Online delivery (fairly boring post)
Occasionally, pricing mistakes are made.

Results this year:
60 packs of 10 snacksize mars, snickers, ... - a total of 15 kilos of chocolate for a tenner. I can eat chocolate for two straight months.
Some killjoys claim this isn't a balanced diet - but I have 4 different chocolate bars.


15 kilos of chicken fillet also for about a tenner.

If you've got the space, making use of the 'favorites on special offer' is a really good plan.

Do check they are actually cheaper than other options.

Keeping track of prices, and planning meals can lead to large savings.

For example - last months shop, I bought no meat, as it was comparatively expensive, with no really good special offers, and I have 15 kilos or so in the freezer.

Currently managing a healthy fairly varied diet on 60 quiddish a month.
(speedevil, Sat 12 May 2012, 1:41, 4 replies)

Tallest man in Wales
Worked in Sainsbury's on Cardiff's Newport Road when I was stacking shelves there during my student days.

The old ladies who shopped there used to love him, they would always be asking him to get stuff off the top shelf for them.

Seem to recall that he and some other people of similar height formed a tall person's club and went on trips to the Netherlands to meet other tall people.
(Capo, Sat 12 May 2012, 1:15, 4 replies)

To all the Lidl snobs
Next time you're passing, Wonder in and check out their freezer section. Here are a few of the things you can buy:

Venison, partridge, quail and lobster.

and I'm pretty sure none of these meats are factory farmed.

Tried the venison, it was delish!
(Nitrous Nitrous, Fri 11 May 2012, 23:55, 8 replies)

Things to do at 10:15 on a Saturday night and you have just finished your shift as a till monkey at a well known superstore with the catch phase 'every little helps...'
1. whatever fresh veg that a customer had decided against buying and dumped in the freezers is now thrown at each other, frozen lemons will give you a nasty bruise...
2. Use said veg to go bowling, this is one of the reasons tesco value baked beans tins are so dented.
3. The store meat heads will race around the entire shop floor to see who can complete a lap the store the fastest while carrying the girl they most want to bang (or the overweight girl if they want to look buff) in a firemans lift.
4. Slinging insults at the night staff, day staff see them as lazy (sorry to those who work nights, I've worked them too and at our store it was widely held that night staff were lazy and unable to hack the world of customers. Personally I thought nights were better, as who wants to deal with the customers anyway. Night staff thought day staff were pansies.)
5. Shudder at the fact that the lonely old guy has come in again to buy, no kidding, a bottle of Napoleon brandy and a single and the largest banana he can find...
6. any fresh fish served at the fish counter and left on the end of a till and not spotted has to be binned or in our case put in the work fleece of the weird old woman who works tills and who refuses to handle fish, any fish, be it frozen, fresh or whatever.
7. And the best saved til last.... Its dark, the car park poorly lit... The manager you most hate has badly parked his BMW so you sabotage his car...clingfilm the doors shut or clingfilm over the windscreen.. Get the gone off milk you were supposed to tip down the drain in the dairy and (if its summer and he was fool enough to leave the window open a crack to stop his car getting too hot) save your big thick straw from your KFC frozen desert and insert it in to stinky milk then squeeze until his nice clean seats are covered in gone off cow juice.
(Winesoaked.hedgehog Camel? No thank you, I'm smoking....., Fri 11 May 2012, 22:30, 3 replies)

Stockboy Midnight Bowling League
Since my best friend was an employee, I was fortunate enough to be a charter member of the "Stockboy Midnight Bowling League". A non-sanctioned, purely informal group, the league primarily consisted of stockboys of the local grocery store - my friend and I were on the "Vendors" team - our participation being mainly the result of my friends early-morning bread delivery route.

Typical rounds consisted of placing the chili-can pins at the end of the frozen foods aisle, picking a suitable frozen turkey from the bin, and bowling the pins over. It was much like standard bowling, but the addition of the fog rolling off the frozen food bins into the humid store, the good-natured banter of the players (who were generally more baked than the turkeys were destined to be), and the illicit nature of the whole endeavour made for an excellent diversion indeed.

