The Pedophile.
Dear readers, snuggle up next to your computer whilst I try my hardest to portray to you all the monstrosity that is... 'The Pedophile'.

My name is Hollie and I work in a bakery. Not just any bakery, oh no. Ours has some sort of spack-tard radar that draws toward us all the limping, shuffling, drooling coffin dodgers that smell of piss and have various bits and peices dropping off their heaving carcasses as they walk.

Not just the elderly, but the impossibly ignorant - ie, 90% of the general public. Hell is released on a daily basis, and its contents directed into my workplace.

My first encounter with The Pedophile is the time he stopped outside our window (from the window you can see right down the area behind the counter where we serve) and, with his best Hannibal Lecter - esque stare, slowly began to wave at us all whilst we worked. (The majority of our staff are under 19). Once he had sufficiantly freaked us all out, he shuffled away.

Thank God, he's gone, we all thought.
We thought too soon. This man must be nearing 50, potruding pot belly, badly fitting clothes, carries a backpack with the straps so tightened it is up to his neck, and stares with tiny beady eyes somewere between his majassive eyebrows and hooked nose.

He makes Gary Glitter look like The Pope.

He returns later that day with what must be his mother and brother. She looks like an evil pigeon, and if I were to accurately describe his brother, somewhere in the world a kitten may die. Whilst mother and brother buy food, pedophile stands at the back of the (very small) shop, and proceeds to stare at each of us (3) behind the counter. He decides that he has taken a perverse liking to my co-worker Samantha. You can see it in his eyes. Oh God. The eyes.

Anyway, whilst 'the' eyes are locked onto Sam, Pedophile begins to lift up his shirt. My heartrate quickens to above 400. 'WHATTHEFUCKISHEDOING?!' I cry in my head. He lifts his shirt to just above bellybutton level, and begins to rub his bare stomach. We all feel sick. We all want to cry, especially Sam. This is reasonable, because now pedeophile is both rubbing his stomach and pointing at her, with his long, dirty arm and filthy little hand.

RUBBING HIS STOMACH AND POINTING AT HER. As she walks up and down behind the counter. Equipped with crazy eyes and terrifying smile. We think he's about to crack one out right in front of us.

Pedeophile decides that he must know the name of his future wife, Samantha. He leaps towards the counter and asks her name, more than once. Sam keeps her composure and stays calm.

*dribble* 'WHATS YOUR NAAAAAMEE...'
'Samantha.'
'I LIKE SAMANTHAA. IT'S A NICE NAMEEEE'. *sweat*
'ok.'

Mother and Brother have finished buying food and procede to the exit, back to whatever shithole they crawled out of.

'BYE SAMANTHAAA.' *stares as if he stared hard enough her clothes would fall off*
'bye'.

Pedophile leaves, but looks back, waving, always waving... as he crawls away. He waves until he is out of sight.

He still comes back sometimes, always asking for Samantha to serve him. We all hide.

First post, don't be gentle, I like it rough.
(Dramamine, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 21:00, 19 replies)

Rice
A customer walked into the shop I work at the other day and chucked a sellotaped bag of rice onto my counter.

"May I help madam?" I say in my most polite voice.

"Don't fucking work" She mumbles grumpily.

"I'm not sure I understand." I respond, in a voice Stephen fry would be proud of.

"Don't work do they? Didn't cook!" I'm unsure exactly what this woman is going on about but decide to press on.

"Have you tried boiling it?" (It was obvious and I hoped I wouldn't offend. Needless to say, I didn't.)

"Don't be fucking stupid. Microwave innit."

I was now confused. She'd tried microwaving the rice? She continues...

"Just went dry."

"Well what were you expecting?" I say, trying to not be too condescending.

"Popcorn..."
(Foz, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:53, 5 replies)

Me.
I am a customer from hell - indeed, I'm fairly sure that I got some poor bloke sacked once.

Myself and my good drinking partner would on many a night go to one of the local chip shops after a night on the lash. We would then proceed to get as much as we possibly could do for free - there was one foreign bloke who was particularly susceptible to this. It started with small discounts: twenty p off or so, but got more and more outrageous. The last three occasions stand out most:

"Hello, can we have some of your finest and most delicious fried potato slices please!"
"That's £2.50"
"Can we have them free?"
"NO! I MUST CHARGE YOU! ONE PENNY!"
"Yay, we love you chip shop man!"

"Hello, can we have some of your finest and most delicious fried potato slices please! And how about a hug from your one armed manager?"
"That's £2.50 please"
*friend falls into bin*
"Ahah! I have no money, but I bought you this traffic cone!"
"I am sorry, you must pay"
*picks up lettuce from floor*
"And some delicious lettuce! You can have it for dinner!"
"Yes! That is fine! Enjoy chips!"
"Thankyou Mr ChipMan!"

"If we tell you a joke, can we have some free chips?"
"Errr, okay!"
"What has eight legs and makes women scream?"
"Err, I don't know"
*both shouting* "GANG RAPE!!!"
*hands over chips, looking scared*

Sadly we never saw him again. If you're reading this, sorry albanian chip man!
(Merrep, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:35, 5 replies)

My mate used to work in the statistics office
where people phoned to ask any stats related questions. One rang and said they were doing a student project and could he tell them how many tall people there are in london. WTF? Personally I would have said, um....4. Bye.
( DumbMonkey The penis mightier than the sword, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:13, 2 replies)

Customers from hell and further afield
as in Mars and possibly Alpha Centurii

I worked for a year at Cambridge University Library in the "reprographics Department" ie we photocopied stuff, maps, Phds, old and rare books and provided a service to all staff and employees who could not be trusted to understand copyright law (then it was 10% or one chapter of anything under 50 years of age, or a complete phd if permission was granted from the auther)

The customer from Hell - I never met him, but he made my job a misery, this chaps name? no idea, but we called him Engine Shed. Every few weeks we would receive a pile of maps with a list of grid co-ordinates he wanted copies of. they were of engine sheds from the 1880s to modern day, quite cool to look at the evolution but a royal pain in the arse to copy as some of the older maps were huge, and the copiers not sensibly laid out. these engine sheds had to be EXACTLY in the centre of the page, if they weren't a week after posting these off you would get a snotty letter and a sheaf of rejected copies, which had to be done again and sent out free of charge, I came to hate this man and his damn sheds.

Another one was a chap who turned up at 9am, and demanded a copy of a 360 page Phd by midday! midday! it took me 25 minutes to find the damn thing and it was bound pretty poorly by some fucker making the book not lay flat to copy easily, I finished the bloody thing at 11.45 and was this chap grateful? was he fuck, bah humbug.

Customers from Further afield.

Eventually the library bowed to modern ideals and provided a photocopying room for people to use which was cool and took a lot of the more mundane* work from us, however this meant we had to look after the machines and provide help a lot instead.

As you can imagine on most days there was on average 25-30 sheer unadulterated geniuses (genii? very clever people) in the building, and as we all know your run of the mill genius might well be fantastic in a certain field but can sometimes have a bit of a tenuous grasp on the everyday humdrum of reality, this quite often involved little young me trying to teach some of the greatest minds on earth how to make a photocopy of a book.

nnnnnnnnnggggggggggg.

Imagine being asked to teach Eistein how to piss in a pot, or to show Crick how to make a bowl of cornflakes and you get the drift of what it was like.

