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Oh yes the clienetle are not exactly the best.

Mess, stolen dvds, clothes all over the place and such. A literal bin bag of house hold rubbish... Box of used Ann summers prodcts . Why. Just why! Staff where great I admit, and met a very good friend there just some days. Like fact I just was in a car crash bad knee, oh, can I move heavy boxes.... Like hmmm if you want your entire cargo of stuff to send off broken...

Ok there was the x box one fully factory sealed once, damn! Itbwas when first out too....

Several cheap 40k sets I got for next to nothing.
Ideal for my tight budget wargamming!

 jhe90 wrote:
2.5 year retail veteran. I've seen some gak.

Oh and messing up the wall I spent 3 hopurs sorting the momment I walk away from it.... Grrrrrrrrrr...

I
Oh and people stealing 99p DVDs....

Charity shop retail!
Why does any retail involve bodily fluids stories? Seriously? Do people not think workers are human?

Not in America.

We had regular customers we called emotional vampires or joy vampires who would just come in and bitch at the sales staff for as long as they could. They weren't scamming for a better deal. They weren't angry about something reasonable. They just wanted to shout at people who had to stand there and take it.

I remember one lady insulting the barista because her cookie was too cold, and then shouting at the barista when the cookie was warm.

Things that just come back to you... I used to work in a store that was physically half of an entire street. Something like four stories high, and six buildings wide. Ancient, freezing, and weird Narnia-esque corridors where you'd change floor without realising you'd walked up a ramp, such was the length of the building.

I was in the attic collecting a box of stock, and the manager just stops me, "Don't walk that way, go back around the way you came."
"Oh, sure. Why?" I assumed there'd been a roof leak.
"You'd die, this floor stops just around the corner."
So I put down the box, grip the shelving and slowly walk and peer around, and sure enough, there's an entirely unmarked drop to the basement.
There's probably still a superman style hand print in the shelf, and I don't think I unclenched for a week.

"WHY"
"We had a lift but it broke."

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Things that just come back to you... I used to work in a store that was physically half of an entire street. Something like four stories high, and six buildings wide. Ancient, freezing, and weird Narnia-esque corridors where you'd change floor without realising you'd walked up a ramp, such was the length of the building.

I was in the attic collecting a box of stock, and the manager just stops me, "Don't walk that way, go back around the way you came."
"Oh, sure. Why?" I assumed there'd been a roof leak.
"You'd die, this floor stops just around the corner."
So I put down the box, grip the shelving and slowly walk and peer around, and sure enough, there's an entirely unmarked drop to the basement.
There's probably still a superman style hand print in the shelf, and I don't think I unclenched for a week.

"WHY"
"We had a lift but it broke."

Dammnit butters stop it

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Things that just come back to you... I used to work in a store that was physically half of an entire street. Something like four stories high, and six buildings wide. Ancient, freezing, and weird Narnia-esque corridors where you'd change floor without realising you'd walked up a ramp, such was the length of the building.

I was in the attic collecting a box of stock, and the manager just stops me, "Don't walk that way, go back around the way you came."
"Oh, sure. Why?" I assumed there'd been a roof leak.
"You'd die, this floor stops just around the corner."
So I put down the box, grip the shelving and slowly walk and peer around, and sure enough, there's an entirely unmarked drop to the basement.
There's probably still a superman style hand print in the shelf, and I don't think I unclenched for a week.

"WHY"
"We had a lift but it broke."

Gotta be either Debenhams or Harrods..

Or BHS.

We had access to the roof in my old store. In the roof there was a fifty by fifty foot hole that went straight to the ground. No access to it from anywhere else, if you fell down youd die.

it was not a chain store. I'd have reported the gak out of it if it were.

A few months after I left, the owner's son came to collect him, couldn't get a reply and found him dead in his office. It breaks my heart that it happened that way.
The guy was awesome, even though I was just shop floor staff, he would find my parents and check that my hours weren't stopping me from doing well at school.


...Do I need to post another kitten

No one ever died at my store, so far as I know, but we did have a cashier who missed shifts twice because she was in the ER for coke-related heart problems and once because she was in jail. She was the best damn cashier, too.

Someone did get a gushing head wound once, and left a trail of blood from the store to his car. He refused to wait for an ambulance or to be treated, and mall security couldn't stop him from staggering to his car and dazedly driving away.

Working in retail, albeit at a high street payday loan company, threats of violence and death were daily occurrences.

Customers have thrown cups, plates, vases, shoes and a myriad of other random things at me.

Its safe to say that i stand out in a crowd due to my height and stuff, so I've been spotted by customers out in town and had to fend off their aggression on several occasions.

