Job: cashier
Item doesn’t scan
Customer: “That means it’s free, right?”
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Only about 4 weeks in as a cashier and I’ve heard this enough to last me a lifetime.
In Australia, if it scans higher than the price on the shelf, it is free.
Maybe that’s the policy at some stores, but according to the ACCC, it has to be sold at the cheaper price, or not sold at all.
Correct. However, Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, and some IGA stores are signatories to the voluntary code of practice for computerised checkout systems in supermarkets.
Generally, this means that if an item is scanned at the checkout at a higher price than it says on the shelf or as advertised, a customer is entitled to receive the first item free and all multiples of the same item at the lower price.
So not all stores, but generally speaking it’s a thing. I’ve seen it in action with a cocky teenager demand his coke free, and got it.
Huh. That actually sounds familiar now that you write it out in full. I guess we’re both right.
When I join into a call with one if our software vendor support teams and they waste 45 of my minutes cause they dont know wtf is going on in our SaaS environment they control. Like get it the fuck together or let me host it.
My husband is a DBA and I hear him on his work calls sometimes. Same shit, weakest link on the call holding up everybody’s work day.
Job: Software Dev
Internal stakeholder or C-Suite: presents nebulous idea for workflow/product/feature with no actual end goal
“We have a CRITICAL need for this product. It will REVOLUTIONIZE everything we do here. The stakes could not be higher. THIS MUST BE COMPLETED ASAP”
My boss: Okay. We will move heaven and Earth to get this done for you.
Me: Works 60 hours a week for two months to ensure the new product is successful
Also me: checking usage statistics six months later…last used by me during go live testing
I hate my life.
Me: Software developer. Other person: Sales guy.
Sales guy: Have you finally fixed the XYZ bug?
Me: What XYZ bug? Never heard of this before.
Sales guy: The bug that impacted our project A, B, and C! It is there for years!
Me: No, I have not fixed it. Because I just heard about this issue now. Nobody told me about an XYZ bug, or problems with projects A, B, and C.
Sales guy: What? Why didn’t you know about such a bug? This cannot be possible! I’ll talk to the boss about your incompetence!
Me: Because none of your team found it necessary to inform me? Maybe we should talk to the boss about this.
Open a goddamn ticket.
Indeed. And yes, they know how to do that.
But tickets take too long.
I will go and open a ticket and I will put two words in it, and require you to contact me for
moreany information, and then I won’t answer the phone for 6 weeks. Oh and don’t bother leaving a voicemail message or sending me an email, because I never check them. However despite my complete unresponsiveness, I am nonetheless going to insist that it’s marked as high priority even though I don’t understand what high priority means - Every Employee Ever“please fix”
no bug report, only fix!
Literally nine tickets like this so far today. Nine.
It’s a good thing for them The purge isn’t real.
Job: cashier. Not my current job, but definitely the one that racked up the most irritating quotes.
Customer: “Now, don’t you try to double scan my items. I’m watching you.”
I heard this one constantly when I was a cashier at a grocery store. At first I assumed that they were kidding. After all, it’s such a stupid accusation to make. It was only after about 100 elderly people had said it while staring daggers at me that I realized they weren’t kidding.
I assume there must have been a news report in the 1960s about store clerks charging you twice for an item and then taking the extra cash, and a certain kind of person had been paranoid about it ever since. Except this wasn’t in the 1960s, it was the 2010s, and such a scam couldn’t even work anymore. The cash register isn’t just a lockbox like it was in the 60s, it’s a computer and it knows exactly how much money should be in it. And if it has less than that in it when your shift ends, you’re screwed.
Plus, you’re paying with a credit card, Gertrude, how am I supposed to steal your shit when you’re paying with a credit card?
I think the thing that made it so irritating was the fact that they are willing to whip out this assertive, domineering attitude at you based on information that hasn’t been true for about forty freaking years. They have a mistrust of other people because they don’t know how the world works anymore, yet they think they’ve outsmarted you.
