Category: customers

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customers Hot Dog Days tourists

Rude customers, first thing in the morning.

First thing in the morning, I had some rather rude customers. All they wanted was a bottle of water, so I gave it to them, and as the guy was counting out change, I was trying to discourage him from using his pennies.

Me: “Sorry sir, we do not accept pennies.”
Guy: “I don’t, either.” *goes back to counting out the pennies*
Me: “Sorry, we do not accept pennies, I cannot take pennies from you.”
Guy: “But this is US Legal Tender!”
Me: “Sorry…can’t accept it.”

The guy becomes upset at this point and then looks through his wallet. Meanwhile, his wife was stupid enough to start drinking the water before he had even paid for the drink, which, if she hadn’t done so, would have saved us a lot of dumb drama.

I notice the guy has smaller bills in his wallet, but he decides he wants to be “smart” with me and pull out a $100.

Me: “Sorry, do you have anything smaller than that?”
Guy: “WHAT, are you being smart with me today?!”
Me: *becoming really annoyed* “I cannot accept such large bills for just a bottle of water, okay?”

Then, the guy decides he wants to threaten me.

Guy: “I’m going to report you to the Visitors’ Bureau, get you shut down for being so rude to tourists.”

Hmm…he wants to report to the Visitors’ Bureau that I wouldn’t accept a $100 bill from him for a $1.50 bottle of water.

Honestly, I do not see what caused for the guy to get so upset. I would understand a little more if he were becoming upset because I overcharged him or did something really shady, but really, all I asked was for no pennies (my managers do not like counting out pennies, considering all our prices are set at quarter increments anyway), and for no big bills (for purposes of avoiding counterfeiting). Perhaps I should have explained myself better, but most people would not put up such a fight about those two issues. They would just shrug, walk on, and move on with their life.

Hm, what a way to start off the day.

Categories
customers Hot Dog Days rant Work Diaries

Customer Stories.

We seem to get the most interesting characters at the hot dog stand. People who think they’re funny, people who think they’re going to one-up us by threatening this or that (small threats, mind you).

Yesterday, after the whole homeless guy incident, we got this customer who seemed to be giving me and my co-worker “eyes” (checking us out). The guy orders a jumbo hot dog, and I serve it to him. Then, he complains about the fact that there’s this “strand of something” on his jumbo, and my co-worker and I notice that it’s just a piece of sauerkraut (pickled cabbage). So my co-worker just plainly states to the guy, “It’s just a piece of sauerkraut, it won’t kill you.” And the guy complains more, saying he wanted a different jumbo hot dog. Sigh.

I guess he thought we were being smart to him, because then he asked for our names and our manager’s contact information. My co-worker luckily was acting fast and just gave the guy our manager’s email address..really, come on, that’s ridiculous. You’re going to go complain to our manager about a piece of sauerkraut on your hot dog? I can understand a strand of hair…sure. But sauerkraut is EDIBLE. Gee whiz, the guy needs to get a life.

Today, I was giving breaks, and while I was at one of the “slower” carts, I was approached by this guy who was trying to be funny but failed miserably. All he wanted was a soda, which costs $1.50, so I told him the price. He began looking through his wallet, then he decided to pull out that joke. “I’ll give you $1.37…and a cigarette butt!” I didn’t laugh, didn’t do anything, just looked at him like he was nuts. Then he tried the joke again, this time with other objects (a piece of string, etc.). I still didn’t laugh, and he kind of gave up on the joke…but not before he said to me, “You have to admit that was pretty funny!”

Did you see me laughing? No. It wasn’t funny dude, sorry.

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customers Hot Dog Days observation Work Diaries

"Can you please die?"

A guy approached the hot dog stand at work today and was talking on his phone; in the middle of his conversation, he asked me for a Diet Pepsi, so I immediately quoted the price to him: “1.50, please.” The guy’s eyes widened and he proceeded to comment on the exorbitant price to his friend, saying “I’m paying freaking $1.50 for a can of Diet Pepsi! Isn’t that insane?”