Some people do just not get it, and its very very very difficult not to swear or curse at an Archbishop that does not comprehend how to change a machine to landscape, and some of the greatest legends of open university tv were baffled by the form feed.

oh lordy how I miss that job

*hah like everything else we did was laugh a second bundles of joy, well apart from the sealed room, its a copyright library which means it has one of every single porn magazine published in the uk ever, a whole fucking room of grot.

locked up bah, but the erotic books were kept on levels 12-13 of the tower and we were allowed to take what we wanted that wasn't from the rare or main rooms :)

The less said about some of the medical books that concentrated on child abuse injuries and suchlike the better though, was actually violently sick once from the pictures of some poor kid and I have seen some ghastly shit (as posted regarding my hospital job)
(Halfy By light alone, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:10, 1 reply)

Tech support wrongness
OK. Two things to start off. Firstly, I work in the IT industry, for central government. Secondly, as what I do is rather specialised, I also take in work out of hours - to keep my hand in on some of the more obscure PC faults. In actual fact 90% of it tends to be malware infections, but there's the occasional fault that gets the grey matter ticking over.

So working for central government, there's an awful lot of absolute cretins I inhabit an office with. One of them approached me with a machine that 'needed updating'.

I forget the exact spec - I think it was something like a celeron 600 with 128 of ram, running 98SE. It was running internet explorer 5.01. This was late 2006.

Anyhoo, the updates went relatively painlessly. I clagged a NIC into the machine, joined it to my network and just downloaded the lot. I also dropped an antivirus package on there and a copy of Moz. Firefox.

When I handed the machine back, I stressed the importance of using Firefox rather than IE due to security concerns. As it's 98 there's pretty much feck all you can do to mitigate the chance of threats as you can't assign file or registry key permissions. Due to the specs of the machine and the type of usage she had, it wouldn't run 2K or XP usably, and it wasn't worth upgrading.

A month passes and she comes up to me full of hell. The phone bill has shot through the roof; she's insisting it was my fault and demands that I pay the phone bill. I agree to take the machine and diagnose exactly what happened.

Well I was on for hours. I got traces of every website she'd visited for the preceding month and cross-referenced the history with a copy of the itemised phone bill I'd taken.

The sequence of events was as follows:

30 October - I'd dropped the machine off, and had phoned home to check that the modem was working OK.
31 October - 9 November - various browsing - local estate agents, hi-fi shops, vinyl record shops, &c.
10 November - Following a browsing session from about 9:30AM - 11:45AM, the machine starts calling out on a premium rate phone number. If a DUN connection is attempted, the machine quietly drops this premium rate number. If the machine is powered up, the modem dials out.

So satisfied with the sequence of events, I ask her into a side room to discuss. I outline the above, and as I'm able to pretty much cite every website she's visited during the month it's quite obvious to her that I know exactly what was going on.

Finally, I followed up with "And how come you're not using Firefox - that browser I recommended you use for reasons of security?"

"I don't know really - I was just used to the other".

"You do realise," I continue, "that the infection you received, ten days after I'd handed the machine over to you, was only possible using Internet Explorer. If you'd followed my advice, you wouldn't be facing a £190 bill".

"Oh. What do you think I should do?"

"I'd suggest you pay the phone bill. And, here's an invoice for my time in working out what you'd done to your system."

Twunt.
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:07, 1 reply)

Just thought of another pub one...
People that whistle to try and get your attention, to which I usually reply:

"You should only whistle for your dog or a taxi. So, do you want me to piss up your leg or run you over?"
(SarcasticBarSteward wants to be good at Photoshop when he grows up, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:02, 2 replies)

Things complaint handlers wish they could say ...
.
Working for a large organisation as a complaint handler brings you into contact with an amusing variety of customers. Most have genuine complaints, we apologise nicely, ensure the error is corrected, and usually send them a little "goodwill gesture". Or some tatty old flowers, depending on the budget.

Unfortunately, a proportion refuse to let it end there. Given free reign, the complaint handlers could easily ensure they took their business elsewhere with a few short sentences.

"Sorry, your file had a late-night visit from the fuck-up fairy. You may not be aware of how difficult fuck-up dust is to remove - trust me, its bloody sticky stuff."

"It appears that you have a little too much spare time on your hands. May I suggest some appropriate hobbies? Bull-fighting is a grand way to see the world, with a regular adrenalin-kick thrown in. Climbing Mount Everest without oxygen would certainly give you something to boast about down the British Legion. Or perhaps a short holiday to Afghanistan? "

"I was always led to believe that only God never made a mistake. Apparently, you are the only other creature in the history of the earth who never made a "whoops" at some point. Congratulations - you truly are the pinnacle of evolution."

"I resent your repeated insistence that you "pay my wages". Believe me, your paltry investment wouldn't go anywhere near supporting my coke habit, and let's not mention my losses on the gee-gees."

"Your letter to the CEO has been passed to me because, quite frankly, the man's too busy running the company (and shagging his PA on the side) to give a flying fuck about a tiny error some underpaid drone made while typing your address. I mean, you got the fucking letter, didn't you? Get over it."

Sadly, I'll never be allowed to put any of this on letterheaded paper. If I ever win the Lottery (unlikely as I seldom remember to buy a ticket) I will sneak into the office very early and reply to all the complaints as above. Or maybe I'll write the shorter version ...

Dear Sir/Madam

Fuck off.

Yours etc



The CEO



and I'll sign his name in purple crayon!

.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Fri 5 Sep 2008, 19:51, 1 reply)

Management haplessness
As mentioned in a previous post I once had the pleasure of McEmployment. I anticipate and look forward to a rich vein of hatred and bile being mined by my fellow ex and current fast foodies during this qotw. It's an industry which really does attract the custom of the absolute worst of the scum and twattery in this world.

Nonetheless they do, on occasion, provide a golden moment or two.

I was working on a till during breakfast. It was sufficiently early that the store was pretty quiet and the area manager, who was a weapons-grade twat himself, happened to be there to see how things were going. This made the store manager a bit jumpy because he was being assessed for a franchise. The store I worked in was used to train potential store managers before they were given one of their own. It was a busy place and usually turned a decent profit, so as long as you didn't fuck it up completely then you were basically a shoe-in for one of your own.

This particular store manager was okay, a bit of a dickhead, perhaps, but no danger to himself or others and tolerable as a boss.

On this morning, with the area manager in attendance, he was particularly eager to please and had obviously been reading his copy of McHowToBeJollyNiceToTheCustomers.

So when one of the breakfast regulars, a sallow, miserable looking old git, bowled up to the tills he spotted an opportunity to deliver some Excellent Service right underneath the area manager's nose and collect a big gold star for the 'Gives a toss about the customers' test.

Sadly he didn't leave it there, but followed the regular over to his seat and attempted to engage him in further conversation. The regular, who had just pulled out his newspaper and was about to commit plastic knife and fork to cardboard pancake, looked up as the approaching store manager fired off his opening salvo of 'Good morning!! You're in here quite often at this time aren't you!'

The regular's response will remain with me for a long time...

'FUCK OFF and leave me alone! I just want to read my paper and eat my breakfast in peace without being bothered by anyone. If you can't do that then I'm going to eat somewhere else!'

The expression on the area manager's face was expensive, the expression on the store manager's face was priceless. I suddenly found some work that needed to be done under the counter so that I could indulge in quiet hysterics unobserved.

