Saturday, December 31, 2011
For the sake of your sanity...
To the parents of small children and/or dogs, please remember one thing: squeaky toys are of the devil.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Usual Suspects
As far as the most common sources of surges of passive aggression and annoyance at work, the top three are my customer's inability to cope with the following: the prices, the carwash, and being too stupid to work the pump.
The first of these is the easiest to shrug off. Whether it be for the price of gas, or how ridiculous it is for snack prices to go up after sales taxes go up. While I might agree on one point or two, I prefer to keep them from building momentum, at least while they're near enough for it to be my problem. When confronted by such complaints, I inform them of my manager's hours, go silent, and give them a polite gtfo look.
Recent rains have made the carwarsh a much less major thorn in my side, but it still fills in the number two spot for cause of stupidity. I've known the carwash manager longer than I've worked this job, and we have a good working relationship, which makes me a bit guilty when I pawn most of my disgruntled idiots off on him. Interestingly enough, the people that cause the biggest stink about the carwash are the people that show up 3 hours after closing time and are insulted by the audacity of closing before sundown.
As far as I'm concerned, if you can drop a pencil into a coffee mug, you have the motor skills to work a gasoline pump. A solid 40% of my customers can't say the same. But before you can get to that, you have 2 options to issue payment, either pay outside at the pump by debit or credit card, or come inside to pay with cash/credit/debit. For whatever reason, the card swipe may fail, or there may be an additional error that will cause the "Please see cashier" message to appear. The usual greeting I get when this happens is something along the lines of "your pump is broken, you need to get that fixed" blah blah blah. Sadly, the most common reasons are people forget to push the debit button, or my favorite, are trying to buy gas with an expired card. Somehow whenever I tell them the card is expired they get mad at me for not reminding them to renew their cards 4 months ago. If you keep any cards in your wallet you don't touch or look at for 4 months at a time, I would suggest to your neighbors they steal your identity and see how long it takes you to notice.
The first of these is the easiest to shrug off. Whether it be for the price of gas, or how ridiculous it is for snack prices to go up after sales taxes go up. While I might agree on one point or two, I prefer to keep them from building momentum, at least while they're near enough for it to be my problem. When confronted by such complaints, I inform them of my manager's hours, go silent, and give them a polite gtfo look.
Recent rains have made the carwarsh a much less major thorn in my side, but it still fills in the number two spot for cause of stupidity. I've known the carwash manager longer than I've worked this job, and we have a good working relationship, which makes me a bit guilty when I pawn most of my disgruntled idiots off on him. Interestingly enough, the people that cause the biggest stink about the carwash are the people that show up 3 hours after closing time and are insulted by the audacity of closing before sundown.
As far as I'm concerned, if you can drop a pencil into a coffee mug, you have the motor skills to work a gasoline pump. A solid 40% of my customers can't say the same. But before you can get to that, you have 2 options to issue payment, either pay outside at the pump by debit or credit card, or come inside to pay with cash/credit/debit. For whatever reason, the card swipe may fail, or there may be an additional error that will cause the "Please see cashier" message to appear. The usual greeting I get when this happens is something along the lines of "your pump is broken, you need to get that fixed" blah blah blah. Sadly, the most common reasons are people forget to push the debit button, or my favorite, are trying to buy gas with an expired card. Somehow whenever I tell them the card is expired they get mad at me for not reminding them to renew their cards 4 months ago. If you keep any cards in your wallet you don't touch or look at for 4 months at a time, I would suggest to your neighbors they steal your identity and see how long it takes you to notice.
Introductions
A while back, I jokingly talked about creating a blog to talk about all the stupid and crazy stuff that happens at work. While it was all said in jest, now that the holidays are upon us, I really do need an outlet for this crap or I think I might go insane. So here we are! I work 40 hours a week at a gas station in Southern California, and come across some of the most interesting and annoying people possible, and will use this blog to share my tales of interest, insanity, and massive amounts of passive aggression. Enjoy.
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