Veni Vidi Venti--I came, I saw, I had a coffee.

Holiday Shopping last minute

2010-12-26T12:20:00.001-06:00

As a retail worker, I detest last minute shoppers. There haven't been any sudden announcements of new holidays in a long time, yet people seem very surprised that one is coming up. So, if we all know the holiday is pretty much the same time every year and we have a year to prepare, why do we feel the need to shop for it the day before?

I had to work on Christmas Eve. I think this is completely unnecessary since 1) everybody's had from December 26, 2009 to prepare for December 25, 2010 and 2) Christmas merchandise is out starting right after Halloween. The first thing that happens when I get to work is somebody standing in the aisle yelling "Where the $&@(# is Windex" if you're using it to clean that potty mouth, it's in aisle 13. Just before lunch I get yelled at because we sold out of cookie tins. Ok, were you told just this morning that you're going to a cookie exchange? I doubt it. We've had notices up for the last two weeks that the store would close at 6pm on Christmas Eve and not be open on Christmas Day. What happens at 6:02? Somebody wants to buy booze. Sorry, closed at 6 means closed at 6 no more browsing no more purchasing. Get to the checkout and get out of here so we can go home. You had all year to booze it up don't infringe on my time because you didn't plan.

Now, I can see having to run to the store because you ran out of milk, or marshmallows but not the day before to buy the entire meal. You have a year to prepare, use it wisely.

Also, Walgreens by me was actually open on Christmas Day. What are they thinking? ($$$$$) Don't they realize their employees have families and maybe they'd like to spend the day with them? Or is it about the almighty dollar? I don't know about you, but I refuse to shop at any store that is open on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Those days are meant to be spent with family, not with a bunch of idiotic shoppers who didn't plan very well.

*edited to correct a grammatical error*

Things overheard at WalMart

2010-09-11T09:43:00.000-05:00

As much as I didn't want to, I had to go to WalMart this morning to get some things I need for a dessert I'm making. I'm amazed not so much at the abysmal customer service but with the idiocy I see and hear there every day.

Heard just today:

Customer (actually, this was me): Where can I find waxed paper?
Employee: I dunno, did you look in school supplies?

Maybe if I was going to write a dissertation with it

In the parking lot:

"Why are there so many cars?"    Ummmm because you're in a parking lot?

"Weird, the ground is all wet."   Because there's water falling from the sky! Run for your lives!

The last time I was in, my total was $7.27 I gave the clerk a $10 bill and the 27 cents. It confused her, she didn't know how much change to give me.

I had a cashier who ran out of some coins that was required for my change. He said "I'm out of ten centses" and called for change. I was in a hurry so I said "Just give me 2 nickles, I'm in a hurry". He looked confused and said "I don't think I can do that."   Ummm...last I looked 2 nickles was equal to one ten centses.

Deadbeat Dad Issues

2010-07-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

I'm revisiting the topic of my first post. Why? Because I'm still dealing with it and I'm very frustrated.

My son is 19 years old. I've been fighting to get child support for....19 years. When I got the first support order, the father quit his job and moved out of state. He claimed that he couldn't pay his support because he couldn't find work. Thankfully, Illinois told him "tough, you still owe, pay up". For a while, his parents were sending in the payments for him, I don't know why they stopped, but they did. For 15 years, all he was required to pay was $25 per week. Yes, you saw that correctly, Twenty Five Dollars Per Week. I never got a cost of living raise in support or anything...why? Because as soon as support was being taken out of his paycheck, he'd quit his job.

Now, a year after he no longer has current support, I'm still fighting him for the $3800 in back support he owes. His excuse...."It's a hardship". Hardship? He doesn't have to do anything but have to send a check every week. I was up all night comforting a baby through his fourth ear infection in 6 months. I was the one rushing a 3 year old to the ER after a mirror fell on him and cut his leg. I was the one who had to try to explain to a 5 year old why he couldn't get a new Power Ranger toy every day. I was the one who had to explain why the other kids at school have a daddy and he doesn't. Believe me, Mr. Deadbeat knows nothing of hardship.

Why am I posting this now? Because once again, I have checked to see if he's made a payment, only to see that nothing for the last month. The last payment he sent was $50. It really makes me want to start a facebook page to say that "Eric Langley of Friendship Wisconsin is a Deadbeat Dad"

The best dental care...

2010-06-10T17:46:00.000-05:00

I've had some pretty bad experiences with "professional" dentists. From one who over charged (wanted over $10,000 to fix my mouth) to one who just wanted to pull everything, and one who thought he was 'doing a favor' by drilling my wisdom tooth then leaving it open with the nerve exposed, thusly costing me almost $600 to have it surgically removed.

Hence my trepidation with going back to a dentist. However a few months ago I ended up with a badly infected tooth that caused my jaw to swell bad enough to make it look like I was holding a tennis ball in my cheek and took 2 weeks worth of antibiotics to get rid of. I do not have dental insurance because the one that is offered through my employer covers so little, it's nothing much more than a discount club. My last dentist visit was for a check up, x-ray, and an extraction...they covered $25. So for many years I hadn't set foot in a dentist office, mostly because I couldn't afford it and because of prior bad experiences.

I have since found a really excellent dentist, and she's at a neighborhood 'free' clinic. I have not heard nice things about clinic dentists and doctors...mostly to the tune of "they don't get paid much to do that so they don't care about you." Well, in this case it's the exact opposite. These people are in the business to do what it's meant to do, help people who need it. They're not in it for the money. IMO, this is the best care one could get. Now, I put "free" in quotes because while if you have no income and no insurance it is free, however they have a sliding pay scale for people who do have income. In the past month I've only paid about $300 for 2 extractions, 2 permanent fillings, and one temporary filling. I go back in a month for one more filling. Then I need a crown and something to fill in the gaps from extractions and we're done. Much cheaper than $10,000 huh?

Sorry Big Bucks Dentist...but you can finance your new Mercedes with somebody else's mouth.

For anybody looking for free or low-cost dentistry, do a Google search for "free dental work", that's how I found mine. Look to see if you have an Aunt Martha's Healthcare Network near you www.auntmarthas.org

Product Endorsement

2010-05-14T23:47:00.000-05:00

For the record, I am not receiving anything from any companies for writing. Heck, chances are none of them even know I exist LOL When I do find something that works like advertised, I like to share it.

Normally, stuff "As Seen on TV" rarely is what they advertise on television. I actually found an ASOTV product that really DOES work as they say on TV. Heel Tastic. I actually picked up a stick of this at Walgreens recently just to give it a try. I do occasionally get very dry skin on my heels and bottom of my feet, as well as my knees and elbows. The first time I used Heel Tastic I could see a difference right away. It does have a slight odor, hard to describe it...kind of minty, but not medicinal like some lotions I've tried. It also works for my knees and elbows.

Well worth the $9.99 I spent at Walgreens.

McDonalds

2010-04-15T08:26:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, I went through a McDonalds drive through a little bit past 10pm. I'd closed that day and really wanted a frappe. I pulled into the drive through and got an automated greeting saying Welcome and would I like to try one of their new frozen McCafe beverages. Yay, that's exactly why I stopped.

When the order taker got on the intercom, I ordered a Quarter Pounder meal with a caramel frappe as the drink. The girl then said "We already cleaned the machine". Um, but you just asked if I wanted a frozen McCafe drink..."We cleaned the machine already. There's no coffee drinks". Now, the posted hours of this drive through say it closes at midnight during the week, 1am on weekends. Why would they close down the coffee drinks 2 hours before closing? So I cancelled the order and went up the street to Wendy's. They were able to make a frosty-cino at 10:30pm.

When I got home, I sent a complaint to McDonalds via their website and told them I was offered a 'frozen McCafe drink' but when I tried to take them up on their offer I was told no because the machine had been cleaned. I also said that I went to Wendy's who served me a frosty-cino 30 minutes before closing.

The next day I had a voice mail from the district manager to apologize (he left two messages, because of course they always call when you're not at home), and in yesterday's mail I got a letter of apology from the owner and a coupon for a free small frappe. I'm thinking I'll save it for Saturday, the next day I close to see if I can get one at 10pm.

Yeah, it's been a while

2010-04-07T13:16:00.002-05:00

Why has it been so long? More of the same stuff that's been so aggravating I've wanted to scream, or chuck it all and join a convent (and I'm not even Catholic).

The car issue: The car is fixed. Turned out NOT to be the alternator, but the alternator belt was gone. Not broken, just not there. Apparently it broke and fell off somewhere. Also, the serpentine belt was near rotten so I had to replace that too. Good news, instead of $500 for alternator, it was $150 for belts. While I had the car in, I told them to put in a new battery since I had no idea how long that rebuilt one was there, might as well change that while I had it. So, $300 later, my car was running with 2 new belts and a new battery. The next day, it started thumping when I turned left. Not good. Brought it back in, both front axles needed to be replaced...$500. Only problem I've had since was the serpentine belt came loose and started to squeal, but that was under warrantee so they fixed that no charge.

