When i first start cutting for Winn-Dixie years ago we had a lady come in, instead of stopping at the service desk and asking for a refund or another product, she came to the market I was out checking the counter, she start hollering at me about some bad family pac chicken, I wasn't going to listen to her as she was being very rude and cussing., I told her let me get the market manager, when he came out she started right in on him about selling rotten chicken. He apologize for her having to bring it back and ask her if she wanted another pack of chicken parts, her money back or a store credit. she goes off into a rant about ruining her supper, tells him to **** his self and throws the chicken parts at him, they hit him in the face and he is trying his best to be clam, I happen to notice the package laying on the floor, I pick it up, looked at it and told her, madam this didn't come from Winn-Dixie, these chicken parts came from Wal Mart,. your crazy she said I know where I buy stuff from, Then she looked at the label on the package and turned white lol At this point my Managers says, Lady get away from my counter before I have you arrested for assaulted with a spoiled chicken with intent to do bodily harm. She apologized and almost ran out the store. After this we would call our manager chicken face some times, everybody would laugh, even him
In the 80's, I was a assistant market manager. I would always try to accommodate customers desires, but i had a market manager that didn't roll that way, every now and then, when the same person would come in with a complaint every week, he would snap.
Once, one of our regular troublemakers was yelling why didn't he put out fresher t-bones. "I know you've got better t-bones back there!"
He snap and told her "Of course I do, ma'am. And I'm going to put them out as soon as you break down and buy some of the crappy ones."
well you are rude she said and i'm never shopping here again
his replay was praise God
well that was good for three days off for him with out pay lol I got the over time
I'll have to be vague about where and with who I was working with, never burn bridges, we had been dealing with a patty matic machine that would work right about 30% of the time. We sold the s**t out of burger patties and this machine caused us a lot of grief. Multiple service calls. Company did not won't hand made patties displayed. During 4th of July holiday, my manager and I were in early busting our humps for a 30k day. I was putting a pan of ribeyes into service case and heard a tremendous noise behind me. I turned around and saw the patty matic turrned over on the floor and in pieces and my meat manager looking at me with a grin. I surveyed the situation and said Bill, you ok? He said, "I am now". I turned around and started on a pan of strips with a smile on my face.
This is my first post here and I decided after reading some stories here mine would fit in good, so here it is
I was working in the Meat Dept. of a large grocery chain. Our store sells already cooked chickens everyday in our meat isle and we had to take care of it from 6 to closing & clean the warmer
Let me set the scene, I and a co worker ( Beth ) are getting ready to close for the day. Meat closes at 9, and the rule is if you have any Chickens left by 8 price them down 40%. I'm working in the back, labeling stuff and getting a ready rack of meat to bring out when my co-worker comes into the back asking me about a cooked chicken...
Lady wants to know if she can get a discount on this chicken because it's damaged
I look at the chicken and there's nothing wrong with it, just a little bit of meat off one of the wings so I tell her to tell the customer no, but if she waits another 20 minutes, we will be pricing the chickens down anyways so she can get one then. Now yes, I could have given her the discount sticker then and it would have saved me some time, but I'd only been working there for about 2 months, so I was following the rules religiously.
So Beth takes the chicken out to the customer and I follow about 3 minutes later. As I am doing it I see that Beth is still dealing with this customer who looks quite aggravated. So as I walk by Beth and the crazy old lady this conversation follows:
Lady says were you the one who told her that she couldn't price this down?
Yes ma'am
Lady Why not?
The chicken wasn't damaged enough for a discount, but if you wait 15-20 minutes we can price the chicken down for you anyways.
Lady disgusted, you've got to be kidding me!
This conversation goes on for a little longer with her getting angrier until she is doing that "I can't believe you" laugh as she's talking to us. As I am trying to explain to her for the fourth time that we will be pricing them down soon she leaves while I am mid-conversations saying "Oh I can't wait", grabs a chicken and stomps off.
I look over to Beth and she and I both make the same "Well then" expression with our eyebrows and continue working. about 10 minutes later, we hear a call over the intercom
Will someone from Meat Dept. please come to till two for a return.
