elaborate. The new system doesn't have a mid-way cut-off. To be paid for a 15 minute time period, you must work for every second of it. This means that any swipes after 11:45 will round off to 12:00. So let's examine the example again, but with different swipe times.

You swipe on at 11:46 and swipe off at 16:44. This means that you have worked for 4 hours and 28 minutes. Which, to any right-minded person, is four and a half hours. But to the Draconian swipe system, it is four hours! You worked 14 minutes at either side of your scheduled shift, therefore you didn't work for a full 15 minute unit and won't be paid for it.

Similarly, if you swiped off at 15:59, instead of 16:00, you would only be paid until 15:45.

What's right about it?
Before I launch into a tirade about why this is outrageous to me, I should show Food Place the courtesy of making it clear that I can see why they are tightening the rules. At the moment, there's a hell of a lot of employees taking the piss out of them.

When an employee is scheduled to work 12:00 - 16:00, this has been planned so that the employee is there to cover the period when Food Place has recognised there is work for them to do. Some people exploit the current swipe system by swiping in early and swiping off late. The company thus ends up paying lots of employees an extra half an hour each day. Spread over a month, I'm sure the amount of money that canny workers are extracting from the company is huge.

And the majority of those employees practising this method of pay-boosting aren't providing the company with the benefit of more work. Lots of people swipe early and then stand and have a good gossip until the time they're supposed to start. So basically, Food Place is currently paying a lot of people to stand and chat and they're quite right to be pissed off about it.

What's wrong with it?
Basically, they've tipped the scale so far in the other direction that it's going to actually deter people from working. They've gone to the extreme of being so penny-pinching that it only doubles the blow from the insulting rates of pay Food Place offers.

Can you imagine the struggle I'm going to face at busy times on the checkouts? No longer will anybody be willing to stay an extra five or ten minutes to help get the queues down before leaving. And quite rightly. I would refuse too. Why should I stay back to help out if the company isn't going to pay me for it?

Other problems are going to arise when it comes to 'finishing off' after the store closes each night. We currently schedule the evening checkout staff to finish at 22:10. By the old swipe system, this meant they got paid for the tidying-up and cleaning they did. But now, we're either going to have to eat into our stringent labour budget and keep them there until 22:15, or stop expecting them to clean up. I would never continue to ask them to work until 22:10 knowing they would only be paid until 22:00.

Which leads me to the other MAJOR criticism I have.

Food Place seem to be quite keen on keeping this 'migration' -as they're calling it - low-key. They don't want the staff to be formally briefed about it, although they've stopped short of telling us to remain silent. This is despicable. I've already illustrated how easy it will be to lose 15 minutes' pay. All it will take is for somebody to do that three times a week and over the course of a month they've lost 3 hours. To some of our part-timers, that's a whole shift. Some of them perhaps won't notice this - but many will. And it's going to be me that has to give them the bad news:

"Sorry Debbie, over the course of the last pay-month you deprived the company of 12 minutes of productivity by swiping off a minute early to go home. As a result, you've lost three hours from your pay."

Terry's attitude has disgusted me too. He says "bring it on". He's looking forward very much to the 'minute-grabbers' in our store finding their pay smaller than expected. Doesn't it just show that he's paid rather too much? Doesn't he understand? We're talking about people who are paid at just above the National Minimum Wage here. Lots of our staff live in very difficult circumstances. Yes, the system will rightly hit the deliberate con-artists who've been at it for years. But lots of genuinely hard-working staff are going to be short changed!

What about people working overtime to help out at short notice? Go back to my earlier example and imagine that somebody comes in and works 4 hours and 28 minutes to help us out - out of the kindness of their hearts. And the company neglects to pay them for the 28 minutes of honest work they've put in.

It's all wrong. It's far too strict. All it's going to do is cause bitterness, resentment and discourage people from working. If the big bosses view us workers with such contempt that they need to introduce an all-take and no-give system like this, then what hope is there for us? If they get away with this, what will come next? Incidentally, the briefing pack we were sent commented that 'scores of retailers' have already adopted this approach and it's been a resounding success.

Yes. A success for the company as they've cut costs by robbing their staff!

Drama Queens & Corpses

2007-08-17T17:02:00.000Z

After a reasonably quiet week on the fussy customers front, a lady chose today to table her motion to have our entire product range tweaked to suit her.

The lady in question is a customer who frequents Food Place. She's one of those strange customers that you never know how to take. Some days she appears to be in high spirits and chats away to you like a best-friend. Other days she does nothing but moan; usually about the finer details of her personal life.

This week, the big topic is that she's been diagnosed with diabetes. She's told us all about how she is waiting to find out whether she will have to inject insulin on a daily basis; all about her new diabetic nurse, who's lovely by the way; all about her quest to discover whether she can milk any money out of the government. Well, her words were closer to "this is affecting my quality of life! I might have to stop working, they should be paying me disability."

I felt like slapping her in the face and yelling at her about the four or five diabetic staff we have at Food Place. You didn't hear them moaning for days when they were diagnosed and they aren't screwing it for all it's worth by trying to get out of work and extracting extra benefits.

I digress.

This lady has decided to complain to us, formally, that our product range is not suitable for diabetics. She wrote Terry a snotty letter which went something like this:

Dear Mr Lucas
I am very annoyed that Food Place does not cater for me properly as a registered diabetic [oh, we're keeping a directory of people with blood-sugar disorders now are we?] and here are some examples of this.

You stock Dr Pepper full sugar, but not diet
You stock cans of full sugar Tango, but not the diet version
You don't stock Robinson's Summer Fruits in a low sugar variety

[the list continued ad infinitum] I feel very discriminated against by this stocking policy. Please change matters.

Just who the hell does she think she is? The opening paragraph of her letter suggested that Food Place doesn't cater for diabetics in general. She then moved on to give a list of very specific products that we stock in a standard variety but not a low-sugar variety. So what about the several hundred sub-brands we do stock that are suitable for diabetics?

So basically, Mrs Muck, you're actually saying Food Place is discriminating against diabetics who insist on buying summer fruits squash rather than blackcurrant & apple. Who insist on buying Tango rather than Fanta.

Or, closer to your meaning still, you're moaning that we don't stock a long list of products you want, and using diabetes discrimination as a weapon to get your own way.

Dead Customers

Today we found out a regular customer had died. Paula, who lived on the row of houses opposite Food Place, died of a heart attack aged 52. She wasn't in ill-health and seemed absolutely fine when I spoke to her yesterday morning - only about three hours before her death.

As most people know, a sudden death like that brings some harsh realities home. Any day on this earth could be our last. And what are we doing with our lives? Working in supermarkets. I spent a lot of the day walking around in a little daze thinking about dying and how seemingly random it is. Paula got up yesterday morning and went about her normal daily routines - popping over to Food Place to get something in for her husband's tea before she started work - all for the last time. She might have been worried about a dentist appointment next Wednesday. Or putting off paying a gas bill. And it's all over now.

And death makes people talk. Everybody at work was discussing it today. I was helping Deborah out on the kiosk this afternoon and we got talking about other customers who have died on us. I worked on the kiosk for quite a long time, and if there's anywhere in the store where you get to know the customers, it's there. Mostly because it's the same people coming in for the same products. A lot of the time, I used to find myself subconsciously going to grab a packet of their brand of smokes before they even asked for them. Every now and then, a customer would suddenly stop coming in and you always assumed they'd kicked the bucket.

The most memorable is the one we'd all like to forget about. The customer called Bob who visited the store twice every day - and then died in it. He collapsed in the wines & spirits section, suspected heart attack, and was dead before he even reached the hospital. Strange that I even remember the date - Tuesday 2nd November 2004. My God, it seems like last week! I'm getting old!

Not quite a customer, but linked to the store nonetheless, was a 10-year-old boy called Dylan. His mother was a regular customer who I often spoke to and I remember, vaguely for I was never paying that much attention, she often had her small son with her. He was run down by a truck on the road immediately outside Food Place and three members of our staff were on the scene administering First Aid. That was a terrible week too. The staff involved were deeply disturbed by what they'd seen and the front of the store was covered in floral tributes.

There was a young-ish man who shopped most evenings for odd-bits. I didn't know his name until after he'd died, but he was always chatting away to us. I had no idea he was an infamous criminal until the night he fell through a glass skylight whilst trying to break into a warehouse and plunged 30ft to his death. JPS Lights were taken out of our tobacco range not long after he died because he was the only customer who ever bought them.

Another slightly bizarre one was a young woman who often came in with her father. She was on holiday in Africa and was killed in a safari accident. The local rag never elaborated the details, which is probably a blessing because I don't imagine a safari accident would be very pretty.

There's lots more, but I'm going to stop being morbid now you'll be pleased to learn.

Jekyll & Hyde

2007-08-11T16:25:00.000Z

The Strange Case...
There was a bizarre customer today that seemed to have a split-personality.

She'd gone to Cleo's till just as she was opening it up at the start of her shift. Most supermarket shoppers will know that it can be quite a pain if you've got a big trolley load and you're the first customer there - you don't get time to get everything onto the belt before the action starts.

Seeing that this lady was going to fall behind with the packing, I went over and started bagging things for her whilst she finished putting her shopping onto the conveyor belt. When she'd finished, she seemed delighted at this help:

"Oh my, oh thank you so much! You've made my day!"

She watched me packing for a few moments before suddenly exploding:

"Don't put all that in there! It'll be too heavy and I can't lift it!"

Taken aback, Cleo and I shared a puzzled glance with each other. I don't think the lady noticed this but, nonetheless, she swung back to her former self:

"Oh, how ungrateful of me to complain when you've been so helpful!"

My God! What is this? I was thinking to myself, almost too scared to speak in case she burst into another furious rant. In the event, I didn't need to speak, she did it of her own accord.

"NO! That's still too heavy, I'll never get that into the car!"

Miffed at such ingratitude, I reorganised the bags a little so the weight was more balanced.

"Oh, you're ever so kind, thank you."

But seconds later...

"I'll never get all THIS into the car!"

And then, she flipped back once more...

"Thank you very much. At least I've got a good strong husband at home to help me get it all back out again."

By the end of that encounter, I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Cleo was just as baffled as I was. Perhaps you couldn't appreciate how unnerving this customer was without seeing her. She literally veered between being so smiley and chirpy it was intolerable to being so full of rage and hatred she was shaking and spitting as she yelled. Perhaps she was doing it on purpose to make my day interesting?

Long winded
A customer telephoned the store today and when I answered, I got perhaps the longest query I've ever come across. "Oh, hello, my name's Madeleine Hayes, and I'm just telephoning you because I thought you, or one of you staff, might be able to assist me in discovering whether or not you might sell such a thing as an electrically operated toaster?"

So, basically, "Do you sell toasters?"

I mean, come on! It was as though she was asking for something completely bizarre that she'd never heard of before. Have you ever come across a device for toasting bread that isn't electrically operated? Apart from a spit for holding bread against a fire, I doubt it. And since when was it necessary to formally introduce yourself to shop assistants?

Still, I suppose I shouldn't be complaining because she was, at least, polite about it.

Self-Centred Staff
An incident today has given me the opportunity to have a good old whinge about people who think they're important and should have priority over their colleagues when it comes to booking holidays.

Today's event involved a team member requesting 25th August off as holiday because it's their wedding anniversary. They were told, quite rightly, that two weeks' notice was nowhere near enough and that because so many other staff had already booked holidays over that week, the only way they'd get it off is by asking somebody to swap a shift.

They went off in the huff at this and stomped off to Terry's office to complain. But they didn't just complain about the holidays not being granted. The complaint was made personal towards the supervisor who had refused the holiday request.

Just who do people think they are? It's made perfectly clear in the company induction and in the terms and conditions handbook, issued to all staff, that the company's standard notice period for holidays is three months. In our store, we say give two months' notice to be guaranteed the dates you want. You can ask at shorter notice and you will get the holidays if they're available. If not, tough.

There's just no fairer way of doing it than allocating dates on a first-come-first-served basis. Which is why I got so annoyed at the team member's reaction to being refused. It's not as though they didn't know when their own anniversary was and they should have booked it months ago. It's no good asking for time off when the schedules are already compiled for that week. As it was, that particular week has been booked solid since March.

When this colleague finally found somebody who was willing to swap a shift, they then started moaning that they'd need to get a babysitter for their new shift. Well Christ almighty! Did you want your anniversary off or didn't you!?

My Review & More Kiosk Annoyances

2007-08-10T16:26:00.000Z

My Review
Was actually quite painless, I'm very pleased to report. For once, Terry managed to keep the whole thing running at just under two hours. That might sound hellish for some people, but believe me, for Terry it's actually quite brief. The last review I had commenced an hour before the end of my shift ("I'm sure we can squeeze it in," he said) - he ended up having to pay me two and a half hours overtime for it!

The main criticism I got from him is one I entirely accept. I don't throw my weight around enough. Perhaps that makes it sound bad, but the way he put it across, it sounded much better. He said something along the lines of: "you're far too willing to accept other people not supporting you like they should and instead of getting mad and putting your foot down, you take on their share of the work and try to do your own as well, which leads to things falling apart occasionally". This is true. It was a bit rich of Terry to point this out, however, considering he's the main culprit for not supporting me. I mentioned this and he accepted that, yes, sometimes he does tend to overlook my department - but he assured me he only did so because he was always so confident that I'm more than capable of managing. Which, I suppose, is nice. In a way.

On the plus side, he had plenty of positive comments to make about how the department is running. He's "over the moon" about the low discrepancy figures and commented that, of all the departments, checkouts and services feels the most upbeat and has the best morale. Which is all down to me and Wendy's hard work. Aww.

The best comment of all was "I think you're easily the most customer-focused person in the store." He elaborated that, throughout his Food Place career, he's always found cash office, personnel and admin people to consider themselves "back of house" and tend to have as little to do with customer service as possible. He said he was surprised, when he came to our store, at how much time I spend on the front-end and how I "never lose sight of the needs of the customers and plan my days to make sure I'm always around the checkouts at the busiest times".

Ironic really that he should say things like that when I actually spend so much time slating the customers on this blog!

I'm surprised I managed to get my head out of the door when he'd finished with all of that praise. I was so pleased to hear things like that. I thanked him for such positive and warming praise but, never missing an opportunity, I pointed out how much better it would make me feel if he told me these things more often.

So, on the whole, it went extremely well. If I've learned anything it's that, in order to get more support from Terry, I need to give the impression that I'm incompetent and need help (tehe, sarcasm).

Kiosk Annoyances Part Two
So after listening to all that praise for how "customer-focused" I am, I went back down the front and spent the last two hours of my shift getting irate with stupid customers.

I jumped onto the kiosk to get the queue down and immediately found another gripe to add to my list in this post. It fits in with a theme I already discussed - requests. Why can't people just ask for what they actually want without muddling the issue? Today, a lady asked for "Twenty Lambert and Butler and twenty Mayfair". So I turned round and grabbed twenty of the standard L&B (in a silver and blue pack) and twenty standard Mayfair (dark blue).

"I don't want those ones, I want menthol!" She snapped after I'd scanned them through the till.

I felt like blasting: "well you didn't ask for menthol did you!?"

Not long after her, another customer arrived that reminded me of another kiosk moan. People who have their own special names for the brand of cigarette they smoke. Names that aren't printed on the packets and have no fathomable origin.

This lady always says, "twenty B&H red please."

I remember the first time I ever served her because I couldn't find what she was looking for. I was thinking to myself I know there's a B&H gold and silver, but red? What makes this lady more annoying is that she's asked for "B&H red" for years now and, every time she gets a new kiosk assistant, she can clearly see that it causes some confusion - because they don't exist! Yet, she doesn't bother to learn the correct name. She actually desires "B&H Superkings" which are just a longer version of "B&H Gold". But she stubbornly persists that they're subranded as "red" when they aren't.

I always, after picking them off the shelf, deliberately say "Twenty Bensons Superkings was it?". She always looks quite annoyed, but she won't be stopped. We've all just got used to her now.

Another regular is the lady who requests, in the poshest voice you could imagine: "twenty Silk Cut silver cigarettes please." I think she believes that smoking Silk Cut Silver puts her a class above other smokers. Curiously though, for somebody who takes such pride in her brand, she's quite shifty. She shoves them straight into a carrier bag and always glances nervously around - probably checking to make sure nobody she knows is watching.

This is a phenomena usually only seen in the younger smokers that you have to ask for proof of age. Their eyes always dart to the back of the queue whenever somebody else joins and you know they're thinking "Oh my God, is that my Auntie Ally, is she gonna see my buy fags?"

Another kiosk moan emerged soon after; people who trespass behind the counter. This was never a problem before as the old kiosk had a huge heavy counter-flap for access. But the new one has a small door on the front next to the lottery terminal and unauthorised, uninvited access is becoming an increasingly frequent event.

Naturally, the Nosey Woman, discussed in this post, is the most frequent offender. Whenever she's paying for lottery, she pushes the little door open and leans over the counter, gawping at what's underneath. I often wonder why she goes to such effort when she could just stand by the wall and get a perfectly clear view of the back-end of the counter.

But there's other unwanted guests. Lots of people now, upon spotting the door, walk through it and start scrutinising the products on the shelves behind the kiosk. Picking up packets of cigarettes and inspecting them. The kiosk staff just ignore them and hope they'll go away, but I barge right at them screaming "I'm sorry, you can't come behind here, staff only! OUT!" Well, maybe not that blunt, but I certainly show them the door!

What a Wonderful Day!

2007-08-09T16:35:00.000Z

I just cannot believe how well today went!

Maybe it was because I went to bed early last night and woke up feeling utterly refreshed and ready for anything. Maybe everybody else was in a good mood. Perhaps there was something in the air that decided today would be good.

I didn't have any staff moaning at me. The customers were all lovely. Robert, for the first time ever, got through the entire day without upsetting or annoying anybody. Every task I endeavoured seemed to slot very nicely into my day - nothing seemed to eat up too much time.

If only every day could be like that one, I'd be a truly happy person.

Another Retained Card
This morning, Angela got a message on her till that instructed her to retain the customer's credit card. When this happens, as readers will probably know, the retailer is being instructed to withhold the card because the issuer suspects there is something amiss that must be stopped immediately. Well, in theory this is the case. Nine times out of ten, when the customer telephones the card issuer for an explanation, the lying, snivelling little toads will push the blame onto us and tell them "oh, there really is no reason Food Place should have kept your card."

When I was first summoned to today's incident, I was thinking 'oh Christ, here we go, a perfect day ruined!' But the customer couldn't have been more understanding. Their exact words were: "Well, at least it's reassuring to know that the banks are monitoring your cards and they'll pick up on anything fraudulent."

I nearly collapsed and died from shock. I have never known a customer take such a positive outlook on something as unpleasant as having their card snatched from them by a supermarket. The man was so pleasant about it all and I'd really like to thank him. Right here, on this blog. A public thank you message to one of the most surprisingly understanding customers I've ever dealt with.

Ah, on days like these, retail actually seems like a worthwhile occupation.

Performance Review
Tomorrow morning, I have my 6-monthly performance review with Terry. I haven't actually had one of these bi-annual meetings now since last September, but never mind. I'm not exactly devastated that I'm overdue a grilling on my ability to do my job.

Terry is one of those people who can turn a short, snappy, informal procedure into a major operation. He takes 200 words to say what can be said in 20. He poses questions and then rambles on for so long "just giving you a feel" for what he wants to hear, that he answers the bloody question for you. He moves away from the corporate-standard format for the review and adds his own questions. And don't even start me on targets.

The targets he set me last September ranged from the impossible to the downright insulting. Or, in the case of: "I want to see you drive cash discrepancies down to no more than £3 per week", both. I was infuriated that he completely disregarded the progress I'd already made (discrepancies averaging at £7 per week versus £44 under my predecessor) and set me a ridiculous target that worked out at 3p per till per day. Yes, I agree, I would absolutely love to have such small discrepancies all the time and, in fact, we do achieve the £3 figure around 1 week in every 4. But to set it as a benchmark for every week!

Other targets left me rolling my eyes. "Make sure the progress chart for cashiers is updated every week." Err, Terry, I do it every Monday morning as part of my routine! Was he really having to pick his brains so hard for a target that he couldn't scrape anything better than that? Because making sure a chart is updated is really going to improve my job satisfaction.

But for every insult, there's a compliment. I went into my last review fully expecting to be unjustly slated, but I got a lot of positive feedback. So positive, I felt quite humbled. Didn't exactly reduce me to tears, but it was very nice to know he does appreciate me - sometimes.

Tills Upgrade
The till system had an upgrade installed last night that has greatly improved the speed at which it operates. No more waiting 3-10 seconds for the cash drawer to flip open after the transaction is processed. No more waiting 10 seconds for the system to ready itself for the next customer. It's instantaneous now. As soon as you press a key, the system does what you asked it to.

There's been some other changes too. A lot of the menus have changed around or been tampered with so options can now be found in different places. This resulted in a lot of cashiers sitting scrolling through screen-after-screen, feeling like wallies, just trying to weigh a banana.

Never fear, we shall adapt to this shiny new way of doing things soon enough.

118 118 Staff

2007-08-06T18:45:00.000Z

There's been stories in today's newspapers about a Facebook group set up by staff at 118 118 Directory Enquiries. The group allows staff to tell stories about awkward customers and vent their frustrations about working for the service.

Read it here (The Sun version)

When I read about some of the things that staff have posted on the site, I immediately thought about this blog. OK, so this blog doesn't reveal the company I work for (although regular readers probably have enough information to make a good guess) nor is it particularly critical of the company. In fact, I don't believe I've ever posted anything that would harm Food Place's reputation - either for the service it provides to its customers, or its merits as an employer. Most of the things I rant about reflect more about me and my colleagues than anything else. But I couldn't help but feel that my blog could actually be likened to the Facebook group for 118 118 employees.

And when they say things like: "I wrote a few a****** callers numbers on the walls of public toilets and pasted them on many an Internet site" - it's worrying that a blog like this could be viewed as similar.

Yes, I do rant about our customers. I've called some of them every name under the sun. And I can entirely sympathise with this comment from the 118 118 site: “People of Britain, re-discover the phonebook, you lazy b******s.” Yes, we all know they're the people who, ultimately, pay our wages. But that doesn't stop them getting on our nerves and I don't think it should take away our right to come online and have a screaming great rant about them.

It's not as though I've ever named a customer I've posted about. Given the anonymous nature of this blog, even their location isn't revealed. If I was posting copies of refund slips on this blog, giving out their details, then I would deserve to be sacked and banned from working in a shop ever again (oh, the delight!). But as it is, I don't. It's a bit of harmless steam-venting and, I hope, it provides a little bit of entertainment for anybody who happens to read it.

It's probable that if a Food Place customer ever stumbled across a blog entry that was actually written about them, they wouldn't even realise. We all see the things that go on around us from different points of view and my take on an encounter is nothing like that of the customer.

Having said all of that though, I wouldn't want to be lumped into the same category as a group of people who spoke of their customers with such outright contempt. Anything derogatory I say about customers is said entirely for comic effect. I don't really come home each night so full of bile that I need to post scathingly insulting messages on the Internet about people. When you consider that my Food Place serves between 20,500 and 22,000 customers each week and balance that against the tiny proportion of ones that I rant about on this blog, you can see how small the number of outright awkward customers there are.

For me, it's just a bit of fun. For a few members of the 118 118 group - they're clearly taking things too far.

The Sun article has some reactions from customers.

“This is bang out of order. I’ll never use their service again." and “It’s customer service at its worst. I won’t be surprised if callers hang up in droves.”

OK, I wouldn't be happy if I thought that call centre workers could paste my number on toilet walls if they didn't like my tone, but don't these people understand that staff are only humans? If you yell and scream at a call centre employee down the phone, with no provocation, then yes - they are going to go home and post nasty remarks about you on the Internet. Employees in the service sector are simply not paid enough money to take a professional stance and say "Oh, I say, that was a nasty gentleman," and think nothing more about it.

Just follow the golden rule. Be nice to shop staff, and they'll be nice to you. Be unnecessarily rude or aggressive, and you'll get everything you deserve. In 118 118's case, that means you can expect lots of prank phone calls. But, at Food Place, we'll stick with belittling you and making you look a clown on this blog. No offence.

Terry Rant

2007-08-05T21:58:00.000Z

I'm a cash office supervisor. But Terry seems to think that makes me a supervisor of everything that general managers prefer to ignore. And, in his case, that means the entire Services department.

I'm sick to the back teeth of running an entire department single-handed with no managerial support. It wouldn't bother me so much if Terry didn't spend approximately 94% of his time nannying the grocery supervisors. He can't even trust them to pull in a delivery without his support. If they have a problem, he'd gladly spend hours on end trying to sort it out for them. But when it comes to a problem with checkouts or cash office or personnel or EPOS, we can sod off.

The finest example of this came today.

Last night there was a leaving party and most of the staff attended, myself included. A group of about six of us came home at midnight after three or four drinks because we all knew we were due in work early and didn't want to have a hangover. The rest stayed, got leathered and didn't roll home until about 6.00am.

So, naturally, two cashiers, one grocery assistant and the grocery supervisor (bloody Ed) failed to turn in for work. And what was Terry more concerned about? Needless to say, his beloved grocery department. But as for my checkouts being understaffed, he couldn't give a stuff.

So I spent an hour and a half serving between the kiosk and the checkouts when I should have been in the cash office. At one point I didn't have any prepared till floats ready for an arriving cashier and called Terry to fetch one from the cash office. He gave me the "what the hell am I paying you for?" look.

After I managed to get away from the tills I decided to update him on how short-staffed we were going to be in the last two hours of opening. He had the cheek to turn round and say: "we can't lend you anybody because we're short ourselves."

I was on the verge of entering into an almighty row. "We're short? Aren't you the general manager? Or have I missed something? Are you now the grocery manager and not responsible at all for Services?" I felt like thundering. I managed to hold back, briefly - it was the next comment that saw me slam the keys on his desk and stomp off on my break:

"I need you to do the section count for pet-foods since Ed's sick."

"You what? You want me to do Ed's job for him because he stayed out on the razz until 4 o'clock this morning and was too hungover to drag himself into work? What about me? I'm about an hour behind in the cash office because I've been sat on a till covering another two hangover-cases. It's ten to two anyways and I've been in since 9 without a break. I'm going on my dinner."

And off I stormed. Terry wasn't amused because he kept coming into the canteen and bothering me - it's a sign he's in a mood. He'd come in and announce things like: "the stamps are running low", "I can't find the keys for the supplies cupboard [that I've never set foot in nor taken any interest in ever]", "Is there a carrier bag order coming in because there's only two sleeves down there?"

