Food Service/Retail Woes

[Pirian]

Oh, I went to the Chinese place the other day to get my lunch special, and the girl who took my order was cute as fuck. No complaints with this establishment

I always wondered what my odds would be of picking up the hot Asian girls that works at those stores. Most of those small ones are just owned by a single family (not actually owned by them, just operated, but I digress), so it's most often the daughter on the register, ma and pa cooking. They never speak English very well, but always enough to have that cuteness to it.

Yellow fever up in bitch.


Also, I thought stores HAD to sell at advertised price? I had a friend get some Sony multimedia player or something (seriously, no fucking clue) for like 50 or 60 bucks when it was suppose to be like 120 or something, because the price was wrong.

[Xantavia]

This sums up what its like to work retail the last few years.

[Shakki]

Probably too late to matter but if you are a full time employee (I think it's 37.5 hours a week or more?) you are required by law to get time and a half for working the 4'th, memorial day, thanksgiving, christmas and one more (I think labor day???)

It'd be quite easy to sue the hell out of them if they didn't and refused.

Unfortunately, I only work about 30-32 hours in an average week. I do get Thanksgiving as a paid holiday, but that's it. There are other people working here who definitely qualify as full time (mostly cooks), but I have no idea if they get holiday pay.

There are other laws that are being broken, I'm sure, and we're not even following the rules set by the company itself. For instance, the law is very clear how many breaks you're supposed to get depending on how long you work. According to company policy, we're supposed to get paid for an extra hour of work every time we miss a 10 minute break...lol, yeah right. I miss mine on probably half my shifts.

I don't know if there's any actual action I can take here...I'm just one person, and as all of my coworkers are poor and desperate and some of them are illegals, it's pretty hard to get any of them to speak up and complain, too.

[Pirian]

Call the BBB

[Ace-o-fire]

I really don't know if its true or not but our systems can somehow track if a price is modified beyond its actual sale price to catch "special hookups". Paranoia ensues at our store because of that.

most PoS systems are loaded with a key tracker software to track *abnormal* key strokes, along with that i know most major companies will also save a digital file to the server of all sales just for reference for possible returns/legal shit.

Most stores when they notice stuff like that will get a report from central offices to the store manger who will then question it or look for offenders. 9 out of 10 times they will just fire that person or stop scheduling them. Dicks sporting good catches people all the time long with Pet Smart, Target, Abercrombie & Fitch and PacSun. The worst of all the "mall stores" is Zumiez. They will send at least 3-4 kids a year for simple things my friend says, mostly for 1-5 dollar mark offs.

[Shakki]

Call the BBB

I'm pretty cynical. Would anything actually come of this?

[Pirian]

If they're violating laws, then definitely.

[Furionstormrage]

So I work for AutoZone right now (Finishing another degree, last "real" job went under due to blahblahrecessionetc). I do Inventory Management and Loss Prevention, which puts me in stores for 90% of my workload. Never in my life have I been so baffled by both employees and customers. (and I worked in a grocery store and at CompUSA in high school).

It's an interesting dichotomy, you have people who have no idea how to work on cars but insist on doing so because they can't afford to have a mechanic do it, being told by people who don't know how to work on cars (and are just making minimum wage while they get through school or lament on their poor life choices), how to fix the aforementioned cars.

I could probably type out an entire essay on the subject, but I'll just mention a few of the more "wtf" moments I've overheard.

- Customer brought in an old rusty fuel pump, obviously just trying to scam a few dollars. When told he couldn't return it because he didn't buy it, he said "That's not very Christian of you, Jesus would help me".

- Two customers (both men) got into a fist fight because one of them wanted help putting on his wiper blades. The other man said "What kind of man can't put on fucking wiper blades?", and they started duking it out.

- Guy wants 2 new batteries for his Diesel truck (he had bought ones from us recently). Employee tested the car, the man had a bad alternator, nothing wrong with the batteries. The customer got loud and angry, employee gave him new batteries. I told the customer his alternator was going to die within a week and he cussed me out for "not knowing what the hell I was talking about". Three days later he was in another store (I work at 9 different ones) buying, you guessed it, an alternator. I just smiled at him as I walked by.

- Guy walks in and heads to the tool aisle. He walks back out toward the door, and the 3ft long breaker bar he had stolen fell out of his jacket and hit the ground with a loud "bang". He turned, looked at me, and said "I better run huh". I responded "that would be a good idea" and off he went, leaving the tool on the ground.

