Ha! I never had to . Never Forgotten is my first, last and only.

the price of cigarettes

i started smoking (which was stupid), and Parliment Full Flavors are pretty expensive. I hate taxes.

Your lucky, you can't imagine how many jerk wads exist out there who abuse their forum powers and privileges, it can be down right disheartening and discouraging to even bother seeking any thread out to go to in the first place.

I've had my fair share of forum troubles in the past, though for much of time I've usually wound up being ignored in such places, which is possibly a good thing. Before finding my way to Never Forgotten, I used to a hang out on a fairly extensive forum which was ostensibly very civilsed (in that members rarely felt the need to yell at each other with the caps lock on, and other such nonsense), but once you'd scratched the surface actually turned out to be pretty damned unpalatable. The atmosphere was extremely cliquey, with very little effort being made to welcome the newer members (who nonetheless still came there in their droves) and the moderators were seemingly unwilling to get their hands dirty in the interests of members who were outsiders to these cliques. There was little overwhelming flaming as such, but the place was nonetheless a breeding ground of subtle but sarcastic and cutting remarks blatantly designed to get one another's backs up and cause arguments, with particularly vicious wars ensuing over which members had the greatest merchandise collections. After a couple of months, it was becoming a very dispiriting place to spend time in. As I've implied, I mostly wound up being ignored (to the extent where, if I made a point in a thread, someone else would make the very same point a few posts later with no reference at all to the fact that I had already made it), so I very much doubt that anyone there has noticed that I'm gone.

To let the babies have their bottles would be my advice, Mr. M. If you're feeling at all unhappy with how a forum operates, then stepping away and seeing how much power such folks actually have in the grand scheme of things is often a pretty effective antidote.

Well, I just posted in the "post whatever is on your mind" thread about the crazyness that is work. Then I started getting into "what ticks you off" thread territory, so I decided to come here to vent.

People coming into the store right before/after closing ticks me off. Okay, if you know exactly what you need and can be out of our store quickly, fine, whatever. Do your thing. But people that come in 2 minutes before closing and start browsing, or people that come in after closing can not cut it with me. You have all day to get out here. I understand if you work and stuff, but come on...2 minutes before closing?

And this may sound like "all I care about is myself," but these people have NO IDEA how long the book keeper is forced to stay at the store until after closing (yes, I book keep). About two weeks ago, these two older ladies walked into the store (we were closed: the "open" sign was off, the automatic door was turned off), they PUSHED the automatic door opened, looked at me and said, "Your door is broken?" I was like, "Um...no, we're just closed." Then they acted like I should let them get whatever they want, but I wouldn't let my guard down (I already had all the drawers pulled and was in the process of doing the paperwork for the last cashier...I was not going to pull out another drawer and make myself do MORE paperwork). Dude, I had to go to school the next morning, and I was already due to stay for more than an hour after closing to do paperwork and lock up; I didn't need these ladies making me any more late than I already was. Certain people think the world revolves around them and that we should open the store back up because they need something so badly ::) Yeah, there's a grocery store open right down the street where you can get practically all the same items.

Oh my. I could write a novel with all the things that tick me off about work. I will...be back sometime to do that ;)

If they need whatever that badly they should've gotten it earlier. "Closed" is not a hard concept to understand. :P

M'dear, I think we're in the same business, possibly company. Pet store, eh? Yup, it all sounds all too familiar.

I hate it when customers seem to think we're the ones who created every single thing we carry. They expect us to have every ingredient in every food and treat memorized, know what country every thing was made in (we have a lot of people actually boycotting EVERYTHING from China right now), and know how everything works and why. And then they get irritated when we say "Well, let's just see what the packaging says". Come on people, maybe if I owned every pet we supply for and got everything we carry at one time or other to use for those pets I'd have better input. But as I don't, and am not 213 year old (the time it would take to become better familiar with all the millions of things we carry), I can only give decent input on the products I have used, and only minimal input on things I've heard great things about.

Another thing that really ticks me off about work is a week ago there was an update at the company's intra-net site stating that the employees can no longer wear any holiday accessories like Santa hats or reindeer antlers because it doesn't look professional, and the customers won't recognize employees (despite the uniform and name badge? duh!). If you ask me, when I go into a store and see someone wearing a Santa hat, I usually assume they do work there, and it doesn't look unprofessional at all. Being cheery and trying to have some fun during this most stressful and busy time of year for us retail drones is in fact very professional! And to add to the stupidness, the update at the site went on to say that although they want the employees to have a fun holiday season, it's more important to help the customers. Ok, so apparently wearing a Santa hat or a headband with reindeer antlers takes our attention away from the customers. Whatever! If anything, it makes us more approachable, and happier so in ways we might help them even better! Ugh, corporate don't have a clue. I wish I could go down there and kick them all in the shins.

Yeah, I could write a novel too. But......I won't. :slybendy:

Oh my gaaaawwwwwd, that is all too familiar! "Excuse me, does this have *insert inconveniently long name of ingredient here* in it?" Well, let's just look at the igredients list. "Oh, I coulda done that." Uh, duh!::)

I know this is a bit off topic, but what pet store company do you work for, Lynnie? I work for Pet Supplies Plus.

Exactly! A lot of my customers actually get annoyed at having to read the packaging though, too. They expect to save time by not reading the packaging at all. I'm all like "I'm sorry, but if you think you can memorize everything like that, I'd like to see you do it!" (of course I don't actually say that, but I know you know what I mean ;)) Yeah, I'd like to see them do our job.

Haha, I have sooooo many stories of stupid/arrogant/annoying/irritating customers! I could share forever. ::)

I wish I had had access to a place like this back when I was in retail, it would have helped with the hurting...