I look over at Beth, wink at her and say "Don't worry, I got this" I confidently stride over to the register where, guess who, is returning the full price chicken.
Lady very hateful You can take your chicken back.
Me: Okay ma'am, but we will be pricing them down soon.
Lady I don't want it.
Me: Okay
So I take the chicken and leave. Now here's where the justice comes into play. After crazy old lady left the first time I noticed a man walk by with his kids and wife and stop to look at the chickens, and he stands there looking at them the whole time we working. Now you can tell this families a little down on their luck, not very nice clothes, kinda dirty, you know the people. Well as I am waking back to the chicken area to put crazy old lady chicken back, I see him standing there, looking at the three remaining Chickens. I look down at my watch and the time read 7:48. I think oh yes. This is it. I walk up to the man and this following conversation made my day, and probably his week.
Me: Sir, if you wait for me to go in the back, I'm going to price these chickens down 40%
Guy face turns to that of a child opening gifts on Christmas, to me he says, oh my gosh thank you!
After going to get stickers, I come back to see each family member beaming from ear to ear, with three of the remaining chickens in hand
Guy says this is so awesome! I can't believe this. This is gonna last us the whole week! Thank you so much!
As I'm putting the stickers on here comes crazy old lady, I'll take that other one after all.
I reach and get it, put a sticker on it and hand it to the little girl
Sorry They just got them all and walked away
Was I an ass? yes. Did she deserve it. In my eyes, hell yeah.
-- Edited by Geno on Sunday 28th of June 2015 06:52:06 PM
THIS STORY DOESN'T COUNT IN THE JUDGING just one I thought you may get a laugh out of
Once with A&P in Atlanta we got word the big ****s would be getting off the plane and our store was first on the liist to check out. I was the cutting manager there at the time, market manager was off. we had the beef and chicken in, started on pork but it was slick, just came in the day before but was already slick. I refused to cut it and fill up the counter with it, my store manager threaten me if I didn't cut it he was going to fire me. I got a phone from my market manager to cut it and I told him no I would take the ass chewing from the big ****s. HERE they came, down the case with a big smile till they hit the pork section, They ask me why I didn't have it full, I told them the reason, one of the big ****s ( Allen ) wanted to see the pork loins, so we went to the cooler and he checked all 8 boxes, everyone was slick. He ask for the invoice and checked the date and weights on the boxes. He came back into the cutting, picked up the phone and some one at the warehouse got a ear full, I heard him say, I want 8 cases of fresh pork loins at this store in 30 mins or some people there want have a job. we went back out on the case, my dumb ass store manager came running up and said do you want me to fire him, Allen told him, if you fire him, fire your damn self while you at it. This man has save us business and possible save us from a lawsuit if someone had got sick. He handed me his card and told me, IF you ever have a problem in this division call me and I'll take care of it. I never called him but I would see him about twice a year when he would fly in to check the stores. He wasn't a man to get piss off at you, but if you were right he would be on your side. ooo and that store manager, he use to come by us market guys some times and pop that mouth off, I would tell him, DON'T make me call Allen on you, he would shut up and go away lol
As a young cutter with 4 years experience I hired in at a newly open grocery store. I also had to help work in the fish dept. Being a new store, they had this dumb asshat from another location as temporary fish dept manager to get things going. This moron obviously took the promotion in exchange for the inconvenience of having to work in a different city. It went to his head. He was the most incompetent condescending jackass possible. When I closed he would give me these impossible list to do. I had to mark off each thing I did and leave the list in his little office, I would get a ass chewing for each item not did and some times depending on his mood get threaten with a write up
Customer didn't like him because his method of killing the live trout we sold from the tank was to violently bludgeon them to death in front of the customers, he didn't sever the spine and the dead fish sometimes would be flopping around in the bag at the checkout counter!