I'm still dealing with the insurance about dropping the old car and adding the new one. I had gotten a letter right after the accident that said I had 30 days to replace the car to keep my insurance current. I bought the new car 29 days after the accident. When I called to get the new car insured, the girl on the phone said I couldn't drop the old one until the adjuster closed the claim. Um Ok, but I don't own the car anymore...she said to call the adjuster and have him close the claim. For 2 weeks, I paid premium on the wrecked car, then for 2 more weeks I paid a double premium. I'm still trying to get a straight story from somebody at MetLife on what's going on. First, the girl who took the information to insure the new car said they could pre-date the end of the first car to the day after the accident. The adjuster said they could only go back to the day when I returned the rental car, and I did not need to keep the wrecked car insured after I accepted their total loss offer. I called back, talked to another girl about dropping the wreck, she tried to say I couldn't drop it until the claim closed, so I told her what my adjuster said, I don't own it so I can't insure it. She finally dropped it, but for the wrong date. In the mean time, my new car is insured as "car 2" and not getting the discounts that should be applied. Now they're saying that if the pre-date the drop on the wrecked car and add the new one, the premium will be higher because of a "lapse" in coverage...2 weeks? They gave me a month to replace the car and now they're going to penalize me for using 2 weeks? I'd love if somebody at MetLife would get their head out of their butt long enough to come to some conclusion and get the story straight.

Work wise...new policy now forbids me from mentioning the company name in a negative manner, so while I can say they suck, I can't tell their name. However, if anybody's been keeping up with business news, you'll figure it out *g*

The corporate fat cats have decided that in order to cut payroll costs (so says the guys with the $100,000 salaries) they would "streamline" the store management. Where we used to have one manager over grocery and one manager over drug (we do have a much larger drug section than most grocery stores) there would be one manager over the entire store. Of course that would mean that at least half the store level managers would be losing their jobs. Good move! Also, instead of telling one manager "you're fired" and letting the other one take over, they changed management in just about every store. My store got a former drug manager who knows nothing about managing grocery. Some stores have a grocery manager who knows nothing about managing drug. See where this is going? Stores are now managed by somebody who doesn't know diddly about what he's doing. I rarely see my manager because he's over in grocery learning how they do things, so my store is being run by the assistants. To top it off, we lost the best assistant to another store and got one who knows less than a clump of dirt. So basically, we have no leadership and corporate fat cats wondering why customer service scores have dropped to about 30%.

Corporate fat cats, I dare you to work just one month at store level and see what your moronic decisions are doing to the people who are doing all the hard work for minimum wage while you sit in your cushy offices pocketing $100,000 a year.

More Car troubles

2010-01-19T22:25:00.004-06:00

Well, the car needs an alternator and since I bought it "as is", I have an $1850 lawn ornament. Actually, as soon as I get my tax refund deposited, I'm taking it to be fixed. Going to replace the alternator, get a real battery (it has a Bear Cat battery...never heard of them? Me neither. It's reconditioned), and have them look at the brakes because there's a slight whistle. I'm hoping to get this fixed soon with my income tax refund, otherwise it's a nice little car.

I'm still fighting to get my money back from Enterprise, and I'm thinking I'm probably out what they stole. I got a letter from my bank that confused me, I need to call for clarification. It reads like I'm getting money back, but where there are supposed to be amounts and dates, the spots are still blank. They included a copy of letters received from Enterprise claiming that I gave them the OK by signing the contract...then they included somebody else's contract (which was for what Enterprise claims I had), and the kicker...they included the other person's credit card number! I was shocked! I have this other person's name, address, telephone number, and their credit card number. No, I'm not going to do anything with this information, but not everybody is honest. I'm glad I canceled my debit card and got a new number because who knows who Enterprise is giving my information to!

Work has been the same. Unfortunately this is the time of year when retail sales drop so our part time workers are barely getting any hours. Thankfully my being full time guarantees 40 hours, however with less part timers, it's also meaning I'm doing more work that's not mine so once again, my department is suffering because I'm not there. Oh well, I've told the managers that I need the time in my department, and if I'm not in it, I can't work it.

Insurance, banks, credit ratings, and car dealers

2010-01-09T07:20:00.002-06:00

I think I'm close to the end of the car accident nightmare. Finally got the check from my insurance company last week, banked it this past Monday. Went to another car dealer that afternoon. They tried to get financing, but because of my repo last year, nobody's giving me financing..actually according to the letter saying why it's because of a wage garnishment that is 7 years old (it drops from my credit report in September)...which was for my ex-husband's credit card (that he put my name on the account without me knowing). Wednesday I went back to the dealer after work, he was trying another lender trying to get me financing, but that one said "not without a cosigner" but he did have a few "cash buy" cars...older cars that were low-priced and meant as a "cash and go" purchase. He had a 1997 Suzuki Esteem with only 78,000 miles on it (not a roll over, the odometer has 6 digits) and I could have it tax, title, new plates for $1850. I test drove it, bought it and took it home.

The only problems so far hve been a need to replace the wipers (total crap, didn't even hit the windshield), gas cap (previous owner had a locked cap on it, not good in Chicago winters), and possibly the battery. I'm hoping it's not needing an alternator, It needed a jump Wednesday when I bought it, dealer said it was because the car sat in the lot for 3 weeks in the cold, had to charge the battery last night, this morning it started, but I'm taking my parents car to work instead.

I love my bank :)

2009-12-22T23:04:00.003-06:00

Nope, this is not a rant, and they're not giving me anything to say this...but National City Bank is the best.

I called them this morning to find out how to keep Enterprise Car Rental from getting into my account. Basically, I have to close out my current debit card and be reissued another one. I can live with that, just have to change my online billing information for my home phone company and my cell phone.

They are putting through disputes on the two additional charges from Enterprise due to me not authorizing them. They said it will take their dispute resolution team about 4 days to decide if Enterprise was wrong to take money out of my account. I explained that I had received no notice of the charges nor was I phoned in advance to authorize them. If found to be in my favor, I get that money back plus the overdraft fees. They are also waiving their $8 per day 'continuous overdraft fee' for the trouble (I will get those fees back too).

Update on insurance and car rental

2009-12-21T19:12:00.002-06:00

I'm still in car insurance hell. I FINALLY was able to get somebody on the phone to let me know what was going on. They sent out a packet of documents on the 18th, which will probably show up in my mail box tomorrow (I hope), which I need to sign, and return with the title for my car. The return will be via FedEx 2 day, once they receive the documents, they'll issue me the check. Of course this means I won't have the check until probably next week. I work until 6:30 tomorrow so it won't be until after then before I get the documents, send them back on Wednesday, 2 days is Friday..Christmas Day, no delivery. Next day is Saturday, nobody's there on weekends, it won't be received until Monday, and I probably won't have my check until Wednesday. So 3 weeks after I total my car, I'll finally be able to replace it.

As for Enterprise, I returned the car tonight before they decided to attack my bank account again. They wanted an ADDITIONAL $120 in fees. I fought it, told them they owed me for the overdraft charges on my bank account, we fought it out for a while, them standing behind their farce of a "contract", only pointing out items hidden in fine print after I disputed them. They were willing to cut the fees to $60 as a "sorry we stole your bank account" measure. They kept saying "you didn't read the contract?"...well when you're standing outside in 30 degree weather and it's blizzard conditions....no, I signed where they said and went home. They completely took advantage of my situation and the weather conditions to screw me into a contract that was going to cost me a couple hundred bucks out of pocket. We'll see how long they're willing to wait for their $60, however now that they have my bank card number, I might have to have my bank reissue a new one.

Never rent from Enterprise, you'll get screwed.

The joy of snowstorms

2009-12-19T09:20:00.002-06:00

The Midwest got hit with a big snowstorm on December 8. Weather reports were saying the worst would fall overnight into Wednesday morning, so I figured I'd be OK going to work on Tuesday. There was already about 3" on the ground and this was the first time I was driving my car on snow. It was also the last. This was the Saturn I got in March from a local church. I was doing OK until I got to where I had to make a left turn onto another street. I started to slow down as I went into the turn lane, but the car kept going. I collided with a Dodge Dakota truck. The Dodge was able to be driven away, but my car had to be towed. The policeman who took the report was nice enough to take me the rest of the way to work, which was closer than going back home. My boss was nice enough to let me use the phone in her office to make my phone calls. My insurance covered a rental, and referred me to Enterprise. Here's where the trouble starts.

First off, it took my insurance a week for my insurance to even look at the car to determine it was totalled. I finally got to talk to them on December 17 to accept the offer. I was supposed to get a call from their total loss department within 24 hours, it's been 48 and no phone call. So it'll be 2 weeks in a few days, and I'm still owning a totalled car.

