Not a customer from hell...
...but I worked for a greedy company from hell. An insurance/pensions company I won't name.

Due to stock market shittiness we'd screwed some poor elderly lady over regarding the amount of pension she was to receive - a lump sum and then a monthly amount. To be fair, the lump sum wasn't bad (about 5 thousand) but I knew she would be struggling.

Anyway, due to offshoring incompetence, this nice lady had received this £5,000 twice. No one in the company had the faintest idea, but she'd written to us to tell us as such.

It was my job to write a letter in reply to her, asking if she'd be kind enough to send it back in the form of a cheque.

Now, when we sent letters, we had to print a copy which would get filed on our computer system. What I did was file on the system a letter which asked for the money back.

What I did in reality was send out a letter saying to keep it, as we were the ones at fault. I then shut down her file on the system so it would never be looked at again. (Her regular pension payments would be paid out automatically, however.)

I hope she bought something really fucking nice.

Robin Hood or thief? Depends on your view point, I guess.
( The Helpful Bear, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 1:36, 14 replies)

The worst customers in the worst bar in the worst part of the worst town on the planet
I used to work in a dockside bar that was, to put it mildly, a little rough.

It all began after I moved to this well-known (and utterly crap) port town. The town itself was bad enough, rammed full of ne'er-do-wells and a smorgasbord of freaks, but the closer you got to the port the worse the punters became. The vile clientele that poured through our doors was continuously topped-up thanks to the convenient location of the bar. It was the first watering hole the transients clattered into as they stepped off their ships onto terra firma. Some of our customers wouldn't have looked out of place in a zoo and a couple still make me shudder when I remember how nauseating they were.

The bar itself was a monumental shithole. The drab interior got wrecked most weeks by the locals fighting with the fleeting (then fleeing) masses. The owner had tried to add a pointless touch of sparkle by hosting live acoustic jazz bands most nights, but the contrast between the music and the atmosphere was laughable. Imagine a clarinet concerto in the aftermath of the Brixton riots and you'll be halfway there. My job as chief barman was without question the worst means of paying my rent I've ever had.

I'd only been working there for six months but I'd just about had enough, what with having to blindly ignore the constant criminal activity and put up with the ebb and flow of human detritus that wafted through. I’d developed a bit of a cunt's attitude to my customers, as it was the only way to get through the nights. The final straw came on a particularly busy shift. To give you some idea of the kind of bullshit I had to put up with, earlier in the day I'd endured a full sweep of the place by the authorities to assist them with a fucking manhunt. It was definitely not shaping up to be a good evening. I was serving a particularly short-fused customer with the motley jazz band in full swing when the door swung open. I knew at once we were due for big trouble.

It was a group of four drifters who looked *completely* out of place; that is, they looked relatively normal compared to our usual patrons. The first problem was that two of the members of this group were obviously flaming homosexuals and this was *not* a gay-friendly bar. The taller chap was a sight to behold. He was worryingly camp, wearing a lurid gold outfit that Liberace himself would have sent back to the shop for being too ostentatious. The short, fat one was relatively straight-acting but I’d already made my mind up. This feckless bling-clad mincer and his stumpy companion were attracting exactly the wrong kind of attention from the burly crowd assembled in front of the bar. I had to do something quickly, so I made it clear that I wouldn’t be serving either of them. The young bloke in the group had a quick word and thankfully, the sad-faced queers retreated rapidly towards the exit in order to avoid what otherwise would've ended with a merciless beating. I felt bad, but it was better than clearing up their body parts.

The other two gentlemen stayed in the bar. The old fellow wandered over to one of our regulars and started chatting, which was a little strange as I knew the guy couldn’t speak English at all. It seemed that they were acquaintances though, so I turned away from the bar for a moment to collect my thoughts. Almost as soon as I’d turned around, I felt a tug at my shirt. It was the young guy again. He gave me an understanding nod but didn’t actually say anything. I still felt rather grateful and relieved for his swift help a few moments earlier, so I handed over a free drink which he silently accepted.

Barely ten seconds later, it all kicked off. One of the foreign dockhands in the bar spotted my act of charity for this stranger and took exception to his special treatment. I turned to see this fearsomely-ugly thug march over to shove him hard and begin a drooling tirade of unintelligible drunken aggression. One of the dockhand’s mates joined in with the intimidation tactics. They were both very drunk, but I overheard him slur something about a criminal record followed by a death threat. That was par for the course in this place. The young stranger kept cool, but the altercation had obviously unnerved the poor chap. Before he’d had a chance to think about retaliation, his elderly friend had left the chit-chat with my regular customer and stepped into the situation himself.

The old man tried his best to calm things down, but by now it was too far gone and a fight was ready to break out. Without any further warning, the dockhand’s mate grabbed the younger guy and flung him across the room into a table full of drinks. I spotted a gun being produced so I ducked behind the bar, where I then heard a terrifying scream. The commotion died down and I re-emerged to find the assailant lying on the ground, one arm completely severed and the old man standing there wielding a glowing energy sword. I watched blankly as he returned it to his belt, my customers continued with their business and the band continued playing their god-awful music as if nothing had even happened.

Like I said, it was a fucking shithole.
( chart cat has an itch, Mon 8 Sep 2008, 20:59, 34 replies)

Do you ever wonder why your Council Tax is so high?
Not too long ago I worked for a Borough Council in London which I won't name. Through one career accident after another, I ended up being first the complaints officer for the Chief Executive's department, then resonsible for investigating all complaints that had become such a mess that the Chief Executive got involved (so-called "Stage 3" complaints) and writing to the complainant on the CE's behalf, to being the go-to guy for the Ombudsman, to being in charge of implementing a new IT system for complaints handling, to being in charge of the entire complaints policy for the entire Council.

So, basically, there's not much I don't know about complaining to Councils.

Let me tell you right now that complaint handling in local councils is excruciating, from the Council's point of view. Every complaint, no matter how trivial, must be investigated in full, and a full trail of paperwork kept, anything up to 3 times, and if it isn't resolved the third time around it goes to the Ombudsman, and you environmentalists out there really don't want to know how much paper that consumes.

But what's the problem? Isn't it good that we investigate all complaints properly?

No. Because 90% of complaints to councils come from twats and have no basis in reality. Maybe 5% of complaints are actually justified, the other 5% are worth asking but not actually the Council's fault, the rest come from one of the various species of subhumans outlined below:

**Twat #1: The Outraged Planning Appellant.**

Easily 50% of the complaints I dealt with had to do with planning, and they were all the same. Basically, if a decision by the planning committee doesn't go your way, and neither does the appeal, the only way you can get the decision reversed is by proving the Council didn't carry out the planning process properly in some way.

So that's what everyone, and I mean everyone, does. Some of the "errors" allegedly committed by the Council include:

* "Deliberately" posting planning notices to someone when they were on holiday (wtf? If we knew enough about you to know when you went out on holiday, we'd rub you the fuck out before you ever had a chance to bother us - we have binmen you know, so we know a thing or two about disposing of rubbish).

* Posting planning notices in too small a font for someone to read (the typeface is set by law, btw.)

* A complaint that our head of Planning had "waggled his finger" at an applicant thus clearly demonstrating bias. This nearly went to the Ombudsman, and I had to inform the complainant that the officer concerned had been "warned about his behaviour", which consisted of me phoning him up and both of us trying unsuccessfully not to giggle while I told him not to waggle his finger at residents ever again.

**Twat #2 - "I am the center of the universe"**

Some people are under the impression that the Council exists only to serve them and them alone. Practicality, legality and budget mean nothing, the Council *must* accede to their demands or they'll "Go to the Press, and the Ombudsman" (oooh, we're scared.)

* The woman who wanted a tree in someone else's garden cut down because the shade it created meant her roses weren't growing very well. The "offending tree" was four doors down.

* The woman who complained that our binmen were "handling her recycling box roughly" when they emptied it. It's our box, not yours, twatface, and we'll handle it how we like. If we break it, we'll replace it, so shut the fuck up.

* The man, who ended up going to the Ombudsman, who demanded that we make a compulsory purchase of the house next door (which would have cost easily a million quid) because its delapidated state was "lowering the tone of the road". I actually went to look at this house, and all I can say is that if that place was "delapidated", he's clearly never lived in the West Midlands.

**Twat #3: "I know my rights"**

* One man, on getting a perfectly legitimate ticket for driving in a bus lane, decided that he would wage war on the Council for something that was basically caused by his own stupidity. He demanded, through the Freedom of Information act, just about every statistic that existed about bus lane and parking fines, including whether any Council employees had been fined. When we refused the latter (due to that other "I know my rights" chestnut, the Data Protection Act), he went bezerk, submitting FoI requests demanding:

- The wages paid to every Council employee, month-by-month, for the last ten years
- The holiday destinations of all the Directors of the Council for the last five years "to see how deep the rot goes"
- A copy of the Council Tax bill of every Council Employee who lived in the borough "to see if they are different"

When we refused, he complained and sent in another batch of ludicrous FoI requests (including a copy of my employment contract, amongst other things). When we rejected his complaint he complained about that and made an abusive phone call to the Chief Executive's secretary. When we banned him from contacting us without a lawyer present he complained about that, when we refused to speak to him again he went to the Ombudsman.

Who told him, basically, to fuck off.

That whole process must have cost the Council tens of thousands of pounds. If you're reading this, you cunt, you know who you are. I know where you live, and what you do for a living, and the registration number of your car. I don't work for the Council any more, and I will be free, if I see you in the street, to tell you, in front of everyone, just the sort of cunt you are.