He then hands me his $20 bill, which I had to check for authenticity (it’s standard protocol for us to check all big bills). He continues to make commentary to his friend, saying “AND the girl is checking my $20 bill to make sure I didn’t make it just today! Oh my GOSH!” (Yes, the man was rather flamboyant). Finally, he gets off the phone and says to me, “Oh my gosh, can you die now?”

I gave him a look of shock, but I could tell he was joking (kind of…). Then he rambled on about the economy, talking about how, “How can you charge so much for a soda when the economy is in shambles?” And all I could say was “Well, I don’t set the prices, sir…” Then he ended on a nice/weird note, saying, “Well, I hope you will make A LOT of money with your cart…good location, by the way!”

And then he pranced off.

Categories
customers Hot Dog Days Work Diaries

T-shirt saying.

While working the carts today, I had a customer come by who was wearing a shirt that had an interesting saying:

“#1 Stud Between the Sheets”

I was a little disturbed yet amused by this shirt; the guy did not look like one to wear such a thing. Oh well, I guess people continue to surprise me.

Categories
customers funny Hot Dog Days My San Francisco Chronicles observation rant

Karma’s a bitch.

Yes, karma’s a bitch. And here’s a story to teach you about this statement:

Yesterday, I worked a full day from 9:30am-7pm. I think working seven days straight with no day off finally caught up to me in the afternoon because I felt a bit cranky with some customers then. So, this guy comes along, parks his car in the spot behind me, and then proceeds to bug me for dollar bills and quarters. At that point, I was low on dollar bills and was not in the mood to have someone bugging me for quarters. He was persistent (and rather rude), but I stood my ground. Finally, he “gave in” and bought a bottle of water from me so to “force” me to give him change (what a way to phrase the situation, huh?)

He bought his water, I gave him his change rather begrudgingly, and he filled up his meter. I guess he needed more quarters afterwards (more than $1.50 worth!) and asked for more quarters. I felt really annoyed with him at this point so I shoved the quarters into his hands with no smile. Come on, give me a break, seriously. This is a BUSINESS, not a change machine, dude. No thanks or anything from him.

The guy ended up leaving to go shopping after awhile; I was so tempted to do something to his car since it looked shiny and new. But I resisted the temptation since I felt I could never be so evil to do such a thing to someone’s car. So I forgot about the guy and went on to do my usual duties.

I don’t know how much longer afterwards, but there was a bit of commotion in the area due to some guy jumping off a building nearby (I was completely oblivious to this, fortunately?). Two parking officers came by and were trying to clear the lane behind me for traffic to get through; the female officer stopped and looked at the guy’s car parked behind me. She proceeded to punch in his license plate/make into her little machine; I thought at first she was going to give the guy a ticket. But after awhile, I noticed she was not leaving right away and was sticking around for quite some time.

I was already feeling some sort of victory over the guy with the thought that he was probably getting a ticket. Then, a tow truck stopped in front of the guy’s car and the tow truck guy came out and asked if the car was mine. Well, gee sir, yes it is my car, and I am going to let you tow it away right now…..(sarcasm). Anyway, so the tow truck guy proceeds to prepare the quarter-hoarding guy’s car for towing away; meanwhile, throughout this whole ordeal, I was laughing to myself inside. I could not believe this was happening; the guy was getting his car towed, and the tow truck incident pretty much made my day 10x better.

The car was towed away after awhile, and finally I felt relaxed. The quarter guy comes back much later and looks confused. “What happened to the car that was parked here?”

“Oh, it was towed away.”

“But…they didn’t see the parking meter!”

“Well…the parking officers said no parking in general in this area.”

The guy looked confused for a few minutes more, then he walked away to call someone. In some ways, I felt a little bad for him, but in other ways, I felt like my evil laughter inside was justified. That’s what you get for harassing someone for quarters. Yes, karma’s a bitch.

I will probably be struck down for laughing about this later on, but right now, I’m still feeling amused by the situation.