Why I go to work.

I spend a LOT of time complaining about people on this blog, don’t I? Although for some of you, it doesn’t seem like I can ever do enough. Seriously, with the nagging and the phone calls and the “Phil, write another post already!” I have a lot on my plate right now, okay? The last thing I need is you hassling me to add one more thing, something that I do out of the goodness of my heart to entertain and delight millions, to that over-crowded towering pile of food on my plate! In fact, I need a second plate! My first plate is full! No more room for food on Phil’s plate, but still you demand that I add that one more side dish.

I kind of lost track of that analogy, didn’t I? Oh well.

So anyway, like I said, I spend a lot of time complaining about people on my blog, so I decided that, in honour of some special guy’s birth (My cousin Cameron, who’s birthday was yesterday—happy birthday Cameron!!!) I would write a few things that I really love about my job.

1) The guest-stars:

There are some people that I see on a fairly routine basis, such as the fed-ex delivery guy, the couriers who travel to all of our locations every day, the people who work at our sister companies, the other mall staff (especially the managers at Cookies by George and Second Cup) who always manage to make my day a bit better. I don’t know a lot about these people, but what I do know is that they actually make me have faith in humans. When the Second Cup manager gives me a free coffee or cookie, or when our courier Mary makes sure that I’m wearing something orange, or when the staff at our sister company congratulated me on my promotion and said “It’s about freaking time!”, I realize that despite all of the drama and stupidity, most people are fairly decent individuals. They actually want to make sure that the people around them are having a good day, they do little things to try to make people happy (and they always seem to do it right when I need something to cheer me up), and they are just generally good people. So while I may not know their last names or where they grew up, I do know that they make each day a bit more awesome.

2) The awesome customers:

I know it seems like the only people who come in to my store are a bunch of inbred rednecks with severe brain damage or are simply angry, ignorant little people, but a lot of the customers I see are simply too nice to be all that funny.

For example, there’s this one family consisting of a mom, a dad, and their two sons, and they come in every few weeks to get the kids’ glasses fixed (they’re boys, things happen!), and they have got to be the nicest family ever. The mom and dad are easy to talk to, the kids are energetic but well behaved and are so polite that they even say thank you to us without ever being told to. The parents make conversation that doesn’t involve yelling at us about how kids’ glasses should be indestructible, or how they are never buying glasses from us again. They are just kind, reasonable, personable people who I actually enjoy seeing, and they always make us feel like we’re doing a great job, which is always a plus.

Another one of my favourites is a lady I sold glasses to about two years ago, and at first she had a lot of trouble adjusting to them (it was her first time wearing progressives). She was understandably frustrated, but kept thanking me for all the time I was taking to help her out. She went back to the doctor without argument, and agreed to take the time to adjust to the new prescription, agreeing that it must take time. After a few weeks and many adjustments, she came back and thanked me for all of my hard work, gave me some chocolate, and then proceeded to send friends and family to see me.

She came back in a couple of weeks ago knowing that she was due to get her eyes checked, and we spent an hour looking at frames, joking, catching up, and when she had her eye exam done and realized she didn’t need new glasses she was crushed. But then she brought in her husband to buy glasses from me! She’s one of my favourite people.

There is a whole mess of other customers who have made my days awesome throughout the years; the lady who had shopped around and came back to get her glasses from me because all of the other sales people were annoying, but I was the “least offensive” (she was joking! I hope…); there’s the amazingly nice and down to Earth former Calgary Flames player and his wife who get their glasses and contacts from us; there was the guy who gave one of my co-workers chocolate the other day because she had his glasses rushed; and all of the others who just have fun trying on the ugly frames, or tell me that I’m good at my job (duh) or simply make my day better by making fun of the asshole who was in 30 seconds before them. I know it sounds like I deal with a lot of crazies, but I deal with a lot more great people. They’re just harder to make fun of, which is why you never hear about them.

3) The other stores:

I work for a large chain, and we have several stores throughout the city. We all wind up talking on the phone or emailing each other on a daily basis, looking for frames, calling for help, or warning each other about a potential awful customer headed their way. There are some people who I have known for years and recognize their voices, but wouldn’t recognize them if we walked past each other in the street because we’ve never met in person. These are the people who I can rant to, tell a funny story to, and who do the same with me. They are the ones who know what the day is like when it’s dead and you have nothing to do or when it’s been insanely busy and you’re short staffed, or when all you get is complaint after complaint.

Some of these people are also past-co-workers, people who worked with me, or who I worked with at a different location, and then we transferred. These are the ones who I can start talking to on the phone and then wonder where the last half an hour went. I miss these guys at my store every day!

4) My co-workers:

Sometimes we fight. Sometimes they are stupid. Sometimes I’m a bossy asshat (I’m sure most of them would agree). But these people are my second family, and I love them despite the occasional drama, minor mistakes, or the fact that I wind up cleaning up after them every day. These 9 people are the reasons I show up every single day.

Serenity Now!

Come with me while I take you on a tour. A journey of the mind, if you will. Now close your eyes. Close them dammit. They’re still open, what’s your deal, I told you to close your freaking eyes! If you’re not going to participate why are you even reading this? Now close your freaking fracking eyes!

Now imagine you’re going to a grocery store. Why aren’t you imagining this? What is up with you today? First you won’t close your eyes when I ask you super nicely to, and now that I finally convinced you to close your eyes you won’t read along and oooh now I get it.

Open your eyes.

Please open your eyes.

Ok I’m just going to wait for you to get bored and open them. I’m waiting. Really, you aren’t bored yet? You’ve got a bit of drool.

