WARNING! LONG POST AHEAD! Read for funnies!
Oh good grief, thank God last week is over. Let me tell you yet another fun story from work that happened yesterday!
First of all, it was a slow day, because the Green Bay Packers were up against the Seattle Seahawks and everybody stayed home to watch it, so business was practically non-existent. We were way overstaffed but didn't want to cut any hours in case the Packers won, because then everybody would be out to celebrate. Yes it is that big a deal up here, apparently.
Anyway, a while after the game (Seahawks won), business picks up a tad bit. One of my coworkers is done with her shift so she clocks out, has her jacket on and everything. No visible sign she works at the store.
This lady comes in, and tries to get in one of our electric carts. She can't figure out how to operate it so one of my grocery baggers runs over to help her (he is also off the clock, waiting for his ride home). She about runs him down, turns around, and almost runs into my other coworker and demands to know where our cooking sherry is. She tells her it's down aisle 3 and the woman demands her to show her. My coworker (we'll call her Karen) said "OK, well, I have to go down there for my stuff anyway so just follow me!" and leads her right to it.
Karen and the customer come back up to the Service Counter, where I am training Sharon (another pseudonym) on how to get ready to close the desk for the night. The woman demands to know where our sweet potatoes are. I pointed her in the direction of the Produce Section and made it very clear I was in the middle of helping my coworker, but in a polite way of course. Karen sneaks off at this point (good on her!), and the woman demanded to know where she was. I told her she was off the clock and going home and that REALLY pissed her off. So she demanded I take her back to the Produce Section, and rather than argue I conceded (BIG mistake), so I gladly took her back there and showed her right where the sweet potatoes were.
"Where's your ORGANIC option?" she demanded in a really irritated tone, while backing up in that cart and practically running me over. I told her we unfortunately do not have organic sweet potatoes, but that I would go check with my manager anyway. I told her to go ahead and wait right there and look around for the other stuff she needed from that section and I set off to the back. I found another manager who knew produce better than I did and she said we absolutely do not carry it, and she offered to come out and help me. I warned that within the minute I've been helping this woman she was irritated with me and about ran me over.
Anyway, we both get back to the Produce Section and told her we unfortunately did not have organic sweet potatoes. She glared at us and said something like "Well you NEED to carry them, that's why I came out here tonight, I'm TRYING to make this glazed turkey dinner", then demanded to know where "the Hell [our] organic celery" was. She then floored the pedal on the cart BACKWARDS, didn't look at us at all, my manager literally had to leap out of the way, stepping on my foot in the process, and I had to catch her from falling into the apple display. The woman just smiled and repeated her question. My manager stares at me and says "Wow!", and the woman repeats herself again. I am seething at this point and wanted to smack the woman in the face, but instead point out the organic celery. She then asks me to go find something else for her. I considered using that opportunity to disappear entirely, but unfortunately I decided to continue to help her out.
I go and find the other thing she needs and bring it back, where she's yelling at my manager about the prices of organic vs. non-organic (very reasonable at our store, but she didn't care). She floors the cart again, backwards, and I jump out of the way. Instead of saying thank you, she demanded to know where a good liquor store was around here. I pointed her in the direction of our liquor section (which is a separate department because my city has weird ordinances like that), and she said she had already been in there and we didn't have anything that she needed. She needed White Zinfandel wine which I knew we ABSOLUTELY had, and told her I had literally just seen it in there 20 minutes ago. She argued with me so I called the liquor department. The clerk in there told me she hadn't been in and yes, we did have White Zinfandel. Rather than ask me to show her to it she demanded I point her in the direction of yet another store. In no way was I going to tell her about other stores around here, instead I lied, saying ours was the closest and best deals. She told me she was going to find someone who knew what the [censored] they were talking about, and I just looked at her, stared at her, wanting to throttle her , and I just said "OK then", and walked off.