Now, the rental. Enterprise picked me up from work (since I had no car) to get the rental. They told me I needed a credit card. Since I don't have credit cards, I asked if I could use my Debit, they said sure. They said there was a $50 deposit which would be refunded when I returned the car. I figured that was it. Well, they showed me two different coverage options and had me under the impression I had to pick one, so I picked the cheapest. They never said I could have turned down additional coverage since my insurance company was paying for this. I told them several times that was my debit card, it was coming out of my bank account, and there wouldn't be any money in it until I got paid on Friday. They charged the first deposit on Thursday so it overdrafted. When I checked my account yesterday, I had a balance of $-23 even after my paycheck was direct deposited. When I checked account activity, I saw that Enterprise charged me $50 again on the 14th and on the 17th. When I called them and asked why, they told me then that the initial deposit was only good for 3 days because of the cost of the additional insurance. The guy on the phone said I could go back and sign off on the additional insurance. I was not happy because they had me under the impression it was required. It would have been nice if they would have 1) disclosed at the time of the rental that the deposit would only last 3 days and 2) notified me when there would be additional money taken from my bank account.

I told the guy that with the addition of the overdraft fees they caused ($108) plus their multiple charges for deposits, they got my entire paycheck. I now have no money for food, and no money to put gas back in their car before I return it, which will be another charge. I thought they did not bill additional charges until the car was returned...which they did not disclose either.

This accident has ended up costing me much more than just my car. I'm still going to be without transportation until after the new year at the rate the insurance company is going to settle the claim. If it weren't offered via payroll deduction I'd probably change companies, and definitely NOT renting from Enterprise again.

Customer Service

2009-11-06T22:18:00.002-06:00

Actually, this isn't a complaint about bad customer service I have received...but it's about....bad customers!

The last few days at work, I've seemed to get the real doozies of customers to deal with. Every one assumed "customer service" meant that I can move the moon if they snap their fingers. Wrongo! Here's some tips to ensure you do receive what truly is good 'customer service'.

1. Make sure the service you are expecting is offered. One of my problem customers seems to think that the checkouts double as bank. Sorry, but they don't. We can't give you your change in specifically split up denominations. If your change is $20, you get a $20 bill. Sometimes we may be able to split it into 2 $10's, but not all the time. That's what a bank is for. There's been too many problems with "quick change artists" that many retail establishments will not allow the clerks to break up change for anybody. Yes, we CAN do it, but many times, it's against policy. Just like you wouldn't go to the deli to order a birthday cake, you shouldn't do your banking at the checkout.

2. Don't be a chronic complainer. That only serves to give you a reputation and nobody will want to wait on you. We have a regular customer that we've dubbed "Godzilla" because that's what she acts like when she's in the store. Nobody wants to wait on her because no matter what we do, it's just not good enough and she complains. After a while, nobody even pays attention to the complaints so when there's a legitimate issue, nothing will be done because "oh, it's the complainer again". Hold your complaining until there's something worth complaining about. If you don't like the clerk's hair color or makeup, keep it to yourself.

3. Don't be pushy. It's 2009, you will have to wait in line. Try to be patient, and if there's more than one checkout, feel free to use another one. Today I was waiting on a customer and it was taking a while since he was renting a carpet cleaner. There were about 5 regular checkouts open other than the camera counter. The next customer started complaining about having to wait in line. Seriously, the louder somebody complains about having to wait, the longer they'll be made to wait.

4. Store policy is not the employee's fault. Also, if you had one employee who did not follow policy, don't expect that every employee will do the same. There's a reason that some products are either locked up or sold at a special counter. If it were OK for customers to walk around the store with expensive or high theft items, they wouldn't be locked up. Just because one clerk said it was OK to take cigarettes with you around the store, doesn't mean all of them will.

5. Don't be upset when you're not the first priority. When you're checking out somewhere other than the regular checkouts, you may NOT be the priority customer. My store has a camera counter that also has registers. It's not a full service checkout, yet we do get a lot of people who think it is (refer to point 1 above). Firstly, it IS a camera counter and priority will go to customers who have photos on order. If there are no photo orders, then we'll deal with checking out.

Remember, the clerks are people just like you, please treat them with respect. They're expected to do a lot for the little pay they get and they deserve your respect.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T10:38:00.002-05:00

This is actually a non-venting post (so far, I haven't been to work yet..."What do you mean you're out of candy? It's Halloween!"), but I wanted to say "Happy Halloween" and ask if anybody was dressing this year and as what? Send pictures and I'll post the good ones. :)

Things to consider when you're at the drug store

2009-10-05T16:00:00.002-05:00

A lot of people know that I work for a drug store chain. On a daily basis I get asked questions that either I can't answer, or the answer is so obvious I really just want to roll my eyes and walk away.

So....I present you a list of the most common questions/comments I get, and what I'm really thinmking (and it's quite possible this applies to every retail employee in every retail store).

"Oprah said this product is good for my illness"....Um, is Oprah your personal physician? I doubt it, so please don't take her word as fact. What works for Oprah (or any other celebrity) won't necessarily work for you. This goes the same for stuff you read in the newspaper (gotta love Dr. Gott) or in magazines. ALWAYS before trying something new, talk to your doctor first to make sure you actually NEED it, and that it won't interract with something you're already taking.

"Do you have any of this in the back?" ... never We don't have a back room big enough to have the entire store in back stock. Actually, stores keep very little backstock because it's a money loss to have it sit in storage. Unless it's a popular selling item, chances are pretty good that we will not have it. Also, the fact that we ordered it doesn't guarantee that we'll get it in. Any store's stock is dependent on a central warehouse, that may service hundreds of stores so it's very possible that even they will run out of an item if it becomes quickly popular.

"Can I have a raincheck?" ... most of the time, yes however a raincheck is only in case we're out of stock on a sale item. A lot of people ask for raincheck because we're out of the product they have a 25 cent off coupon for. Also, it's useless to get a raincheck on seasonal items, or items that are not sold in all locations. If the tiem never comes in, it's a wasted raincheck. Also, rainchecks do have restrictions. We don't really believe that you really need to have 20 bottles of ibuprofen for a dollar each, that's just being greedy (and we never order that large a quantity without a special order). Also, they do expire so don't get mad at us because you forgot about your raincheck and never got to use it.

"What should I take for.....(insert malady here)?" This is a question that really should be asked of a doctor or pharmacist. When I tell people this, they reply "oh they're busy", or "I dont' want to bother them"...well you need to bother them, because asking medical advice from the high school kid who's stocking cold medicine is just plain stupid. Floor people have no medical training and are not qualified to give medical advice, that's why we have a pharmacy. There are things to consider, such as the age of the patient, weight, other medications being taken, etc. that the stock clerk won't know. It's a HUGE liability on the store to have a sales clerk give out medical advice. Chances are pretty good you'll get the wrong information and it could be lethal. Best to get medical advice (and this includes what vitamin to take, what pain killer is better, even down to what to use for poison ivy) from a medical professional.

"Why haven't you gotten this in?" or "When will you get this in?" We really have no idea, but most of the time I'll make something up that sounds believable. We're told so little at store level, we're lucky we know the phone number and hours of operation! We know when our scheduled delivery days are, but we won't know what's in the delivery until it's delivered. So basically, we'll get it when we get it. As for why not, "manufacturer issues". ;)

Long time no Rant

2009-09-26T09:02:00.004-05:00

Yeah, it's been a while...however something good has come out of it....Starting Monday I'll no longer be a Comcast Cable customer.

Long story but here goes.

About a month ago, somebody stole my bank card number and tried to process about 15 internet transactions in about a minute. My bank (National City...highly recommended) caught the activity and put a stop on my card. I didn't realize this though because when they tried to call me to verify the activity, their voice mail did not identify them as being from National City, they were identified as from another company and they needed to "verify activity on my credit card"...I just have my bank card, I don't have a credit card so I thought it was a scammer and ignored it. That weekend when I tried to use the card at the gas station, the transaction was declined. When I called the bank, they said there was a fraud stop on the card and that they had tried to call me to verify. The person on the phone listed a bunch of websites that I'd never heard of. They were nice enough to keep the debit (PIN required) portion of my card open so I could get gas and food, but at 5pm the card would be completely closed off and a new card issued. Until the new card arrived and was activated, and the fraud transactions had a chance to run through my account, I couldn't use it. This took about a week.

Since I couldn't use my account during this time (I could have gone to a branch, filled out a withdrawel request, showed ID to get cash, but that's a lot of trouble to go through for a few bucks), I called the companies who had bills due that week and told them of the situation. One was Comcast. What did they do? They shut off my account for non-payment! It was off for a week until I could access my account again (after my next direct deposit) and call in a payment. Plus, they raised my rates...again. I started 2 years ago with the $99 per month triple play. My last bill was for $175.