**Twat #4: "If I complain you can't touch me!"**

* One enterprising chap, who was about to have all his stuff taken away by bailiffs for not paying his Council Tax, wrote to me say that he was going to make a complaint about the bailiffs at some undetermined point in the future. Therefore, it would be some kind of breach of his rights if the bailiffs took his stuff while there was a complaint outstanding (which there wasn't, nor was there any indication of where there might be). Basically, he was asking us not to take his stuff until he said we could. Nice try, toilet-features.

**Twat #5: Total Lunatics**

What do sad, lonely, deranged or psychotic individuals do all day? They write letters to the Council complaining about whatever random insanity happens to be occuping their hallucinations at the time. Unlike most organisations, we can't just fling these in the bin, we have to investigate and reply to them *all*. How would you reply to some of these?

* The individual who wrote to us about speed humps, claiming that his life was in danger from Council "assassins" if he complained about them other than anonymously. This letter was written in purple crayon, in capital letters, with a full stop in between each word. (answer: because there was no return address, we classified it as a "comment").

* The woman who complained that the telephone mast on top of a Council-owned building was "projecting psionic radiation" that was interfering with her crystal healing business and giving her headaches - she said she could "feel the rays pumping into her mind." (Answer: a quick call to facilities revealed that the mast had been switched off for three years after the Council lost the contract with the phone company. I wrote her a letter explaining this and suggesting she see a doctor for her headaches).

* The old woman who was obsessed with regulations to do with graveyards and phoned up random Council officers ranting about death and God and hyperventilating, for anything up to two hours at a time. She called me a few times, quoting the bible at me and calling me, within the space of five minutes "an angel sent from heaven" and "an agent of satan." This went on for ELEVEN YEARS. (Answer, we called our Social Services people, saying we were "concerned for her health". They ended up having her sectioned.)

* A woman who sent in a letter claiming the Council was sending trolls to bump into her shopping trolley in Morrisons. She also appeared to think she was Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. (Answer: as the letter was addressed to the Leader of the Council, I classified it as a "question to a councillor" and forwarded it to his office. His secretary never spoke to me again.)

This all might be funny, but we worked out that a complaint that went all the way to the Ombudsman cost the taxpayer in excess of £25,000 in staff wages, lost work and not to mention piles of fucking paper. So, on behalf of taxpayers everywhere, may I present to you this handy flowchart for making a complaint to the Council:

1 Do you have a complaint?

if yes, go to 2. If no, wrong flowchart, moron.

2 Are you a twunt?

if yes, hammer a nail into your face and go to 1. If no, go to 3

3 - Write to us, nicely. We'll probably be able to put things right for you.


The moral? Don't fuck with the Council. We can paint double-yellow lines on your ass, then recycle it.
(Axeman Jim, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:58, 14 replies)

I created the customer from hell (sort of)
10 years ago I had a stopgap job at my local airport working behind the bar. After a few weeks the head manager realised that I could add up, string a sentence together and more importantly wasn’t stealing from the till so they put me in charge of the thieving retards that worked there.

Now the thing you have to understand is that when a job starts at 4am and pays £4.74 per hour with no overtime rate you don’t exactly attract the cream of the available workforce, and one morning I was introduced to a new member of the bar staff who I had the pleasure of showing the ropes. He was 18, scruffy and to be blunt, thick as a donkeys cock.

I showed him how to pour a pint and how to use the till. I also explained that every other customer will complain that the prices are extortionate and that they will explain that the same drink is half the price at their local pub, at which point you should put on your most charming smile and say “Ah, but you cant catch a plane from your local”. If you said it right you would get a laugh every time and turn a grumpy complaining customer into a happy holidaymaker who might even give you a tip for cheering him up.

So the shutters go up and we start serving the first customers of the day. A large tough looking man with his extended family approached the bar and made his order. The new lad took the order with no problems and stated the total cost; at which the customer looked aghast and complained that it was twice what it would cost him down his local. The new lad looked at me and I nodded, he turned to the customer and said “Ah yes…but...um…why don’t you FUCK OFF DOWN YOUR LOCAL THEN”. There was a split second of silence during which my draw dropped through the floor and then the customer exploded into apoplectic rage, his wife joined in and their terrified kids hid under a table and started crying. Security ran in and had to restrain the man from climbing over the bar and tearing me apart to get at the new lad who was cowering in the back room. Luckily this was before 9/11 so nobody got shot or held for 28 days without charge.

We both ended up in the airport general managers office with members of the security staff giving their account of what happened. The new lad was crying like a baby with tears & snot running down his face, when asked why he had insulted the customer he pointed at me and sobbed “He told me to say it”. Unfortunately I wasn’t fired as it was only 6am and I had another 7 hours before the next shift arrived. The new lad went home.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 12:50, 8 replies)

PC FUCKING WORLD
Yes, I was a techie for PC World, and working so closely with the public you get to meet some fucking insane characters. This is my favourite one:

*customer bangs on the desk with his fist, I look up from the PC I was upgrading. Banging fist on desk is never a good start..

"COME HERE IMMEDIATELY!" Shouts the man, very short, about 50 with a balding head but a big beard - they're the worst

So I trot out, good as gold, noticing that he had brought his PC in a trolley, including the monitor, cables and The Sale of Goods Act printed out and highlighted the sentences that he thought would add weight to his case.

Me: "What seems to be the trouble, sir?"

Mr Twat: "THIS PC YOU SOLD ME IS FAULTY!! I SPENT OVER £500 ON THIS! (it's probably the cheapest one we sold at the time)

Me "Ok I can have look for you, what seems to be the trouble"

Mr Twat "DON'T TAKE THAT TONE WITH ME, I HAVE DRIVEN 6 MILES TO BRING THIS FUCKING SHIT IN"

Me "Please don't swear at me sir, I will help you but I won't be sworn at"

He turns a shade of purple that I didn't know existed.

"I'LL SAY WHATEVER I DAMN WELL PLEASE"

The store was quiet but a small crowd had started to gather. The security guard had gone down off his podium and was ready to press the panic buttons. I was shitting myself but was suprisingly steadfast in the face of this loony.

"Could you tell me what the prob....."

"THE RED CARDS WON'T STAY ON THE RED CARDS"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Twat: "THE RED CARDS WON'T STAY ON THE BLOODY RED CARDS!"

Yes, he had printed out the entire Sale of Goods act (about 2 reams of paper-worth) he had unplugged his PC, put it in his car, driven all the way (probably at 80mph) - because he didn't know how to play fucking Solitaire

He was still shouting when he left the store, after I had explained the rules of Microsoft Solitare, and left the car park with his tyres screeching.

There were some other corkingly awful customers but I think my brain has created a special compartment to hide them from my waking thoughts to stop me going insane. Maybe some more will escape and I'll let you guys know!

Length: 3 gruelling years before I left for a proper I.T job, 4x the salary for a fraction of the grief!
( h3donist tryin' to play me out as if my name is Sega.., Thu 4 Sep 2008, 20:28, 8 replies)

The only time I've ever told a customer what I was thinking... or, The Day I Told a Punter to Fuck Off.
I posted the edited version of this on ‘off topic’ a short while back; here’s the extended special edition version.

Some background: as many people now know, and are no doubt sick of hearing about, I worked for the DSS (or Benefits Agency as it was then, or Department for Work and Pensions as it is now) for pretty much all of the nineties. For the most part it was a shitty job, but compensated by working with some good people. However, one stint I had to do was working in a satellite office attached to a Jobcentre, on my own. This ‘caller office’, as it was known, had limited facilities and was essentially a waiting room on one side, and my space on the other, with a private interview room. The staff side of the office was an inverted L shape, and I had a work desk tucked away around the corner, out of sight of the information desk. With the only telephone on it – there wasn’t one on the information desk at all.

The office was basically somewhere that scrounging mongers benefit recipients could come in and have queries answered, pick up forms, or just piss on the seats, and it was my job to help them, point them in the right direction, or put ‘please do not use this seat as it is covered in piss’ signs up in the waiting area. Most of the time it was a lonely job; I think the most human traffic I had in one day was 15 people. Usually it averaged about 10. The days were often long…

Anyway, the situation of having the only telephone situated away from the information desk meant that on the occasions when I had to go back to the main office for further advice, it often entailed a very difficult three way conversation. Not ideal when you’ve got Mr or Mrs Fuckwit in the waiting room wondering why their giro hasn’t turned up, and Mr or Mrs Couldn’t Really Give a Toss back in the office half heartedly punching a few numbers into their computer and trying to cover up the fact that the giro hadn’t been sent because they forgot to press a button when inputting a change in details.

And so it went, until a change in job mean that I would thankfully no longer be manning the caller office. Woo and Yay!

On my last day, which was unusually quiet, I was looking forward to closing the doors at 3 and buggering off. At 2:40 I heard the door, went to the helpdesk and was confronted by a woman.

“Can I help you”? I asked her.

She said nothing, but thrust a letter under the counter. I looked at it. It was from the Contributions Agency and seemed to be some indecipherable nonsense about her pension forecast. Not my bag, really, in fact, absolutely nothing to do with the Benefits Agency at all.

I looked at her again and asked her, perfectly politely “And how can I help you with this”?

“I want you to ring them for me”, came the snotty reply. I sighed. It was bad enough holding three way conversations about stuff I was familiar with; this was way over my head and would be a nightmare. OK, tactics – try and find out some additional information first, like has she spoken to them herself at all?

“Have you tried speaking to them yourself”?

“What”?

I repeated my question.

“No, I want you to do it for me”.

Christ. “Is there any reason why you can’t talk to them yourself”? I began, “it’s just that…”

“Oh, I can see you just don’t want to help”, she snapped, snatching the letter from the gap under the screen.

