Filed under: anger, customer service, the crazies | Tags: crazy people, customer service, food, full moon, jobs, shopgirl, shopping, special offers, the recession, unemployment
…soup and sandwich for a fiver?” she asks.
*blank stare*
I’m holding back from reaching across the counter and shaking her but instead, as politely as I can muster, I say: “Well you get a sandwich and a soup for €5..our soup today is minestrone..and a sandwich of your choice”.
She goes for it. Cue much discussion on whether or not to grill the sandwich, she phones someone to see if they want the sausage rolls she’s bringing them heated. Unless they live in a tent outside the shop door it would be a futile exercise.
There is a full moon in the sky tonight. They’re all out.
My co-worker casually makes some comment on the weather. It’s not exactly tropical outside but there’s no rain, or frost, or frogs splattering on the windscreens. The customer looks at her, emits a crazy little laugh in my co-worker’s face and says “oh, you’re very optimistic aren’t you?”. Cue another mildly deranged laugh and out the door with her.
Yes, I’ve been away. Thought I could say goodbye to being shopgirl. But the times have changed and having a job, regardless of how often you die a little inside on a daily basis is better than none at all.
Or so I’m told.
Happy New Year folks.
Filed under: day off | Tags: careers, days off, hot chocolate, pop tarts, rain, scones, shop, shopgirl, weather, work
Get soaked in ridiculously unpredicatable Irish weather. Find Pop-Tarts in ridiculously over-priced shop. Eat pop-tarts and scones. Drink hot chocolate. Continue your journey through Season 5 of The Wire.
Get a better job?
Filed under: music | Tags: albums, is this it?, musak, music, shopgirl, shopping, shops, sundays, the strokes
The Strokes – Is This It?
I had a craving for familiar simplicity that wouldn’t challenge me too much, was energetic yet easy enough on my delicate ears so early on a Sunday morning. As the album begins with what could quite possibly be the bravest song to have as track no.1 on an album, Is this it?, it felt like a slow, reassuring introduction to the day.
And, as the album rarely speeds up to levels usually reserved for thrash metal or techno it didn’t provide a frenzied soundtrack when busy came to play.
and, hopefully, this isn’t it.
Filed under: the crush | Tags: crushes, love, relationships, shopgirl, shopping, shops, shyness, the crush
Volume Three
It’s so over.
There was a fleeting moment when the mysteriousness ridiculous level of shyness was attractive but no more. I’m sure he’s a nice person but, as I informed my co-workers yesterday, there’s only so much you can get from intense awkwardness and a desire to throttle shake a person until something more than a nervous grimace comes your way.
And, just for the record, I suspect this may sound harsh but as it was, all told, a fantasy crush noone really got hurt, save for the characters in my imagined world of wonderment our coupling would create.
And anyway, there’s something [someone] I think may be actually worth moving from the imaginary realm for. Someone I have never been a shopgirl to.
Someone who’s worth crushing over.
Filed under: anger | Tags: anger, customer service, employment, good girl, identity, journalism, people, rage, shopping, shops, work
and then it hits me. It’s a wave, a tidal rush, of resentment, anger, rage – white hot rage – and a creeping sense of plain wrong.
“good girl”.
Two words and one enormous crisis of identity. Yes, the customer was an asshole. A fat, balding, greasy, pompous, illiterate (probably not true – he could read the prices), asshole. And those two words probably fall from his self important lips all the day long. “Excuse me, where’s the nearest petrol station? Good girl” or “Oh doctor, hearing my tests came back negative for herpes is such a relief [if entirely undeserved], thanks, good girl”, etc etc.
But falling from his mouth, his lips, his round moon-like face, they felt like two bullets. Two bullets and a red flag to this bull.
I was rude but stealthily rude. Something you learn in the retail industry is an ability to belittle and shame the person responsible for making your day a pile of steaming turd without them quite knowing what just happened. I mean, c’mon, most of these people barely register that they’re involved in a transaction with another human being most of the time.
But back to the words. “Good girl”.
Suddenly my life is worth nothing and I’m planning my escape. I need out of the job and into the world I’m curoiously over- and under- qualified to enter. The world my peers are in and the place where all of the education and talent I’ve worked sorta hard to acquire have led me to. Yet I’m not there and the breakdown inducing moments of sheer panic when my position in life, my attempt at temporary that has turned somewhat permanent, generally follow enocounters with patronising gits like this one.