By the time I came back from my break, however, he seemed to have mellowed and spent the rest of the day calling me mate and sucking up to me. He even kept coming to the cash office to see me, but didn't seem to have any particular reason for doing so. He'd just watch me for a few minutes in silence, before checking the sales figure and leaving again. But the ultimate act of sucking-up came at the end of the day. "Are you behind with refloating the tills? Because I can help if you like."

If he hadn't offered out of pure guilt, I might have collapsed and died at this unprecedented gesture. As it was I declined the help. If it's only on the menu as a peace-offering he can stick it. I'll cope alone.

But things had better change soon, or I'll go. I'm not one for making empty resignation threats - I normally sit down and talk to Terry about whatever is bothering me. But I've raised the lack of support and the grocery-worshipping issue with him countless times and nothing is done about it. He puts so much pressure onto whichever Services supervisor (me, Wendy or an acting-up-general-assistant) is on shift that we can't cope. Some days I'm expected to supervise the checkouts whilst I'm upstairs in the Training Room updating the training charts - unless I can learn to split myself in half, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. Yet Terry still wants the highest standard. He wants cashier bells answered immediately when he knows fine well I'm upstairs doing work he's thrown at me. He only peeks at our department about three times a day and every time, he wants to see perfection.

So today, as we were getting ready to leave, I said: "you'll either have to lower your expectations of how checkouts should run or give us a bit of help now and then."

I doubt I've got the message over though.

Kiosk Annoyances

2007-08-01T16:08:00.000Z

For non-UK readers, it occurred to me as I was forming this blog entry in my mind today, you might not know what a kiosk is - in supermarket terms.

It's the counter, usually near the main checkouts, with tills that sell, exclusively, cigarettes, tobacco and lottery tickets (or, at least, they're supposed to sell those things exclusively - people actually insist on paying for basket-fulls of groceries there too). When I went to the USA, a few years ago now, cigarettes seemed to be either available from certain sign-posted checkouts or just out on the shop floor with the other merchandise. I'm not sure about other countries though. Perhaps our tiny nation is alone in adding kiosks to supermarkets - just to annoy the staff.

When we got the new kiosk in May, I spent a lot of time on there. The slightest hint of a queue and I was right there, leaping onto one of the tills to help out. This was because I liked the shiny new-ness of it and, for some reason, this enhanced the experience of working on there. It was the same two weeks ago, when the whole kiosk was moved along several feet to get it away from the entrance. Just that slight move seemed to change the whole experience of working on it.

Of course, that's worn off now. All that I'm left with is the irritations and frustrations that come with manning this counter. Allow me to elaborate.

Questions

Kiosk customers will often ask the most stupid questions, make the most vague requests you could imagine, or give you too much information about what they want:

"What's the lightest cigarette you do?" Are you dumb? Do you really think it makes any difference?
"Twenty fags please." What am I? Psychic? I need to know which brand you want!
"Twenty Embassy Regal Kingsize please." Do you want Embassy or Regal? One's red, one's blue. Or do you want ten of each? Help me here!

Memory Games

And as if some of the demands they make aren't stupid enough, customers can also cause annoyance in the way they make their demands. Lots of naughty customers will approach you and say something like this:

"Could I have twenty Lamberts, ten Richmond Superkings, ten Regal Kingsize, five Hamlet cigars, three lucky dip lottery tickets for tonight, two lucky dips for Saturday - on separate tickets, one of them's for Aunt Belle - a Hotpicks three-numbers for tonight, a Lucky Donkey scratchcard - oh, and a lighter."

And I'm standing there, cross-eyed and thinking "que?". How on earth could anybody expect you to remember all of that twaddle?

But, worse still, there are the people who think you're incapable of taking more than one request at a time. It's much worse with lottery customers. They'll begin by giving you one play-slip which you then process for them. This involves taking the slip from them, walking to the lottery machine, and then walking back to till to add the lottery ticket to their bill. When you've done that, they hand you another slip. Repeat process. And another. Repeat process. Then they ask for a lucky dip ticket. Repeat process. Then they want a Thunderball. Repeat process. Then they ask for twenty Bensons. Walk over and get them, bring them back to scan onto the till. Then they ask for twenty Richmond. Repeat process.

I could, honestly, kill those people. I really could. Are they just trying to see how fast they can get me to move? Or whether they can make me dizzy?

Grocery Shopping

The kiosk is quite clearly not a checkout. There's no conveyor belt, no packing area and no scales. But that doesn't stop people thinking they can pay for anything they like there. "But I'd have to queue twice!" they protest if you tell them to pay for their shopping at the checkouts and then get their lottery tickets. I always feel like saying: "Oh, so you'd also like to pay at the deli counter to avoid queuing again?" Bugger off.

I have no objection to somebody with a small basket of items paying at the kiosk at quieter times. They want lottery or ciggies so it makes sense to pay in one go at one till. But lugging a basket crammed with 50 items through the kiosk at peak lottery times is not a good idea. For a start, it's not fair on the people who do it properly and pay for their shopping at the checkouts then join the kiosk queue for whatever else they need. There's nothing worse than waiting for ages behind somebody who's paying for far too much on tills they shouldn't be using.

But since Food Place has forbidden us to turn baskets away from the kiosk or put 10-items signs up, there's not a lot we can do about it apart from politely remind people not to do it. And get our head's bitten off for doing so.

Back to Lottery

Why can't people fill out slips properly? It's simple. You mark the draw you're entering, and mark the numbers you wish to play. If you can't decide on numbers, mark the 'lucky dip' box and the machine will pick for you. If you want more than one line of numbers, simply complete another box.

But it's all too complicated for some. About half of the slips you're handed and place into the machine will be spat back out. People don't fill in enough numbers, they don't mark the relevant boxes to opt-out of additional games, they mark too many numbers. It's really not that bloody difficult!

And then you get people who hand you slips that look like they've been eaten and vomited back up. How the hell do they expect the machine to process it? Damp, full of creases, coffee stains. Dear oh dear. Customers will sometimes make their own alterations to their play-slips. For example, last year the UK lottery operator made the play-slips for all games longer - meaning they didn't fit into the little plastic wallets that some people keep them in. No bother! They just cut the tops off them! For God's sake, it's a machine! It only recognises what it's programmed to recognise!

Some don't even bother with play-slips. We have a growing number of regular customers who, week-in, week-out, can't be arsed to fill out a slip, instead choosing to come to the counter and rhyme-off the numbers they want for you to enter manually into the machine. Can't you see there are people waiting? I haven't got time to prat about waiting on you hand and foot!

And finally...

Don't dare ask for anything from the top shelf. I'm five-foot-naught and can't reach without standing on the bottom shelf and smacking my head off the top shelf in the process!

I Love Bitching

2007-07-31T20:42:00.000Z

Having inspected the stats for this blog, it would seem that visitors love reading posts that mock, insult and belittle my colleagues. Of all the labels I use, Colleague Bitches is, by a long way, the most popular one that people explore.

However, looking back through the posts that I have tagged with this, I've noticed that my bitchiness isn't particularly fierce. Alex, Sandra and Cynthia are the only colleagues of mine that have dedicated blog entries (here, here and here) - and even those aren't as bad as they could be.

So I thought I'd give you an updated low-down on who's annoying me at work and this time I will do my best to make it warts, boils and all. Nothing spared. It's just that it's quite difficult to get passionately angry about somebody unless you've got somebody to share the anger with - why else would bitching be such a popular activity at work? Anyways...

Robert
The new department manager at Food Place continues to rub me up the wrong way. And it's actually getting quite creepy now. Last night, I went out with a few of my friends from Food Place for a quiet drink (well, it was supposed to be quiet!). At about 10:00pm, were sat in a window booth at a bar and Debs looked out of the window to see Robert standing on the opposite side of the street staring right at us.

"Nobody look now," she whispered - God knows why - "but Robert is on the other side of the road staring at us!"

One by one, we glanced from the corner of our eyes and, sure enough, there he was. He wasn't with anybody - totally alone and staring at us - he vanished about five minutes later. And then the text messages started. He texted three different people, bombarding them with questions. Where were we? Was everybody at work invited? When were we going home? The icing on the cake was when he phoned Greg at 12:30am to remind him that he started work at 5:30.

I didn't know how to feel about that. Did I laugh at it or find it outrageous or spooky? At first I was a bit spooked. My mind ran away and starting adding bits to the memories of him standing there. By the time I'd finished blowing it out of proportion, he had red eyes, a death-stare and there was thunder and lightening to set the scene.

But all the same, there's something seriously bloody wrong there. Why didn't he come over and join us if he'd seen us? And what was he doing watching us? And checking up on us? Does he think we belong to him now? He's just a creep and I'm getting more and more uneasy about him all the time.

Sandra
Oh God I hate this woman so much. She never stops moaning about the people "rahnd 'ere". Well sod off back to Slough then! She loves nothing more than picking fights with people and then twisting it round to try and convince Terry that it's all because she's from 'dahn sahf'. She's done it with me more than once and I just laughed in her face. "Yeah, one of my best friends is from Aldershot - I really hate southerners!"

Her despicable tactic of latching onto people she perceives as weak continues. She's all over any new starter like a rash. She tries to convince them she's lovely and everybody else is horrible, loading all the bullets and waiting for her victim to fire them. Yet, whenever she's confronted about things she's said, she denies everything: "I promise you dah'ling I'm not like that. I would never say things behind peoples' backs."

Yeah, and I'm Moira Stuart!

Will
He's one of the department managers. As I've mentioned before, he suffers from mood swings. On Monday he worships Food Place and motivates everybody to think the same. On Tuesday he "can't wait to get out of this shit hole" and drags the morale to the floor. He constantly arrives at work still hung over from his binge-drinking the previous afternoon (he never makes it to the evening!).

Before, I could tolerate him. Now that he's developed a tendency to talk to me like I'm a sack of dirt, I can't stand him. He's forever poking his nose into my department and telling my staff what to do. If I set them off scrubbing the checkouts when it's quiet (a job that needs done at least once a week) he'll drag them away and have them helping somebody else - who doesn't particularly need help.

There was a row over the magazines last week too. Will, in his majesty, went behind the kiosk and pulled out the magazines back-stock box - which contains everything that won't fit onto the shelf, but will be needed later in the week. He pulled out two magazines with last month's date on them and yelled at Lyndsey for not getting them returned. OK, she was careless and we lost credit for them - but bloody hell, the way he went on, you'd think she'd lost us thousands!

Ed
He seriously needs to die (ouch!). Or at the very least, leave Food Place and become permanently unemployed. If that's still too nasty for you, he could go and work in a small shop with Will as his manager and Sandra as his fellow assistant. I cannot abide the bloke. But King Terry seems to love him. Ed gets away with things that nobody else does. He doesn't wear the correct uniform and he takes unofficial breaks all the time - he must smoke about 80 a day judging by how often he's round the side of the building.

He's also a lying little toad. A few weeks ago, he lost one of the small handheld computers we use to do stock counts. It turned up in the cold-room, dead from hypothermia, and he was the last one seen with it. Instead of owning up to his costly mistake, he turned the blame onto Gina, claiming she'd left it there. She must have been the first person he laid eyes on when trying to formulate his excuse, because there is no fathomable explanation as to why Gina would have had the thing or what she was doing in the cold room.

It would seem I'm not as bitchy as I think. Those are the only people I can think of anything nasty to say about. I don't even have much to say about Alex at the moment - he's actually been quite pally with me of late and he hasn't done anything especially offensive. He's still a tart though. And so the claws come out once more...

Conspiracies

2007-07-28T20:33:00.000Z

It would seem that all the cashiers at Food Place have got together and decided to drive me round the twist. All day they've done stupid things. Persisted in asking stupid questions. Summoned for assistance when it's not required. Summoned me to do tasks for them they're perfectly capable of doing themselves. Held competitions to see who can get rid of the most change in the shortest time. Constantly asked to be relieved for a toilet trip.

In case you didn't quite get all that - they've drove me up the bloody wall!

Dianne Leaves her Brain in Bed
It started first thing this morning. Dianne rang for me three times in the space of fifteen minutes to ask dumb questions. Firstly she asked "do we do these?" whilst waving a suspicious-looking card at me. It turned out to be a card given to convicted criminals to allow them to pay fines. Yes Dianne, we do, in fact, allow people to pay their fines here, but we decided not to train anybody to handle it, hoping you'd just blunder your way through it and miraculously do it right! (Sarcasm, as I'm sure you gathered.)

Minutes later she rang down again. "This lady's forgotten her purse, but she lives miles away. She wants to know if she can take the shopping now and pay next time she's in." OK, not a question, as such, but how dumb can you get? Yes Dianne, of course you can allow people to float off home without paying for their shopping. That's what Food Place is all about!

Next time, about three customers later, "Andrew, this isn't scanning, can you find me a price please?" What? You mean that packet of cheese you're waving at me that's got £1.09 plastered right across the front of it?

If she'd rang that bell one more time, I'd have gladly throttled her.

Deborah's Change Requirements
This morning I was in a very industrious mood and I got the morning change run done and dusted within half an hour of the store opening. I had every till crammed to the gills with every denomination of coin and was confident I wouldn't have to even think about change again until at least 3.00pm.

But Deborah had other ideas. By 10.00am she needed more pound coins. Annoyed at this attempt to scupper my change plans, I nonetheless gave her 100 more £1 coins and £40 in £5 notes. Nobody else needed anything, so I had to do this change run specifically for her till. What a waste of time, but I soon got over it.

Not two hours later, when most of the other cashiers hadn't even got through their first bag of £1 coins, Deborah rang her bell again:

"Andrew, I need some more pound coins."

"What the hell are you doing? Eating them? Have you not been working your change?"

The following line was delivered with such perfection that, despite my annoyance, I had to laugh (she was just finishing serving a customer as she said it)

"Yes! I have been working my change! [to the customer] that's £9.99 change, thank you!"

"Oh, you've been working your change, but you've just handed a customer a pocket-full of the stuff, without asking for the penny!"

At least we both got a bit of a giggle, but I still had to go away and do ANOTHER change run for one till only.

The Bells
Four times today, the bell was rang and I walked several thousand miles to assist only to be told that it didn't matter - they didn't need me after all. What the hell were they playing at? I'll tell you what it is - cashiers spot a potential problem, looming about five miles away on the horizon, and immediately ring for assistance - ignoring the 100 possible solutions they could use without having to bother a supervisor.

Oh, it's doing my head in just thinking about it, so I'll go away and get some rest. Hopefully I'll be able to recharge myself adequately so I don't have another stressful day tomorrow. Highly unlikely...

Me: The Mystery Shopper & Ellenfoot's Closure

2007-07-24T15:04:00.000Z

I don't know if other retail workers experience this, but when I go down town, or to a different supermarket, my critical eye switches itself on immediately. I've got hawk-eyes for merchandising standards, customer service, cleanliness and a whole host of other criteria I judge shops on.

On a trip down town today, I took a look around myself in Wilkinson's and wondered why it seems so popular. It's cluttered, messy, lacking in staff - and most of the ones they do have are rude and unhelpful - and actually quite dingy looking. I suppose in a shop like that with low prices, people expect a bit of mess. But then, we had a Kwik Save store near Food Place that was very cheap and yet extraordinarily clean, tidy and well decorated. Or perhaps people don't even notice such things. Thinking back, I don't think I ever took much notice of shops before I worked in one.

Poundland didn't fare any better. When we got the tills with our purchases, two out of eight of them were open and the queues were sprawling everywhere. There was a supervisor-type person standing at the back of them with one of those call-centre-esque ear/mouthpiece things on. He didn't seem even remotely aware of how many customers were queuing. OK, so maybe there actually weren't any more staff there to sit on a till. In which case, why wasn't he apologising to the customers?

It's this very issue that gets my back up in shops like Lidl and Netto. Their whole philosophy seems to be something like: 'We give you goods at cheap prices, so don't you dare expect anything closely resembling good service!' It doesn't matter what time of day you shop there, you can only expect one till to be open. They claim they're not 'wasting money' on overstaffing stores so they can offer cheap prices. I don't see it that way. I think: 'I'm coming in here, putting money into your tills, so do your bloody bit and get me served!'

At Food Place, I like to think that even when we don't have enough till staff to meet the demand, we act quickly to do something about it. I'm a checkout supervisor, but I can't just stand there and watch out-of-control queues. If there's no staff there, I throw my keys at the duty manager and get myself onto a till. It really annoys me when I don't see this sense of urgency in other shops.

The worst offender is Morrison's (one of the only supermarket chains I don't mind admitting this blog isn't about). They don't seem to mind having four people strutting along the checkouts on support duties while there's not half the number of till staff required. A lot of the time, they just stand in a crowd at their little desk and chat away to each other - oblivious to the fact that there's legions of waiting customers just staring at them.

Lack of checkout staff leads me into another area that makes me want to rip my hair from it's roots. Self-service checkouts. There's nothing worse than staff trying to prise you out of a queue to herd you through the self-scan tills. Yes, I'm aware that I only have one item, but when I'm shopping with a company that makes vast profits, I refuse to let them get away with forcing me to serve myself. My stance is partly down to the awful functionality of these machines - they're slow, very unintuitive and I've never witnessed anybody get more than five items through them without a supervisor having to come over and piddle about with the screen at least once. I also object to companies trying to squeeze every drop of profit they can by cutting out the human-contact. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd much sooner be thanked by a human voice than a robotic one!

And don't even start me on electrical shops. Why is it, when I just want to take my time and browse the options, I have to bat away attacks from sales persons every thirty seconds. Comet is the worst - they've got more predators in orange shirts swarming around than they have customers! Yet, when I've actually made my choice and would like to buy a product, there's nobody in sight. There's one salesman in the next aisle putting such a lot of effort into trying to persuade somebody who clearly has no intention of buying - but it would be rude to interrupt. When somebody does float along and you ask for help, their response is invariably "Oh, I don't do this department, I'll send a colleague along for you." Cue more waiting. And waiting. I once stomped out of Curry's in a huff after asking four staff members for help and still waiting almost 20 minutes with no assistance in sight.

See, I can be a snotty customer too. Perhaps I should be more forgiving of some of the less composed Food Place shoppers? Nah. I'm never rude, and I don't expect anybody to be rude to me.

Ellenfoot Closure
Staff at the neighbouring Ellenfoot branch of Food Place were gathered together on Sunday evening to be told the store will close on 22nd September. A rival supermarket chain opened up right over the road from the store in April. The sales initially halved. The manager remained over-confident that there would be a magical recovery and all the lost customers would come back. He was wrong. Sales dwindled slowly over the following months and they are now 71% down on their former glory. This, actually, still leaves them with a respectable take-figure considering the small size of Ellenfoot and their proximity to such a large competitor, but what has really killed the store is not how much the customers are spending, but what they buy. Special offers and promotion stock account for 85% of their sales - and promotions are loss-leaders. They can only make a company many if the customers also buy non-promotional goods too.

Staff have gradually defected to work at the rival store and haven't been replaced. Of a former team of almost 100 staff, only 22 remain. Some of the supervisors have been relocated to our store and the rest remain at Ellenfoot to face redundancy.

It's been strange really. My branch of Food Place was always geared towards beating Ellenfoot. We made sure our service, availability, pricing and general standards were better - Terry was once absolutely obsessed with being better than them - but we could never really top their sales figures. We have, and have always had, competitors - Ellenfoot didn't. Before April, Ellenfoot would take around £45,000 on a Saturday, versus our £37,000. Now, they struggle to top £10,000. Suddenly, it's as though we've got nobody to compete with anymore. Ellenfoot's fall elevated us to the #1 spot on our region in terms of sales. £195,000 for a 13,200 square feet store is good - for Food Place anyways.

Oh well, I expect I shall soon be summoned to help Ellenfoot clear out their nooks and crannies of age-old stock. I did this gritty task when Bartonfield Food Place closed and it 'aint pretty. Packs of cigarettes that are so old they don't carry health warnings - bottles of 'Grants'' Vodka - how long ago did it change to Glen's? And every store I've been in seems to have, in a dusty little corner somewhere, a whole crate of matches that are so old they'd probably explode if you tried to use them. Oh, I can't wait.

Whoa! A Record

2007-07-14T20:14:00.000Z

Today saw the highest number of awkward, strange, bizarre, rude or downright evil customers I've ever come across inside of a single day. It was literally one after the other! And it wasn't just the customers - the day was packed with unusual occurrences and it just felt like one of those days that makes you wonder when things are going to calm down!

Daily Telegraph
It began with a relatively run-of-the-mill rude customer:

"Where are your daily newspapers?" she asked, approaching the kiosk counter.

"Just over there," Lisa informed her, pointing towards the news-cube, stationed quite literally ten yards away.

"I want a Telegraph."

There was a pause - Lisa was obviously waiting for the woman to go and get it. But it soon became clear she wasn't going to budge, so Lisa said: "If you'd just like to take one from the box and I'll put it through for you."

"Well can't you get it?"

I was standing at the podium, which is behind the kiosk, and I was already seething with rage at how downright awkward, not to mention snotty, this customer was being. Did this woman not realise that supermarkets are, by their very nature, self service? You collect the items you require, place them into the vessel we provide for transport, and present them to a cashier who organises payment. Simple.

Sensing that Lisa was a little stuck for words, I intervened. "Let me get it for you. Telegraph was it? You see, Lisa here can't leave her till unattended - for security reasons."

"Well it would only have taken her thirty seconds!"

Well why the frigg is such an issue for you to pick it up yourself?

"There you go, one Daily Telegraph, your magazines are inside," I said, overdoing the fake yet quite pointed and deliberate politeness.

Without so much as saying thank you, the woman motioned to the till. She wasn't even willing to put herself through the strain of taking the paper from my hands. Giving up, I dropped it in front of Lisa and walked off, leaving her to deal with the lazy cow.

Swallowed Cards
Shortly after midday, an angry looking man came storming into the store. I was unlucky enough to be the first member of staff he spotted.

"Oi! You! I've just been at your cash machine and it didn't give me my card back!"

I don't remember my extensive property portfolio including an ATM.

"Oh, well I'm very sorry, but we don't operate the cash point, all I can do is give you a hotline number for Lloyd's TSB as it's their machine. Or you could call your bank and they can arrange it to be returned to you."

"What's this bollocks? You have a cash machine on the side of your building, and you don't operate it?"

Offended at his tone, I continue: "No, Lloyd's TSB operate the machine. We don't have any access to the back of it."

"Well it's got my card and I want it back right now!"

"Well, as I said, all I can do for you is to give you the telephone number for the operators of the machine. When a card is swallowed, it's held in the machine until it's next emptied."

"What a load of shit, I want to see the manager!"

Terry is called. He tells the little dweeb the exact same thing that I just did, interspersed with protests of "get me my card!" "this is bollocks!" and "so I've got to phone a hotline on my own phone bill because of your incompetence?"

Eventually, Terry allowed the man to call the number from the phone on the podium. He gave the poor operator who dealt with his call the exact same verbal diarrhea that I got. In the end he slammed the phone down on the desk, called us "stupid pricks" and stomped out.

What a charming gentlemen!

Alcohol Woes
Soon after the above incident, a young man came to the checkouts with a basket full of alcoholic drinks. Stephen asked him for proof of age, and he presented a birth certificate. We told him that we don't accept this as proof of age and he was fine about it, picking out his non-alcoholic purchases and buying those before leaving. Fine. I wish all such incidents passed as smoothly as that.

But then his father came storming back into the shop.

"Have you still got that basket full of alcohol there that you've just refused my nineteen year old son?!" He spotted it, sitting on the vacant checkout behind Stephen and said he would be buying it now.

Stephen acted in accordance with the law: "OK, do you have any proof that your son is over 18?"

"My son isn't buying it now, I AM!"

"I understand that, but the law states we cannot sell alcohol to anybody who we believe is buying on behalf of a minor."

"Are you stupid or something? I've just told you he's nineteen and he was trying to buy it on my behalf!"

Not wishing to get into a further nasty argument, Stephen summoned me over. I'd already been listening and knew exactly what I had to say - but I was still panicking. Something about this man's tone and aggressive stance made me very nervous of what was going to happen.

After being updated on what the situation was, I explained: "the fact is, he tried to buy the alcohol first, and you're now trying to purchase it instead of him - which suggests to us that you're buying on his behalf. We can't allow this, as Stephen explained, because we'd be breaking the law and the terms of our Premises Licence."

"For a start, he gave you proof of his age!"

"Yes, he gave us a birth certificate. This proves that the person it belongs to is 19 - but there's nothing on there that verifies it belongs to him."

"So you're saying he's using somebody elses as fake ID?"

"No, I'm not saying that at all, I'm just telling you the reason we can't accept birth certificates as ID. It has to be a passport, driving licence photocard or another photo-card with the PASS logo on the back."

He started kicking off even more, so I informed him I was calling the store manager to come and deal with the situation.

Terry arrived and, yet again, repeated exactly what I'd just told this fool. That it is against the law to buy on behalf of minors and that all the evidence pointed towards him as doing so.

"Well if it's the law, get me the fuckin' law! I want the police here!"

I could hardly contain myself. This prat wants us to the get the police involved? And what are they going to do? I'll tell you what they'll do, bang you up for wasting their time and applaud us for being a diligent retailer!

Terry, who's much better with aggressive customers than me, took the man over to the customer seating, sat down and calmly explained things again. The man then produced his credit card, saying that the surname on there matched the surname on his son's birth certificate. Therefore we had proof he was 19 and the alcohol could be sold. Thankfully, Terry wasn't having any of that. He explained that we'd refused the sale for perfectly legitimate reasons and would be standing by that decision.

"You've not heard the last of this, I'm going to the papers!" And off he stomped. I can't wait to see the headline.

Where's my birth certificate?
Not five minutes later a man appeared by the podium.

"Has a birth certificate been handed in?"

"I'll just check for you, when did you lose it?"

"Today."

"OK." I examine the lost property register. Nothing. I get the box out and have a look. Nothing.

"Well I've been told by my friend it was handed in here."

"Well it would be logged in this book, or at least be here in the box, it's where we keep everything that's handed in. So, sorry, we don't have it."

"But you must have."

God's breath! I've told you once! Do you think I'm trying to steal your identity? "Sorry, we don't have it. Who told you it was handed in?"

"My friend. It was last Friday - or the one before."

"I thought you said you lost it today?"

"It's got my bank details on."

"What? A birth certificate?"

"It's in a yellow wallet - you know when you get a birth certificate, it comes in a yellow wallet? You must have it."

"I'm sorry. We don't have it."

He stood there and stared at me. I was quite unnerved. Will you just fuck off!

He eventually strolled away along the checkouts and started looking on top of them all to see if it was there. How bizarre?

Theft
I noticed a customer walking over to the magazine section with a basket full of alcohol. I didn't think very much of it - she probably just wanted a Heat magazine or something. But when I next looked up, I saw her heading out of the doors.

