Entry 3: A day of wasted time
This is the entry that I wanted to put in yesterday, but I just couldn't find the time. The fact that I even worked yesterday was because I wrote myself in on the schedule. Our manager is sick, so one of my moronic coworkers filled in the required hours of labor, and left my name off. For now, just so my identity isn't quite so easy to confirm by anyone I offend, let's call him Bris Cettini. There will be an entire entry devoted to Bris on Sunday, as he is the most incompetent, amusingly stupid Radioshack employee on the planet, and he's moving on Friday. I have to see him off somehow, so Sunday is a "TRIBUTE TO BRIS." Anyway, that's then, this is now. Since I just wrote myself in when I wanted to, there was an overflow of people working yesterday. Every employee we have was standing around waiting for something to do. What was really hilarious is when the owner walked in the backdoor and saw everyone lounging around in the back. Everyone scattered like rats from a sinking ship.

Well, a previous customer, a rather old man, came in and asked for me by name. I had attempted to help him a few days earlier with his answering machine... I drew him diagrams... explained how to hook it up step by step... did literally everything someone possibly could do without going to his house and doing it for him. Apparently all that did no good, because he came in yesterday and asked me to come with him to his house to hook it up for him (the one thing I'd yet to do.)

My first thought was, "Get in the car with a stranger, get taken to God knows where, while I'm supposed to be working? Can I beat him up if I have to?" I looked him over... old guy, drool on his chin, belly-button-high red plaid golf pants. I could take him. My second thought was, "Won't I get in trouble if I leave work?" I looked around... the scheduling conflict aforementioned had left the store full of employees and no customers... the boss wasn't there... (The backroom incident wasn't until later.) But it still wasn't a good idea to do a house call. We aren't allowed to do house calls... I started to speak, and he beat me to it.

"I'll pay you..."

"Let's go for it."

I climbed into a rather old, white Lincoln, and we were off... at a blistering 25mph. You know those people you get behind when you're on the way to somewhere important? You know those old farts that go 10mph under the speed limit, turn out infront of you when you're speeding down an open stretch of road, or make left turns through intersections when they don't have the right of way? This was THAT GUY. It's kind of interesting to view things from his world. He sat in his uncomfortably upright seat and rattled off World War II stories, oblivious to the fact that he just ran a middle-aged woman off the road by running a red light, in such a way that insinuates ignorace, as opposed to recklessness. After a while I grew used to the constant stream of honks and crash sounds behind us, stopped cringing in fear, and settled in for the ride. There are two main types of drivers everyone hates--road raging rednecks, and old people. Both are frequent Radio Shack clientele.

I expected a quick job. I'd be in, out, and have some extra cash to spend. (Which I'm in need of at the moment.) Something got in the way of the quick part, however; he kept driving. We passed businesses, intersections, golf courses, and eventually pastures full of cows. We traveled far outside the reaches of civilization; he took me on about a half an hour car ride. I didn't plan to be away from work for so long... but I kept telling myself that we were almost there. It seemed we never were...

When we finally got to his house, it was a simple problem, as I expected. The man had forgotten to press the "ON" button. I pressed it, and we were off again, traveling the twisting roads 20 miles south of Nowhere. When he finally returned me he asked how much I wanted for the "house call." The phrase "about five bucks" popped into my mind, but I didn't say it. I just shrugged and told him any amount would be fine. He gave me 10 bucks. That, plus the $6.00 hour's pay from Radio Shack that I'm collecting even though I wasn't there, isn't too bad.

Later that night I went to pick up dinner for myself and a coworker. I went to KFC for my meal--a Twister combo, complete with Pepsi's version of Sprite, and a few potato wedges--and it took all of five minutes to get. I then proceeded to get my friend's order from Burger King, two orders of cheese sticks. This order only required for me to walk into the building, pay the cashier $2.10, and wait as she grabbed two pre-cooked boxes of cheese thingies from the heating pad behind her. There was a line. I took in the imitation Sprite from KFC with me, and finished it while waiting. I waited for a good 20 minutes... for cheese thingies. The customers infront of me spewed out complicated orders, bewildering the well-trained staff of the local Burger King restraunt, and increasing the wait time for customers--such as I--seeking the simple pleasures of cheesy goodness. At one point I started to fall asleep, and I noticed an advertisement infront of me for Burger King's flame broiled burgers. It was a picture of a burger with bites taken out of it, asking, "Q: How do you make our flame broiled burgers the same size of our competition's?" The answer was to take a few bites. I don't know why, but after a few dozen minutes of standing in line for cheese things, that advertisement made me very angry. I stole it.

