Kill the birds?

Krazy Kustomer Kwote Of The Day:

“Ma’am, yesterday I got gas here and then spent the night at the motel yonder. Today there is bird manure all over the back of my car. I will be using your wash buckets yonder to clean that off. I have never seen such a mess and don’t know why you people can’t do something about it!”

 

Do what exactly? Kill the birds? This is a rural area!

Yeah, I’ll just grab my Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle with a compass and this thing that tells time built right in the stock…and I’ll get right on that for ya, mister. If I don’t shoot my eye out first.

 

Update: He just carried the now-filthy squeegee into the store, laid it on the counter where people set their food, to “prove he hadn’t left bird manure or rocks” in it. SERIOUSLY???

You call them producers of manure. I call them minions.

*headdesk*

 

Spittle on a Thursday morning.

This morning, a man walked up to the counter and asked for the price of our cheapest pack of cigarettes.

“The Fortunas,” I told him, indicating our handy easy to read price chart posted for the customers’ convenience, “are the cheapest we have. They’re $5.50 plus tax.”

“You’re [excrement-synonym]-ing me!” he shouted, going from passive to postal with impressive speed. Clearly a kustomer without mental middle gears. “You have got to be [copulating-synonym]-[excrement-synomyn]-ing me!”

“No sir,” I wiped a fleck of spittle (not mine) away. “Wisconsin puts a really heavy tax on tobacco these days.”

“I can’t afford that!” he told me.

I waited politely. I’m not sure what he expected me to do. Offering freebies is not in the employee handbook, y’know? Nor was I particularly enchanted with him. Rabid foaming and obscenities are really not sympathy triggers in my world.

“How much are Marlboros?” he demanded.

I told him.

“Mavericks?”

I told him.

“Pall Malls?”

I told him.

“You don’t have anything cheaper?”

“I don’t have anything cheaper.”

“You can’t help me out?”

“I can’t help you out.” Usually I’ll add a personal apology to a statement like this. For some reason, I didn’t feel inclined to in this case. Maybe it was the spittle. I don’t like spittle.

“You’re serious? You’re [copulating-synonym] serious?”

“Yes, I am.”

He glared at me for an uncomfortably protracted period and finally said, “Give me a pack of Mavericks then. Full flavor, one hundreds.”

Luckily, I had those in stock, so I put them on the counter and rang up the sale.

He paid me with a fifty dollar bill.

 

The Separate Transaction

So, a girl (late teens/early twenties) puts four candy bars, a bottle of juice and a bag of chips on the counter. I ring up the bottle of juice and the chips first and only then does she stop me.

“Wait,” she says, and pushes forward a single candy bar, neatly cut from the herd. “Ring this up first. By itself.”

“I already started on the other things,” I say. “Do you want to pay for them first and then we can do that one as a separate transaction?”

“No,” she says. “I told you to ring this up first.”

With a mental shrug, I void the transaction, wait until the cash register spits out the receipt of rejection, and start over, ringing up the single candy bar as directed. She pays me with a twenty dollar bill from her right front pocket. I give her the change. She puts it in her right front pocket.

“Now the rest.” She taps her fingers impatiently on the counter.

I ring up the rest.

She reaches into her left front pocket and, you guessed it, pays me with a twenty dollar bill.

And I really, really, really want to say something.

But I don’t.

Saturday

A minute ago, a disgruntled man came in and asked, “Do you have the Sunday paper in here?”

“Well, no, because–” I started, only to be cut off.

“You only have Saturday papers in the boxes out front! Did someone forget to put new ones in?”

“Today is Saturday,” I said.

He stared at me in silence for a very long moment.

Then he left.

 

 

Spitting mad…

A little while ago, I noticed a garbage can on the verge of overflowing by one of the pumps, so I grabbed a fresh bag and during a rare customer-free moment, sallied forth bravely to take care of it. I pulled off the lid, grabbed a double handful of bag, gave it a businesslike lift…and nothing happened.

The thing weighed a ton.

Upon investigation, I realized that some clever soul had taken their own non-subtle white garbage bag (chock-full of whatever) and rammed it into our already full enough thank-you-very-much, garbage bag. This is really freakin’ annoying, to tell you the truth. Anyway, I decided to remove the intruder first, reasoning that this would enable me to get our bag out without my needing back surgery or a Medflight or something.

So, Garbage Can – Take Two. I reached in, grabbed the white bag, gave a businesslike lift and as it cooperatively popped loose from the can to about the level of my chest, it exploded.

I’m not saying that the bottom dropped out of it. I’m saying it exploded. Because it exploded.

Plastic bags rip. I know this already from bitter experience. Too many times, I have felt the dreaded “brown goo” seeping through my shoes from a leaking garbage bag, no matter how carefully I tried to hold it at arm’s length while waddling at breakneck toward the dumpster. And Heaven forbid that I wear sandals. Really, the brown goo is everything noxious you can imagine, all condensed and pureed. Brown goo on bare skin would probably give me leprosy at the very least.

But at least I know to expect brown goo. And this wasn’t it.