The league finals were paticularly thrilling, as a shipment of unusually large frozen turkeys resulted in an arms escalation of surprising (and worrying) scale. Baked beans can had to be substituted for chili as the stocks were smashed to oblivion. Favorite birds were scuffed and worn beyond salability. Unfortunately, these antics brought the games to the attention of management (why are all the chili cans dented, and what happened to the frozen turkeys?). Thus ended the league, withg ony good memories left.
(danalan Pretty good, for an amateur., Fri 11 May 2012, 20:39, Reply)

My first venture into theft
When I was 14 (1986) I worked as a paper boy for a local grocery/newsagents in a salubrious northern Scottish town. My duties were delivering newspapers every morning, Monday to Saturday then on a Friday and Saturday afternoon I would get on the old grocers bike and deliver groceries to mainly the old and infirm.
The shop was run by two doolally old sisters and every morning myself and the other three paper boys were left to bag up our round whilst they read the papers and had breakfast in the back room.

14 years old.
Unsupervised.
In a grocery/newsagents.

For a year i was the main supplier of fags (single for 10p) in our school, tip was never get greedy, 20 fags and around 10/15 choccy bars a day. Only came to an end when my colleague came to work high on Butane lighter fuel and tried to nick all the fags that were on display, whilst the two sisters were still in the front.
Aaahh happy days.
(Hammy1801 may have scabies!, Fri 11 May 2012, 18:22, Reply)

Defrauded supermarket....
My Mother over a decade ago.

Dad got a bought a bottle of wine that was substandard (from memory cannot remember what was the exact reason, but something was not right).
'I will take it back tomorrow' Says mum

Mum takes it to Sainsburys. Complains. She did not have a receipt, refund given (poss a voucher too but not certain as over a decade ago).
Gets home 'I took that wine back to Sainsiburys and got a refund' Says Mum.
Dad: I Got it from Safeway!

True.
(Booked_moss, Fri 11 May 2012, 17:30, 4 replies)

I'm not saying 'pearoast', that's for cunts.
b3ta.com/questions/randomactsofevil/post1534874
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Fri 11 May 2012, 16:00, 10 replies)

Aldi
Relating to an earlier post – coming home from Aldi with 2 Axes and some collapsible chairs…

For those that are not familiar with the ‘middle aisle’ in Aldi. It is a thing to behold.

Upon first venturing in there, it’s a world of confusion where everyone knows and understands the layout, but you stand aside, mystified at the mayhem unfolding in front of you. But as time goes on, you find yourself looking forward to Thursdays and Sundays when the ‘new stuff’ arrives. Where else can you buy an arc welding kit, bird box with web cam and a petrol chainsaw whilst filling your trolley with your weekly groceries…

These are some of the things I have come home with (some that I have no need for but am convinced I will need one day):

A digital weather station,
Stubby Spanners
Magnetic Torch
Microwave bags
Oven chip mesh tray
Flood light
Collapsible fishing rod
Patio dining set
Light switches
Food processor

I could go on…

I’ve got my eye on a 200 litre water butt at the moment and rue the decision not to get the loft ladders…

You can shove your Asda up your arse… Aldi romps it!!
(Pat mustard, Fri 11 May 2012, 15:53, 7 replies)

Longer ago than I care to think about
I worked for a few weeks during University holidays with the Trevis Brothers of Blackstone, Queensland. Colin and Theo, their other assistant was Mr. Evans, who took orders in kitchens from housewives on Mondays and Thursdays, and delivered on Tuesdays and Fridays.

They ran two shops, one on Thomas Street ( the shop is trill there at Google Earth 27.37.24S, 152.47.57E), up the road from the Welsh Chapel, and down the hill from the cracks in the ground where smoke arose from the burning coal seam. The other was in Blackstone proper, a suburb almost entirely inhabited by coal miners.

I expect you have seen "Open All Hours". Mr. Barker had the tone correct. They belonged to a grocery chain, 4 Square I think it was called and every week the chain would have specials. The A4 posters on cheap duplication paper would arrive in the mail and they would be posted up on the inside of the windows. Now you would probably use tape from a roll. Not Theo and Col. They bought sheets of postage stamps and the blank, gummed edges were carefully torn off and used to hold up the posters.

I was there to make myself generally useful, and to take orders and deliver while Mr. Evans had a little holiday with his family. The store room on the right was filled with bulk groceries, potatoes, chicken feed, carrots, onions. Another room at the back held drums of kerosene and methylated spirits. When nothing much else was doing, I filled beer bottles with these useful fluids or bagged potatoes and onions into 4 and 7 pound lots. A potato can go from sound on Monday to a stinking mass on Wednesday, at least in Queensland's summer heat. One day as I was peacefully weighing spuds, I heard a rustle in the store room and glimpsed something moving down the far end.

A rat! Col had the answer, an ancient single shot .22 rifle. The rat didn't last long.