Before I get into changing companies, there's another company I need to warn about...Rent a Center. I needed a video camera to tape some church functions. Living paycheck to paycheck, there's not a spare $300 lying round to buy a new one outright, so I went to RAC to rent to own one. The rental was $30 per week. I paid faithfully every week, sometimes a little more than needed. When I called them about not being able to pay that one week, they weren't happy about it. They called every day that week wanting to know when I was going to come pay, then that Friday while I was at work they came to my house looking for the payment, then showed up at 8:30am on Saturday looking for the payment. I paid every week for 10 months, miss one and they treat me like a thief. I packed up the video camera and took it back to the store and told them their collection practices were illegal (in Illinois, you cannot go to somebody's house looking for the payment) and they would be very lucky if I decided not to report them for it.

Back to changing cable companies: My parents have always used AT&T for their phone line. I change mine when I find a better deal. Dad had some odd charges on his bill, so he called AT&T about it. Of course when you call any company, they'll try to sell you on their other services. They tried to sell Dad on U-Verse. He had no need for U-Verse since I paid for the TV and he doesn't have a computer. The woman on the phone was persistant, so Dad told her "My daughter takes care of all that"...since I was home (day off), Dad put me on the phone. I could get U-Verse for $109 a month for 6 months, and it'll only go up about $30 after that. That's the final rate and won't go up unless utility rates go up. I'll have phone service, internet, and TV comparable with Comcast, plus DVR is included (that was an extra charge of about $30 with Comcast) on as many TVs as I wanted to put it on (Comcast charged me extra for more than one TV). They're coming on Monday to change everything over.

SO....my product recommendations for this post:

Comcast: Not recommended
Rent a Center: Not recommended
National City Bank: Highly Recommended
AT&T U-Verse: I'll let you know after I've had it for a while :)

I want to screw up like this and keep my job.

2009-08-25T18:54:00.002-05:00

Wow, they sure employ some real idiots in our corporate office.

A few months ago, the company decided to do a "Big Relief Price Cut" by lowering prices on certain items in the stores. Good idea, however very poorly implemented.

Some brilliant person decided the "Big Relief Price Cut" tags should be noticeable so customers can tell what items are included. SO...they made the tags look exactly like our clearance tags! Problem with that...they look exactly like our clearance tags. Anybody ordering merchandise for the departments will take a quick glance and not order while thinking the item is on clearance. Hence, out of stock on a lot of the items.

Next brilliant idea....shelf bullets. They sent these red circles that say "Big Relief Price Cut" that we were to clip to the shelves at every item that was included. Hmmm OK, however the bullets are too big, customers walk into them, they get bent over and you can't see the shelf prices!

Hmmm OK, that's not working out....SO they decided to change the color on the tags from red to yellow since we use Yellow for sale tags (logic would dictate they try this first instead of the "clearance" colored tags). The tags came in on Sunday and I spent 4 hours separating and sorting the tags into which aisle they were to be hung in. Uh oh, somebody goofed and the tags had the wrong prices on them! I get to work this morning and am told "Throw the tags away, they're no good"...so I spent 4 hours sorting garbage.

Since the right hand never knows what the left hand is doing, somebody else decided that it would be nice to make the sale a permanent price change so they sent new regular price shelf tags for about 2,000 items. I spent 6 hours today putting up these tags, get to the last page of tags and the manager comes over "We just got an email, we don't have to put these up". Great.

The latest now is that we're supposed to get a reprint of the yellow tags on Thursday....another 4 hours sorting, and the idiots in corporate want them hung by closing Thursday. My manager laughed and said "yeah right".

I'd love to see the corporate yahoos work at store level for one month so they can see how much their screw ups affect the stores.

You're NOT the only person on this planet.

2009-08-17T13:01:00.002-05:00

While driving to *blech* WalMart this morning (my sewing scissors disappeared from my sewing box...must have run away with my straight pins, cuz they're gone too) I was nearly ran off the road by some idiot who really wanted to be first to the red light. That's all he accomplished...first to the red light. Guess who waited longer? DUH!

Please remember folks, you are not the only one on this planet, have some consideration for other people around you. (This goes double for the woman at Dollar Tree who kept hitting me with her shopping basket).

DUH moment at WalMart

2009-08-08T18:10:00.002-05:00

No, it wasn't mine. I can't stand the WalMart in my area. The employees treat you like you're an interruption to your day, and if you complain to the management, they treat you even worse. I once had a manager say "This is WalMart, not Von Maur". I only go there to buy fabric because the fabric stores by me have all closed.

I went to get fabric to make a couple "Hawaiian" shirts. While in the store I was run over by at least 3 people with shopping carts, and at least 10 kids running around lacking parental supervision.

Get checked out by one of the "you interrupted my day" cashiers, who had trouble counting out the 20 cents she owed in change, head to the parking lot where I almost ran over a woman carrying a toddler (looked around one year old) who just walked right behind my car as I was backing out. To top it off, she put the kid down and let her run around the parking lot...WHILE THERE WERE CARS MOVING!!!! Um HELLO!!!! Anybody with half a brain knows you don't let your one year old run around the WalMart parking lot!

Hang up and drive!

2009-08-01T09:06:00.001-05:00

Hope he has good insurance.

Driver Accused of Texting, Talking

Shared via AddThis

"Mine" means I own it and you can't have it.

2009-07-29T21:25:00.002-05:00

A couple issues that happened this past week:

It seems my private driveway has turned into a public parking lot. Not really, but the neighbors seem to think so. I live in a townhouse so the driveways connect, it looks like a 4 car drive, but it's really two 2-car drives. I can't count how many times I've come home from work only to have to knock on the neighbor's door to have them move a visitor's car from my driveway. Last night the visitor asked "why don't you just park in the street" well, because it's MY driveway, I live here, I pay rent, I park here.

Second, I live with a bunch of pigs. My brother eats anything that isn't nailed down. I'm constantly chasing him out of food that I buy for myself. Just because I didn't eat it the minute I brought it in the door, doesn't mean I'm never going to. I just don't feel I have to eat everything faster than a bargain hunter at a 75% off sale.

Getting nowhere as an American

2009-07-28T19:22:00.002-05:00

This has been an issue with me for quite a long time.

Some background: My mother's ancestors founded Massachusetts. Two of them are signers of the Declaration of Independence. My father's ancestors were on the beach to greet them when they got here. Basically, my family has been in the US since the beginning. What does that get me? Absolutely nothing.

I bring home $280 per week from my job. That's 40 hours a week, after deductions. This is the money I live on. Last year I filled out the application at my son's school to get free fees and free lunches. I was denied. Their reason--my income was too high. That $280 is half of what is printed on the guidelines that are published with the application. I tried to appeal, and was told I could not appeal but I could reapply if the situation changes. I reapplied but the second application was ignored.

This year I applied again. The information remained the same except I changed one thing. Instead of marking "Caucasian", I took advantage of my father's ancestors and marked "Native American". We were approved.

Isn't it sad that you have to be either a minority or an illegal alien to get anywhere in the US? Being an American in America means nothing anymore. That's very sad.

Please avoid "reply all"

2009-07-22T21:20:00.002-05:00

Somebody on my e-mail address book sent out one of those silly "getting to know you" quizzes, to all 100something people in THEIR address book. I usually ignore these, read them, go "how nice" and delete it.

In the last two days I've gotten at least 30 replies from people I don't even know because instead of replying back to teh sender, they hit "reply all" and sent it to everybody. What makes them think I want to know everything there is to know about them? Honestly, I couldn't care less.

Please refrain from using the "reply all" button on emails...unless you really want to tell 125 people what color underwear you're wearing.

Spam Mail

2009-07-20T16:18:00.002-05:00

I had to post after seeing how horribly written some Spam mail I recently got was...Granted I'm no grammar/spelling police, but this is just too bad!

Here's the first one: Notice the misuse of "you're" (huh? I am winning lottery?) and it's Spornsored by UK Live (but further down, it lists South Africa) I've put some comments inside ** so you know it's not part of the mail.

PROMOTION BY LIVE COMPANIES *as compared to 'dead' companies?*

YOU’RE WINNING LOTTERY.

COMPUTER PROMOTIONAL DRAW

SPORNSOR BY UK LIVE UNSIGNED.

HEAD OFFICE

Coors Brewers Limited, *I don't even drink!*
130 High Street ,
Burton -on-Trent,
Staffordshire
DE14 1JZ

THIS MESSAGE IS FROM THE PROMOTION MANAGER, INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT

PRESTIGIOUS LOTTERY .

YOU HAVE WON ON THE COMPUTER BALLOT,

THE SUM OF US$940,000.00

PLEASE CONTACT

(MR.MIKE ZUMA)

YOUR CLAIM AGENT IN AFRICA ON THE BELOW DETAILS *Africa? I thought this was UK Live*

FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE PAYMENT

From: The Office Of Claiming Agent, South Africa.

No 45 Kensington Close

P.0.Box242- 3431- Johannesburg

Tel +27 737766655/Fax +27 866 132 914.