I never saw the regular again. Shame really, as I wanted to at least give him a free coffee or a donut by way of thanks for making my day.
(Dr. Scambolic, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 19:37, Reply)

I work in a supermarket photoshop
Another Shit Day Ahead is the best way to describe the company.

anyway i digress, as i said i work on the photolab,
i enjoy it most of the time general chit chat with customers and my workmates.

until one day our printers fuck up.

we had to shut the machine down completely until a engineer could come and fix it.

one of the 'usual' twunts customers arrived, and begain to load out all his 35mm film for process,

i began to explain that because of machine failure i couldent do any processing AT ALL for at least three days minimum.

He fucking flipped....

Customer- "THIS AN ABSOULUTE OUTRAGE! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET MY FILM DEVELOPED NOW?!?!"

TD- "well sir if it is an urgent order mabye i can suggest maybe the jessops in the shopping center or maybe boots in the highstreet?"

C- "NO! JESSOPS IS TOO SMALL FOR MY LARGE ORDER(3 films of 12 exposures)" AND THE CHINESE MAN BEHIND THE COUNTER IN BOOTS IS STEALING MY PHOTOS"

TD- "...."

with that he walked of and went off into the store...
only to be escorted by security five minutes later for pissing himself and shouting at the top of his voice
"im am william shakespeare, my eyes are cctv cameras and the law is after me"


i love my job sometimes.... that day wasent one of them
(tweedleDUMB Giving Up Smoking, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 18:59, Reply)

Many years ago...
I used to work in The Chillingham Arms in Heaton, Newcastle. A brilliant, and oddly schizophrenic, pub. One side was the lounge, for families and scaredy students. The other was the bar, for local nutters and football teams.

We had this one regular whose name escapes me. But he was an old, pathalogical liar of epic (and therefore comedic) proportions. He'd tell us all sorts of tales of his adventuring lifestyle, ranging from pulling 16 year old girls (he wasn't far from 60) to the time he had to shoot a bull in Leeds city centre because the armed police unit didn't "have the balls".

But his best were when he brought in props. Two such stories spring to mind:

1) He walks in with a pig's foot in a bag. We ask, as we were wont to do, why he's got a pig's foot in a bag. He says it's for a "ritual". We cry.

2) He walks in nonchalantly with a pair of skis. We ask why he has said skis. He says, matter of factly, "just been skiing". Despite the lack of boots or any other skiing paraphernalia. We cry.

I loved that pub.
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 18:17, 2 replies)

Do you ever wonder why your Council Tax is so high?
Not too long ago I worked for a Borough Council in London which I won't name. Through one career accident after another, I ended up being first the complaints officer for the Chief Executive's department, then resonsible for investigating all complaints that had become such a mess that the Chief Executive got involved (so-called "Stage 3" complaints) and writing to the complainant on the CE's behalf, to being the go-to guy for the Ombudsman, to being in charge of implementing a new IT system for complaints handling, to being in charge of the entire complaints policy for the entire Council.

So, basically, there's not much I don't know about complaining to Councils.

Let me tell you right now that complaint handling in local councils is excruciating, from the Council's point of view. Every complaint, no matter how trivial, must be investigated in full, and a full trail of paperwork kept, anything up to 3 times, and if it isn't resolved the third time around it goes to the Ombudsman, and you environmentalists out there really don't want to know how much paper that consumes.

But what's the problem? Isn't it good that we investigate all complaints properly?

No. Because 90% of complaints to councils come from twats and have no basis in reality. Maybe 5% of complaints are actually justified, the other 5% are worth asking but not actually the Council's fault, the rest come from one of the various species of subhumans outlined below:

**Twat #1: The Outraged Planning Appellant.**

Easily 50% of the complaints I dealt with had to do with planning, and they were all the same. Basically, if a decision by the planning committee doesn't go your way, and neither does the appeal, the only way you can get the decision reversed is by proving the Council didn't carry out the planning process properly in some way.

So that's what everyone, and I mean everyone, does. Some of the "errors" allegedly committed by the Council include:

* "Deliberately" posting planning notices to someone when they were on holiday (wtf? If we knew enough about you to know when you went out on holiday, we'd rub you the fuck out before you ever had a chance to bother us - we have binmen you know, so we know a thing or two about disposing of rubbish).

* Posting planning notices in too small a font for someone to read (the typeface is set by law, btw.)

* A complaint that our head of Planning had "waggled his finger" at an applicant thus clearly demonstrating bias. This nearly went to the Ombudsman, and I had to inform the complainant that the officer concerned had been "warned about his behaviour", which consisted of me phoning him up and both of us trying unsuccessfully not to giggle while I told him not to waggle his finger at residents ever again.

**Twat #2 - "I am the center of the universe"**

Some people are under the impression that the Council exists only to serve them and them alone. Practicality, legality and budget mean nothing, the Council *must* accede to their demands or they'll "Go to the Press, and the Ombudsman" (oooh, we're scared.)

* The woman who wanted a tree in someone else's garden cut down because the shade it created meant her roses weren't growing very well. The "offending tree" was four doors down.

* The woman who complained that our binmen were "handling her recycling box roughly" when they emptied it. It's our box, not yours, twatface, and we'll handle it how we like. If we break it, we'll replace it, so shut the fuck up.

* The man, who ended up going to the Ombudsman, who demanded that we make a compulsory purchase of the house next door (which would have cost easily a million quid) because its delapidated state was "lowering the tone of the road". I actually went to look at this house, and all I can say is that if that place was "delapidated", he's clearly never lived in the West Midlands.

**Twat #3: "I know my rights"**

* One man, on getting a perfectly legitimate ticket for driving in a bus lane, decided that he would wage war on the Council for something that was basically caused by his own stupidity. He demanded, through the Freedom of Information act, just about every statistic that existed about bus lane and parking fines, including whether any Council employees had been fined. When we refused the latter (due to that other "I know my rights" chestnut, the Data Protection Act), he went bezerk, submitting FoI requests demanding:

- The wages paid to every Council employee, month-by-month, for the last ten years
- The holiday destinations of all the Directors of the Council for the last five years "to see how deep the rot goes"
- A copy of the Council Tax bill of every Council Employee who lived in the borough "to see if they are different"

When we refused, he complained and sent in another batch of ludicrous FoI requests (including a copy of my employment contract, amongst other things). When we rejected his complaint he complained about that and made an abusive phone call to the Chief Executive's secretary. When we banned him from contacting us without a lawyer present he complained about that, when we refused to speak to him again he went to the Ombudsman.

Who told him, basically, to fuck off.

That whole process must have cost the Council tens of thousands of pounds. If you're reading this, you cunt, you know who you are. I know where you live, and what you do for a living, and the registration number of your car. I don't work for the Council any more, and I will be free, if I see you in the street, to tell you, in front of everyone, just the sort of cunt you are.

**Twat #4: "If I complain you can't touch me!"**

* One enterprising chap, who was about to have all his stuff taken away by bailiffs for not paying his Council Tax, wrote to me say that he was going to make a complaint about the bailiffs at some undetermined point in the future. Therefore, it would be some kind of breach of his rights if the bailiffs took his stuff while there was a complaint outstanding (which there wasn't, nor was there any indication of where there might be). Basically, he was asking us not to take his stuff until he said we could. Nice try, toilet-features.