I saw the interior of a lot of kitchens. After a few times round you knew what the orders were going to be. One always included three packs of "State Express 555" cigarettes. Folk living just around the corner from me had a big family, and every weekly order was three big crates of groceries, I staggered carrying them into the house.

There was Mrs. Marsh. House proud, she was. Mr. Marsh was a miner, and though he showered in the bath house after leaving the pit, she insisted he had another before he entered the house. So there was a little shower cubicle just beside the back door. We also took orders from her married daughter. Both of them had pastel coloured plastic doilies inside their refrigerators and each item had to sit on them just so.

Then there were to two ladies, mother and daughter who lived in a big old Queenslander overlooking the Bundamba Racecourse. I used to get there about 2pm and they'd always had a couple of sherries with their lunch and could be rather chatty.

The saddest were an old couple living not too far from the Ipswich police station in a tiny cottage that must have been built in the 1870s. They always ordered a few cans of dog food. Foul stuff that our dog would not eat. It was a long time before I realised why.

Nearly all the customers were miners. Back in the late 1940s, there had been a national miner's strike that had gone on for weeks. The Trevis Brothers had carried accounts and didn't ask for payment until miners went back to work. It was many years later, but the miners did not forget.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Fri 11 May 2012, 15:04, 1 reply)

Vegemite.
Circa 1991, I travelled abroad (as many Aussies do) to visit the British Isles and spend my formative years working in a series of shitty underpaid jobs.

I wound up in Edin-berg, renting a single room in a large sandstone house with many similarly rented rooms and a single shared bathroom....every morning begrudingly admiring the freshly birthed massive corn-studded turd that a fellow tenant would leave in the communal shitter.

I also appreciated the upturned milk crate in the shower stall, which kept one's feet out of the semi-permanent pool of grey swill in the base of the shower, thanks to a slow draining plughole, blocked with years of hair, spunk and soap.

By chance, I gained employment in a very posh Deli in Bruntsfield. I was the only non-Scot amongst all the staff. After my first day everyone went out on the piss, and they kindly asked me along, and in the true tradition of the all night "bonding session" I got along famously with everyone although I couldn't understand a fucking word they were saying.

Anyway, I built up a regular clientele of nice customers, daily start time was 6:00, when all the busy doctors and lawyers would come in for croissants and coffee, later in the morning the old biddies would arrive.

I remember counselling one really nice old lady against trying Vegemite...she used to buy one bread roll each morning and would cheerily refer to me as "my funny Australian friend" as she handed over 7p.

I knew she was venturing out on a limb by purchasing Vegemite and she wanted to display some sort of misguided solidarity toward me, and also I guessed that she was used to Marmite, which is a lot sweeter, so I tried to dissuade her from her purchase.

Unless you have a hankering for eating axle grease, don't try Vegemite. Australians are immune to it, no other races can abide it.

Anyway, she returned the next day, gave me a sour look and never spoke to me again.

So, her illusions of tasting a small slice of sun bleached, wide open plains, carefree Australia were shattered by the fact that Vegemite is pretty much unpalatable to anyone who isn't indoctrinated from birth on the stuff, and she somehow blamed me.





Whatever, you old prune cunt bitch. Fucking get over it.
( Ken Oath, Fri 11 May 2012, 14:55, 14 replies)

Wife with clubcard points
My parents moved house when I went off to Uni, so my first holiday back from home was in a town where I didn't know anyone. I heard that a neighbour's daughter, my age, worked in the local Tesco, so on my first trip to the supermarket I found her on the tills, introduced myself as the new boy next door and we shook hands at the checkouts. A few meets later - and lots of unecessary trips in to Tesco - I got her number, then got the courage to ask her out to the cinema, and it went from there.

11 years on from that day, we got married last summer, and our first baby's due this summer.

Amusingly, if I recount the story of how we met in polite company, her rather wannabe-upper-class mother likes to chirp in with 'she only worked there as a temporary job you know, we normally shop in Waitrose'
(harrypitta friends with the chilli saucerer, Fri 11 May 2012, 14:37, 4 replies)

Photo shop
Before digital cameras and picture phones gave us an easy way to create our own erotica, enthusiastic amateur snappers of bedroom antics had to entrust their intimate images to the local photo-processing lab.

My first Saturday job was at a large high street camera emporium and much of our trade was sending off film for developing and printing. For the record, no it wasn’t completely automated, yes staff reviewed orders for ‘quality control’ purposes and no, that wasn’t always completely at random. But I digress.

