(no subject)

[catslash]

Since I started regularly reading customers_suck, I haven't yet felt the need to post (which is amazing, since I work at a gas station/convenience store/sandwich shop smack in the middle of Tourist Central), but . . . wow, did I get a winner today.

Crossposted to customers_suck.

Me: Sugar Magnolia
C: Dumbass who was drunk, stoned, retarded, or maybe all three. Seriously. Something was wrong with this guy.

The customer walks up to the counter, which has two registers, and chance ordains that I get to wait on him. He has a six pack of beer and a winning scratch ticket worth a couple of bucks.

C: "I'm gong to pay for everything in change. I'm a pain in the ass, aren't I?" Yes. Yes, you are.

Then, he proceeds to trawl his pockets - or something, I honestly don't know where he was keeping it all - and pulls out several pounds of change, all of which gets dumped in a massive pile on the counter.

. . .

This is way more than he needs for the beer. He says something unhelpful about wanting all the lottery tickets, then mentions "munchies" and wanders off, which ratchets my annoyance up another notch. I proceed to pick out enough quarters to pay for the beer.

I take care of a couple more customers, all of whom are impressed by the huge pile of change.

He comes back, without anything new to ring up, so I shove his change at him. He brings up the lottery tickets, and some patient questioning gets him to explain that he wants the same kind he brought in.

C: "As many as you have."

Now, this may be a serious pile of change, and it may be composed mainly of quarters and dimes, but - yeah, not happening. Further irritated, I just pull off a bunch and ring them up.

Me: "That's X dollars." *points at change* "Go ahead and count it out."

C: "Oh, I can't count it." *pushes it back toward me*

Disbelieving, I make him repeat himself. Then I place the tickets out of his reach. Now pissed, I stupidly start to count instead of telling him to take a hike and come back when he's rolled his goddamn change.

I take revenge by counting slowly as I possibly can. Which, okay, was rude to my fellow cashier, since he had to deal with the other customers, but Chris said afterward that he didn't care. Sadly, I don't think the guy actually noticed.

So I concentrate on the change, entering a zone of counting and rage. As I count, my customer turns to a woman Chris has just rung up.

C: "You have a sexy voice."

She is sweet and flustered and says thank you. He goes on for a moment about he shouldn't say such things, but he just had to, and blah. And then he compared her voice to Rod Stewart's.

I am passingly amused. This fades as I continue to count for the next six years or so.

Finally, I get as much as I can out of the pile. I am so transcendentally furious by now that it takes me several tries to figure out how many little dollar piles I have made. I remove a few tickets from his total and put them back under the counter (which, incidentally, fucks up the lottery count for the night). Then I shove the remainder of his change back across the counter and chuck the tickets at him. He attempts to take issue with this, but I am busy scooping gargantuan amounts of change into my drawer, so he isn't able to get me to talk about it.

C: *earnestly* "Are you mad at me?"

Me: *so angry I'm shaking* *in bright, hyper-polite tone I use when customers are getting on my nerves* "Mildly annoyed, sir."

He doesn't hear and tries to make me repeat it. I don't. So of course the logical next question is this:

C: "Will you marry me?"

Me: *still scooping change* ". . . no."

C: "Why not?" *again, totally serious*

Me: *unable to come up with coherent reply, so just scoops change*

C: "I'm not a bad guy."

Me: *finishes scooping change* *closes drawer and stomps away from register, yelling for coworkers to hear* "I'M GOING TO GO HAVE A CIGARETTE!!"

While I'm sitting outside angrily smoking my cigarette (I don't even feel the nicotine because of the furious adrenalin still coursing through my system), I see him crawling labouriously up the rocky slope between our store and the hotel next door. I blink, then move so that he won't be able to see me.

For the last hour or so of my shift, I was so torn between rage and amusement that some of the most basic parts of my brain ceased to function. I couldn't make sandwiches, I couldn't tell if I was speaking normally on the phone, and I had the worst time trying to write down numbers on the lottery paperwork. It was really bizarre.

Thanks go to Chris for not being annoyed with me for taking so long, Sabrina for helping me to roll the change (thus making it easier to count up my drawer at the end of the night), and Annette the night manager for understanding and not lecturing me on customer service after hearing Chris's version of events. *g*

I just wish I'd thought to take the beer away from him. I didn't realize until after I'd sold it how messed up he was, but I was so crazy during the rest of the transaction that I didn't think about it till I saw him struggling up that slope. On the other hand, I still don't know exactly what influence he was under, so I don't know what my legal obligations might have been (it's illegal to sell alcohol in a store to someone who's already drunk). *sigh* But he obviously wasn't driving, so whatever.