One day, a customer came in to buy ALL of our live lobsters. We had about 20, each worth roughly $15. When the stupid manager couldn't think of a good way to package them, such as in boxes or separate, smaller "in-store" clear plastic bags, he decided it would be a good idea to just use larger grocery store bags from the checkout counter, because they were larger and more durable. I suggested other methods but he wasn't having it. His brilliant idea would prevail. So he weighs, bags them, and puts the white price stickers on the white plastic grocery bags with the store logo on them. No problem, he thought. They'll just ring them in at checkout like any other product. Unless... Unless the customer simply walks out of the store with what looks like many bags of already paid for groceries.
The market manager realized this possibility a half hour later. He asked every cashier if they rang through the big bags of lobsters. I hate to say it but I was so happy when we got the news that NO cashier knew what he was talking about. The customer apparently walked out with around $300 in live lobsters. Asshat got fired because of it. I was a very happy meat cutter & fish dept clerk not having to put up with asshat anymore. After cleaning up the market in the evenings I would pressure sprayed the place down in the evenings for an hour and spent the rest of my shift listening to classic rock radio and talking with the hot ladies that stop to buy sea food.
Three years worked a grocery store with a full service meat counter This place was also in a fairly rich neighborhood, so we had plenty of entitled lady customers.
I had to pull the Christmas Eve shift, You know how people hold off buying their Christmas dinners until the last minute. I was keeping up at a fast pace and memorizing all the codes for our label printer system.
Then came That Guy.
First let me explain how we took our holiday orders as it becomes relevant here. We had a series of massive boards that we printed large graph paper on - we made a chart out of the graphs and set aside so many orders for specific cuts - for example, Orders 1-125 were the orders we would hold for filet mignon, orders 126-150 for lamb roasts, etc. When a person came in, we would write their order down on a small sheet of paper with their name, order, and their order number. If they called, we made sure they wrote down their order number before we hung up - it is imperative to come in with that number, otherwise we waste time scanning over hundreds of orders for your name that may or may not be there. When you pick your order up, we black out the square with a sharpie.
Now back to That Guy.
This gentleman came in saying he had an order, but had no order number. He told us he ordered two standing rib roasts but after checking every square on the charts his name was nowhere to be found. I went to the manager to see if we had any to spare for the guy, because I felt bad that he would be going home empty handed.
The following conversation with the Meat Manager went like this:
Me: Hey MM, do we have any standing rib roasts? This guy said his wife ordered one and it's not on the board
MM: O Yeah, I spoke to this guy's wife, she hung up before I could give her the number, so I put the order back here,
MM: Hang on, I'm coming with you I want to see this guy **** on himself when he sees his wife ordered over $400 of PRIME RIB.
So I returned to That Guy, placed the two roasts on the scale, but they were collectively over the scale's weight limit, I had to price them individually. His reaction to the prices was hilarious!
That Guy: So this is what my wife ordered?
Me: Yes, sir, this is what she has, the total for the two together is going to come out to be $436.00.
That Guy is stunned by the absurd amount, and can only stand there in silence, staring at the scale, until suddenly he says the best line I heard that day:
That Guy....Holy ****!! My wife is f#!%king insane...She just like her nutty mother!!
Alright, wrap it up - I guess I'm taking them!
Thumbs up to the guy for buying the roasts, great order, but his tone in that final comment was hilarious and exactly what I needed to get me through the rest of that grueling shift.
Holy ****!! My wife is f#!%king insane...She just like her nutty mother!!
over 30 years ago I was working in a chain store in the states' capitol city...
a very flamboyant and fruity chef use to walk right in the department and give the meat manager orders of lamb legs and prime rib,,,his name was omar, from morocco, he was the proud personal chef for the Woolworth's estate (the wealthy heirs to the Woolworth stores- they had a huge lake front home in a town called Winthrop)
anyways,,,this Omar chef was a flamer,,,and he made it known he liked a couple guys in the department,,we went along with it for fun and games,, sweet talking him,,,, and such.. as the fall approached he said he had to go south as the family went south ..so we make him a dick-bone and wrapped it... we tried to be discrete because the store manager did not like how we all joked around,,was worried some customers would get offended ....so we gave Omar his gift,,,and made him promise not to open it until he got out of the store and in the parking lot well, he didn't listen,,and started opening it right up and was sooo proud of this bone,,,he started showing customers and telling them we gave it to him,,and of course when the store manager heard the commotion he came over and omar held up his bone proudly and said- see what your butchers gave me!!!, we scattered throughout the store the store manager running after us...we went out the back door and went around the building just in time to see omar going to his car,, he still grasping his bone,,,we couldn't help but laugh,, we couldn't stop laughing..,one of us got a Kodak camera out of our car and took pictures
then we had to face the store manager and we all thought it best as a group not one on one... so he tore into us,, in his office ,,and just like the scene in PORKYS in the principal's office we couldn't hold back any longer and busted out laughing
it was very funny at the time..