EMAIL: mikezuma111@live.co.za

(PRESTIGIOUS LOTTERY SA.)

PRIZE AWARD NOTIFICATION

South Africa mail announce you as one of the 10 lucky winners in the ongoing SA Lottery Draw for the year, 2009. All 10 winning email addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 50,000,000 international emails each from Canada , Australia , Unitaed States , Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Oceania as part of our international promotions program which is conducted annually,consequently, you have been approved for a total pay out of $940,000.00(NINE HUNDRED AND FOURT THOUSAND UNITED STATE DOLLARS ONY.). *fourt thousand ony*

This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of some multinational companies as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the communities and the whole world where they have operational base. Further more your details(e-mail address) falls within our South Africa representative office, as indicated in your play coupon and your prize of $940,000.00 will be released to you from this regional branch office in South Africa . *I totally do NOT understand this paragraph some companies?*

Note that your email address qualified for the draw, as a result of your visiting various websites we are running the e-business promotions for. You/Your Company email address, attached to ticket number 100-309-7482, with serial number 513-10 drew the lucky numbers 7, 14, 20, 33, 38, 43 and Bonus number 5 and consequently YOU HAVE won in the Second Category. *Nice use of different colors to let me see where you've reinserted different numbers*

Your winning Ticket is Number. S/A/N/LYour Serial Number. 754-77
Your lucky draw Numbers are. 15, 16, 17, 18, 26, 46 Bonus Number 40
Your INSURANCE Number: BBTHY/453L/GMSA

You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of $820,000.00 (NINE HUNDRED AND FOURT THOUSAND UNITED STATE DOLLARS ONY.)

in cash, which is the winning payout for the year 2009 category winners.

*Notice, the number and the written out words do not match...and it's still 'ony fourt thousand'*

Please be informed that you have to contact your claiming agent on the neccessary step to take for the claiming of the sum of $940,000.00 is insured with your email address which won you this prize, therefore you should contact (PRESTIGIOUS LOTTERY ) your agent and give them your full names so that they will re-insure your WINNING under your full names.

Please note that PRESTIGIOUS LOTTERY your paying agent, will invite you to their office in Johannesburg South Africa for your immediate payment, you have to hurry up and contact them immediately. To begin your claim, please contact your claim agent immediately, Mr Mike Zuma Email: mikezuma111@live.co.za

NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please remember to quote your reference and batch numbers and other information provided above and below in every one of your correspondences with your claims agent.

Congratulations'' once again from all our staff and thank you for being part of our promotions program.

Sincerely,

MR. C.J GOOWER SAMILITY.

SOUTH AFRICA REP.

77635 476378 255667460

THIS PROGRAM IS SPONSURED BY: SOUTH AFRICAN LOTTO AUTHORITY. AND SUPPORTED BY: (Fé¤©ration Internationale de Football Association) FIFA SUPPORT

*Notice sponsured*

Here's the next one: apparently I just got a grant...I think. The first paragraph is nothing more than a huge run on setence and uses such big words that it's impossible to understand what they're saying.

Dear Beneficiary,
Ref Num: (GRT-877)

Congratulations to you as we bring to your notice that office of the
Senate House has chosen you by the board of trustees as one of the
final recipients of this year promotion cash Grant/Donation to
celebrate the 30th anniversary celebration and your email address have
emerged a Grant of {$750,000.00 USD} Seven hundred and fifty thousand
united state dollars. We are giving out a yearly donation of
{$750,000.00 USD} Seven hundred and fifty thousand united state dollars
to 12 lucky recipients as this Year promotion from the W.H.O, UN, and
the EU in accordance with the enabling act of Parliament.
Participants were selected through a computer bllot system drawn from
2,500,000 email addresses of individuals and companies from Africa,
America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East, and Oceania as part of
our International Promotions Program. CONGRATULATIONS! Your fund is now
deposited with the paying Bank.

In your best interest to avoid mix up of numbers and names of any kind,
we request that you keep the entire details of your grant award
strictly from public notice until the process of transferring your
claims has been completed, and your funds remitted to your bank
account. NOTE: To file for your claim, please fill out below
information and contact the payout bank Via email contact below.

1. Full Name:....... 2. Address:........ 3. Nationality:.........
4. Age:.......... 5. Sex:.......... 6. Occupation:..........
7. Phone/Fax:......... 8. Present Country:...........

Contact Agent:
Mr. Donald Jones
E-mail: mrdldjones9@yahoo.com.hk
Tel: +234 805 279 0400

Your Faithfully
Donald Jones

I love this one:

Donna,

I am Paul Stevenson, and I would like to give you an opportunity that changed my life:
http://mintperu.com/2dh8txn4z6h64ees

This is great program; I am six months pregnant and was looking for something that could make me money from home.
I am so happy that I am able to be a part of this, and I would like to extend an invitation to you as well.

Over 21,256 people have already started living a better life, don't let them leave you behind.
Find out how safe and easy it is for you to work from home too.
http://mintperu.com/ijkxgrzgkxkujcqi

Regards,

Paul Stephenson
Elk Grove, CA

Wait....PAUL was six months pregnant? Somebody copy/pasted without proof reading! WTG Paul! I hope it's a healthy baby!

2009-07-18T10:45:00.001-05:00

Dumb question of the day: "Can I pay for this at the checkout?" uh no we prefer you just make a run for it.

Definately NOT mother of the year...

2009-07-17T19:28:00.002-05:00

First off, now that I know mobile blogging is working, I might post more often since I usually come up with something to blog about while I'm at work, and before I get home I totally forget what it was. Happened today...I should vent about that....why my brain can't remember a simple blog topic LOL

While at work today I dealt with a ton of idiotic people. The worst came in with a newborn with sunburn and was looking for something to use for it. Well, anybody with common sense knows that you don't use anything on a newborn without talking to the pediatrician first. For some reason this woman did not want to call her doctor and just wanted something over the counter...unfortunately nothing OTC exists for infant sunburn. Anyway...why the heck did she not have that baby in the shade to keep it from getting burnt?

2009-07-17T19:25:00.001-05:00

I just activated mobile blogging, testing to see id it's working.

Child Support

2009-07-15T22:17:00.002-05:00

This is a subject that ticks me off the most. I touched on the subject a little in my very first post.

First a little background:

My son turned 18 this past April. I dated his "father" (I more commonly refer to him as a sperm donor since that's all he did) for a year before I got pregnant. We were engaged, but I broke off the engagement when my son was 6 months old. The reason was that the sperm donor was just too immature and there was no way he would be able to support a wife and child. He spent his spare time partying with his buddies, I had to beg to get a package of diapers for the baby (he was always broke because he spent all his money on his buddies). He completely skipped out on the first birthday, he claimed it was because his best bud was getting married. That bud has been married 3 times...his child only had one first birthday.

While I was pregnant, I went on public aid. Part of this was pursuing child support. The baby was about 2 months old when we first went to court. The first thing he did was order a paternity test. This angered me because I was a virgin when we started dating, and he'd been the only man I'd been with. He tried to claim that he was sterile (obviously not). Then his mother kept saying that the baby didn't look anything like him so it couldn't possibly be his child. Of course the test came back saying "You ARE the father".

Public Aid tried to get me $350 a month for support, however when they went to court, sperm donor brought in only one W2 that said he only made $5,000 the previous year. Going by that I was only awarded $25 per week for support. To get out of paying, he moved to Wisconsin. When that didn't work (because I sent Illinois his address) and the support started coming out of his paycheck, he quit his job. For about 4 months his mother sent letters to the state saying that he was unemployed and couldn't pay his support. They finally sent him a letter saying that unemployment was no excuse and he still owed, if he didn't pay he'd be arrested. His parents paid his support for him for nearly a year.

When my son was 15 I discovered that during a visit when he was 13, he was shown porn. At that point I decided to take the sperm donor back to court to amend the visitation order so that he could not take my son outside of Illinois and no overnight visits without supervision. Rather than deal with this 'bother', he decided to waive his visitation rights. I also asked for an increase in support since it was costing me more to raise him. This time his W2 said he made $300. Thankfully I had a judge who wouldn't let him get away with that. I knew that the sperm donor had been working as a Blues Brothers impersonator for cash (which is not reported on a W2), so the judge took that into consideration, as well as a housing allowance since he lives with his parents rent free. The support went up to $50 per week. The sperm donor says this is too much of a hardship for him so he stopped paying. I do have a few court orders that require him to work, report once a month, and if he's not working he has to file unemployment and report that once a month.

Here's my vent: He never did pay his back support from the previous 18 years so he owes me about $4500 in support. Now that my son is 18, the sperm donor doesn't think he should pay anything, including the back support. Once again, another court order so he knows that he still owed the back support. Of course now this is ticking him off so to "punish" me, he sends as little as he can. Last month I got $50 the entire month. Today I got another payment...$50. At this rate I'll have grandchildren before I see my back support.