Oh. I see. You fell asleep. How embarrassing for you. Oh watch out you’re gonna hit your—hi there, sleepy head! No I don’t know why your head hurts. Now follow along dammit.

Imagine you walk into a grocery store, thinking “Hmm, I need some milk!” For some reason you added an exclamation mark in your head. You seem weirdly excited about getting milk. Maybe instead of milk, you should seek therapy. But I think that’s a subject for a different post. Right now you’re going into the grocery store prancing and skipping like a little idiot, so bloody excited to get your milk.

Anyway, you walk up to the customer service desk, and say “Hi there. I need some milk. I ran out.” Or maybe you say “I’m on vacation and I forgot to bring milk with me. Do you sell milk?”

No matter what the response is (you weren’t really listening, anyway. You were just asking in a polite fashion because your mom “raised you right”. Yeah. Okay.) you say “great, can I just get some for free?” Again, when they respond you totally zone out, and then say “Well how the hell am I supposed to get any milk then? I need that milk! You’re just going to make me walk around all day without any calcium? That’s so irresponsible of you! What do you mean I should have planned ahead and bought milk before mine expired? Screw you, I’m taking my money somewhere else, and I’m reporting you! No I don’t know to who! God!” Then you storm out of the store. What a bunch of pricks that they have working there, hey? Good thing you made your point! Assholes, not giving you free milk.

Let’s switch gears a little bit here. No no no, keep your eyes open! Oh crap, I lost you again. Okay, I’m going to the bathroom.

How does your head feel this time? Quit your bitching.

Now let’s imagine you’ve stumbled upon a drug store (your calcium deprived brain has no memory of how you got there), and you decide to go in and see what you can rustle up for yourself.

You head up to the pharmacist and stand inappropriately close to the lady at the counter who is describing a very intimate problem she is having (she pee’s her pants and needs to get some Depends. Either that or she can’t depend on her husband Pete to wear pants. You saw something shiny and only half paid attention.) When she leaves to either go buy diapers or take her husband to seek therapy the way you should be doing, you ask the pharmacist “Hey, do you guys sell pills here?”

The pharmacist, rightfully, seems suspicious. She asks (you assumed it was a he, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!?! Oh yeah?? Well she’s black too, you sexist racist pig.) Anyway, the black female lesbian pharmacist with only one leg asks “Okayyy, do you have a prescription?” to which you respond “No, but I know what I need.”

She then decides that she doesn’t want to keep her job, and listens intently as you describe the exact quantity and dosage you need of your oxycontin.

Just kidding. She tells you in the most pleasant voice she can muster that she can’t just hand over a bucket of pills just because you say so, she needs to have a written doctor’s prescription. No, it doesn’t matter that you remember what it said and you just can’t seem to find it right now, she doesn’t feel like getting fired today.

Of course you give her the same spiel that you gave at the grocery store about how you can go to any other pharmacy out there and they’ll just dump whatever pills you want directly into your pockets, (They will? THEN GO THERE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!) and then you storm out and tell everyone that you pass that this place is the shittiest place ever, and they should not shop there. Those customers, of course, take your advice to heart and leave immediately, because you don’t look insane at all.

Now let’s combine these two scenarios. Take these two separate situations and cram them together into one. Wanna know what you get?

Contact lens customers.

This happens many times a week. We get someone who knows exactly what their prescription is (I think it was minus one point banana doughnut. Yes it was! No, you don’t know what you’re talking about! Get me your manager! What do you mean she’s at home?? It’s 9:00 on a Friday night, why isn’t she here?!??!) and then they get mad at us because we won’t hand over some free trials anyway. They are on vacation, you see, and they didn’t bring a back up pair, or their prescription, or any glasses, and they’ve been wearing this current pair for about 4 months now, and if their eyes rot and fall out of their heads, it is going to be my damn fault!

You know it’s really bad when the same situation ends with “Oh, okay, I guess it’s my own fault anyway. Have a good night!” and we are rendered absolutely speechless.

Now how does your head feel?

Questions?

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Huzzah! Interaction!

Workplace Hazards.

I somehow managed to injure myself at work yesterday. Good lord was there a lot of blood. Seriously, it was a surprising amount. The amount of blood that came out of the body part that the blood was coming out of was astounding.

Let me tell you the story (as if you have an option but to keep reading. My blog is like friggen crack,) about the workman’s compensation claim I will most assuredly be filing.

This severiously sketchy looking individual came in to our store today, and immediately asked me where the most expensive frames were. Ever the vigilant employee, I paid him absolutely no attention as that type of behavior would never set off any alarm bells with anyone. This disheveled man with greasy hair and a ratty, oversized, and totally out of season winter jacked with plenty of pockets clearly had no intention of ever acquiring eyeglass frames without first paying a fair and agreed upon price for them. No no, he was simply in my store to shop.

I mentioned our secret code word to my co-workers, the one we use to indicate that we think thievery is afoot (yes, we have a secret code word!) and my co-workers immediately perked up, ever dutiful, and said, “What?”

Idiots.

For some reason, even though I had absolutely no suspicions regarding this gentleman whatsoever, I moved to a position in the store in which I could watch every single move he made. I’m interested in the human condition, what can I say? My co-workers assisted me by continuing to talk about…boys or…or vampires… or David Cassidy or puppies…or maybe candy and highlighters, I don’t know, whatever the young kids talk about nowadays. I’m sure they were simply trying to lull the man into a sense of security as he rummaged through our product. The fact that they had their backs turned to him heightened the illusion even more that they were paying him no heed.