I was so freaking mad I went to the back, where I found my overnight manager arriving for the night. I told him what all was going on and he laughed at how crazy everything was. I thought I was done dealing with her and went back out to go back to training, and encountered another customer who had a quick question. We didn't have the item she needed so I offered to write her a raincheck. As I'm doing so, I hear the other customer come up and she about RAN ME DOWN and started yelling at me about our lack of Cornmeal. I tell her where it is and then she demanded I move out of her way. I just said "Well if you give me one second I'm helping this lady out and can move out of your way once I'm done" (there was nowhere for me to go since a shelf was back to me) and she huffed and puffed and MOVED THE CART closer to me and did a fake smile. I said "WOW! OK THEN!" practically yelling at her which prompted the other customer to bust her gut laughing, and electric cart lady floored it to the other aisle. I apologized to the other customer and she just laughed some more and apologized that I had to help the other lady.
As I'm FINALLY back on my way to the Service Counter (it's 15 whole minutes later at this point), I hear a big sound come from one of the aisles. We had a display set up and she KNOCKED IT DOWN because she wasn't paying any attention to where she was going. I shook my head, and continued back on my way to the desk anyway. I was going to page "cleanup in aisle 4" when she took off like a bat out of hell through the front doors, her cart full and nothing paid for. I called my liquor department and asked if they had seen her - she went in to finally grab her White Zinfandel. I told my clerk out there those groceries were NOT paid for and she needed to come back in. I also paged my manager on duty so that he was aware of the situation. I was actually hoping that she WOULD steal those items so that we could bust her and ban her from the store. I completely forgot about the mess in Aisle 4 she had created.
She comes back in (after arguing with the liquor clerk that a yellow-tinted bottle of WHITE Zinfandel wasn't actually white, but YELLOW Zinfandel), and ffter speeding up to the desk and running into another customer (without even apologizing), she rudely interrupts and says "HEY! HEY! HEY! I ran over that stupid display in aisle 4, go clean it up", and then waits for a response. I stared at her, unblinking, wanting to rip her off of the cart and throw her ass out the door, but instead I just looked to the girl I was training, who was trying really hard not to laugh, and I just said "Oh, Ok! OK! OK. OK? OK. OKAY!" in a very dismissive manner and walked behind the desk, where I started literally bashing my fist into the counter, and realizing I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
And then... it was over. I didn't hear a peep from her and we finished closing the desk, it was 45 minutes later and I was off the clock, doing my personal shopping. And then...
...I heard the cart.
I ran to the opposite side of the store, and heard it again. She was chasing me. She must have seen that I had clocked out and must have wanted to harass me. I run in back and hide for a few minutes where I run into my manager on duty again. I use the phone back there to call ahead to the lanes and asked them to call me back when she was checking out. They called two minutes later to say so, so I waited another five minutes to be sure, and went out with my stuff to go and pay for it. There's a HUGE line. She was standing there, arguing with the cashier about prices, and was punishing her by paying for all of it in change. It was like $40 in quarters and dimes. I couldn't believe it. Thankfully my manager came and opened another lane temporarily so I checked out with him. once I was done, I pulled my hood up, put on my gloves, and ran past the other lane and out of the store, because I thought for sure that lady was going to chase me out.
I finally feel relaxed and am in the entry way of the store. I walk past the liquor department which was closing for the night, and this guy starts pounding on the door about how it's early to close and blah blah blah. I thought he was going to break the door down. I run and use another phone to call my clerk in there and she said it was all ok, but I still waited outside the door, making sure she saw me and I nodded at her to show that I would be ready to help if needed. He comes out, shouting about how the Packers lost, and then said God Bless for letting him in and then he patted me on the shoulder. I flinched and took a step back and just stared at him, he laughed and I made eye contact with the clerk in there. She shrugged, locked the door, and I went home, fuming about this whole damn night and wanting so very badly to forget the whole thing.
And that, ladies and gents, is the story of Crazy-Insane Electric Cart Lady and Not-Drunk-But-Dumb and Demanding Guy ruined my entire day in the span of about an hour. The woman haunted me in my dreams last night, I'm not joking. I dreamed she was chasing me down the aisles, trying to run me over and hit me with her purse.
If I ever see her again I will do my best to find something on her and get her banned from the store. Destroying displays (and thus store property) is almost good enough already. I hope she ruined her dinner by putting too much sherry in it.
Wow that was a long post
It's back, baby!