What is it with some men that they think they can get away with this stuff. The only people they're hurting are their children. Men like this should be castrated.

Mindless Boring Work...and big waste of money

2009-07-09T18:26:00.002-05:00

Ya gotta love working for a store that's part of a corporation. We're convinced that anybody working in corporate has never set foot in one of the stores...ever.

We've recently rolled out the "Big Relief Price Cut" (sounds like a good bowel movement) in which "corporate" decided to mark down several items in the store. They made a huge deal about the markdowns, then when it happened it was only about 500 items and they were all generic, and the savings was less than a dollar. SO a few months later they decided to roll out "wave 2", even MORE items marked down and now they've added some name brands. Since some customers complained that they had difficulty identifying the marked down items (ya know those big red sale tags just don't do it), they sent us about 4,000 of these big red dots that we're supposed to clip to the shelf at every item that's marked down. Spent 2 days doing this. Of course now our store looks like WalMart, I was waiting for the giant yellow smiley face to come get me.

Of course corporate says there's not enough money in the payroll to actually give employees a living wage, however they can spend thousands of dollars printing these silly dots to hang on the shelves. Heck, put that in my paycheck and I'll personally tell the customers what items are marked down, but it just irritates me to see the company wasting all this money on junk when the employees can't afford to even shop there.

On another note, today I answered a price check call for some napkins. The customer got red and blue solid colored napkins and claimed they were on sale because they were 4th of July product. They're actually not because we sell solid colored party goods year round. When I told the customer that the solid colors are year round and not included, she got angry and demanded a manager, who promptly gave her the sale price. Now...we're constantly told to watch "shrink" (items that leave the store for lower than selling price), yet when a customer claims something's on sale, they give it away. Once again, waste.

Closed is Closed

2009-07-05T08:31:00.002-05:00

Yeah, another work rant. That happens in retail. We're the worst paid and worst treated workers anywhere IMO.

We've had signs on the doors for the past week that we were closing early for the 4th of July holiday. When do people come in to shop? 8:55pm...5 minutes before closing. Then they get angry that we won't let them keep on shopping. Sorry, but closed is closed. We're tired and we want to go home. And we did our shopping early.

Happy 4th of July

2009-07-04T09:01:00.002-05:00

Stopping by to wish everybody (all one of my followers ROFL) a happy 4th of July.

Me, I'm working. There are 6 people who can close the store. One doesn't work weekends (she has another job), there's a mother/son 'team' who claimed they were unavailable (after being unavailable the rest of the week too--but not taking vacation or personal time---I'm sure they're having a nice party), one is out of state for the weekend, and the two highest store managers never close on weekends. So that leaves....ME. The only recourse I get for working on a holiday...I got an extra day off this past week, and I get paid an extra $8 to work. Yup, $8 not time and a half, a dollar an hour to work on a holiday. Hardly worth it but I can't afford to take any unpaid time off.

A lot to gripe about

2009-07-03T20:20:00.003-05:00

This has been a couple weeks from H-e-double-toothpicks.

First off, thanks to Dave from Not So Straight From the Hip for featuring my blog on his. Of course this means I might actually have to post more than once every 3 months ROFL .

Let's start with the obvious....work.

A couple weeks ago I had a week's "paid" vacation. I get my check via direct deposit, so every Friday morning I go to my bank's website and check my balance to see what my deposit was. Usually it's no problem. This morning I should have gotten paid for my vacation week. I check and...no deposit. I go into my work's associate website and see that no check was issued for me for my vacation week. Hmmmm ok some body screwed up. Get to work, and tell the manager. What do they say "Well, you'll have two checks next week" um OK, but that doesn't help any for THIS week. Store director came in, I mentioned it to him (since he's the one who was supposed to have sent in the vacation hours), and he blamed the assistant (who's out of state this weekend)...and once again "You'll have two checks next week"...but still, that doesn't help for THIS week. SO.....getting exceedingly pissed off I kindly informed management that at that time I had $20 in my pocket, 1/4 tank of gas, and bills to pay. Gas will last me maybe the weekend so I'd have to call in next week until Friday morning when the two checks hit the bank. Plus, I might need a day to call those who have bills due and explain that my idiot managers failed to pay me for vacation time so I didn't get a paycheck and please don't give me late charges and I'lll pay double next week. They finally decided that I could get an emergency cash payout that I'll have to give back when I get my two checks next week. What really pissed me off though....none of the managers wanted to take responsibility for the mistake. While I blame all three to an extent, the Store Director is the biggest to blame because he should have made sure that the vacation time was put in. What's nice, the assistant manager (who is being trained on how to do payroll and assumed the Store Director had already put in the vacation time because that's not something he's been trained to do yet) had offered to give me a loan that I could pay back either one lump or little by little. That was very nice of him, but since I got the payout, I don't need it.

My other gripe is the education system where I live. Basically if you're not an illegal alien, you don't get squat. I received a letter the other day informing me that my son did not have enough credits to move onto Senior year, so he'll be a Junior again next year. Now....not once all year did I receive anything telling me that he was in danger of not moving on. No failure notices, no phone calls, no emails, nothing. Why didn't they say something when there was time for him to make up the credits. Now today I get a bill in the mail for the previous year...when I was supposed to get free fees because I'm low income. Apparently they've changed their mind and figure that $280 a week is too high to get free fees. By their thinking, because I rent from my parents that I should include THEIR income as mine. Um, nope. I don't get any of their income, and part of their income is my income since I pay them rent...so I don't see why I have to include them just because they own the house. Do they include the landlord's income for all renters? I don't think so.

Back to a work gripe...after having 10 days off for vacation, I get back to work to find my department in a shambles. SO....I say that I wanted the next day to put it straight again. Didn't happen. I had to cover another department for 3 hours. I had yesterday off (because I have to work on the 4th---that's another gripe....I have to work a holiday and all the company gives me is $8), and today when my warehouse order comes in, I have to cover for another 2 hours because the cashiers who were scheduled for today (a holiday weekend) were cut from the schedule. I have my yearly review coming up and it's going to be a bad one because my department looks like crap because I've been working every job in the store but my own.

I'm ready to walk out and go work somewhere else.

Peeves

2009-07-01T23:14:00.002-05:00

No, I do not mean the poltergeist from Harry Potter (who was deleted in the movie version)

I mean things that really peeve me off. I've been thinking about these for a few days and the list seems to keep getting bigger LOL

Most of these are work related...of course because I work in retail and there's nothing good about working retail.

Co-workers who think you have nothing to do all day besides be at their beck and call.
Managers who think you have all the time in the world to do your job plus three others.
The same managers who ask you why your work didn't get done.

Customers who talk on cell phones while you're trying to wait on them.
Parents who let their children run around unattended.
Parents who let their children throw tantrums in public and ignore them.

People who think they know your job better than you do.
Customers who think they know your inventory better than you do
People who think they know store policy better than the employees.

Kids, remember the motorized cart is for disabled people only.

2009-06-11T18:45:00.002-05:00

You know what carts they are. Those motorized shopping carts for disabled people. The other day at work, three times I chased about 4 teens away from the motorized cart because they were playing on it. One was driving, one was sitting in the basket, and they were chasing the other two around the store. Are kids that bored that they need to deny a motorized cart for somebody who really needs it? Please, be considerate and if you don't need it, don't use it.

On the subject of kids, parents, please keep an eye on your kids when you're in the store! Today a child got stuck UNDER the shelving unit. Yes, the kid got wedged underneath our shelves. How did the kid get there? He was playing with a ball and the ball rolled under the shelves. He decided to crawl under there and get it. Where was Mom? about 2 aisles over looking at makeup. We were able to get the kid unstuck by removing the lowest shelf. Of course who did Mom blame? Us. Because we have toys at a level that a child can get them. Not Mom's fault for not watching the kid, our fault for selling bouncy balls. Go figure.

Finish your shopping BEFORE you get to the checkout!

2009-06-04T17:51:00.003-05:00

I don't know if it's just me or if I'm just expecting too much...but isn't it common sense to finish shopping BEFORE going into the checkout? Maybe I've been doing it wrong all this time.

Today at work I get a page from the camera counter clerk. She wanted to know what to do because two guys put their beer on the counter and left to finish shopping. The clerk had another customer, but the counter was blocked with the beer. Gee....I don't know....maybe MOVE THE BEER! I told her to get a shopping cart, put the beer in it, and move it out of the way.

Meanwhile she's ringing up the other customer, the two guys return with the rest of their shopping, and start arguing because we moved the beer. I explained that we have to keep the counter open for other customers and that they should use a shopping cart and complete their shopping before going to the checkout. They argued with me for at least 10 minutes!.....Sheesh...sorry but you aren't the one and only customer we have, have a little consideration for somebody else.

