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

Do they think that water grows on trees?

The sad thing is not only do we in the uk unles we are liveing over a natural spring ]have to pay for our water we also have to pay again to have it taken away?
yet many conservationist lobbyist are pushing for supplyer of "hazoudous materials" to provide safe dispolal of excess.

Now since water is two highly inflamaable and in some cases extremely voletile gasses ,a case could be put forward that suppliers are responsible !!!!!!and half the time its got "who knows what" to make it safe?ha ha ha i hear in the distent.

Ban dihydrogen monoxide!

Here, in Canada, we have had several incidents of contaminated water in communities. The best-known was in Walkerton, Ontario, where the people in charge of ensuring that the town's water was properly filtered, didn't. The Ontario government inspection process was so overworked and underfunded that no one was checking that water was, in fact, being filtered.

The result was that seven people died and at least 2000 got sick after an e-coli breakout. There were several other bacterial conaminants, as well, said to have been present. http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/walkerton/

Over the last summer and winter break from school, I worked at a fabric and craft store, which also sells things like fake flowers and seasonal decorations. Over Christmastime, we had about two aisles of sparkly, glittery fake Christmas floral, and it was decided to cram as much of the stock into the racks as possible rather than restocking the shelves every week or so. So we ended up with flowers and wreaths and things squeezed as tightly as possible into every space available, extending halfway into the aisle and likely to fall down if anyone so much as breathed on them. They had lots of glitter and rhinestones and beads and little fake leaves and petals that fell off all over the place. And any time a customer pulled on one flower, ten others fell onto the floor, and do you think any of the customers tried to pick up the flowers that had dropped? And where do you think they put the flowers they decided they didn't want? So every day there was an enormous mess on the floor of the floral aisle, which someone had to clean up, and that someone was usually me.
One day, the mess was so bad that I literally could not see the floor. So I waded in and started clearing space and sorting flowers, and I was on my hands and knees surrounded by several inches of fake flowers when I heard a voice one aisle over. A teenage girl had picked up something off the shelf and had decided that she didn't want it. So she was going to put it on the floor, but her mother told her to put it back in its place. But the girl said, "It's their job to put it back," and left it. Then she came over to my aisle and saw me wallowing in flowers, and I just gave her The Look until she got embarrassed and ran off.

Then there was the lady who spent about two hours picking through the little itty-bitty section of fall floral that we had on clearance. I don't know how she did it, but she managed to fill a whole cart with fake flowers, leaving only half of what we had before. We were all happy with that (except my friend who had to be the cashier) because we were desperate to get rid of the fall floral, until I finished cleaning up the Christmas stuff, looked over, and realized that about twice as many flowers as she had purchased were now on the floor.

And then there was the elderly lady who was thinking about getting one of those porcelain light-up houses for the cute little Christmas villages people like to collect. She apparently had a number of houses already and they all had white lights. Well, the box on this one said "Fiber Optic" and when she saw that she decided she didn't want that. So THEN she had to see what it looked like. Well, I had seen this particular one before and I was able to describe it for her (lovely glowing lights strung up all around the house, changing colors as you watched) as well as explaining briefly how the fiber optics worked. Well, as she kept assuring me that she didn't want that, she decided that she had to see what it looked like turned on. Well, this was a pretty expensive little house and it would be nice to sell one, so I got one and brought it over to a counter where I could take it out and plug it in. After lots of struggle to get it out without damaging the packaging, I set it up and plugged it in, she looked at it (picking it up and nearly dropping part of it) and decided that she didn't want it. So she left without even a thanks.

Remind me never to do retail around Christmas ever again.

"It's their job to put it back," Yeah, there's far too much of that 'It's not my responsibility' attitude here

Mrs Gosho and I went into one of the big discount stores just before Christmas to get some wrapping paper and a card. The aisle with the wrapping paper looked just like the description above - almost nothing where it should be and stuff all over the floor. People were pulling stuff off the self, looking at it and putting it back... on an entirely different shelf I wanted to slap them, as well as the people who were taking stuff off the shelf, walking along the aisle a bit and then putting it on another shelf, or walking to another section of the store and then putting it down.