Anyway, at one point he seemed to have decided that he was not drawing enough attention to himself. Or maybe he had a minor electrical event in his brain, I don’t know, but suddenly his arm flailed out and he knocked over a large, heavy plastic display of frames and a sale poster. The noise it created almost made my co-workers stop talking about their werewolves or the New Kids on the Block or what have you, and certainly startled the gentleman enough for him to realize that he had an important appointment he needed to attend, and he promptly vacated the premises.

I immediately realized the hazard of the improperly balanced display (read: I went off and did something else for a few minutes, then remembered that the display could kill someone. For a while I was okay with that, but then I thought that it might kill someone who could one day make me the heir to his or her fortune, you know, like a Bart Simpson and Mr. Burns kind of thing. Remember the one where Mr. Burns realized he had no heir, so he interviewed all the kids in Springfield and, surprise surprise, chose Bart? But then something happened and Bart gave up the inheritance. I was hoping for that to happen, but without the part where I give up the inheritance. That was stupid of him. Well, I guess he is a cartoon, but still, who gives up a huge massive fortune like that?)

So I figured I should go and repair the display. As I was struggling to put it back in place, my co-workers assisted me by discussing the housing crisis in the United States and the current political situation in Libya, what with Gaddafi’s death and all. Ha ha! I jest! They were talking about how dreamy that Jonathan Taylor Thomas fellow is. Anyway, a roughly 2 foot by 3 foot pane of plastic fell off, and gouged my ear.

At first I thought I must be ok, since I could literally hear nothing at all. That’s a good sign, right? Then I realized that my ear canal was already full of blood. My co-workers promptly rushed to my aid. No wait, I misspelled that. They started laughing at me. Until they saw all the blood. Within about three minutes, I had soaked two entire paper towels with blood while trying to dispense a customer’s glasses. I just kept that side of my head turned away from the customer and tried not to pass out from blood loss or get too much vomit on his shoes. I’m really not too sure why the profusely bleeding person somehow managed to get stuck dispensing someone’s glasses. I mean, one of my co-workers went out to get me some spray-on band-aid stuff (that stuff HURTS! And for some reason it smells like bubble gum. Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say: “Smell my ear. Does it smell like bubblegum to you?”), and one of my co-workers left early, and another one went for a break, leaving me in the store alone while bleeding—oh, I think I just figured it out.

So anyway, on the WCB form I’m just going to write a link to this blog. Perhaps I will gain a few new readers! But I’m mostly doing it because I’m starting to get dizzy and I can’t reallg shree akll thit wsellllmnjbc sfvdffffdaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The Dirties.

Screw this whole “working on homework” crap. My marketing assignment can wait. I have much more important things to attend to.

The first one: Bathing. Haven’t done that in a while! Whoops!

Okay I’m back. Who knew that having one shower could corrode the pipes like that? The plumber was quite drained when he was done. One might say he pulled the plug on our problems. He sure did flush our plumbing issues away. In fact, we showered him with praise. But he was such a tubby fella. I had to wrench the chocolate bar from him so he could work! Okay, I'm done, I promise!

Hey speaking of bathing, why do I have to be in a somewhat clean state to go to work, and yet some of my customers, well, they just don’t? (Wow I seriously didn’t plan this! I had my whole blog post planned out, tossed in that bit about me not showering in a while, and now my post is about just that! HI-LARIOUS!)

You know the type of people I’m talking about; greasy hair, dirty, rumpled, stained clothes, stink lines wafting over their shoulders, plants withering and dying in their wake, children crying, nuns openly cursing, birds literally—literally—falling out of the sky as they fly overhead, planes crashing into mountains, satellites falling out of orbit and burning down neighborhoods, the moon suddenly exploding, giant fragments of it whipping through the sky like North Korean nuclear warheads, the sun going supernova, turning into a swirling, twisting, writhing vortex of a black hole of absolute filthy stink…Okay, I may be getting a little bit carried away here. I apologize, I know I’m normally a fairly restrained individual. But anyway, my point still stands, which is that some people out there are absolutely gross.

Which is why I really really like it (really!) when they come in to my store to buy glasses. You know, because buying glasses is nothing if not removed from one another. I don’t spend hours of my day near people, getting my face within inches of theirs, staring intently, touching their heads, behind their ears, their noses—wait, should I be the one complaining about these people? Maybe I’m the creep show. Oh well.

My favorite part of dealing with the stank people is that they always happen to be the close talkers. Why? Why is this? I really do want to know! Can’t they tell when they move toward me that I keep moving away? So smelly guy takes a step forward and I take another step back, maybe trip on something, another step, I try to find an obstacle to put between us like a chair or a desk or a large brick wall of some sort, another step around the object and he’s right there beside me, asking me to put some glasses on him, another step, I fall backward and start half-running-half-crab-walking trying to get away, another step, I retch, another step and my eyes start welling up (both from the fumes and the fear that I may actually suffocate on his smell, good god what a terrible way to die that would be! Can you imagine suffocating on someone’s smell? Ugh that just took over drowning as my number one worst way to die!), another step and there’s vomit dribbling down my chin (and his too, but that’s been there for a while), another step and, well, I don’t know how it ends because I normally black out. When I regain consciousness smelly guy is normally gone and my co-workers have managed to clean me up a little bit.

Anyway, moving away from smell, one of my other favorite types of customers is the one who clearly never ever cleans their glasses and then comes in to get them adjusted. This is honestly one of the most disgusting things I have ever experienced in my life, and the layperson will have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about (it’s just so unexpectedly gross!) so I need to give you a diagram.