Bored really

2009-06-01T08:44:00.003-05:00

Well, nothing's really pissed me off lately that's blog worthy. Of course work is always a good pisser offer lol But that's nothing new and would be too monotonous to blog work all the time *g*

I could go on a mini rant about trying to lose weight. Why is it so easy to turn into a fat cow, but so hard to get thin? LOL

I started first by cutting waaay down on junk food for a month, lost 5 pounds (yay!), then I cut waaaaay down on drinking pop, switched to iced tea, lost another 5 pounds (yay!). SO...after about 3 months of limiting junk (I still eat some on occasion, but not three meals a day like I used to...I swear if I get cut, I'd bleed chocolate sauce) I decided to start exercising. Now, I find regular exercise to be very boring so when somebody suggested playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) would be an excellent workout, I decided that that could be fun exercise. I bought Dance Praise which is just like DDR but with Christian music. I like it. There's a mode where you can start out slow and easy, but each song gets just a weeee bit more difficult. I can usually go 30 minutes on this mode before getting worn out. There's also an arcade mode where if you hit the steps correctly, you get power ups, some good and some bad. I like the confetti one, covers the screen in confetti *g* This game also comes with a calorie counter. It counts how many calories you've burned by doing the dances. I went through 5 songs...and burned 38 calories...that's the yogurt I had for breakfast LOL

Just thought of something else to rant about....last minute notices. My pastor wants to start a puppet ministry, but we have no puppets. He also sprung it on me last Sunday that he wants me to write the puppet skits for VBS, but could I have them done in a week or two so we can practice acting them out and get them pre-recorded before VBS week (June 22-25). Uh yeah sure...I'll just call in sick for an entire week so I have the time. And as for doing these with no puppets....that'll be fun LOL

Something good that happened at work Saturday night....I stopped a $1500 liquor theft. Of course one of the clerks on Sunday told me I was racial profiling for watching these guys in the first place...but if I wasn't watching, they'd have gone out the door with $1500 in liquor. I was covering the camera counter for a break. I stepped into the little back room for a couple minutes and kept hearing bottles clanking together. I peeked out the door and saw 3 black men loading up a shopping cart. I stood back where I could see them but they couldn't see me and watched for a bit. I saw one of them pushing the cart down the aisle, so I stepped out of the back room where I could be seen and just stared at them. The one pushed the cart back into the aisle and they spent about another 5 minutes looking to see what I was doing (staring at them lol). He signaled to his buddies to drop what they had, then they started to wander and hang out in front of the camera counter. I kept staring *g*. The 'leader' asked if we carried Rose...I knew they knew we had Rose, they were just over in that aisle loading up so I told him I didn't know liquor, if we had it it would be on the wine wall. He said he couldn't find any, didn't want me going to help look, and the three left empty handed. After the clerk came back from break, I went down the aisle and found the shopping cart filled with $500 of liquor. Just before we were leaving, the clerk found a hand basket with more liquor...and it was filled, it took both of us to lift it into a cart. I put everything in the back room for the manager to see the next morning. The liquor manager was ordering, and found another hand basket with even more liquor. The 2 managers watched the security tape from the previous night, and saw that one of the guys actually went into the liquor back room and took 3 bottles of $45 tequila. Once everything was totalled up, it was almost $1500. What did I get from the company for stopping $1500 from walking out the door...."good job". That's it..."Good job" When the store manager gets back from vacation, I MIGHT get a $5 customer service award coupon...wow.

More stupidity...

2009-05-15T20:09:00.002-05:00

Wow...2 days in a row posting!!! It's a miracle! (Now if I could just get readers ROFL)

More stupidity in the news today.

A Florida mother is demanding her daughter's school destroy and reprint their yearbooks. The reason? Her daughter wore a short skirt with no panties on the day the club pictures were taken, sat in the front row, and may have exposed herself in the picture. Story Here

The daughter's reasoning? She didn't want panty lines. Huh? Who sees panty lines when you're sitting on your tush? Anybody looking that closely to pictures shouldn't be in posession of a school yearbook!

Moral to this story: If you're going to go without underpants, wear a longer skirt.

Great message!

2009-05-14T17:44:00.004-05:00

While driving home from work I was following this guy:

Normally following somebody in a motorcycle isn't a big deal, but this is what the back of his t-shirt said:

So, we see he's advertising safety, and has a cute picture of a sad face with a head booboo...so..

WHY WASN'T HE WEARING A HELMET?

Horrendous "customer service"

2009-04-13T20:54:00.003-05:00

This is actually my sister's issue.

Some back story first:

My sister and brother in law homeschool my 2 nieces. He's on disability so they order the girls curriculum one month at a time, when his disability check comes in. Every time, they have delivery issues.

The packages come via UPS. The last 3 shipments were never delivered. They call UPS, UPS says the driver attempted a delivery but was unable. They once were told they were in too dangerous a neighborhood...but they live across the street from the police station! They've also been told that they would need to go to UPS to pick up their package...50 miles away! They've been told that the driver attempted delivery but nobody was home. OK....on disability, neither one works so somebody is home all day. No trucks even drove past the house.

There was supposed to be some curriculum for the youngest one delivered today. I even spent a few hours over there and never saw a truck...but the tracking said "attempted delivery, signature not available". Huh? Where did they attempt to deliver? Were they trying the wrong building? If so, don't they double check addresses first? They're supposed to try again tomorrow, and my sister is going to call once an hour to make sure they deliver. My brother in law is going to contact the BBB (since this has happened three times), and they're going to see if their supplier can ship via Fed Ex from now on.

Anybody else have trouble getting UPS to deliver packages?

Hang up and Shop!

2009-04-06T23:40:00.003-05:00

I know I'm not the only retail worker who is really peeved by people who chatter away on their cell phones while we're trying to wait on them.

I had one today. I was covering a break at the camera counter. I was running a roll of film, and heard the woman talking away on her phone. She was standing at the register, but made no move to end or even pause her conversation. I finished the roll of film I was working on, looked up, said "I'll be right with you"...THEN she decided to put her phone down.

Something else that peeves me is those bluetooth earphones. I see people walking through the store holding conversations...and it looks like they're talking to their cart of groceries. "Hello broccoli, are you having a nice ride in the shopping cart?" I thought one of these people were trying to ask me a question, so I said "Pardon?"...and they snipped I'm on the PHONE!" Like I can tell, you're not holding a phone and I see you talking to yourself.

Have you ever been stuck behind one of these in the checkout line? They feel the need to finish their conversation before even bothering to look for their money, then it's the checker's fault when they can't find enough because they're searching through purses with one hand while the other is holding a phone (actually, some people should try super glue then they'll have a hands free!) and talking so much that they don't even know what they're looking for.

Please...just hang up the phone until you're done shopping!

Work is crap

2009-04-01T22:23:00.002-05:00

Yeah, in this economy, I'm thankful to at least HAVE a job...even though it only pays $10.75 per week and there's so many deductions that my take home is about half of that...

Every Wednesday I have to place an order. Orders are due by 2pm. I get to work at 8am...then have to spend several hours just trying to find an order gun. The store has 7 guns, one is permanently kept in grocery receiving, the others are supposed to be split, 3 to Osco, and 3 to Jewel...it never happens that way. There were a lot of complaints about not having available guns so when the company got new guns, some brilliant buffoon made the decision to keep them all at the service desk and have people check them out. That's fine...however NOBODY CHECKS THEM OUT! I go to check, there are 2 out of 6 guns checked out, but none available. Now, I think I'm pretty decent at math....unless the "new" math has changed things....6 guns minus 2 checked out...there should have been hmmmm 4? available. Hmmmm nope. No guns. Walk around the store asking everybody "Do you have a gun?" "Hmmm nope" (while hiding one behind their backs) Normally, I don't get an order gun until about 10 or 11am. My department takes at least 2 hours for a decent order. I take a 30 minute lunch at noon...so getting a gun at 11, I only get an hour to order before lunch, and an hour after. Not really enough time for a very good order. OTC is not a department that can survive a half-assed order, however when the equipment is not available, what is somebody to do?

Also...a few weeks ago (actually almost a month now) I took a vacation week to try to help save payroll. I was assured that while I was gone that my department would be taken care of. It wasn't. A month later I'm STILL trying to catch up. Here's the scoop: All our overstock is programmed into the ordering guns, so that if we order something that we have overstock, we're alerted. After our order is transmitted, we get a printout (a pull sheet) of items to be taken from overstock and filled to the sales floor. We get 2 of these a week. During vacation, my pull sheets were given to one of our night shift high school kids. Instead of taking the product from overstock and filling the sales floor, she marked off and initialed the pull sheet and filed it. The product was still in overstock. Meaning that when I came back, I had to reprogram everything. That normally could be done in a couple days...but not in the retail world. It's taken a month because every time I tried, I got called away to help somebody else with their job...but getting no help at all with mine....except for the high school kid who messed it all up in the first place.

