It’s a Jungle Out There

While messing around with Sally Mae today at work, I happened to remember an incident at the service desk, I had previously completely forgotten about. The first summer I worked at Ziggler, I was alone at the desk one day and it was the first time that I had been slammed. I was overwhelmed with customers, the piles stacking up behind the service desk when a woman came into the line with two of the Garden Center carts. Each cart was full of bushes and trees that were taller than my 5’2” self.

I remember just looking at her and instantly hating my life. I hated this woman and whatever reason brought her to the desk at that precise moment in time. She had her receipt, thankfully, and all of the bushes and trees all had the tags still attached, also a blessing. The reason she was returning these bushes and trees was absolutely beyond ridiculous.

“My neighbor said he would kill them. He said they were an eye sore and that I had better get rid of them or he would kill them.” She told me with panic in her voice. It was as if these trees and bushes were actually people this man was going to kill in front of her like a sacrifice.

I just looked at her in complete shock; she was my first crazy customer. I had no idea how to make my face neutral and not show how completely insane she sounded. “What do you mean, he is going to kill them?” was all I could muster.

“He’s going to poison them!” She shouted. She looked at me with such fear, like I should understand her plight and dial the police for her. “I just can’t let him do that. I have to get my money back, or else he’ll kill them!”

I just raised my eyebrows in a “what else can I do” kind of way and did the return. I remember her saying goodbye to the plants, and customers looking at me like I was crazy for the rest of the day because the whole customer service area was covered in plants.

That’s the day I realized how much I would hate working at Ziggler.

No Means No

Sorry I have been so absent from the story telling lately. I’ve been struggling to keep up with both jobs as of late. But hopefully this story of two dreadfully stupid women will make up for it.

Let’s begin by explaining some back story. At Ziggler, in our produce section, we sell ready to eat, pre-made containers of fruit. This includes strawberries, grapes, apples, watermelons, and cantaloupe. Now in order to make these containers, we must use whole melons to cut up, and cut up bunches of grapes and hull strawberries. Now in the case of the melon, and for reasons even I don’t understand, we take the half we don’t use, wrap it up in plastic and stick a great big sticker on it that says, clear as day, “NOT FOR SALE. DISPLAY ONLY”. Can’t make it any easier for ya really.

Well a few months ago, in one week, I had two run-ins with these not for sale melons. The first woman had her two rowdy ass kids with her, who of course were screaming and throwing stuff all over my lane. Her order was well over $400 and about half way through, and me not really paying attention, I pick up half of a small personal watermelon. I look down and see its one of the display melons. I try to hold back the grunt of dwindling patience, and I look up to see the woman trying to wrangle her children in the lane.

“Ma’am, excuse me,” I tried at first. But she wasn’t hearing me. “This isn’t actually for sale,” I ended up yelling. She shoots me a look of disgust, and stomps over to get in my face.

“What do you mean? Of course it is.” Being the smartass that I am, I hold up the melon so that the sticker that says, “NOT FOR SALE” points right at her face. “Actually, this is just for display. We can’t sell this.”

“This is ridiculous, how can you have something on the floor that isn’t available for me to buy? I can’t believe this, what am I going to do?”

Then the good Ziggler employee comes out and I offer to have someone grab a regular melon for her, but she flips out.

“I don’t want someone touching my food.” Insert confused rage face here. “I don’t want it, whatever, just, hurry up.” I continue the order and just go about my day, losing hope for her children’s future.

The next woman came through the self scan registers a few days later. I was working alone, watching ten registers at once on a slow day. Basically doing a lot of walking around in circles. I was watching the computer screen as this woman’s son rang up the groceries and she bagged them and I noticed half a cantaloupe came down the belt but was never rang up. I walked over and saw it was a display melon.

“I’m sorry but this never rang up. It’s actually not for sale,” I said while pointing directly to the sticker, “you can pick up another one if you like.”

“But I want this one.” She was so matter of fact about it, like I was the stupid one. Hardly the case at Ziggler.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t sell this one. It’s only for display purposes. It’s probably not even safe to eat.”

“I smelled it, it seems fine. Call someone, they’ll tell you to sell to me anyways.” She goes back to bagging while I curse her under my breath. I called a coworker in the produce section, not a manager, because that would be a waste of time. I wasn’t letting her win and a manager would make me give it to her. So I called up produce and told him basically to say no to me on the phone. I explained the situation and he laughed and said, “Yeah, no, not gonna happen.”

I hang up the phone and say, “I’m sorry, but I still can’t sell this to you, did you want to get another one?”

She just sighed and turned away, telling her son the mean lady wouldn’t let him have the cantaloupe.

I say this all the time at work, and I’ll say it again, I hate people.