I almost bit my tongue in half this past weekend trying not to blow up at a man. I'm not a fan of yuppies. We all know how I feel about howler monkeys, much less yuppies with howler monkeys. Yuppies with multiple howler monkeys need forced sterilization.
Anyway. I lost my joi de vivre after about an hour of the heat and the stupidity on Sunday. I couldn't make jokes about people returning babies or husbands. I just didn't care. There's only so much of white trash returning $145 dollars worth of stolen fishing line you can deal with per day.
So Yuppielicious rolls up with three kids. Two are standing in the shopping cart with a Ziploc bag of goldfish crackers. A trip to the Wal-Mart do not necessitate provisions. This is not the Oregon Trail! Before they're gone, there are enough goldfish and goldfish crumbs to start seventeen Zen water gardens and possibly feed a family of mice for a year.
Then there's the blonde and mouthy pre-adolescent - the proto-Paris - who actually turns out to be pretty cool.
Yuppielicous has some pool thing he wants to return. But before he even starts the return, he starts waving an empty jar around goes on a RANT about peanuts. I can't remember. I don't really care.
The rant was about how we don't have the specific type of unsalted peanuts he wants. How there is no shelf space for them but that the other Wal-Mart he goes to has them. Why doesn't this Wal-Mart have them anymore?
Do I look like I know? I can get someone for you. That's all I can do. See that man over there. Go talk to him. He's got a radio. He can get someone who might know something. Me, I just mash buttons. DID YOU NOT HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID? I really don't know why we don't have your precious peanuts. Seriously. You got to shut up. Eh. Wait. Let me get a word in. Nope. Not now. Maybe now. Sir. Sir. If you .. fine. Talk to the air. I'll sit here and nod. OK. That's all about peanuts? You can talk to Daniel over there when you're done.
He shuts up about the peanuts. Seems to accept the fact that there is nothing I can do. Maybe he just needed to vent. I can accept that.
Then, like a bad relationship, when the wife takes the cheating husband back, we move on into a whole 'nother realm of dysfunction.
ME: "Do you want to return that."
YUPPIELICIOUS: "Yeah."
ME: "What's wrong with it?"
YUPPIELICIOUS: "It didn't work."
ME: "What specifically is wrong with it? We need to be able to tell the manufacturer. Did the seals blow out, did it break, what?" It was a plastic, blow-up pool toy of some sort.
YUPPIELICIOUS: "Yeah. We tried to blow it up but it has a hole in it."
ME: Looks at receipt. Purchased May 15. Is now July 29. School starts in three weeks. Funny how it manages to get a mysterious hole after you've gotten a good ten weeks of use out of it.
YUPPIELICIOUS: "We never used it once. Everything we buy here breaks." Continues for a while. Their pool filter is malfunctioning. His daughter's bike is bad. He didn't like some strawberries he bought last week. His paper shredder makes funny noises. You're still shopping here .... you're still shopping here ....
ME: "But you're just returning it now? You bought it more than two months ago."
YUPPIELICIOUS: "Well we can still return it can't we?"
ME: picks up package, notices distinct smell of chlorine, processes return. "Do you want me to put it back on your debit card or cash?"
YUPPIELICIOUS: "Can you give me cash, we're going to the bowling alley later? Can you believe it, the bowling alley charges $4.75 per game. A man can't take his family out. That's just too much money." Continues in this vein for a while. I get an earful about the bowling alley, the high cost of living, the difficulty of finding family entertainment, etcetera.
YUPPIE'S BLONDE DAUGHTER: "Daddy, you said we weren't going to go bowling. You said we couldn't go." PWNED. By a seven-year-old.
YUPPIELICIOUS: "Well we might go later this week." Dude, seriously. Your parenting issues are not my problem. But if you have to lie to me about your kids in front of your kids, you have more issues than Newsweek. And then lie to your kids about the lies you just told me about your kids? That's just .... messed up. You should not have been allowed to spawn!
ME: "Uh. Here's your money. Sign this."
YUPPIELICIOUS: "OK."
ME: internally "Please Jesus. Just make this man leave. I am about to gouge out my eyeballs with a spork."
YUPPIELICIOUS: "I'm not a complainer, but I got to talk to someone about the peanuts."
ME: "But you're complaining right now." I swear, this slipped out before I could bite it back.
Fortunately for me, he was so in love with the sound of his own voice he didn't even notice I said anything.