You know the nosepads on metal frames? The plasticy doo-dads that sit on the bridge of your nose? They are attached to the frames with little metal hooks, like so:

You have no idea how long that took me. Although I must admit, considering I did that using just the shapes on Microsoft Word, that is a dang good looking rendering of a pair of spectacles, if I do say so myself. But yes, moving on, the orange parts are what I’m talking about. The grossest thing, the most absolutely worst thing I can ever experience is when there is some green ass junk growing all the hell over those, sometimes growing on to the lenses, like this:

Ew! Ew it’s just the yuckiest! I seriously want to tell these people that they need to go home and clean their glasses before I touch them and it gets on me and into my skin and my blood and multiplies and turns me into one of the gremlins who can’t be fed at night and you can’t let water touch them and then I’ll become one of the gross people!!!

You Can't Always Get What You Want: Especially when you have no idea what it is in the first place.

My all time favourite customers of all time (seriously, all time) are the ones who don’t know what they’re looking for. The ones who, when asked “Is there anything I can help you find?” respond “Uh, glasses?” with a smirk that is normally reserved for teenage girls who have just made a hilarious quip about the kid with patchy hair and nose-warts who has to run along-side the bus, since he’s not allowed on the bus because he smells and touches things (like the bus driver’s hair) but he can’t walk to school alone in the morning or else he’ll get distracted by a homeless man who he thought looked like a kitty cat. Not that that’s happened to me.

What was I saying?

Right. The customers who don’t know what they want.

I’ll usually respond with some sort of hilarious comment that they fail to appreciate (“Whoops! All sold out!” Ahahahaaaa! Juuuust kidding!”) and then offer to let them take a look around (by the way, if someone offers to let you “look around”, you should be immensely offended. It means that person would rather hang out with their co-workers who, trust me, are no prizes, than to hang out with you.) and I turn and walk away.

A lot of the time, though, they’ll simply start by demanding I find something that looks good on them, such as:

Me: Hi there, how are you do—

Customer: CAN YOU FIND SOMETHING THAT LOOKS GOOD ON ME?

Me: I—uhhh, suuuure. What did you hav—

Customer: I’VE NEVER WORN GLASSES BEFORE. I LIKE PURPLE.

Me: That’s good…(randomly grabs a purple frame) How abou—
Customer: THAT’S NOT PURPLE, THAT’S RED. I LIKE PURPLE I WANT PURPLE PURPLE.

Hm. The word “purple” doesn’t look like a real word any more.

Then there are the ones who absolutely have no idea what they want, but they sure as HECK know what they don’t want! I seriously had a lady a few weeks ago who responded to more than ten frames in a row that they were “hideous”, “terrible”, “just awful”, and even a raised-eyebrow-are-you-effing-kidding-me “Uhh, no,” before my hand even reached the frame. At this point, I gave her my usual “Well, why don’t I just let you look around (see!?! There it is!) to which she responded “Some help you are.”

I think you can all imagine how I reacted to that. I kept walking and cussed her out to my co-workers after she left. Yeah, take THAT you old wench!

Ultimately, though, our all-time favourites are the ones who come in and spend HOURS trying on every single frame in the store, keep dozens hoarded away so they can try them on and eliminate them at some future point in time (because none of the other customers in the store might want to try those ones on. I was once helping a customer who actually knew kind of what she was looking for, and I found a specific frame in some lady’s pile, announced that I would put it right back, and picked it up. You should have SEEN her reaction! “That was MY frame. I might WANT that.” I actually can’t even come up with a hilarious simile it was so vehemently hateful.) Anyway, these hoarders tend to spend upwards of two or three hours in the store needing at least one—if not two or three—employee’s full attention, only to announce that they don’t feel like shopping for glasses. They then leave, and we never see them again.

Another random side story (wow, these people must REALLY be my favourites of all time!) is from a few years ago when I had a customer who came and left four or five times over the span of an entire 8 hour shift, deciding on exactly which frames she wanted. In fact, I think I was even there until half an hour after close just so that I could take her freaking money. She wanted to look like Star Jones (WHY???) and kept showing me magazine photos of Star and her ill-fitting glasses, and at one point I actually had to tell her to stop showing me the photos because Star Jones has no idea how glasses are actually supposed to fit, and it was like she tried to cram size 12 feet into a size 7 shoe. A week and a half later, when this particular customer came in to pick them up, she decided that she wanted to exchange them. Before she even tried them on. She felt that I had—get this!—RUSHED HER.

Goodness me.

I often have people asking me why I haven’t posted on my blog lately. Seriously, I get these questions 3, maybe 4 times a year. The demand for blog posts is becoming so overwhelming that I just can’t take it any more. Blogger even threatened to shut down my account if I didn’t keep posting! I must be popular.

Here’s what happened; I was talking on the phone to a very cheerful co-worker of mine who loves her job just…so so so much. It’s great, really, that she enjoys it as much as she does, but she doesn’t seem to understand people who don’t truly desire to spend all of their time at work. So anyway, we’re on the phone and she mentions that she’s read the blog, and she’s concerned because it seems that I don’t like my job very much. I think she actually told me that I seem angry about my job. I’m not too sure where she got that idea. She then started to wonder how our regional manager might respond to reading my blog. She wondered this out loud in the tone of voice that is usually reserved for wondering how one’s family will react upon hearing that one has been eating the mushrooms growing from the tree stump in the back yard for the last 6 months, and performing lewd acts to the lawn mower. (Not well, that’s the answer.)

Anyway, apparently I like my job enough to want to keep it (or I did at the time, anyway!) so I elected to stop posting.

Several months later, my regional manager asked me why I had stopped posting on my blog. After making a mess in my pants (I had a pen in my pocket that exploded) I explained the scenario. It turns out that my regional manager liked my blog! Huzzah! I was up to 5 whole readers!!! Then and there, I decided I would start posting again.