“No, it’s not that, I’m just trying to find out some more information, and the phone is round the corner which makes having…” She stormed out. …”a conversation a bit difficult…” I trailed off.

Five minutes later a man burst in. “You’ve upset my wife”! he roared at me. “You refused to help her”.

Sigh. “Sir, no I didn’t. I was trying to find out some more information, and merely asked she had already rang the Contributions Agency herself before coming in here. It’s not really my area of knowledge, see, and the phone is round the corner making a conversation a bit difficult; she would probably be better off speaking to them herself was all I was suggesting”, I explained, confident that he would see the rationale to this logic and go outside and slap his wife for being so dim.

Except, what happened was he went off on a rant. “I know all about your sort”, he yelled.

“Excuse me? What do you mean by ‘my sort”?

“Your sort! You don’t give a toss about other people”.

“I can assure you that I do”, said I. “As I was saying, I was merely trying to…”

“You see? You refused to help my wife, and you’re refusing to help me now”.

“No, I’m not”

“I’m going to report you for this”.

“Sir, you can do what you want; I don’t really care”.

“Oh, so you’re admitting it now then”?

“No, I mean that I don’t really care as today is my last day so it doesn’t matter if you report me or not”.

“Ah, now I see. I bet you’ve been like this all day have you? Think you can get away with it”?

Dear God. “No, if you would listen to what I’m trying to say to you instead of ranting at me…” but it was no good, he wasn’t listening by this stage. Somewhat dramatically, I swung my right index finger towards the door and yelled at him, “GET OUT”!

“WHAT”?

“You heard me. I’ve been trying to be helpful to you and your wife, and explain a few things to you but neither of you have had the politeness to actually listen to what I’ve been trying to say. If you can’t be bothered to be courteous to me, I’m not going to be courteous back. You’ve been rude to me, insulted me and threatened to report me, so I don’t want you in this office any more. Go on, get out. Fuck. Off. Please”. And put my head down to count how many A6 forms were left in case I had to order some more.

Stunned silence. I looked up again, aware of a presence. “You still here, then”?

He left. Quietly.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 5 Sep 2008, 12:01, 11 replies)

Marks & Spencers, a Christmas yuletide log
Word was spreading like wildfire among the staff.
I was among a pack of teenagers acting as Christmas workers at an M&S in a greater London shopping centre, and stacking shelves at the time.

There was a woman on the shop floor doing a poo.

I decided on hearing this rumour, that I was going to investigate, and trotted through to the food tills. There was indeed a small melee around a till, where yes, a woman was crouching over a green bucket, the ones normally used for the flowers in the horticultural dept.

Red-faced, she'd hitched up her skirt, and was coiling one out in full view of a rather packed department store ten days before Christmas.

She didnt even look like a weirdo. Quite posh in fact. She stood up and handed the bucket to a male member of staff, and said to the ashen faced till girl....

"I'm so sorry. I'm pregnant."

The M&S guy said, 'we have customer toilets.'

to which she replied,

"I didn't want to lose my place in the queue."
(whitehorse, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 10:15, 8 replies)

Fruit Obsessive
Back in 1997, the country was riding the crest of a wave. Labour had waltzed into power at the expense of the beleaguered Tories, Blair was being hailed as some kind of toothy Messiah. The general air was one of hope and optimism.

A 17 year-old BK had began dossing through 6th form, doing the occasional bit of work inbetween getting drunk, playing in a (I now realise, fucking terrible) band, and working the fruit and veg department in Safeways, although it was somewhat ostentatiously called the produce department.

I enjoyed this job. I was good at it, and enjoyed a relative degree of autonomy. In the evenings I was left on my own to shut the department down, a job I was adept at carrying out.

There was one task us veg-monkeys dreaded if we'd been left to close up on our own and that was the making up of fruit baskets. A customer could come in and ask us to make a basket up for some occasion or other. This was a task that invariably interfered with our time schedule as, for some reason, people who would otherwise lob random bits of fruit into their trolley, would insist on unprecedented levels of perfection when they were for other people.
It was not unknown to end up in heated discussions over the relative merits of one lychee against another.
"This apple has a bump on it."
"It may well do, you're not deciding on a Faberge egg here."

Eventually, it was decided that the fruit baskets were way too much of a ball-ache as it didn't gain us any revenue and it held us up.

The week after this decision had been by the higher echelons of the fruity sages I happened to working the evening shift again.
After putting the finishing touches to a faithful representation of Dali's The Metamorphosis of Narcissus using the medium of beefsteak tomatoes (may be an embellishment), I was an accosted by an absolute buffalo of a woman. She was a terrifying heiffer of a kind I'd previosuly never encountered, being unaware at the time of the sterling work of Ann Widdecombe.
She was accompanied, in an inspired move by the comedy gods, by the kind of tiny, hen-pecked husband you rarely see outside of a 1950s cartoon.

"Wanna froot baskit! Tenner's wurth!" she boomed, in a voice which was half Barry White, half Rab C. Nesbitt. After replacing a few suicidal figs that had spontaneously leapt off the shelf at such Richter-tickling basso profundo I addressed the woman/ source of Mozzarella.

"Sorry. We don't do them any more."

"what?!!!?" The face imploded in ways a human face shouldn't, as if she'd ingested the juice of a thousand lemons in one go. The look of disgust would be justified if she'd caught me with my dick in a pensioner, but I had merely informed of a small change in our fruit retail policy.

"I wunt tenner o' froot fur ma mate. Heez in hoaspitul!"
I looked hopefully in the direction of her husband. I got a small smile of apology before virtually his entire face vanished into his roll-neck, obviously some tortoise-like defence mechanism.

"Sorry. We don't do them any more."
I was sticking to ground I felt comfortable with.

"Wunnna see yer manajur!" This time, it was the turn of some low-level kumquats to hurl themselves from the shelves.

I got the manager, having warned him in advance of Hurricane Gustav in sovereign rings waiting in the aisle.
He infomed her of our position on out fruit-vending shift.
Tectonic plates shifted; birds in Asia took off from their trees; a small village in Ulan Bator flooded (I'm enjoying the embellishment).

Suddenly, I had a flash of logic.
"Exactly how ill is your friend if you expect him to eat £10 worth of fruit?"

The face imploded again. My manager stifled a giggle. Even the hubbie snorted through the safety of a mouthful of Pringle's finest.
"Would a portion of grapes not be enough?"

Aware she was being ridiculed she informed us she would never shop there again, and stormed out. We were treated to a most gratifying grin from the husband though, before he trotted out after her.
( Boss Keloid Got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 0:27, 9 replies)

Pearoast from pet peeves
I work at an Indian restaurant most nights
so I have lots!

People who think it's funny to order in an Indian accent and take the piss. It's not funny, you look like a twat and do you really think it's a good idea to antagonise the people who are about to prepare your food? WE're too professional to sabotage it, but it's still not a good habit.

People who come in and say "Um, I'll get the one I had last time...It was orange". That's wonderful sir, we serve 20 different curries and 15 of them could be described as orange. I'm happy to reccommend dishes but I'm not a mind reader, I don't know what you want. You do.

People who say "Will I be able to handle the heat?". See above. I'm not a mindreader, I don't know your palate. I take my curry really hot, so saying "Oh, however you take it" is not going to produce the results you want. Just because I'm a white girl doesn't mean I'm as pussy as you are with spices. All you have to say is mild, medium or hot. Nothing complicated about it.

ALSO, people who order a dish and upon seeing it, decide they don't want it and shouldn't have to pay for it. THAT'S NOT MY FAULT. If you ask for a hot chicken vindaloo, I will give you a hot chicken vindaloo and you can bloody well pay for a hot chicken vindaloo. It's not my fault that you don't know your tastes well enough. It's not my fault that you order it too hot for your own good, or suddenly remember you're vegetarian, and I'm certainly not going to give you a discount for being so fucking dumb.

ALLERGIES: People with severe allergies, I understand that it's be hard to eat out. That's fine by me. Tell me about it and I'll be happy help you out, I'll get a dish made without coriander, or cream or whatever. I don't have a problem with that. But do not get angry at me if you only tell me about your nut allergy as I'm putting your korma onto the table. Kormas are made with almonds, and if you had actually read the menu you would know that. No, I can't just 'get rid of all the nuts in it', I can't unmake it. It doesn't work like that, and if you're gonna choke from eating those nuts, don't bloody well order them.

See that table? It has two chairs on it. Therefore it is a two person table. Our tables are large. You don't need a table for six when there's only two of you - it's losing us money when you sit down there and refuse to move. And don't sit down at a table for two then 'sneak' over onto a large one.... You look like a twat and I WILL make you move back.

As someone said before, people who ask for unnecessary things, i.e fresh orange juice. What do you think, that we serve 2 types of orange juice? One that's mouldy and gross and one that's fresh?

Brits who think they're better qualified on curry than Indians. Mainly I love the brits, but saying "oi, I'm from England I know that butter chicken doesn't have cashews in it!!" just makes you look like a twat. Butter chicken does have cashews in it, and newsflash, curry did not originate in Britain. Don't argue with the experts.

Sleazy old men. I'm 17, young enough to be your granddaughter, keep your hands off me. Do you honestly think that a fat, drunk, sweaty, leering old man is going to turn me on? Do you actually think that by grabbing my arse and winking at me, that you'll get a date? Your wife is sitting there looking ashamed of you, and the rest of the restaurant thinks you look like a lecherous old cunt. Stick to your own age.

Yes, I realise that I am a white girl. Yes I know you think that for some reason that is hilarious. But I've heard "So, you're not Indian! HAHAHAHAHA!" way too many times now.
Please. Give up.