One day in walked a rather ample lady, plain featured, wild hair; think a younger Susan Boyle on a good day. She’d lost her counterfoil slip for her photos, which was fairly common and not really a problem. I took the name and picked out a couple of possible candidates.

“We’ll just check if these are the ones” said I, opening the first pack and fanning out a few prints on the counter. Her various children craned their necks to see the exciting new family photos.

I looked down, then up, then down again. The enduring horror is probably a combination of my embarrassment, the images themselves and the realisation that those kids had just seen their mum, recumbent, legs akimbo and exhibiting her frankly astonishing muffro to maximum effect.

All I could manage to say as she hurriedly gathered up the pictures and stormed out of the shop was

“Yup, those are definitely yours….”
( custardthehedgehog, Fri 11 May 2012, 14:22, 10 replies)

Threshers
I loved that job, despite the derisory wages, long hours and drunk/violent/cuntish clientelle. Mainly because we had a great team of staff, including a manager on Christmas eve said "help yourself to anything except spirits!" About 5 cans of Gold Label later I spent my shift serving 3 identical customers.

Then the head office had a great idea of making us work solo. Not only did it destroy staff morale (looking after a shop for ten hours alone is soul destroying) the local criminals got wind of it and we were robbed and shoplifted almost daily.
( h3donist tryin' to play me out as if my name is Sega.., Fri 11 May 2012, 13:16, 6 replies)

Saturday lols...
In my mid teens I had a Saturday job in the local hardware store, paid a pittance but it was actually fun working there so loved doing it. There were 3 of us young lads there, one wasn't the sharpest tool in the box to put it mildly, you could catch him out with literally ANY of the golden oldies. You know the sort, asking the boss for a long weight, getting him to check if we had any tartan paint, my absolute favourite though was asking him to go down into the basement and see if I was down there. At least three times he got half way down the stairs before turning around and telling me that I wasn't....

I don't think he had any mental issues as such, he just didn't seem to consider conscious thought as important...or he was stoned...I've never been sure which.
( repooc, Fri 11 May 2012, 13:14, 1 reply)

In the 90's i worked as an assistant manager for Dillons convenience stores
It was late saturday i was cashing up the lottery takings the shop was closed and 2 of my good friends had turned up in anticipation of the night out we had planned, bored of waiting i sent them to the magazine section whilst i finished up the safe and takings stuff, i heard laughter and movement and asumed they were laughing at the 50+ smut from the top shelf, i finished up and The following Friday i was called into the managers office because if the alarm is set late as it was on Saturday the CCTV is checked, i sat down and watched footage of my 2 best friends flying towards each other in aisle 4 on wheeled office chairs with french sticks jousting. I was suspended pending an investigation. I was sacked.
( Kung-fu Womble The pope is smelly, Fri 11 May 2012, 12:50, 2 replies)

Badge of honour
As you've probably noticed, many of the larger chainstores make their employees wear name badges to make them seem more human.
I wanted to get some info from the customer service department in Homebase in Basildon
The name?

Mike Hunt.

I was like the centurion in Life of Brian when I noticed.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Fri 11 May 2012, 12:47, 3 replies)

Working at Boots, 1994
The staff in the electrical department used to put new CDs on over the store tannoy system. They got the Pulp Fiction soundtrack delivered and put it on without checking.

I don't think I've ever seen a shop manager move that fast.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 11 May 2012, 12:42, 2 replies)

The company I worked for supplied EPOS systems to the Cornwall's infamous Trago Mills tat Superstore
One night as one of my colleagues was completing an installation down there he sent me a text message:

"They sell size 12 Ladies white stilettos! SIZE 12! WTF?"

To this day we're unsure whether they were for local giantesses or whether the locals are into a bit of cross dressing of an evening.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 11 May 2012, 12:16, 2 replies)

This was the days before Fabreze
A family used to wheel their decrepid and incontinent grandfather into the local Waitrose and leave him for a good two hours to do his own shopping. The stench he emitted was unbelievable and had the workers and shoppers all gagging.

This happened every weekend and as he was a paying punter, no-one could summon up the courage to ask him not to come into the store. Instead the checkout manager used to walk behind him liberally spraying a can of air freshner with no subtlety whatsoever.