In 5 months.

Now that I’m working, going to school again full time, and my best friend’s man-of-honor, I figure this is the best time to start writing blog posts again. I’ve never had more free time!

So anyway, on to the actual post. Recently, my company mailed out a simply massive amount of coupons for some free cleaning products. They have actually been bringing people in, and many of these people really do buy glasses. The coupons are working. (Hi regional manager! I like my job!)

But we definitely have some people who clearly only want to receive the free product and leave, but feel incredibly awkward just handing me the coupon. So they make extremely awkward small talk as if they are really considering buying glasses. It goes something like this:

Customer. No, wait, NOT customer. Free Product Wanter: So hiiii, how are you?
Me: I’m great thanks, how are you?
FPW: I’m…I’m gooooood. So you guys, you, ah, sell glaaaases here, heyyy? (They always drag out their vowels. Seriously, do they think they sound casual? Because really, they just sound kind of stoned. Or like they have a van out in the parking lot with the windows painted black and full of candy and puppies.)

Me: Yup. Glasses…

FPW: So how, like, do you maaaake them? (Start fondling some frames.)

Me: Um, with machines?

FPW: Cooool, wow.

Me: Soooo…is there something I can help you with? (Note: At this point there are usually several legitimate customers who really want to give me money.)

FPW: I’m just kind of, you know, just kind of looking around. (Picks up a child’s frame, tries to cram it on their face. Realizing it doesn’t fit, places it gently in the middle of the floor.)

Me: Oh…kaaaay. Let me know if you need a hand at all. I’ll just go help these people out…

FPW: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, by the waaaaay, I have this coupon here…(starts drooling as they hand me a moist, crumpled coupon.)

Me: Oh really, I didn’t realize! (I totally realized.) Let me go grab that for you.

FPW: (grabs the free cleaner and immediately sprints out the door, shoving through the line of 47 some-odd people who have been waiting for me.)

Do these people think it’s rude to come in and NOT waste my time? Do they feel obligated to pretend they’re shopping? Do they think I’ll judge them incredibly harshly and talk about them on my blog if they don’t hide the fact that all they want is some free crap?

The good news is that we are starting to run out of the free cleaners. Oh my god, maybe that’s terrible news. No, NO! I don’t want to even THINK about how these people will react when they go through the whole fake-shopping thing only to realize that I don’t have anything to give them! It will be like those teenagers who go out after 10 on Halloween after people have blown out the candles in their jack-o-lanterns and turned off their porch lights, but they still go up and pound on the door and ring the doorbell and yell “trick-or treat” and start laughing like it’s some sort of joke, because it IS some sort of joke, because if you don’t give them treats then you will most definitely be tricked, like the kind of trick where you suddenly see a pumpkin flying through your living room window all evil glaring and shards of glass and oh god is it BLEEDING?!?!? Why is the pumpkin BLEEDING!?!?!?

Oh my goodness, I hope I get fired.

Time After Time

So today I was reading over the old “Seven Deadly Sins of Safeway Shoppers” (there are a lot more than seven!) and I realized that many of them apply to my current job too! Yay customer service! Here are a few of them, in no particular order (except numerical);

6) Thou shalt not tell me that someone did something for you last time that is against the rules. I said NO! Now SHH!

At Slaveway, people would become extremely offended if I wouldn’t use an expired coupon for fifty cents off a can of Funions, like, the amount of offended certain parents would get if you told them that their child wasn’t really that gifted, that they too eat paste and colour on the walls. Good heavens, the fit that these people would throw! “I got to use this coupon last week!” Yes! And last week is now in the past! I think these people have contact lenses stuck in their brains. It was actually a bit fun! Now people expect me to replace their $500 lenses for free two years after they purchased the glasses because their dog ate them yet again (see charts in “Eyeglass Economics 101”)

Usual Perpetrators: Trashy men wearing pit stained clothing, soccer moms.

9) Thou shalt not talk on thine cell phone while going through the till. The penalty is brain cancer.

AGH! This one still makes me insane! At Safeway when people came through my till talking on the phone, I would immediately perk up and become Friendliest Cashier Ever, a character I invented to piss people off in such a way that they couldn’t complain. I would start asking them how their day was going, if they found everything they were looking for, what they thought of the current weather, all with a grin on my face that would normally indicate that I had just experimented with a wide assortment of over the counter medications.

I actually once had a customer cover the mouthpiece of his phone and say “Excuse me, I’m on the phone,” to which I responded, “Excuse me, I’m doing my job.” (Friendliest Cashier Ever went away for about 2.5 seconds while I became Light You On Fire With The Power Of My Thoughts Cashier.)

(Another true story about Friendliest Cashier Ever; I was once refusing an expired coupon to an increasingly irate customer, who finally asked “Where the (expletive) do they find people like you?” to which Friendliest Cashier Ever responded “Aisle 12, next to the sugar!” The customer then expressed some more frustration to which Friendliest Cashier Ever responded “Aw, you have a great day too, sir!”)

Now my job requires me to have much more involved conversations with people, and when we’re sitting down talking about their glasses and they start babbling on their phones (about some undoubtedly important gossip or, as was the case with one gentleman this week, very important business sounding words like “Merger” and “Asset”), it takes an enormous amount of strength to stop my ears from bleeding.

I have two responses to this situation; one is to sit there staring at them while I wait to ask a question or measure something, causing the discomfort to increase exponentially on a second by second basis until finally the person has to hang up their phone (“I have to go…the glasses guy hasn’t blinked in about 17 minutes”). The other option is to get up and go make my own phone call (or answer the phone if it is ringing) and then drag out whatever Important Phone Conversation I am having until at least 5 minutes after the customer has hung up his or her phone and sat there waiting for me. Are you calling me passive aggressive?