Don't get in my way. This is a special message to the drunken idiots who thought it would be a great idea to STRIP OFF and start doing press ups in the middle of the restaurant while I was trying to get past to take care of an epileptic customer in the middle of a seizure. GET OUT OF MY WAY. I know that naked sweaty press ups are very important to you, but that woman's life is more important. I know this is a hard concept to grasp, so why don't you just start with STAYING CLOTHED AND IN YOUR SEAT.

If you can't pronounce something, that's ok - not many people can. But don't pretend, and don't argue with me about it unless you speak a fair amount of Hindi or Punjabi like I do. Because I WILL shoot you down.

Parents: It is not my job to restrain your child. You chose to have children. With that choice comes certain sacrifices - sometime you will have to remove your child from a restaurant. Don't just look at me helplessly as your child attacks other patrons or tries to kick my legs. I WILL ask you to leave if you can't control your child - this is a perfectly reasonable request so please don't look at me like I've just slit the throat of your precious little crotchfruit (although after 3 hours of him I would love to)

Yes pikeys, I will ID you. If you come into my restaurant in your bloody school uniform then I'm not exactly keen to serve you 5 generic shitty alcopops.

If you need to be served quickly, we'll do our best. But don't come in when we have a full restaurant with a table of 60 and one of 30 and say "oh, we have to leave in half an hour, so we'll get *INSERT HUGELY COMPLICATED ORDER HERE*, oh and we'd like at least 15 minutes between the starters and the mains". I don't really like you anyway and assuming that you're the centre of my universe isn't the best way to do things.

Don't whistle at me, grab my apron, grab my tablet (we use tablets to process orders)or try to come behind the bar. PERSONAL SPACE PEOPLE! Yes I'm only 17, but I'm not willing to be pushed around just because you're wearing a suit. Also suits, don't give me your business card and say "Call me when you're in Christchurch". Ew. You're three times my age and I don't want THAT sort of work experience, you sleaze.

I am human. I can only do so many things at once. If I'm running past your table with a tray full of drinks and another with food on it, then it is safe for you to presume that I don't actually have time to get another 16 beers for the table. If you insist on asking me to "just nip down and get another round of JD & coke for the table before you go do those orders, love" then I will smile, nod, and 'forget' about you for the next 2 hours. If I'm busy, be patient; I'm trying, and I'm coming soon. Just WAIT.

If you ring up to order a takeaway, please have a general idea of what you want. I do not have time to read the entire menu to you on a busy saturday night while you say "um....well... I've just got to talk to Sal, she wants something beginning with P? I think it's orange? Actually luv, just read those ones off to me again?". GO AWAY.

Also, I'm not an idiot. I'm studying to be an engineer - this is just to pay bills. Don't treat me like I'm unintelligent, you patronising bitch.

On the other hand, if you are polite to me, you don't act like an arrogant twat and you treat me with respect, I will go out of my way to make your meal a good one. Drinks will disappear from your bill, we'll give you extra naan bread for no charge, you'll be served in record time. It's not hard to be decent and the rewards will be noticeable. Good customers really are appreciated...It's just a shame that I see so few of them.
(Holy Gabrielle is Holy, Mon 8 Sep 2008, 11:09, 24 replies)

Not me but the shop nextdoor
was a very high class maternity wear shop.

It had nice comfy chairs just outside the changing rooms.

One afternoon when all the changing rooms were full of pregnant ladies a man came in, sat down in the chair, got his lad out and wanked himself square and round again.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Thu 4 Sep 2008, 20:40, 12 replies)

Reppin'
Yes I was a holiday rep for six weeks until they discovered they'd hired the most sarcastic and misanthropic person in the world to work with people on holiday. Part of the job was receiving complaints from tourists - and they had many.

The best one was a guy who'd booked a pot-luck holiday and been shunted to the hotel with no facilities on the edge of the island. Nice enough place, but in the middle of nowhere. When I arrived, he'd manage to piss off the whole hotel with his tantrums. He was waiting for me in reception with a virulent tan and his too-small sunhat perched on his head.

He had prepared a four page written report of his woes, which he insisted on reading to me with an oratorical delivery. In short, his issues were:

- The waitress wore braces to hold her trousers up. A waitress should not wear braces.
- He had seen communist graffiti on the island.
- Even though the taxi transfer had been free, he had felt compelled to pay the driver anyway, and now he wanted a refund.
- The taxi driver had broken the speed limit,
- The landscape was 'lunar' [I pressed him this, pointing out that there was no Ionian Sea on the moon, but he was adamant].
- The management had put a free fruit basket in his room and had then refused to remove it. It's presence was making his wife suicidal and he wanted it removed.
- Nails were sticking out of the hotel roof - around 4 metres above ground level. It was a health and safety hazard, he said [presumably for people filled with helium].
- There was shredded paper all over the beach. [he insisted on showing me the green, sea-weed-smelling 'paper' and said he was taking a sample back to England for chemical analysis.
- The hotel manager was 'fat'.

I jotted all of these complaints down on the official form - and then tossed it out of my car window as I went for one of my habitual four-hour coffee and cake breaks.
(frankspencer, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 10:08, 7 replies)

McDonalds
As a lot of people, I used to work there.

I won't complain about the job, frankly it was the best job I've ever had in terms of job satisfaction, from cooking your own breakfast ("Triple Sausage McMuffin please!") to serving on the drive through after just having my trouser pulled down, to running Cannibal Corpse (Hammer Smashed Face) through the in store speaker system. Was ace!

However, as this is about customers from hell, i'll talk about a couple that I saw happen to others, and happen to myself.


-Chav elects to throw a milkshake at a 'member of staff'(clue in the '), covering the back of his head as he's backing out from the toilet with wet hands.
Turns out he wasn't a member of staff, but a bit of a hardman. The chav learnt that with a bloody nose, a black eye, and a full contingent of staff refusing to acknowledge they saw anything except for this lad throw the milkshake ("Maybe you slipped" quoth the manager)



- I'd spent half the evening tidying the lobby area, and was doing my final sweep in the 5 minutes before closing the restaurant. Group of kids has been in the corner for the last half hour throwing shit on the floor, and then denying it was them. Their mates then come in and 'accidentally' kick the pile of rubbish I've swept up. Twice.
At this point I'm gritting my teeth, trying not to rise to them, so I just laugh and say "Mind out twinkletoes, anyone would think that was intentional!"
At which point he turns, and spits in my face.
Within 30 seconds my manager had vaulted the counter to stop me from smacking this lad's head into the nearest table. He storms off with his mates, claiming "He'll get the police on us, he's connected" (To what?)
Police turn up, surprise surprise, no-one had seen a thing, it was our word against theirs. Considering they had a history already, they were then bollucked for wasting police time.



Last but not least, the store manager was a woman called Clare. She wasn't skinny, but was by no means fat at all. She was a great manager, but horrible to be told off by, because you always knew that she was right, and would never go over the top.
However, this changed one night. A bloke storms in, pushing the customers out of the way (including a pregnant woman with her family) and throws a Chicken sandwich into Clare's face. In the quarter of a second it took for everyone to fall silent across the restaurant, you could almost hear the mayo sizzling on her face, such was her anger.
There was another manager in the restaurant who had worked with her for 10 years, and says he's never seen her that angry.
Long story short, she grabs his tie, pulls his face over the counter, and smacks him square in the nose, with a nice crunch.
She then proceeds to bash his head into the counter a few times, before letting him fall to the floor, dragging him to the glass door, and throwing him THROUGH it. She then asks me to take over her till, and goes off to calm down, and have a little cry (adrenaline always mixed her up a bit).
She also phones her rugby playing husband, who turns up by the time the guy is able to stand up, and simply lays him over his shoulder, throws him into the boot of the car, and goes for a very bumpy ride, before dropping him off at the police station a little while later.
We never saw him again, but he was instructed by his PAROLE OFFICER to write a letter of apology to her, and never come our way again. It turned out he'd not been long out of prison for assault, he supposedly had an 'anger problem'.

However, the best bit of this entire story? The letter was addressed to "The Mental Bitch That Broke My Nose".

I think it's still framed in her living room now.

Length? A4
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 13:38, 8 replies)

One-stop photo
I was working in a photocopying shop that happened to be next to a photo processing place. One lunchtine, some prick in a suit walked in and arrogantly slapped his film canister down on the counter. Didn't say a word.

I looked at the film. I looked at him. He looked at me in that way people look at uniformed shop monkeys - like I was a turd under his shoe.

"Yes?" I asked, with the intonation of 'what do you want, dickhead?'

He even didn't speak. I wasn't worthy of that. He just gestured to the film on the counter with an 'are you some kind of retard?' expression.

"It's a film." I remarked.

"CAN. YOU. DEVEL-OP. IT?" he enunciated, as if speaking to an incontinent old woman.

"THIS. IS. A PHOTO-COPY-ING. SHOP." I retorted in the same manner.

He reddened. He snatched the film. He stormed out of the shop, pursued by my sneering laughter.

One of the many jobs I was fired from.
(frankspencer, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 9:39, 5 replies)

Reduced to clear
I worked for Britain's largest supermarket for a good 3 years of my life, as a part-timer no less, so I really got my share of shitty jobs, shitty bosses and shitty customers.

After being there a few months I was granted the power of handling all the reduced to clear pricing. I'd fix sarnies for 10p for my mates and generally abuse my responsibilities to the point where I sold 10 quids worth of high-end cakes and eclairs (to myself) for 50p. Generally it was a tasty job that provided a good source of backhander income, including reducing 40 crates of Carling to a quid each because someone out back "forgot" about them for a year. I split the bill with my mate and sold them for a tidy 700% markup. Alas, I digress...