I have never ran so fast in my life. I don't usually go in for heroics. I'm happy to prevent shoplifters by keeping hawk eyes on them when I see them behaving oddly, but I usually draw the line at chasing them. But this time a fire burned in me and off I went.

She tried to say she was going to the ATM, but I was having none of it (she was walking in the opposite direction for a start!) She was hauled into the office and spot-fined by the police.

YES! A victory!

That's about all, as if it wasn't enough!

Mrs Snot Returns

2007-07-13T18:19:00.000Z

Today we got a blast from the past at Food Place when a customer kicked off over some pears. The woman in question was formerly referred to as 'Mrs Snot' in this post about a previous incident relating to clementines. Maybe she just has some sort of obsession with going into shops and kicking up a fuss about fruit.

This time she launches her offensive with a phone call:

"Good afternoon Food Place, how can I help you?" came my cheery greeting.

"Yes, I was in your store earlier and purchased some pears which said 'buy two for two pounds' on the shelf. I haven't received this offer. Can you tell me why?"

I love you too...

"OK, I'd have to go and have a look at the shelf, but if you could just tell me which ones..."

She doesn't let me finish: "They're prepacked Conference pears, can you go and look now."

I'm perfectly capable of scheduling my own day, thank you very much, I will do what I want to do and when I want to. Try asking nicely in future. "I'm afraid I can't go this second because I'm in the cash office and can't leave at this time - if you'd like to leave your number, I can call you back in about ten minutes, would that be..."

"Well hurry up because I'm going to collect the children from school any minute. It's 556357." CLUNK!

Aghast at her extraordinary rudeness, I'm left to scrabble around to find a pen to jot the number down before it goes out of my head. It crosses my mind not bother returning her call and wait for her to phone Food Place again - I could just say I didn't catch the number before she slammed the phone down on me! But I'm not petty. I write the number down and duly set off to investigate as soon as the cash is safely stored away in the safe.

A quick look at the shelf reveals that the Conference pears are above a standard price tag which says £1.29. In the next basket along there are bags of Braeburn apples which are marked at £1.45 - buy two for two pounds. Clearly, this woman has made a mistake. I decide that I'm not going to phone her back and kiss her ass and offer a double refund and triple replacement - she's going to be told she's made a mistake and invited back to obtain a refund should she not want the pears.

When I attempt to call her back, the number doesn't work. I could have just given up there and then - but I didn't. I remember that the woman had an Ellenfoot twang to her accent, and tried the phone number with the Ellenfoot area code in front. Ta-da...

"Yes?"

"Oh hello, it's Andrew calling from Fo..."

"Yes, I do have a caller display!" (she's obviously so accustomed to telephoning us, she knows the number by rote)

I contemplate hanging up, but decide against it. "I'm calling back about the pears you bought. I've had a look at the shelf..."

"I can see where you're going with this, you're going to blame me for picking the wrong thing up - again! It's not good enough, you're not looking after your customers here!"

"Well, yes, actually I was going to explain that there is a two for two pounds offer, but it's on Braeburn apples - which are next to the..."

"Well your shelf display is misleading customers, like myself. And, quite frankly, I'm fed up with this. Every time I come in your bloody shop..."

It suddenly dawns on me who this woman is and she's not getting away with it a second time. It's time for me to interrupt her for a change. "Well I have just inspected the shelf, and I can say in complete truthfulness that there isn't anything at all misleading about the way the products are displayed."

"Oh so I'm a liar now, I ought to inform your manager about this..."

"Would you like to speak to him? He's just outside the door now..."

"No, I don't have time for this carry on, my children will be waiting in the rain! I shall be coming back to return these pears to you and I want my money back. I shall find somewhere else to shop in future!" CLUNK!

And I leave the office whistling a merry tune to myself. Does she think I care that she won't be returning? Let Morrison's deal with rabble like her. OK, so we lose the money she spends - but what price can you put on a happier working and shopping environment for all? Actually, it's academic anyways because she threatens never to return every time she misreads shelf labels or finds something minute to complain about - if only she'd stop teasing us with such promises.

Robert
Robert has been getting on peoples' nerves again. Lorraine and myself were in the training room this morning conducting a return-to-work interview on Cleo (who was 'sick' for the umpteenth time) when Robert barged in. The door was closed (a sign on the outside of it says that the room is engaged when the door is closed) so just who did he think he was to burst in?

"I'm sorry Robert, we're in the middle of a private meeting..." Lorraine said politely.

"It's OK, I won't bother you."

"No, Robert - it's personal business..."

He sighed and walked out, but kept knocking on the door every thirty seconds thereafter to see if we were finished yet. By the end, Lorraine was so annoyed and frustrated that I had to escort her to the smoking area to unwind. When we arrived, Mike from the bakery was already there - also unwinding from an encounter with Robert.

"Twat-face would like me to remove the baskets from the bakery shelving and display everything in plastic tubs instead!" He explained through gritted teeth.

Lorraine exploded again. "WHAT? Since when was he anything to do with bakery? And has he not read the Merchandise Showcase book? The baskets have to be used!"

She then used several colourful terms to express her frustrations about Robert - again, I'm too delicate and innocent to even think of repeating them here...

Catch-up

2007-07-11T22:08:00.000Z

Robert
At the time my computer broke, Robert, the new department manager, was just beginning to get up everybody's nose, if you recall. Since then, he's surpassed himself numerous times and now, I can say in all honesty, not one single person in the store actually likes him. And very few haven't been pissed off by him yet.

I first realised that I wasn't going to get along with him very well about a week into his training month. Although I'd heard all about him from other people and knew of the numerous incidents with my colleagues that had caused upset, he hadn't actually directly annoyed me. As it turned out, he did it without intending it.

One day, I was in the toilets, having a wee at one of the urinals (as you do) and he entered the room. Now, any man will know that it is basic toilet etiquette that, when somebody is using one of the two urinals, instead of going to relieve your bladder right beside them you use the cubicle instead. Apart from the basic manners aspect, the other urinal is in full view of the door and, should somebody open it, any passing waif or stray can get a front-row view of you peeing. All of this bypassed Robert though. He parked himself next to me, so close he was almost touching me. This alone was enough to distract me and no amount of concentration could allow my urination to continue. As if that wasn't enough, he then started blathering away about the trolley in the warehouse with checkout sweets needing to be worked immediately and that I should get one of the 'checkout girls' to see to it. Apart from the fact that 25% of the 'checkout girls' are actually male, did Robert not realise that this was a totally inappropriate moment to hold a strategy meeting?

Toilet troubles aside, he's also got it into his head that I'm his PA. He keeps stalking me, with his arms full of paperwork that he wants me to do for him. On three occasions, he's dumped a load of handwritten training sheets for his staff on me and informed me that they need typed up. OK, in the past I've been more than happy to do peoples' typing purely because I can get it done three times faster than most people. But other people ask nicely. "I'm sorry to bother you Andrew, but could I be cheeky and ask you to type this up for me when you get a spare minute?" is the usual request. But in Robert's case it's more like: "I need these typed in time for a training meeting at two-thirty-sharp." Excuse me mate, I'm a flamin' shop assistant! If I wanted to be somebody's secretary, I'd pick somebody much more charismatic and attractive than you!

And then came the day he had to get some passport photographs taken for his Premises Supervisor liquor licence. He informed me at 9:00am that he was getting them done and would need to be reimbursed for the expense from the store allowance. At 10:45am, he found me on my morning break in the canteen and remarked, "I would have thought breaks were less important than finishing your work - you still owe me four pounds for my photographs." I owe him money? The fool. He's not even the manager of my department!

And those are just the incidents where he's got up my nose. I'm too much of a prude to repeat any of the numerous expletives I've heard Wendy - who famously doesn't swear - utter in reference to him (I'll give you a clue what the worst one was - it started with a 'c' and ended with a 't').

Delicatessen Closure
Food Place decided, quite rightly, that the deli counter in our store wasn't worth operating. Considering it needs to be staffed for fifteen hours a day and loses more money in waste than it actually puts into the tills, I certainly can't argue with their reasoning. The unfortunate aspect of this is that the four staff suddenly didn't have a job to do. Because they'd all been with Food Place for longer than five years, it meant the four newest recruits from the other departments lost their jobs. We had to lose two very good, very flexible cashiers to make way for two old-fogeys who if they operated any slower would stop. But then, that's life.

At present, the deli counter remains in place but is soon to be removed to make way for an extended bakery section. How exciting. I often wonder why Food Place didn't think, 'oh, why don't we look at all the work that needs done with this store, and do it all at the same time to save money?' In January we had a store refit, in March they replaced the freezers, in May they replaced the checkouts and the kiosk, in June they closed the deli and, soon, they're coming back to move the kiosk (again!) slightly. What a total waste of resources. Surely the thing they did first, the painting of the walls, should have been done last, when they had everything where they wanted it.

Customers
Of course, there's been the usual ones. The Kappa-clad chavvy mothers who accuse me of starving their children because I won't let them have a £4.18 tin of infant formula in exchange for a £2.80 Healthy Start token. But aside from those, there haven't been a great number of remarkable customers. There was one lady who came in to be refunded for some cat food and we couldn't work out how the hell she'd managed to buy it from Food Place because it was a variety we don't stock. She rang ten minutes later to apologise, saying she'd just remembered that she bought it in Morrison's.

The Floods
Our store was affected twice by water over the past couple of weeks. When the heavy rains first started, one of the pipes that carries rainwater burst and emptied over the wines & spirits aisle. Several customers were soaked and angrily demanded that we replace their clothing and we had a lot of mopping up to do. Later in the week, the biggest fuck-off torrential downpour I've ever seen in my life turned the car-park into a lake and the water ran into the store. Within half-an-hour it had spread across the shop floor was approaching ankle-depth. It totally knocked out four of the tills when it became deep enough to bathe the computer terminals beneath them. Yet more mopping up to do, which several of us volunteered to stay overnight and do (night-work premium - RICH!). The engineers arrived to fix things (freezers, chiller cabinets, ovens, tills, the lot) and perform safety checks at about 3am, and we were ready to trade in time for opening the following morning. Terry didn't manage to drag himself in from his holiday though.

So, that's about all there is to update on, so with any luck I can resume normal posting from today.

I'm Back...Again

2007-07-10T16:27:00.000Z

My lack of posts for the past month and two days has been due to another computer failure. But since I haven't had enough cash handy lately, it's had to wait until now to be fixed. Luckily, I've kept notes of things to include in my catch-up post. But I am now, officially, back on the map. Well, unless my computer should decide to go wrong again.

Quiet on the Customer Front

2007-06-08T21:17:00.000Z

I've noticed, and you probably have also, that Food Place has been remarkably devoid of horrible, nasty, vile customers recently. Nobody seems to be in the mood to complain about anything. I even had a customer today who brought back a fruit trifle that had soured, smelly cream on top of it. Naturally, I couldn't apologise enough and had my teeth gritted just waiting for the outburst of bile. But it didn't come.

"Oh, never mind, these things happen!" she said with a toothy smile.

What?! No 'I could have been poisoned!'. No mention of having to 'travel fifty three miles specially to return this substandard pot of filth!' I was stunned. They didn't even throw in a snide remark that we should 'check these things'. Don't get me wrong, I was very happy with how this customer reacted. If only more people realised that checkout staff can only be quality controllers to some extent. It's normally the poor cashier who gets blamed for smelly fish, glass in coffee jars and lumpy orange juice.

The smelly fish remark has reminded me of one customer, many moons ago, who brought back a pack of fresh prawns claiming that his entire family had smelled them and they all agreed that something was wrong. 'They just didn't smell right. They smell very fishy' - I couldn't work out if this was a deliberate pun, intended to be funny or whether he didn't realise that prawns are actually seafood. Of course, I played along with him and agreed that they smelled vile. But they didn't. They smelled of prawns to me and I made a point of surveying my colleagues to see what they thought. Everybody agreed with me - they actually smelled quite appetising.

Robert
The new department manager has continued his quest to make enemies out of all the people in Food Place that, actually, are very useful to have on-side. Take Wendy, for example. She will work for anybody, treats everybody with respect and will defend anybody when she feels they've been wronged. Why on earth would somebody even dream of trying to make an enemy out of her?

Allow me to explain. Robert wandered up to the cash office yesterday afternoon and knocked on the door. Wendy opened it, on the chain, and asked what he wanted. He demanded to be let in. Wendy, perfectly reasonably, explained that he isn't authorised to enter the cash office and, even if he was, she was busy processing cash through the system and had it out on the worktop, so it would be a breach of security rules if she let him in. Robert threw a wobbler and protested 'I'm management!'. Wendy stood firm, as I would have done, and said no. The rules are clear. There's a list of people on the back of the door who are allowed in there and even those people are not allowed in when another team member is dealing with cash.

Robert took his wobbler to Terry. Apparently, he doesn't like 'that woman's' attitude. I can see why he might have felt his nose had been put out of joint. He's management, yet he's not allowed access to a certain part of the store. But sorry 'that woman' was only doing her job. And if he doesn't like that he can sodding well lump it, can't he!

I'm just dying for him to turn round and start picking on me. I've come across far bigger shits than him in my life and I've always came out the other side sticking two fingers up at them. He won't be any different.

Another Day From Hell

2007-06-04T19:24:00.001Z

Today was one of those awful days, that I seem to have a lot of lately, that starts off terrible and doesn't get any better.

Cleo pushes her luck

It was exceptionally busy today, for a Monday, and we hadn't really budgeted for this when we compiled the staff schedules. So we were a bit thin on the ground with checkout staff and I was running between departments like a blue-arsed-fly borrowing staff. The last thing you want in that situation is a member of staff failing to turn up on time for their shift.

Just as I realised Cleo was AWOL and was about the phone her, she came sauntering in looking like she'd been run over by a tram and said: "Andrew I feel terrible, like I'm going to faint, I don't think I'm fit for work."

I was ready to wrap my hands round her throat and finish her off. How dare she do this to me. "I'm sorry Cleo, you know the company policy. You need to give us an hours notice at the very least if you're ill. You will have to work you shift."

This might sound cold-hearted. Not if you know Cleo. She can be a good worker for months on end and then all of a sudden she goes through a phase of constantly coming up with any excuse not to work. She never phones the store if she's 'ill' - just turns up and demands to be sent straight home.

"I couldn't phone you, I had no credit."

"Well you have a land line phone don't you?"

"It's only taking incoming calls. I didn't know what to do."

"Well you could have gone to the phone box." (I know perfectly well she lives right beside one). "Or at the very least came to the store earlier to let us know in person."

"I'm really not well," she droned, putting on the 'please feel sorry for me, I have a hangover' voice.

"Well, if you're telling me you're not fit for work, all I can say is that you haven't followed the procedure correctly, so it's out of my hands. You'll have to go and see Terry and see what he says."

Half an hour later she came to the tills and sat herself down - with a face like a smacked arse. She managed to sit there for exactly an hour before deciding to have another go. This time she bypassed me and went to Terry again, who'd evidently told her the first time to see how she felt in an hour. She was evidently unsuccessful as she worked the remainder of her shift, sat on the till sulking.

I'm sorry, but I just do not have time to indulge staff when they start swinging the lead. If she was genuinely ill I'd have known just by looking at her. But her acting skills aren't worthy of an Oscar, so I knew she was faking it. All the empty threats of "I think I'm going to be sick" came to nothing. I'm not going to put myself through the stress of trying to cover a shift at the eleventh hour for somebody who just wants to go back to bed.

New Manager Gets Shirty

I've mentioned in passing that Sean, one of the department managers in our store, left rather suddenly. It's THE bit of juicy gossip in Food Place at the moment and I'd love nothing more than to discuss the ins and outs of it here. But, for rather obvious reasons, I don't want to go giving too much away. Suffice to say he was given a very clear-cut choice and he took the sensible option.

He's quickly been replaced by a man called Robert, who'd already passed the interviews and assessments and was just waiting for a managerial position to arise in one of the stores. I don't like to give the impression that I'm reacting unduly negatively towards a new colleague before giving them a fair chance, but the man's an arse.

The current management team in our store are the first fully-functional lot the store has had in a long time and they've worked very hard to throw Food Place's past in the bin and start again. They've brought the staff together to work as a team and have eliminated most of the weak links among us. They've tried their best to stamp out the old ways that were embedded by the piss-poor management of the past and the store really has benefited from it. And now this Robert has waltzed in and rattled enough cages in a mere four days to risk stamping over all the hard work.

It started, quite literally, the second he walked into the store. He walked along the diary aisle and collected four pieces of loose cardboard from the shelves and retrieved a multi pack of yoghurts that were on-sale despite having split outer packaging. Fine. But to herd together five team members that he hasn't met before and berate them for 'failing to do their job properly' and 'poor standards' without even having the courtesy to introduce himself first - is not fine.

He then proceeded to complain to Terry that customers were being kept waiting at the tills whilst supervisors 'faffed about' looking in the till drawers to see what change was required. 'Could that not be done before the store opens?' he asked. Except, he didn't ask. He set it as a rhetorical question. Well. For somebody who doesn't have a clear understanding of how Food Place's cash flow system operates, he's nobody to barge in and start poking his nose into it. I should point out that, and I've timed it, it takes takes around 15 seconds to check a till drawer for change.

So he's got up mine and Wendy's nose too. Even Terry has admitted that he's came in with completely the wrong attitude. He hasn't yet taken the time to introduce himself to anybody and hasn't gone out of his way to build bridges with the team.

It's all going to end in tears. I just hope we don't go through the living hell of having another manager like Nick again.

Nature Bites Back

2007-06-01T22:07:00.000Z

I'm now the laughing stock of Food Place. Allow me to explain.

This morning I woke up feeling really groggy and tired. You know, when you feel as though your body just doesn't want to wake up and all you can think about is crawling back into bed and sleeping. And sleeping. You want to go back to sleep so badly you couldn't care less if you never woke up again.

So, I think I've just about established that I felt tired. Well, as I was leaving the house to walk to work, in a daze of tiredness, I tripped over the doorstep as I came to close the door. I fell forwards, landed on my hands and rolled to the side, promptly going head-first into a large plant pot. God, if my head hurt before, it was caving in with pain now. If I'd have been in any other mood I'd have creased up laughing so badly I would have struggled to get back to my feet. But, as it was, the foul mood I was in got the better of me and I was sat on the front path gritting my teeth with anger. How dare the doorstep trip me up.

You might be wondering how my little accident in the front garden turned me into a laughing stock at Food Place. Well, I pulled myself to feet and stomped off to work. When I arrived, still in a complete strop with myself, as I walked up the first aisle to get to the canteen, I quickly realised I was getting a lot of stunned looks from my colleagues. If you're anything like me, you'll know how irritating it is when people stare at you when you're in a bad mood and want to be left alone.

Eventually: "What? Why is everyone staring at me?"

Lorraine was struggling to hide her giggling. "Go and look in the mirror Andrew."

I felt butterflies in my stomach. Oh my God, what have I done? My foul mood suddenly seemed to evaporate and I was nervously smiling away to myself in anticipation of the view the mirror would yield.

I got into the toilets, took one look and burst out laughing - hysterically. I had soil marks down my cheeks and bits of twig clinging to my hair! By the time I'd composed myself enough to go back into the canteen and face everybody, quite a few people had gathered to survey the damage. Of course, I had to tell them what had happened. Everybody found it riotously funny that I'd fallen arse over face into a plant pot and still had bits of horticulture in my hair and mud-stains to show for it.

I, very briefly, tried to trick them into thinking I was offended by their reaction: "Oh well that's just charming isn't it. I fall over and possibly concuss myself and all you do is laugh. Some friends." It didn't wash though. Still, at least it cheered me up for the morning.

New Change Safe

2007-05-31T21:50:00.000Z

When I walked into work today, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. The powers that be have delivered us a small safe to sit under our 'supervisors podium', storing change so that we can issue it to the tills without trundling up to the cash office.

You're probably thinking, how unbelievably sad and demented can this boy get? You've probably got a picture, an accurate one at that, in your head of me walking in, spotting the thing and my eyes lighting up like a child's at Christmas. Yes, Yes, I know. But when you spend most of your waking life in Food Place, anything new and improved is something to get happy clappy about, believe me.

But is it an improvement? It dawned on me this afternoon that this new contraption would run out of change eventually. Which would mean going to the cash office and carrying a huge bag full of refill stock down. Still, it's got to beat running around like a blue-arsed fly. And I've worked out my method. We shall keep a base float in there of two thousand pounds (I've even broken it down into denominations in accordance with what we use!). This float can be chipped away at throughout the day as the tills require change and, once a day when the last change run is done, we can take the sheets to the cash office, add them all up, tap them into Bob (the cash office computer) and restock from the cash office safe. It just means the small safe will have to be counted whenever I do a cash office tender count, but I can live with that.

I'm yet to discover how the customers will react to the new safe. You might be thinking, but surely, it's none of the customers' business where you store the change? Well, you're wrong. They'll make it their business. Especially the woman I mention the other day in my 'weirdos' post. As soon as she realises, she'll start poking about behind the podium, under the pretense of looking for a pound coin she dropped, to see it. And then there's all the customers that will come over and disturb me while I'm clearly busy counting the coins in the bloody thing. I mean, you just wouldn't do it would you? If you were in a shop and you required assistance, you just would not go up and start bothering a member of staff that was counting money would you? Oh, but the morons will...

Keeping within the theme of improvements, I decided that the cash office layout had become boring and required changing. I do this from time to time. Colleagues have noticed that I seem to alternate between having a clinically tidy office, that looks totally bare because it doesn't have a scrap of clutter in it, and going for the 'fuller' look. Today I changed over to the 'fuller' look. I went round the other offices and stole equipment such as paper-tidies, pen cups, plastic trays and baskets, and re-furnished the cash office with them. Nobody will find out about my thievery as only four people are allowed into the cash office - unless somebody spots their paper-rack on the camera monitors (eek). I even unscrewed and made-off-with a shelf from the Training Room so I could re-jig the wall shelves in the cash office. I was bored of them all being perfectly aligned, so I've moved the planks up and down for a zig-zag look.

I was actually considering buying a Yucca plant from the store to add as a finishing touch.

Wendy will kill me when she sees my handiwork. Just as she's getting used to where I moved everything last time I refitted the office, I move it all again. In fact, last time I reorganised the office, I did so because I was sick of all the clutter and I threw away one hell of a lot of stuff - she still thinks I just tidied it away into drawers (eek, again). She'll kill me if she finds out I scopped out her collection of broken pens.

Sharp-eyed readers may also have noticed that I've changed the colours of this blog template. I'm far too lazy to make my own design, but I will at least commit to rejigging the colours from time to time. When the weather turns sunny and nice, I might just go orange and yellow.

More Who's Who

2007-05-29T22:20:00.000Z

It's been a while since I last blogged about my colleagues in any sort of depth. Well, there's Sandra, but I don't need an excuse to bitch about her. There's also been a few new staff since I wrote my original Who's Who post - and then there's the people I missed out the first time - so I feel it's time to update you on the people I work with.

Without further ado...

Lisa
She's the most remarkable of the new starters. If you've ever been looking to the original dumb blonde, you needn't look much further than Lisa. Example: I was standing behind her till waiting to check her change one day, just as she happened to be filling a pod with money. She put it into the air chute and watched it shoot up the tube. She turned to me:

"Andrew..."

Feeling she was on the verge of asking a stupid question, I was cautious: "Yeeeees?"

"You know when I put the money in those little pods and put it in there..."

"Ah-huh..."

"Where does it go?"

Oh my God how dumb can you get? "Well Lisa...they shoot up into the ceiling, then down through the wall, underneath the ground and all the way to Head Office."

She stared at me for a moment and said: "Oh. Right." Before I burst out laughing and called her a silly bint and informed that it's actually nowhere near as MI5 as that - they really just travel through the chute and drop into the cash office at the other end.

Despite her empty-headed moments, she does have quite a good sense of humour though. Well, maybe that's the wrong way of putting it. It's got more to do with her saying things in a certain way that makes them sound funny - so I suppose you could say she has a good sense of comic timing. An example of her cracking me up over something very minor was when Cleo remarked to her one day "oh my God, you look like hell Lisa!". Lisa came to tell me about this and said: "I wouldn't care, but I actually made an effort today - put my makeup on and everything and apparently I look like hell!" Don't know what I found so funny about that...I just did.

She also called Alex a cheap man-slut. Classic.

Enid
The second dumb-blonde we have. Her name makes her sound like an old granny, when she's actually only about 29 - named after her great-gran it would seem. Anyways, she's just plain dippy but, again, in a funny sort of way. Like the day she set off to walk to work and walked right past Food Place and didn't realise until she got to the roundabout, half a mile down the road. Or, less amusing, the time she walked off and went for her break leaving her cash drawer lid wide-open. It sat like that for about five minutes until I noticed. Amazingly, no cash was missing when I checked the till.

Alex
There's already been a lengthy post about Alex, so I'll make this brief. He's a tart. He straightens part of his hair each morning to get his 'do looking just right. He wears his uniform with added accessories to make sure he doesn't look "too naff" and spoil his image. He makes it a hobby to go around everybody in the store, find out what buttons he needs to press to really aggravate them, and presses them. I have no time for the little dweeb.

Rhianna
Or Lady Macbeth as I tend to call her. She works on the frozen foods which is ironic since she's a bit of an Ice Queen. I don't think I've ever seen her smile - at all - and she rarely speaks to anybody and if she does, she doesn't make eye contact. Her eyes always have this, sort of, glazed over look as though her brain is another realm. I actually find her pretty scary and certainly wouldn't like to be alone with her behind a locked door.

Jane
She's actually an ex-colleague, but speaking of Ice Queens reminded me about her and I felt she was worth a mention. I was having a laugh with Marjorie about her the other day as it happens. She used to work on the checkouts, but only one shift a week - on a Saturday afternoon. This was back in the days when I was just a lowly student till-body and because I always started an hour before her, I usually ended up on the till in front of her. Well, trying to get a conversation out of her - you might as well have chatted to the carrier bags. She was very snobby - completely above speaking to any of us - and was the most miserable human being you could ever imagine. A customer came to my till one day and whispered "I came to you because you were smiling - I didn't like the look of that mardy old trout behind." Me, indiscreet as ever, turned round, looked right at her and started giggling. I don't think the Mardy Old Trout was very amused.

Kiera
She's the first of the supervisors to transfer from closure-threatened-Ellenfoot to our store. She's obviously one of the better team members they had as everybody's instantly taken to her. She's so friendly and genuinely pleasant that it's quite humbling. She likes nothing more than laughing at herself. Like the first staff night-out she came on with us. She'd had several million straight vodkas and fell flat on her face getting out of the taxi. In true Only Fools and Horses style she didn't even have the reflexes to put her hands out and break the fall. Most people, considering the state of her face the next day, would be feeling sorry for themselves. Not Kiera - she thought it was absolutely hysterical and spent most of the day admiring the damage in the mirror.

