The Intriguing Illogical Ideas of I

Work Stories

So, as you may or may not know, recently I've acquired a job at a major retail chain store. I've been meaning to write this chapter for ages, but I've kinda been a bit slow. No surprises, a job in this industry has many interesting stories that come along with it.

So yesterday I was working, as I do, and it was a 7-hour shift, which is quite long if you don't know because you have to be on your feet the whole time and you only get half an hour for lunch.

It's getting pretty late on a Sunday arvo, so I'm just standing at the Registers and eventually, a woman comes through with her daughter, who I'm gonna call Ms 4.

So Ms 4 is wearing one of the onesies that we still in the kidswear section, and the mother just passes me a tag. She tells me Ms 4 'had an accident' and she needed to pay for it.

This wasn't uncommon, and a lot of people actually come up to the registers and just hand me the tags for things they're already wearing. So I just nodded and went through the transaction. However, what I failed to notice was that the mother had placed Ms 4's PEE-SOAKED PANTS on the table in front of my register.

Then, she asks me to put it in a bag. And I was just like, 'Oh hell no!' so I passed her a bag to bag it, however, that didn't stop the pee puddle that was on my register table.

Most of the staff have gone home by now, and it's just me and my supervisor at the register. So I waited for them to leave the store, and turned to my supervisor and asked if he had any cleaning products.

She just passed me a cloth and made me clean it.

Which was not fun.

Another fun story was when, earlier in the same shift, I was tidying the kidswear section when this woman walks up to me and asks if I have any more plates.

So I asked her which plates she wanted to buy, and she showed me the pile. And then she tells me that she wants 30 of these plates. They were $1 each.

So I force a smile and I head out the back to get her plates. And just my luck, the box with the plates she wanted was right up the top of the shelf, so I was on the stock ladder, bringing the plates down two at a time.

Then I was greeted with my next problem: 30 plates are kinda heavy. So I had to go and find my manager and ask him to show me how to set up one of the stock-carrying trolleys, and after loading the plate piles onto them, I headed out to find the customer.

She was so surprised that I actually counted them out for her, but seemed thankful. I then told her I'd escort her to the registers when she starts shaking her head and tells me that she wants to put them on lay-by.

So I put on my customer-service smile (god how I hate customer-service me) and I took her to the lay-by desk. One of my other co-workers was there, so I just pushed the plates in front of her and left.

That's in lay-by's hands now.

For the record, it was a $30 purchase. I don't even know if that meets lay-by minimums.

I didn't care. I'd wasted half on hour on this lady with her plates so it wasn't my responsibility any longer.

But other than those fun stories, I really do enjoy having a job. There's good music (When the PA isn't broken) and you meet loads of cool people and the food court at the shopping centre has a Subway, a McDonalds, and a KFC, not to mention a place that makes the best roast beef sandwiches in the world.

Plus, the pay is pretty good.

Employment is great.