When it comes to money, people are ultra passionate. Even more so when they're being ripped off by payday loans and are then hounded by the providers when they cant afford to pay them back.

Payday loans are depressingly bad and are a stain on any society they appear in. The only people who benefit are the providers themselves.

One of the sadder stories that always come to mind when thinking of my days there was when we had a couple of bobbies come into store saying they had found a guy dead in his flat/bedsit. The guy in question had been one of customers. He went 'past due' (didn't pay back on time), so we hounded him as per the company policy. When his body had been found, our calls chasing him were the last he had received. I cant help thinking that the stress we were putting him through exasperated his health issues. I remember him saying on one of the calls that he had health issues, but being the cynic i was at the time, we dismissed this and hounded him further anyway.

The police couldn't find any next of kin details for the dead guy so they had to ask us to provide what we had on file.

That being said, we had some genuinely lovely customers too.

Long story short, everything that goes on in a payday loan store is a horror story.

My grandfather told me this story a long time ago, it happened sometime in the 70s in Communist occupied Poland, I dont remember exactly what he was doing there but it was some sort of work related thing on a train.

Anyway, there were a bunch of people there, including a German couple and a Polish Holocaust survivor with PTSD.
Sometime during the train ride the German man started giving abuse, shouting at other passengers in mostly German and being a dick to everyone in general, this went on for a while but the Polish guy lost his nerve, walked up to the German guy, dragged him to an exit and threw him out a moving train, killing him.

Sadly because Communism and because PTSD wasn't really that recognised back then he got something like 20 years in jail and died a few years in.

That's sincerely fething heartbreaking.

 Daemonhammer wrote:
My grandfather told me this story a long time ago, it happened sometime in the 70s in Communist occupied Poland, I dont remember exactly what he was doing there but it was some sort of work related thing on a train.

Anyway, there were a bunch of people there, including a German couple and a Polish Holocaust survivor with PTSD.
Sometime during the train ride the German man started giving abuse, shouting at other passengers in mostly German and being a dick to everyone in general, this went on for a while but the Polish guy lost his nerve, walked up to the German guy, dragged him to an exit and threw him out a moving train, killing him.

Sadly because Communism and because PTSD wasn't really that recognised back then he got something like 20 years in jail and died a few years in.

Moral of the story, don't insult Poles when you are on a Polish train.

 Frazzled wrote:
Moral of the story, don't insult Poles when you are on a Polish train.

Dont insult us at all or we will behead you


Automatically Appended Next Post:

That's sincerely fething heartbreaking.

Yeah Eastern Europe is pretty depressing to live in sometimes.

 Daemonhammer wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Moral of the story, don't insult Poles when you are on a Polish train.

Dont insult us at all or we will behead you


Automatically Appended Next Post:

That's sincerely fething heartbreaking.

Yeah Eastern Europe is pretty depressing to live in sometimes.

Imagine Polish retail...

 Frazzled wrote:
Imagine Polish retail...

Well since communism collapsed we actually have food on shelves in shops now, so thats pretty cool

Seriously though, rarely anything serious ever happens in retail shops in Poland, its usually pretty calm. Especially compared to some of the stuff im reading here.

I have retail horror stories that are less about the customers and more about the employees.

Such gems would include getting thrown from a moving vehicle because someone thought it would be fun to go off-roading in a vehicle with a MILK CRATE as a passenger seat.

One of the employees spraying another employee with gasoline and setting them on fire for fun.

Discovering one of the employees has gone missing for most of the day and searching for him for a few hours only to discover he was accidentally shrink-wrapped inside a boat.

The employee who spent 10 years in federal prison threatening to use various engine lubes and greases for not their intended purposes on/with other employees.

The employee who was careless and damaged a customer's boat and refused to pay for it who later found the boss's bulldozer parked on top of his car.

A bulldozer owner is ALWAYS right.