here's a true story ,,always stuck with me
one summer early on, the meat supervisor asked if I would go around to help stores during vacations,,,i said sure,,i was learning and thought the exposure couldn't hurt
the first week I was scheduled to go to a town called south paris,,we had an old corporate store there (use to be a sampsons) I wasn't familiar with that area,,, so I stopped at the first shopnsave I saw (which was Smith's in oxford) so I go back get dressed up...ready to go and the meat manager says,,,"who the f--- are you"?? im here to help fill vacations, what can I do first"?? well, the manager is just looking at me,,then smiles and says im going to give you a list,,,, and he did,,,and I whipped right thru it,,, after two hours,,he takes me aside and says "who sent you here"?? I said the meat supervisor,,,,,,then he laughed and said son,,you've got the wrong f---ing store,,,but thanks for the help...come back anytime that I don't have to pay you.."
so,,,im ****tin bricks,,,not only thinking what a dumb thing to do,,,but im two hours late,,,and they have probly called the supervisor to ask where im at.... a nice cashier up front told me where the south paris store was,,
I arrive.... run to the meat department, I walk in the cooler,,,see an older fellow grinding burger with an old grinder (with a plunger) and he's smoking a cigar!!!! I said sorry im a little late,,,got held up...he said don't worry about it ...and we worked together to fill the case...he was really decent to work with,,,the next day the manager was there,,,,he gave me a list,, first thing was a couple top butts...so I cut and trayed one ,,,he comes in looks at me,,and says "you don't know what the f--- you are doing do you"? I said hey im trying,,,,,so he says ill show you once,,,,so he retrimmed what I did,,repackaged them and said,,,now those are done by a professional,,,not a hacker,,, he hollered cut the other one and show me the steaks before you wrap them.. so, I sliced the top butt, put the steaks aside and put the ones he trimmed on the tray ... then asked him to come check them out,,, so he shakes his head,,,, "those look like dog****" im biting my tongue,,,not to scream at him they were his,,,,,but the point was made,,he was just being an ass ..after that I knew it wasn't me... and it was good training for thick skin... The meat supervisor told me later this same ass that I didn't back-talk to,, actually gave me one of the best reviews. this taught a lot,,,,being young and immature of course I wanted to deck him,,,but I had to learn to channel my anger .. and let it go,,,this was excellent training for that
I have a story, but I posted it before. In the original MSN board and here in 2011. I didn't want to submit a "used" story. Plus, it's not mine.
For those who missed it, here is is one more time.
I posted this in the original board. Some of you may remember.
One of our older managers (now retired) told me this story and swears it's true. I'm not sure. Either way, It's a great story. Do you think it's true?
A lady customer was a real pain in the a$$ with her questions. For months, she was a regular always asking the same thing
"is it fresh?"
yes
"Are you sure?"
yes
"May I smell it?"
yes
It was very irritating/offensive how untrusting she was since the meat was fine and they had to go over all that every time she came in.
So one day she asks for a whole body fryer. Again it's
"is it fresh?"
yes
"Are you sure?"
yes
"May I smell it?"
yes
He places it on the counter (a tall full service counter about at her neck height for her) and she spreads the legs wide open. Puts her nose as close as possible into the opening without touching it and deeply inhales through her nose.
"It seems OK, I guess I'll take it".
The cutter wraps it up, hands it to her and asks her
"could you pass that same test?"
-- Edited by Burgermeister on Monday 27th of July 2015 11:50:31 PM
