h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm working today. It's Sunday.

You can bet I'll have some stories to relate here when I get home this evening. Weekend shoppers are like weekend drivers - they don't know how to do it

When my children were about 1 and 3 and one sat in the seat on the trolley and the other one was sitting in the trolley itself, the whole thing tipped over, as the bigger one leaned over the side. I've never seen this happen again, but I warn other people that it can happen - even if you're standing right by the trolley. Can't remember now if anything happened at the time - certainly no lasting damage to kids - they're pretty indestructible.

We worry about the wrong things.

I can't compete with these stories. Most of the problems I had when delivering pizzas was due to me messing up orders or running out of change, getting embarassed, talking incessantly to cover said embarassment and thus annoying the customer. I thought you might like this website, though:
http://www.actsofgord.com/

Don't know how he gets away with some of it - violence towards shoplifters may be tempting, but I don't think it's recommended.

I worked for a couple of months for a retail store. It sold stuff like nuts and bolts and kettles and gardening stuff. I hated it. I did at least meet some interesting people though.

Incident #1: Customer aked me how to leave the store. Considering that it was effectively two large rooms, one on top of the other it wasn't exactly hard. I can only assume he thought you weren't allowed to leave by the door he came in by. Welcome to the hardware store California

Incident #2: "Just put that on my account young man!!" Was a phrase that engendered thoughts of homicide. Call me a snob but you just ain't seen these people.

I did manage to set light to the carpet one day. Meths and those gas lighters (the ones that just spark) = fireball! .

Retail!! *shudder*

oh... am now ashamed to admit I once had to ask for directions out of a changing room.
Well, it was mirrored on every surface, and I could not tell which was the *real* door, and which was just an illooooooooosion...

The assistant did not seem surprised, however. And to her credit she did not laugh.

*Barely muffled snigger*

Well, I have to confess that as Sundays go, this one was a dream. I have no stories to tell The place never got too busy, there were no screaming kids, no muppets who couldn't find their own ar**hole if you gave them a bloodhound, and only a few people who expressed mild surprise when I pointed out that they hadn't signed their card.

If every working day in retail was as pleasant as today, this thread would be a graveyard

(bloodhound, LOL...)

I am not technically in retail (no, I have to grab customers by the throat and shake them personally, not to mention measure their- ok, don't go there...) but I have an odd one at the moment. Could anyone suggest someone who is happy to give you the payment you request, yet 9 months later accuses you of bleeding them dry?

They just didn't happen to notice the terms they'd agreed to months ago?

I didn't anticipate having to agree terms and conditions when I was essentially doing a favour for a friend. Especially since this 'problem' has only occurred after doing them another similar favour, which was not done as quickly as they demanded. (Which I never agreed to, btw.)

I have a friend who has an alterations business, and she often has friends who are her customers. She said that when she was trying to be nice and do favors all the time, there were hard feelings. They had no problem coming to her for favors all the time, and yet would be upset that she would put the paying customers' jobs before the friend's jobs, etc, as if she wasn't really running a business and didn't need the money.

After dealing with this for a while, she printed up a rate sheet and gives it to anyone who brings work to her, friend or not. She might give a very close friend a slight price cut, but generally she sticks to the printed rates. Now that she is treating these friends like the customers they are, things are much smoother.

It may be too late to do that with the current favor you're doing for this person, but to save yourself the hassle in the future, you might try a similar tactic. This friend's reaction to a price list will tell you a lot about how much the friendship (and your well-being) is valued, or if they're just looking for someone to work cheap - or a free ride. You might want to print out a rate sheet now and let him know that any future work will be subject to these rates.

Having watched a lot of "Judge Judy", and sat in enough courtrooms to know that even if you don't have a written agreement with terms and conditions, if someone (friend or not) asked you do to something and you said okay, and a price was discussed, and you did the job, they owe you the money agreed upon.

If they think you were asking too much money for the job, they should have thought about that before you did the job. Once the work is donr, it is too late to complain.

If they think the work was shoddy, they can say "That is a really crappy job and not worth $$$" but if you think you did a grand job, you have every right to expect full payment. The person for whom you did the job can then sue you if they want some or all the money back.

If, however, you finish the job and they dawdle about paying and then eventually complain that you want too much money, you have every right to expect full payment. You might, then, have to sue them.

The point would be that you made an agreement to do some work and did the work and they owe the money. Whether they like it or not is a moot point. It is probably a good idea for both parties to take it as a learning experience and avoid this in the future.

They were happy to give me the initial payment plus £5 extra I asked for when it turned out to be more expensive than I thought. They're not making a fuss or asking for a refund or anything, they're just being a bitch about it. Somehow my asking for £5 extra turns into me gradually asking for more money to a total of about £70 (their estimate) <???> which of course at the time they perfectly happy to hand over. This problem, of course, only becomes apparent after I have a go at them due to their demanding that I place them over and above my regular paying customers.
I'm not that bothered about the money- I got paid, anyway, I just needed somewhere to rant. (No unpleasant legal stuff involved this time...) I do not anticipate doing any further work for them in future.
did not mean to off-track the thread or anything, carry on with the tales.

Feel free to vent here, my dear....

Pat, pat, pat... pat, pat, pat....

another bookmark.

, did I kill it?

Most of my customers are nice, honest.
However I was told (ironically, by the same chap who's giving me gyp) that he served the same man twice in one afternoon; the first time he was wearing shorts, the second he was wearing trunks and goggles.
We are land-locked here, btw.

oh dear

xx

Ah, and one I overheard: man working in Dixon's, and a somewhat shabby customer comes in; he says can he have a refund for his camera, because it got wet and broke. When asked how it got wet: "Well, I was in the bath..."

My dear old Papa had a very old Leica.... he hadn't used it in many years, so when the Queen was coming to town, he hauled it out, trundled off down to Sussex Drive and waited for her to pass by. As luck would have it, the car stopped for a moment right in front of him, she leaned forward, and he snapped a couple of photos before the car moved on. He was thrilled.

He popped in to the Earl of Sussex to have a celebratory ale, answered a call of nature and dropped the Leica down the toilet. It took some time to haul it out of the toilet, the back had opened, and camera and film were ruined......

Ces't la vie.

<bookmark, ticket for next week's vacation! )

- with a ticket from The Tower Bridge Experience