Great message!

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"

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!

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

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

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

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!

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.