Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Y'all Gon Make Me Lose My Mind

People act a fool in public. At work, we have to call the police more often than we would like. I honestly think people believe they can do whatever they want in a gas station. I have the perfect example of such person.

At our stores, our gas pumps automatically turn off after gas has been sitting for 10 minutes. If you don't pump your gas, you have to come back inside so we can reset it. There is no way around it and something that is done company wide. It's fucked up but we can't do anything about it. When our customers order food, we tell them to pump their gas before they wait for their food. On the weekends, our wait times for food could be up to 20 minutes. We don't do it on purpose, and we try to keep the times down, but it does happen.

We have a system. One person "starts" the food at one end of the counter, brings it to the other end where the other person puts the vegetables on, wraps it and hands it out. The person starting usually goes a lot faster because they have less to do, so they line food up on the counter until it can be finished. Since the only thing on this particular person's sandwich was honey mustard and vegetables, it had to wait until the orders in front were finished before her veggies were put on. During that wait, the lady's gas had timed out. No problem, we can just reset it and its all good. Except...she paid with a credit card. When we refund it to the card, she has to swipe it again and re-charge the card. Unfortunately, her particular bank makes customers wait three days for all refunds, so she didn't have money to re-charge the card. Which was our fault because "we took too long" to make her food.

She insisted that we did it on purpose. We knew she was in a hurry and specifically took a long time to inconvenience her. She screamed at the manager, "I watched the girl make my sandwich, bring it to this end and go back with nothing in her hand! She didn't give me my food on purpose!" After apologizing profusely, we offered to re-make her food and give her a cash refund. She insisted we give her $30 because she needed gas and couldn't get it because we took too long. After telling her that we are unable to do it, it was obvious the manager wasn't getting anywhere trying to get her to calm down.

The lady stood at the front of the store, screaming "I WANT MY MONEY! I WANT THIRTY DOLLARS! THREE ZERO! THIRTY DOLLARS! GIVE ME MY MONEY!"
Not the actual lady, but the general idea of how she was acting.  Google Images. 


Another coworker decided to try. She politely told the lady, "I'm not yelling at you, so I expect you to stop yelling at me. I'm sorry if you're having a bad day-" and the lady lost her god damn mind. She screamed that she was *NOT* having a bad day before she was "robbed" by us. Also, that we had no right to assume she had a bad day. She was verbally attacking all the employees. She didn't want to talk to "that white bitch" (the manager) or "that black bitch" (my coworker) she only wanted to talk to someone who would give her thirty dollars. We had had enough since there was literally nothing else we could do for her after re-making her food and giving her a refund. She was told she needed to stop yelling and calm down or the police would be called. Finally something made her happy.

She insisted we call the police so she "didn't have to" and they would make us give her thirty dollars. You know, because that's how police work. They change our company, and her bank's policy. She continued to scream "Call the mother fucking police!" while banging on the counter. She continued to scream about how we wouldn't give her the money because she was black and we were all racist and she couldn't wait until the police arrested us because of theft for stealing her $30 that we told her she needed to pump before she waited for her food.

After the police arrived, they told her she wasn't entitled to a refund and that she had to wait for her bank to clear the refund. She was told she had to leave the property and not to return. She refused to leave so the officer told her she was going to be arrested for disorderly conduct. Eventually she left with her free sandwich, her refund, our company's customer complaint number and a warning from the police that if she returned she would be arrested and charged with trespassing.

Moral of the story: Pump your gas before you wait for your food or you could be arrested and written about on the internet.

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