**Twat #5: Total Lunatics**

What do sad, lonely, deranged or psychotic individuals do all day? They write letters to the Council complaining about whatever random insanity happens to be occuping their hallucinations at the time. Unlike most organisations, we can't just fling these in the bin, we have to investigate and reply to them *all*. How would you reply to some of these?

* The individual who wrote to us about speed humps, claiming that his life was in danger from Council "assassins" if he complained about them other than anonymously. This letter was written in purple crayon, in capital letters, with a full stop in between each word. (answer: because there was no return address, we classified it as a "comment").

* The woman who complained that the telephone mast on top of a Council-owned building was "projecting psionic radiation" that was interfering with her crystal healing business and giving her headaches - she said she could "feel the rays pumping into her mind." (Answer: a quick call to facilities revealed that the mast had been switched off for three years after the Council lost the contract with the phone company. I wrote her a letter explaining this and suggesting she see a doctor for her headaches).

* The old woman who was obsessed with regulations to do with graveyards and phoned up random Council officers ranting about death and God and hyperventilating, for anything up to two hours at a time. She called me a few times, quoting the bible at me and calling me, within the space of five minutes "an angel sent from heaven" and "an agent of satan." This went on for ELEVEN YEARS. (Answer, we called our Social Services people, saying we were "concerned for her health". They ended up having her sectioned.)

* A woman who sent in a letter claiming the Council was sending trolls to bump into her shopping trolley in Morrisons. She also appeared to think she was Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. (Answer: as the letter was addressed to the Leader of the Council, I classified it as a "question to a councillor" and forwarded it to his office. His secretary never spoke to me again.)

This all might be funny, but we worked out that a complaint that went all the way to the Ombudsman cost the taxpayer in excess of £25,000 in staff wages, lost work and not to mention piles of fucking paper. So, on behalf of taxpayers everywhere, may I present to you this handy flowchart for making a complaint to the Council:

1 Do you have a complaint?

if yes, go to 2. If no, wrong flowchart, moron.

2 Are you a twunt?

if yes, hammer a nail into your face and go to 1. If no, go to 3

3 - Write to us, nicely. We'll probably be able to put things right for you.


The moral? Don't fuck with the Council. We can paint double-yellow lines on your ass, then recycle it.
(Axeman Jim, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:58, 14 replies)

This one still cracks me up, years after the old bag's probably popped her clogs.
I had a job where I had to do home visits and do jobs for clients. One old cow used to watch for my car to arrive and then complain to my boss - before I'd even parked - if I had anyone in the car with me. Obviously my time was all hers and I wasn't allowed to give my mum a lift.

I used to have to cash her pension and do some shopping - incontinence pants, haemorrhoid cream and so on - for which I took care to collect itemised receipts, which she would carefully scrutinise for fraud.

All in all she was a hateful old witch, always looking for a way to do me over.

One day I went for the pension as usual and was told that there was a new pension book.

The Post Office clerk said 'I'll have to tear up the old book in case of fraud', while looking meaningfully at me. I swear the old bag had rung ahead to warn the Post Office of the Famous Embezzling Home Help.

So... the snobby clerk then flourished in my face, and ripped in half, the NEW pension book.

The look on her face was priceless - she realised what she was doing just too late to stop herself.

I immediately collapsed into helpless laughter and pointed at her and gasped 'You ripped up the new book! You ripped up the new book!'

The clerk answered 'It's not funny!' but as I assured her, oh, it was, very funny indeed.

She wanted to keep the new ripped-up book until the next week when the replacement came, but I refused on the grounds that Mrs Hagwitch would accuse me of stealing it. The boss was called and she and I stood over the clerk as she taped up every page. Then she had to write a letter of explanation and apology.

I screamed with laughter all the way back, trying to get it out of my system, and really did think I'd kept a straight face when explaining the incident to the old boiler.

Must've let something slip though as she was soon on the blower to my boss, complaining that I had laughed at her pension book.

I wasn't in trouble though as everyone in the office was hysterical too. Happy days - give the gift of laughter.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:50, 1 reply)

Catwalk
In my 3 years of living in America I have had about 9 jobs, because I am generally useless and like to take spontaneous trips to the desert and have 30 hour lock in band practices.
My favoritest job is ironically the one with the most customers from hell.

A job that allowed me to work when I want and how I wanted to.
A job that has openings in any city across the US.
A job that was always hiring, even for one night.
A job that happily allows you to take days, weeks, months off and always lets you return at exactly the same position and pay rate.
A job where you are happily allowed to drink up to five adult beverages a night.

Yes, it is...stripping! What better way for an underqualified over-sexed Brit to earn wads of tax free cash whilst continuing to be fundamentally lazy, rude and drunk. Mmmmm yes this is indeed the dream job. And none of this crap about stripping victimising women. If anything -I- was victimising the customers...maintaining the illusion of the possibility, even eventuality, of sex until they were out of cash and their credit cards were maxed out.

So here is a handy pull out guide to the worst/funniest/mentalest strip club customers, and some dos and donts for you b3tans who frequent these dens of inequity.

1. Mr. "I don't really need to be at a strip club because when I'm in the real world, girls' clothes fall off at the mere sight of me".

Some men have this attitude because they are insecure, and some have it to try and score a free lapdance or justify not tipping. Whatever it is, you can fuck right off back to this imaginary world where hot girls rub their meat flaps in your face for free.


2. The Retard.
WHY THE FUCK the otherwise lovely staff let Down's Joe in every afternoon is beyond me. He makes all the dancers feel totally weird, and only tips a dollar an hour. I guess the bouncers feel sorry for him but it is just cunting wrong! I am usually the only girl that will get on stage and dance for him because I feel sorry that the other dancers ignore him except for the day he gets his disability payment and buys 2 lapdances. For I refuse to give him lapdances...I have to draw the line somewhere. I will gladly dance on a 300lbs trucker who is only wearing thin nylon shorts, but a grinning, drooling spaker who regularly calls me his best friend...I have to decline.

Plus the DJ indulges him when he is the only customer (during the 4pm-6pm dead period) and plays Joe's very own Monkees CD on repeat.

Imagine the Forrest Gump take off parodied in Tropic Thunder and add a hard on.


3. Customers who harp on that I'm too pretty/too smart/too educated/too British to be doing this. Stop asking why I do this and getting all pseudo-freudian on me. I DO IT FOR THE MONEY YOU MORON.


4. Men who try and get real into it when I give a lapdance. The ones who moan loudly and grind back into my crotch. You just look stupid. It's not flattering, I just care if you like it enough to give me money at the end. Actually, I don't even care if it was the most unsexual, crashingly boring experience of your life and I farted in your face, the bouncer sitting 5 feet away will make you pay me anyway.

My favorite lapdance customers (apart from the Yale literature professor who quotes Tolstoy and Amis) are the ones who sit nicely with their hands by their sides and say nothing for the entire dance, then ask for 5 more. There's one really nice Spanish guy called Angel who does this. He sits on a chair away from the stage all night, ignoring all dancers attempts to hook him into getting a dance, and at half an hour til close spends $300 getting lap dances from me. Doesn't say a word or try to touch me the whole time. Brill!

That leads me onto
5. Lap dance recipients who try and touch.
I understand that it's frustrating having a naked girl grind on your clothed dick, rub her tits and pussy in your face and not be able to feel her up. But that's tough shit. It's not as if this is unexpected, there's signs all over the lapdance area.

