A Farewell to Customer Service

So the thing about customer service is that it's a universal. I can talk about my job with any person who has ever worked customer service and we will always have something to talk about because we will have all the same customers. Not necessarily the same people, but since we all know that customers aren't people the archetypes will be the same.

Everyone who ever works with customers will have the psycho who can't understand why you won't violate state or federal law to get what they want. They'll have the person who wants you to bend space and time to get them something that you physically have no control over. The people who yell at you over company policies like you have some control over them. The people who expect you to be psychic about their special things (allergies, the fact they don't want the handles of their soda cases punched in). The people who hand you copies of Watchtower magazine and give you Chick Tracts. These are universal truths.

I had a customer today who I have never had before in my years of working a register. This one was a special breed all her own.

I first encounter Dingbat because it's 15 minutes to close and she is standing in the juice aisle bent over in half not moving. I ask her if she maybe needs help because I'm kind of worried she's not entirely okay. She tells me she's fine, she's just reading the juices to see which one is on her WIC. I am a little perturbed but tell her that the Juicey Juice is all okay.
Finally, a couple minutes after I make the finally "we're closed!" announcement, she gets to the register. I look through her vouchers and realize she has a pound of cheese on the voucher she didn't get. Since I am a good person, I ask her if she wanted the cheese. She's starting to freak me out, because she's mumbling to herself a lot but she goes off to get her cheese. She walked down an aisle and bumped in to the meat case and just stopped and started staring at it. The manager went and got her and told her where the cheese was and she finally came up and I got everything rung up and put through. This took 15 minutes. Then she stood there for another 5 minutes asking us why we didn't

This is my personal bubble, you are currently inside of it

So I'm fairly sure my new boss is insane. I only recently started this job after leaving Ice Cream Palace for greener pastures when one of my co-workers got me the interview for my current job as a cashier for Food Mart. I like my job. I like being a cashier. I'm good at being a cashier. I get to engage with people for approximately 5-10 minutes and then they go on their way and sometimes tell me nice things about myself. Some of my favorites:
"You have very good customer service." Aww thanks! Customers like this are one of the main reasons I don't randomly decide to give up worldly posessions and become a nun!
"You know, you're really quite pretty." Um, thank you man I just met who whispered this to me and leaned in as far as he could. That's...only mildly creepy!
"Girl, you're a trip! You've got a great personality!" Lady, you're quite possibly crazy according to one of my co-workers, but you're fun and I love you!
"That's a great...necklace!" Uh, thanks. Now please take all your purchases and leave the store and stop coming back through my line. And for God's sake, stop staring at my chest, dude!

Those are just a few of the gems. You also have the people who get irrationally angry at you because they couldn't find the Nesquick or their brand of beer because it was out of stock.
"They blamed it on the vendor, but you know, the vendor doesn't own the store!" Well shit dude, neither do I! If I owned this store, do you really think I'd be dealing with your sorry ass?

Whatevs, I have my rage. Everyone who works in the service industry does. Or else they go slowly insane. Anyway, so now I'm working at Food Mart which is a nice large corporation. I'd forgotten how much different a chain store is from a small business. My manager is seriously starting to freak me out. I haven't really worked a full shift with him since I started, but last night I closed with him. He kept making calls for "Security" to scan the store and "rollback cameras." The thing is, we don't actually have a security team. And I've never seen a control room for the cameras. He does it every 30 minutes or so. Last night, though, he called for them to report back to him. Then all of a sudden he's got his phone to his ear, but he was standing not 10 feet away from me the entire time and I never heard it ring or saw him answer it. I suspect he was talking to nobody.

Maybe I'll get offered a better job by one of my nice customers.