Ed
It's maybe a bit of a foolish idea to start talking about Ed, because I could go on all evening. He's the Grocery Supervisor which he takes to mean Store Manager. He thinks he runs the place and has the idea that he's one notch higher than all the other supervisors. Example:

Last Saturday I was busy refilling the magazine section and he came stomping over: "Andrew, are you keeping your eye on your department, 'cause I don't think you are, there's queues up the aisles, get over there!"

My face fell in horror. Who the hell did he think he was? He was bloody lucky I was in a reasonably good mood, otherwise he might have ended up face first in Hello magazine. But he wasn't finished. When I failed to react adequately to his outburst he started blathering away about being the 'Floor Supervisor' and that it was 'his duty' to keep the store running smoothly and I 'wasn't supporting him'. I walked away from him, inspected the checkouts and found that none of the tills had more than 1 person waiting to be served. And then went back to stalk out the evil Ed and give him a piece of my mind:

"Right Ed, for starters there was nothing wrong with the checkouts. For seconds, you seemed to be implying I was skiving when I was actually filling up the magazines - you know, so we can, sort of, sell them! - and, you seem to forget, you're on a level-pegging with me mate. Any feedback you have about my performance is appreciated, but speak to me like that again on the shop floor, in front of customers, and you'll find yourself the subject of a formal complaint. Right?"

It's amazing how self-righteous and over-defensive I can get over work, but there you go. I was actually quite proud of myself for standing up to him like that - because I'd been dying for an excuse to knock him down a couple of rungs. If I had my way I'd shake him off the ladder altogether.

He expressed interest in the Grocery Department Manager post, vacated last week by Sean, and he was so confident that the job was his, he didn't even bother handing his application form in. Well he's got another thing coming. He'd be lucky to pass the interview, let alone the aptitude tests. This is the person who put of POS advertising, among other things, "Specail Offers" and "Redused to Cleer Items".

Hmm. I try not to get too wound up by him, because I know he's just a moron.

Some Strange People

2007-05-18T22:32:00.000Z

Due the gossip/hot action drying up at Food Place of late, I thought I might as well tell you all about some of the more bizarre (you have no idea how many attempts it took me to type that word correctly!) customers and random weirdos I've come across. The ones that make strange requests, or have odd habits.

The one that immediately springs to mind is the customer with the weird hair. He's an oldish man, around 65, and the first thing you think of when you look at his hair is 'SHOE POLISH!' And, judging by the contents of his shopping basket, we're not wrong. Every time he comes in he buys a tub of the stuff despite the fact he always wears suede boots. So we're actually quite convinced he does rub shoe polish into his hair - he certainly smells as though he does!

Next up is the lady with the huge bags. When I think of it, she probably belongs in the 'annoying customers' category and doesn't really have a place here, but now I've mentioned her I might as well see her tale through. While she trundles around the store doing her shopping, she places everything into large plastic bags that she's carefully fore-lined her trolley with. When she gets to the checkout, she places each of these bags onto the belt. You have no idea how infuriating this is. The bags are quite tall and you have to stand up to reach into them for the items. Worse still, she insists you put everything back into each bag as you found it.

Next up is Nosey Woman. I first noticed her antics about two years ago. It's almost as though she has a pathological obsession with seeing parts of the store she has no right to see. Whilst waiting to be served at the checkout, she'll lean forward and have a good look underneath the nearest vacant till to see what we keep under there. I've caught her leaning over the (former) customer service desk for a good nose. She'll ask for cardboard boxes and try to follow you into the warehouse. If she sees me carrying change bags she'll wait until I'm nearly at the doors that lead to the office areas before trying to follow me through them to ask a question. If the customer toilet is out of order you can guarantee she'll develop a bladder problem and ask to use the staff ones. When being served at the deli she comes round the side of the counter so she can see behind. Strange. I often wonder whether she's some sort of secret inspector, sent in by Food Place to check these things out. She once asked me if I could spare her some coin bags and she looked very disappointed when I produced these from one of the tills - I think she wanted to try and follow me to the cash office.

And then there's the lady we call Granny Smith. She's one of those people that manages to be absolutely infuriatingly annoying, yet hilarious, without actually doing much. She's a very old lady who comes into the store ten minutes before closing time EVERY night. And she always buys the same things. She goes to the rotisserie/deli counter and squeaks (her voice is very meek):

"could i have two slices of beef please"

When she has obtained her 7p bundle of meat, she turns to the hot chicken cabinet.

"are those plain chickens in there? Not flavoured?"

"Yes love, they're plain"

"Could I have one drumstick please?"

I don't actually know why I bothered typing that dialogue out because the humour factor is completely lost unless you've seen the woman I'm talking about and heard her voice.

When she has her very fussy selection of deli products, she goes for her soap. One bar of the cheapest, nastiest variety we do (Food Place budget label). And then she'll dither around, dragging her little trolley-type-thing behind her until we have to put a tannoy announcement across to get her to come to the tills. If I went into a shop and I seen the staff lowering the shutters and locking doors, I'd feel pressured to get out as quickly as possible. She doesn't. She'd happily stay locked in overnight I think.

I needn't mention Mr Foole again because I gave all the detail you need in this post. But there's another customer who happens to live directly opposite the store who is just as bizarre.

He's called Mike and he has demons. Demons that tell him things are happening when they aren't. He makes endless complaints to us about our nightshift staff playing music so loud he can't sleep - he's very adamant. Even when he complains about it happening on nights when we didn't have the nightshift working, he just won't be told that he's talking bollocks. We do put it much more politely than that, but still. He recently wrote a letter to the local newspaper expressing outrage that Food Place had started charging customers for carrier bags. These charges were, of course, figments of his imagination. He's also accused our staff of: kicking him, pulling faces behind his back (he may have been correct on this one...), swearing at him, jostling him in the street and damaging his car. He claimed Terry had insulted his wife and called their baby son 'butt ugly'. Terry might be a little direct - but get a grip!

I can't believe I can't think of any more weirdos. I KNOW there's at least a hundred more. I suppose I'll just have to discuss them as a I remember them - in different posts.

Operation Checkout

2007-05-13T11:23:00.000Z

You may remember, a couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the arrival of Operation Checkout (see this post) which is the refit program centred on checkouts and kiosk.

Well the day has now dawned. About an hour before the store closed last night a team of electricians came from nowhere armed with ladders, tools and all kinds of dramatic-looking equipment. By the morning we had shiny new checkouts and a new kiosk.

Now, I was quite looking forward to this happening because the original plans I saw looked quite good. But it would seem somebody decided to change the plans prior to the work being carried out. Instead of the planned ten conveyor-belt-checkouts, we have just seven - one less than we had before! They have, however, made up for this with extra express tills, so it remains to be seen what sort of impact the new setup is going to have on our out-of-control queue problem.

But my main concern is the awful layout of the new checkouts. For a start, half of them are left-hand-scan. I was only serving for ten minutes and my back was breaking! I found myself reaching my right arm across my body to lift things off the conveyor belt. And the cash drawers are now sited to your left (or right, depending which way your till faces) as opposed to directly in front of you on the old tills. I kept trying to dip my hands into the scanner to get customers their change. The receipt printers have also swapped sides so I kept reaching the wrong way.

So, really, I spent the time I was serving jiggling about on my chair like a Morris dancer.

The kiosk is, however, a vast improvement. They've moved the lottery machine so it sits in the middle of the tills as opposed to right at the end, like before. Much less walking time. Sadly, however, they've put the whole thing in a rather stupid place so it practically blocks the entrance doors.

Still, I suppose we'll adapt to this new fangled layout in no time.

In other news, I chased a thieving bastard halfway across town this morning. I spotted him loading razor blades into his pockets from one of the till racks. As till merchandise sort of falls in my jurisdiction, I felt duty-bound (power-mad more like) to take pursuit. And I ended up five streets away, scooping razor cartridges out of the gutter.

Still, it could have been worse. Like the time I actually managed to catch up with a thief and they hurled their stolen booty into my face and cut my forehead. At least I got a battle scar to exhibit to all and sundry.

Dirty Evil Lying...

2007-05-07T17:09:00.000Z

If anybody's been wondering where I've got to (although I very much doubt it!), I do apologise. My computer decided to fail a week ago past Thursday - on the one day I could have really done with coming home and having a massive bitch-rant about my colleagues. Fortunately, for you readers, the carry-on that erupted on that day has now blown over. So I don't need to go boring you with every minute detail.

I've been back online since last Wednesday but, in all truthfulness, there's been nothing to blog about. The customers have all been very polite, amicable and well-behaved. None of my colleagues have got on my nerves.

But things changed today.

An evil, stuck-up old cow misread shelf signage and bought the wrong products for a promotion and then lied to another member of staff to make me look stupid. Here's what happened:

I was summoned to Amy's checkout and before she could explain to me what the problem was the old bag she was serving blasted in my face.

"Why have I been charged three pounds something for these when they clearly state 'buy two for two pounds'?"

A quick inspection of the products revealed the problem. She had one tub of Food Place Egg Mayonnaise Sandwich Filler and one tub of Preston's Florida Salad. Both were marked at two for two pounds but, since they were completely unrelated products they clearly weren't in the same promotion.

"It's because these are two different products, there's one offer for the sandwich fillers and the same offer is also running on the coleslaw and Florida Salad. But they're separate promotions, so you can't mix them."

"Well why are they both marked at that price?"

"They just happen to be the same price, but they aren't in the same offer. If you don't want to pay separately for them I can change one of them for you so the discount will trigger on the till. I'll run and change it if you like." I'm already being far more polite to this woman than she deserves.

"Well yes. Change one."

"OK. Did you want another Florida Salad or another sandwich filler?"

She lashed out and poked the sandwich filler which I took to be a sign that she wanted another of those.

"Did you want another egg one, because there's other varieties?"

"Well no. No I don't want another egg."

"Tuna and sweetcorn?"

"I don't like tuna."

Oh for fuck's sake will you get a grip woman, I'm trying to help you here!

"Chicken and sweetcorn is in the offer."

"NO! Oh for crying out loud, I'll go and get it myself!"

Oooh you are seriously getting on my wick missus! I had a feeling she was going to go and re-arrange the shelf display in order to try and prove she was mislead (surprising how many customers you catch doing this) so I tottered up the next aisle and hid behind the rotisserie oven, watching her through the glass.

She stood in front of the shelf in question, staring at the products for a few moments. Suddenly she started picking up the pots and slamming them down again, making "this is ridiculous!" gestures and sighing. This went on for at least a minute - by this time I'd told Mike, who was behind the rotisserie with me, what was going on and we were both having a good laugh at her.

But then she did something that changed her from being another hilariously stroppy customer to being a lying turd.

Lorraine happened to walk past the old bitch and she swung round and started twittering away to her about the sandwich fillers. I was trying to hear what she was saying but couldn't, so I came out and moved towards the cakes, pretending to tidy them up so I could eavesdrop. I could see through a gap what was going on and the woman picked up two tubs of Egg Mayo sandwich filler and ranted at Lorraine:

"I've just taken those to the till and the boy down there said I couldn't have them at the offer price of two for two pounds!"

You lying old scumbag!

I came storming out from the cakes, nearly knocked Lorraine flying to get to the shelf and picked up the Florida salad.

"You didn't have two of the sandwich fillers, you had one sandwich filler and one Florida Salad." I waved it in her face for emphasis, "And if you look at the shelves here, the salads are at the bottom and the sandwich fillers are two shelves up. Both of them have separate promotion signs and aren't in the same offer."

She looked shocked. She certainly wasn't expecting her plans to gain victory by deceit to be foiled in this fashion. She mumbled: "It says two for two pounds!", gathered her egg mayo and stormed off to the checkouts.

How dare she tell lies about me. What was she trying to achieve? I bet anything you like she saw them both on the shelf and took them thinking "oh those stupid girls on the till won't realise they're different products" and when her evil little scam didn't work she became embittered and decided to try and get people into trouble by lying. She was probably planning to complain to Head Office and get the local rag to print a headline: "Pensioner conned out of one-pound-eighteen by heartless supervisor at Food Place"

Do you see what working in a supermarket does to you? Your entire day can become consumed by one scabby old bat and a tub of sandwich filler. You can develop conspiracy theories in your mind all about customers and the silly, insignificant things they do.

I don't know why I get so enraged when customers try to get their own way by using dirty tricks. At the end of the day, what does it matter to me? But it doesn't stop me doing my damn best to thwart them. I TOLD YOU THERE'S A LIMIT OF TWO BOXES OF PAIN KILLERS PER CUSTOMER! HOW DARE YOU TRY AND TAKE A THIRD BOX TO ANOTHER TILL! I suppose I see myself as an enforcement officer for Food Place rules.

Oh dear.

Sandra

2007-04-25T17:31:00.000Z

It always happens to me. I turn my back for five days to go on holiday and when I return the place isn't the same. Everybody's fallen out with each other, so-and-so and so-and-so have got together, so-and-so and so-and-so have split up, so-and-so's been suspended and so-and-so's been sacked.

Well, it's not quite as drastic as that, but you follow my meaning. And I should add that, somehow, I always seem to become involved in this disputes and dramas despite not being there!

It began with huge bitch-fight that took place between two female cashiers on Monday afternoon. Tensions had been frothing ever since Jean's surprise ruby wedding anniversary party last month. To cut a long story short, some people were miffed not to have been invited. Not me though. Personally, I can't think of a worse way to spend an evening than watching old people try to dance to crap music. But the tensions have been directed at Marjorie who was given the task, by Jean's family, to compile a list of who, from Food Place, they should invite to the party.

Anyway, feelings were bitter as it was. Now, if there's anybody you can always count upon to make a situation worse it's Sandra. She just can't keep her mouth shut about anybody or anything. She's a born stirrer and there's nothing she loves more than trying to humiliate people by shouting at them. "I tell it like it is!" is her strap line. Personally, I would go for: "I shout utter bollocks to try and make myself look tough and morally superior to everybody!"

What started it all, I don't know for sure. I presume Marjorie was having a dig at Sandra for not rotating the checkout confectionery properly - or something of the sort. Whatever happened, Sandra burst out with this:

"Wait a minute darling! You can back off speaking to me like that, because I don't know who you think you are. You've caused so much trouble in here and now everybody feels bad. What right did you have not to invite some of Jean's friends to her party? You're just a manipulative old..."

At which point she was cut off by Marjorie bellowing that the party was none of Sandra's business. She had a point there, it wasn't. Sandra would never have been invited in a month of Sundays because everybody hates her and she makes no secret of the fact that she hates everybody else. It's not easy to like somebody who, having been in the job three days, declares: "I don't care who I stand on to do it, I'm rising to the top in here!" (I just thought it made her sound dull - if you've got burning ambition like that, why waste it on Food Place?)

Sandra retorted with more utter tripe about Marjorie's involvement in the invitation list for the Godforsaken party. I don't normally defend Marjorie, but on this occasion I will. She was told she could only invite 10 people. So for everybody else it was tough luck. What else could she do?

But the row soon turned to much nastier. Here's a rundown: Marjorie called Sandra an evil, twisted liar. Sandra came off her till and, in front of customers, yelled "come on then!" in Marjorie's face to try and start a fight before accused her of being a coward. Marjorie told her she wasn't worth it. Sandra ran off the canteen and started blubbing to anybody who'd listen that everybody had it in for her and what had she done to deserve it? She then ran to the manager and told him a pack of lies about what had just happened. Wendy became involved because she'd witnessed part of the action and, her self-control failing her, told Sandra that she brings everything she gets on herself.

At this point Sandra changed tack. Before Terry got hold of the true account of what had gone on, she began to 'open her heart' to him about how ill-treated she felt by ME.

ME! ME? ME! I'm supposed to have upset Sandra! There I am naked on a beach in the Algarve (not literally) and, halfway across the continent, I'm being dragged into rows going on in Food Place!

She told Terry I bully her over her working hours. I'm supposed to have promised to raise her contract to full-time (I would never promise that because I don't have the authority to do it) before cutting her hours down and taking shifts from her to give to other people. Without consulting her.

Here's the truth: I gave Sandra three weeks' notice that she was losing her Friday evening shift (which she isn't contracted to) because she was consistently late for it. She told me this was to do with bus timetables so I gave her a shorter shift in the afternoon.

And now I've discriminated against an employee because they can't drive! You work it out, because I can't. I just flamin' well give up with doing the hours. Wendy and I are presently lumbered with the task because there isn't enough management cover for one of them to be able to do it. We'd had no experience of planning a checkout schedule so we found it hard. But we approached it with a simple philosophy. We said we'd be fair to everybody and we'd do what we could to accommodate peoples' requests.

But Sandra has just taken the Michael out of us from the word go. At first, she tried to tell us that Terry had promised her 35 hours a week - hoping we'd just give them to her without checking. It was total bollocks, Terry had said nothing of the sort. Next, she told us she was available to work until 10.15pm each evening. We gave her the shifts believing it to be a good move. She got extra hours, we got cover for the graveyard shifts. It was only three weeks later we discovered she'd been leaving at 9.45pm every day to catch her bus home - conveniently forgetting to clock out. With those shifts promptly taken away from her she looked elsewhere for overtime. Next thing you know, she brings us a typed letter signed by another employee "officially handing over" 5 hours of their contract to Sandra. What the Hell? She thinks it's OK to alter employment contracts without consulting a manager? In fact, who does she think she is doing things like that full stop?

I've had more than enough of this shite from her now. It's not the first time she's gone running to Terry about me. Last time it was to discuss with him my lack of supervisory skills. I confronted the issue with her and said: "if you'd like to try doing the work of four supervisors on your own with very little support from above for peanuts more than the minimum wage, you're welcome to try it out."

Argh, my rambling about Sandra is becoming disjointed now. I need to go away and forget about her for a few hours before I get in my car, kidnap her and throw her off Beachy Head!

Sunshine & Rudeness

2007-04-15T16:04:00.000Z

Judging by this weekend, it would seem that warm weather and sunshine brings out the worst in people. It's been the first truly summery weekend of the year and, rather than making people happy and glad to be alive, it seems to have turned everybody into foul-tempered, moody so-and-so's. There hasn't been any one incident with a customer that has stood out, but there have been a few occasions this weekend when I've been gritting my teeth.

The first happened when I'd jumped onto the kiosk to help quell the last-minute lottery queue. I served a good few customers but, when there was nobody left waiting, I announced to Sandra I was going back to get on with the cash office jobs. But a woman appeared just as I was signing my till off and moved to plonk her basket on the shelf.

"I'm sorry, I'm closing on this till, Sandra will be with you in a second," I explained. I even smiled. The lovely breezy spring evening had made me cheery. But not this woman. She tutted and rolled her eyes, and made such a drama about of moving her basket onto Sandra's till. It was as though I'd told her she had to use another till on the other side of the shop.

Apart from anything else, it really irritated me that she didn't even have the decency to acknowledge that I'd just spoken to her. Most people would at least say "oh, OK" or something like that. I could have been a naughty, rude cashier and just walked away, leaving her standing there like a lemon. but I didn't, I spoke to her. I wish I hadn't bothered.

I came across the next irritating person in the laundry aisle. I was on my way to take the damaged products to the waste point in the warehouse so I had my arms full of bags, packets, boxes and all sorts. There was a customer blocking half of the aisle with her outstretched trolley and I was moving towards the gap on the other side of her to get past. But another woman veered round the corner, looked up and seen me approaching, but still tried to push through the same gap I was halfway through. I had to stop, walk backwards and move aside to let her pass.

She tutted. How fucking dare she! She was the one who got right in my way and forced me to alter my path! Any normal person would have, having seen me coming, waited until I'd passed. For which I would have thanked them and thought nice thoughts about them. But no. She was in so much of a hurry she had to barge her way through, nearly knocking me flying.

The next incident came soon after. A lady had got all her shopping scanned through the checkouts before realising she'd left her purse at home.

"Well I live 6 miles away, what am I going to do now?"

She said it as though I'd made some cock-up that was going to cause massive problems for her. How rude. I continued to be polite and tried to establish whether she had any means of paying at all. She said no.

"OK, well we can keep everything aside for you and make sure all the cold goods are stored properly until you get back."

"You can't expect me to make a 12-mile round trip!"

Well duh! You stupid cow. I don't expect you to do anything. You're the one that's got yourself into this mess. Any normal person would be apologising for inconveniencing us like this!

"I have my cheque book, but the card is in my purse, so I can't exactly use that now can I!"

"Well, if you write your name, address and telephone number on the back of the cheque and sign it, you can take the shopping home with you now and phone us with your card number so I put the cheque through as payment."

"Well yes, I think that would be a more appropriate solution."

WHAT? I'm placing a lot of trust in you here, as well as saving you a 12 mile trip! I don't HAVE to faff about all day cleaning up your problems, but I'm doing it out of the kindness of my heart and you're not even grateful.

I could kill people like that. The worst of them are the ones who ask for your assistance and then don't thank you for it. Like when somebody asks if you'll try and find a product in the warehouse when it's absent from the shelf. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's not in the warehouse either (contrary to popular belief, if we have a product in stock we like it to be on the shop-floor so we can sell it!). When you tell the customer this, they sigh and walk off.

A-hem! Excuse me! I've just gone and scouted around to try and find what you're looking for. Two little words would do nicely!

And don't start me on the customers with a general lack of manners. Either they were never taught how to behave towards fellow human beings or, more probably, they don't think they have to apply general rules of civility towards shop workers.

Sometimes you'll be standing in an aisle when you hear somebody whistle at you. Or click their fingers. Or wave and bark "OI! You!" I always turn round, grin and say "hello, can I help you at all?". Rude people really get rubbed up the wrong way when you're nice to them.

Some people think they're more important than any other customer in the shop. You can dealing with one customer when another comes waltzing along and says: "is there any tomato sauce?" For God's sake, I'm clearly dealing with this customer. Wait patiently! And sometimes you're talking to one customer over the phone when another comes along in the flesh and starts demanding your full attention. It's just so rude.

By reading this, anybody would think I don't like customers. I do. I genuinely like working with the public because 90% of our customers are lovely. You can have a laugh with them and they treat you like a fellow human being. It's just the tiny proportion of arrogant, cocky, rude buggers that really get on my nerves.

Hall of Shame: Volume IV

2007-04-12T18:40:00.000Z

Smokers, it seems, are worse than anybody else for making a show of themselves in Food Place dramatically enough to warrant a Hall of Shame entry. Many entries about nasty customers seem to relate to scenes that have unfolded at the kiosk and this one is the worst of them all. Looking back, I think I handled the situation well, although very unprofessionally. But nobody who witnessed it really cared that I was a little out-of-line.

This, I should point out, happened before I rose to being a supervisor. I was just a kiosk assistant and was nearing the end of an eight-hour-shift of non-stop serving customers. I was sick of the sound of my own voice saying "hi", "bye", "please" and "thank you". I was thirsty. I was tired.

----

A lovely old chap, a frequent Food Place visitor, approaches the lottery desk in his mobility scooter. He can't walk very far on his own, so he uses this vehicle to keep his independence. He seems to like coming in for the social activity more than anything. He's always bumping into people he knows and most of the staff, myself included, enjoy a good chat with him. He's one of those old people that can get away with rambling on about his life because he actually has something interesting to say about it.

Back to the story, he's in the lottery queue. He hands me his slips and begins to chat to me about the weather which, if I recall correctly, is pretty horrible. When I get to the last slip he's given me the machine throws it back at me and makes one of it's many silly noises. A quick investigation yields the explanation.

"Oh, I think you've filled this one out on the wrong type of slip. Was it the main lottery game you wanted it on for?"

"Oh yes, why what have I done?"

"Oh you've written onto a Hotpicks slip, that's all. Never mind, I can type the numbers in for you."

The lovely old man apologises, I assure him it's not a problem, and proceed to enter the numbers. Within seconds I'm disrupted by an overly-dramatic sigh coming from the queue. I look up and see a young-ish man - hair gel, leather jacket, shirt and tie - giving me the evils. He's looking at his (flashy) watch and shaking his head.

At first, I ignore this blatant show of impatience and bad manners and continue typing the numbers. Seconds later, the sigh sounds again only this time with far more emphasis. I look up and return the death-stare, determined not to be the first to look away. The man crosses his arms, sighs again, and looks to the roof.

This momentary distraction causes me to lose track of what I'm doing, forcing me to start all over again. I apologise to the man in the scooter for the delay.

But somebody else isn't amused.

"For fuck's sake, I haven't got all day you know." He clearly hasn't got the guts to shout it though. He just mutters. But I bloody well hear it. He's got one last chance. He gets one final death stare from me as a stark warning to behave himself.

I return to typing the numbers, but I've barely got the first one tapped in when he flares up again. But he really makes me see red this time...

He directs his venom at the poor man in the mobility scooter: "What are you playing at holding us all up like this?"

I'm not having that: "OI! This gentleman is a customer like anybody else, and he'll be served just the same. I'd do the same for you, so just back off. You've no right speaking to people like that."

He's stunned. Obviously he thinks lowly shop assistants aren't allowed to challenge his disgusting conduct. "What did you just say to me?"

"Basically, I said mind your manners and stop speaking to people like they're dirt on your shoe."

"I don't fucking believe this. You're paid to do a job, so do it..."

"Well, if people waited patiently and respected the fact that they're not the only customer in the shop, maybe I'd be able to get on with doing my job!"

The man puts on a flabbergasted face and gives me the 'your card is marked!' look. He does more huffing and puffing and it's really distracting the poor old gent caught in the middle of this unpleasant charade.

The man, ever polite, turns round to the jumped up, spikey-haired pillock. He touches his arm and begins to apologise for the delay. I'm about to run over there screaming at him not to apologise, when the pillock launches his next tirade:

"Don't touch my jacket!"

Oh my God! How far up his own arse can he get? Mind the jacket? Does he think it's special or something? Jesus Christ I have a leather jacket! Half the population have a leather jacket!

"I'm sorry, I'm just trying to say sorry for the delay, it's my fault for filling out the form wrong..."

Pillock cuts him off: "I haven't got time to wait all day because of your arse-ups."

I've had enough now. "Any more swearing and I call the manager and have you removed." I turn to the old man, "And you've got nothing to apologise for, it's an easy mistake to make." And back to Pillock, "You're only holding yourself up by making such a scene, I could have sorted this out three times over if you hadn't been such a drama queen."

Pillock turns a bright shade of red and backs down. He turns his back to me and allows me to finish dealing with the gentleman. Soon it's his turn to be served.

I'm not the in mood for all-singing-all-dancing customer service. "Yes?"

"Twenty Bensons."

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard."