As much as we hated the sight of the filthy old duffer, we couldn't begrudge his no-doubt long suffering family the chance of fresh air for a couple of hours a week.
(BinDipper, Fri 11 May 2012, 12:06, 2 replies)

Comet
I’ve posted stuff here about my time as a sales person for the 2nd rate store…

Here’s another…

Having been re-hired for the xmas rush after leaving 3 months earlier to go to uni – the store had a new manager who said I came highly recommended but she was aware that I had a tendancy to ‘dick around’ and not take the job seriously (harmless stuff really – but it never looked professional). Basically, I would start straight away but there would be no probation period. I was on her radar and she was ready to pounce if I was up to no good.

I was on the 12-6 shift and was having a productive day. It came to 5:55 and I was in the storeroom by the office when I spotted it in all its glory. A huge cylinder of helium used for promotional balloons. Then I spotted the tannoy microphone in the office. I really couldn’t afford to miss this opportunity.

Several gulps of helium later and I hit the tannoy button.

“Staff announcement, Staff announcement”
(Now imagine a combination of Frankie Howard and Kenneth Williams with chipmonk voices)
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

I looked on the CCTV to see most of the staff falling over laughing and then spotted there was at least 10 customers still in the shop, then I spotted the manager storming towards the back office.

I was royally bollocked!!

It took me just under 6 hours at my ‘new job’ to get my first written warning
(Pat mustard, Fri 11 May 2012, 11:55, Reply)

Repost, but relevant I guess.
Really Rubbish Job.
I used to work for a nasty retail chain in Scotland, the managers there always adopted the "I am much too important for this" attitude when dealing with the staff, and working conditions there were hell.

I had handed in my notice (I was fed up with the abuse from managers and customers) and on my last day, a few minutes before the end of my shift, I decided to get my revenge on those evil managers.

Every receipt printed there has a promotional message on it, usually some shit about special offers and such, I logged into a terminal (only one user name and password, everyone used) and accessed this data, I changed it so that every receipt had the words "The managers in Makro are Fucking Wankers"

It was hilarious, as apparently it took them three days to notice it, and hundreds of receipts had been printed, Imagine if you had just bought something from them, and noticed that printed on the receipt!
( Squiggy Alloria makes theme parks., Fri 11 May 2012, 11:30, Reply)

I was in a supermarket today and I heard this over the tannoy:
"Will Miss McCann please report to the lost property desk".

I nearly had a stroke.
( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 11 May 2012, 11:24, 9 replies)

'Staff can no longer engage in conversations with Daniel about football on the shop floor'
Waz4444's tale down there reminded me that the shop I once worked in also had a 'employ a local mentally disabled individual to give them more interaction with the public' scheme.

The young fellow who graced our supermarket was called Daniel. He had Down's Syndrome and was about as wide as he was tall- he could lift 25Kg sacks of potatoes like they were bags of crisps. He would challenge anyone and everyone to feats of strength and even once queued up at the checkout on his way out to ask one of the old dears if she wanted to arm wrestle. To accept a this challenge was a shortcut to defeat and pain.

One surefire way of avoiding such contests was to quickly change the subject onto football. Daniel loved football and could only come in every other Saturday for his 4 hours as on the other Saturdays he was taken to watch Tottenham Hotspur at their home games. He once asked me if I thought I could catch a cabbage if he threw it at me as hard as he could. An enquiry into last week's score soon but that one on the backburner.

Until one fateful day. I can only speculate about what happened the Saturday before. I assume that the game had not gone well for Tottenham and a member of the crowd has voiced his anger about it. A week later a challenge was offered and deflected with talk of football.

-"How did Spurs get on last weekend Daniel?"
-"SORRY BUNCH OF CUNTS!!!!"
-"Oh Christ."

This happened every time- You would think, 'It's safe, they won 4-0. He won't say it.' You'd be wrong. We'd make a game of it, calling out to Daniel as you were leaving the shop floor so that hundreds of middle class women would be serenaded with 'SORRY BUNCH OF CUNTS!

Eventually we were told in no uncertain terms to stop this, but Daniel had come out of his shell and would start conversations of his own. (So I guess the social interaction aspect of the project worked) In the end the lady who would come and pick him up announced that Daniel wouldn't be coming back. It turned out that he'd regale the elderly at his care home with his thoughts of the Tottenham squad too.

Years later I heard that Daniel had passed away and my first thought was of him at the pearly gates telling St Peter just what he thought of those eleven men he watched running about a few days before.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Fri 11 May 2012, 11:10, Reply)

My girlfriend...
...suggested we should be a bit more 'adventurous' or 'spontaneous' with our love-making.
As a callow youth I was a bit uncertain as to what she meant, so I asked her to elucidate.
"Oh you know," she said, "molest me while I'm doing the dishes or take me roughly over the freezer when I'm not expecting it."
So one day, when she was least expecting it, I "made 'er 'av it" over a chest freezer.
And that's why we can never go in Tesco's again.