The way you described then makes me think of the “make sure your man double-bags” scene* in Shawshank Redemption.
*WARNING: Major spoilers for the movie if you haven’t seen it. In which case, you should really go see it. It’s one of the best movies in existence.
The movie’s 30 years old, I think we can relax the spoiler warning.
I don’t ever want to be the one responsible for spoiling such a good movie for someone who hasn’t seen it, even today.
Sometimes the scanning technique can mean an item is accidentally scanned twice. It’s a bit of a faff around to have to go to the CS desk to get a refund, so I can understand them wanting you to not make any mistakes in the first place.
Why would they have to go to the CS desk? the cashier can just change it right there. It happens occasionally where they scan too many items and have to void some out, it’s really not a big deal.
Not if they don’t catch it then and there.
“Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later” —> code that is hackish and will never be replaced.
“We need you to do this one time because of someBullshit” —> congratulations, your team had to do this thing outside of your specialty, even though there exists a team dedicated to it, and now we’re just going to make you do it over and over again (despite, again, a whole team dedicated to that existing).
You should tell them this is not 'Nam. There are rules.
These are older lessons and I’m generally pretty effective at pushing back on those now. I’m not a manager, though, so I can be overruled.
Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later
I’m always blown away whenever someone says that they like some language or framework because it’s “great for prototyping.”
Like, what magical fairyland software company do you work at where your prototypes are not immediately put into production as soon as they kind of start to work?
When I was first starting as a server at this one restaurant, I swear every other phrase out of my coworkers’ mouths when they saw me during the entire first 2 weeks was, “you having fun yet?”. And everytime, I’d give a half-assed smirk and say “oh you know it”. So dumb. That phrase still irritates the shit out of me to this day.
I once had a job in an office building that was shared by several different businesses. One of them was an accounting firm that seemed like an incredibly boring place. And I swear, every time two guys from the accounting firm passed each other in the hallway, they had to say to each other, “You having fun yet?” or “Are ya workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”
It must have been a requirement. Literally company policy. I heard it so many times in just a couple years, there’s no other explanation. Like, if you didn’t say it, the manager would ask to see you in his office, and he’d be like, “Hey Phil, someone tells me that you and Dave passed each other in the hallway, and neither of you said ‘you having fun yet.’ Now you know we like to have fun around here, and ‘you having fun yet’ is part of our company culture, so I’m gonna need you to make sure that you say ‘you having fun yet.’ It’s for fun. And we like to have fun. It’s mandatory.”
Livin’ the dream!
“Nightmares are dreams too”
There’s a reason Office Space is such a popular movie.
The office they worked in is so similar to one I worked in. The scene that sticks out the most was them walking back from lunch and cutting through the ditch to get back quicker.
When I worked in retail, I had this wanker of a middle manager who would ask how I was getting on, and when I said fine, he’d always say “It’s not rocket science, is it?”
He was mid twenties and only a few years older than me. He used to call female employees “babe”.
One time I watched him get a withering telling off from a customer. The customer wasn’t in the right, but it felt like a little bit of retribution for all us “babes”.
So…
You having fun yet?
Go fuck yourself
Maybe a niche issue, but “that doesn’t scale!” In the context of software development.
We’re writing software for usually very well defined user groups, but so many of the architects and seniors want to build a second Netflix, which costs 4 times as much as the simple solution and in the end usually isn’t even better, because those morons have no idea how to do that.
Currently, I’m in a project where I fought tooth and nail to avoid having a micro service architecture for a batch job that inserts less than a million entries per day.
premature optimization is a root of all evil.
also when those morons decide to do ‘microservices’ but end up creating glorified SOA with one messy DB where half the tables are not even used by anything, updates in place are the standard and there is nothing like one team per service, but instead everyone is expected to navigate millions of lines of spaghetti code with poor documentation, barely any reuse and inconsistencies all across the board with this oh too-fucking-common entity service anti-pattern.
and so much fucking coupling that you better start deploying your dev cluster just right after waking up so it maybe is up and running by the time your daily is over.