The problem with working in a discounted section is the zombie influx of bargain hunters that emerge when darkness falls. They tend to be the mothers with 14 identical children tied to their trolleys, no knowledge of English or culture and a bigger budget for fags than food who would argue for England or whatever country they claim to be from for 5p off a ready meal.

Normally I'd oblige if the date was running out or it looked a bit scuffed, until I met the pikiest of pikey scum who decided he wanted some knock-off yoghurts. Yoghurts, if you don't know, could survive a nuclear apocolypse in terms of their sell by date. They also tend to be flimsily put together. Regardless to say, I wasn't having any of his begging and turned him down for a reduction.

In a moment of 'genius' in order to get his discount, he decides to take the damaged route by throwing his multipack of Muller yoghurt onto the floor, which promptly exploded over feet and clothes. Oblivious to how foolish he looked, he forged the smuggest self-satisfying grin ever recorded.

"It's now damaged," says he. "You better cut the price down. Plus my clothes are ruined thanks to you. I want some replacement ones".

"Okay then," say I. "I'll go get a cleaner to help get this tidied up and be with you again in a minute."

I went home. He apparently kicked off and got escorted out by security 10 minutes later when he realised he was standing in the middle of a crowded supermarket covered in cherry syrup and vanilla bellowing that he wanted free clothes.
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Thu 4 Sep 2008, 17:29, 4 replies)

Hello. And what kind of job are you looking for?
I was, I believe, an entirely reasonable Jobcentre monkey. Often I would help clients to avoid having their claims closed down, by getting them to sign a form they should have signed a week earlier, and backdating it for them. This helped to avoid mountains of crappy paperwork and getting them to wait for two hours whilst an adjudicator looked at their case, which would invariably be closed and result in them having to make an appointment to make a new claim.

However, my reasonable nature was pushed to the limit when a new claim interview that should have lasted 40 minutes turned into a two and a half hour 'banging my head off the desk' extravaganza.

The scene: 18 year old kid comes in to make a claim. I, your heroic new claims monkey, am assigned to do the interview. The lad is wearing a vacant expression that only a mother could love.

"Hello, I'm DG and I'll be interviewing you today". Shake hands, take to desk, and offer seat.

"Now then, have you claimed before? No? OK, I'll just run through a few things before we start". And I launched into the automatic spiel about the format of the interview, the basic rules of claiming Jobseeker's Allowance, and off we go.

"I'll just take a few personal details first". Usual stuff, check name and address, National Insurance number etc. It's going swimmingly so far. Now for the nitty-gritty.

"You haven't worked before?"

"No, I've just left school".

"OK, what sort of work are you looking for?"

"I'm not". Ah. This was a bit unexpected.

"But you're claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. To receive it, you have to be looking for work," quoth I.

"Do I?"

"Yes. Why don't you want a job?"

"Because I'm starting college in a couple of months time as a full time student."

"OK, but between now and then you could conceivably take a job, yes?"

*Shrug* "Dunno. Wouldn't it be taking the mick out of any employer?"

"Not really, there's plenty of seasonal work about."

"Yeah, but I'm not really looking for work, so wouldn't it be lying if I said I was and wasn't?"

"Well," I began, and launched into some helpful advice about how he could just say he was looking for temporary work until he started college, then sign off. Go through the motions, jump through the hoops for a couple of months, and all will be fine. As long as you follow the rules, it'll be fine. Client nods head. By George, I think it's getting through.

"So, what kind of work would you consider then?"

Another shrug. "Not really bothered, 'cos I don't really want a job."

Help. Me. Please. A colleague comes over "Everything OK?", she asks. I have a quiet word, she takes a seat next to me, and proceeds to explain, Janet and John style, about the rules for receiving benefit.

Cutting out a lot of frustration, we get to 90 minutes worth of interviewing. The waiting area is getting backed up with clients I'm meant to be seeing, but can't until the interview is finished. My colleague is getting frustrated by this point. "You're not doing yourself any favours here, you know", says she.

Eventually, he agrees that bar work might be viable. "But I can only do five hours a week".

Eh? What? Why only five hours a week? Turns out he wants bar work in Newcastle as the pubs in Alnwick are shit, and as he'd have to travel by bus, he'd be limited to how long he can work as the last bus back is at 10:30 at night.

"You're not really getting this are you?" I ask. But he was insistent that 5 hours a week bar work in Newcastle was all he could commit to. "OK, 5 hours a week but I'll have to send your claim to an adjudicator, and it's very likely that they will turn your claim down. You do understand what I'm telling you, don't you?" I said, slowing my words down pointedly.

*Nods*

"OK. You'll need to go and sit over there whilst I refer this for a decision, OK?"

About half an hour later the decision comes back. My interviews for the day have either been seen by someone else, or sent home with a new appointment and their travel costs reimbursed. I beckon my hapless halfwit back across and deliver the news that, as expected, his claim had been turned down on the grounds that he was placing unreasonable restrictions on his availability for work.

His reaction was not what I expected. "OK. So when do I come in to sign on?"

"Erm, you don't. Your claim has been disallowed, ergo, you're not entitled to anything, so you don't have to come in to sign on, because you wouldn't be achieving anything by doing so."

"So what am I going to live on?" he asks, genuinely.

"That's not up to me".

"But I've got no money".

"Well, you could apply for a job".

"But I don't want one".

It was at this point that my brain was screaming "Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhh"....
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Sun 7 Sep 2008, 14:09, 13 replies)

Not a Library
I used to work in a petrol station and I guess that's where I met my worst customer. It was a dark, rainy night in 2002 and a man comes in with a beanie hat and a coat done up right round his mouth. He's carrying a tesco carrier bag and judging by his walk and his face (the bit I can see) being red, I guessed he was drunk. We were located between two pubs so quite often we got drunken proles coming in for the cheapest fags we did. The following took place (ad verbatum):

Man: Mggrrfrrmmpfrmgp

Me: Sorry?

Man: Mgrfrgrhrekrhremp!

Me: Could you pull your coat down? I can't hear what you're saying.

[Man pulls down his coat and lifts up the carrier bag. He'd cut a hole in the bottom of the bag and inside was a sawnoff shotgun]

Man: Give me the fucking money

Me: Oh, right

[I put my hands up in the air, then realised I'm supposed to do that AFTER I give him the money. It's amazing how your brain treats the whole thing like a scene in a movie. I empty the till into his holdall, even picking up stray coppers that had fallen on the floor. I am a meticulous robbery victim].

Man: You got any more?

Me: No, honest. Well there's the safe but I don't know the code or anything. (God, I'm crap at this).

[Man looks at me with absolute disgust and leaves].

So, if you're thinking of robbing someone, don't rob me. I'm bloody awful at it.

As a side note, I was told there was a silent alarm under the counter. I tried going for it at one point but decided that keeping my lungs was worth more than the 600 or so quid in the till. After he left I pressed it and the place lit up like fucking Vegas. There were bells, whistles, you name it. I was half expecting a dancing troupé to come in through the door. I still think to this day if I'd pressed that button I would have been splattered all over the cheap fags and drink behind me. As it stands, I survived and I can bore you all with this story :-)
(GONEism, Tue 9 Sep 2008, 16:45, 11 replies)

I used to work in the gift shop at an amusement park - toys and trinkets mostly -
and dealt with a customer base of approximately 80% moron. Children, despite being young and unknowing, were no exception to this trend.

A very obnoxious girl, maybe ten or eleven, comes in with her two younger brothers and starts raving about all the shiny objects in the shop (as little girls do). She comes across a mood ring, clearly having never seen one before, reads the instructions, holds it in her palm for all of two seconds, and SLAMS it down on my counter.

"IT'S BROKEN!!"

"You have to hold it longer!" exclaims her six-year-old brother.

"Shutup! Shutup! You're shit!" she replies, "I held it and it's still blue! It doesn't tell anything about my personality."

I take a deep breath.

"It works just fine. Blue means you're retarded."
( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Thu 4 Sep 2008, 21:54, 4 replies)

Rice
A customer walked into the shop I work at the other day and chucked a sellotaped bag of rice onto my counter.

"May I help madam?" I say in my most polite voice.

"Don't fucking work" She mumbles grumpily.

"I'm not sure I understand." I respond, in a voice Stephen fry would be proud of.

"Don't work do they? Didn't cook!" I'm unsure exactly what this woman is going on about but decide to press on.

"Have you tried boiling it?" (It was obvious and I hoped I wouldn't offend. Needless to say, I didn't.)

"Don't be fucking stupid. Microwave innit."

I was now confused. She'd tried microwaving the rice? She continues...

"Just went dry."

"Well what were you expecting?" I say, trying to not be too condescending.

"Popcorn..."
(Foz, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 20:53, 5 replies)

We hate you white South African bastards.
In mid 80s I worked as a part time barman at a country clubs sports bar. Easy money for a student and most people were fine. The only problem was conferences when the client base was usually jumped up wamkers who worked in sales. Very loadsamoney and finger snapping for service.

Now imagine these sales people were from South Africa, and were quite wealthy, and very used to having people jump to their every need. 'Boy, give me four beers now.' 'Why are you so slow?' and 'Are you stupid? I asked for a ham sandwich.' were some of their more polite comments.

Myself and the girl who worked there got them back. We a put few quid in the jukebox and played The Specials 'Free Nelson Mandela' 36 times in a row.

That fucking showed them.
(Tugnut I got them all..., Tue 9 Sep 2008, 17:01, 6 replies)

more bike shop tales of woe
we had this steretypical asian rudeboy come in (lines shaved in hair & eyebrow- check. comically large avirex leather jacket with more logos than a designer's portfolio- check. large diamante stud earring- check. 'innit' in place of punctuation- check)
so this guy's got an issue with his bike (not bought from us- some catalogue thing) he bring it in for a quote. we tell him, £30 if we can salvage the part £50 if we have to replace it. he leaves a contact number, goes, we do the work.

when he comes back in, he starts arguing the price. we tell him it's not negotiable, he agreed it, and if he doesn't want to pay we can simply remove the new bits, replace the broken ones, and he can have it back. so he starts calling us all every name under the sun, then , in an almost unbelievably disingenuous manner, he flips to 'polite' mode and syas ok, let me take it for a test ride.
so OBVIOUSLY we ask for a deposit before he leaves the shop (no WAY was he going to come back and pay)
he starts screaming, 'are you calling me a fuckin THIEF blud? i'l fuckin BANG YOU blud, you don't know me, etc etc.. eventually settles on leaving the massive diamond stud earring (i was out back, i'd NEVER have taken that £10 argos piece of shit as security, despite his claims it's £500 gucci bling)
so obviously, he fucks off and doesn't come back.
so we ring the contact number one more time before we give up, it's a landline, and hey presto, who do we get?
a local imam (his dad!!)
we explain the situation, and the guy's attitude.. within one hour, the dad is in asking to see bills and so on, another half hour passes, and the dad, complete with VERY embarassed looking rudeboy, come back in, dad makes him apologise, pay up, and then starts tearing this guy a new asshole in the shop, saying how he's ashamed, and the kid's a disappointment, and how he's not allowed to drive the car and so on.. man that was nice. karma's a bitch.
(UppityDamnPrimate LET'S OPEN THIS F*CKING PIT UP, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 12:18, 9 replies)

I used to work in Tescos cafe
And we got all kinds coming in. The builders would always arrive in the morning for their massive breakfasts and were absolutely stellar guys who were polite, appreciated the fact 15 big breakfasts took a while to prepare and always cleaned up after themselves.

We did also get Mrs Furcoat and her shrivelling husband who would come in every Saturday afternoon for their dinner. Mrs Furcoat always asked to be served by the same girl (I forget her name lets go for Ann), however on once occasion girl was on holiday so I politely informed Mrs Furcoat of this and offered to serve her instead. Begrudgingly they accepted. They wanted "generous" portions, because Ann was nice to them and they always insisted on the meal going in the microwave for a minute "to make sure it's properly hot" (wtf?).

They also always left the table a mess and generally were rude and up their own ass.

The following week Ann was off again, Mrs Furcoat haughtily asked if she was there I said no I was the only one in at the moment (as the person who was supposed to come in was running late). Mrs Furcoat puffed out her chest and said "I'll have lasagne"

I kind of snapped a little. I have a really short fuse when it comes to rude people. However if the situation was repeated I would do everything that follows exactly the same...

I replied with "Lasagne what?"
She shot me a venomous look "lasagne and chips"
Smiling sweetly now (which is bad, I'm not sweet. If I am smiling like this I either want something or am about to be a total bitch) "lasagne and chips what?"
The husband nudged Mrs Furcoat and quietly mumbled "please".

Mrs Furcoat did not like this. Mrs Furcoat yelled across the hot plate of slightly wilted goodies at me "PLEASE, although you should know that I have had cancer and I come here every week to give you business"

Calmly I replied
"Unless it was cancer of the manner gland I suggest you either say please or leave"

Strangely I never saw them again....
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 14:18, 8 replies)

More ‘call centre’ fun…
My nephew works at a call centre for package holidays and wotnot. Recently, he told me about this conversation:

Nephew: “Can I help you?”

Customer: “I’d like a refund on my holiday please”

Nephew: (after taking details and tapping into computer revealing info on a £2000+ holiday) “I see sir. May I ask why you require this refund?”

Customer: “...Because I forgot to go...”

Nephew: “Jesus wept” (hangs up)
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 5 Sep 2008, 9:04, 2 replies)

Telling customers to fuck off
Inspired by DG's heroics.

I'm sure you're all aware of a cheap and cheerful (ROFL) retail establishment by the name of Lidl.

I worked there for a period of 7 months between late 2004-early 2005 before I moved down to Leeds with then Miss Keloid.
I was in a celebratory mood. This despite the fact it was now 8.15pm and I had started the shift at 7am, with one half-hour break around lunchtime. The reason for my good cheer was it was my last day and I was all packed and ready to move.

Officially the store closes at 8 and there were still stragglers wandering up to my till.
I jokingly said, "Come on folks, haven't you got homes to go to?" Most in the queue indulged me with at least a chuckle.
One bloke didn't. He was only just five foot tall, had a patchy beard and a combover. In fact he looked a bit like the slightly deformed comedian you sometimes see on on QI and Mock the Week.
"How dare you!" he chuntered. "We pay your wages, you know."

I fixed him with what I imagined to be a basilisk stare (I probably just went cross-eyed and dribbled a bit).

"You're a bit fucking short for that high-horse, aren't you?"

The place went silent. A few people giggled nervously, one poor bloke choked on a mouthful of pseudo-Red Bull we sold for 25p, which he had serruptitiously opened.
To this day, that remains the single greatest come-back I've ever countered a comment with.

Eventually, having gone varying degrees of puce, the wee fella exploded.
"How...how dare you!" his voice ricocheted round a few octaves with rage.
"I'll get you sacked!"

"To be honest, mate. It's my last day, and I can't be bothered with your attitude. Leave your basket and fuck off!"
The fact I could literally look down on the apoplectic little fucksock had elevated me to Zeus levels of authority.

He eventually stormed off to get the manager, who let me leave early. I was congratulated by several of the departing customers who told me I had made their day.
( Boss Keloid Got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 13:21, 8 replies)

Apologies for outing your daughter...
I worked temporarily as a customer service representative (Phone-monkey) at a certain TV, Cable TV and Internet service provider that was eventually taken over by a company famous for pulling out of b3ta competitions.

The best call I ever got was from a muslim gentleman regarding his cable TV subscription.

He was enquiring why his bill had all of a sudden jumped from £280.00 per month to £420 per month.

Fucking insane, I know but I looked into the reason behind his bills and noted the following: -

Someone had been ordering at least three pay-per-view porn films per night. Most of these were of lesbian interest and as the bill payer and account holder he was well within his right to obtain this information.

The best part was sitting there reading through the list of titles that had been ordered. At every point in telephone calls I remain calm and composed, if someone starts screaming and shouting, I remain calm, no-one could have prepared me for what was about to happen. The guy fucking flipped, he was screaming blue murder in his native language and would not stop, he had paid them almost four grand and almost all of this was for pornography. He was incensed.

I politely explained that if he so desires, we could disable pay-per-view to prevent this in future and this is where he dropped the ultimate bombshell.

He just paid the bill. The actual television was installed in his daughters flat in leicester which she shared with a female housemate.. oooh thought I... not good!

He hung the phone up and I thought that was it.

A few days later I was dealing with written correspondence and lo and motherfucking behold what did I see...

A letter from a rather incensed woman about disclosing what she was watching to her father and revealing her alternative lifestyle.

I went to the account and decided to respond personally, saying in the third person that I had done exactly was required of me, explained that as I was discussing the account with the named party I was more than at liberty to disclose the titles of ordered films.

Good times!
( Muns, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 1:37, 5 replies)

Hello, I'm from British Gas. I'm here to read your meter...
That was my standard opening line to whoever answered the door I was stood at one summer.

Now this made for an interesting job... not only did I meet a massive cross section of society but I did so on their "home turf", plus they weren't expecting me so all sorts of states of unreadiness were found.

Some highlights if you like;

- "We've just had a gas bill, I don't want another one!"
"Well you'll be getting a bill anyway but if I read the meter it will at least be accurate instead of estimated".
"But I don't want a bill, you're not coming in."
"OK, I'll write it down as refused access then?" (For those in the know this is a black mark against your name in the eyes of the gas board!)


- Then there was the nutter... The door opened on a VERY hot summers day and there stood this lady about 60yrs old in a heavy winter coat and tea cosy hat.
"Are you here to take me to the hospital?"
"No, just to read the gas meter".
"Oh, because I think I'm supposed to go to the hospital".
My notes told me the meter was just inside the hallway and behind her I could see the small cupboard it was in. After gaining entry I then became alarmed by the fact that EVERY FUCKING INCH of wall was written on in various pens. The outpoured mental rantings of someone clearly not right in the noggin. It was like something from a hollywood film, total nut job.
After reading the meter I left sharpish, only to be pursued down the road as she called out "but we need to go to the hospital! The doctor will be cross if I'm not there!"


- Another favourite was I rang the doorbell and almost instantly the door opened to a man sitting on a small footstool in the hallway in a string vest and shorts literally polishing a shotgun.
From upstairs a lady called out "Who's at the fucking door!?"
"Some wanker from the council!" he replies, all the time staring right at me.
"No," I stammered back at him, "I'm the wanker from the gas board".
Luckily he found this amusing and let me in to read the meter... "Nice gun" I commented as I left.
"Yeah, I'm waiting for the man from the council." he replied.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 10:44, 5 replies)

Rodney King's Mate.
I was working in the USA as a manager for a mens clothing shop in what was described by the company as an 'urban trouble store'. Why they put me, a lanky, young, white guy with an English accent there was beyond me but oddly enough I seemed to build a decent rapport and had something of a celebrity status with many of the locals, many of whom were gang members.

The client base was mostly black and hispanic teenagers from lower income families and I really grew to like it there, but unfortunately there were a load of crack-heads who used to regularly shop lift. Usually very badly.