You REALLY want to touch? Then pay $400 for 15 minutes in the VIP area where I will let you touch my boob flesh (not the nipple) and my legs and thighs. You will then also have the added pleasure of being watched closely by a 300lbs gorilla who will snap your hard-on in two if you are naughty and touch me somewhere bad.


6. Mr Stinky.
Shower before visiting our humble establishment and you will be approached by the hot dancers and not only the one who has 'thug passion' tattooed on her back, 7 kids and a crack problem.


7. Yes my tits are real, as real as my affection for you.*


8. Men who ask me out on dates. No. Just no. And don't act surprised when I say no. The sole reason I am acting like I'm into you is to get your money out of your wallet and into my garter. Do you ask your mechanic if he'd like to go for a long drive with you this week end? Hm?


9. Customers who ask to fuck me.
If I did that I'd be working for a top escort agency and be earning a lot more. Go ask the ugly girls.


That's it for now, I'll add more when I think of it, and if you click. Go on, I DO think you're hot and you ARE making me wet.


*my tits are real, this remark is courtesy of another stripper I know.
(little fawn, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:48, 8 replies)

Seriously! Who opens on boxing day!!
"If you’ve noticed the day madam you’ll know that it’s Boxing Day and we are the only shop open on the high street. I'll also direct your attention to the open, half empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter here which I can assure you was full when I started today."

"So if you’d like me to do anything other than point or put something in a bag and take money from you I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait for a more reasonable shopping day."

I was perfectly pleasant when I said it, and smiled all the way through I was also the manager so any complaint would ultimately come to me anyway.

I think she took pity on me because she just asked where the new release DVD’s where. It meant all I had to do was point, so I did (in the general direction anyway) and thanked her.
( HornO, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:46, Reply)

I have had many eyebrow-raising experiences over the years from customers...
...in fact my teeth are constantly suffering from all the grinding. Still, I seem to have mastered the art of subtly transforming a grimace into a grin so the damage has not been totally in vain!

Unfortunately for me I have a rather large love of cars, being a girl this tends to bring up some manly testosterone along the way… not from me you understand but from rugged (read: fat), knowledgeable (read: think they know it all), dicks (read: dicks). I’ve had some interesting comments thrown my way over the years including… ‘erm, *looks at his shoes* I want to buy some sparkplugs… erm… *looks at my boobs* er… do you work in the parts department or can I see a man?’ My internal thought process is along the lines of ‘Well you can but then you won’t be able to lean on the glass counter whilst vacantly staring at my breasts, is that okay with you pal?’ but sadly what comes out is ‘certainly sir, one second and I’ll go find someone who can help you’.

Oh and please don’t get me wrong I do realise that all men aren’t like this, I understand that many blokes will happily sit for hours and talk to me about their head gaskets and do the same dribbling at the side of the mouth thing I do when I see a Bugatti Veyron, so gents please don’t think I’m getting at you all… its just that some of the male population are… well… chavvy plonkas who think that telling me they own a 2007 Fiesta ST in Frozen White is going to make me mess my pants… I’ve driven one… it handles like a shopping trolley so… erm… they’ll be no pant messing here today!

Anyhoo… rant over… story begin…

My first proper job was working as a Parts Assistant for a tiny company which basically sold parts for Triumph cars and transformed tatty TR’s into shiny works of chrome and leathery joy. We had a small showroom in a barn and larger barn, which burst at the seams with parts. There was also a third area, brilliantly named ‘The Stripper Grotto’ (sorry its not half as exciting as it sounds) which was festooned with car parts which had been stripped off older TR models, the idea being that you’d buy the parts at a discount and have them refurnished then fitted to your car. We mainly kept panel work and heftier items but every now and then something random would sneak its way into the Grotto and be plucked up by an enthusiast.

Now we had a few nightmare customers who would frequent our showroom, most of them were harmless but one was particularly irritating and went by the name of Mr Michaels. Mr Michaels was a crotchety old git who loved nothing more than to come to the garage and rant for hours about the lack of parts available nowadays and also bang on about his Triumph Spitfire which he had been ‘fixing up’ all on his own for the past 30 something years. The man drove everyone to the point of despair and most parts guys would actually run and hide when they saw his clapped out Honda chugging up the gravel drive. This pretty much explains how I ended up getting lumbered with him one sunny Friday afternoon.

I was merrily wandering around the parts department when Mr M appeared at the counter with a massive scowl on his face and a few dusty looking brake pads in his arms. ‘How much for these girly?’ he mumbled as he dropped the parts on the desk. I peeked over and asked where he had gotten the parts from, he huffed and puffed and said that he got them from the Grotto. Now call me crazy but I didn’t much like the idea of selling someone second hand brake pads… just in case they… well hit a tree and then tried to sue the prats that sold him the used parts. I very calmly explained this to Mr Michaels and he hit the friggin’ roof, ‘don’t you know who I am, I’ve been coming here since before you were born’ etc etc. Rather than getting shirty (after all I was attempting to have his best interests at part) I decided to get my boss involved and wandered off to find him. After bribing him out from under his desk with a Toffee Crisp he came to the front and had a stab at trying to explain the situation to Mr Michaels. It was a cockup on our part that the pads were in the Grotto in the first place and my boss did explain that he could sell Mr M some new pads which would end up being £2 more expensive than the dead ones, but evidently that wasn’t the point, he wanted these ones as they were originals… didn’t seem to matter about the level of potential… well… DOOM involved.

In the end my boss gave up and said he would give Mr M the new pads for free just so he didn’t do anything stupid, apparently that still wasn’t good enough so he ended up saying he would leave the parts around the back of the shop, if they were missing when we closed up he wouldn’t say anything and we would leave it at that. I found that to be completely nuts but then I didn’t own the company so kept quiet… worrying thing is I never did see Mr M again… Even though he was a dick I do hope he wasn’t peeled off the pavement somewhere because of the pads… although judging by the time it was taking him to fix up his car, it probably would never touch tarmac.

Apologies for the length I do have a tendency to ramble plus I may have had a drinkie or two, it is Friday after all!
(Flim-Flam the Magnificent "You is talking loco and I like it!", Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:27, Reply)

Customer from hell tutorial: Ordering a pizza on the phone
Courtesy of "THE INTERNET"
---------------------------------------

-If using a touch-tone, press random numbers while ordering. Ask the person taking the order to stop doing that.

-Terminate the call with, "Remember, we never had this conversation."

-Tell the order taker a rival pizza place is on the other line and you're going with the lowest bidder.

-Give them your address, exclaim "Oh, just surprise me!" and hang up.

-Answer their questions with questions.

-Tell them to put the crust on top this time.

-Stutter on the letter "p."

-Say hello, act stunned for five seconds, then behave as if they called you.

-Rattle off your order with a determined air. If they ask if you would like drinks with that, panic and become disoriented.

-Change your accent every three seconds.

-Ask if you get to keep the pizza box. When they say yes, heave a sigh of relief.

-Have your pizza "shaken, not stirred."

-Move the mouthpiece farther and farther from your lips as you speak. When the call ends, jerk the mouthpiece back into place and scream goodbye at the top of your lungs.

-Tell them to double-check to make sure your pizza is, in fact, dead.

-Eliminate verbs from your speech.

-Ask to see a menu.

-Belch directly into the mouthpiece; then tell your dog it should be ashamed.

-Order a slice, not a whole pizza.

-Ask what their phone number is. Hang up, call them, and ask again.

-When listing toppings you want on your pizza, include another pizza.