Fun fact, I used to work at a company where a lot of projects use Elixir and a bulk share of my coworkers have been outspoken critics of microservices precisely because OTP manages to power fault tolerant and scalable systems but not by insane levels of complexity like kubernetes does but by CoC that rarely gets in your way.
Wow, Elixir and OTP. I envy you.
so many of the architects and seniors want to build a second Netflix
Good old Resume-Driven-Development
I wouldn’t even call it that. It’s a weird lack of a sense of scale combined with organizational hurdles.
They basically can’t estimate, how much resources a proper app would need and they don’t know how to manage teams to work on a common codebase. So they simply draw a diagram of the functionalities, spin out each block as a “Service”, assign that to a team and call it a day.
I’ve talked to several of them about this and I had to do very simple math directly in front of them to convince them. I’ve had to explain to a grown man, an experienced engineer, that 16 cores and 96gb memory are more than enough to handle a million simple inserts per day in a batch mode. He wanted to split the job into 4 services, each essentially running 10 lines of actual business logic, each using the resources mentioned above. Absolute madness.
See counterargument tho I’ve had multiple cashiers try to scan a thing that wasn’t in the system and just throw it in my cart so it DOES happen. Lmao
What I do is find a similar item that costs less and use that for that item.
Doesn’t that mess with your inventory numbers?
Sure does! But when I’ve got a line of paying customers, “shrink” is not too high a priority for me.
I do make an effort to find the right item. We have a “cashier book” in the POS system that I can look stuff up in. Unfortunately it’s not very robust when it comes to acceptable search terms, so if I can’t find it after a few attempts, and the item is under $10, I just want to get the customer on their way.
This was a latex loofah at a Safeway grocery store. Good luck finding something similar. Maybe a sponge from the kitchen aisle?
Just charge them for bananas. 4011. Everything is bananas if it doesn’t scan.
“X is down/broke.” No, Kelly, the internet isn’t “down.” You typed the URL wrong in your browser.
People will state it like the entire company has lost internet connectivity, or an entire department cannot access files or run a certain program, when actually, only a single user is having a problem.
Also people not knowing the difference between log out, restart, and shutdown. Even after explaining it to them.
At one point, I had to explain to my dad that we’re paying for internet access, not for all servers to be available and sufficiently fast. He was not happy about that.
I can’t really sympathise with you here. You’re clearly an IT guy, so the difference between log out, restart and shut down is as natural to you as breathing. For the average person is not that intuitive. For many people the computer is “on” when they press the power button and enter their username and password. And the blurring of the distinction is increased by most people having a smartphone where just lifting it up to your face wakes it up and logs you in (technically) at the same time.
I know you’re explaining it to them, but if that’s not something that they live and breathe, they’re just going to forget the explanation. I’m a molecular biologist, so to me the differences between genome, transcriptome and proteome are bleeding obvious, but I have a colleague who’s not a scientist but needs to become familiar with these terms. I explained them to her last week in an meeting that lasted an hour, but this week I had to do that again. She’s not stupid, it’s just all very abstract to her.
If people too stupid to use computer, their computer license should be revoked, because they clearly cheated on the test
People should know basic concepts about tools without which they can’t do any part of their job.
Your colleague will learn this terminology at some point. I’m sure her job isn’t litterally juggling these three terms all day every day, otherwise I’d expect her to already have come in with that knowledge too.
I’m mean, it’s literally in the name. These are not concepts that require a degree to understand, much less an hour long meeting.
Logout means ending your user session, restart means your computer turns off and then comes back on, and shutdown means it turns off and stays off.
The buttons are all in the start menu, they are clearly marked, and these concepts have existed for 30 years at least.
It’s like driving a car for decades and not knowing what the difference between reverse, drive, and neutral are.
I still think your promoting the view of “this is obvious to me so it should be obvious to everyone”. Even your explanation would be confusing for someone who’s not an IT guy - what does it mean “end my user session?” People rarely go to the start menu to deal with their computers’ “on-ness”, they just press the hardware button that has an incomplete circle with a line on top or often no marking or label at all. Or they close the lid and that makes them think of their laptop as “off”.