So, some about my time at the water park.
So I was working the Dippin dot hut/Icee stand. We sell dippen dots and suvenir icee cups. the cheapest cup is 10$. One day, the whole park is out of dippin dots(They sent us expired ones) so im selling ice cream sandwiches/pops. A Father comes up demanding to know why we are not selling dippin dots. I explained to him what happened. He then asked to see the 10$ cup. two of them. I set them down, he says "Thanks" and walks off with them. me and my supervisor look at eachother dumpfound.
My supervisor likes me though and sends me off with an ENTIRE box of dippin dots for home. The guy then sees me and throws a fit saying im stealing from the park. I tell security that he is harassing me. Him and his family is thrown out.
One time I found a little girl looking scared and crying. I said "Lets go find security and they will help you" She runs off and im not gonna chase a girl in the park. So I tell HR who is roaming that park where she went.Than an hour later the mom comes by my hut, apologizes, says her daughter was scared of me cause I look like a stranger and then laughs and puts a 20$ bill in my pocket and says thank your.
Then there was a time a massive fight broke out between a 20 strong black family and a 30 strong Asian family over chairs. There was so much blood in the pool.
Then the company picnic happened where a guy got drunk and tried to lure 14 year old girls to his cabana. Where his boss was.
Then there was a time when the cabanas hosted a Rap party and man did that not end well. Customers where mad, the partiers where angry. Another fight broke out.
The best had to be the concert where some no name artist came and visited the park. He was only played for 30 minutes, he was supposed to for an hour. Why? he got frusterated no one knew the lyrics to his song.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 adzila wrote:
Working in retail, albeit at a high street payday loan company, threats of violence and death were daily occurrences.

Customers have thrown cups, plates, vases, shoes and a myriad of other random things at me.

Its safe to say that i stand out in a crowd due to my height and stuff, so I've been spotted by customers out in town and had to fend off their aggression on several occasions.

When it comes to money, people are ultra passionate. Even more so when they're being ripped off by payday loans and are then hounded by the providers when they cant afford to pay them back.

Payday loans are depressingly bad and are a stain on any society they appear in. The only people who benefit are the providers themselves.

One of the sadder stories that always come to mind when thinking of my days there was when we had a couple of bobbies come into store saying they had found a guy dead in his flat/bedsit. The guy in question had been one of customers. He went 'past due' (didn't pay back on time), so we hounded him as per the company policy. When his body had been found, our calls chasing him were the last he had received. I cant help thinking that the stress we were putting him through exasperated his health issues. I remember him saying on one of the calls that he had health issues, but being the cynic i was at the time, we dismissed this and hounded him further anyway.

The police couldn't find any next of kin details for the dead guy so they had to ask us to provide what we had on file.

That being said, we had some genuinely lovely customers too.

Long story short, everything that goes on in a payday loan store is a horror story.

So what your saying is if I want to make money, I should open a pay day loan place?
I should add that to my Idea of business ventures, tha also include buying an hotel in Santa cruz, renovating it, than selling rooms to desperate students for 1000$ a month.

Ok we had one lad who would work the twilight shift putting stock out and he would pillage the office areas for sweets each night. Me and another manager got fed up with the moaning from the office girls so we went to the local chemist and got the biggest bar of x-lax chocolate we could find re wrapped it in dairy milk wrapper and left it in a draw ....now one chunk of this stuff was enough to keep you super regular for 48hrs he eat 32 chunks in one go .... rang in sick for the next 5 days with explosive diarrhea this ment he was over his allowed sick days so i sacked him :\ lol

 CURNOW wrote:
Ok we had one lad who would work the twilight shift putting stock out and he would pillage the office areas for sweets each night. Me and another manager got fed up with the moaning from the office girls so we went to the local chemist and got the biggest bar of x-lax chocolate we could find re wrapped it in dairy milk wrapper and left it in a draw ....now one chunk of this stuff was enough to keep you super regular for 48hrs he eat 32 chunks in one go .... rang in sick for the next 5 days with explosive diarrhea this ment he was over his allowed sick days so i sacked him :\ lol

Now that is a "Low" blow!

You do realize that could kill someone? causing them to become super dehydrated?

Food service is pretty much one long horror story. It's where you learn that some bad customers get a fried dishrag. Or a steak that's been seasoned in the pants as well as the floor. And sometimes they tip change on a table of twenty plus. Or get irate demand to know why you don't serve a given item on the menu.
Then there is fast food where once you deal with a fryer and grease trap, you pretty much know you're in hell.

I once ran a store where the toilet was clearly marked "NO PAPER TOWELS IN TOILET- TOILET PAPER ONLY!" and toilet paper was provided. And it wasn't even the cruddy waxy scratchy stuff- it was legit soft toilet paper that we bought to try to make it a nicer place. This was a small game store in a somewhat older shopping center, so there was only the single toilet bathroom that everyone had to use.

Needless to say, on more than one occasion, someone did flush towels. And on a particularly pleasant occasion, the next person took a huge, nasty, crap. When that didn't flush, the next person apparently, despite seeing a bowl full of crap and about to overflow, happily peed and then flushed. So finally a customer comes up and is like up, your bathroom smells really bad. I thought this odd as we regularly cleaned it (I wiped up so much pee....). So I go back there to find a gurgling fountain of urine, feces, and toilet water happily flooding all over the bathroom. That was a fun afternoon of cleaning...

