Saturday, January 27, 2007

Beans and bugs

My job is to make your day better. I've got a limited number of weapons in my arsenal. I can give you a refund. I can help you with an exchange. I can call a manager for you. And I can listen to your complaint, although the odds are VERY long that I can actually do anything about it.

Whether I give a flying leap about what you're yakking on about anybody's guess. The answer is probably not, in so far as I only care about keeping the wage slave job that allows me to keep paying my rent and bills and keeps me from having to live in my car and scrounge for food in a Dumpster.

I don't really care that the girl on Register 9 was rude to you, although I'll apologize to you. I don't really care that the lines are long and that you think we ought to open up some more registers. Don't you think we would if we could? I really don't care that you can't find the kind of yogurt you like and that they had at your Wal-Mart back in Ohio. This is not Ohio. You should have stayed there and then the lines wouldn't be so long.

My job is to smile at you, make you think I'm listening, make you believe that you matter to the Wal-Mart, and get you to leave so that the people behind you can get the same treatment. I'm very good at my job. Because at the end of the day, until consumers start voting with their pocketbooks, Wal-Mart will continue to practice business the same crappy way.

So when two women slammed a Winn-Dixie bag down on the counter and commenced to complaining, I sort of switched off the conscious part of my brain and started nodding. They're saying that they bought beans and peas and lentils that had bugs in them. Worse, said bugs are now crawling all over my counter. Yes, I've got an infestation thanks to these two yenta, who are creating a hurricane of Category Five proportions.

One of them has a receipt and I can see that they bought this stuff back in November. I start trying to see what they've got and the whole time they're practically screaming at me about how nasty this stuff is, how the bugs got all over one woman's pantry, about the lifecycle of bugs, how Wal-Mart should be sued for selling this stuff to her, on and on and on.

Of course, I have to actually remove the bags of beans from the Winn-Dixie sack to see what she's got, so when I put it the beans on the counter, some of the bugs start to go walkabout. Which sets off another round of complaints about how now the bugs will get all over the store and infest everything. And they go bananas about the bugs on the counter. YOU BROUGHT THEM IN THE STORE. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? BUTTERFLIES? And they start in again on how nasty the bugs are and how shocked they are that these beans, which they made a special trip t0 Wal-Mart to buy, are just so nasty. Last I checked, Publix, Winn-Dixie, Albertsons and Sweetbay all sell dried peas, beans and lentils too!

I just couldn't take these two and didn't want to wade into a "discussion" with the two of them. What I wanted to do was crawl over the counter and staple their lips shut and then put some tape over the top of that.

If you've had the beans since November, that was plenty of time for them to have been infested with anything else from your pantry. Moreover, you're probably just fishing for some extra compensation for your "nasty" beans and nobody here is going to give you any. Thirdly, these were the only beans in the past two months we'd taken back with bugs, so it is sort of unlikely that there was a problem on our end. Which I wanted to tell her, but I held my tongue.

And finally, the grand total on this entire refund was $6.26.

There are days I can deal with the unwashed masses — and there are days I can't.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heh! And to think I didn't run, screaming, into Publix when a package of Cumin Seeds came with the bug larvae which turned into these little rust colored beatles. I just threw the packet away and cleaned the pantry. Who knew these things came with extras??? ;)

Anonymous said...

I would have told those idiots they were nasty fuckers and that the bugs came from THEIR pantries, most likely, since all other Wal-Mart beans were BUG FREE. I'd explain that when you leave food open in a pantry like dirty, nasty skanks, THIS is what happen, bugs doing what bugs do. Nasty Skanks.

Who hasnt had bugs in their pantry at some point that came in from somewhere or something? One tiny little corner of one tiny little package is all it takes. Theyre resourceful little things, unlike the idiots you deal with.

You can take back 2-month old, bug-infested beans? That's nuts!

Anonymous said...

I wish someone would tell the leaders of Wal-Mart(Gary Dawes) and such to take a running hike off a short pier. The in-store managers, (with exception of the GM), have their hands tied by the tyrants that run their regions. If only people would see that, it is the big boys in Bentonville, that are screwing Americans and not the in-store employees, things might be better. Wal-Mart has the most liberal return policy in the world. They sell garbage and are deathly afraid of courtrooms. Everyone in America should make up a frivilous lawsuit against Wal-Mart. After 300 million lawsuits, Wal-Mart might give up.

Anonymous said...

I see you had one of those days today.

I had a cow come up to the desk today and insist that her layaway PAYMENT receipt was a valid receipt to do a return with. The stupid moron wouldn't shut up and admit she was wrong. Her husband even ceded I was right after I explained it to them, but she wouldn't give up. She got what she wanted because she cried like a $!@$ing baby enough.

I HATE PEOPLE.

Anonymous said...

At least these two wastes of life didn't take a swing at you. That happened to the Associate working next to me about a month ago. Luckily she was quick enough to avoid the customer's reaction to the news that Walmart was not taking back the sick-ass meat that had obviously NOT been refridgerated in some time.
-ThePhantomAssociate

Anonymous said...

There are days I can deal with the unwashed masses — and there are days I can't.

I really like this blog, but it seems from all that I've read in the past few months that there aren't any days when you can't deal with the unwashed masses. You encounter absolutely ridiculous people everyday and, if memory serves, you always deal with them. Smile, nod, call for a manager, don't point out how wrong the idiot/customer is. You don't give yourself enough credit because you always deal with the fools.

And I must guiltily admit that I'd love to hear about a time when your superhuman patience ran out and you went off on a stupid customer. If you ever win the lottery, please go to work the next day and have a marathon of "giving them what they really deserve" to see how many it takes before you are asked to leave. :-)

yellowdoggranny said...

lordy..i could NOT do your job..i would have been over the the counter and bitch slapping them into the nether world...judas priest..
your a better man than i am gunda din