Never before have I seen this level of catastrophic disintegration. And never before, in the line of duty, have I found myself liberally splattered with…

 

 

 

Rotten watermelon.

In a vague way, I’d be quite interested to find out if the gasses from watermelon decay can interact with the chemical compounds in plastic.

 

In a more immediate way, I’d really like a shower.

Clues. So many clues!

I’m at home, enjoying the evening, but just had to post this from my counterpart:

“Just had a girl in here who was on her way home from a picnic in Rockford, Ill. She lives on the north side of Chicago. Didn’t the Welcome to Wisconsin sign give her a clue she was going the wrong way?”

Apparently no more than going past several noteworthy Wisconsin towns, the entire city of Madison, a few prominently advertised cheese shops, a couple thousand cars with WI license plates on them, and the Wisconsin River. *sigh*

This is a clue.

If Only It Hadn’t Been A Labrador Retriever

A lady comes in, places a wadded up and noticeably soggy pair of jeans in the middle of the check-0ut counter and says, “Can I have a plastic bag to put these in? My dog just had a seizure in the car and peed all over my lap.”

 

 

 

…Grandpa?

An elderly lady (accompanied by her adult grandchildren) walked up to the counter. As I was ringing up their purchases, she noticed some bags of beef jerky on display, picked one up, turned it around in her hands thoughtfully for a minute and said,

“Oh girls, this looks JUST like your Grandpa!”

Directionsch

A woman in her 30’s or thereabouts walked into the store and gave me a big Sue’s Jack O’ Lantern smile. This is an apt description because when I carve a pumpkin for Halloween, I tend to do such a bad job on the teeth that I end up lopping most of them off in disgust. It’s not that she didn’t have any teeth, mind you. It’s just that none of them were optimally placed for communication purposes.

So, in the interest of time, I’m going to request that you assume that everything she said had to be repeated at least three times before I understood it. And, if you choose to read aloud, make sure you make slurping noises. Like…schlurping noishes. Schee what I mean?

Thank you for your cooperation.

Regardless, she schaid said to me, “I shink I’m loscht. I can’t scheem to contact any of my relativesch for directionsch. Can you help me pleasche?”

I asked her destination and when she told me (it wasn’t pretty) I figured out that it was about 100 milesh, I mean miles, from here. I reached for a map.

“I can’t read mapsch,” she said.

“That’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “I’m just looking for the best route to tell you.”

“I prob’ly won’t remember,” she chuckled. “I’m very bad at directionsch.”

“No big deal, I can write it down … for…you…” The apologetic look on her face spoke volumes about the education system from whence she came.  Maps are not the only things she can’t read.

Asch we schtared at easch other in confusched silensch, a voische broke in to offer salvaschion. It was another customer.

He  (perhaps despairing of ever being waited on in this lifetime) told us, “My friend out there by the van comes from that town. Go ask him and I’m sure he’ll help you out.”

As she obediently went outside to conschult consult, I noticed that the helpful customer and his friend were wearing matching shirts which read, “Village Idiot.”

It’s probably just as well she couldn’t read.

 

Lighter Logik

 

Last night, my co-worker Janet was at work, I was at home, and we were chatting on the phone. I was sharing my nascent thoughts about whipping my horrible doughy carcass into shape and competing in a Tough Mudders’ event next year. Janet, always a very supportive friend, was atypically quiet, although I think she wasn’t feeling well and having some asthma issues or something. At least that would explain the snorkeling wheezy noises she was making.

[I’d have thought she was laughing her head (or other bodily parts) off at me, except that I know she’d never do that. Not my friend, Janet. No way.]

ANYWAY, Janet is the consummate multi-tasker, especially when it comes to using the telephone, so as I talked and she wheezed, she was simultaneously waiting on customers. I could hear the transactions cranking along like white noise in the background and honestly I didn’t take too much notice when a cigarette lighter was sold. We sell them. It happens. We don’t get emotionally attached to them or anything. It’s not like adopting out puppies.

But a few minutes later, the lighter buying customer returned and crossed the line into true kustomercentricity.

First she asked for matches. After buying a lighter.

And then she asked to swap out the original lighter she’d bought for a cheaper one of a different color “and don’t worry about the price difference,” I heard her say.

Er…what?

I paid closer attention.

Don't be deceived by its benign appearance. This thing will BANKRUPT YOU ALL!

The original lighter was purchased for someone waiting out in the car. That person rejected that specific lighter based on the following criteria:

1.) They were en route to a casino.

2.) The lighter in question was orange.

3.) Orange lighters are…BAD LUCK.

Yes, you heard it here first. Orange cigarette lighters are a contagion guaranteed to put a boil on Lady Luck’s bottom. Or something like that. (Also, smoking is bad for you, but I digress.)

So, let’s make sure we understand this.

In an effort to improve gambling luck, the kustomer paid $1.99 (plus tax) for the orange lighter and then traded it in even-steven for a $1.29 (plus tax) lighter, thereby incurring a loss of $0.70 before ever setting foot in the casino.

Yeah.

I think this is a valuable lesson for all of us, don’t you?