I toy with the idea of calling the manager to give this drama an explosive end, but, after more death-stares, I decide to proceed with serving this piece of filth. I get what he wants, violently scan the barcode and fling the packet onto the desk.

"Four-seventy-two." (You can tell how long ago this was) Even after all that had gone on, I still felt very rude for omitting the please. But he'd have to have some bottle to comment on my lack of manners.

He tosses a five-pound-note onto the desk. I snatch it up, hammer the buttons on my keyboard, slam my cash drawer lid down and drop his change onto the counter. He makes a big show of slamming his fist onto it, sliding it across the surface and scooping it into his pocket. He walks away doing his tough-man walk.

But I just know he's going to go back to his flashy little car and try to crawl into the boot to hide and recover from the humiliation. Serves him right. He tries to look hard by abusing shop assistants and defenceless customers, it backfires. Shop assistant bites back and he ends up looking a right prat in front of a queue of people.

If he hadn't involved the poor man in his little attempt to look powerful, I'd have laughed in his face. Arrogant little wotsit.

Ellenfoot Dies

2007-04-10T20:09:00.000Z

Today brought me to visit Ellenfoot Food Place, unfortunately. You remember, it's the store that's always got on our wick by being oh so better than us.

Ellenfoot Food Place is virtually identical to ours, only slightly narrower. It has the same warehouse-look as us, with no ceiling and a clear view straight to the tin roof and air conditioning apparatus. The staff, however, are another issue entirely.

I don't need an outsider to tell me that my branch of Food Place has friendly staff. We know many of the customers on first name terms, we're generally very cheery and we'll go out of our way to help (unless the customer in question is a nasty-pasty). But Ellenfoot is something else. At the till they totally blank the customers. No eye-contact, no smile, no please, no thank you, no sod all. One of them has the looks and posture of a gorilla.

Ellenfoot is also more expensive. Food Place think they can get away with charging the customers more money because competition is thin on the ground in the town. The staff don't follow the POS policies and, as a result, many of their shelf prices are missing, inaccurate or misleading. My inside knowledge tells me they don't follow stock-control procedures properly and it really shows. The number of missing products, incorrect facings and overcrowded shelves is quite astounding.

Ellenfoot have always thought they can get away with being sub-par because their customers generally had nowhere else to go. But last week this all changed. Muhaha! A rival has opened up shop in the town, and sales figures for Ellenfoot Food Place plunged. At first the manager was overly confident it was because people were checking out the competition - he was so sure they would all return. But it's not happening. In fact its worsening. This time last week they were down 38% on the previous week. This week, they're 18% down on last week's poor figures placing them 56% short of their sales before the rival arrived.

In a way, it's sad. There's no doubt that people are going to lose their jobs. Food Place has "Sales Tiers" which dictate how many supervisors the store needs. Ellenfoot has dropped two sales tiers in the past two weeks. Their new position, if maintained, means they should have 5 supervisors and 2 department managers. They currently have 9 supervisors and 4 department managers. Eek. And then there's the possibility of closure. If their new rival (you're probably already guessing who this rival is) gains the confidence of Ellenfoot residents, Food Place is stuffed. If it goes anything like Bartonfield (another local Food Place hammered by the same rival chain) then the sales will continue to slide gradually until it reaches the point that promotional stock accounts for 90% of the total sales. And we all know what that means - no profit. Bartonfield lasted 8 months - I wonder how long it'll take for Ellenfoot.

When I visited today the store, although far from deserted, was nothing like as busy as it usually is. There were plenty of customers but, sadly for Food Place, they were only stocking up on the special offers.

And the effects don't stop at Ellenfoot. Sales at my Food Place branch are down by roughly £3000. This is a tiny fraction of our total sales and isn't going to lead to mass redundancies, but it's still something.

At the end of the day, the blame doesn't lie solely with the rival - naming no names, but inviting guesses (I'll give you one). Ellenfoot Food Place isn't able to compete because it's much smaller, more expensive and it was too complacent. If the staff had run the store well in the past, they might have more customer loyalty now. But it's too late...

The drama.

Operation Checkout & Retained Cards

2007-04-07T23:02:00.000Z

Retained Cards
It's so bizarre that I should have thought to myself last Thursday, "oh, it's been a long time since we had to retain somebody's credit card". I wish my mind had kept it's dirty little thoughts to itself because, sure enough, the very thing happened today.

Carla's chip-and-pin machine had instructed her to swipe a customer's card, the old fashioned way, rather than processing it the now-normal way. When she did this, a message came up on her till: "RETAIN DEBIT CARD". Thankfully, she had the brains not to tell the customer this, and rang for me.

God, did the customer take the news badly. I can understand it in a way. It can't be nice to be told, by some checkout supervisor, that your card is going to be taken away from you and destroyed.

"WHY? What's the matter with it? WHY, WHY, WHY?!"

Again, understandable. I think I would be agitated under such circumstances.

I tried to keep the whole thing discreet. I didn't want all the customers rubber-necking and eavesdropping for a bit of scandal. "I'm afraid they don't tell us why they've done this, so I can't say for certain, but they normally ask us to withhold a card if they've noticed suspicious activity in your account. That's not to say they suspect you of anything, they've most probably done it as a precaution for you."

"What? You mean some hacker's got into my account and spent my money!? Oh my God. Sweet mother of God, no, not this..."

"No, no, I'm not saying that's what has happened, I was just giving an example as to why they might have asked us to keep your card. You'd have to get in touch with them as soon as possible."

"Well it's a brand new card!"

"I see. Have you used the old one today at all?"

"Yes, this morning."

"Well that could be why they're asking us to retain the new one. On their system, it will appear to them that you're still using your old card, yet there's been an attempt to use the new one - they might suspect it was intercepted in the post."

She took this explanation readily enough and paid with her credit card. I followed the normal procedure and cut the corner of the card off in her presence before filling out a form and placing it in an envelope ready to send back.

It wasn't long before she returned and asked for the manager. Oh God, here we go.

She ranted to Terry: "These fools in here have cut up my new debit card and sent it away, and I've just been on the phone to my bank who've told me there was no reason they should have done this!"

It took a long time for Terry to explain to her that we can only handle cards as the tills instruct us to. If it asks for us to seek telephone authorisation, we have to do that and if it instructs us to keep the card we have to do that. He eventually won her over by reminding her that she wouldn't thank a shop for ignoring such a message if her card had been stolen.

Honestly. But there you go. That's banks for you. If ever there's a problem they always shift the blame onto the shop. Nothing's ever their fault.

Operation Checkout is Coming
Today was absolute hell on earth. Easter isn't normally especially busy for us and we certainly didn't bargain for what we got today. We're putting it down to it being the first Easter since the local Kwik Save store closed down, but God Almighty, surely all those customers didn't just come from that! At one point this afternoon we had all the tills operating and the queues were stretching back to the middle of the aisles.

Strange that people still glare at me as if to say "I'm waiting here! Do something about it!" when there aren't any more checkouts left to open. What am I supposed to do? Wheel out the six spare tills we keep locked in a cupboard? Yeah.

But thankfully our saviour may be on the way. Following on from the huge refit Food Place underwent after Christmas, the hitherto unchanged checkout area is in line for a revamp. Operation Checkout they're calling it. It's a rolling program moving across all Food Places that will see new checkouts installed and layout improvements. Or so they say.

So they're finally ripping out our existing checkout bases, which are pitted with dried up debris that's gathered over the past 10 years, and replacing them with shiny new ones. We're going to have 10 mainbank 'fish-tail' checkouts (ones with conveyor belts and packing wells for those unfamiliar with techno-shop-talk) versus the 8 we currently have. And we're getting express checkouts back - the old ones were removed to make way for self-scan tills which, themselves, were pulled out months later because of shocking levels of customer abuse.

However, by far the most interesting change will be the removal of our Customer Service Desk. The tobacco kiosk, which it's currently joined on to, is being moved to make room for the additional checkouts, and the desk isn't surviving the changes. In once sense I won't be sorry to see the back of it. It'll mean I never have to cover another lunch break on there. Which means less exposure to the morons who shop with us. Or does it? With no desk to complain at, they're going to attack anywhere and everywhere. I can see it coming. Nobody will be safe.

Least of all me and Wendy. To compensate for the loss of workspace when the Service Desk goes, we're getting a small 'podium' behind the new kiosk which will act as our new base camp. Customers are going to see that as a 'Please Complain Here' location. I see teardrops ahead.

It's a shame these changes aren't going to bring the cash office back down to the front line. It was so much easier to manage in the past, when the cash office was behind the kiosk. We could do the cash office jobs and supervise the tills at the same time - we even had a little window to keep an eye on what was going on outside. Nowadays, if you're upstairs in the cash office, there's no question of trying to be anywhere else at the same time.

New Uniform, Cheque Madness & Goodbyes

2007-04-06T09:50:00.000Z

Uniforms
Today will be my first day wearing my new uniform. Terry, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that he wants the store supervisors differentiated from the rest of the staff by what they wear. The previous uniform was something of a sore point.

When we were hastily taken over and rebranded two years ago, New Food Place sent in somebody to take our uniform measurements and order what we needed. This woman, Tricia she was called, was also responsible for organising everybody's contracts, so she had a bit of a say in who got what posts. Problem was, she had her favourites. She immediately took to Lorraine - who wouldn't though? - and made sure she got a supervisor post and ordered her five tops, five pairs of trousers, a quality name badge (not like the DIY-kit ones most of us wear) and all the accessories. However, Tricia didn't like me and Wendy. We got two tops each, no name badge and she did her very best to try and stop Terry making us supervisors.

Lots of bitterness broke out in the store when it was revealed that Tricia hadn't been allocating uniform fairly. Some part-time staff had got more uniform than the full time staff. She told some people that blouses and shirts weren't available, but allowed others to have them.

As a result, two years on, some of us are wearing rags because we got so little that it's been washed a thousand times over.

But not from today. I have shiny new shirts and ties to wear, as well as a smart name badge. We were all happy with this new situation except Brian, one of the stock-control supervisors, who took issue with the colour of the shirts. He's gone away and moaned to Terry and he's been told he can buy his own shirts and wear those. This caused a minor riot amongst the other supervisors. We all went to Terry and announced we'd be coming in wearing luminous yellow shirts if we were allowed to pick and choose what we wear now. He quickly backed down and is making Brian wear the standard attire.

So all is now well in that department.

Guarantee Cards
Today was Good Friday and it was horrendously busy. We slightly underestimated how many bodies we needed to man the checkouts and ended up borrowing from all over the shop. On the whole, however, the day ran pretty smoothly, but you can always rely on one person to go and bugger it up by kicking up a fuss.

Cleo rang her bell to summon me to her checkout and explained: "This gentleman wants to pay for his goods by cheque, but the guarantee card he's given me isn't for the same bank account as the one written on the cheque."

You'd think it would be quite straightforward to handle this.

"I'm sorry," I explained to the man, "if you want to use this cheque, you'll need to provide us with a guarantee card for the account the money will be coming from."

"I don't believe this."

People say that quite a lot. They can never quite believe their own stupidity it would seem. Never occurs to them for a moment that it's their cock-up. They just think that, being paid shop assistants, we should be able to sort out any mess of theirs.

He continued: "My name is on my card, and it's the same name printed on the cheque!" He waved the card in my face as proof.

"Yes, I'm aware of that, but the card is for a Barclay's account and the cheque is for a Halifax account. The guarantee card is our confirmation that your bank will honour the payment to us regardless of the funds in your account..."

"Well, are you trying to say I've got no money, because I have!"

"No, I'm not saying that...all I'm saying is that we can't accept cheques unless they are supported by a guarantee card..."

"But I've given you one that clearly belongs to me!"

"I'm not disputing that the card belongs to you, I'm saying that we can't take payment by this cheque unless you provide us with the card for the same account."

At this point his wife starts. "This is pathetic. I've never known anything so small minded and petty."

"I'm not being petty, I'm just trying to explain the situation to you..."

"We've paid with these a hundred times in Tesco!"

I seriously doubted that this was true, but continued, "Well Tesco's till operators clearly haven't checked the details on the card you're giving them. Checking card details against cheque details is the first thing our cashiers are trained to do when they learn to handle cheques."

Like most similar situations, my attitude wasn't helping matters. I'm not the best person to deal with these situations because I take the moral high ground with everything. I insist that, if I was the customer, I would never expect shops to take a cheque from me without a guarantee the payment would be honoured, and I believe all customers should think the same way. But they don't.

"So, to be clear, you definitely don't have the card for this cheque account?"

"No."

"OK, well if I call the manager down, we can see what he says, but I'm quite sure he'll only confirm what I've said."

I was right. He did. So, what did the customers do? Threw us the card to pay with that! After all that fuss! I was furious with them.

Goodbyes
Food Place won't be the same for me after today. It was Kate's last day before she moves on for pastures new. She's finished her degree and has secured a job as a Human Resources Field Manager for a large clothing retail chain.

I can't imagine what it's going to be like when I don't have somebody's accent to mock. And nobody else can laugh with me when I find random things funny. Renault Espaces. Poo. Certain doors. Chairs with amusing postures. Evac-Chairs. Diana Ross. Shoe polish. Poop-scoop bags. Klingons.

I'm going to miss having her there so much. She started there at the same times as me, and she's one of the few people who've been there the whole time I've worked at Food Place. I'm really happy she's going on to better things, and I hope I'm not too far behind her, but HOW DARE SHE LEAVE ME ALL ON MY OWN!

Well, there's 83 other colleagues, but they're not Kate!

Recruitment Woes

2007-04-05T19:55:00.000Z

Oh my God if Food Place never hires a colleague again I will rest easy. You cannot underestimate how annoying, stressful and plain hectic it is trying to recruit a suitable person to fill a 25-hour checkouts vacancy.

I think the whole problem is aggravated by the extremely low staff turnover in our particular branch of Food Place. If I had to deal with recruitment week in, week out - like many stores do - it would just become part of the daily routine. If we were such a horrid place to work that we went through 20 till assistants per week, reputation would spread and nobody would bother applying. But as it stands, our store is the only major employer on our side of town. If local residents secure a job, they don't bloody well let go of it. A bit like me really. As a result, a vacancy in Food Place is a minor media event.

The fun starts the second you place the advert in the window. You get a rush of people asking for application forms. But they don't just want one. They'll also take one for their son who, they explain, is so lazy he sits down to take a pee. Yes, you really skyrocketed his employment prospects by telling me that didn't you? And then they remember, they should take one for their neighbour, Joyce, who's been very depressed lately and needs something to take her mind off things.

Give me strength.

But some people can't even be bothered to visit us in the flesh to seek an application form. Whenever we advertise vacancies, you always get people ringing up and asking for one to be posted to them:

"Hello, Food Place how can I help you?"

"Could you post me an application form?"

Could you post me an application form WHAT? But you have to be nice, so you get a pen ready and say "Yes, certainly, can I take your name and address please?"

"It's 11 Peel Green Road, Natasha Bedford."

WHAT?! You want me to post an application form to PEEL GREEN ROAD? It's practically in the car park! Jesus Christ I'd have to walk past your house to get to the post box! You lazy great heifer! As if we'd even contemplate employing somebody who can't be bothered to walk five yards!

When the closing date arrives, we remove the notice and start vetting the application forms. Here are just a few observations that have arisen from this arduous process:

"I want to work this day, those hours!" Why do people respond to an advert for an "evenings and weekends" checkout assistant and fill in the grid saying they can only work 8am-10am every fourth Saturday and 10.00am - 2.30pm Monday to Friday except every fifth Tuesday? Do you really think employers will take on anybody who dictates their working hours like that?
"I don't want 2 work on da tillz!" Well tough madam! You applied for a 'tillz' vacancy! And please at least attempt to use English when writing an application form.
"I want to work 'behind the scenes' as I'm not good with people!" Oh good! You're exactly what we're looking for! NOT. There is no behind the scenes in a supermarket. Most people are crap at dealing with the public, but you've got to do it sonny. Sorry. I work in the cash office and you still get customers popping out of the safe to ask where the pasta is! (slight exaggeration)
"I be cleaner as I speak no English at all!" Well you're not much use to us then are you.
"I've had 15 jobs in the past two days!" How can people honestly expect to get anywhere in finding a job when their track record proves they can't hold a job longer than 20 seconds? Well, when you think about it, some morons must be hiring them.

So, having waded through all that nonsense, you end up with four very good application forms. Two of them are from recent school-leavers with good grades who are currently doing part-time further education courses. Two of them are from mature applicants who have very good previous employment records that prove they can hold down jobs for years on end.

And then it comes to the interviews. Sadly, two of the applicants looked much better on paper. One of the school-leavers clearly got somebody with nice handwriting to write their application form for them and one of the mature candidates has obviously held their previous job so long because their employer couldn't find an excuse to get shot of them.

I mean, they just showed no spark of life at all. It went something like this:

"So, tell me about your last job."

"It was in a pub" ...

"OK...and...what were your day-to-day duties?"

"I served drinks" ...

Oh for CHRIST'S SAKE! Do you want this job or don't you?!

But the other two pose a dilemma for us. What do you do when you have two applicants who are both as suitable as each other competing for one post? All there is to do is let one of them down gently. We send them a letter which says how impressed we were with their interview, but due to overwhelming response to the advertisement, we cannot offer them the job on this occasion but will contact them as soon as something suitable arises.

I felt like such a bastard for having to do that. It broke my heart! And here's me trying to be tough.

However, the next step is the one I'm dreading the most. The induction. Kill me now.

I'm Re-Launching Myself

2007-03-29T17:16:00.000Z

Several events over the past couple of weeks have made me come to realise that I'm too soft. I'm a department supervisor and, in the absence of a department manager, I'm in charge of 51 checkout, kiosk, cash office and admin staff. And I've been letting some of them walk all over me.

This problem stems, very simply, from my inferiority complex when dealing with certain staff. I'm 21 years old and, despite having worked at Food Place for six years, still feel very uncomfortable exerting my authority over people who are older, wiser and have worked there longer. The worst part is, all the time I've been a supervisor I've known this feeling is totally irrational. I don't need anybody to tell me that, in general, I'm liked and respected amongst the staff (Linda, rather disturbingly, wants to wrap me up and take me home - which is a separate matter - probably one for her psychiatrist). But I can't get away from the fact that I feel very queasy about laying down the law with colleagues who are old enough to be a grandparent.

On the whole, I'm fiercely protective of myself and I'm not afraid to stand my ground when I feel I'm being treated unfairly. I'm very outspoken with the management and I'm known for my vicious rants at staff meetings (sometimes, you can see people edging towards the door to escape once I've got going). It's the realisation of this that's made me see things from Terry's point-of-view this week.

You'll probably recall that I've had a series of rows with him. Until I actually sat down and thought about them, I was adamant I was in the right and that Terry had behaved unpleasantly towards me. But, the more I thought, the more I realised how frustrating it must be for him. In me he has a supervisor who, on one hand, let's certain staff get away with murder and, on the other hand, will scream and shout at his superiors at the slightest provocation. He's probably thinking: "if only he would get this worked up about old grannies on the tills nipping off for fag breaks whenever they like".

So, starting yesterday, I re-launched myself as 'the firm, but fair supervisor'. It didn't take long for a situation to arise that would test my resolve to kick the older staff into shape.

Marjorie, a Food Place veteran, started kicking up a gigantic fuss when she discovered she was scheduled to work a three-hour morning shift on Easter Monday. Before she'd even spoken to me about it she'd been threatening to walk out and was encouraging other people to rebel against the rota and refuse to work the bank holidays. She eventually did come and see me though.

"I'm not working that!"

"What's that Marge?"

"Easter Monday. I'm not contracted to Mondays, you can't make me."

Now, the old me would have snapped under the pressure and made alternative shift arrangements to give moaning Marge the day off. But the new, improved Andrew dealt with the situation fairly but firmly:

"I'm sorry Marge, the rota is done now. If you have an issue with it then you need to see Terry, but I can tell you now there's not a lot he'll do about it. You're not contracted to Mondays, but you always work them and, if you remember, Terry used his discretion to pay you for Christmas Day and New Years Day because they fell on Mondays and you wouldn't have got paid otherwise."

"Well this isn't fair."

"We've worked the shifts to be fair to everyone. Anybody who didn't request the Bank Holidays off was put in to work either Good Friday or Easter Monday and will be paid for the one they have off if it's a contracted day. If we'd put you in on Good Friday you wouldn't have got paid for Easter Monday because you're not contracted."

"But Terry would have paid me."

"He wouldn't Marge. He only did it at Christmas and New Year because the store was closed. He won't pay you for Easter Monday if you don't work it."

"Well I don't want the pay then, I'll just take it off unpaid."

"Then you need to see Terry or find somebody who'll work it for you or do a shift swap. Me and Wendy haven't got the time to redo the rotas to work around one person. Sorry."

It felt good actually. Marge obviously presumed that all she needed to do was wait until Andrew was in, kick up a fuss, and all would be arranged for her to have paid leave. Well no. Not anymore.

And Sandra had better watch her back the next time she dares to take 25 minutes for a 15 minute break!

Another Week from Hell

2007-03-24T09:26:00.000Z

Well, so much for my assertion that it would be back to business as usual this week. So far I've had three nasty customers, three rows with Terry, the last of which left me on the verge of collecting my things and walking out, and I've had to be interviewed as part of disciplinary action against a colleague. So not exactly what I'd call a typical week.

A long-forgotten customer-type re-emerged this week. The ratty old lady who thinks it's OK to speak to supermarket staff like something she scraped off her shoe. There have been no fewer than three occasions this week when an old hag has seen fit to abuse us over nothing at all.

Evil old cow #1
The first incident was on Monday. I was sitting on a checkout with my weighing scale, counting the money in the cash drawer, whilst Deborah was cleaning the conveyor belt on this particular till. We started having a little chat, as you do when there's no customers around, before I spotted an old woman stomping towards us.

"Instead of sitting around gabbing, you want to get up and do some work! I've been watching you two, drooping about on these tills - there's no cream crackers on the shelves up there, so I suggest you get off your lazy behinds and get some!"

We were both completely speechless. I think I've mentioned before that I tend to lose my ability to speak when affronted by customers. It's only when they've gone that I start building up an idea of how I should really have handled the situation. I just stared right into the old witch's face.

Debs spoke, however. "Excuse me, but I'm not on my lazy behind, I'm cleaning this conveyor belt, which is part of my job, and he's counting the till float - doing his job. And I can see cream crackers from here." Thank God somebody was able to compose themselves enough to answer back.

The woman was shocked at Deborah's tone and asked to speak to her superior.

My chance to shine had arrived: "I'm Deborah's supervisor, how can I help you?"

Her face turned scarlet and off she stomped. Debs still hasn't stopped ranting about this woman. How dare she speak to me like that!

Evil old cow #2
The next old lady who'd seen her arse in the mirror that morning crossed paths with me on Wednesday. This one was a nosy old bitch who was poking her nose into areas that were none of her business. I happened to walk by as she was leaning over the kiosk counter and she turned round and attacked.

She jabbed me on the shoulder and snapped: "That notice on there is DISGUSTING!"

When I'd got over the initial shock of a customer committing battery against me, I looked over and seen what she was talking about. A notice, placed behind the kiosk by me, reading: This kiosk has now been cleaned and organised and anybody found to have messed it up again will be hanged and buried in an unmarked grave! Just a nice, lighthearted little message to the kiosk staff - all of whom found it amusing.

"That notice isn't intended for your eyes. It's behind the kiosk, out of customers' sight, and its addressed to the kiosk staff."

"Well I can see it and it's disgraceful. I shall be reporting it to your manager!"

I would normally try and be diplomatic, but not on this occasion. "You could only read it because you were leaning across the counter. The staff who can see it, thankfully, have a sense of humour."

She did a HUH! noise and stalked off.

Evil old cow #3
Wendy and I were busying ourselves merchandising a new rack displaying women's tights when the next moody old heifer kicked off.

"You've got nine empty tills down there and I'm waiting to be served! Get somebody else, pronto." Notice how they all launch straight into their nasty little rants without seeking our attention first.

Wendy isn't the type of person who gets mad with customers. She calls a shovel a shovel to anybody else, but she's generally overly professional and doesn't mind kissing customers' backsides when they're horrible. I guess she's just able to stay detached from them.

"Let's have a look then, and we'll call somebody else if we need to," she said, ever so nicely.

But nobody was 'pronto-ing' me. "There's no queue at all on till 3, straight over there. Jenny is just serving that customer with a newspaper, you can go there."

"I shouldn't have to stand about waiting behind other people. You've got nine tills doing nothing, so get somebody on them!"

"We will gladly open checkouts when there's more than two people waiting at any other till - but not when there's one person in front. You wouldn't even have got all your things on the belt by the time Jenny over there was ready to serve you."

Did she think we're going to open all of our checkouts every hour of every day, even when there's no customers there to serve? Did she think we want to go bust? And manners wouldn't go amiss.

Other Business
Terry has been picking at me all week.

The first row flared over the wages. Last week he told me off for signing-off staff working hours when people hadn't taken breaks. He made me go back and edit their records to deduct their break entitlements - even though they hadn't taken them. Fair enough. They know they're supposed to go, the supervisors provide cover for them to go, if they don't go and they don't write the reason for the missed break on their timesheet then they shouldn't expect to be paid for it. But this week Terry had done the wages and I noticed he'd signed-off the time sheets without deducting the missed breaks.

Battleaxe that I am, I fought the issue with him. How dare he criticise me for inflating the labour spends by not deducting breaks, when he goes and does the same thing himself. Terry being Terry, he wouldn't admit that he'd been a hypocrite, had a mini-row with me and went away to sulk.

The next row came when he rewarded his two blue-eyed-boys (department managers Sean and Will) for working overtime by giving them bottles of wine. This was at a staff meeting and he then went on to sing the praises of the fresh foods and grocery departments and congratulate the relevant staff. I was waiting for the Services department to get it's mention - but it didn't come. Wendy and I were giving each other looks of disbelief over the table. I had to say something.

"Terry, can I just say, I think you missed a department off your little praise-list there."

He gets confrontational when challenged and he put on his little sarcastic, mock-offended act: "Oh, I'm so sorry Andrew, what do you want me to say?"

"Well the fact that me and Wendy both worked 45 hours last week to cover sickness, and are both losing holidays because there's nobody to cover, could do with a little mention. And while we're on the subject, we haven't had a manager now since Christmas and we're both having to do all the work of a Services Manager on supervisor pay. And I read in the visit report that Steve [area manager] was impressed with the front-end and you've yet to feed that back to us. We worked hard for that, and we've got no thanks for it. The more we do, the more you expect from us."

Terry was bright red and you could have heard a pin drop in the room. He made a public apology and took Wendy and me to one side later in the day. He apologised again and admitted he had taken our work for granted. A result.