Usual Perps; Important Executives! and “cool” older women.

17) Thou shalt not sneeze on me. Seriously, ew.

Does this one require further explanation?

Usual Perps; Gross People.

22) Thine cashier resides solely at the till. We know not where every last freaking item in the store is.

I would always have people coming up to me at the till asking for directions to some obscure item like “Jackelope Harfin Norgs”, and when I asked what the crap it was they would snort derisively and launch into a 4 minute explanation that left me even more confused and suggesting they look at NASA headquarters or something. I spent 8 hours a day standing at that till! How in the hell was I supposed to know where everything was? And they would actually get mad if I called for a general clerk because they came to ask me cause they didn’t feel like waiting. I’m seriously still very flummoxed by this behavior.

Now I have people stumbling into my store asking where other stores in the mall are, and about 50% of the time, I’m not making this up, they insist that I’m wrong. I will get out the mall map that I have in the store, point to it, and they will still tell me that I am incorrect. They don’t give me a reason for why they think I am wrong, they just inform me that I am, beyond all measure of a doubt, wrong.

Another 40% will immediately turn around and leave without saying a word.

Many times, it’s a store that I haven’t heard of or cannot immediately recall, and the person will inform me “Well you work in the mall.” Yep. I sure do. You live on Earth! Could you please direct me to Starbucks in North Carolina? You’re WRONG.

Usual Perps; Old “privileged” women

23) Thou shalt not let thine children run wild and free, unless I am allowed to kick them outeth of mine way.

This one works the same at Slaveway as it does at my current store; There are parents out there who see their children growing restless and think “Now seems like a great time to run some errands! First things first, everyone have your bowl of sugar in syrup!” Then they (the parents) drink some Nyquil and hit the roads!

First stop, the grocery store, where they buy ice cream, frozen chicken nuggets and pizza, frozen fruit (to put on cake), and all of this shopping gives the kids plenty of time and space to run up and down the aisles throwing things at one another (did I mention that this is on a Saturday?) while the parents stumble around in a Nyquil induced (I pray) stupor. Don’t forget that the kids need that little burst of energy to keep them going though the rest of the mid-morning, so they have a healthy snack of hot chocolate and Lucky Charms with the pesky wheat-bits removed, and then they head off to the mall to buy some glasses!

There, the kids are free to demolish frames and run in and out of the store playing tag while the parents yell at the employees to hurry right the heck up because their groceries are melting in the car. Trust me, parents, we are going as fast as we can humanly go.

It’s nice to have this continuity from one job to the other!

My Baby Takes The Morning Train...

I take the train to work, and the (roughly) 3000 feet between the train station and my store can contain some of the most frustrating experiences of my day. Let’s take a look at some of the people I happen upon;

-Gaggles of teenaged girls:

How is it that two or three teens happen to take up five and a half square miles of space? No matter how you try to get around them (they are, of course, walking at about the speed of glaciers), they somehow manage to be in the space that you were trying to walk through! So you’ll dart around to the other side and suddenly there’s another teenager there! My theory is that teenage girls don’t exist in the 3 dimensions that you and I (and everyone else in all the land) are aware of. They exist in like, 5 or 6 dimensions, so we can really only see about 40% of any teenage girl at any one time. Each one seems to exist in about 5 different places at once. Laws of physics be damned.

-Pedestrians who stand on the street waiting for the light to change:

I know that this has little to no effect on me whatsoever, but these people simply baffle me. We will be approaching an intersection, seeing that red “do not walk” sign illuminated, and both of us will be fully cognizant of the traffic cruising through the intersection. I will stop a few feet away from the curb, lest an errant rock or automobile come flying toward me, but the other person will keep right on going, and step off the curb, and only then will they stop. Cars and trucks (and errant rocks) will be zooming by them, honking (not the rocks), and missing the individual by mere inches. Is this some form of lame death-defiance? Is this how they get their rocks off? (Nyuck! Rocks. Get it?) I simply do not understand.

-Solicitors:

This section needs to be broken down into a series of sub-sections. Yep. I’m that insane!

i) Religious Enthusiasts;

While it’s easy enough to get away from religious enthusiasts who may ring your doorbell (one option being to close the door, or the other option, if you’re my younger sister, is to answer the door in a bikini in the middle of February caressing knives against your skin. Whatever works for you in your current circumstance), it is substantially more difficult to get away from them while out in public. See, they tend to follow you, and no amount of protesting will get them to leave you alone. Which is why I have taken up yelling at them that I worship the Prince of Darkness and that one day he will reign fire upon this Earth, and I will rejoice. That usually gets them to leave me alone. One of them threw Holy Water at me.

ii)The random guy who I always think is going to murder me;

This large (not to be racist) African fella works at an actual store (I think) selling actual hip-hop style clothing (I think) and routinely leaps out at passers-by from behind the bushes thrusting flyers in our general direction. He usually does this at night while wearing dark clothing, and his tone of voice usually indicates that if you do not take a flyer, your family will be receiving your various limbs in carefully wrapped packages delivered via Fed-Ex for weeks to come. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate here, but I am seriously not making any of this up. Seriously. And since he is currently lurking behind me (I can only presume), I should probably keep my limbs intact and encourage you to shop at his store which, despite the number of flyers I have taken, I cannot recall the name of. Ow! Give me back my leg! I need that!

iii) Canadian Red Cross Volunteers;

I know I’m going to sound like a charity hating jerk-wad here, but I seriously hate the Red Cross specifically because of these wholesome, cheery, peppy pieces of garbage who accost me on almost a daily basis. They’ll be set up in twos or threes on opposite sides of the street (so there’s no escape unless you leap in front of a large truck), goofing around with one another, being all wholesome and crap, and as a group of people from the train station approach, they will perk up and start sauntering toward the crowd. The best way to avoid them is to plant yourself in the middle of the crowd of people and sacrifice those on the outskirts, and sometimes fist fights will erupt among those struggling to not be accosted by the Red Cross Volunteers. I once saw a nun kick out the crutches from a teen with a broken leg in one of these skirmishes. His butt needed to be sacrificed for the greater good.

