You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
No not content as you may think, i mean one post in 3 weeks is hardly interesting. truth be told its been a weird few weeks, early august and september seamed so far away which put me in he most awful of moods at work. With one or 2 events planned for mid august time ebbed away and now I’m smilin again. Ive played my last game of touch rugby, spent the bar tab from last years winners prize and last weekend was a good laugh as mates from all over came and had few drinks as out tenancy agreement expired. I’m happy to say that the full deposit was returned. Now only 3 weeks until i leave, one of which will be spent in cornwall and just 10 days in work!
so, complete lack of what? Manners, common courtesy, chivalry, politeness, gratitude and what ever else you would expect from the average person. Maybe it is just London culture, as everyone puts their head down, sprints their commute and pushes to obtain as much personal benefit for as little effort as possible, with no kind regards for anybody else.
I’m actually in a good mood at the moment so it is quite difficult to have a minor rant, and enlighten you to the difficulties a person in the public eye must face on a daily basis. As anyone who knows me, also knows i work in a supermarket in Clapham, London, and for some unknown reason many of the characteristics of a stereotypical ignorant city dweller seam to bottle neck once they arrive on our car park. OK, so some of this is general because there are many polite and pleasant customers in our store, but there are more ignorants here than i have experienced anywhere else.
Does customer service negate the need for manners?
Do you have a right to be rude because you are spending money?
What does common courtesey actually cost?
It’s unbelievable Clapham, at 1505 on a saturday afternoon I locked up my checkout already 5 minutes into overtime, from the back of a queue on a neighbouring checkout a man stormed over slammed his shopping down and said
Sit down! You’re here to work
thats not rude, just pure aggression-needless to say I didn’t serve him, So as far as that goes it’s pretty extreme and when you are tired at work we all know things become more and more exaggerated. I had some photos of things i wanted to show you about the ignorance of customers.
1. Returns, around 30 trolleys at night of things customers dont want and just dump anywhere and everywhere. as a result we have around £2000 worth of damages each week, plus the man hours on returning the shopping to the shelves. Savings which could be passed on to customers.
2. Trolleys and baskets. why just dump them anywhere? would it hurt to put them neatly in the trolley bays or basket trolleys? apparently so
3. Litter. no excuses just dont do it it makes the place look horrible, and its only the customers that complain! again maintainence costs which could be passed on in savings if customers would be just a little more considerate.
4. customer is always right. actually 9 out of 10 times they are wrong, just because it says 2 for 1 on chicken doesnt mean that applies to beef too-no wait thats obvious right?
5. the customer comes first. for once yes i agree we shuold put you first. but when im serving another bloody customer i cant just tell them to go away!
The last one comes with a true story. imagine on the back of a couple of 80 hour weeks at about 2am and a regular goes through the tils, buys her 4 or 5 items, the same as every night something like water, peaches and reduced meat. yes a good combination i agree, she then sits down to check her bill. I clocked her and i was the only person who could help her whats more i had a queue of around 7/8 people.
She walks over and whilst serving others i politely say “can i help?” she says yes so i tell her she needs to wait while I serve the others first. She looks at me in disappointment, the typf of look that says get me the supervisor, i told he i was the only one that can help and she needs to queue. she still pushes the fact that she wants serving, so i turned to her and narkily said ok madam what would you have me do,
“serve me she replies” so in front of the whole queue i said and what should i do with these customers, to that she replied there should be someone on customer service desk (usually me – this she knew being regular as clockwork) “perhaps there should” i replied,
“but there isn’t so your only choice is to queue and il serve you or come back another day” as blunt as i could and then i just smiled and returned to my customers who were waiting for the other customer to step out of line!
One guy says to me “you have a way with people like ive never seen before” his friend says “its cos’ he’s northern” yes i was blunt but a lot of it was tired narkiness, at the end of the day why was that customer thinking she was more important than anyone else.
right now my mind is blank but i have some pet hates at work please dont come to me and do or say any of these.
1. is it 10% day to day? no its not nor is it free today or half price and guess what its not £10 cheaper if you pay buy cash. your not funny
2. when i ask if you want help with packing you say no! its lazy not to, im helpful and i will help those in need not those who are lazy!
3. if you are too fat to fit through the checkout it should make you think!
4. take you mp3 player out and talk on your phone if you want poor service. ignorant!
5. please, thank you they are very useful words in coversation.
6. if you dont want something leave it on the shelf, other wise read above!
7. have your money ready, throw it at me or screw it up and it will take ages – trust me!
8. copper up in the bank not on my til
9. forgot something? tough sh** queue up again dont hold everyone else up.
10. in the queue? dont bring your brother husband and three cats through 10 minutes later they are at the back of the queue its not fair to push through!
11. wash. if i put my fan on in your direction its not a compliment. you stink.
12. so you were overcharged 8p get a life dont waste my time.
13. 2 for £2 is the same as 4 for £4 use your head!
14 dont ask me if we have somethng stupid like the chick peas in the warehouse, when slearly you cn see im sat on the checkout!
