This revelation comes like a thunderbolt from the sky. It's like finding out who really killed JFK, or where those flying saucers come from. Had I known this, the drive to Sterling Heights and getting fucked over by the camel jockeys at Napa Beverages would not have been necessary.
I learned this carefully guarded secret only because, one day when I took some beer bottles they do sell, that their glass machine won't take, to customer service, there was a Save-A-Lot bottle in with them and the CS lady said she'd give me the 10c for it, and any others like it.
So I went home and collected the orphans I'd accumulated since Napa: cans of Screaming Pink Possum IPA, bottles of Aunt Josephine's Handmade Homemade Root Beer, and the cans with the squiggly writing on them, probably Hindi, that our friends from the city leave behind in the state park, all with "MI 10c" printed somewhere on them. I had one hundred and thirty eight. That's $13.80 worth of empties that would otherwise go to the landfill. Knowing they'd be useless in the bottle room where none of the machines would accept them, I took my cartful to customer service. It worked last time. Why shouldn't it this time?
The young people, however, can always come up with a way to turn something easy and workable into something difficult and not workable.
An eager young lady at customer service told me I'd have to take my empties back to the bottle room and try to run them through the machines.
I said no, the reason I'm here is because they won't go through the machines, I'm NOT going back out there to try all of them again, that isn't going to accomplish anything, YOU need to call the bottle room guy and have him count them by hand. And, when she double-clutched and balked, I added: "YOU need to do your employer and its customers a favor and go home and bake some cookies. And try not to burn them. It's easy. I can do it and, if I can, you can too."
The absolute worst, most offensive, politically incorrect thing you can say to an incompetent snowflake female member of the work force is that she needs to go home and make dinner, or bake cookies, make some pancakes, whatever; anything except fake it on the job.
Miss Snowflake then summoned the bottle room guy, but not before acting out a little mini-scene reminiscent of Renee Zellweger playing Judy Garland.
The bottle guy was helpful. He counted my empties, all 138 of them, wrote me a slip for $13.80, and that was that. Or at least it was until the next time I had some orphans to trade in.
My mistake this time was finding four at the bottom of the bag that I'd set aside, thinking that maybe the machines would take them. I went back out, found out they wouldn't, and returned to customer service. Miss Snowflake, instead of just giving me my forty cents and sending me on my way, made the first move:
Her: "Why are you back here?"
Me: "Does it matter?"
Her: "Yes it does, because the last time you were rude, and inconsiderate, and . . . "
Me: "Yes, and I did that because you're supposed to provide customer service, you couldn't, you still can't, and you belong at home in the kitchen - "
Her: "All right!" (Slams fist on counter, picks up house phone.) "Management? Help, I'm being harrassed . . . . !"
Me: "Are you going to call the cops on me, like you said last time?"
Her: "I can do that." (Picks up the phone again.) "Okay, they're on the way."
I think: yeah, right.
"I'll be out there," I still say, pointing to the parking lot. "The red Jeep over at the end."
Having more important things to do besides be worked over by some female almost young enough to be my granddaughter, who needs to be at home rolling out cookie dough, I left. But not before pointing out to Miss Snowflake that impersonating Bette Davis on the clock wasn't going to help her career in retail customer service.
I wonder if she knows who Bette Davis is.
I should have said "Julia Roberts," but I wasn't thinking. The whole thing developed so fast. Next time -- and yes, there will be a next time -- I'll remember to invoke the name of Generation Z's favorite drama queen.
Kroger does have a phone number where customers can report such things -- (238) 536-1500, the Michigan division HQ in Novi -- and a live person who answers. I called it and retold this story, and since then Miss Snowflake hides in the little office room off customer service when I come in, and I haven't seen the HR guy named RICK who'd been stalking me on every visit. He in fact appeared without provocation and watched the first part of Incident #2 go down before crawling back under the rock he came out from.
I've posted about this place before. Set aside the good and wonderful 10c empties rule -- the ONLY thing it's ever done to actually help the customer -- and going in the door is like opening a box of live poisonous snakes. And it doesn't have to be this way. The other day, I took in some more cans; Julia Roberts was nowhere in sight, the CS lady counted them and made sure they all had MI 10c on them, and I was on my way in two minutes, drama free. Now see? It can be done. It's as easy as baking frozen cinnamon rolls. Including the hard part: getting an equal amount of icing on all of them. After all: we just want to be fair.
Previous "Everything Happens For A Reason"
Next "It Happened AGAIN"
No comments:
Post a Comment