It’s not about being “obvious.” It’s about understanding the most basic concepts involved with using a piece of equipment that is central to their job and has been that way for decades.
I wouldn’t want ride in a car with somebody that couldn’t remember what the difference between red, yellow, and green traffic lights are, or couldn’t remember how to activate their turn signals or windshield wipers. And I certainly wouldn’t want them operating a vehicle as a core part of their everyday job.
Now I’ll grant that in general, a car is far more dangerous than a computer. But the principle still holds, these are not tough concepts to understand, takes literally 5 minutes to explain at most. Plus, they haven’t changed in at least 30 years, so it’s not some new fangled techno-babble.
Yes but you see if I close the lid, then it’s off. And that’s why my system has an up time of 208 hours.
208 hours.
Those are rookie numbers. I’ve had users that didn’t ever shut down. A power outage was the only relief that poor system got.
Ive already said it on another comment here, and i no long work support so im a user myself now but, FUCK USERS!
It’s frustrating when you know there’s a huge gap between your comprehension and theirs, but they think you’re the idiot.
“This is a business!”
I work retail. People walk up to me like I’m a robot.
“Duck tape??” They just… Bark at me. I have gotten to the point that I refuse to tell them where something is until they treat me like a human being and ask a very simple question, “where’s duck tape?”
Makes me think of this guy.
You’re gonna hate me for this but since it’s your job you might want to learn it’s “duct” tape.
Not what they asked for. Duck tape is a brand, and is in my department. Duct tape is in plumbing which also does HVAC products, and is actual foil tape with a peel off backing, actually used for ductwork.
There is such a thing as duck tape though, It’s a brand of duct tape
But that’s not what the customer asked for.
People asking me if I’ve tried turning it off and then turning back on again, sometimes while seeming to imply next I should try reversing the polarity, inserting blinker fluid into it, and giving it a good talk like it’s a homegrown tomato or something.
Did you try burning sage?
Can you change the report for this one customer who has a nonstandard completely fucking stupid set up that none of your collection points account for and goes against the entire point of this report?
Well, maybe not those exact words. It’s more like:
- rep: customers XYZ doesn’t like what they see on the report
- me: well tell them to clean up their shit and stop leaving orphaned systems in their environment
- rep: well can’t you just exclude the orphaned ones
- me: the point of the report is to help you clean up your environment. If they did that it would show improvement week over week until it got to the levels they want to see.
- rep: they don’t want to do that, they just want them excluded from the report
- me: no
My husband did report-writing for a few years. #GIGO
I hope this customer is being charged for these orphaned systems. They’ll care more if it’s costing them money.
Patron using the computer: “Your Google is broken! No matter what I search, it just shows me books!”
Me: “…you’re typing in the library’s catalog. This isn’t Google.”
Used to work in this exact environment. This tormented me daily.
Along with crap like “You look pretty smart.” or “Hey I bet you’re a genius.”
Or just typing their email address into the URL bar.
Or just barking at you “PRINT.”
Or “Why this no work, I click ‘E’ for ‘internet’.” (We had a stubbornly archaic IT lead who insisted on keeping Internet Explorer around for ages.)
I was going to suggest putting signs up that clearly state the search bar isn’t Google, but I realized that even if you did, they would likely get ignored. You may even already have them up.
I worked in a office supplier at one point. People would enter the office, put some documents on the first desk they see and look at the guy sitting there. No hello… No sentence… Nothing… That is usually the point when we knew what was up. The guy would look at the documents and say "you aren’t at the right place. Wrong floor. Wrong door. " They would look at us in shock. Sometimes complain that you couldn’t tell where you are. It was always the same. They wanted to get something from the government. They had an office in the same building. There were multiple big sign. There was literally 2 signs outside telling you which floor. Obviously our office had a sign too. They passed at least 3 signs in an office building while they were looking where to go… People don’t read signs… They just don’t.