(Anyone seen my coat?)
(minimalist ..., Fri 11 May 2012, 11:02, 1 reply)

Dont piss the Fresh Food Staff off...
There's going to be a million of these, ifact I've got a few like the Donut Filling Machine, head under neath it, how much strawberry jam filling could you fit in the new saturday lads mouth and hat or the "Eat as many Mini Babybels in the Backup Freezer" Challenge.

Anyway, Pizza Prep. Where freshly made pizzas were made. Saturday was a busy day, making loads of fresh pizzas, sealing them on the machine then putting them out. Except 1 stuck up woman pushed to the front, grabbed me and demanded 2 fresh 12" Cheese and Onion ones. I picked 2 out of the pile i was putting out saying "We've just made these, here you go" as politely as i'd been trained. Oh no, those weren't good enough. "You look scruffy, i don't want pizzas you've made - get him to make me some more" pointing at my equally less-interested and more scruffy mate.

"Yes Madam" he replied.

I hope she enjoyed the massive boogie (booger for the Merkins) that 'Snotty Eric' smeared on the bottom of the base along with the cheese swept off the floor. A small petty victory none the less.
(TheManofScience, Fri 11 May 2012, 10:47, 7 replies)

nothing exciting happens at my work
apart from the fact that i print Noddy Holder's Business Cards.

and David Dickinson's (but he's a bit of a *nice fella, just very busy*).
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Fri 11 May 2012, 10:08, 3 replies)

Free live yeast!
Due to some old bylaw or othersuch nonsense many supermarkets with in-store bakeries will give you free yeast.

Come back next week for more awesome money-saving tips.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 11 May 2012, 10:04, 2 replies)

Bit of an old one here -The Sad tale of Mr N64
Many moons ago, back when I was a student, I worked Sundays as a Sales Assistant for a well known stationary and entertainments chain.

It was about 8:30am and the store had just opened. A colleague and I were standing by the computer games section, where we were discussing the move by the managers for a special sale; the stock room was being cleared out, many a treasure had been discovered, and would be put on sale.

One of the prized items found was an N64, mint in box. The other sales assistant was explaining that another member of staff had reserved this little treasure. The entire conversation was held at little more than a whisper, as we were supposed to be working, and were instead, like all good assistants, slacking off.

To my surprise, two minutes after I had decided to go back to pricing something, HE showed up. He was in his mid-thirties and most likely still lived with parents. He was known to all of us in the entertainments department, as he had once brought a number of PlayStation 2 games over the year and proudly boasted that he would not unwrap them as they would depreciate in value.

He grabbed my attention and calmly asked whether or not he could buy the N64 that I had just been talking to my colleague about. Rather than asking if he had been stalking me, as there was no way he could have heard that conversation, I apologised and informed him that it had already been reserved by another customer and was not for sale. At this he simply said "Ok, not to worry!".

What proceeded after that, was the most anal behaviour I have ever seen by anyone during my time in retail.

He went around the ENTIRE store, asking EVERY single member of staff what the stores policy was on reserving items for staff. He when into heated discussions with the manager and supervisors. Hounded servers at the till points causing some rather awkward queues.

He eventually left the store.

About three hours later he returned. He had been around every other local store that had be open to question every other assistant and manager in the surrounding area about how staff were allowed to reserve items for themselves. He presented numerous handwritten pages of what other sales assistants and managers had said to him. At this point he was almost crying about buying this N64.

Luckily (probably the one time I've ever appreciated having a manager in store)we had one of our new and younger managers in; she wasn't one to stand for this sort of crap. She had him escorted out of the store, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he ever caused a scene like this again, he'd be banned.

And thus, the legend of N64 Man passed into our rich tapestry sales assistant lore, and setting the bar for mental customers.

Before that, the craziest was an American gentleman who turned up with his wife (who we could tell was incredibly embarrassed by his subsequent display), and was trying to return a stack of Friends VHS tapes, all opened and without receipt. When the manager refused, he leapt up on the desk, smothered the till and said we wouldn’t serve anyone until he had a refund.

It was at that point our security guard threw him out.
( theoriginalsteve <this space intentionally left blank>, Fri 11 May 2012, 9:48, 2 replies)