At some point I finally got my order. (another overly long adventure whose climax lasted less than a minute) I then walked over and filled up my KFC cup with ACTUAL SPRITE. The manager looked at me, obviously wondering if he had a case against my KFC cup being filled with Burger King Sprite, but he didn't say anything. I walked out and went back to work.

Unless someone moved it today (I'm sure they did) the aforementioned advertisement I stole is still on Radio Shack's front counter, advertising our burger size. I can't wait for a customer to ask about it.

Entry DeUx: A BIG SUNDAY UPDATE!
Whoo. Big Sunday update. I actually tried to update this page this weekend from work from our lovely "MSN DSL INTERNET CENTER" but the thing's a piece of krap, so it didn't work. Sadly our blistering 28.8kps DSL connection isn't able to load Pitas.com's site. Maybe some other time.

Where in the world do I begin? On Friday I had this crutchedy old lady slowly waddle through our doors and ask for an Alltel(tm)(R)(c) phone. She said that she'd already been turned down once today by the branch in Wal-mart(the pinnacle of customer service) because the name on her driver's license and social security card weren't the same. After, in that familiar "I've got nowhere to go so why hurry?" old lady fashion, she got out both ID's, I found that it was a simple misplacement of her middle name by the DMV. "No big deal,"I said, and proceeded to run her name through Alltel's(*insert proper copyright bull here*) credit check.

I gave them her information, and they told me to hold. An eternity later they came back and informed me,"*HE* has already been told this once today, *HE* cannot have a phone until he straightens out the mess with *HIS* SS#." It turns out that three people are using that number--one of them being a man. I told the lady, she looked surprised, and vanished into the night. Anyhoo, next story.

My first customer on Saturday was another old fart, this one male, with an apparent hearing problem. He had thick glasses, to the extent where it looked as if two pairs of lenses had been melted together, so that his eyes appeared to be the size of baseballs. I asked if he wanted help... a few times. He just kind of stared at the floor until I finally got his attention with a scream... he looked at me and said, "DUHN?" (kind of like a huh?, but stupider) He mumbled something about scanners, and figuring that he wouldn't possibly even know what a flatbed scanner is, I led him to the scanners of the police variety. He didn't follow. Apparently my, "Right this way sir." Wasn't loud enough, because when I turned around he was still standing where he was before, staring at the floor.

"SIR! OVER HERE!"

"DUHN?"

To make a long story a little less... long, he managed to point to a scanner he wanted, and I brought out the box. He wanted to make sure he "diddntgethaveawon" so I had to take out everything and show him that "idsallder." There's three pieces to this particular desktop scanner: the unit, the antenna, and the power transformer. He proceeded to pick up the antenna... slowly... "Yeathisgoesindaback...." ....he slowly unpeeled the bubble wrap from the unit...."thisaintdathardtaprogramizit?"....."DUHN?"....Anyway, after I was bored to the point of counting the times he licked his lips per sentence, he asked for a frequency sheet. I got him one. He wanted to know why a county a good thirty minutes away wasn't listed... I told him I didn't have that county's listings and that he would have to go there to get them. "IliverightontheborderofdadcountyandI'msureIcangetdem." Good sir. "IliverightontheborderandanotherRadioShacksaidtheyhadabookwiththem." We're out of the book sir. "IliverightontheborderandI'msureIcangetthemifyougivemethelistofthem." We don't have the list sir. "IliverightontheborderandIknowIcan..." I gave him another copy of the list he already had, and he thanked me, bought the scanner, and left. What a way to start the day.

I'm getting tired of writing, so I won't go into much detail on the paraniod schizo. She basically came in with a track phone and asked me to set it up for her, jumping from request to request in a steady flow, "I need a card for this phone... what does this mean? Uh huh.... see, that's why I need a manual. It's up in Maine, I lost it in the move, and I'm afraid I'll blow up the phone. Can you give me a manual? You don't need all of them do you? You can order me one? I need a battery" *I give her a 70 buck top of the line lithium ion battery, and she doesn't even think twice* "I need a charger that can charge two batteries at once because I'm worried about not having a phone when something goes wrong and I know it's going to and I don't want to blow it up." *I give her the only duel charger we have... 80 bucks* "Okay, how about that instruction manual? I need it really bad... can you make me a copy? Give me one out of another phone so that I don't blow up my phone because I really don't want to."

She racked up a few hundred dollars and paid with a check. I had to argue with her to be able to see her driver's license. She was local, the check was in the thousands... and it was hers. She gave me the check and ran from the store... before I rang up... without her stuff. A few minutes later she came back in, scooped the pile of stuff up into her arms, and sprinted from the store. The check turned out to be good... thank God.

"Have a nice day!"