-Learn to play a blues riff on the harmonica. Stop talking at regular intervals to play it.

-Put them on hold.

-Teach the order taker a secret code. Use the code on all subsequent orders.

-Make the first topping you order mushrooms. Make the last thing you say "No mushrooms, please." Hang up before they have a chance to respond.

-When the order is repeated, change it slightly. When it is repeated again, change it again. On the third time, say "You just don't get it, do you?"

-Order a one-inch pizza.

-Order using a Speak-n-Spell where possible.

-Dance all around the word "pizza." Avoid saying it at all costs. If he/she says it, say "Please don't mention that word."

-Order a steamed pizza.

-------------------------------------------

I think that'll do for now :-)
( chart cat has an itch, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:20, 22 replies)

McDonalds
As a student, I could afford to spend nights in the pub drinking "Riding Mild" at 92p per pint by working at the McDonalds store in Hull town centre.

Being on till late on a Saturday night made for some oddball customers.

One occasion, at about 23:40, we'd ran out of that green pickle. As no one likes that green pickle stuff anyway, nobody bothered filling it up.

Move forwards to almost closing time, most of the drunks had fucked off to get a taxi, or wandered to a club, but we'd still the odd few wandering in.

One guy ordered a qtr pounder. He opened it up to find no pickle. "Where's the pickle?"

I explained that it'd been put away.
"I want some pickle on it." he demanded.

Ok, so I handed the burger back to the kitchen (who were damned if they were going to make a fresh one).

The pickle came in a large polythene bag full of vinegar, in a rather thick cardboard box. You couldn't open the box without scissors, so they finally found some, opened the box and put a couple of slices on the burger (after warming the burger back up on the grill).

I handed the burger back to the guy who opened it up to check.

He then fished it out, dumped it in the carton and proclaimed

"I fuckin' hate that green cucumber shit" and walked off.

The twat. Still though, I had the last laugh when he hadn't pushed the door hard enough on his way out. The door swung back, catching his elbow and causing him to shove the burger into his face and then onto the floor.

I thought I'd cracked a rib from laughing as I went and clocked off. I wasn't going to hang about waiting for him to come back and ask for another.

That was my "Customer from Hull".
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:16, 3 replies)

Davros' Grandad's story reminded of an incident
You might not know that I spent the best part of a year training to be a junior school teacher - it's not something I like to think about much. I didn't quite complete the year and ended up with a mild breakdown. This was caused by my second school placement in the Year 4 class at St.Chav's Junior. There were four kids in the class that were waiting for statements; this means that they had problems serious enough to warrent a full-time classroom assistant being allocated to each of them, but, there weren't any, as the waiting list for assessments was too long. One little lad (and they were 7 or 8 years old) used to self-harm, by scratching the back of his hand til it bled. One other little lad had enough energy to power a small town and got into a full-on fist fight most playtimes. I had to manage this class of 32 kids on my own for about a month.

After a day, my throat was knackered from shouting over the bedlam. Even at story time at the end of the day - come on kids, sit down here on the floor and I'll read you a story - a sure-fire winner in any class, guaranteed to calm them down - not here: ended up with three of the little terrors stood in corners facing the wall. Sounds like a nightmare? It was.

So, one time I was telling off some kid for something and another of the girls at the table was grinning like a loon at her classmate's misfortune. I was near boiling point so I turned to this kid and said: "And you can wipe that smile off your face."

End of the day comes. I'm sucking on a Strepsil, clearing up mess, checking my lesson plan for the next day, collecting up books for marking etc. when little Chavestina comes in with her mum, who looked as if she was the love child of Big Daddy and Jade Goody. Stolen merchandise was sticking out of her pockets and she'd come into the classroom smoking.

"What the 'ell do you mean you'll wipe the smile of my daughter's face?"

"Eh?"

"She says you said you'd wipe the smile off her face, I want to know what the hell you meant by it", I thought she was going to hit me, and of course, there was little Chaverstina behind her, grinning her fat little face off because I was getting told off.

That was the point where I should have decided to pack it all in, instead of sticking it out for another 3 months.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:09, 1 reply)

Zombie Bakeries
For the most part, folks are reasonable and possess a sense of humour, provided they're treated like human beings. In my particular service sector, I've dealt with all kinds of folk, for the most part they've decent. However once in a blue moon, you'll end up dealing with a dimwitted cocksnot of the most contemptible variety.

One chap I used to deal with warrants particular mention here. I used to run weekly payrolls for a string of bakeries he'd bought into. His strategy was to hire a handful of superannuated old ladies to staff them and paid them just enough to be below the tax threshold each week. Within months, the bakery would invariably end up insolvent and the staff would be directed back to me when they asked for their last weeks' wages.

Sure enough, as the octogenarian staff arrived at work, they'd be greeted with a sign saying "I'm sorry but the business has had to close. It is insolvent. All wage queries should be directed to PJM at **** ******** Chartered Accountants"

*ring-ring* (PJM stops working on xyz payroll and picks up telephone)

"O'our bakury has only gorn insulvunt. I can take a cheque for mi' money if that’s orlroit please?"

Now, the owner paid the staff cash himself, but to avoid the shop being looted by the staff he’d sent them to me on vague (and false) promise that I’d be able to pay them out of my own pocket.

I'd then have to help the poor old biddies fill out all the paperwork and forms to allow them to claim from DETE for their money. It would take hours. I couldn't just leave them to it, I'd have to painstakingly explain the situation every time. What was I supposed to do, say "Well you fucking lucked out didn't you, you old trout!"?

However, he had one bakery that stubbornly refused to die. This was largely because at this point the owner had fucked off to Leicester and left a borderline senile "manageress" in charge whom he paid eighty quid a week.

Every week, I'd receive timesheets which were liberally dusted with crumbs, flour and the occasional currant. I'd have to chase up mysterious new names on the timesheet for a P46 form, because simply processing wages for someone called "Edith" wasn't an option. I think the manageress assumed I had a crystal ball somewhere.

In a drastic change to policy a couple of school leavers were hired. Instead of noting down who the person was and where they lived, I'd find "Goe's to collage" written on a discarded till receipt next to the person's hours. I'd then have to follow up with a twenty minute phone call. Everything I did at work was chargeable and given that I had umpteen things to do, often Just-In-Time my own time was in fairly short supply.

(PJM picks up phone, dials number. *Ring-ring* etc)

"I need some details for "little Stevie" Mrs Jones, can you tell me his surname and where he lives? I cannot process his wages without them"

"Oh wurl, 'ee lives down that Manor Road oi fink. I do know that 'ees at the collage (sic). Wi' that be alroight?"

"No Mrs Jones I'm afraid it wont. They don't know who Little Stevie is at the Salford Tax Office. I'm not allowed to process anyone's wages until I have their details."

I really wasn't being awkward. Those are the rules. If HM Revenue and Customs paid the place a visit, David - the owner of the business would end up in all sorts of trouble. Now that wasn't overly concerning, but given that he was a client of ours, I'd be obliged to spend hours sorting it out for him and deal with HMRC on his behalf.

Sure enough, I'd have to go through the same exercise to extract the details for every new member of staff. Every week I'd send in forms for them to give to new starters and had even designed new timesheets with handy reminders printed on them. No dice.

(PJM picks up phone, dials number. *Ring-ring* etc)

"Hi Mrs Jones, it's PJM here. How are you? Yes, yes, lovely. Can you tell me a little more about 'Doreen'? Yes, yes... I didn't know she had four grandchildren... Like her address and date of birth perhaps?"