At the same store I also made the terrible mistake of asking a larger gentleman in cargo shorts and his girlfriend if I could help them. Everything went well until I responded with a polite yes sir to a question, at which point he made a scowl, and her eyebrows raised. Turns out, despite the slight facial hair, it was 2 she's. I quickly apologized and corrected myself, and they didn't make a big deal, but there were quite brusk after that and I felt pretty terrible.

Payment was also sometimes interesting. The saddest was probably a scrawny kinda nerdy kid who hung out with a more outspoken kid and they both loved Magic. Now we had a community land card box as well as a big commons box where people would donate all the zillions of commons from drafts and events. They were free (within reason) and were great for the younger kids to build janky decks with and learn the game. Especially those who obviously didn't have much money like these two. So this kid loved angels and I felt bad since both these guys seemed to have pretty absentee parents and seemed like good kids, so had tossed him a couple of angel cards and given a few rares to his buddy from my personal collection.

One day the kid comes in and says he saved up a bunch of money and proceeds to pull out a bunch of quarter rolls to buy packs. Maybe $50 in quarters. Impressed, I cut him a discount and wish him luck on his pulls.

The next day, an old lady comes in and asks if a kid had bought some cards with a bunch of quarters. I tell her that had happened. She leaves and hauls the kid in and makes him tell me what he had done. Apparently, he had stolen part of his grandfather's collection of quarters, rolled them up and brought them in. He sheepishly admitted it but wouldn't look at me the whole time. To make matters worse, apparently his grandfather was disabled so didn't even realize what was going on until grandmother figured it out. She didn't ask for a refund, just asked if she could exchange $50 for the quarters. Problem was that we had just done a bank drop the previous day, so I didn't even have them. I pulled $50 and offered it back to her, but she refused. I told her we didn't need the cards back and were more than happy to refund her, but she insisted that the kid was going to pay it back and thanked me and left. Needless to say, never saw the kid up at the store again.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
You do realize that could kill someone? causing them to become super dehydrated?

Thats what you get for eating the lady birds' chocolate.

 CURNOW wrote:
Ok we had one lad who would work the twilight shift putting stock out and he would pillage the office areas for sweets each night. Me and another manager got fed up with the moaning from the office girls so we went to the local chemist and got the biggest bar of x-lax chocolate we could find re wrapped it in dairy milk wrapper and left it in a draw ....now one chunk of this stuff was enough to keep you super regular for 48hrs he eat 32 chunks in one go .... rang in sick for the next 5 days with explosive diarrhea this ment he was over his allowed sick days so i sacked him :\ lol

Though funny, thats messed up yo. sacking him from a prank? seems overboard

That laxative story made me cringe. I remember the last time I had explosive diarrhoea. I missed the toilet...

yeah, If I knew about that, I ould be lawyering up. While stealing candy isnt exactly nice, I dont think thats kinda not really a fireable offense IMO.

Honestly the canning is the only thing that bothers me.

the rest is flippin gold.

dont steal candy

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So what your saying is if I want to make money, I should open a pay day loan place?

I should add that to my Idea of business ventures, tha also include buying an hotel in Santa cruz, renovating it, than selling rooms to desperate students for 1000$ a month.

Yes. Although you should really be a "full service" short term lender: Car Title Loans, Mortgage Loans, Payday Loans, Cash for Gold - the works, all under 1 roof. Vertically integrate into Repo / Towing as well, then Bail Bonds.

Sure, it is super predatory, but you are guaranteed to make money for the rest of your life. Fortunately, you will have enough money to buy whatever mirror it takes to make you feel good about the people's lives you will destroy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
You do realize that could kill someone? causing them to become super dehydrated?

And?

I fething hate food stealers.

That is total BS. If I were in a big office, I'd be making literal gak sandwiches from clearance meats and leaving them in the fridge with a "WARNING!! DO NOT TAKE, DO NOT EAT!" label on them. Steal my food, I really don't care if you get E.Coli or salmonella.

That is total BS. If I were in a big office, I'd be making literal gak sandwiches from clearance meats and leaving them in the fridge with a "WARNING!! DO NOT TAKE, DO NOT EAT!" label on them. Steal my food, I really don't care if you get E.Coli or salmonella.

***Interesting how closely that matches the definition of involuntary manslaughter and potentially voluntary manslaughter. :( Don't mess with JHD's peanut butter and jelly! I prefer the tried and true "fork in the arm" technique myself.