So today...2 hours to get a gun, I'm trying to order, getting paged every 10 minutes for some stupid thing and I have people all over trying to take my gun. I get my order done (half-assed), take a break, then start re-programming my overstock. Apparently the boss isn't happy because this means that I'm actually utilizing the space in my bay, and he can't store his overstock liquor there. I'm in the middle of re-programming (with a department the size of mine, this could be an all day project, between re-stacking, organizing, and condensing boxes) the boss says that my department is a mess and I need to face it up before I go home. Hmmm OK, but the guy who does date codes was in today and he faced it while doing date codes. SO...I decided that I'd do what I could today, and do the rest tomorrow...but I finish MY work FIRST before doing anybody else's. Thursday is ad audit day...the gal who does our audits complained about the amount of work she has to do, so they decide that since I have nothing to do on Thursdays that I could take half her audits. Anybody else in that store can get all the audits done in one 8 hour shift, but for some reason she can't....why? Very poor time management skills...and she spends about 2-3 hours snooping to see what everybody has in their desks and overstock areas.

Such is the world of retail.

Village Ordinances

2009-02-16T11:10:00.002-06:00

Gotta love how village ordinances work so well to protect the residents. NOT

My parents, both retired and diabetic, got a letter from the village. The trash cans are visible and that violates an ordinance. Ok...they live in a townhome with no outdoor storage (no shed, garage, etc) Where exactly are they supposed to put the trash cans? Also, several years ago our trash pick up company got new trucks with this fancy lift, however the fancy lift doesn't work with regular plain old metal outdoor trash cans...my parents had to buy these huge plastic trash cans, which every Tuesday evening must be pushed to the end of the driveway. There are 2 cans, one for trash and one for recycling.

My parents have been keeping their cans on the porch for the last 2 years. For some reason this year that's not good enough and in order to help "beautify" the village, residents must now make sure their trash cans are not visible. SO...this means either putting them in the backyard and dragging them through the house once a week, or just keeping them in the house..where there's no room.

They asked about putting up plywood on the porch so the cans would be unseen...they village wants them to get a building permit...to put about 5 nails into a sheet of plywood.

Women with many children

2009-02-12T22:57:00.002-06:00

I wonder why women have a ton of children when they can't take care of them all.

Now, I will give props to the Dugger's and 'Jon and Kate plus 8' because they ARE taking care of their children without welfare. What disgusts me is why women like the octuplet mother have 14 kids when she can't afford them or take care of them. Come On!

Now, I don't know the 'crazy baby lady' (what my friend Dave calls her) so I can't talk about her, but I do have a regular customer where I work who has 8 kids. Thankfully she doesn't shop with all 8, but she usually has 2 or 3 with her, and not one of them behaves while in the store! Today she had the two youngest with her. One took the shopping cart and raced up and down the aisle, the other turned on every noisy Valentine gift item we had, threw several bags of candy on the floor, and both of them just screamed at the top of their lungs! All this time Mom is totally oblivious and complaining that there's not a lot of Valentine candy left (the day before one of her many children needs it for school). I had to leave the aisle because I just couldn't work.

I've known women in my old store who have said that as long as they can keep getting welfare, they'll keep having babies. Women like that should have their kids taken away because they're obviously unfit. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking welfare...I've had to use it myself before, but to keep having children to keep getting welfare is just wrong, and if they insist on popping out a baby every 11 months, then at least take care of them and teach them to behave!

It's on the same day every year!

2008-12-21T20:17:00.002-06:00

Unless I've been told wrong (it's happened), but I'm pretty sure Christmas is December 25 every year. If so, why the heck are people so surprised when it's here? And why do they get so upset when they shop at the last minute and discover that what they wanted is sold out?

For example: Window Clings!

I'm sure everybody (or most people) know that Christmas merchandise is out in the stores. Smart people get their stuff early...decorations and cards at least. A woman comes into my store this past week and had a fit because we only had one design of window clings, no partyware, and only 3 boxes of cards left. "Don't you KNOW that it's only a WEEK until Christmas?" Uh yeah, that's why we're sold out.

Common Sense?

2008-02-28T19:18:00.001-06:00

Common Sense has died. People want to pass blame for their stupidity on others and not take responsibility for their own actions.

Short rant, but there ya go.

More on the job change

2008-02-15T22:53:00.003-06:00

Well, not only now do I have a new job to do, I also have to train the replacement in my old job. Today I'm trying to check in a late delivery, my 'replacement' comes back and says "what do I do?"...his order was sitting there just waiting and looking bored, so I said "put your order away", to which he replied "I don't know where it all goes yet"...so I said "look for it. That's how you learn your department." Later on I had to help him place his second order, and try to tell him what items sell best and what doesn't. The previous order, he had help from the store manager (who has never orderd this department) so whenever I'd say "This sells, stock up" he would say "Well Kim said only to order 3"...3 is fine, but with a BOGO (buy one get one) sale, it's stupid to have an odd number in stock. So I told him that I've been in charge for the last 2 years so I think I'd know best what to order.

Job change

2008-02-15T08:27:00.003-06:00

Well, sort of a job change but not really. More of a department change. I've been moved from OTC department to Receiving Clerk. Both jobs are classified as "specialist" jobs, so it's not a demotion or cut in pay. However now instead of dealing with idiot customers, I deal with idiot vendors and drivers. Just Wednesday I had a delivery driver who tried to tell me what my job was...because he was used to 'the guy' checking him in (our previous Receiver is now the Liquor manager) and he didn't like that I was changing how he brought his stuff in the building. Several times he muttered "I'd rather deal with Bill"...Well, Bill isn't here, and if you don't like working with a female receiver, reload your truck and get your sexist pig behind back to your mudhole.

Beer at 7am?

2008-02-11T07:33:00.000-06:00

Firstly, Blogger must have read my last rant, I had no trouble signing in this morning LOL

Here's today's rant.

Do people REALLY need beer at 7:00 in the morning? I work for a store that has a liquor department. My store is in a town that has liquor selling ordinances, 7am-10pm M-Sat and 12pm-10pm on Sunday. It's amazing how many people are dancing around the liquor doors at opening time anxious to get their booze. It's 7:00 in the morning...you don't need it that early...actually, you don't need it at all. Who wants to wander around all day with your senses dulled?

Blogger

2008-02-07T21:01:00.001-06:00

Well, I haven't been able to rant lately, because every time I try to log on to Blogger, they tell me either my e-mail address or my password is wrong. I clicked the "forgot password" link...and got information for somebody else's blog! Today I get my password reset, type in the password I always use and am told that I can't use it, it's not strong enough. It doesn't matter how strong it is if Blogger will send the information to a stranger when the "forgot password" link is clicked!

Life-rant update: I quit the second job. It was too much stress for only $7.85 per hour. I'm keeping the one full time job and going to live on that paycheck for a while. The housing situation came to a grinding halt. Nobody would come down in price on the houses for sale so I'm back living with the parentals. It's temporary. I'm on the list for Habitat for Humanity, hoping to hear from them soon.

Here's a peeve of mine...when something says "free with purchase", that means that you must actually buy (as in pay for it) an item before you can have the freebie. I went shopping today for some things, and one of the items I bought came with a free pen and notebook. I went through 3 items before finding one that still had the free items attached. The object of "free with purchase" is for you to purchase, not to help yourself to the free stuff and not buy anything. Bunch of cheepos.

Stupid People

2007-12-13T19:54:00.000-06:00

Stupid people irritate me. God gave us brains yet some people seemed not to have received the user's manual.

There were reset people in at work today. Everything they did, they asked permission. I don't care where the product is placed as long as it's set to planogram or what shelves they use. They even asked me where I wanted the garbage (Duh, maybe the garbage can?).

On the drive home I get stuck behind somebody who thinks the route number is the speed limit (I was on Rt 25, thank heaven I wasn't on Rt 2). Pass that guy up and get stuck behind somebody who's in love with the brakes, used them every 2 feet!

People, wise up! Use your brain!

Deadbeat Dads

2007-12-11T17:04:00.000-06:00

Here's my personal vent...deadbeat dads. They're out there and they're making single mom lives heck.

My son's father moved out of state trying to avoid paying child support. It didn't work. What was he avoiding? $25 per week! That was the court order for 15 years. Last summer I had it increased...to $50 per week. Why so low? He won't work. First he claimed that there was no work (he moved to Wisconsin--he can make cheese for all I care), then at court he claimed he had a mental disorder and wasn't able to work due to panic attacks. Guess what he said when he was asked if he's applied for disability? "I didn't think I would qualify". Well, if you don't qualify for disability, that means you can work! The latest, he's refusing to pay because he doesn't have visitation rights anymore. When we went to court, he waived visitation because I wasn't going to allow my son to be taken out of my state after he was shown pornography at his father...errrr sperm donor's house. Now the donor and his mother are refusing any contact, even if initiated by my son (and they told my son this), and are refusing to send support. There is an income witholding order on file, so when the deadbeat does work, I get his paycheck. Right now he owes almost $5,000 in back support over 16 years.