15 finally, although there are more i cant think about – stop using 3 bags to carry a loaf bread home, every now and again i understand yo need to double bag…but not for everything!
you may think they are trivial annoyances however after 3 and a half years it soon builds up.
21 days until i finally finish! 
so the best story that will ever have come out of work must be the disposable bbq.
a women brings back the disposable bbq’s to the customer sevice desk complianing. a colleague asked her, whats the matter, i can’t see anything wrong with it. the customer replied with
Well, when i opened the lid there was no meat on the bbq
with a straight face we had to expain that the £2.50 bbq’s dont actually come with meat, chuckling inside. to round it off the customer replied with a worried look on her face,
oooh, I better take the other 2 out of the fridge then when i get home
at that point I couldn’t help but laugh. The intellingence of some customers.
3 weeks until i leave!
Hakuna Matata – it means no worries, for the rest of our days – its our problem free. Yeah ok im singing a lion king song, so what? actually though i didnt realise until last week that it is a translation from swahili to english, i had no idea i knew so much swahili!
One of the best things about working in Clapham is the mix of people there. so many different languages. At 630 in the morning with noone else around 4 or 5 Ghanaians speaking twi, shouting across the road makes you feel a million miles away from home. Unfortunately my travels do not include western africa, they do however include east africa, and in particular Kenya – so to work with a swahili speaking Ugandan and Kenya is great, I get to learn a whole load of phrases while passing time away.
Jambo – helloe
Habari – how are you
mzuri sana – very well
asanti sana – thank you very much
tafadahli – please
meme nawamba – i would like
kwaheri – goodbye
maji – water
i think there are a few more but i cant quite remember them and please for give the spellings, whilst being thankful for the fact that you cant here my pronunciation.
There have been a distinct lack of posts recently, apologies but it has not been my best week. Psychologically it gets tougher as i get closer. I hurts to work but i will take it a week at a time. Parents will be here next week, so i will be off for a few days – coupled with a leaving party which will take my mind of work for a wee while, the week after is my ultimate wind down, camping in cornwall. A few good friends, plenty of alcohol and the beach. For some reason I dont think i will ever get bored of that.
Just 37 days to go.
No word of a lie, it was 4am I couldn’t be bothered with work and a guy and 2 girls came through the checkouts, all probably in their early 30s. they were slightly drunk and the girls as usual were faffing around tryign to ge things in bags, with barely a word spoken other than the polite “hello” the guy looked at me, paused for a second and said
so, you going to go to college or something
i had to stop and think at that point so I said “sorry?” He said,
You know, do you plan on being here for ever or are you going to go get a career or something
only for his girlfriend, still clinging to her 20s to chip in an ultra patronising comment
You gotta be careful its these sort that become super rich entrepreneurs
yes she did use the words ‘these sort’
now the point that I was 20 with a degree and qualified to teach a year later seamed to startle him, the conversation went no further, especially not 6 weeks further – i didnt want to upset him, so he walked away feeling smug and I just smiled.
The point of all that being he was lucky he said that to me, I am indeed using ASDA only to fund my education and gap year. It’s not glamourous. A few climb the ranks and make a career out of the retail sector but others are there to earn a living. Imagine he had said that to a Sri Lankan, with a family who had been affected personally by the Tsunami. Or a Ugandan, or a Zimbabwean escaping economic recession but having to send their wages home to family. The fact is that someone must do these jobs, whether house wife, student, school drop out or refugee. What right does it give others to judge, it certainly doesnt give anyright to patronise.
There isn’t much more i can say about this ‘episode’ of ASDA life! there are so many things that annoy me though, “just grin and bear it” I say, “Just grin and bear it” and smile at the idiots who havnt got a clue.
So comments are flying through at the moment, useless riddles though to anyone else in the world. It did however get me thinking about pet names, no not furry little animals but the names you call your boyfriend/girlfriend. I read in an article, ok again it was in my daily read the londonpaper, but they mentioned snugglepuff, honeybunny, sweetcakes, and a whole load more that are almost too sickening to talk about, but truth be told i cant remember them all. I was thinking how embarassing it would actually be to use these words in public – but then im nto sure anyone really does, sweet pea and my love are amongst the ones i have listened to on a daily basis at home. There is no embarrassment amongst the 2 im talking about. The more i think about the stranger it gets because of course i had pet names too when i was in a relationship and to think now i actually said those things makes me laugh! want to know some words and phrases we actually used?
kermit crab
smelly bear
baby bear
sebastian – once highlighted this one needs no imagination as to who, or what it refers too!
how strange, whats worse is going to a mates house to see a card on his fridge, which read
to my baby bear
how can 2 people be called the same thing to think your mate has been given the same pet name! it makes me laugh. Pet names are usually a secret, a private joke between 2 people but one the relationship is over we can all laugh about the things we used, what do a million apples mean to you? when asked the question how much do you love me? would you ever answer it millions, millions of apples? no – its crazy, yet we all do it (implicitly implied that that there was a phrase i have used!). What does squinting of the eyes mean to you? a wiggle of the ears? what is the difference between snuggles and huggles? There are a million more that we all use between us, they all have meaning until one day we just stop using them!
At this point I hope I’m not the only one!
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