Customer Service / Work Time Fun

I spent 15 years in the grocery store business.

I started at 14 as a bag boy, the easiest damn job in the world. Bag people’s shit fast, don’t smash the bread, chase carts, and load old ladies’ groceries like your life depends on it.

At 16, my store manager gives me a choice: cashier (which I was already doing) or chicken fryer.
So naturally, like the idiot I was, I picked chicken fryer. I lasted three days. The assistant deli manager asks what I think of the job. I tell her the truth: “It’s a job.” Apparently that was the wrong answer. Next day I check the handwritten schedule, and I’m not on it. That what-the-fuck feeling hits hard. I go upstairs and ask the store manager what’s going on. He tells me the deli manager said I cursed her out and I’m fired. Bullshit. I tell him I hadn’t even met her, but if she wanted to accuse me, I’d gladly go make it true. He tells me to let it go. Says my record speaks for itself and the front-end manager wants me back up front as a cashier. Would I take it? I’m 16, pissed off, and broke, so yeah, I shake his hand. I think that’s the exact moment I became the biggest asshole in my small town. For the next few years, I made it my personal mission to torment the hell out of deli manager who lied about me. Not proud… but also not sorry. After graduation, I bounced to a brake factory until it shut down. Couldn’t find work, so back to the grocery store I go, this time as a night manager. Then I had the bright idea to work an office job there because apparently I hated myself and had no life. Then a better offer at another location as an office manager. Left that for the factory again. Then somehow ended up working the factory andnight managing at my old store at the same time. Because why not. Eventually they offer me store manager. I leave the factory for the money and walk straight into a store that’s already in the red. I tried to save it. I really did. But after seeing everything the public could throw at a human being over 15 years, I finally went back to the factory. and that’s where this comes from.

These are the stories — the crazy ones, the dumb ones, the “there’s no way this actually happened” ones — from working with the public.

I call it Customer Service / Work Time Fun.

So sit back. Relax. See what makes you laugh.
And if you’ve got a story, share it.

Because I love a good customer service horror story.