ME: "Like I said, you can talk to Daniel right over there. See, that metal box? Go talk to him. He's the manager on duty."
YUPPIELICIOUS: "Him?"
ME: "Right there. Black guy. Blue shirt. Dark brown pants. Holding the radio."
YUPPIELICIOUS: "OK."
ME: Make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave ....
I officially had craptastic karma all this weekend.
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15 comments:
I don't know how you do it. I'd have jabbed a finger knuckle-deep into one eye, told him to STFU, then jabbed another finger just as deep into his other eye before offering the blood of his children to Kali or Cthulhu...
It never ceases to amaze me how people are the exact opposite of what they say they are. The only thing that really surprised me was that he didn't preface the entire exchange with the "I'm not a complainer" line in much the same way that people will say "I'm not racist or anything" just before they make the most racist statement in history.
I think somebody needs to have a kid on his own. Seriously.
I'll probably get jumped on for saying this but I'm going to anyways. While I'm not condoning everything else this guy did, is it such a stretch of logic to go to customer service with a complaint? I think that sounds like the most logical place to go. Should he have gone into the diatribe to you, maybe not, but I just don't feel like going to customer service to voice a complaint is so illogical. So what if he wants to complain about peanuts, it's his complaint, not yours
What about the proto-Paris? You didn't finish that story.
I don't get the rant about the peanuts. This Walmart doesn't have them--GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. I and many others buy things from other places.
Yuppie can't really believe that his ranting is going to magically make shelf space for the peanuts.
I had an incident once where I blurted something out accidentally.
It was a busy Saturday on cash, as Saturday always is, when a woman comes up with her little kid in the cart.
I don't know what was wrong with this kid, possibly he was enthusiastic about learning to spell, but he would not shut up. He kept saying "I can say my own name." and "My name is I-A-N." He kept spelling it over and over, never actually saying Ian.
It was a pretty large order so he was doing this for about 5 minutes when without thinking I looked straight into his eyes and said "Could you spell that for me?"
Then I realized what I just did and got a horrified look on my face because I don't normally snap so easily. Luckily for me, the kid got quiet and had a confused look on his face and his mother erupted with laughter.
Thank god *some* people have a sense of humour.
It's amazing how people just don't make the connection. This store doesn't have X. I buy Y here and it's junk. I bought Z and they didn't taste right. And I still keep coming here.
Total disconnect.
So weird how some people's thought processes work.
I would see no peanuts and think
"Huh. No peanuts."
and go to the other store.
I would never expend the time or energy that is necessary to go all apeshit and complain.
You have a wonderful way of making me feel really good about my job. Thanks so much!
Seems like the guy couldn't believe that a black guy was in charge. Hmmm.
Not to mention if the guy was even successful at getting the store to order his stupid peanuts, the chance of anyone finding them when they came in would be slim to none.
I would never ask a store to special order something. I'd just go to where I found it and buy it there. That's just common sense. And if I really like it, I buy a shitload of it at once so I don't have to go back.
If this guy was such a yuppie wannabe why was he eating peanuts? Wouldn't the more yuppie snack be something like cashews?
When it comes down to it you can take the trash out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the trash.
Make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave, make it leave ....
I said this to myself about 10 times a day when I worked retail and dealt with annoying customers and about 100 times a day when I worked in a call center and talked to mean, bossy callers so I know exactly what you're going through.
This is not the Oregon Trail!
Oh, that line was great! How do you think up these things? I totally agree with you about the Goldfish crackers. Cracker crumbs make a mess! It seems like people really don't care though. We used to have people come into an upscale store I worked at and the kids had ice cream cones and lollipops. The ice cream always ended up falling out of the cone and onto the floor and the lollipops always ended up touching all of the clothes. Usually, the white colored ones!
By the way, I like the new blog...
I came up with a fairly easy way of shutting up the people who go on and on about us not having something that another location has. I simply tell them that each location only has so much space and has to use it for items most commonly purchased. I then tell them that they can fill out a comment card or call 1-800-walmart and if it will be taken under consideration.
After a while I sounded so practiced that they figured I was told to say that and really couldn't help them.
"There's only so much of white trash..." ? I'm certain BB meant "black trash."
Oh, and now BB is Christian? "ME: internally "Please Jesus. Just make this man leave."
RECOGNIZE: silence is consent.
Jess.
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