A Couple of Peeves

People who can't count. A patron calls, says she has a couple of books to order. We do most of our service by phone and through the mail. "A couple" usually means 5 or 6 titles because people underestimate. However, in her case, it meant 27. And I was silly thinking "couple" means "two." When I'd run out of room on the sheet of paper I was using to jot all this down, I told her we were supposed to take no more than 10 titles over the phone. She said she's been given special permission to give more. I told her I'm the supervisor (true) and the rule is 10. She said she was finished, anyway. (yeah, sure) And lest you think I'm being rude and unfair, the longer the list, the more likely I'll make a mistake or enter the data incorrectly later, and it was forcing someone else to wait on hold while I finished with her.

People who waste time: The culprit: The woman ahead of me in the little grocery by the subway station. I stopped in to get a quart of milk. I have the exact price. In my hand. There's an older man between us. I missed the beginning of the transaction where somehow some of her things got rung up with the person ahead of her. No problem. The cashier fixes it and apparently rang up just those items. Turns out there was more, so after the woman pays for that, the cashier rings up the rest of her order. She pays. The cashier starts to ring up the older man's order, what looks like 2 apples, 2 oranges (I don't recall what, but 2 each of 2 different fruit). He says nothing. The woman who supposedly is finished, after a full 5 minutes of fiddling and paying, now notices that the oranges are hers, too, and weren't rung up for her. The old guy also has no clue what he's buying because he says nothing. I'm starting to get annoyed. People lining up behind me are getting very annoyed. The cashier is getting annoyed and has to void what she just rung up,which was all 4 fruit. The woman customer is actually laughing (at her own inability to remember what she's buying, I guess). The woman grabs up her groceries, now in 3 bags for 3 separate transactions, while the cashier mutters in Korean (at least, that's what I think it was). The guy pays, leaves. I pay, and leave like a bat out of hell. It was getting very stuffy in that store.

Feeling:

peeves