One such crack-head was Leon. I had interviewed him for a postion a few months previously (when his addiction was not apparent) and had offered him a stock position which he failed to show up for. Since then his decline was bad, weight loss, incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together but most obvious were the sunken bloodshot eyes. He would regularly come in to the store and blatently try to steal jeans/shirts anything that was not nailed down - in fact it was a bit of a running joke; he would grab something I would have been watching and standing by the door, he would drop it, we would laugh and I would tell him to 'fuck off' and he would say 'OK see you tomorrow'.

Now as Leon's situation deteriorated he started to become more threatening to some of the girls that worked there, and it eventually got to the stage where he was so strung out he hit one of my workers, tried to grab a whole rounder of t-shirts and run off down the mall with it. I chased him down (not difficult as he could barely push it) grabbed it back off him and tried to calm him down as he was screamimg blue murder. So much so, the police came and he was arrested and charged with theft and assault. Plus he was given a court order never to come to the mall again.

Weeks go by, no sign of Leon.

Then I get a call from the Corporate Office. I was being suspended with pay for a undetermined length of time whilst being investigated of a charge of racism. Leon had apparently accused me of not giving him a job, assault and verbal abuse due to him being black plus a wrongful accusations of theft.

This being the good old US of A they take it seriously and a court date is set for a few months later. (Incidentally, it was summer and the World Cup was on in the USA so I had a great time apart from the occasional worry that he would somehow win the case.) My company took statements from all my employees, my background was checked and all was fine.

So, the court date rolls around. The case is presented by his attorney - some smarmy bastard who specialised in discrimination cases and eventually Leon is asked to speak.

He rises, nearly falls over and his first words are...

"That white, motherfucking, Crocodile Dundee, faggot is a motherfucking racist you know what I'm saying? Shit. Fucking limey cracker bitch!'

At that moment, the case was dismissed.
(Tugnut I got them all..., Fri 5 Sep 2008, 11:13, 2 replies)

A friend of mine used to work at Ann Summers
As you all know, Ann Summers tries to euphemistically market itself as something more highbrow than a sex-shop. That is, it gives an impression that it's all about the "unicorns and rainbows" side of sex and is in no way sleazy and to re-enforce this, only women (and accompanied men) are allowed inside. However, in practice, this is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Most of the customers there would feel equally at home in a regular sex-shop. How do I know this? I have some insider information...

Years ago, I used to share a flat with one of my female friends called Melanie (not her real name). Melanie wanted to become a hairdresser, but couldn't find the work, so instead, she took on a stopgap job as a shop assistant at Ann Summers. Often when she came home, she would tell me tales of some of the moronic customers she had to put up with.

There were all the usual stories about rude and ignorant customers, but the ones that stood out the most were the ones that had something to do with the nature of the business. Some were amusing, such as the multitude of women who complained that their new 'best friend' was either too large to go in or didn't touch the sides, and so wanted a refund. Often, these frustrated women would just place the used toy on the counter, not realising that not everyone wanted to handle someone else's used sex-toy. Sometimes, these stories were a bit on the off-colour side. Melanie often said she wanted to say, "For goodness sake, if you've got a raging yeast-infection, please clean the toy you want a refund for!" Melanie would say this with a straight face and not look grossed out at all.

However, some stories were slightly more ... ermmm... how shall we say ... interesting. There would be the occasional customer who would complain that the quality of the orgasm she received was insufficient. Melanie would then explain that either they read the instructions properly, or try and be 'creative'. They would then reply by going into great detail about their masturbation habits and how they used it. Melanie relayed these stories to me in graphic detail.

One of the things that turns me on is a woman pleasuring herself. Some of these stories went into so much detail that I would often have to make a trip to the toilet to take care of business as soon as our conversation ended. Me and Melanie were good friends, and that's as far as it went. She wasn't my type, and to be honest, I did not find her attractive in that kind of way, so I just pictured Melanie's customers in the scenarios they described. Also, I was too courteous to ask if Melanie ever took home a few 'goodies' from the shop, and had no interest in finding out.

One day, after telling me a particular story that involved a customer discussing in great deal a step-by-step guide to using their new Deluxe Vibrating Rabbit, I was getting so aroused that I couldn't wait for her to stop talking about her day, so I just made a beeline for the bathroom. When I finished, Melanie was still there.

"Did you just go and have a wank?" she asked me forthrightly.

She had never questioned me about this sort of stuff before. I just stood there and blushed.

"Look, you head off for the bathroom each time I talk about my customers' masturbation habits. Surely there's a connection."

Words were trying to get out of my mouth, but I didn't know what the words were. I just stammered for a bit.

"It's OK. I know you're single, and need some release from time to time. Men will be men. Don't worry about it."

Sheepishly, I admitted that I did 'do it' in the bathroom.

"As long as you clean up afterwards, there's nothing to worry about."

Before I could say anything, she said,

"Tell you what. Tomorrow, Ann Summers herself is coming into the shop to give a demonstration. If you're interested, the space under my counter is big enough to hide someone. There's a small gap you can look out of, and the whole space is covered, so you can do what you like with yourself without anyone seeing."

I trusted Melanie enough to realise that this was not some kind of prank.

"Ann Summers giving a demonstration?" I thought to myself. "That will certainly be something I can tell the grandkids."

I would finally get to see the mythical Ann Summers herself. I had heard about these so-called Ann Summers parties where someone would come round to a group of women and try and sell them sex-toys. I was always intrigued about how this would work. Would Ann just organise an ordinary party but when an appropriate moment in the conversation popped up, would she then steer the conversation to launch it into a sales-pitch for a particular sex-toy? Would she give a demonstration? Was she that much of an exhibitionist? Did this turn her on? Thinking it through, I started to wonder if this was just part of her elaborate masturbation ritual. Was her empire of stores nothing more than a by-product of this? So many questions that needed answering; so I agreed.

We got there before opening time, and Melanie let me in. We were the first ones there. She pointed out the space behind her desk and I just hid myself there. I soon found the opening. It was at just the right height for me to lie down and get a good view of the shop. The store was soon opened. As with all retail outlets, Ann Summers had its fair share of goons, loons and buffoons in the checkout queue. There were no interesting incidents, but thankfully, Ann Summers herself showed up. She was in her mid 40's but looked quite fit for someone of her age. She carried herself with great confidence. For someone who goes around giving public demonstrations of sex-toys, it was something I had expected of her.

Ann soon stood at one end of the shop. She started to introduce herself to the crowd. Most of the customers stopped their random milling about to listen to Ann. In my hiding place, I had an excellent view. Nobody was blocking it and I could see Ann in all her splendour. After talking for a bit, she took off her fur coat and shoes to reveal that she was dressed only in a red bikini. However, something seemed a bit wrong. At first, I couldn't figure out what it was. My attention then zoomed toward her bikini bottoms. There was a rather 'un-feminine' bulge at the front. Could it be that the legendary Ann Summers was in fact a transvestite? I desperately wanted to believe this wasn't true, but evidence seemed to suggest otherwise.

Just then, Ann took off her top. Her breasts were round and small, but pretty firm for someone of her age. Their small size meant they didn't have much chance to sag. Her nipples stuck out just slightly below the centre. She got out a set of nipple-clamps and attached them. The sight of this was starting to arouse me, but because I still had doubts about her true gender, I was starting to feel a bit uneasy. 'She' was giving out commentary about how it was making her feel. I pretended to ignore it but it was turning me on. It was certainly getting my attention, but I felt dirty. I had to know the truth.

After a while, Ann took off her bikini bottom. What I saw took me completely by surprise. While there was no willy to be seen, it was the hairiest bush I had ever come across! The hairs seemed to defy mistaspakkaman's first rule of pubic hair that states they only grow to a certain length and stop. Hers seemed to go on much longer. But the bush looked very well maintained. The hairs stood out on end in a uniform pattern. It was like she had grown her bush into a perfect afro. I swear, it was as if Foxxy Cleopatra was constantly going down on her. No wonder she had a bulge!

My imagination immediately started going into overdrive. Could she hang sex-toys off her pubes like Christmas-tree decorations? In fact, every day would be Christmas for her if she had that many sex toys to play with.

It was at this point that she repositioned herself. Safe in the knowledge that she really was female, I could now touch myself without giving myself any psychological scars or putting my morals into a spin. However, in her new position, all I could see was her afro-bush and not much else. Without being able to see her face contort into orgasmic ecstasy, I just had to make do with seeing what she did to herself, and because it was completely covered by a massive bush, I couldn't see anything. To make matters worse, she chose the smallest vibrator she could find and started talking about it.

Without being able to see anything, I was feeling somewhat disappointed. I then remembered that Melanie was a trained hairdresser. Maybe she could trim the afro-bush just enough so I could see what was going on. I got out my Swiss-Army knife and got the scissors out. I tapped Melanie's leg to get her attention. I then whispered into her ear the following:

"Cut Summers' 'fro Mel!"

Apologies for length.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Wed 10 Sep 2008, 2:23, 17 replies)

Roasting peas...
I don't work here anymore, but when darkness falls I STILL HEAR THEM SCREAMING...

I am hopeful this loving piece will give you hoo-mans a little insight into the world of a Stan James telephone gamble monkey. Having said that, sensible people should probably stop reading now; if you're into your bitter, hate filled diatribes, crack on!

