April 6, 2021
Sergeant K
Opened the store on Saturday. Well, almost opened the store. Pulled into lot with another car already there. This usually drives me nuts. Remembered it’s baseball season now; no need to be crabby.
Walked to entrance when customer rolled down window.
“So 9 o’clock then?” they asked me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Is it just a drop off?”
“No, I need to ship something,” they said.
“Oh okay. Just give me a few minutes,” I said, kindly. Was early for work for the first time since 2002 and had left myself a couple of things to do from closing the night before.
Wordlessly, customer rolled up window and sped out of the lot like I had told them they were ugly and their kids were, too. Never came back. Didn’t particularly feel bad that I stated what time we opened and confirmed what they already knew.
Boomers, man. Most entitled generation ever.
Was happy I’d held my time boundary as the Master computer station did not recognize the mouse or keyboard anymore, ghosting them unnecessarily overnight. Used touch screen to open station as no other station will open until the Master graces us with its presence.
Planned to figure out the problem at some point by using my advanced I.T. skills, a repertoire that includes rebooting computer, plugging and unplugging the USB, and googling, “The Master is being a bitch. Fix?”
Don’t actually try that search, by the way. You’ll end up on an FBI watch list.
Photo of the Day!
At first, this seemed like the worst cornhole board ever made. At second, I realized that the board is for a company focused on cow health. At third, I thought, ‘Why the eye mask?’
Large contingent of customers wanted to lament online shopping for minutes at a time. This may sound simple. But “minutes” is measured in dog time when someone is complaining about shopping online. In fact, I would venture to guess if you want to really connect with someone and just can’t find anything to say about the weather, I would suggest changing it to “So. How about that Amazon Prime, huh? Free shipping to you but not free shipping back because the company is based in China and they conveniently hide that to get you to think you’re getting a great deal on that t-shirt but they sent you a 5X instead of a small? Crazy.”
Customer commented on my hat and asked what team it was for. “Tampa Bay Rays,” I responded.
“Oh! That makes me think about Japanese baseball!” he exclaimed.
While there was a semi-logical reason for that exclamation, it came after I squinted and said, “Why?” without meaning to.
Great Stories In Trying To Get Away With Something
Customer told me we had scanned his QR code off his phone before. I said, “No, we haven’t.”
He said, “If you say so,” in that tone of voice that would have landed me a good amount of time in trouble when I was younger.
“Private Ryan, have we ever been able to scan a QR code off someone’s phone?” I asked, replicating every movie where the drill sergeant asks some other officer a question designed to make a lesser soldier feel stupid.
“Not even once,” he replied, almost without pausing what he was doing.
“Not even once,” I repeated to the customer.
Perhaps I’ve made too many Field jokes.
Another customer came in to get their money back because Private Ryan typed the wrong zip code on his package so the shipment went to Alabama instead of New York.
It is rare for one of us to screw up a zip code because our system does not allow us to type in city names. (A lot of people don’t know what zip codes are, by the way. The number of people who think their zip code is their phone number’s area code is much higher than you’d expect.) It’s a pretty easy “match A to B” thing.
Fun fact: A lot of states have cities with the same name as other states. Occasionally these two forces collide.
This customer wrote their return authorization number as the zip code. So yeah, it went to Alabama. And no, we won’t give your money back for that. We are more than willing to take the blame for what is ours, but man do people need to abandon the whole “The customer is always right” nonsense, if they haven’t already.
It was 81 degrees in April in Minnesota. While I am not one to instigate weather discussion, I also hate being hot. Private Ryan does, too. So we complained in a multitude of ways about it. I would sneak off to the bathroom to run cold water on my hands and arms just to try to cool down. We were both wearing jeans and my entire body was stupid levels of hot.
At one point I told him I asked the Colonel to run me an ice bath for when I get home. He said, “Do you take a lot of ice baths?” Which led to a conversation about ice baths.
Do you know what we absolutely never discussed?
Turning on the air conditioning. At the end of the day, he looked at me and said, “Why didn’t we just turn on the air?” And I looked at him and said, “I have no idea. Why didn’t we ever consider it? Or just do it?” Perplexed, we realized we were either getting old and senile or are just way too flighty to focus on solving a problem without getting distracted by playing with a tape gun or our super new industrial stapler.
“I’m sorry I made you work in a sweatshop today,” he said as I was leaving.
I know. You’re sitting there asking, “Why didn’t you wear shorts?”
Because my legs are translucent and I haven’t shaved since November, okay? Okay.
Quote of the Day!
“Can I get a flat rate envelope?”
Another customer told Private Ryan that he would be the perfect person to teach everyone about the horrors of the vaccine and the “truth” that Trump will become President again soon and Biden has secretly been dead for a decade and we’re just seeing his stunt double. Anyway, this quote is why that’s a terrible idea. Private Ryan is a customer service genius, but he has no problem whatsoever fucking with people in a subtle, harmless way. Also he’s not insane and doesn’t believe any of that, but that’s definitely just a sub reason.
“Sure. What company?”
*stared at me blankly* “I don’t know what it’s called. The American… American…”
“The American Postal Association?” Private Ryan said.
“Yeah. That one.”
Baseball is back so I need to go off into my cubbyhole where it’s the only thing that exists now. Cheers, everyone!
Colonel C
Bought these at Menard’s. Am genuinely surprised they are not outlawed by the Geneva Convention as a war crime. Have taken away all of her credit cards. Harsh, yes, but must be done.
