Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The Luck of the Draw

I hope no one has tired of hearing my tales from that ever so gentle work environment of mine because I have another.  

I woke up and could tell the day had an ominous black cloud hovering over it.  On Labor Day I was working in the customer service department.  This was supposed to be good news, as I would not have to deal with nearly as many customers waiting in line to buy merchandise.

I woke up with a feeling of great dismay, as I knew that even though I was working in the customer service department it would still be busy and I would be dealing with grouchy customers. 

The night before there had been a torrential downpour that had found its way through my car window.  I arrived at work with a cold wet, butt.  Not happy.  I pulled into a spot, noticing all of the people in line, turned off the car, and got out.  As soon as I got out there was this man... lets call him moped man who was blocking the way to get into the building.  I decided to do something out of my nature and I smiled and said, "Hello."  He just looked at me and said, "You can't park there.  Park across the street."  I got back into my soaking wet car and drove across the street.  The parking lot there was full though so I decided to parallel-park on the street... not my best talent but I managed.  

As I got out of the car I saw a monstrous puddle going the entire width of the street.  I had no choice, I had to try and jump across.  You can only guess what happened.  Yes, I misjudged my vertical leap abilities and landed right in the middle of the puddle.  I had a nice shiny shoe full of muddy puddle water.  

I walked into the store, fuming, and told one of my supervisors about it... he laughed.  I guess my anguish is funny.  The rest of the day was fine until my very last service call.  

I answer a call and there is a woman on the phone who tells me she has a gift card from R.C. Willey that she was unable to use and was wondering when it would be activated.  I did a gift card search on her account and came up with no active gift cards.  I then looked in the open orders screen and found a gift card attached to her open order.  It said that it was voided so I inquired a little further.  It turns out she had already been issued another gift card for that same order for more money.  As you can guess, you are only supposed to be issued one gift card per order and I explained this to the lady.  Then I told her that the gift card that had been issued to her had already been used towards fabric protection on the order she received the gift card for.  She then got huffy and said, "Who authorized that to be put on a gift card."  I told her that it was her sales associate who put it towards her order.  Then her husband gets on the phone and I tell him the whole story and he says, "I want to talk to someone who's competent... Get me to my sales associate!"  Then he proceeded to swear rather loudly in my ear.  I said, "Sir you need to calm down so I can help you."  He continued to swear and again called me incompetent and asked for someone else so I said, "No sir, I will not get you to someone else" and hung up the phone.  

I was thinking of a career in sniping.  I feel that it would do a lot for my people skills, because I would not have to try to develop them anymore.   

2 comments:

Audrey said...

ahhh, the joys of working retail. I have been cussed out several times for things that were not my fault and that I had no control over. I understand your frustration.

Marcene said...

glad you hung up on that man. Sorry for the soggy butt, no fun. Maybe you should just come visit me, I miss you stories in person.