I've got a million more, all true I assure you, if anyone cares. I've also got some good grocery store/CompUSA stories, along with your typical griping about idiot retail employees. (Though I try to be very forgiving, having been on the other side).

[Ghost_Wheel22]

I'm pretty cynical. Would anything actually come of this?

Start a paper trail of shit, take it to your state ombudsman agency. You'll have the state and federal's foot so far up your manager's and Del Taco's ass they'll have to open their mouths to tie their shoelaces. Plus can you push for lost comp and get a settlement pretty easily.

[Furionstormrage]

I don't know if there's any actual action I can take here...I'm just one person, and as all of my coworkers are poor and desperate and some of them are illegals, it's pretty hard to get any of them to speak up and complain, too.

I know how you feel. As much as I want to tell you to speak up about the situation, I know that plenty of companies (including the one that I work for) will just stop scheduling anyone who calls attention to HR regarding a breach in labor laws or anything similar.

If you happen to work for a decent company, or don't value your job, by all means go for it. I just wanted to give you the warning, since I've seen it happen. (And strongly disagree with it, but I can't say anything, I need to get paid)

[Meyor]

For Christmas a few years ago I my stepmom got me a kitchen aid mixer, it was a door buster really low end model at Kohls. She got me a black one, and all the appliances in the house were stainless steel look so a week or so after Christmas I went in and tried to exchange it, they didn't have any of that model in silver, so I returned it and got a gift card for it, and they said they would call me when a new shipment came in. Week later I get a call, go in, store General Manager handles me, says he doesn't have any silver ones in that model, but wait, here is a silver one, high end model, worth almost 300$ more, with attachments. I look at him for a few seconds... then we walk up to the counter and he rings it up himself and walked me out of the store. I was shocked.

And as for nightmares, fuck, I worked for Taco Johns, both as a General Manager and a trainer at the corporate office, and god, people are fat, stupid, lazy, and stupid. Customers and employees. And karma is the biggest factor in fast food, if you are a fucking bitch, you are going to get your order wrong, and be an even bigger bitch when you call back to complain. 99% of customers are just cool, normal people, but god, the 1% that make you hate your life are always the ones that get their orders messed up, and not on purpose, it is just karma.

[Celeste]

Fuck off haters, I work at bed bath and beyond and our bosses slave drive us. Also no matter how nice we are to customers most of you are cocksuckers who leave shit EVERYWHERE. And by shit, I do mean shit, there was a fucking full diaper in the parking lot last week.

/comfort

[Salodin]

I really don't know if its true or not but our systems can somehow track if a price is modified beyond its actual sale price to catch "special hookups". Paranoia ensues at our store because of that.

Yeah they track me too, but they don't care about a few bucks here and there, that's stupid. The company knows keeping the customer is worth losing a few bucks once in awhile, that's probably why I'm not super stressed at my retail job compared to just about any one else in this thread. Of course that does make me spoiled, so now if I go into other store I expect the same level of service, and I never really get it.

Don't get me wrong, the job still has it's moments, but most of them come from silly things like not scheduling enough/hiring enough people. I'm full time so I get like 6 holidays a year, and I get 10 vacation days a year (with an extra 5 days every 5 years I think it is), also 3 paid sick days. Not the best, but for a more mentally taxing then physically taxing retail job it's a good deal.

[Silenka]

Diapers in the parking lot are kiddy stuff. I worked at JCpenney in the home/housewares department for a few years. We had display beds and mothers who needed to change their babies would proceed to change them ON THE DISPLAY BEDS next to me. I didn't even know what to say to them - "please stop changing your baby"? "The display beds are not for your kid's ass"? "There is a restroom downstairs, please try not to spill shit all over the floor on your way down"?

Another one of my favorites was a Mexican lady who pretended she couldn't speak English in hopes I would get confused and just give her the sale price she was obviously trying to get (the sale had not started yet and she switched the sign herself, in JCPenney stores often future sale signs will be placed behind the current ones. Usually, if it was a past sale sign still up we'd have to give them that price, but in the case of a sale sign that was never supposed to be up in the first place, no dice, wily bitch). Later on I heard her talking perfect english with someone else. Going that far to get 2 bucks off a rug...idk.

We also had a large Arabic community, and they would often train their small children to take the pink/green clearance stickers off clothes in the children's clearance and stick them on regular sale items' tags. Thanks to the fact that there are roughly 1 billion different designs of tiny four year old shirts on active sale at a time, it was nearly impossible to tell what was supposed to be on sale and what was actually clearance unless you were really good at remembering detail.