But sometimes you wind up as the unfortunate soul sacrificed to the RCV, and the conversation ensues thusly;

RCV: “How are you, buddy?” (She has like, 945 teeth in that huge grin)
Me: “Leave me alone, please!”
RCV: “Do you wanna talk about the Canadian Red Cross?” (Are there more teeth growing??)
Me: “I have to get to work! Please, leave me be!” (At this point I’m sprinting)
RCV: “Hey, those are some awesome sunglasses you have on! Can I try them?” (This is not made up.)
Me: “They’re prescription… I’m going to work now!” (Still not made up)
RCV: “Hey, maybe we have the same prescription! Can I see?” (STILL not made up)
Me: “Oh my God, I’m calling the police!” (Made up)
RCV: “Well have an awesome day, pal!”

Part of me died just writing about them.

-Indecisive Coffee People:

Some people go to coffee places for coffee. Other people go to coffee places to get in line, chat loudly with their friends for several minutes about something incredibly personal (“I started menopause last week! Sob!”), get to the front of the line only to realize they have forgotten where they are (“I’ll have a burrito!” “You’re at Second Cup.”) and only then start looking at what the coffee place has to offer. Many times, this period of intense decision making involves questions such as “Is the Iced Mocha cold?”, “Where is this ‘Ethiopian Blend’ from?” “What’s your smallest size? Small? Small is your smallest? Can I have an extra small? No? No, you don't have that? No extra small? Ok then, I’ll get a large.”

In some instances though, the employee is aware that the ten people standing in line may start getting upset, and since she would rather not spend her afternoon cleaning up blood, asks the next person in line what she can get for them. This, of course, offends the Indecisive Coffee Person so much that they demand immediate service, and vomit out the last words that they saw on the menu, taste the drink, and then inform the employee their drink is awful and they want a refund.

-Couples:

Good lord I hate couples so so SO freaking much. What is it that encourages two people to slowly walk hand in hand down a crowded hallway in a mall, forcing other people to fight it out to get around them? I have problems with these people for several reasons:

1) The mall is not romantic! It’s a mall for crying out loud! What is it about the mall that makes you want to stroll and hold hands? The lame music blaring out from generic emo store after generic emo store? The Bell Booth employees telling each other stories at a decibel that could destroy reinforced concrete? The burnt-grease aromas wafting from the food court? Seriously!

2) They always spread apart while holding hands. It’s as if they were actually playing with crazy glue, got their hands stuck together, and are now forced to walk through the mall hand in hand while trying to retain as much of their individual bubbles as they can. And for some reason, I always restrain myself from playing Red Rover with them, and I hate them for that.

3) Like teenage girls, they exhibit the same glacier-like speed of movement and somehow manage to exist in 5 places at once.

As I’m sure there are some I have forgotten, I encourage you to post comments reminding me of the other stupid people I have forgotten about. I also think that this post is getting a little long for certain items, such as those who treat the escalator like a ride, people who get off the escalator and immediately stop causing everybody else on the escalator to panic and scramble backwards, and possibly fall down the escalator and get those sharp teeth jabbed into their skulls as they bounce down the moving death traps, and groups of people who think it’s appropriate to stand in front of doors having a conversation.

iGlass Economics 101

It seems that people have a skewed relationship with how much money they spend on certain items versus how much care should be taken with said items. Many seem to think that the more money they spend on a pair of glasses, the more indestructible this makes them. Following is a graph to illustrate this point:



However, the amount of care taken with said high expense items creates an inverse correlation, meaning that the more money they spend, the worse they treat their glasses:



It needs to be noted that this rule only applies to very specific items. Most individuals would not normally spend tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle (let’s say, for argument’s sake, a BMW) only to drive it off a cliff, or use it to demolish an old garage, or allow his or her child to drive it simply because the child wants to, and then go back to the BMW dealership and berate the salesperson because they spent $100 000 and the car should have been able to deal with the high speed impact on the boulders hundreds of feet below, and they now expect a full refund. What are you talking about? Of course they didn’t bring the car in so that the salesperson could see what sort of carnage (get it!?) was wrought. The salesperson should just take the customer who drove his car off the cliff at his word and give him a new one!

See? That sounds crazy! The expectation here is that the more money is spent on the BMW, the more care is taken of said BMW.

Glasses, however, are treated in a much more indelicate fashion. Following are some examples of the damage I have seen done to glasses:

• People adjusting their own glasses, heating them using hair dryers. (If you have never opened the hood of a car, would your first crack at carburetor repair be with your 6 month old Lexus?) Heat, by the way, destroys antiglare.

• Mothers allowing their children to play with their glasses (although seeing my sister with my nephew, I now kind of understand that one. New mothers don’t sleep a lot, and when the kid wants to play with something, he or she will definitely get his or her hands on that something. May as well just give it up willingly.)

• Glasses dropped in a garburator.

• Glasses cleaned in a dishwasher (I wish I was kidding.)