But he soon ruined matters by starting another fight over a piddly little matter. This time it was over the carrier bags - or should I say lack of them. He caught me coming out of the cash office and started a tirade: "Andrew, there's only four sleeves of carrier bags down the front, we're going to run out, how did you let this happen?"

I wasn't in the mood for such attacks: "Er, I'm sorry Terry, but since when have I been responsible for ordering carrier bags?"

"Are you a Services Supervisor or aren't you?"

"Well, actually, last time you consulted me, I was Cash Office Supervisor - and the Stock Control Co-ordinator Routine Chart clearly states that carrier bags should be ordered when processing a sundries and store consumables order on a Friday morning."

"Well why haven't you liaised with Greg and told him you were running low."

"As a matter of fact, I ordered 15 cases of bags last Friday - I didn't have to do that, but I did - and only 10 cases were delivered."

"Liar."

Did I hear him correctly? Did he just call me a liar? I walked away from him, having grown extremely mad, and into the stock control office. I had Greg print me a copy of the previous Friday's order, and took it and thrust it into Terry's face.

He still tried to babble his way out of admitting he was wrong. But he'd annoyed me so much I was ready to walk. It was more to do with the fact he'd jumped on me for a problem that wasn't, technically, my responsibility. Yet, he's quite happy to ignore all the other extra duties I do.

I locked myself in the cash office and sulked. Terry went home we haven't yet crossed paths again. But I certainly hope he'll apologise.

Omnibus Edition

2007-03-17T21:09:00.000Z

The past week has been living hell. Due to a certain ex-line manager (cough, Nick) signing off holidays willy nilly before he departed from Food Places employment, we've been left chronically short staffed this week. I haven't had a day off for 13 days now and I've still got tomorrow to work. Obviously, being tired and ratty (I've done two 13-hour days), I haven't found the time to sit down and blog about work. There's been plenty of things to blog about however.

Monday
Four, yes four, members of staff from the checkouts all decided to be ill. How dare they. Have they no consideration at all? Here's me working all the hours God sends to keep the place running and they're all busy conspiring to make my working day hell. As a result of this synchronised lead-swinging, when the store opened on Monday morning there was one cashier on the kiosk and me in the cash office - with nobody else due to arrive until 10.00am.

Several frantic phone calls later, I'd managed to get some staff on the scene but the day wasn't finished with me yet. The safe key decided to leap from my pocket and conceal itself underneath the worktop in the office. Cue 45 minutes of frantic searching, conducted to chants of "I've lost the bloody key. I'm doomed."

So, all in all, a day of absolute torture.

Tuesday
Things were going too well. By 10.00am, I'd done everything I needed to do and thought it would be a good idea to get ahead with the checkout rotas. I came to wish I hadn't bothered. After an hour and a half of trying to perfect it, problems began to arise. One after the other. It emerged that I'd given two people shifts on days they'd specifically asked for as holiday. I'd overlooked kiosk cover on two afternoons. I'd overlooked front-end cover on one morning. So another job done to the worst of my abilities.

More frustrations arose when, in the process of correcting these careless oversights, I unwittingly smeared my hand with Tippex before running my hands through my hair (my usual deep-in-thought-subconscious-action). You've never seen anything like it - I looked like Cruella DeVille.

Wednesday
One haircut later, I was all set for more mishaps. When I set about the morning cash office duties, I immediately discovered that Deborah, who was on the cash office close the previous night, had obviously been having an off-day. Five of the till floats were counted incorrectly, the safe had been miscounted by £540, the cash office stock was short by £59. It took me HOURS to sort it all out.

And then some stupid customer steps on a grape and skids three-quarters of the way down the produce aisle. They didn't actually lose their footing but, probably seeing the pound signs floating before their eyes, invented a neck injury that had resulted from this slight trip. This resulted in a good two hours of interviews, witness statements, CCTV trawling and form-filling.

Thursday
Linda, who works on Legality Maintenance, went swanning off to a funeral for the day meaning that Jacqueline needed my help to make sure the workload got done. This meant I spent the day darting between the cash office, covering front-end supervision, and checking price tickets and putting out POS. I have never been so stressed in all my life and, by the end of the day, people around me were walking on eggshells.

There is nothing so mind numbing as conducting a category check. It basically involves using a handheld computer to scan every single product in a particular category and checking that the price on the computer matches the one on the shelf-ticket. Jacqueline obviously seen me coming and landed me with doing Beers, Wines and Spirits - the largest single product category in the store. It took me nearly two hours to complete this task and I was clinically brain dead by the end of it.

Friday
Whichever Godforsaken company it is that sends us our change made a complete cock-up of it. The failed to send us the ordered amount of pound coins, £5 notes and 50ps - the most vital coins. They did, however, compensate with lots of pennies and 5ps (which hardly get used). Thanks to this, my safe is now stuffed to the gills with useless coin and it'll take weeks to run it all down again.

Other than that, a reasonably good day, however.

Saturday
There's not a lot to say about today other than that it was horrendously busy. And we didn't have enough staff due to more malingerers, but that's nothing fresh.

It's a shame I haven't been able to write full-length dedicated blog entries for some of the events of the past week as I'm sure they'd have made amusing reading. It is, however, back to business as usual this coming week.

They Just Keep Coming

2007-03-11T19:30:00.000Z

Thankfully I'm in a much better mood today. Thanks for the comments from nice readers about yesterday's shenanigans. Normally, after a day has passed, I feel a lot better about incidents like that. But not this time. I still feel every bit as angry as I did when that old arse was mouthing off at me. But, one good thing, I've secured the support of all the management. They stand by my refusal to give the old git what he wanted and have promised not to cave in to him when they contact him tomorrow.

Enough about that.

I had a rather bizarre customer today. She was up her own backside, snooty and moaney - but all over a newspaper supplement. I mean, who on earth would walk into a shop and make such a fool of themselves over a trivial matter like that?

She collared me while I was standing next to the newspaper rack.

"Excuse me, I bought a Daily Mail yesterday and when I got it home it had the magazine in it for The Telegraph."

Oh, I'll just wave my magical fairy wand and correct the problem for you. "Oh, I'm very sorry about that. Somebody must have made a mistake when they were putting the inserts into the newspapers."

"Evidently. I'll be wanting the correct magazine please."

"I see. Unfortunately we don't have one in store..."

She cut me off: "what do you mean you don't have one? How can that be?"

"I'll explain. At the end of each day we tie everything up that we have left and send it back to the distributor so they can credit us for the value of what we haven't sold. So any remaining Daily Mails would have been sent back."

"In that case I'd like you to contact your distributor and get the magazine for me."

Oh for the love of Christ. "I'm afraid we can only contact them on weekday mornings and they wouldn't be able to fulfill a request like..."

"So that's it then? Somebody in your shop is incompetent and I'm now missing something I paid for! You haven't even checked to see if you have one and you're just refusing to help me!"

SUPPLEMENTS ARE FREE! You didn't pay for it you stuck up mare. "If you want me to show you the empty returns box I will, but all isn't lost. There should be a telephone number inside your newspaper to claim missing inserts."

"There will be a charge for that. And I'm not paying that because this is not my problem."

Not your problem? Is it mine then? If you'd had the foresight to phone us yesterday, as soon as you realised you were deprived of a magazine, we could have kept you one! Do you think we're some sort of vintage free crap stockist? "No I don't believe they do charge. You've already paid for the newspaper see."

"And what about my telephone bill..."

I knew full well she was just looking for a fight. But no way on God's planet was I giving her one. I took hold of a Daily Mail and browsed for the number. I was deliberately unhurried and relaxed just to annoy her.

"Oh here we go, it's a freephone number."

"Well they're going to charge me for postage and I shall be billing it you. This is your mess up, not mine."

"I'm nearly sure they won't charge you, but if they do then feel free to contact the store and we will be more than happy to refund you for any costs this mistake might incur for you.

She looked rather shocked at this and I was half expecting her to return later with petrol station receipts to claim her travelling costs. She didn't though. I can just imagine her sitting at home telling the people on the Daily Mail Missing Supplements Department how it was all Food Place's fault and recommending we're struck off their list of sellers.

As low as my opinions of people like her are, I can't help but be slightly pleased they exist. It's good, simple evil customer fun. Nobody gets insulted (well, not directly anyways), nobody gets hurt and it gives one party something to complain to all their friends and relatives about and the other party a good laugh. I hope she knows the entire scene was re-enacted to everybody in the staff room with full-blown impressions and exaggerations.

I remember another customer, a few years back, who was quite similar to this woman. It might even have been the same person. The other incident, nothing to do with any of the staff, was a grown woman throwing a wobbler in the middle of Food Place at her humiliated family.

"OH HURRY UP PORCIA! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY AND I WANT TO GO HOME AND OPEN MY PRESENTS! I DON'T WANT TO BE STUCK IN THIS PLACE ON MY SPECIAL DAY!"

While her family tried to hide behind sweet displays or pretend they were nothing to do with her, other customers looked on. Nobody quite knew what to make of it. I thought I was watching a scene for a new sketch show being covertly filmed. You know, like the Dale Winton impersonation visiting ASDA in Dead Ringers.

Oh, they do brighten up my day.

Customer Reduces me to Tears

2007-03-10T21:53:00.000Z

I'm deeply ashamed that it happened. I'm deeply embarrassed to write about it here for the world to see. A word of warning before I go any further: my sense of humour has completely deserted me today.

Being somebody who has always taken the stance of never letting nasty customers get under my skin, it's very hard for me to admit that I let somebody get the better of me. The situation was intensified, to me, by other pressures I was under at the time - but still. How did I let somebody get me to the stage of rushing into the cash office to cry tears of rage? Wiping my face on a cloth cash bag (no tissues available), afraid to go back onto the sales floor because my eyes were red.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of why the customer chose to behave the way they did. It was a very mundane situation which arose because they looked at the wrong price tag for a particular product. There was nothing amusing about it and nothing amusing about the way they treated me. They weren't abusive - in which case I certainly would have been writing a humorous blog entry, poking fun at them. They were just plain obnoxious and made remarks that hit all the wrong nerves with me.

My attitude towards work, of any description, is this: if I'm doing it, I might as well do it well. Strange as it may sound, I take a lot of pride in what I do and feel very good about the fact I do a good job and work hard. So if somebody comes along and starts blaming me, personally, for something outside of my responsibilities that is wrong I get very defensive. To be told I'm "absolutely useless", "a disgrace" and "completely incompetent" is hurtful. It's more hurtful still that it took place in an aisle crowded with customers.

The long and short of it is that they were so unpleasant, they made me extremely angry. They also happened to catch me when I was in the middle of frantically trying to work out why one of the tills was showing as being £750 short. Throughout the encounter I was desperately fighting the urge to scream "FUCK OFF!" in their face and return to trying to find the money. Visions of being hauled in for a security-breach investigation were flashing through my mind. As far as I was concerned, at that moment in time I was as good as sacked. And there I was being publicly grilled over £1.02.

By the time the customer finally went away, I'd allowed the pressure inside me to build to a level I couldn't handle. I got myself out of the way and cried. But it wasn't the thought of the missing money that was driving my tears of absolute rage - it was the thought of the way that customer had spoken to me. How dare they? Who did they think they were? Why can people get away with that? Do I not have a right to be treated with respect because I'm a shop assistant?

When I managed to compose myself, I immediately realised where the missing money was. If I had any tears left in me by this point, I'd have been crying with joy.

I sometimes wonder why I allow myself to get so wound up. It's not as though I'm paid a salary that's high enough to warrant such pressure. The key thing for me is finding the humour in things. But there's nothing funny about losing £750 - until you find it. And for the worst customer imaginable to turn up and start ranting while you're still searching. I'd challenge anybody not to have got stressed.

I've never felt this bad about a single day at Food Place since Nick was my line manager. Every day was living hell with him, but that's a story that should be saved for a day when I can laugh at it.

New Music Tape - Hurrah!

2007-03-06T17:29:00.000Z

The powers that be have decided that the in-store music at Food Place needed sprucing up. Frankly, after after over a year of listening to the same tripe ad infinitum anything new is good news. But what they have provided us with has enormously boosted my confidence in Food Place bigwigs.

They've introduced "customer-suited" music. They've carried out extensive studies on what sort of customers shop in the average Food Place outlet and at what times. They've had this information analysed and have used it to play suitable music at suitable times. So the morning is dominated by Motown classics (I nearly jumped through the ceiling with joy when The Temptations - Get Ready came one) and slower, gentler modern tracks. The oldest track I noticed was Little Bitty Pretty One. The afternoon has a more 70s/80s pop tone, with disco classics like Heart of Glass and FunkyTown included. By the evening, when they think the younger people come shopping, the music gets rather rockier. Of course, there are limits. Sweet Child O' Mine, classic as it may be, isn't really suitable for food shopping is it? However, I did hear Place your Hands and Snow (Hey Oh).

OK, so they've stereotyped people enormously by doing this. But who cares? For somebody like me who listens to anything, it can't go wrong. There have been times today that I've been desperate to burst into song and dance along the aisles. Before the new stuff came along, we generally had the music turned to the lowest volume, but today we've been blaring it out. It's amazing what sort of effect a small detail like background music can have. Nothing has seemed like too big a chore today with decent tunes to work to.

It also seemed to go down extremely well with the customers too. They haven't been moaning half as much today and many of them have actually made positive comments about the new music. Perhaps next time somebody starts complaining about nothing, I'll just advise them to go with the music and relax.

We had further good news today. Head Office received a letter of compliment from a customer about the service levels in our store. It related to an incident when the customer in question had brought back a faulty MP3 player. We didn't have any in stock to replace it, but since they were quite keen on having another (they were a good make at a good price) somebody on Customer Service (Ooo...I wonder who on earth that could possibly have been...) rang round the other local stores, located one and arranged for it to be brought to our store for the customer to collect at their convenience.

Nothing outstanding really. We would do that for any customer. But they went on to say that they were "consistently bowled over" by how helpful we are. "Nothing is too much trouble", "everybody is smiling" and "the atmosphere is so friendly". Aww. They even said they prefer to travel to our store rather than use the Ellenfoot Food Place! Victory or what?

All I can say is this: they must have been lucky on their visits having obviously never encountered some of our more dubious staff. There's Andrea for a start. Her face has been set to frown-mode for so long now I think it would do serious damage if she ever happened to smile. And they clearly have never come across Cynthia and been bored to tears by tales of glandular fever and brain tumours. And they haven't gone through Lisa's till any time recently. It's basically like paying to watch a girl chew gum whilst scanning shopping.

I have to travel away on another course in a few weeks time. Mercifully, it's only about 30 miles away and I already have a vague idea of where I'm going. No confusing Internet directions this time. And I don't have to stay overnight in a hotel, which is always a bonus. Overnight stays invariably involve crossed wires at Area Resources when some fool books you into a hotel opposite a store - but not the store your course is based at. So you have to travel a further 10 miles just to get you to a room which was actually booked with somebody else's details in mind. So after rowing with reception about your own name you're booked into a room where smoking is forbidden and there's no shower. And then they decide there's a cap on how much petrol money they'll pay you for such outings, regardless of how much you spent.

You wouldn't think working in a supermarket would require such excursions would you? At the end of the day, all we do is sell people food. And yet I have to go on courses that attempt to teach me how to develop teams, coach colleagues and operate elaborate computer systems - which are only actually used to a tiny fraction of their potential. Oh it does my head in. We once had to do a pretend mystery shop in one of our rivals' stores - I've never felt like such an idiot in all my life. Being somebody who has the brains to be able to find things in supermarkets, having to go up and ask a member of staff something was an ordeal for me. I felt so stupid - "can you tell me where the tuna is please?" when I'm thinking DUH! Try looking where the rest of the tins are for a big sign saying 'tinned fish'!

I just can't help thinking that all this effort is completely wasted...

I'm a Rude Customer Magnet

2007-03-02T19:37:00.000Z

Whenever I jump onto a till, when it's busy, I might as well stick a sign at the end saying "Rude customer? Please queue here." They just won't leave me alone! And it doesn't stop at the rude ones. I also seem to get all the downright nasty ones.

The first incident took place while I was serving at the kiosk. The queue was a mile long and, take it from me, when it's as busy as that you don't have time to look up. But, having served one customer, I looked up to see a woman starting to pile the contents of a shopping trolley onto the counter.

"Oh, I'm sorry, this is the cigarette kiosk. You need to pay for those at the checkouts." Duh! Does the fact that there's no conveyor belt and nowhere to pack not give anything away?

"What?"

"We can only take pay for five items here I'm afraid."

"Well where's the bloody sign saying that?"

Don't you get shirty with me you snotty mare. "It's just up there," I say, very politely, pointing up to the huge poster on the wall.

The woman pushed her glasses down her nose and strained to read it. Though why she'd need to strain I don't know because the writing is big enough for a bat to read without effort. She was just doing it for show. "Well how's anybody supposed to see that?"

God if I ever spot you in the street I'll kick your feet from under you! "To be honest, it doesn't really need to be there at all, it's generally accepted that you can't pay for more than a handful of items at the kiosk in any shop."

"This is a pissing joke! You've stood there and watched me wait in this queue, which is a mile long, and now you're telling me I've got to go back over there and queue again?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you waiting. If I had, I've have told you sooner." And how in the name of sanity did you get that trolley over here anyways? You must have pushed it through a closed checkout, which you obviously shouldn't have done! Did it not give you a clue that all the other people with trolleys were paying AT THE TILLS?

The woman had clearly entered stand-off mode. She was adamant she wasn't budging so Sandra, who I'm learning to like, decided to try and talk sense into her: "I'm sorry darling, it's not fair on..."

"Don't you DARE call me darling!" the woman roared.

I couldn't help myself. I burst out laughing. Sandra's accent includes darling as a general term. The same way Yorkshire folk say love and many people say mate.

"Are you laughing at me? Right. I want to see the manager now!"

Terry was called. As soon as he arrived the woman started her tirade: "Do you know what sort of people you're employing here? That Welsh one won't let me pay for my shopping and that Cockney thing - the cheek of it - calling me darling!"

I was starting to wonder if I was actually dreaming. Did I just hear myself called 'that Welsh one' and Sandra 'that Cockney thing'? Sandra is from Slough. Stupid bitch.

Terry managed to successfully prise her away from the kiosk by opening a checkout specially to serve her. God I wish he wasn't such a push-over. It's not even as though there were queues at the checkouts, but he still did it just to shut her up. He probably gave her vouchers as well. Still, he did get one snide remark in at her: said me and Sandra were working very hard, but that we had rules to follow. I doubt very much this quelled the woman though. I'm expecting a complaint through Head Office to come through soon.

Next up was another snotty woman who objected to waiting in a queue consisting of ONE other person to buy lottery tickets.

"But I've already queued with my shopping, why should I have to wait again?"

"This gentleman was here first, I'm serving him now, I'll be with you in 30 seconds."

But that wasn't good enough. She marched herself behind the man I was serving and stood huffing and puffing and looking at her watch. "This is ridiculous!" she said about five times.

And then something absolutely wonderful beyond belief happened! The gentleman I was serving stuck up for me! I couldn't believe it. I wanted to cry and hug him and offer him free shopping for life!

He said to me, purposefully loud enough for her to hear: "Just because people are old bats, it doesn't mean they have to be rude to people just because they're young. They should be setting an example!"

Oh her face. If I'd had a camera. It's customers like him that restore my faith in life! (OK, maybe I'm going a bit too far, but in five years of working at Food Place, only one other customer has ever defended me).

There were quite a few more rude ones, but they're hardly worth bothering about. Just run of the mill awkwardness.

Colleague in Focus: Alex

2007-02-28T21:17:00.000Z

Alex? Alex? Who the fuck is Alex? (oh I dazzle myself with my own inventiveness) You might be wondering, considering he isn't mentioned in the Who's Who's entry. Well there's a reason for this. Until last week he was an unremarkable grocery assistant.

Prior to the sudden emergence of his true colours, however, there was only one vaguely interesting subject for blogging that linked to him. That was his perception of me. Which, I later discovered with horror, had been shared by most of the staff in Food Place at some point. He said he was "a bit scared" of me, that I was "kinda intimidating" and "thundery". And there's me thinking I had been successful in suppressing the aggressive side of my personality.

Of course, when you discover something like this about yourself, you tend to go around and ask for other peoples' opinions. First stop was Terry, the store manager. He confirmed what Alex said. My natural facial expression, he reckons, is "very frowny and confrontational". He did, thankfully, redeem me by saying "it all vanishes when you get talking to you though". Well, at least that's something. All snarl but neither bark nor bite.

Back to the point. What happened with Alex that's earned him the dubious honour of a dedicated blog entry? He's shown himself to be nothing but an immature little boy that's never got over having to leave his former profession of class clown. That's what.

It started one day last week. Me and Steven were in the staff room, eating dinner. I was engrossed in the newspaper, Steven was listening to his iPod. Don't you just hate people who can't respect other peoples' right to a bit of peace and quiet? Well you wouldn't like Alex. He came blasting in and started twittering away. And it wasn't the sort of twittering that you can just allow to fade into the background. He kept asking questions and demanding our attention. OK, minor irritation but he's bound to shut up soon.

But he didn't. And when the responses from me got drier and drier, he turned his attention to Steven. Now, Steven is a very quiet, sensitive sort of person. He wouldn't say boo to a goose, generally, and only comes out of his shell around his friends (like me - we've known each other for years).

So, anyways, Alex suddenly tore one of Steven's earphones out, put it to his own ear and shouted "what's this shite?". Steven's face flared bright red and he didn't answer - I saw red and felt my face forming the death stare at Alex.

He noticed and made a mock scared voice: "Ooooh Andrew's giving me the evils, doing his tough look".

I got madder. But, at the same time, I knew I had to be very careful. Being a supervisor, whether in the staff room or not, you can't react to things like that the same way you could outside of work. For that matter, none of the staff at Food Place can.

"If he wanted to share his musical taste with you, he'd bring a stereo to work. He's wearing earphones, so it's none of your business what he's listening to." It was the best I could come up with, but I delivered it with the death stare still in place. Alex's face looked a little flustered - he really doesn't like anybody coming back at him.

He tried to play it down. Maybe I did overreact a little bit to what he did and said, but it's one of my pet hates. People slagging off other peoples' choice in music or clothes. It makes the veins in my head throb. Smarmy little asses going round mocking what other people like. Don't you just want to knock their two eyes into one?

Alex didn't give up however. He tried to argue it out with me and it resulted in him asking me what music I liked (trying to move away from the mini-argument). I told him and added: "are you gonna slag that off then?" He gave me the 'is this for real or are you just joking?' look. He carried on trying to get me to be nice to him for a bit longer before leaving the room, under the pretense of going to his locker, and sitting elsewhere when he came back in.

That wasn't really a major incident. He did something, I thought it was out of order, stood up for Steven because I knew he wouldn't do it for himself and gave Alex some dirty looks. But the whole thing put me onto a bad footing with Alex.

[The song at the centre of this debate was Close to Me - The Cure. Had I known that at the time Alex would have got a tirade from me for bashing a brilliant song]

Throughout the rest of last week my dislike of him blossomed and bloomed. I started noticing small annoyances about him. His hairdo for one. It must take him hours to construct. And then I overheard him boasting to Lisa: "I can't even remember how many women I've slept with!" (He's 17!) He obviously thought this would make him look like something he isn't. Thankfully Lisa knocked him down by remarking that he'd made himself sound like "an easy man-slut".

And then came our public clash. On Saturday it was very busy and I called for till-trained staff. When only one person responded, I glanced up the aisles and called the names of the first staff-members I spotted. Alex was one of them. He came marching down.

"I'm busy, you'll have to call somebody else."

BUSY? You're facing-up dog food for Christ's sake! "Sorry Alex, there is no busy. If you're needed on tills, you're needed on tills."

"Well you're not doing much, you sit on."

"Alex, I'm a department supervisor asking you to get onto a till to get the queues down. If you have a problem with that request, then speak to Terry. He'll also tell you why designated front-end key holders can't sit on tills. Till six please."

Small tip: never get me on my high horse about till-trained staff calls. I won't stop rabbiting on for hours. And NEVER argue with me in front of waiting customers. Sit down, serve and shut up. This little disagreement took place right next to customers who were waiting for him to get on a till and serve them. If looks could kill, Alex would be dead.

Alex muttered "fucks sake" under his breath" and sauntered off to till six. He was trying to take his time removing the grab-lock, probably hoping the queues would vanish, but I went waltzing across and herded the customers over "TILL SIX IS OPENING! TILL SIX!"

When he got off the till, not five minutes later, he gave me a dirty look and said "see, you didn't even hardly need me."

"Alex, that's the point of calling all till trained staff. Everybody jumps on, the queues are gone in seconds and everyone can get back to their jobs."

"But I was busy."

"Well you'd better get back and get on with it then if it's so pressing and discuss your issues with Terry later..." ...so he can tell you it's part of your job, like it or leave.

So he's well and truly riled me. Right up there with Cynthia now. Ugh. Enough about him.

Scammers

2007-02-25T20:13:00.000Z

Why can't people just go out and get a job to earn their living, like everybody else? Would it be so difficult for them? No. So why do some people feel the need to go around stealing money? Do they think it's not theft, just because they're not physically sticking their hand in the till and taking it?

I'm referring to the dirty, evil con-artists that targeted our store today. It's a trick that's very widely reported across the retail industy which involves scumbags asking cashiers to change notes before diddling them into handing too much change over.

It's something that's stunningly easy to carry out. Basically, they buy something small with a £20 note. While the cashier is getting the change from the till drawer, they hand another note over and ask them to change it into pound coins whilst gibbering away so much the cashier loses track of what they're doing. By this time, they seize the moment of confusion and offer guidance as to what the cashier owes them, gibbering away to create yet more confusion, before walking away with £1o-30 too much (depending on how much they handed over).

There are no words for how low my opinion is of these fraudsters is. They deliberately go for the cashiers they believe look gullible enough to fall for it. They're polite and chatty to place themselves above suspicion. They know that any doubts in the cashier's mind will be offset by their desire not to look stupid by questioning what is going on. They're nothing but thieves.

We've started this week £30 down because of this. It's just a shame the cashier didn't get a grip on what had happened until it was too late. I certainly don't lay any blame on them though. The trick is amazingly easy to fall for - particularly when you've been on the checkouts for hours on end. You go into auto-pilot mode and it's, very often, too late by the time you realise you've been duped. It happened to me once not long after I started working at Food Place - never again. It's a very easy lesson to learn - change notes for nobody.

The crime wave at Food Place is beyond belief lately. This weekend alone we've stopped NINE people trying to walk out with trolleys full of unpaid-for goods. Each time the total was more than £150. Even on a quiet day you can spend half of your time investigating when the alarms go off at the doors. But lately even they've become unreliable. They've been sounding for no reason at all.

