Customer Complaints

I've worked in retail, (on and off, obviously), for around 18 months now and I have come across some fairly stupid customer complaints since I started out in the world of customer service. Some of them have been understandable, such as the unfortunate time the BP toilet exploded and leaked on to a waiting customer's foot or the time a customer complained about The Wall's ridiculous fits. At the time, I was pleased that customer complained about him, but that is the only time I remember a customer complaint being a good experience.

This afternoon was just plain stupid. I was experiencing a rare PM shift at the "berp", and I was sure it was going to be a long 8 hours. It was, but it was made slightly quicker by the insane, tedious and downright silly complaints that some people came up with. The first one came not very long into our shift, so everyone was still a bit grumpy and generally not looking forward to the same humdrum of the afternoon, when a woman came in, came to my till, and asked for a £1 discount, because the fuel had splashed her BMW after she took it out of her car. Now, really? She continued to the point where my manager had to go outside and look at the problem, (of which there wasn't), and the customer came back in, without mentioning the incident, and glared at me like an opening bowler who had delivered a vicious bouncer that the batsman had just avoided, before leaving in a huff. Why she expected me just to say, "Oh ok then, you can have a measly £1 off, because a green-coloured liquid splashed your car because you didn't let go of the trigger", I don't know. Stupid. Is it called a 'trigger' when it comes to filling up with petrol?

The 2nd incident was arguably even more comical. Just before I went on my break, at about 5.30pm, arguably the busiest time of the day, another woman came in, (noticing a pattern here?) and bought some salad noodle dish thing. I thought nothing of it, took her money and moved on to the next customer. Nothing special, let's get this over and done with. Only 5 minutes later, she strolled back in, jumped the sizeable queue entirely, to the disgruntlement of many people, and came up to my till and demanded to know why it was empty. Now. I can assure you, when she bought it, it was full to the rafters, so I can only assume she had gone back to her car, eaten the contents, and then decided that I would have not noticed that it was empty upon selling her it. How stupid do these people think we are? She stood at the till for a whole 10 minutes, while the clearly angry queue dispersed behind her, and she went through my answers and my duty manager's answers before she refused to move along until she saw the Store Manager, who had gone home, many many miles away. Clearly this was going to be a troublesome situation unless someone spoke up, so I said, I was certain that I had sold her the product in a perfectly good condition, before she stood down. But she did mention that she would be back when the Legend Alex, the store manager, was in town. Quite frankly, I am looking forward to what she comes with.

That 2nd woman does it all the time apparently. She comes in, at the busiest time of day, and tries to fool the staff into thinking they sold her something empty. She seems to think that everyone there is lacking in the lighthouse department, when really, it is her who is the one without a working brain cell. Now I know the reason why my Duty Manager ran off the tills as she saw her in the queue, leaving me, blissfully unaware, to serve her and subsequently deal with the daft consequences. The reactions of the people in the queue were fantastic, and understandable, also, with one man claiming, "Some of us have things to do aswell you know!" with another, a white van man, simply shouting, "Hurry the f*** up woman!". I would of nodded in agreement, if I wasn't dealing with a woman with a mind of a coconut and eyes that resembled Lord Voldermort.

I was pleased for 10pm to come around, despite the ridiculousness of the afternoon providing a laugh or two at the end of the shift, once the complainers had long gone. It's just incredible that some people can think they can get away with the most outrageous of lies, without us clocking on to what they are doing. The amount of paperwork to be completed after these stupid "official complaints" were made also, is mind-boggling. Such a waste of time, for people who are essentially, time wasting. It really does seem the Social Group of Official Complainers were out in full force this afternoon, and they converged on BP. When I was on shift.

Typical.

In other news, I was greeted by Sister Mitten yesterday, as she told me there were "presents waiting downstairs for me". I thought for a second, but despite the adverts and promotions starting ALREADY for Christmas, it is still a long way away and my birthday set solidly in the middle of May, I struggled to think of any reason why they had bought me "presents". Upon entering the kitchen however, I soon realised, as I saw the Beales and Wilkinsons bags sitting on the table, that these so-called "presents" were not going to be exciting. Sure enough, despite the collection of tumblers, pillowcases and tea-towels and the like, sporting interesting patterns, they were not very exciting. Useful? Yes. Exciting? Not really. The start of my university experience draws ever closer though, and I am starting to think about it daily now. Everything is happening ladies and gentlemen. Everything is happening.

I just hope I don't get landed with complainers in Halls, otherwise they might find their eyes stuck on the end of my forks, so kindly bought for me from Beales.