• Countless dog-on-glasses maulings (with several of them being the second, third, or even fourth incident for the same person with the same dog. They say old dogs can’t learn new tricks?)

And most of the time, the customer comes back to our store with purposeful stride and announces that we owe them a new pair of glasses or they want their money back. We hear the story of how this is the worst pair of glasses they have ever owned, how this sort of thing has never happened to them before and how we told them they are 100% scratch proof and demand to know why they should bring the glasses in, they’re in the garbage disposal dammit, they want some new ones!

Now, several of the statements made in the previous paragraph need to be dissected further;

-“scratch proof coating”; This should protect against your dog’s teeth? Really? REALLY? Your dog has chewed your couch, coffee table, TV, bed, toilet, sink, bathtub, and house foundation, but the tiny piece of metal and plastic for which you paid $500 that holds lenses on your face should be able to stand up to them because of the “scratch proof coating” that is applied to the lenses only? I must be underestimating the power of this stuff, and I think that NASA should consider coating the Space Shuttle with it.

-“this sort of thing has never happened before”; For those who say this, I would like to respond “Have you ever cleaned your glasses in the dishwasher before?” Of course this has never happened before! It’s because you’ve never done this to your glasses before!

-“100% scratch proof”; When selling glasses, we actually correct people who say “scratch proof coating” by saying “There’s no such thing as scratch proof. They are scratch resistant. “ The usual response? “Whatever. You know what I mean.” Do you know what you mean?

So what is it that causes this inversion of money spent / care taken with glasses? Scientists have posited several theories, but the leading theory goes something like this: Eyeglass lenses focus x-rays beamed to Earth by black holes directly into the cerebral cortex, causing the wearer of the lenses to suddenly go insane and want to destroy them. It is not uncommon to see these people bashing their faces into tree trunks or sticking their glasses into a blender. As soon as the glasses are destroyed, the customer loses all memory of why they thought it best to ruin their spectacles. The memories are sometimes replaced with something much more mundane, such as “I was wearing them and they suddenly exploded,” or “I took them out of the case and they were just sitting there in eighteen thousand pieces.”

Bear in mind that the researchers who came up with this theory also like to inhale helium on a regular basis.

Let's Try This Again

I've often thought about returning to blogging. I’m always thinking of the hilarious stories I could write, the amusing anecdotes, the tall tales, the--ok I'm out of ideas. But seriously, I do think about this blog, and then I simply don't follow through. But now that my Auntie Di (http://www.ingredients-for-health.com/) and my sister Nicole (http://functional-fresh-fabulous.blogspot.com/) have both started blogs, I feel inadequate. I mean, I was the first one in my family to start one. But alas, they have beaten me with their consistency (both having written for more than two whole days!)

But I'm back, and this time I promise you readers, all 3 or maybe even 4 of you, that I too can write with consistency! When Nicole or Auntie Di post, I will feel shamed and compelled into posting as well.

I figure my first post back should be one of the classic struggles we in the eyewear industry endure daily, the passage of time. While some people feel that time has passed far more quickly than it has, (“Where are my glasses? It’s been weeks since I ordered them!” “You just left here an hour ago!”) others feel the opposite. These others are always, without a doubt, contact lens wearers.

You see, in Alberta the rules are quite strict. If your current prescription is more than two years old, we cannot sell you contacts. It’s mostly so that your eyes don’t rot and fall out of your head, but it’s also a little bit because we’re jerks like that. A conversation one might overhear goes like this;

Employee: “I’m sorry, but it looks like your prescription expired last month. Have you had a new eye exam done since then?”

Customer: “I just bought contacts six months ago.”

Employee: “Yes. (Pause.) Yes you did.” (At this point, we usually wait to see if the logic has sunk in. It, invariably, has not.)

Customer: “So I wanna buy the same ones.”

Employee: “But now your prescription is expired.”

Customer: “But I just bought contacts.”

Employee: “Yes. Six months ago. And your prescription expired one month ago.”

Customer (quite indignant, as clearly the employee is the idiot): “Then how could I buy my contacts last time?”

Employee: “Because last time your prescription was still valid. Now…it is…not.”

You see, the average contact lens wearer does not understand that in the time that has elapsed since their last purchase, events of many types have transpired. One of these events was the expiration of their contact lens prescription. This conversation can go back and forth for quite some time, with one or both people becoming quite irate.

Customer (sighing): “Well then how do I order contacts?”

Employee: “You need to have an eye exam done, and then a contact lens fitting.”

Customer: “Why do I have to have a fitting done? I know how to put them in.” (Please note that the employee has said nothing here about how to put them in. Shall we applaud that the customer still knows how to put them in? I'm honestly flummoxed as to how to respond to this statement.)

Employee: “We need to make sure your contacts still fit your eyes properly with the new prescription.”

Customer: “I’ve never had to have that done before!”

Employee (showing the file): “You actually had one done two years ago. And two years before that. And two years before that. And two years before that. And another two years before that. In fact, you have had these appointments done every two years since 1990. You’ve had ten—TEN—of these appointments in the past! And you don’t REMEMBER?”

Customer: “Oh. Yeah. I forgot.”

At this point the employee usually has to be restrained by several burly gentlemen.

So why is it that contact lens customers are usually so, shall I say, forgetful? One common theory is that one or more contact lenses have actually slid up the customer’s eyeball and has been sucked along the edge of the optic nerve and is now lodged in the person’s parietal lobe like some sort of beaver dam, with large quantities of time building and building up until one day the lens caves in, and a massive flood of time bursts forth, flooding through the whole brain, at which point the person comes in to the store and asks “Where are my glasses? It’s been weeks since I ordered them!”