And then there's the ones that hide razor blades in boxes of cereal, stick reduction stickers over expensive products to get them for 7p and steal POS from the shelves to put it back on, weeks later, and claim items at special-offer prices.

Get a job you thieving arseholes! I'm not in a high spirited mood today. At this moment in time I'm so sick of Food Place I want to write out my notice and hurl it at Terry. But, no doubt, things will look better in the morning. I won't bore you with those problems - unless they persist.

Evacuation!

2007-02-23T10:41:00.000Z

Why is it, we can go for months on end without anything exciting happening and then, suddenly, it all comes at once?

Yesterday morning there was a fault with Food Place's heating system and the store began to fill with thin white smoke. There was a strong smell of burning and it was quickly evident that we needed to get out.

But the customers had different ideas. I put a tannoy call out that customers had to leave their shopping where it was and make their way to the car park immediately. What part of that is difficult to understand? We had people just continue shopping, fanning the smoke away from their face while they did it. Some went to the checkouts, intending on paying before they left. Perhaps they'd have got the message more clearly if I'd star-jumped along the aisles screaming "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!".

It's just so selfish. They might not mind taking risks like that, but don't they realise that the staff can't leave until they've got everybody out? In the event, nobody did get hurt. But in emergencies, every second counts YOU MORONS!

Now, if that happened to you whilst you were shopping, and you were ushered out of the store, what would you do? Bear in mind you've seen the smoke, smelt the burning. Would you say it was very likely you would be let back in there any time soon? No, of course not. But what did the customers do? Went and sat in their cars and scowled at the staff standing at the emergency assembly point. I swear I lip-read one woman saying "look at them! Just stood there!".

Yes dear, we're just doing this for a laugh! We like standing outside in the pouring rain with our coats and car keys trapped inside the building! That said, we did our best. The duty managers were in touch with the emergency services, our operational support desk and the utility companies, so we were regularly touring the customers in their cars, keeping them updated.

But they were getting increasingly ratty. One of them exclaimed: "I've got a pound in my trolley in there! I'm not leaving without that!" I'd heard it all then. Do they think all the staff are rubbing their hands together at the thought of all the pound coins they can steal as a result of this? Do they really think we're not going to let them claim it back next time they visit? If I'd had a friggin' pound coin in my pocket I'd have thrown it at them.

They eventually gave up. One by one, they pulled out of the car park, scowling at us as they did. But those customers were only a quarter of the battle. Imagine the struggle we had trying to keep newly-arriving customers away. One old man pulled up in a car, got out, got a trolley, moved the advertising boards we'd blockaded the entrance with, and tried to prise the doors when they failed to open. Seriously mate, come on! Open your God-damned eyes! Do these people never ask themselves questions about what's going on around them? Do they even notice?

Three and a half hours. That's how long we were out there. We were finally OKed to go back inside just after 1pm, and a group of gossiping customers (who'd jumped to the conclusion the company was in administration and had closed all the stores indefinitely) tried to follow us in. Get a grip on reality you stupid fools! They actually thought that we were just going to let them straight back in without carrying out any sort of survey of the premises. For a start, we had to make sure all loose, uncovered food was removed from sale first.

So goodbye produce department.

The rest of the day was hell. I got around 20 extremely snotty phone calls. "Hello, have you reopened yet?" I felt like snapping: "No, we're not quite finished deliberately inconveniencing you yet." And then there was the people coming back for the £1 coins. I have never been regarded with such contempt in all my life! It was as though we'd done something absolutely awful to them. I actually said, to one whining customer, "Would you rather have stayed and choked? We had no idea what the smoke was, it could have been noxious, we acted in the interests of everybody's safety, what is the problem with that?"

As Basil Fawlty said: "I don't know why we bother, we should let you all burn."

Stop Bucking the Trend

2007-02-20T13:38:00.000Z

Why can't customers just be reliable? OK, so I know they're going to moan, complain, cause complications and, generally, make my life hell. But why can't they co-ordinate themselves to do it?

What I'm alluding to are our store trading patterns. It goes without saying that Monday and Tuesday tend to be relatively quiet. Wednesday is usually very busy due to the town market dragging people from far and wide. Thursday is steady, Friday is similar to Wednesdays and Saturday and Sunday are hell on earth. Wednesday, Friday and weekends are easy to staff. It's simply a case of tapering the staff in until all the tills are full by 11am. Keep them full until 7pm and then taper everyone off until 10pm. Except Saturdays, when the trade declines to a mere trickle from 6pm onwards.

But just lately, stupid customers have been bucking all the trends of a normal Monday trade. Take yesterday. The entire population of the surrounding area decided to come shopping at 7pm, when we only had three till staff. I was the first person to end up sitting down and serving, followed closely by Steven being dragged, kicking and screaming, from dairy. This still didn't improve matters and Michaela had to be taken from the deli and Kieran had to abandon the shop-floor. When the queues still raged, Sean, who was managing the store, had no option but to hop on himself. So there we were. Virtually everybody in the store, all sat on checkouts.

And, it's not just me, but the customers are getting slowly snottier. I served at least five people yesterday who where too far up their own backsides to even respond to my friendly greeting. I took great delight in, totally overtly, pulling faces at them when they weren't looking. Got some chuckles from the people behind.

The whole store has an air of boring blandness about it because Kate is on holiday this week. I rely on her hilarious outbursts and comments to keep me going. And I don't have anybody's accent to mock. Kate is Scottish and I could spend all day imitating everything she says - badly. But she isn't much better at impersonating my broad south Wales accent (and I don't live there anymore before the Security Mafia teams of several supermarket chains narrow my location down to Pontypridd). Still, it keeps us amused.

Had a bizarre moment yesterday evening. I went into the cash office, and the sensor that normally triggers the lights to come on, failed. I went in and door closed behind me. Leaving me standing there in pitch darkness. For some reason, I was afraid to move - an action that would have solved the problem immediately. I think I was just wondering how close I was to smacking my face into the lock-box.

Telephone Queries and Anniversaries

2007-02-18T18:04:00.000Z

Today has been a bizarre day for telephone calls. Normally customers come into the store and be annoying to my face, but today they launched a new offensive by phoning me.

Of course, it being a Sunday, we got the usual quarter-to-ten barrage of phone calls all asking the same thing. "What time do you open?" I swear it's the same voices every week. You'd think we just opened whenever we fancied. These, as ever, lasted for around half an hour. It was only later that the bizarre calls started.

Weird Phone Customer One
This one began with a bog-standard product query. I hate it when people do this. If I wanted to go and buy something, I would form a list in my mind of places that might sell it, and visit those places until I found what I was looking for. Why can't other people be this considerate? Still, if they're enquiring about a product, they're not complaining - which has to be a bonus.

This customer wanted aubergines. But not any old aubergines. They had to have been freshly delivered and "large". Well how vague. How am I supposed to know how big a "large" aubergine should be? My response was that we had some aubergines, delivered this morning, that were considerably larger than the smallest ones in the tray.

The caller just said: "Right. Erm. Thank you. I think I'll leave it at that," and hung up. Charming.

Weird Phone Customer Two
If you're going to call Food Place to complain, it does help if you find something to complain about first.

This call started as a query: "Were there any toilet rolls left behind at the tills?"

Ah, a simple query about a simple oversight that I can rectify and make somebody happy. I checked the book and yes, indeed, some toilet rolls had been left behind. Till eight to be precise, at 10:45am while Kerry was serving. I informed the customer they had been left behind, and asked if they'd been paid for?

"Well how will I know that?" she asked, in a tone that betrayed her doubts about my intelligence.

"If you have your receipt, that should tell you if you've been charged. If you haven't, you can come back and get them whenever's convenient for you or have them refunded."

"Well is that all?"

Well what the hell else do you want? A party to celebrate? "I'm sorry?" I use that question an awful lot when a customer is baffling me. It doesn't tend to get any sense out of them though.

"Is that all you're going to do about it. Would it not be an idea to make sure your staff are competent enough to notice things like this?"

You bitch! That incompetent member of staff you speak of, actually took the time to retrieve your left behind purchases and log them in the book should you return. They were looking after you damn it! It's not their fault you're a useless scatterbrain. "All I can do is apologise. The store is an extremely busy environment and oversights like this do happen. You might have dropped them on the floor or something, it most probably wasn't the cashier's fault."

She sighed and hung up. Good riddance to stinking' trash.

Weird Phone Customer Three
This one was a query about a receipt. Basically, a man came in and bought £11.31 worth of goods and cashed in a £3 win on a scratchcard which he asked to be taken off his bill. Leading to a total of £8.31 to pay. He handed over a ten pound note and was given £1.69 change. I know all this because I served him.

He rang to query his bill but was very incoherent. From his first sermon, I managed to deduce that he reckoned to have been shortchanged by £4. He spoke of having given £15 in cash. I knew he hadn't, but before I could say anything, he started babbling about the £3 instant win having been added to his bill rather than deducted. Knowing this to impossible, I began explaining what had actually happened.

He, evidently, couldn't make head nor tail of me and passed the phone to his wife. From what she said, I realised what was going on. She'd given him £15 to buy some shopping, he'd only spent £8.31 and the change he'd given her was £4 short. So where, in God's name, do I come into this? She wasn't budging from the idea that we'd conned her out of money so I offered to spot-check the till in question and give her a ring back.

I duly checked the till, which proved to be one penny over (the penny I found on the floor and put into the till). When I phoned back, I spoke to the wife of the piece, who said she'd been adding up the receipt and now understood it entirely. She said:

"I think my husband has used the change to sneakily buy cigarettes. So, the fact of the matter is, I won't be sending him shopping again."

NO! You fool! The fact of the matter is this: you have just wasted a good fifteen minutes of my time because of your problems with a lack of trust and honesty in your household!

Anniversaries
Today also marks the sixth anniversary of my employment at Food Place. I was 15, wanted a Saturday job to get some pocket money, and had to get a work-permit from the Education Authority. It was only ever going to be part-time while I was studying. But I just sort of stayed there. Through my A-levels and through my gap-year. I had been planning on working weekends whilst at university, but when I decided I'd picked the wrong course, I left uni and went full-time until I could apply again. Only I didn't get round to it last year, so another year of full-time work ensued. (Fear not, I have applied this year and my place is secured and finance soon to be arranged).

Today also marks two years of Food Place trading under it's current banner. The store changed hands in December 2004 and we were converted to trade under the new company's format in February 2005. At first, we were all ready to leave. We hated it. But, once the dust settled, we soon seen the light. Retail employment is retail employment, regardless of which company you work for. They're all the same.

Colleague in Focus: Cynthia

2007-02-16T16:04:00.000Z

I don't need an excuse to write anything about Cynthia, because she pisses me off every moment that I'm in her company.

Being in charge of personnel and having, last year, transferred all the staff details to the new computer system, I'm well informed about the past employment of every member of staff in Food Place. Cynthia's is particularly - well - long. A glance at it shows that she's had around 20 jobs since leaving school and most of them haven't lasted for more than 3 months. It's not hard to imagine why.

She began working at Food Place when it opened but, evidently, settled better than at any of her previous jobs. This, most likely, had a lot to do with the first store manager being soft as clart. She let the staff get away with murder and the place was a disaster within months of opening. Cynthia settled into her lovely little groove of doing whatever the hell she liked in those days, and hasn't changed since. Whenever new managers have attempted to get her in line, she's gone off on the sick and threatened legal action, before returning to continue just as she always has done.

Cynthia has a strange notion that everybody is interested in her latest phantom illness. Through time, we've been kept informed about every last detail of all her bodily organs, functions, systems and God knows what.

The truth is, she uses illness to escape having to do a scrap of work. She can't go on the checkouts because she gets panic attacks. She can't work on the shop floor because of her back ache. She can't work in the cash office (not that I'd want her to) because the smell of copper coins hurts her teeth. She can't work in admin or stock control because she's "susceptible to the effects of the sounds computers make" - apparently the humming disrupts her mental capacity to work! So what can she do?

Basically, she comes in, whenever she fancies, and wheels a stock truck around the store. She equips herself with a bucket of soapy water and a cloth, and a price-checking gun. What, exactly, she does with these articles I'm yet to fathom. She stops every passing customer to bore them with tales of her ailments and, once in a while, selects a random shelf and checks all the products are in-date.

If she's not talking about her family's genetic history of cancer, she's discussing Polish immigrants. "Those bloody poles, coming over here and taking our jobs!" Yes love, and there's me thinking that you are a total waste of 35 hours a week that could go to somebody who actually wants to work!

She thinks she's very tough and will look for any excuse to get into fights with people. Lorraine once jokingly called her a fool for ordering 50 cases of coleslaw instead of 5. I have never seen such a drama in all my life. "Don't you DARE speak to me like that! You think you're hard because you're a supervisor? I'll have you in the car park any day of the week missy!" Poor Lorraine didn't know where to put herself. All of that took place in front of customers and the manager at the time, Eliza, did nothing about it. I would have sacked her on the spot.

And then there's the issue of her chronic bitchiness, nosiness and tittle-tattling. She stays in touch with a lot of ex-supervisors and store staff and tells them all sorts of things that are none of anybodys business. And now and then, she'll invent a complete lie and spread that about. She once got herself into serious hot water by accusing two members of the management of having an affair. They were both happily married and had absolutely no interest in each other - in that sense. How she ever got away with that, I'll never know.

And I must stop talking about her, because I've burst my Stressball.

Team Building Joys

2007-02-15T19:53:00.000Z

This week has been, in work-related-matters terms, quite average. But everything has been made ten times worse by the fact that I've been ill. But we're so short-staffed and hard-pushed at the moment, I haven't had the heart to stay off ill. I'm most certainly not working whilst ill for the benefit of the company, I just don't like letting my colleagues down.

On Tuesday a customer tutted and shot a filthy look when I coughed, whilst serving them, into my fleece sleeve. My fury knew no bounds. I'm still ranting about it to anybody who'll listen now. I felt like getting them in a head-lock and screaming at them, spit flying into their face, "How dare you! Do you think I'm not human or something? A robot? Would you rather I stayed at home and coughed in bed? No. You wouldn't. Because then you'd be standing there tutting because you had to queue for longer!"

Luckily my symptoms eased yesterday. Which was just as well because it was the glorious day of the Team Building Workshop. I have never been so patronised, insulted, humiliated and belittled in all my natural days. I'm sure they only made us do half of the exercises to have a good giggle at the photographs.

Basically, all the management team and supervisors in my Food Place branch had to attend this "day of fun" at our regional training offices - sixty-five miles away. With me being one of the designated drivers. If you knew anything about my navigating skills you'd be shuddering at the mere thought. Miraculously, for the first time in history, the directions from the AA website were accurate and didn't make reference to phantom roundabout exits. Cover staff from Ellenfoot were left babysitting our store.

The introduction presentation, at the start of the day, included testimonials from Food Place staff across the country, informing us how wonderfully useful and fun the whole day was going to be. I suspect these may have been false.

After introducing ourselves (to each other - the people we've worked with for God knows how many years), we congregated in the car park outside to play a team-building game. We were told this would be fun. It was actually highly embarrassing. We each had a tennis ball, and we had to pass them to the people opposite us, all at the same time. This sounds easy. But a bunch of balls thrown at the same time, in the same direction, are bound to collide. We spent more time darting across the car-park retrieving balls than anything else. And all this in full view of passing traffic.

Once back inside, we began another exercise. This time far more humiliating. We were divided into three groups, and we each had to produce and perform a song and dance routine all about how good our store was. Obviously, the first question raised was: "But what if our store isn't good?" The trainer-woman picked the teams for us and happened to put all the shy people into the same group. Which included me. So, ours was a complete and utter farce when it came to the performance and the recorded video footage has probably made us a national laughing stock amongst Food Place human resources teams.

All this I could cope with. To some extent. But the final practical exercise of the day was torture itself. A rug was placed on the floor. This rug was roughly 2 square metres in size and we were all instructed to stand upon it. All 15 of us. It was bad enough that we were all squashed in such close vicinity to each other. But then came the actual aim of the exercise. We had to flip the rug over, so we were all ended up standing on the reverse side of it, without any of us stepping off.

Oh my God. It was absolute hell on earth. We tried all manner of wacky ideas and most of them revolved around getting as many feet as possible off the rug. And the only way to do that was to lift people up. Being 5 feet, five inches tall and weighing a mere 10 stone, I was quickly selected to be one of the people hoisted into the air. My ribs are completely battered and shattered. By the end of it, I'd been on peoples' backs, lifted up by my armpits, raised onto the shoulders of the four tallest people, lifted up by my stomach. But, unfortunately, since the group also needed to spare half of the their energy to put to the task of flipping the rug, it meant everybody had to chip in with the lifting effort. Me, Lorraine and Sean ended up jammed in the middle, hoisted in the air, desperately trying to resist the urge to dive out and scream "THIS IS SO STUPID AND I REFUSE TO TAKE PART!" Everybody was sweaty by this point.

We eventually managed to pull it off. Two hours later. Not an experience I care to repeat.

Of course, it wasn't all practical "fun". There were lots of boring lectures, we played a game with Lego pieces and took personality tests. The last two, at least, were interesting and, somewhat, fun.

On the way back, the manager decided we were all going bowling. If my pride was damaged by the rituals of the day, it was certainly won back when I thrashed everybody in 4 out of 5 games.

Hall of Shame: Volume III

2007-02-11T15:00:00.000Z

This incident took place long before I was in a position of responsibility. I was a lowly checkout assistant and, to boot, I was under-18. At the time, the company didn't pay 16 and 17 year olds at the same rate as older employees - I was probably earning little more than £3.00. So hardly in any sort of position to be dealing with the stroppier customers, wouldn't you think?

This is, however, a customer encounter that is remembered much more fondly than the other Hall of Shamers.

Round One
It's 23rd December. The store is heaving and the checkouts aren't a particularly nice place to be. We're all penned into our little cubicles, each with a queue snaking back so far, the end is out of sight. Everybody is totally fed up, staff and customers alike.

My till receipt roll starts to come through red, signalling it needs changed. Typically, there's none on my till, or any of the adjacent ones, so I apologise to the next customer and dash to get one from the cupboard. But I'm stopped in my tracks.

"Excuse me."

This isn't said as a kind opener to an impending verbal exchange. It comes across as more of a 'Oi! Shopboy!' greeting.

I smile politely at the woman before me. I can see by looking she's not the type I'd want to roll a red carpet out for. She's got a stupid hairdo, obviously the work of an overpriced, elite 'studio', and is wearing clothes that would pass in Los Angeles but look rather ridiculous in Food Place.

She takes an exaggerated breath and begins: "Two things." She gestures her hand, frowns and adopts the pose that people take on before launching into a 'this is OUTRAGEOUS!" tirade. "I've come here, with my children, for our shopping and there are no parent & child parking bays. Also, your cash dispenser is out of order. What are you going to do about it?"

Two things. Firstly, do I look like a manager? No. I'm a sloppy, cocky student worker who's got a queue of waiting customers to deal with. Secondly, who the hell are you? Speaking to people like that, you snotty bitch! Amazing how you can have such detailed thoughts in a mere split second.

"I'm afraid I'm serving on that till over there, I'll call the supervisor for you, it shouldn't take a moment."

She performs an over-the-top 'what a farce!' sigh, obviously done for dramatic effect, as though I've just told her that her hairdo is breaking the law.

I get back to my till and ring the bell. I carry on serving, thankfully the next customer isn't moody about being held up. But Mrs Lampshade Haircut isn't going away. She positions herself at the end of my till and taps her (fake) fingernails on the surface. Oh she's getting right on my wick alright.

Round Two
I thought, rather naïvely, that as soon as Annette arrived to deal with Mrs Lampshade Haircut, she would be out of my way and my brief dealings with the woman would be over. Not quite.

"Yes love?" Annette says on arrival. She's not the cheeriest of supervisors and is known for her habit of aggravating situations that are bad enough to begin with.

Mrs Lampshade raises an eyebrow, evidently thinking herself unsuited to the title of 'luv'. She should count herself lucky it wasn't 'doll'. Nevertheless, she begins by repeating her two complaints, only this time she adds a bit of a speech about having to guide her children across a car park 'teeming with traffic' because there were no special bays.

Annette is undiplomatic and straight-to-the-mark as ever: "Well I'm sorry love, but it's two days before Christmas and the schools are off. You're not the only one with kids. You can't just expect to get a place when we're as busy as this!"

I'm enjoying the unfolding scene from the relative safety of my seat behind the till.

Mrs Lampshade takes issue: "Excuse me, but were you speaking to me just then? I've never come across such rude people..."

"I'm not being rude love, I'm just saying - we're very busy, which is to be expected at this time of year!"

"And your cash dispenser? What about that? Do you not think it's a bit of a silly time to be getting that wrong?"

"What do you think this is love, a bank? We don't run that thing, it's only on our premises."

"Which makes it your responsibility! Is this a business you're running here or a circus? What kind of company lets the cash supply for their customers stop working on one of the busiest days of the year?"

"Ask NatWest darling."

The exchange continues. Much as I dislike working under Annette, I absolutely adore her manner with customers. I wish I had the cheek to be so shirty with them. Eventually, however, Mrs Lampshade tires of Annette's attitude and announces she's going to do her shopping because her children are tired! But, like most Hall of Shame candidates, doesn't leave without promising we haven't heard the last of the matter.

Round Three
And I certainly haven't heard the last of her.

About an hour later, her face appears amongst the sea of customers queuing to be served. When I first notice her, she's too far back to be able to tell whether she's in my queue and I pray to God she isn't. She is. Oh Jesus Christ, why do they all come back to haunt me? I'm due a break and get through the next ten minutes hoping cover arrives before Mrs Lampshade's turn.

It doesn't.

"Hi," I begin once she's got to the front. For once, I'm hoping a customer is rude and doesn't reply. In fact, I'd be happy if she totally blanked me, didn't say a word and never came back.

She shoots a look at me, giving it the eyebrow and pursed lips. She packs a couple of items before letting out a rant that's, clearly, been bursting to escape.

"Do you know something, I have never been in a shop like this. Where the staff think the customers are just cattle. If I'd gone to [insert swear word] none of this would have happened. I've never known such ignorant staff! It's completely ruined my Christmas up to now, coming here!"

What do you say to somebody like that? I know what I think about somebody like that. Piss off to [insert swear word] then you melodramatic, self-obsessed bitch.

"It's always a bit hectic at this time of year." That's the best I can come up with? I can't stand the bitch, so why be such a Judas to my own thoughts? Go on. Tell her what you think of her. Of course I don't.

"It's disgraceful. I won't be coming back in here ever again. I'm drained, my children are fed up. We just want to go home. Don't we Courtenay?" she says to her child, who's too young to dribble, let alone speak, "we're sick of these awful people aren't we?"

The customer behind is slightly gobsmacked. But by this point, I'm starting to see the comedy value Mrs Lampshade offers and couldn't care less that she classes me as awful.

"Well just you take note," she addresses me directly, "I won't be letting this go lightly. A big company like this isn't getting away with treating customers like this for much longer. Not when I've finished. That car park was like a minefield, and because of the complete lack of proper parking facilities, my children could have been hurt!"

OK, I'm now starting to think you're on drugs.

"Thanks very much now, have a nice Christmas," I say at the close of the transaction.

"I will, no thanks to this place."

Audit Week & Ellenfoot Food Place

2007-02-10T10:27:00.000Z

The low frequency of my posts this week has been, largely, due to it being audit week at work. It's not that I had to work overtime or anything. It's just that your brain gets fried when you have to spend hours analysing your own work - on top of actually continuing the work. By the time I've finished work, every night this week I've been practically in a coma with boredom.

They've had a system in place for two years now, which allows us to self audit. All the department leaders have to fill in a questionnaire about how their department is operating. When the store manager approves it, you type it all onto a digital version of the questionnaire, which gives you a percentage score and sends it off to the audit team for them to check. If they find you've been naughty and told fibs, they send somebody into the store to re-audit everything. So it doesn't pay to lie.

There's some questions you won't get away with lying about. For example: "Have at least three random till-checks been carried out each day?". The records on the computer answer this question. Lie, and the audit team will notice immediately. But there's some questions that rely on trust: "Do you empty the entire contents of the cash office safe and count everything back in when performing a safe count?" They can't prove either way if you do or don't. And this is where Terry and I differ. I would rather tell the truth. That way, if you're doing something wrong, the audit will highlight it and an 'Action point' is added. So you can improve. Lie, and within a few hours you forget that you're actually doing things wrong, and nothing will improve.

I carried out each audit before consulting Terry and I got scores of 76% for cash office and 68% for personnel. By the time Terry had finished tinkering and telling porkies the scores had inflated to 91% and 88%.

Ellenfoot Food Place, naturally, scored 95% or higher on all departments. I know as fact they're lying. Whenever I've gone in there for shopping, even without my critical eye on, I've picked up on literally tons of things they're doing wrong. Like POS with no prices on. POS with different prices to the one stated on the shelf ticket. And LOTS of missing prices. How do they get away with it? Because they're a blue-eyed store.

You might wonder why I get so irritated about Ellenfoot's lack of compliance with company policy. At the heart of the issue is the fact that I know how hard certain people work in my store to do things correctly. And still we get knocked down by auditors and never praised. Yet the Ellenfoot lot take the piss (in general, they do have some very good team members). Our EPOS team spend three hours each week sorting out the new shelf tickets when they arrive and getting them out to keep the prices correct. Ellenfoot throw them in the bin. They have supervisors for departments we operate using only basic-grade staff.

Ugh, they irritate me so much.

On a brighter note, I have two days off now. If I'm feeling sunnier tomorrow, I might be able to write something vaguely entertaining. Perhaps a new Hall of Shame addition.

Constant Interruptions

2007-02-08T19:59:00.000Z

I feel like I've been running around today with somebody elses brain inside my skull. I haven't been able to focus on one task for longer than thirty seconds today without either drifting off to Planet Cuckoo or being interrupted.

It started first thing this morning. I'd barely got my key in the cash office door before people started bothering me about swipe cards. We have to swipe on and off at the start and end of our shifts. Because I'm the personnel body, it's up to me to sort it out when people forget. But what I can't drum into their skulls, no matter how hard I try, is that they don't need to tell me about it every single time! I simply print a report that highlights missed swipes. But it doesn't get through to them. They still come tottering up to me: "I forgot to swipe in this morning, so could you sort it..." and they look at me as if to say, "like...now."

Later, I'd barely got to step two of the morning cash office procedure before Lynette appeared to announce her wages were wrong. Just when I thought I'd got through payday without a single query.

"F*****g hell, could you look at these F*****g wages for me, 'cause it looks like they're F*****g wrong and the F*****g council will be down on me like a F*****g ton of F*****g bricks!"

