Posted in airport, Work

Lost tickets drama

Procedures for lost tickets at the airport parking…booths require us to fill out a form with all their information which means we need a driver’s license. If they can not provide one another form of ID is needed. If they can’t provide that then we can’t let them out. We need to call the sheriff that is on site to come check out their car registration to verify ID.

The reason for the form is because in the past I’m told that people would steal cars. Like people who needed to repo a car would do just that. Or people would have someone tow it out claiming to be the owner. Pissed off significant others would come in and take them.

Now to cover ourselves we require all the information off of a driver’s license or passport if they don’t have a ticket. All together filling out the form, at least for me, is less than 5 minutes. If they have ID at least. Otherwise… Oh boy. Hell breaks loose. It sometimes does when they cooperate and give you what you ask for.

A common occurrence seems to be someone goes to grab the car and bring it around to pick them up from the terminal. And the person(s) waiting for them have the ticket and their wallet. So there’s no ticket, no ID, and no form of payment. Yelling tends to ensue. A few will offer collateral to hold onto until they pick up everyone to pay for it. Like someone offered their insurance card as collateral.

When that doesn’t work they start insulting us about how we’re making their poor defenseless children wait at the terminal for them and are preventing them from reuniting (the woman with the insurance card did this). Or we’re making their old senile parent/ grandparent wait out in the freezing cold.

It’s like Christmas when a lost ticket form goes smoothly without being belittled by a customer.

Posted in airport, Work

K as in….

Have you ever tried to explain the letter K to a grown man at 4:30 in the morning? There are only so many ways to explain a letter to someone who doesn’t understand.

It could have been because it’s so early in the morning that it just didn’t register in his brain. That’s the case for many people. Maybe it was because English wasn’t his natural language (he had a very thick Italian accent). But let me tell you, there are only so many ways!

I used the old “K as in Katrina. K as in Kite. K as in kill me now” that people do. The customer was still confused. So then i decided to tell him it was ten rows down (10 since we start the rows off with B and not A) and that didn’t work. It was a 5 minute conversation that held up my meet and greet line for work before he finally just pulled away.

I assume he figured it out.

Posted in retail, Work

Clean up on aisle 9!

A few years ago I spent several years being employed at Walmart. Before that I used to work for McDonald’s. So my switching to Walmart from the hell that was McDonald’s felt amazing! … For the first three months. It lost it’s charm very quickly. I was a cashier at both jobs so my main job involved dealing with the public.

It was at these jobs that I learned – I hate people. Mainly when working. Cause when you’re a lowly cashier (or any employee in the customers eyes) you are worthless to them. Just some scum on the bottom of their shoes they need to scrape off. Most think they’re better than you. It’s infuriating.

I used to remember the horror stories but since I no longer work there I’ve forgotten many that weren’t… level 10 horrific for me.

Once I was running the register by the bathroom. Literally right across from the bathroom. This normally meant you were going to be smelling crap all day. ALL DAY. This woman came into my line and began to unload her cart onto my belt. With her was a young child around the age of… 6 or 7. She was dancing around my aisle like she had to go to the bathroom.

“Mom! I really need to go.” The little girl whined doing the potty dance.

“Hold it in.” The mom continued to empty her cart.

The whining got louder.

“Ma’am, I can wait while you take her to the bathroom. It’s right there.” I frowned looking at the pain this little girl was in holding her bladder.

“No! She’s a big girl she can hold it.” The mom snapped, glaring at me. “And I know you’re going to overcharge me if I leave. I want to watch you ring up every single thing so you can’t overcharge me.”

“I won’t scan anything else if that’s what you’re worried about. I will wait until you come back to scan anything else.”

“No, she can wait!”

Since I was talking to her mother I didn’t notice the little girl had stopped complaining. I continued scanning her items. About a minute later the mother had asked for paper towels because her daughter had dropped something on the floor. As I handed over the paper towels I didn’t think anything of it since it happens quite frequently.

“Can you throw these out for me?” the mom thrust soiled towels at me and dropped them into my hands.  “My daughter couldn’t hold it any longer.”

So thanks lady for dropping your daughter’s pee soaked towels into my hands because you didn’t want to take her to the bathroom 10 feet away from us. I spent about half an hour in the bathroom scrubbing my hands raw from that. My managers weren’t even mad and everything makes them mad.

Posted in airport, Work

That Logic Doesn’t Make Sense!

Part of my job is to do meet and greets. I currently work at an airport and when people enter a specific lot I do said meet and greets. Basically when they come to pull a ticket I tell them where we’re parking to make them get picked up by the shuttles much sooner. 75% of the time they ignore me and do whatever they want. It’s part of my job those so I need to do it.

Today we had 3 spaces left in the main lot. Every where else in the main lot was completely full. There were no extra spots anywhere but those three all the way at the back. So we moved onto one of the additional lots that had 40 available spaces. Within an hour I sent 30 cars to the additional lot which means that at least 27 cars had to have made it into the additional lot since 3 could still fit out in the main area. That brings us down to 10-13 spaces left. How are you going to say there’s still 30 spaces left out of the 40?!

It’s the damn Bermuda Triangle of airports I guess cause those cars just seemed to have disappeared!

40-30 = 10 

40-27 = 13

40-30 does not = 30!