Life as a grunt
I work for a supermarket. Thankfully, I'm in night fill (which, to those of you who don't know, means I stick the stuff on the shelves), so most of the hours I work are without customers around. Ah, but when they are...
Customers are rude. They often act as if you're an inconvenient object without sentience. They'll barge through where I'm working, or stand right where I need to be (for ages) without bothering to say 'excuse me' or anything decent like that. Half of them are like cows chewing grass, utterly unaware of anything but the grass. How I'd like to do some cow tipping!
To their credit, some customers are nice. You occasionally get what I call a 'polite customer day'. Just one day out of the blue where customers do say 'excuse me' or apologise for being a pain in the arse. Some even make pleasant conversation with you. I like those days, because the use of manners takes some of the built up agro out of me. I don't mind someone being in my way, if they at least acknowledge that they are, and have the decency to apologise for it. Then I don't feel like stuffing them in the box crusher! (Always wanted to see how many would fit in there, though...)
Then there are what I call 'inquisitive customer days'. These are the days when just everybody has a question. For some reason I keep getting asked for obscure shit like donkey paste or somesuch that either doesn't exist or is so well hidden even I haven't noticed it in my five years of boring but loyal service. Not that some idiot doesn't keep changing all the shelves around on a regular basis. It's supposed to keep the customers wandering around longer, so they find things they didn't know they wanted to buy. Another brilliant idea from the people who brought you beer milkshakes! That is to say, Head Office is full of gimboids who wouldn't know the inside of a supermarket from a cow's udder. Shifting shit around pisses people off! It doesn't take a genius to figure that out, and customers whinge at me all the time, to prove it!
Mostly I love the stupid questions. 'Where is the milk?' Well, it's not in the freezer, which you're facing, but is directly behind you in the fridge, where milk is usually kept, and the section is smegging huge! Oh, and here's a beauty: 'you've got 40% juice cordial - what about 100% juice cordial?' It's bloody juice! Am I having a Basil Fawlty moment...? I'll give you one more, before I move on. One of my male colleagues came up to me one day and quietly asked 'what do you tell a customer who asks where your nuts are?' Me, I'd have to say 'sorry mate, you're mistaken'. Bwahaha!
This last bit I say more as a consumer than a night filler. It's about the products themselves, and how they smell. It amazes me how they sell some of these things.
1. Men's hygene products
Be it a deodorant, aftershave or shower gel, almost every male hygene product you can get from a supermarket smells like bloody fly spray! I find this most unfathomable! Do men enjoy smelling like fly spray, or is it just something the market forces on you?
2. Cleaning products
There are two in particular which come to mind, though I suppose naming them would get me in trouble and possibly sued. You'll forgive me, I'm sure, for wanting to avoid that. Anyone who cleans once in a while could probably tell which ones they are, anyway. There's one which smells quite distinctly like mouldy cheese. It's a spray one for ceramics and stuff, to give you a hint. And the other smells like (*insert drum roll here*) stale spoof! You know, that smell that arises the morning after. (That one comes - if you'll excuse the pun - in a cylindrical blue bottle.) And these are cleaning products, for crying out loud! Sure, I want my house smelling of mouldy cheese and stale spoof. Good lord!
Customers are rude. They often act as if you're an inconvenient object without sentience. They'll barge through where I'm working, or stand right where I need to be (for ages) without bothering to say 'excuse me' or anything decent like that. Half of them are like cows chewing grass, utterly unaware of anything but the grass. How I'd like to do some cow tipping!
To their credit, some customers are nice. You occasionally get what I call a 'polite customer day'. Just one day out of the blue where customers do say 'excuse me' or apologise for being a pain in the arse. Some even make pleasant conversation with you. I like those days, because the use of manners takes some of the built up agro out of me. I don't mind someone being in my way, if they at least acknowledge that they are, and have the decency to apologise for it. Then I don't feel like stuffing them in the box crusher! (Always wanted to see how many would fit in there, though...)
Then there are what I call 'inquisitive customer days'. These are the days when just everybody has a question. For some reason I keep getting asked for obscure shit like donkey paste or somesuch that either doesn't exist or is so well hidden even I haven't noticed it in my five years of boring but loyal service. Not that some idiot doesn't keep changing all the shelves around on a regular basis. It's supposed to keep the customers wandering around longer, so they find things they didn't know they wanted to buy. Another brilliant idea from the people who brought you beer milkshakes! That is to say, Head Office is full of gimboids who wouldn't know the inside of a supermarket from a cow's udder. Shifting shit around pisses people off! It doesn't take a genius to figure that out, and customers whinge at me all the time, to prove it!
Mostly I love the stupid questions. 'Where is the milk?' Well, it's not in the freezer, which you're facing, but is directly behind you in the fridge, where milk is usually kept, and the section is smegging huge! Oh, and here's a beauty: 'you've got 40% juice cordial - what about 100% juice cordial?' It's bloody juice! Am I having a Basil Fawlty moment...? I'll give you one more, before I move on. One of my male colleagues came up to me one day and quietly asked 'what do you tell a customer who asks where your nuts are?' Me, I'd have to say 'sorry mate, you're mistaken'. Bwahaha!
This last bit I say more as a consumer than a night filler. It's about the products themselves, and how they smell. It amazes me how they sell some of these things.
1. Men's hygene products
Be it a deodorant, aftershave or shower gel, almost every male hygene product you can get from a supermarket smells like bloody fly spray! I find this most unfathomable! Do men enjoy smelling like fly spray, or is it just something the market forces on you?
2. Cleaning products
There are two in particular which come to mind, though I suppose naming them would get me in trouble and possibly sued. You'll forgive me, I'm sure, for wanting to avoid that. Anyone who cleans once in a while could probably tell which ones they are, anyway. There's one which smells quite distinctly like mouldy cheese. It's a spray one for ceramics and stuff, to give you a hint. And the other smells like (*insert drum roll here*) stale spoof! You know, that smell that arises the morning after. (That one comes - if you'll excuse the pun - in a cylindrical blue bottle.) And these are cleaning products, for crying out loud! Sure, I want my house smelling of mouldy cheese and stale spoof. Good lord!
posted by The Mad Shillelagh | 2:41 am
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