So I spent the next fifteen minutes investigating. All I managed to turn up is that she had an unknown absence logged on 22 January. And suddenly she remembered. She had to take the day off because her son was off sick from school. So her wages were correct after all. Thank you very much for wasting my time you dozy bint!

Just when I was getting going with my morning workload, an engineer turned up to service the cash office console. So, once again, I had to stop what I was doing. I decided to abandon that task until later, since I was getting nowhere fast. I know! I'll order missing shelf-tickets!

But that wasn't to be either. I could barely manage to get one shelving bay checked without a customer boring me with their problems or asking me where they could find suet. God's sake will you all just bog off!

When I finally got round to attempting to carry out the cash office routine again, Terry, the General Manager, started throwing spanners into the works. It really bugs me. He can leave me alone for weeks on end, never once questioning what I'm doing or ordering me to do silly tasks. But on the morning when I left my brain in bed, he decides to pounce.

"What are you doing now, are you busy?"

Why is it, when people ask you that, you can never find a way of telling them what you're doing that actually makes you sound as busy as you are? By the time I'd finished telling him, I'd convinced myself that I was just wasting time.

It got to ten o'clock and it suddenly dawned on me. I hadn't done the morning change run for the tills. Precisely two and a half seconds later the bell rang and, upon my response, I discovered all the cashiers wanted change immediately.

Now, the company doesn't like to make the change-run task easy for us. They refuse point-blank to let us keep a small supply of change in the lock-safe on the service desk. They insist that we must write down the orders for each till, go up to the cash office and bag up what each till needs and then transport it down the chutes.

And while I'm talking about the chutes, can anybody think of a way of getting cashiers to regularly send bank notes to the cash office? They just don't seem to grasp that it is not permissable to have £3million sitting in a cash drawer. In fact, it's plain stupid. They needn't come crying to me when they get robbed! All they have to do is, at regular intervals, empty excess notes into a pod, put it in the chute and press 'send'. What is so hard about that?

By the time I got the change run done and dusted, after several thousand interruptions, it was almost time for me to go for lunch. And after coming back from that food-break it was time to sort the cash banking out. And then I realised I still hadn't done the morning cash office procedure. So by the time all that was done, it was nearly time for me to go home. And I'd done precisely nothing all day.

Yet, I'm absolutely shattered and ready for bed.

The Customers You Just Hate!

2007-02-06T20:29:00.000Z

On the average week, our branch of Food Place will serve 22,000 customers. Of course, being a neighbourhood store, the majority of those will be repeat visits. I'd guess that we serve around 10,000 unique customers each week. And they all fall into distinct categories.

Only a very select few customers will ever be branded as 'Lovely Customers'. When the time arises I will, no doubt, blog about them.

The people who don't get on my nerves fall into the category named 'Tolerable Customers'. They may be pleasant, plain boring or just totally unremarkable. They respond when you speak to them, they pay promptly and don't get in the way. If they have a problem, they request your help politely and accept that it's rarely the fault of the member of staff they're talking to. It would be nice to think you could create an interesting blog entry discussing these people, to give them a mention if nothing else, but the fact is they're just boring.

But the bad customers - few of them as there may be - are categorised much more vigorously. It's not enough just to describe them as bad. Or infuriating. Or rude - because not all of them are rude. They have to be labelled in a way that demonstrates exactly why they get on my wick so much. Many of the offenders that spring to mind may fit into more than one category.

So without further ado, here is a discussion of the many different subcultures that exist within the 'Annoying Customers' society.

Just Plain Rude
If I'm serving you on a till and I say "hello", what do you say back? Yes, I know, it's common courtesy. But these people just don't do it. There I am wasting my breath on them when most of them can't even be bothered to look at me and at least smile. It's much less common for customers to have the cheek to leave without saying thank you. But there are some who dare it. Which means that a very small minority of customers don't acknowledge you at any point during your time with them. How very dare they.

Ditherers
No matter how nice a particular customer may be, they can ruin their reputation by dithering. I cannot abide it. Yes love, you might have all day to faff about, but we don't! It's far worse at the checkouts when they can bring a whole lane to a standstill, but it exists all over the store. People who treat the place like a community social club, for example. OK, so you haven't seen Gladys for 55 years but do you really need to stand, trolleys straddled across an aisle, reminiscing? Part of the problem is that most people are too reserved to say 'excuse me please'. So they try and squeeze their way past and run over somebodys foot or knock something flying. And it's all down to these stupid ditherers!

Parent and Child Types
For God's sake, why can't you leave your snotty, screaming, ugly children at home? Or with a babysitter. Anything that means the poor staff at Food Place don't have to put up with them. You're putting yourself through stress as well. Face it, who wants to have to keep running across the shop screaming "CAITLIN STOP IT!" and dragging urchins out of photo booths?

And then there's the kids that try to be helpful. And fail. They stick their faces right next to the products on the conveyor belt so I'm scared to pick anything up in case I smack them in the nose. They insist on picking each and every item up and handing it to you. THE BELT MOVES! And don't even start me on the ones that want to 'give the man the money'. They drop it everywhere or hand you two pence when you want twenty-five-pounds.

Argh, children.

Lazy Types
If anybody makes my blood boil it's the people who walk through the door and ask the first member of staff they see where the milk is. You haven't even looked you bone idol pillock! Or the ones that stand and watch you pack all their shopping for them, without lifting a finger to help. I always feel like getting all sarcastic on them: "Would you like me to drive you home and unpack it all for you?"

Drama Queens
Why do some people love to make a huge song and dance routine about nothing at all? Is it really going to hurt that much to wait thirty seconds while I help the previous customer get finished with their packing? You'd think so. They tut, tap their toes, look at their watch. And then you have people who get flustered for no reason at all. Yes, the shopping is coming down fast, but do you really think I'm not going to help you pack when I've done my bit on the till? Pull yourself together!

Customers-on-the-Move
There's always somebody who thinks everybody else should get our of their way because they're 'in a rush'. Why the hell should they? If you've got lots to do and you haven't given yourself enough time to do it all, it's nobodys fault but your own! Why on earth have you stopped off a busy supermarket if you've got four minutes to spare before a dental appointment on the other side of town?

Drunks
Just get out! I don't want to smell your brandy-breath, and have to pick the contents of your purse up from the floor, or have to clean the mess up when vomit everywhere. And stop trying to buy alcohol. You know we can't serve it to you when you're in that state.

Snobs
If food place is too downmarket for you, go to Harrods - or shop online. If shopping is so below you, don't cast your shadow on our floor! And don't dare assume you're my superior. One of these types actually said to me: "If you'd studied harder at school you wouldn't be sitting on a till". And then there's the two old bats who come in and stand having conversations about "the local plebs". Go home and read your Daily Mail.

***

Those are the obvious ones. I'll update this post as and when more spring to mind.

More Rude Customers

2007-02-03T22:54:00.000Z

It's seven-fifteen in the evening and I'm getting very annoyed. We've been two members of staff down all day and haven't been coping particularly well. But all my hopes have been pinned on the trade dying off at around 6:30pm, as it always does on a Saturday. But not today.

It's got to seven o'clock and the tills are still ringing. Since we were short staffed for the kiosk, I've ended up stuck on there helping Kate get the lottery queue down. We're both very clearly stressed and tired, but we're doing the best we can. So the last thing we want is rude customers coming along and trying to centre all the drama on themselves...

Attempted Queue Jumper
This man appeared in the corner of my eye standing at the end of the kiosk. He waits for about four seconds before beginning to tap his fingers on the desk. This riles me. How DARE people behave like that! Use your manners and say 'excuse me' if you want something! I presume he's waiting for change for a trolley or something and once I've finished serving the customer I'm dealing with, I turn to him. "Can I help at all?"

"Twenty Lambert and Butler."

God damn it! I've tried a million times before to come up with a polite way of telling somebody they need to join the queue like everyone else, but it just cannot be done: "I'm sorry, you'll need to join the queue."

"What?"

"If you want to buy cigarettes, you'll have to wait in the queue until your turn to be served." I'm trying to be nice, but I don't know why. He can see the queue. He knows he should be in it. He just thinks he's better than everyone else.

"F***s sake! I've been standing here waiting!"

"I'm sorry, you've only been there for thirty seconds - these people were here first. There's two of us serving, it'll only take a couple of minutes."

"Shove it up your f*****g arse!" He bangs his fist on the desk to emphasise his rage and stalks off.

The next part is a bit of a blur. The next person to come to my till from the queue is giving me the 'oh God, I feel so sorry for you having to deal with people like that' look but makes a supposed-to-be-funny remark about the lottery ticket they're handing me. I do the polite fake laugh to humour them and suddenly there's a loud voice in my other ear.

It's the queue-jumper. "Don't laugh! Don't you f*****g laugh at me!" He's pointing and giving me the death stare.

I was too stunned to muster up a response. What? The cheek of it! How dare he? I'm not even laughing at him!

"Looking at me like that you f*****g arsewipe, you'll only f*****g cross me once!" He starts to back away muttering obscenities under his breath.

Far from being intimidated I'm merely thinking Woah! I can blog about this! The people in the queue are surprised I'm not really reacting to being verbally abused in the middle of a supermarket. Meh, been there, done that, a hundred times.

Mrs Snot Mk2
But these things always come in twos. A few minutes after this drama - and a brief lull in custom for me and Kate to have a Megabitchfest about the guy - it's approaching 7.30pm. Which means one thing. The lottery is closing. Der, Der, DER! A fresh queue congregates all waiting to for their last-minute stab at being a millionaire.

We work our way through the customers but, inevitably, 7:30 comes and the lottery closes. It does this unceremoniously, as always, and simply refuses the first ticket we attempt to process after the closure. Kate is the unlucky one who has to break this to a waiting customer.

"Dang, sorry you've missed it, it's shut off." She's very to-the-point.

"I'm sorry?" It's a snobby woman. She looks like she's had a day of it and has been waiting for something to kick off about.

"The game closes at 7:30, you've just missed it I'm afraid." The other customers in the queue hear this and resign themselves to being workadays at least until Wednesday. Most of them depart.

But Snotty isn't giving up. "Well I'm very sorry madam, but I was standing in this queue at twenty-five-past, so you can just get it put through." This is a blatant lie. She's only been in the queue for a minute or so. And who does she think she is, calling perfect strangers madam in that tone?

Kate is apologetic, yet firm: "I can only apologise, the machine will not print tickets after seven-thirty."

"So you are telling me I can't put these on?" SHE CLICKS!

"I'm afraid not no," I chip in. There's no more customers and I have nothing better to do than get involved in other peoples' squabbles, "there has to be a deadline for it, and it's set at seven-thirty."

"So it's my fault you don't have enough staff on and I had to queue for ages?"

"There's only two tills on this kiosk, and there's two of us here, we couldn't possibly go any faster" Kate re-enters the debate. She's dropping her customer-service tone by now.

"Well I think this is terrible. You're being so petty-minded. I was here before the deadline, and you knew it! And you still closed it down on me!"

Is this woman bloody deaf? "We didn't close it. It closes itself, and there were other people behind you in the queue too." What, do you think we've just done this for a laugh?

She promises we haven't heard the end of this matter and leaves. Megabitchfest II time!

"Every time I come in this Bloody Shop..."

2007-02-01T18:44:00.000Z

Mrs Snot & The Clementines
It's been one of those hours where everything has gone tits up. Firstly, a cashier rings in sick five minutes before the start of her shift, everybody in the whole town decides to pack into Food Place at once, all the staff from every department are sat on checkouts - including me, the supervisor - and somebody goes and smashes a bottle of vinegar.

"Oh, oh, whoops! I'm ever so sorry."

"It's alright, don't worry about it - happens all the time..." I'll give you something to be sorry about you blundering fool! Can't you see this is hardly a convenient moment to start smashing the place to bits?!

After an hour like that, the last thing I want is an arrogant, cocky customer blaming me for things that aren't my fault. Dealing with them is not a pleasant experience at the best of times, never mind when you reek of vinegar. But whether I like it or not, a lady we shall call Mrs Snot, has chosen this moment to vent all the steam she's holding about Food Place.

She catches me off guard. Normally, you have at least five seconds to prepare when you see a situation emerging unless, that is, they sneak up on you. And she does just that. I've just finished a telephone conversation with a nice customer making enquiries about what brands of furniture polish we sell. Which is lucky really because the morale boost from that customers pleasant tone certainly helps with what's about to come.

"Excuse me, I've had enough of this place, every bloody time I come in here something is wrong, can't you get anything right? It's just constant, if it's not pricing it's rude staff or mouldy food, I'm just fed up!" Mrs Snot stops to catch her breath and I'm aware that I'm gawping at her, startled.

"I'm sorry, is there anything I can help with?" I muster upon regaining my senses.

"Well you could just scratch the surface by explaining to me why your products are in this state!" She produces a pack of Dairylea cheese triangles. The packaging is split.

"Oh, it most probably got damaged in transit, I can replace..."

"Well if it was damaged in transit, why didn't your staff pick up on it, aren't they trained?" Mrs Snot is seriously overreacting. Perhaps it doesn't come across so much in what she's saying, but the fact that she's almost in tears indicates the melodramatic tone.

"If we notice something is damaged, we remove it immediately, but we case fill here you see. The transit box is cut open and the whole case of products put onto the shelf - so that pack you have probably wasn't handled by the staff."

"This is exactly why I get annoyed with [Food Place], you have pathetic excuses for everything. You're actually trying to tell me that it's not your responsibility to check the quality of the goods on sale?" Mrs Snot is now making hand gestures to emphasise how useless we staff are."

I'm not in the mood to let her generalised assault on our job performance pass without defense: "We will always try to make sure products aren't going on sale when they're damaged, but we can't be everywhere at once. There's a lot of work to be done to operate this store and only a limited number of people to do it. We are only human and we can't spot every problem. But we will act when somebody points them out."

It's lost though. Mrs Snot has more fish to fry: "And while we're talking about problems," she rips out her receipt, "you're displaying a sign next to the Satsumas that they're buy one get one free. Nothing has been deducted from this bill, just nothing!" She hits the receipt for emphasis.

I take a glance and read: "Clementines 2@£1.22" I tell Mrs Snot that I'm going to check the sign for her, to humour her, but she decides it's necessary to follow me. I clearly cannot be trusted.

We arrive at the produce department and she lunges for the sign "SEE! Buy one get one free!" She turns to me with her 'well what do you have to say about this?' pose - eyes widened, lips pursed.

"Yes, the sign indicates Satsumas are buy one get one free, but you bought Clementines you see. And those aren't on offer." I, briefly, contemplate adopting her wide-eyed pose, but decide to remain as diplomatic as possible. I just know she's going to have an answer for this and it won't be 'oh I'm terribly sorry, my mistake!"

"So why on earth is the sign above the Clementines then?" Mrs Snot is on the brink of sobbing hysterically and throwing her shoes across the shop now.

"If you look at the shelf layout, the sign is below the Satsumas. It's the standard right across this store and any other supermarket to have the POS displaying the offer below the product."

"I don't want these, get me a refund so I can just get out of here!" She picks the Clementines out of her bag and drops them back onto the shelf.

I'm only too happy to get rid of her.

Why this incident irritated me
Firstly, would it be so hard for people to check their facts before making complaints? If I suspected I'd been charged incorrectly in a shop, my plan of action would be to return to the shelf, check I'd read the price/special offer correctly and check I'd bought the correct product. If I remained certain I'd been overcharged, I'd go to the desk, alert the member of staff about the pricing error and request a refund. That way nobody gets insulted or, in Mrs Snot's case, humiliated.

Why do people need to make a scene about such trivial matters? Does it really matter to them that much? Some of the emotion and bile that customers have when they complain is beyond imagining. I often wonder what sort of a difference they could make to this country if they directed their venom towards the things that really are a disgrace - the NHS cash crisis for one. I'm glad that this world has people that kick up a fuss and complain - but they should stop wasting it on trivial matters, hurling the flack at people that don't deserve it!

GGGgggRRRrrr I need sleep.

Good Behaviour at the Checkouts

2007-01-31T12:18:00.000Z

I once started a thread on a discussion forum in which I began listing the things that customers do at the tills that make my blood froth. Before long, other retail slaves joined in and the thread ending up with over 500 replies. When I set out to write this blog entry, I intended to find that thread and handpick the best points from it, but I can't find it for love nor money. However, the fact that a 500-post discussion was held on the subject shows the sheer amount of material there is.

So this topic is likely to be one that I'll keep coming back to. For the next few weeks I'll probably be sitting in the training room racking my brains for more points to raise. But let's kick it off by discussing the customer do's and don'ts (I have no idea how to punctuate that correctly) that are formed in my mind right now.

Do not ignore me because you're too busy holding a conversation on your mobile phone. It's downright bad manners and, whether you realise it or not, it slows things down. The number of times I've stood there like a parrot "Two-thirty-nine please. Excuse me, two thirty-nine-please. I said two-thirty-nine please!" I will not stand there politely waiting for you to finish attending to your private business!

Do not wave leaky sugar in my face to demonstrate that the bag is bust. I believe you, and I will get it replaced. I don't want to be there until midnight trying to get sugar grains out of the till equipment.

Do not steal heavy duty, 10p carrier bags from the checkout in front. I will notice, and I will type in the PLU to charge you for it.

Do not moan that you have been given a handful of pound coins rather than a five pound note. Cashiers can only gather fivers when customers give them, and frankly if you pay for a 40p newspaper with a £20 note, you deserve to be punished with a handful of heavy change.

Do not wave credit cards in my face before I've asked for payment. I will finish scanning your shopping and then request that you pay. You have no right to invade my body space. Make yourself useful and pack.

Do not pretend not to see TILL CLOSED signs. I will fit them with neon flashing lights if necessary. We aren't robots. We do need to go for breaks and we do have homes to go to. If you're in such a hurry, do whatever pressing business you have before coming shopping.

Do pack whilst I'm processing your credit card. What is the point in standing there watching me put it through when you still have about 4 bags worth of shopping to put away? Stop wasting everybody else's time! Equally annoying, don't refuse help to pack and then insist of standing there for five minutes bagging your purchases before offering payment.

Do watch where you place items on the conveyor belt. Leaving a huge sack of potatoes dangling over the 'Next Customer Please' bars will push them down the groove and they'll all fall onto the floor. And it isn't going to be you crawling around retrieving them is it? And as for bottles. Use your brain. Stand them up and they'll fall down. Lie them horizontally and when the belt stops they're going to keep on rolling aren't they?

Do look after your God damned children. If you know they're liable to carry on in shops, get a babysitter and don't bring them out in public! You're only going to blame me when your child topples the trolley you're letting them climb all over.

Do not waste time pratting about. You've had the whole time you were queuing to prepare for your forthcoming interaction with the cashier so there's no excuse for dothering. When you've been served, don't hold the queue up by standing there sorting your purse/wallet/bag out.

Do not assume yourself to be intellectually superior to the cashier. When I'm putting your fruit and veg through, I'm looking on the wheel the find the code - not to find out what the item is. Droning: "haven't you ever seen a passion fruit before?" doesn't make me look stupid and it doesn't make you look clever.

That will have to do for now. No doubt more will come along soon.

Inducing Colleagues

2007-01-30T14:51:00.000Z

Well the recruitment drive was completed yesterday. We have two new checkout assistants, one new night-shift team member and one new grocery replenishment assistant. And I'm not struck with any of them.

Of course, before they can start work they have to go through the company induction day. This is when they're told all of the boring things they need to know, are shown a barrage of wannabe-cool videos about health and safety and customer service and are issued with their uniforms and other palaver. And it falls to me to guide them through this wonderful experience. If they were enthusiastic and keen when they went in, they certainly weren't when it was completed.

We kicked off with introductions. I told them who I was, and asked them to tell the group who they were. First up, Lisa. A former MacDonald's employee who almost couldn't attend because she had a meeting with the benefits office. Then there's Dave and John who are fresh out of working for a rival supermarket chain (I made a mental note to probe them about it because I'm considering a change of scenery). Finally, we had Dean who has only ever worked in construction.

The next part was to read them through the employee handbook. I hate reading aloud. I can read very speedily in my head, but trying to co-ordinate my mouth with my brain just doesn't work. I kept tripping over words and soon became very self-conscious. For instance, I spent most of the read-through with my hand covering my mouth because I could feel my front teeth sticking out. I was trying to create an impression - I didn't want to look like Bugs Bunny. And then, the further through the book we ploughed, the more my voice droned. By the end of it I sounded like Ian Curtis singing Love Will Tear us Apart.

And all that was on top of the blushes created by the content of my sermon. Have you any idea how embarrassing it is lecturing people about personal hygiene? I had to tell them they needed to take a bath before coming to work. I had to tell them to keep a hanky with them. I had to tell them to wash their hands after going to the toilet. I had to explain to them that sweaty people smell. I'm cringing just thinking about it.

The book covers a barrage of other insulting topics too. Like how to behave towards disabled people. You mustn't call them cripples, invalids, spastics, mentalists, loonies or spackers. The correct term is 'wheelchair user' - not 'wheelchair bound'. And there was me just treating them like the next person. I mean, who the hell would actually refer to somebody's condition when serving them? It's not as though you'd say "oh, let me pack your bags for you since you have Cerebral Palsy and, therefore, must find shopping a challenge."

With the book out of the way, it was time for the video. Oh the joys. The first one gives an introduction to working for Food Place. It's shot inside a store using actors wearing the company attire. It demonstrates dialogue you should use with customers: "Good morning and welcome to Food Place. Would you like me to help you pack your bags? Isn't the weather beautiful!"

I've seen it now about 15 times and it just gets cornier and cornier with each viewing. Particularly the scene which shows you how to handle awkward customers. It depicts a woman screaming a lengthy diatribe at a badly-portrayed cashier because the store has been moved around and she can't find suet.

Now the Accident Awareness video is one that I do enjoy. It's hilarious because it uses CCTV footage of real accidents that have occurred in Food Places across the country. I sometimes stick it on to watch while working in the training room (I know, I do need to get a life). Here are some gems:

"Take care when approaching outward-opening doors with no viewing window." Cue footage of somebody getting smacked in the face by a cash office door.
"Never attempt to move a roll cage on your own." Somebody tries to pull a cage from a tail-lift and it topples right onto them.
"Be aware of slip hazards throughout the store." A customer slips on a grape and ends up on their backside halfway down the aisle with their shopping basket scattered around them.
"Never try to climb on fixtures to reach top-shelves." Some fool steps on a shelf and it crashes to the floor, taking them with it.

I could watch that one all day.

The next part of the induction process, having got them to sign-off all their training sheets and fill in all their personal details, is to guide them around the store, taking care to point out fire doors. I don't know why, but I always feel like everybody in the building stops and stares whenever I do this. Here I am conducting a guided tour of a supermarket to four people in plain clothes. It attracts a lot of puzzled looks. And you feel stupid pointing at a shelf of Pedigree Chum and explaining: "This is the pet-foods section."

Could all readers please join me in a prayer. Please don't let Food Place recruit anybody else. Ever. Because I'll only end up having to bore you all with a fresh account of the induction process.

In other news, Emma worked on the checkouts on Sunday. And lost £30 from her till. My fury knew no bounds. It's been three weeks since our weekly cash discrepancies have totalled more than £10 - and that's for all the tills for the entire week. And this week, that airhead goes and loses three times that amount in one wallop. And on the first day of the trading week. So we went into Monday £33 down!

Hall of Shame: Volume II

2007-01-28T18:24:00.000Z

I could fill a book with stories about encounters that have taken place on the Service Desk. It's where people go when they've got something they feel the need to make a fuss about. They hurl all their own frustrations at the poor member of staff who is paid (not very much at all) to take it.

I was unfortunate enough to work on that desk, full time. I wanted to progress to working in the cash office and this was just the stepping stone. I had to keep telling myself that.

There's the little day-to-day annoyances. Like people who bring stinking, vile, mouldy food back when they want a refund because its gone off. Why the hell would you do that? It's not as though anybody could make a career out of returning empty packages and demanding refunds, so why would we distrust anybody who did? Throw the rotten article away and bring me the wrapper you fools! I don't want to share a workspace with a decomposing chicken.

Sometimes, however, there are much larger hurdles to overcome. The main one I can think of is common sense and intelligence. Some customers lack both. And nobody displays this better than the Milk Token Man.

It was a Sunday (surprise, surprise) and this man, who was Welsh, had just had an argument with the cashier at the checkouts. I'd caught bits and pieces of it and it mostly consisted of him mouthing off about free milk.

It wasn't long before I had the pleasure of his company.

"I've just been to your tills and have been told a load of absolute bollocks about these milk tokens!"

Why, in the name of Christ, should I even respond to this? "If you could just explain the problem to me, I'll see if I can help."

"Well I've already wasted my breath explaining it to her over there!"

Strewth. "There isn't much I can do to help if I don't know what it is you want."

He gave me a filthy look before telling me of his plight.

"I now receive these vouchers." He waved one right in my face to demonstrate. "They are for free milk to feed to my children and I've just been told I can't have it free!"

"I see, how much milk were you buying?"

"This!" He shows me two bags, each containing three four-pint cartons of milk.

"OK, and how many coupons do you have?"

"This one, I've shown you it haven't I?" He took a deep 'I don't believe this' sigh and leaned across the desk. Which is actually quite intimidating when you're trying to help somebody.

"Well, if you look on the front, the coupon states what you are entitled to. And that's 7 pints of milk." I had my diplomatic voice on, but the effect was lost on him.

He mimicked my voice: "Well, if you look underneath it also says I'm entitled to 3.98 litres of milk." He read it as 'three point ninety-eight', of course.

"That's the just the converted amount."

"Could I have that in English please?"

You cocky ass! "7 imperial pints is equal to three-point-nine-eight metric litres. They're the same amount. This voucher entitles you to a 6-pinter and a 1-pinter. Or any combination that adds up to 7 pints."

"You lot want to learn your own jobs and stop talking out of your arses! This says I can have 3.98 litres, and that's what I'm getting. Free"

Am I talking to a paperclip? Why the hell do I stay here!? "Well that's fine. You keep one of those 4-pinters, and get a two-pint and a one-pint. That'll be free and it'll be 3.98 litres. But you'd either need to pay for the rest or have them refunded if you don't want them."

It went round in circles for a while longer. Another lady was now standing waiting to be seen, and the man chose to drag her into it and started complaining to her. "This is f*****g disgusting!" She just nodded along, but clearly didn't agree.

He finally gave up, but not before delivering this:

"You robbing bastards are taking food out of our childrens' mouths! You want shot, the lot of you!"

So as well as being tired, probably slightly hung-over, hungry and desperate to get off that damn desk, I was also responsible for starving babies to death.

The man departed. To the next counter: "I want three hundred Richmond Superkings please".