asshole managers

I hate my customer service manager.

I hate her.

I hate how I have to do everything on her terms. I despise that she is allowed to talk to me in such a disrespectful manner, I am sick and tired of her acting like she is the star of the show, Miss Right-Out-Of-Business-School. I hate the cabal she and my other supervisors have formed and I wish J would come back.

I miss him.

There’s something about female managers. I am not a threat to this woman; I don’t have the degree to be a threat, and my honest feelings about being promoted is DO NOT WANT. Yet I am treated like I am worth less than nothing, my time is abused, my concerns dismissed.

The last time I worked with her she interrupted my work by double-teaming me with another supervisor, to have me do something I could easily have done after I closed. They both walked off when I got done, tired and needing to use the bathroom, and forgot that I needed a break.

She is a menace, at best disrespectful and at worst actively aggressive and verbally abusive.

I like that summary a lot; I will enjoy using it when I go to HR to report her.

I wish people would leave their politics at home

We have a new supervisor for areas of customer service. She seems really nice and friendly, but the other day, she pops up with the following statement:

“I don’t think women should be in a position of power like the president. Women shouldn’t be in places of power, it says so in the Bible.”

She says this right before she runs off to help another co-worker as their supervisor.

I hate when people bring up religion and politics at work. I don’t need to know I’m working with a bunch of religious wackos who can’t even see their own hypocrisy. These things make it hard for me to take them seriously. Since I’ve been working in customer service, I’ve met so many customers that will preach at and condemn other co-workers and myself, who will make me ring up $800 worth of merchandise and then tell me since our store takes Christ out of Christmas¹ they refuse to pay and walk out, leaving other team members to put all the items up—I can deal with their stupidity, but it’s hard to deal with it in other coworkers, because I’ve spent so longer surrounding myself with anything but people who understand logic and reason and who are religious but realize there are limitations to that religion that don’t apply to our secular world.

We had a new girl and she was wearing a pentagram on her necklace. A guest cursed her out and told her she was going to hell, screamed at her, caused every eye in the lines to turn to him. These the the kinds of Christians I see, day in and day out. That was actually the last day I saw her, since I don’t cashier as much anymore. I don’t even know if she still works with us.

If I wasn’t an atheist before, this job would have sealed the deal for sure.

¹ Which, hilariously enough, we don’t—the majority of our holiday decorations pander to the we’re-Christians-and-the-only-religion-that-matters crowd.

no one thinks of the girl behind the popcorn

What’s the shittiest thing to happen at the snack bar, in my experience?

Running out of popcorn oil.

On a week when your supervisor forgot to order more.

This means I have to drag the can out from under the machine, pop the lid, scoop dregs of oil from the very very very bottom of the can into a tiny cup, then dump it and popcorn into the kettle.

When our normal operation for making popcorn is “press the oil button and dump the kernels in” this adds up to a lot of oil on the floor, on me, and precious seconds I could have been catching up on my dishes, lost.

An extra helping of fail if it happens on a weekend or a holiday (which it did), and customers feel the need to complain about the speed. As everyone knows, if you don’t get your popcorn IMMEDIATELY it’s the end of the fucking world. Awesome!

no, we are not psychic

When you walk up to the snack bar and say, “I want the popcorn thing.”, here is a clue: WE CANNOT READ YOUR MIND.

Do you want large popcorn? Small? Do you want a small popcorn and a medium drink? Or maybe a small popcorn and a medium ICEE since you’re dragging along your screaming spawn and talking so low I can’t understand you over their wails? And when I ask you to clarify, the proper response is probably not, “I guess. Whatever.”

This is the point I’m going to charge you for a large popcorn and a large drink and then you give the small popcorn and medium drink out of complete spite. Please look at our menu, or just ask us what the options are. Don’t expect us to guess. I have to read my supervisor’s mind; I have no room for yours.

Also, dear thieves,
When you buy a combo meal and pay for the fountain drink and I give you the lid for the fountain drink, do not put it back and then take the ICEE lid.

This is called stealing, and it doesn’t matter that it’s only 20 to 30 cents difference. It is still stealing.

No love,
Your Annoyed Snack Bar Cashier

customers suck at lying

Here’s a line I hate: “I don’t mean to be rude, but…”

A book I read once called “but” BEHOLD THE UNDERLYING TRUTH. And boy, do the truths come spilling out whenever a customer feels they’ve been the slightest bit wronged.

The scene: snack bar, afternoon rush. There’s three of us behind the counter taking and filling orders, and lines are long everywhere. I’m helping with what I can as I’m taking orders at the first register, trying to whittle the line down so everyone else can fill orders. I have too much going on in the first place, trying to remember how many combos the lady I just finished checking out had, plus a fresh order for a pizza. It’s a bad place to be, and I let one of my co-workers know about the combos, and before I can even see the next guest two teenage girls rush the counter and interupt my train of thought.

They want to know about drinks; I tell them about drinks, I sell them cups, they leave. Then I see the annoyed face of a customer that had clearly been there for awhile.

“Shit,” I think. “He’s going to—”

Like clockwork, he pulls out the I WAS WRONGED AND CHEATED card. “I don’t want to be rude,” he says, “but how are you going to wait on them first and skip me?”

I was in the wrong, of course, and apologized. Jesus H., though. Customers don’t have to act like they’ve been shunned. Yes, asshole customer—you did mean to be rude otherwise you would have gone, “wow, they’re really busy and those girls totally cut in line and distracted a very frazzled looking snack bar cashier” and would’ve realized it was probably not intentional. But instead, you took the negative route, because it’s much easier to assume that the snack bar employees are out to stiff you time wise than assume it was an honest mistake. Don’t be dishonest; you wanted to make me feel like shit for cutting you off by the 30 seconds it took for me take their money and give them two cups. That’s what 30 extra seconds of your time is worth; 15 minutes of me feeling like shit.

So congratulations! I hope your hot dog tasted extra delicious to make up for what a horrible cashier I was for you.

Retail makes people assholes.

I am convinced when people walk through our doors, they become raging bitchholes intent on making every possible worker as miserable as possible.