1. Opening the Call

a) OK, best not to start with the opening gambits of "Would you like my account number?" - no, I'd like to fucking guess it sir - or "Can I have a bet?" - You've. Rung. A. Betline. See, the answers I really want to give to both questions are invariably "no", so just give me your account number and let's get this over with.

b) About that account number. It is six digits long, there is no need to pause after each one. I'm a big boy, I can take it all.

c) Shockingly enough, I need the account information before I can place the bet. If your race is going off, and you are angry that I must ask for said information, there is a simple remedy, RING 20 SECONDS EARLIER YOU LAZY CUNT.

d) Think about the events that are about to transpire, your best course of action. Trackside at the Moto GP? Don't call. Eating food? Don't call. Actually taking an actual shit while we're ACTUALLY talking? Dear Lord, have some shame man. Don't call. When all the above criteria are met, and you are somewhere quiet and free from interruption, I can just barely tolerate you. This is as good as it gets.

Sometimes this happens - "You want the account number? *sigh* Hang on I'll just get my card" - this will make my heart hurt. Preparation is the buzzword here, more on this later.

2. Right, We're In

a) Oh, where to start. This is where things begin to go seriously wrong. For starters, don't cut me off during my "Hello Mr Shroodgambler, what can I do for you?" spiel - can't you see I'm being courteous, you fucker.

b) At this point, don't wander off for a conversation with your friend/partner/child. It's crucial we talk, so the important business of betting happens.

c) Now I can't stress this one enough - have some idea of what your bet is before you ring up.

You don't walk into a betting shop, wandering around asking people what to throw your money at, do you. Do you? Spending hours trawling through Lithuanian table tennis prices just so you can find some streaky 2/7 shot makes me cry blood tears.

d) Shouty calls are great. If there's one thing I love, it's repeating every word I say simply because you can't be arsed to leave the pub. Similarly it's brilliant fun when you whisper, due to fear of reprisal from wife/boss/Allah.

e) There are a select band of miscreants who are only allowed to get a bet on when confirmed by the card holder. The type of guy who isn't allowed his own bank account. It is generally "the missus" who does the deed (says the alpha-male type who opens the call - ok pal, move along, let your wife get the bet on), but there is at least one individual who needs the confirmation of his mum. Time to give it up imo.

3. Bad Bets

a) Too many years gambling, and too long working here, has made me quite snobbish about certain bets. There are a few specifics which I will mention later, but for now, a quick rundown on some of my favourite crap bets. Oooh it's like the chart show isn't it:

- Betting less than a fiver on an odds on shot. Get away from me you gypo, quite frankly.
- Placepots in which you pick every bloody horse running, for 5p stakes.
- Through-the-card forecasts on the dogs. I mean, what leads you to believe trap 1 will beat trap 2 in every. single. race? If you hate money that much, give it to charity.

b) Each way betting is a type of bet used to back long odds. There are two parts to the bet - the win, and the place. Without boring you with too much detail, if you back short odds, you lose money on the place. Anything below 5/1 is a bit silly. So when you go e/w on even money shots and less, my face looks something akin to a bulldog licking piss off a nettle.

c) But we make it hard to just go all out for the win. Myriad bets on a plethora of sports, it can be confusing. But sometimes you just wonder at the thought process of someone putting their cold hard sterling on the assumption there will be over five first half corners in a Belgian League 2 match. Just WHY?

d) I'll lump the rest all in together, as they all tend to come from a very distinct type of customer - the ones we make all the money off.

If you do any of the following -

Back the next fav off without even knowing what it is, when it's off, what sport it's even in.
Ask for what's "in-running" due to the urgent need of betting on something RIGHT NOW.
Ask for the score, get told to ring the results line, then go "Ahh sod it, I'll just have £500 on the short price".
Are unable to pronounce the name of whatever filth you are backing - this one is always a sure sign of the amount of in depth study that has gone into a selection. And don't worry if you can't quite get it, we accept anything from words that sound a bit like the one you're trying to say, to mild racism ("gimme a hundred on that chinky bird")

- any of these, and I will instantly want to ritually slaughter your first born.

4. Things I Don't Need To Know

a) I just need the name of the horse. Dear God. We have this cracking little index thing that means I can just type the fucker in, and everything magically happens. I don't need to know where it's running, who the jockey is, the trainer, what price it was this morning, how it did when it ran out last saturday, what ground it prefers - you might as well tell me its birth mother and date of conception.

b) Personal facts. I don't wanna hear about your life as an accountant for the largest Kellog import/export depot in Europe, about your theory on gay people, whether you've recently shagged a prostitute, the death of all your close family, or how that recent trip to the hospital went.

I'll be blunt, having to hack your voice for one second longer than necessary has me reaching for the staplegun, its destination, MY FACE. I HATE YOU. This is maybe a point I should've raised earlier.

c) Anything else but the bet really. When I give you a price, and you say "but Ladbrokes are doing 3/1!!", what exactly d'you want me to say? Good for them sir!? Just have a bet, or fuck off, is the rule I'm implying.

Also, our company perhaps works differently from those you have encountered previously. Your opinions on our prices/markets/anything else? Quite useless. Utterly without value. I mean that sincerely. If I say something, it's right. If you don't agree, you're wrong. In todays crazy world, it's nice to see a pure black/white fact.

d) The jokes. Oh the jokes.
"What can I do for you sir?"..."Well you could find me a winner! hohoho chortle chortle!"
"Would you like 3/1?"..."I'd prefer 20s hohoho guffaw!"
"D'you do prices for the marathon?"..."Why of course, who were you..."..."Wassa price of the bloke in the diving suit AHAHAHAH CHORTLE LOLZ!!one"

5. Almost Home

a) OK, almost there, but not quite. One of the most crucial parts of the call is about to happen - reading the bet back, and calling "Bet's on". I have to do this. I don't wanna, but I must. So don't talk over the top of me. Don't talk to someone else as I do this, then ask what the bet was again. Don't allow me to go all the way through, dial for the money, strike the bet, then go "Errr, actually I wanted it like this". Just be cool.

b) When I say "Anything else Sir?" that's your cue to get involved, should you want anymore gamble. When you wait until I finish the bet and go "Oh there was something else", my teeth actually curl back on themselves, and reroot into my gums, and blood froths from my mouth. It's a terrible sight.

c) DONT HANG UP ON ME. NOT WHEN IM READING THE BET BACK, NOT AFTER I GIVE YOU A PRICE YOU DONT LIKE, NOT AS IM DIALLING THROUGH, NOT AFTER IVE TAKEN THE FUCKING TIME TO PUT YOUR SHIT FUCKING BET ON AND LISTEN TO URFUCKING INANE TWIITERINGFUCKIN CUNT YOU FUCK ARGJRHG DONT HANGUPVP;]ORGRSLSR DONT. HANGUPSKUDHG[#KJBZE DONTFUCK INHG]DHANG UP CUNTSKU,.;AB;EFKEW. #]. Don't do it.
(bacontrout got ska, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 6:02, 4 replies)

Radio 4 said...
I worked in a bookshop once, and was busy minding my own business behind the till when a mid-60s woman (not elderly but definitely not doable) approached and stated...

"I was listening to Radio 4 last night...

(ooh how classy you are madame, I thought, way above my status as a mere bookmonger)

...and they were talking about a book. Do you have it? It was EVER so interesting but I don't know what it was called."

Says I:

"do you know the author?"

"No sorry - radio 4 last night"

"hmm,was it this? (producing the book at bedtime)

"Erm no, but it was on radio 4"

"How about this? (producing Radio 4's Book of the week)"

"No! It was on Radio 4"(slightly annoyed now)

"Okay" says I, and look for a company list of books 'in the media' that week, reading the list of books on the BBC radio stations, meanwhile my colleague looks at the bbc radio 4 site for a list - needless to say none are right...

She looks peeved "NO - it was on RADIO 4! Just put 'Radio 4' into the computer!"

Says I "Well, that won't help me find it"

"THEY SAID - JUST PUT RADIO 4 IN AND IT WOULD COME UP"

"Err, well I can search by title, author, synopsis, publisher, imprint, publication date, format, size...but not what radio station it was on."

(sighs) "Well...it can't be a very good system then can it?!"

"OK....(smiling through the rising anger)..we don't know the title or author...what was it about?!"

(angry now) "Well I don't know!

Says I:

"Must have been a great book then." (smiling)

looking shocked, walks out mumbling "I don't have to listen to this..."

She obviously would rather have been listening to Radio 4.
(Andrelius67JHHVGC7 Han har stillet træskoene, Thu 4 Sep 2008, 17:17, 9 replies)

Preparations for the Friday evening rush
at the pub I worked in were taking place. Glasses were being washed, tables cleaned and the odd bit of banter passed between customers and staff.
I only had an hour left of my shift, all was well with the world.

A young couple were sat occupying one of the booths opposite the bar. They had been drinking most of the afternoon and had progressed from slight touchy-feelyness to full on 'heavy petting.'
I stopped perving went to serve a customer and upon my return noticed the girl had vanished. Well, I thought she had until I noticed her leg sticking out from under the table. Her boyfriend was sitting there however, with his eyes closed and his head tipped back. He let out quite an audible sigh, the sigh of a man in fellatio heaven.

My fellow colleagues and I exchanged somewhat shocked glances, a few even laughed nervously before Neil spoke up.
Neil was famed for being a lovely, polite man who also had a tendency for stating the bleeding obvious.
"She's giving him a blow job!" He exclaimed.

It was thus decided that Neil would be the one to go over and ask them to stop. He calmy walked over to the booth and said "Excuse me chaps, but that thing you're doing, well, could you not? It's not very nice."

Our young gentleman friend obviously didn't agree though for it was at that moment he pushed his girlfriend's head away before liberally spurting a quite frankly impressive amount of hot, sticky jizz all over his jeans and her hair and face.

They were asked to clean up and leave.
( wanderlust, Tue 9 Sep 2008, 16:26, 16 replies)