As far as places to work go, JCPenney wasn't one of the worst. But customers can be so fucking stupid sometimes, it boggles the mind. Little stuff like asking "where are the towels?" when the ENTIRE WALL behind me is lined with them, looming like an Egyptian cotton monolith, impossible not to see. Also bigger stuff, like meth addicts coming in with large merch (kitchenaid mixers) and no receipt claiming they 'got three from an aunt for their wedding because she thought they'd need more than one' and that they were returning two. I'm pretty sure a fucking five year old could come up with a more plausible story. Then again, some of the stealing wasn't so obvious, and I got the wool pulled over my eyes a couple times and felt terrible when I let someone get away with returning something they hadn't actually paid for in the first place. The 'customer is always right' mentality can brainwash employees as well as customers when employees are told not to hassle them in any way and give them what they want even if it's slightly unreasonable sometimes.

There are so many outrageous things that go on in the service industry. Honestly, as far as food service goes, it would be better off for everyone if it was done by robots. However, America needs all the jobs it can get, even though they are downright miserable, thankless jobs. It's a pretty piss-poor situation. I was lucky to find a job at a department store, even though retail is also like being forced to lick Satan's balls every day. I left that job to go back to school and I will never work customer service again if I can help it. But my stint as a sales clerk really opened my eyes to what it's like to be treated like shit and blamed for things that aren't your fault by customers, and I feel like it's made me a much better and more forgiving customer and taught me the bigger picture of the flow of consumerism.

[Shakki]

I know how you feel. As much as I want to tell you to speak up about the situation, I know that plenty of companies (including the one that I work for) will just stop scheduling anyone who calls attention to HR regarding a breach in labor laws or anything similar.

If you happen to work for a decent company, or don't value your job, by all means go for it. I just wanted to give you the warning, since I've seen it happen. (And strongly disagree with it, but I can't say anything, I need to get paid)

That's my concern. My manager already does this for people she doesn't like--she cuts them down to 2 hours a week until they quit because she doesn't want them to be able to get unemployment. If I report it and anything comes of it, I'm pretty sure my manager will know it was me. I'm literally the only person at my store with a college education, and most of them can't speak English well enough to file a proper complaint, so...

However, in a few weeks I might be in a better position (i.e. won't have to care about keeping this shitty job), so maybe I'll just prepare everything for then.

[solanis]

This sums up what its like to work retail the last few years.

lol that's at rice to riches, a rice pudding shop in nyc near my old apartment

www.ricetoriches.com/

[MaachaQ]

My policy was if a customer said that something was cheaper than it was then I ALWAYS gave it to them for that price. At the beginning I always called my manager and asked, but after a while I realized how little $1-5 means to the company/my managers... Like I give a shit if someone saves $2. Seriously. I would've just given it to her for 8 bucks.

I worked retail for a long time, and without manager approval we weren't allowed to adjust the price of anything by $2 or more (I think? might have bee $5), even with a coupon. A Manager had to come and approve the price change by putting their key in the register and punching in their personal PIN number. Also, if the price was enough of a difference, we checked in the computer how much the item cost us, if it was marked below our cost (like a $199 TV marked $99 but it cost us $150), then we are only legally required to sell the item at cost. I worked at a Meijer in Michigan, which had a law that said every item has to be pricemarked, even little crap like Chapstick (that law was being fought last I knew, so might no longer be valid). If the stocking crew made mistakes when they were marking the thousands of things they had to stock every night, or if a price was changed in the computer and the price change team hadn't gotten to re-tagging all the products yet, it caused all kinds of headaches for the cashiers and daytime service people.

I also worked at McDonald's for a few years in Highschool, but I don't really have many bad memories from that. We were in a relatively small town so even the busy times weren't too bad for being able to keep up with special orders. I worked pretty much every job in the place at some point, grill, cashier, drive-thru, but never had interest in becoming a manager because I saw what kind of crap they had to deal with even in a pretty good store like ours ^^; McDonald's here in Korea stopped giving free refills on drinks a few years ago, so we stopped going there. We now go to either Burger King or Lotteria if we want fast food (we have 2 young kids, they're the only reason we go to fast food places at all >.>). Drink refills literally cost pennies, to not give them is just insulting...

[MaachaQ]

Net hiccuped, double post >.>

Lots of great horror stories here: http://notalwaysright.com/

[Maaglin]

If you don't inspect every single thing in the bag before leaving the window, you deserve what you get.

Fuck you fags who do this. Pull the fuck up and check it so you don't hold up the line.

[miokomioko]

Remember, if you don't do someone else's job for them, you deserve shitty service. Wait, what?