The same kind of thing happens at the CD store every day. People will look at a CD, then put it back at the front of the row instead of taking the trouble to find where it went in the row. They'll put it back upside down. They'll put it back the wrong way round. They'll put it back upside down *and* back to front

I've got some bad news - I'll only be working there until mid-March, so the stories will start to thin after that. I can't tell you how happy I am that I'm finally getting away from dealing with customers.

And you can bet your life that if I ever see anyone bullying a sales assitant or being a little sh!t in any way towards someone behind a counter, I'll be inviting them to take on someone their own size - me

Dear oh dear.... no more tales of adventure from you, Gosho? What will we DO? Perhaps we should take up a collection to suppliment your income at the CD store, just to ensure a steady cupply of stories?

What is almost worse than customers with the attitude "that's their job...." are the employees with the attitude "Someone else will clean that up" or "Who cares if this doesn't go here".

In every job i have ever worked, I have encountered sales-people who will shelf thing where they damn-well please rather than where it is supposed to go or where it SHOULD go (the two are not the same... head offices often decide something should go someplace and no one would ever look for it there, necessitating a staff person having to do all the legwork).

When I worked at Tower, I would take responsibility for just about everything because the other staff didn't want to take the time to find where the greeting cards or magazines (called "books" by them(?!??!), or the book should go and either "tidied" by sticking cards together wherever they found them instead of the rather easy system in place. That meant that restocking and ordering took 100 times longer because I had to do a week's worth of tidying in order to get close to where I could see what was and wasn't stocked.

At Chapters, I had organized everything by subject and then alphabetical (head office would take, say a TC/PIP book and have in shelved in graphics or word-processing and insisted that it had to go there. You had to fill out a form requesting it be changed which, in my experience, no one ever did).

The sales clerk would take that TC/PIP book and shelve it, not in with all the other TC/PIP books in the section clearly marked TC/PIP, or in the Graphics or Word-processing section where the computer erroniously said it should go, but you would at least find it if you checked the computer. They would shelve it in the Mac section or in with the Internet Explorer.

I spent 90 percent of my time reshelving books where they were supposed to go because a clerk mis-shelved them to begin with, or reshelving them when "customers" took them across the store to study with the..... No amount of begging either the staff to get it right, or management to get people into the department who gave a damn had any effect what-so-ever.

That goes for double for music store employees Mudhooks. People who work in record/CD stores aren't usually there to do a good job - they want to look , or they want to be able to tell their friends that they work at a music store, or they are in a band and are working at the music store because music store managers sometimes have a sympathetic attitude to people who want to take two days off every week to rehearse or to play a show, having been in the same position themselves some years before.

Where I work we're all music lovers and can help people with just about any music related question they might have, but since I've been there, there have always been at least two employees who fall into the 'I'm in a band' category and are constantly requesting time off. There have have been many 'I just want to look ' types - they rarely last more than a few months once they realise just how hard the work is and how monotonous it can be filing 500 CDs every day.

But thankfully there's always been a core of employees who want to do a good job... and we spend at least half our time fighting against the whims of the owner

Further to Walkerton, from the CBC today: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/10/walkerton_court040210