The owner of the business had a massive aversion to tax and dealing with tax of any kind. He didn't earn enough to pay tax (allegedly) and made damn sure none of his staff earned enough for NI and tax to be deducted. He made sure his manageress paid his staff in cash on Saturday when the payslips turned up.

However, one morning, the unfortunate 'Doreen' arrived at work bearing a piece of paper, probably not unlike Neville Chamberlain for they were of a similar vintage. The note found it's way to me and having processed the payroll it awarded Doreen £18.72 in a tax rebate.

At 08:58 Monday morning, Doreen was on the phone.

*ring-ring* (PJM utters the words "fuck off", sighs in despair and picks up phone)

"Can I haves my tax rebate as a cheque from you please. Ol' David tells me that your'll sort it owt for me."

Yep, he'd dodged responsibility and told her to come straight to me, knowing full well there was nothing I could do.

(PJM picks up phone, dials Leicester number and waits *ring-ring*)

"When it comes to tax, we need to put the onus on the staff!" opined David "We need to make tax their responsibility".

"That's not legal David. You're responsible for paying her tax rebate, but you do get it back from the Tax Office" I replied.

"But I want nothing to do with tax! Can't you get Doreen to go and bother the tax office herself?" He continued.

"No David. HMRC will simply tell her that the employer deals with it, put a mark against your business and then investigate you sometime down the line. Can you imagine the fuss?"

Somehow he saw sense and at great protest arranged to pay her £18.72, complaining bitterly that the "tax people" had no idea about cash flow and the impact on his business.

He nearly hit the fucking roof when the Inland Revenue caught up with another employee.

*ring-ring* (PJM stops working on xyz payroll. Now hating the entire world, the phone is picked up with an irritated "Hello!")

"Sandra's given me a tax code notice which says BR! How much is that going to cost me?" she was under sixty five and had worked there long enough to sue the arse off him for wrongful dismissal. besides, it wouldn't cost him a penny. It would cost Sandra a straight 22% of eevrything she earned, which the business was oblidged to pay HMRC. It took five attempts to explain this to him.

"Look, I'll tell you how much tax is due at the end of every month and all you need to do is send a cheque in to the tax office. I'll even fill out the forms and post them to you" I replied.

Not even I was expecting what happened a month later.

*ring-ring* (PJM stops working on... Oh fuck it, you get the idea)

It's the office receptionist

"I've got a Sandra in reception here who needs to see you"

I went downstairs, grumpily distracted from processing a two hundred person payroll, due to be paid two hours hence. I was pointed toward a hatchet faced sextenegerian, frothing gently at the mouth.

"Ol' David sed I should gi' you my tax and yor'll sort it out. I ain't gots no bank accunt or nuffink, so you've gutta take cash." she explained, handing me over an envelope full of copper coins.

"An oi'm not leavun' 'til I gets a receipt!" she added.

Sure enough, she made me count out the £22.18 in copper, fill out two compliment slips as a receipt and while she was there leave an envelope containing timesheets, crumbs, caster sugar and currants.

I'd then have to hand over the copper to our gibbonesque, gurning Practice Manager (a man bearing an Alaska-sized grudge against me), who'd put it in petty cash and write a cheque to Inland Revenue for a corresponding amount.

Every fucking month this happened. Some days Sandra would turn up unannounced at ten past one and would kick off in reception because I dared be out having my lunch.

*ring-ring* (PJM answers mobile from pub "whatthefuckdotheywantnow?")

Sure enough, Sandra was in reception and causing a scene, demanding that someone came down specially to "Sort me' tax owt!". The sour faced old bag pensioner was sufficiently rude to all the junior members of staff to ensure none of them would deal with her and I'd have to sort it out.

*ring-ring* (This time, PJM is on a week long holiday in Wales with his friends. He's halfway up a mountain when his mobile phone rings). Oh joy, it's our practice manager again, no doubt with the senior partner listening in.

"Hello PJM. That mad old bat is in reception again. I tried to explain you were on holiday, but she's kicking off again".

Grrr....

And to rub salt into the wounds, I made a loss each and every time the payroll was processed. Why? By existing agreement with the firm's partners David's bill for professional fees was less than twenty pounds a month.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:08, 4 replies)

Working in a bar
I was doing the rounds and decided to check the toilets. I noticed that the sit down toilet was blocked up with so many layers that it resembled a hellish Vienetta. I reported as such to my manager in the hope that he\\\\\\\'d get a skivvy to attempt an un blocking. He did. Unfortunately it was me.

I armed myself with a mop, some bin liners and some marigolds (i didn\\\\\\\'t really have a properly formulated plan of attack). I got back to the toilet no more than three minutes after noticing it was blocked to find a still reasonably sober prannock having a big shit on top of it all meaning I not only had to tackle the afore mentioned Vienetta but also the dead otter which had suddenly appeared on top of it all.

Yeah Cheers Mate.
(wooly_sammoth, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:05, Reply)

Here's a good one from the aisles of my local Asda a few weeks back
The customer service desk was dealing with its usual tasks of changing faulty goods and sending a number of Smart Price electricals to be buried in a pit before they exploded when one of the local scumbags walks up and slams his fists down onto the counter:

Chav: I've just been in your store and picked up some bleach, the top has fallen off and spilt all over me finest Burberry and burning me skin

Asda Worker: What?

Chav: Look (removes his battered top to show his pasty white chest has got a nasty looking red mark over it)

Asda Worker: Oh, two seconds let me get my boss

Chav: Whatcha gonna do about it Im gonna sue you for this!!!!

Asda Worker: Aren't you more bothered about what it's going to do to your skin?

(a crowd starts to gather around the chav who is starting to enjoy this moment)

Boss: Bloody Hell! What happened?

Chav: Ah told you I was picking it up off the shelf and it spilled all over me, you better get ready for the payout

(As the little chav does his victory dance the boss is pulled to one side by a member of the public who whispers something into his ear)

Boss: Right you stupid little shit I've just been told from a witness that you did this to yourself, we are just going upstairs to lookup CCTV footage and if this is right you had better not be here when I get back.

(Boss walks off and sure enough the Chav scarpers)

Why the hell would anyone pour bleach on themselves in a crowded supermarket and not get caught? Words fail me but I hope that the bleach did something permanent to his skin, twat.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:00, 4 replies)

The customer *is* always right
"The customer is always right" is my motto, a maxim to live by in all industries.

The reason I say this, is because if someone comes along who is wrong, then they are obviously not a customer, and can piss off, and stop wasting my time.
(Rastus P Watermelon, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 16:59, 3 replies)

Good old customers
Working in a call centre I get no end of idiots on the other end of the line. Our chosen speciality is Fraud (stopping it, not perpetrating it).

Recently, as some of you lot will probably know, there has been a propensity for a pop up to appear on the toolbar asking you to upgrade your anti-virus software otherwise xy and z will happen, as detailed on this link.

www.fife.gov.uk/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.display&objectid=FF9BF953-984A-D737-2FADB57C499D5050

This is one of the most obvious scams, but so far I have dealt with about 500 of these cases. When people ring up and I ask if they put their credit card details into a pop-up, they say yes. I then say "well, technically it is your fault, would you give your card and pin to someone on the street if they said they needed to check it out?" They invariably answer in the negative.