Those two words, and the accompanying tone, all the ‘loves’, ‘pets’ and ‘sweethearts’ the public can throw my way, are the epitome of the condescension shown by the public to the people behind the counters of this world. It’s not affection, it class war thinly disguised as affection. It’s a not-so-subtle way of telling me where I belong in this world’s strati of status. I’m a century past living in the basment of your Georgian mansion tending to your every whim and calling you Sir or Ma’am yet you still think you own me.
And, godammit, it worked. I feel like nothing. I morph with my uniform and become the serf I sometimes wonder I was born to be.
And the asshole walks away and I remain. He to his home and me to another person who has another order for me and a vacant stare with which to greet this shopgirl.
Two words and I’m up all night trying to find a way out.
But like the good girl I am I know I’ll be back tomorrow.
grrl x
Filed under: the crush | Tags: boys, crushes, love, people, shopgirl, shopping, the crush
Volume Two
He cut his hair. Is it so awful that I don’t like him as much as I used to?
And the shy, mysterious thing – it kills me. I mean, I love it as I love him in my imagination but when he’s beside me buying things I can’t chat with him like I do the dozens of others who pass through the doors each day. If I mention the weather I will feel like one of those inane people for whom the weather is their daily source of conversation. If I talk about what he’s buying I feel like a phoney trying to do some form of promotion or, worse, a shopgirl with an unnatural fascination with bananas or bread.
So I mutter prices to myself, drop things because I’m nervous and get him out the door as quickly as possible. I rush through the sale (he probably gets a lot of things for free…) and more than likely treat him brusquely.
Dear god, he hates me!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: customer service, money, people, shopgirl, shopping, smiling, the bad, the good, the insane
The bad
She rushes in. “I’m parked illegally and i’ve left three kids in the car, if you could, y’know, work faster that’d be great [insert condescending smile here]“
“I’ll do what I can”.
So i slowly put my gloves on and slowly, stealthily, do her bidding. What is it that this woman needs so badly that she is willing to leave her three young children alone in a car parked illegally on a busy street?
She needed brie, she needed coffee, a bottle of wine, some biscuits, bread, goats cheese, a lemon…the list goes on. All rather essential items no human could go without or, heaven forbid, wait for.
The good
She smiles a lot. She asks a lot of questions and demands recommendations for everything she buys. But she’s open to suggestion and grateful for your time. Today as I helped her pick out oil and vinegar she said “I’m so glad to see you smiling, I always thought you had such a pretty face if you would only smile”.
So I smiled and reminded myself that some people ain’t so bad. It may be crazy to suggest to the shopgirl that she smile more but she got away with it. The dudes in nightclubs who do the same are rarely so lucky.
The quite frankly insane
I weigh what she’s buying and when the price flashes into the screen I input the same amount into the register.
“That’ll be €2 please.”
“Which price am I paying? This one or this one?”
“em, this machine weighs the items and this is where I record the price and get the amount of change owed to you”
“So I’m paying this amount on this machine always?”
“um, yes, yes you are. This is where we weigh the food, this is where you add the items up”
“ooh, [chuckling away to herself] I’ll never understand it! haha”
What the f***? It’s times like this you nervously scan the shop to check you’re not being filmed by a hidden camera show. Seriously.
grrl x
Filed under: the crush | Tags: boys, crushes, customer service, love, shopgirl, shopgrrl, the crush
Volume One
So, I have a crush. On a customer.
He’s double cute. Tall, with the looks I usually go for and clothing I approve of. Unlike the other cute customers who wander into my workplace he does not seem to have a girlfriend. His smile is lovely and nothing in what he buys has alerted me to anything crazy in his personality. (You would not believe how much you can learn about a person from a shopping basket alone)
He’s shy. So shy he makes me shy. I’m not what you might describe as bubbly/outgoing but I can hold a conversation with a stranger and have good smalltalk. But no, I stumble, stutter and blush in his presence. His voice is low and his eye contact barely there. He may feel the same but I suspect he’s just painfully shy and my being-an-idiot in his presence does little to ease and everything to aggravate the situation.
What to do? Whos’ going to ask a shopgirl out?
Who could ask a customer out? How?