I'm no longer working at the craft store, due to college on the other side of the country, but I now work one night a week at a food place on campus called the Rathskellar. I work on Saturday nights from nine to one in the morning, and all sorts of people come after their Saturday night parties (all drunk to varying degrees) and eat there. Well, its a pretty easygoing place and we have fun working there, but occasionally we have to deal with the jerks. Last Saturday, around 1:10, a guy came in and wanted to order food. Well, we were still completing things that had already been ordered, but the register was closed and we couldn't take any more orders. So Quinn, the manager, told the guy that we were closed and the guy said it wasn't even 1 yet. Quinn said, "It is by my register," and the guy got really angry. He yelled at Quinn to f off and left. Well, a few minutes later the fire alarm went off. So we had general chaos as we pulled food off the grill and some people tried to get their food that wasn't finished yet, and we finally managed to get everyone out of the building. Then we had to wait in the snow for the fire department to come and check the building, and finally we were allowed back in. Well, of course, now we were all messed up because orders were half-finished and things like that, but we were able fix everything up. THEN a few minutes later, the guy called on the phone, and when Quinn picked it up, the guy laughed and said, "Ha ha, like how I closed down the Rathskellar?" So Quinn campus security and they were able to trace the call and identify him, and now he will be fined $500 and probably suspended from the college!

By the way, anyone who enjoys this thread and wants more should check out www.actsofgord.com. The Gord is the owner of a video game store and he has compiled a list of hundreds of tales of woe about the most idiotic customers ever.

Actsofgord has been mentioned once or twice in this thread The Gord is someone I think many of us here aspire to and admire, nay worship

Oh, Mudhooks, that is terrible!

Oh, I didn't realize Gord has already been mentioned. I usually try to read most of what's already been posted, but there are a lot of stories in this thread! I guess great minds think alike, though.

Yes, I worship the Gord as well, though I think instead of aspiring to be just like him, I'll learn from his mistake and stay as far away from retail as possible. (Alas, even then I wouldn't be able to escape the stupid people--they're everywhere! Aaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!)

Well, since this thread is rapidly approaching its first millenium, I don't think anyone's going to berate you for not reading all the backlogue - anyone who manages that deserves a bloody medal, so don't feel too bad about bringing up The Gord again - he's always welcome in these parts

This guy needs to find himself spending an eternity in Hell in the form of a salesclerk at Christmas.

"If you will notice most of these sales personnel don’t even live in your hometown. They get bussed in from other parts of the country during the holidays and are sent back to their hometowns after New Years." WTF? On what planet does this boob reside?

and.... "Yes, since the rush is over, we should be able to get the kinds of service we all deserve and pay for with a smile. No one should be surly or rude to us for any reason, should they?" I'd give him the service he "deserves"....


http://www.pearyperry.com/2004/01-12-04.htm

Well, the guy is right, you know, as long as he's from some planet where robot salespeople are manufactured in factories every Christmastime and dismantled again shortly afterward. What he's failing to take into account is that salespeople are people too. We have thoughts, opinions, and feelings. Now I can't speak for every person who has ever sold something, or even for everyone here, but I generally like people. I enjoy helping, and I genuinely want to make the customer happy, just because it makes ME feel good. That said, I'm also an imperfect, ungodly human being, which means I make mistakes. Sometimes I forget about that one special fabric in the back corner of the store that the lady desperately needs for her project. But I feel BAD when I make a mistake, and I certainly don't enjoy causing inconvenience to a customer.
Now, maybe the big department stores do buy robots for their Christmastime sales, but I've never encountered a salesperson who didn't either sincerely try to help me or have a legitimate reason why he/she couldn't.

Yet so many people tend to assume we're just beinbg awkward if we really can't help them...

A few months ago I wanted a top in a particular colour. My local branch of the shop didn't have it ("All our stock is on display. If you can't see it we haven't got it.") so I went to a different branch. The sales assistant I spoke to checked their stock on the computer terminal and found the top listed in the size and colour I wanted - none of this "If you can't see it we haven't got it." She then checked the rails in case somebody had tried it on and put it back in the wrong place. When that failed, she went up to the stock room to look for it, mentioning as she went that the computer *doesn't* always reflect the true state of their stock. She came back with the top, which I bought, having thanked her very much. My thanks verged on fulsome, but that kind of service *deserves* special thanks, just to let the sales assistant know that not all customers are jerks.

[email protected]

Anyone made use of that yet? I fully intend to when I have the time.