Retail.

(Disclaimer: This is not a rant about my job itself. I like my job. I work with good people and it pays nicely. With that in mind, let's continue.)

As you may know I work in retail. Yes that job that almost everyone does at least once. You may also know, if you have ever worked in retail, that there are certain customers you wish just would not come back. Even we have those.

There's the old man in the wheelchair (That he seems not to need as he trots around it and pulls it along with his legs) hung with his entire life attached to strings. I have no problem with this but it's the first thing you recognise to identify him. He will mumble questions to you, then get very angry when you ask him politely to repeat himself so you can answer. He then uses the next ten minutes, in front of the till (or right next to it) , to hang his shopping bag on the back of his wheelchair, faff around with his strings and sit down, looking at everyone as if they've personally offended him.
I have no problem with the quirks people get in old age, that's fine, but the intentional rudeness just bothers me.

The second is a lad who comes in and hangs around the pick'n'mix, takes some, puts it in a cup, decants it into another cup, walks off, returns and decants it into another cup, fills up the cup, decants it again, walks away, puts a few in his pocket, puts a lid on the cup, walks off, picks it up again, decants it, eats some, closes the cup... lather, rinse, repeat. I'd say it was a psychological issue and you can't blame him for not understanding that taking sweets is stealing, but he won't do it if someone's around. He makes sure no one's looking, gets jumpy when the staff are around and makes sure he LOOKS as if he wants to legitimately buy. That takes a lot of thought and understanding and it drives me nuts because I know the bleeding hearts would scream if we asked him to leave.

Next is a general one. The types that will ask you to fetch items, price check items (That we can only do on a none logged in till), discount items (why should we?) all in the same transaction as the line grows longer and longer behind them.

It just makes life hard for everyone.

My next little complaint is about technology. The tills, oh sweet gods the tills. When they work they work well. When they work. When they don't they're slow, unresponsive, and sometimes simply crash. And all the while I have to apologise. And the scanners decide when, where and what they will scan. They could scan an item from across the room, but you try and scan a large bar code from an inch away and nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job and 99.9% of customers are polite, nice, considerate people, but some things are just irritating. Thank goodness for decent, nice, staff.

So everyone, have you ever experienced an irritating customer, a pain in the butt checkout system or even a rude shop assistant?