blog
Feeling
I was ill yesterday. Woke up at 5am feeling like I had a fist shoved up my nostrils and thumping against my eyeballs and my skull. Took some cold+flu medication and that helped but I still felt like crap. Did some web work at home, but had to drag myself out to Officeworks in the afternoon, which wasn't much fun. Got home grumpy, cold and tired, but went to bed early and had a good, restful night's sleep.
Morning started well, feeling much better, but clients are still hounding me for their work, and I had to go to Officeworks again this afternoon. This is the main reason I'm leaving. I honestly want to do my clients' work but I keep getting dragged away to stand at a cash register. And the managers at the store think they are doing me a favour by rostering me on more days than I ask for.
Had a few incidents at the shop today that left me sour. One being an annoying customer who just couldn't decide what she wanted to do. First she says she wants to return an item, which I duly put through, and continued with her purchases. While doing so, she starts pulling things out of the plastic bag that I had placed all the tilled up items, saying that she wants some things on a separate bill. Only to realize that all of those were supposed to be together anyway, EXCEPT the refund item, which was to go with something else! If you got confused reading that, don't worry. I was there and I didn't know what she was trying to achieve either.
Then later I got told off by one of the managers because I had been doing refunds without calling for a supervisor to check and provide her POS ID number (not password). I have no problem following processes and procedures but it takes no less than 5 mins for a page to get responded to, and when you're dealing with people at the checkouts, every extra minute is testing the customer's patience. Also, when you're at the front-line, you also receive all the abuse from annoyed customers.
That's the problem with big corporations who thrive on paperwork and 3-inch thick manuals on processes just to work on the registers. As a customer I would hate to have to deal with three different people just to refund something, and spending about 20 minutes on average just waiting for all these people to come to 'assist' me. Yet this is exactly what happens all the time.
In a way I'm lucky to have avoided working in retail for a very long time, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Now it makes it all the more gratifying that I've decided to leave it in pursuit of something I'm passionate about, and to answer to nobody but myself.
Just three more shifts to go.
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Comments
stumbled across your blog through various link from one another..nice, come clean, nice write up..it would be better to justify the paragraph! anyways, keep it up!
October 7, 2005 1:40 AM | jonathanpoh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jonathanpoh.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
said:
Thanks. Always good to hear from people who actually read my blog. :)
October 7, 2005 1:51 AM | sooyin said:
Hiya...been following your blog, first time commenting, though. Hope you're feeling better and don't let the job get you down...=) Good on you for resigning to do something that you'll enjoy!
October 7, 2005 4:24 AM | geekchic said:
OEI! You quit msn while we were halfway chatting! We were talking of our common disdain for corporate life, REMEMBER? I should go start my own biz, etc. I still want that cosmetics emporium with Shryh, I still want to read, blog, write, drink coffee (and get paid), I still want to start my book+doggie cafe, I still want to do webdesign/coding/just plain debugging for you. :P And yes, minus all the political shit, I still want to do research engineering. Most of all, I want to go present my damn paper! :)
Okay, so this is about JP. Yar, hope you get better soon. It's spring. It's the bug. Customer service kinda job is always shit but you hadn't got a mean bone in you, you're like the perfect guy for this kind of job, though you hate it ;)
October 7, 2005 1:37 PM | wandernut said:
Hope you're feeling better!
Retail is quite a pain.
Ever tried waitering part-time?
The F&B business has its fair share of mean customers, but you'll meet more nice people (maybe potential clients) than bad.
Free grub's a bonus ;)
And the occasional tip, too!
October 9, 2005 11:18 PM | Ka-Meng said:
I see you're gaining a fan base here, Jon. w00t!
October 7, 2005 1:23 AM | charlene said: