I bet most of you thought I was dead...

I've been neglecting my social netwoking facets this week (facebook, twitter, this blog, etc...), but that's mostly because I have nothing really new to say. I spent most of my work week in a department I despise (front end, or cashiering, for those not in retail). That's how I was rewarded for my excellent sales for the first two weeks of July. I was stuck up front at a register where I can't move and am overworked for eight hours a day. You know what wasn't designed to stand in one spot for eight hours straight? The human body. My knees are pretty well shot by the time one of those shifts are done. And at one point one of my managers asked why my sales weren't as high (I have seven different bosses. I'm hoping for one more so that I can find someone named Bob and explain to them how many bosses I have).
But today, oh boy, today was going to be different. I was actually in technology. And, you know what, I made a bunch of sales! Who would have thought? But enough of the bitching about work, because, honestly, it doesn't get me anywhere. I will, however, write one thing more about work. Only because it is so f***ing ridiculous.
So, on Tuesday, the last day I worked before today, I found and then rang up a couple of flash drives (or USB drives or thumb drives or whatever) that were on sale for a customer.
She came in today after hearing that we were giving away a cheap lil 6.99 backpack with a $10 purchase and demanded to know where her backpack(s) was(were).
I told her that we were out.
She asked for a raincheck.
I explained that it was a promotional item and that we weren't expecting to get anymore in.
Then she asked why I hadn't given her her backpacks when she had been in on Tuesday.
I had no response to this, because, really, anything I could have said would only have made things worse.
She asked who the store manager was and if he was around (I've been asked that a lot lately, and it's usually never my fault or that of the employee the customer is angry at). He had just left, so I told her I was calling the manager on duty to the front of the store.
She proceeds to call the MoD by the wrong name and then goes off on how she never shops at our store because we intentionally label items with the wrong price and how I should have given her the backpacks when she was in the store on Tuesday before they ran out on Wednesday (I mispoke, because I rarely have Wednesdays off and we had run out the last day I worked).
He explained that it wasn't an item that we just give to the customers, that they had to either get one off the shelf or request it at the register. She yelled for a few more minutes and then said she was going to write a letter of complaint to someone or other and asked for all of our names.
She then called the MoD by the wrong name again and he asked for her name so that he could relay her complaint to the Store Manager. And then she left.
It was only the 2nd customer of 3 in a row to yell at me. And it all boils down to this:
The customer was pissed because I wasn't psychic. Sorry.


Now, I will very rarely openly debate politics. Mostly because I try to actually be rational and logical when it comes to such things, and whoever I argue with hardly thinks of those things as useful or intelligent. I preface this next segment because I don't want to see any political comments (not that there are many comments in general). An...acquaintance that I knew in high school joined the military after graduation. I say acquaintance because I mostly knew him from working at the grocery store in my town and I graduated high school with his sister. He served in Iraq and was wounded three times in the line of duty. Twice from shrapnel from homemade explosives and once from a missile. He took a godamned missile hit and kept going.
He recently received the Purple Heart and a commendation from President Obama. His sister, with pride (and well-deserved) pointed to a news article on the website for the local paper (hence how I know how many times he was injured and from what). I read through the article and thought, "This is a boy (I later corrected myself and said man when retelling the story to my girlfriend, since the young man in question is only a year younger than I am) that served his country. And he was mentioned, by name, by the President of the United States. How cool is that?"
And then I made the mistake of reading the comments. I think maybe two comments in is all it took for the hate and political rhetoric to creep in. One of them even blasted him for joining the military to support a fake war. Another was ranting about President Obama and how he is ruining the country. Now, I don't care how anyone feels about Iraq, Afghanistan, or the current President of the United States, but there is a time and a place to argue about such things. At the end of a news article about a soldier receiving the purple heart for being wounded in action is not one of them. Nor the funeral for anyone who fought for their country and died. Nor anything having to do with sports. Really? The Cubs are playing lousy and you're going to blame the war or Pres. Obama?

So this is my salute, Matt Seidl. Thank you for serving your country and continuing to do so in the face of adversity.