Working in retail

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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Joined: 9-12-04
May 25 2007 10:52
Working in retail

It can frustrating as fuck dealing with the public in retail. This kinda work can turn you into a misanthropic cunt if you let it.
What sort of stuff did you do to lighten up the day?

Me, my bro and Revol taking out of date food to the top of the building fire-escape and throwing at an adjacent building. Once a carton of yoghurt streaked all the way down the window and they didn't clean it for at least a week.
Taking out of date stuff and just smashing it against the wall out back was always good.
Dropping a water melon from the 7th floor fire escape
Spraying each other with the fire extinguisher (a bit anti-social in case there actually was a fire, but funny as fuck)
Serving customers in foreign accents - seriosuly try this one. You will almost certainly burst out laughing the first couple of times but it's worth it, especially if you are all doing it. I tried french, scottish, belfast spide, camp, they all provide a chuckle.
Adding random inappropriate words into customer dialogue - like made-up words for pound or change
e.g. instead of "27p change", "27p scratch", instead of "2 pound please", "2 scoops please"
seriously, if there's a bunch of you on checkout it's funny
Throwing food around the shop
Putting Morbid Angel on the store tape
Hiding behind shelving and shouting as loud as you can - brilliant, especially if a colleague is standing nmearby and gets the dirty look of a customer
If there's music playing, sing along as loud as you can, preferbly in a deliberately annoying way
Mashing the keys on your workmates till when they turn their back, so they charge the customer £764635732 for a tin of coke and packet of cheese n onion.

Any more?

#2
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Joseph Kay's picture
Joseph Kay
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Joined: 14-03-06
May 25 2007 11:03

when i used to work in argos we'd draw darts boards on the flat packed furniture and play darts with the little blue pens. and also see how long/how many said pens would stay hanging from the ceiling tiles before the boss noticed. we also once had a massive pen throwing fight, which nearly ended in tears when i got one stuck in a guys head from 30 feet. workers' solidarity embarrassed

as you may have noticed, those pens featured heavily in our skiving activities.

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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May 25 2007 11:04

Ooooh moved to organise - how nice smile
On a serious note, this type of messing about and skiving does increase workplace solidarity, once you've smashed an old jar of jam off the back wall with someone, you're far more likely to cover their backs for them and vice versa wink It stops you being an arselicking jobsworth cunt if you engage in daft shite with your workmates

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BB
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Joined: 12-08-04
May 25 2007 11:04
xConorx wrote:
Spraying each other with the fire extinguisher (a bit anti-social in case there actually was a fire, but funny as fuck)

Tick.

xConorx wrote:
Serving customers in foreign accents - seriosuly try this one. You will almost certainly burst out laughing the first couple of times but it's worth it, especially if you are all doing it. I tried french, scottish, belfast spide, camp, they all provide a chuckle.

Tick. West country and old lady (on the phones).

Supergluing phone handsets to the unit, doing the same with unit, coffee mugs a good one especially when it and the contents go everywhere.

Drawing knobs on the queen on stamps, as packages go out the door.

Accidently shredding fax orders.

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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May 25 2007 11:23
BB wrote:
Drawing knobs on the queen on stamps, as packages go out the door.

actually I done something similar on our lottery stand. See there's the marker-bit where you write in the numbers and can wipe them off the next week for new numbers. but the rest of the stand isn''t wipeable - of course me being a dumbass didn't know this and drew cocks all over the faces of the people on the stand advert, coloured in the teeth, drew scars etc, but mainly cocks.

When I realised I couldn't wipe them off I started panicing! Eventually I had to scrub them off with a brillo pad, so there was these big scorch marks all over the faces on the ad, but it was worth it. I hjust said "kids came in and drew on it"

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BB
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Joined: 12-08-04
May 25 2007 11:32

^ LOL, nice one.

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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May 25 2007 13:44

Locking your workmates in the freezer "for a joke"
Locking them in the toilets
Jumping into piles of boxes in the storage room, works for boxes of crisps if you're in confectionary retail, or in clothing retail, almost any boxes will do.
Sitting in the office/control room whatever watching the cameras and having control of the music volume. Turn the music up as loud as possible quickly and then back down - watch customers getting shocked hilariously. turn it up again for a slightly longer period - this sounds retarded but it's funny as fuck.
Throwing boxes of merchandise about in the store room.
Riding up and down in the stock lift
Deliberately let stuff go out of date when supposedly date-checking so you can either a)take it home for free, or b) smash it

Shaking up bottles of coke etc and putting them back in the fridge, at the front.
Putting merchandise down your trousers and then back on the shelves
Lifting stock, say biscuits, and snapping them and putting them back on the shelves
Those last few are examples of the misanthropic alienation one experiences working in retail or service industry.

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the button's picture
the button
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Joined: 7-07-04
May 25 2007 13:59

"Surfing" on the prongs of the forklift truck in the warehouse. Looking back, this was dangerous as fuck, because -- if you fell off -- the forklift would have no chance of stopping in time. Just say no, kids. smile

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EdmontonWobbly
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May 25 2007 14:38

Deliberately crashing computers, leaving batteries on the backs of the servers, smoking pot on coffee break, stealing headsets, having competitions to see who could be the least productive...ahh the call centre.

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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May 25 2007 14:45
revol68 wrote:
my favourite trivk was to get caught slagging off the bosses christian music tape on the first day of the job, way to make an impression.

yeah that was prettty good, i meant to tell you before, but letting you dig a whole was nice./
like the time you slagged off religion to christian Melanie.

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ftony
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Joined: 26-05-04
May 29 2007 18:05

me (pot washer) and the sous-chef cooking and eating countless steaks worth a good fifteen quid a pop (sorry choccy, i should have said "fifteen scoops" there, eh)

general food theft (DUH!)

spitting into / sneezing on food on their way to twatty customers (well, DUH again!)

and my fave from my girlf's repertoire: throwing scalding hot soup all over Jenny Powell grin

as admin monkeys, we quite often did the ol' wheelie chair races on the late shift.

as PhD students we often take the lecturers out drinking and enjoy watching them make fools of themselves. that's always a goodun.

yeah, so nothing too imaginitive, but all good fun

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jef costello's picture
jef costello
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Joined: 9-02-06
May 29 2007 19:06

Dumping all the stuff from the chill room onto the shop floor so we could play basketball.

Repeatedly stealing stuff. I once stole a crate of chocolate oranges.

Abusing reduction stickers to the max

throwing food at each other. (sometimes customers get caught in the crossfire, serves them right, they're on the front line in the class war.)

playing a form of baseball using melons and a fuck huge knife.

boring holes in fruit and spreading rumours that the 'senior' is having his wicked way with it.

getting your mate from beers wines and spirits to hook you up

weighing up dope on the fish counter scales

taking an hour and a half for break in a five hour shift

spraying the crotch on people's trousers with shelf cleaner (over time this bleaches the trousers so it looks like they have a recurring problem

deliberatley crashing trolleys

running really fast then jumping on the back of the trolley and riding it

combine the two above

tipping a crate of clementines over your mate's head

eating lots of stuff

chatting up girls in frozen foods

chatting up shoppers

turning a blind eye to shoplifting

stealing money

betting pints (to be drunk on break) on how much 'eroctica' you'll sell.

getting stoned

spend an hour wnadering around claiming to be looking for your manager to tell him about a problem so by the time you find him it's time to go home and you won't have to clear up the big mess that is definitely your fault.

laughing at Rory.

finding ways to wear your tie incorrectly

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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May 29 2007 20:52
ftony wrote:
yeah, so nothing too imaginitive, but all good fun

so long as it's fun and on The Man's time smile