People who give their card to someone then act surprised when they rob them blind are a favourite. They launch into a diatribe about how I am the one at fault and they should be protected.
The standard response to this one is
"If you lend your car to someone, and they crash it, would you moan at the car company?"
"err, no"
"so when you lend a credit card to someone, give them the PIN and then they use it, whose fault would that be?"
"well, putting it that way...*hang up"

Other favourites from my time in the service industry include

"Do you have any vegetarian chicken?"
"They're all vegetarian, chickens practice an ancient form of Buddhism, the story goes that they were present when the Buddha became enlightened and took on his ways"
"Oh, excellent, I'll have some of that then"

"This gazpacho soup is cold"
Didn't even dignify that with an answer.

*whilst silver serving a full tray of meat*
"could you get us some drinks right away?"
"I'll do it in a minute, I'm a little tied up now"
"When I go to a restaurant and I ask for something I expect to get it"
"In 2 weeks I'll be able to do that for you and multi-task, you see, I'm getting an extra pair of arms sewn on"
"They can do that now?"
"Yeah, wonders of modern science eh?"

Same bloke then complained that his Yorkshire puddings looked homemade. When asked if he could wait a few hours whilst I got some couriered from Rotherham he went quiet again.
(triley, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 16:54, 1 reply)

Okay then, an on-topic one now.
Many years ago, when women wore shoulder pads and perms to make themselves look BIG and makeup that looked like a drag queen had exploded in front of them, I worked as a waiter. The restaurant I worked in catered to the older crowd, typically late fifties and up- at the time, the older portion of the WWII generation and the ones from before then.

Now normally this was fine- I got pretty decent tips from them, and only once did a table of drunken women grab at my arse- but once in a while I would get a real live one.

One evening I had a fellow who was (I hope) a professional Jack Benny imitator. He looked and sounded exactly like the man, and used a lot of his mannerisms- so if he didn't do this for a living, he was a pitiful wretch indeed.

After I brought them their drinks, he informed me, "I'm afraid that tipping waiters is against my religion."

I'm nothing if not fast with a reply. "I'm sorry to hear that sir, but my church is the Sixth Church of Rodney, who has proclaimed the waitstaff to be deities in their own right." (Yes, I actually did say that.)

He looked flummoxed for a moment, so I added, "Their creed states that I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than to have to have a frontal lobotomy." And with that I retreated to get their salads.

The meal went uneventfully enough, with pleasant exchanges regarding the requests for more drinks and such, and ultimately I brought the bill. When I came back to pick it up Jack Benny handed it to me and said, "Now if you want a tip you'll have to guess the serial numbers on the bills." And he held one up so he could read it.

"Very well," I replied. "The first number is one."

He looked startled. "You're right. How did you know?"

"Because the serial numbers on bills always start with a one or a zero."

He was impressed. "A man who pays attention to his money! What's the next one?"

"Three."

"And next?"

"Seven."

He looked up at me, baffled. "How are you doing that?"

I smiled. "Intuition. And the next number is four."

And I smiled at his wife as she peered over his shoulder and held up three fingers.

I got a very good tip, actually...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 5 Sep 2008, 16:49, 3 replies)

Tesco Trotsky
This geezer was not from hell, he was from a 1970's sitcom about right-on socialists.

Twice I encountered him, the first time was in the car park. Now I hated being a cashier so I was always the first to volunteer to do something else, anything, if the store was quiet and extra staff were needed elsewhere. This particular day, I had managed to wrangle a morning of collecting trolleys. There was a tiny bit of drizzle coming down. Trotsky came up to me and asked me why I was working outside without a coat (I had on my grey nylon blazer). I told him that it didn't bother me. "It's outrageous" he said, "You want to get on to your union about this". I was 17 and doing a saturday job for drinking money.

The next time I saw him, this was around the time of the Edwina Currie salmonella in eggs health scare. He came to my till with 6 loaves of bread and I don't know how many boxes of eggs but I reckon about 90 eggs in total. As he slammed them down he said "I don't care what that bloody cow says, I'll eat as many eggs as I want!"
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 16:47, 3 replies)

"I don't have AIDS!"
A good friend of mine works in a bank - basically when you walk into a bank, normally you see the rows of tellers behind their glass screens and then a chap in the corner at a desk. My friend is this chap.

About half an hour before closing time one afternoon, he's approached by a large woman with a very thick Nigerian accent.
"Can you sort out my money? Something's wrong with my money."

She hands him an account book. Not a bank card, not even a new, up-to-date account book, but an old, battered book which at best was probably issued in the early '90s.

My friend takes a look at this book and sees a number of worrying figures in there. It appears the account has been closed.
"Excuse me," he says, "I'll just go and check our records and see why this account was closed."

He goes away to find out the account was closed for "debt recovery" - basically the credit history was so bad that the bank dropped all the debts just to be shot of this woman.

My friend finds a more polite way to explain this to her. Her response?
"Why do they do this? I'm not a bad person." Then, very earnestly, "I'm not a prostitute! I DON'T HAVE AIDS!"

She then launches into the story of how her account came to be in this state. Little of it is cogent; all my friend can really work out are two things:
1. Something about a Dr Lumenfrond and his wife, who are from Switzerland. They are apparently "very naughty people" and stole her identity.
2. She doesn't have AIDS. She keeps reminding him of this; in fact, nearly every phrase ends with the assurance, "I don't have AIDS!" It almost becomes punctuation.

After twenty solid minutes of this, my friend has switched off. He has to be careful now - is this woman crazy, and should he call the police? More importantly, if she says "I don't have AIDS!" one more time, he's in danger of cracking up and laughing very loudly.

Eventually he finds the best way out of this situation:
"I'm very sorry to hear about all this. What you should do is fill out this complaint form. If you send this to the head office and tell them what you told me, I'm sure somebody there will be able to deal with your account."

And he breathes a sigh of relief as she takes the form and shuffles away. I really hope she wrote up the entire story of Dr Lumenfrond and her lack of AIDS and has sent it to some poor, bemused person at the bank's head office.

Length? About twenty, maybe thirty, minutes. But at least she didn't have AIDS.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 16:45, 2 replies)

there's only one Castle
Just next to Piccadilly Gardens in city center Manchester there is a lovely rustic (ie ruff as feck) pub called "The Castle." Fantastic place, multi-roomed, all with thier own unique flavour (and smell), and well renowned for serving after time has been called (alledgedly, officers).

One evening a few friends and I were chatting at the bar when the most troll-like baglady I've ever seen pushes open the front door and tries to drag her shoppping trolley in with her. (I say her trolley, strictly speaking it belonged to Tesco's).
"Oy! Gladys" shouts the barman "I told you before -- y'barred".
"Just want a quick nip" pleads the troll.
"Fuck off Gladys, before you get pulled again" says barman (I think he meant arrested as oppossed to offers of sex - there's not enough deoderant in the world for the latter).
So Gladys pushes the shopping trolley back into the street and says "Right!"
She then squats down and gushes about 40 gallons of piss all over the mat by the front door. I swear to the gods, the vapour that came of the piss fumed- as in, 1980's pop video. Did I mention the Castle only has a front door? The smell was horrendous- eyes were watering, women were puking, we were laughing ours tits off in between gasping for breath. We all became olympic standard triple jumpers trying to get out of the pub.
Ah.... "The Castle."
(bugboybeast, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 16:27, 2 replies)