Archived ALL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN!

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CeeCee said:
Thank you so much for that update. Have a wonderful day! 🙂
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I find killing 'em with kindness (and a teeeeeny tiny bit of passive aggressiveness) often works surprisingly well. I had several guests apologize to me for being rude/angry whilst I was a cashier.

Sounds like nothing could have made that couple happy though. Some people are just plain difficult.
 
lurker said:
Had a women with a check and close to $300 in product. Her check was turned down since she had never had a transaction that big. She was afraid to use her debt card because of the breach. I sympathized with her while I listed all the stores who have had breaches (and maybe some that hadn't 😉) until she finally used her debit card!
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Didn't you hear... Wal-Mart, Costco, Whole Foods, and Macy's all got hit too!!! So Crazy!!!
 
Probably 100% of all major stores have had a data breach, whether they admit to it or not.

I will say though the chip reader scares me. If a swipe is enough time to get your bank account information, what all is being looked up during the much longer time your card is in the chip reader waiting for approval? The length of time really bothers me because that's a long time for a computer to be focused on gathering information on you.
 
Jenna120 said:
Probably 100% of all major stores have had a data breach, whether they admit to it or not.

I will say though the chip reader scares me. If a swipe is enough time to get your bank account information, what all is being looked up during the much longer time your card is in the chip reader waiting for approval? The length of time really bothers me because that's a long time for a computer to be focused on gathering information on you.
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There's a few different reasons it's slow, especially at target:

The chip generates a secure, encrypted, one time use code for the transaction. It has things like total, time stamp, and some other data meant to pin point transactions and patterns. From a programming aspect, with cryptography, slower is usually better -- it makes recreating the encryption technique or repeating it very annoying.

It is also slow, and I fear this is a target thing, because of network bandwidth. Target is not the best when it comes to infrastructure, so this is likely the culprit. Latency in a transaction shouldn't be an issue, but for so many retailers, it still is 🙁
 
DoWork said:
There's a few different reasons it's slow, especially at target:

The chip generates a secure, encrypted, one time use code for the transaction. It has things like total, time stamp, and some other data meant to pin point transactions and patterns. From a programming aspect, with cryptography, slower is usually better -- it makes recreating the encryption technique or repeating it very annoying.

It is also slow, and I fear this is a target thing, because of network bandwidth. Target is not the best when it comes to infrastructure, so this is likely the culprit. Latency in a transaction shouldn't be an issue, but for so many retailers, it still is 🙁
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I know other countries are pretty fast but then again they've had theirs for 10+ years..
 
I pick fast and cheap. If it's like that, I don't care if it's good.
 
Oh how I wish I could post video of security footage without getting fired.
Had a lady that was high AF and tweaking hard that took an electric cart into the parking lot, then got off it, leaving in the middle of the road way. She then walked over to a tree and sat down for about 30 seconds, before some random truck drove by. The lady then stood up, walked a few feet, then took off like Usain Bolt in the 100 yard dash, seemingly chasing the truck, down the entire length of the building. The STL, my ETL-AP, HR, LOG, HL, and I were all laughing our asses off.
 
Most of the time, I personally dealt with drunk guests trying to flirt or make suggestive comments to female TMs.

There was a few instances where someone was leaving porn in kid's books.

A CA caught a person who repeatedly visited the parking lot to have a SOLO PERFORMANCE in the car. AP called local PD and got the guy.
 
doxiemama said:
We have a guest we call Crazy Katie. Katie will come in the store, completely fill up a cart, then demand a team member scan every item to see if it's on Cartwheel. No matter how many times we tell her she could do that herself, she insists somebody else do it for her. And if you ask her to wait or can't access it (we have a few hot spots in the store where we can't access the Internet), she starts having a screaming fit - loud enough that everybody in the store can hear it. Team members actually hide when they see her come in. I often work the Fitting Room. One day, she came back there to try on some clothes. I had heard the stories, but had never met her. Several times she asked me if a pair of athletic shorts fit. They were very tight, but I figured she wasn't the kind of person who wanted to hear the honest answer, so I told her they looked wonderful. She turns to me and says "Are you Jewish?" I thought it was a weird question coming out of nowhere, but I admitted I was. She then turns to me and very enthusiastically says "I love ethnic people". I just stared at her and said "Ummmm....thank you?"
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I had someone ask if I was Polish recently.

Definitely not Polish.
 
Last year my store had a serial pisser. He'd always piss in the biggest planter he could find (usually also the most expensive) so we were told to be cautious zoning seasonal, and his signature was leaving an empty gigantic McDonalds cup and an empty giant can of Arizona tea in the puddle of piss at the bottom of the planter. Never did find out if our old APTL caught the guy or not.
 
There was the old AP that would use the security cameras to spy on the female TMs while they worked.

There was the guest that came in for camping stuff, and asked me to go camping with him. I told him I couldn't, that my boyfriend wouldn't like it. He left, came back 30 minutes later, and asked again. My STL showed him out.

The guest that came in several times and "watched me work" (after finding me on social media, according to him) before he made himself known. He was shown out, and banned.

The guy that was a regular that told me he thought about me every night before he went to sleep. He also invited me over to play twister on a different occasion. He was developmentally challenged, and lived in a group home. He was totally harmless, but he did get another girl in the home knocked up. Cute baby. Haven't seen them around in years, tho. I would talk to him and help him whenever he would come in. Never got a bad feeling, but you know.

The guy that would go from talking about, say, the weather, to preaching about God. Then he would take off his shoes and walk around the store barefoot until someone confronted him. He'd just walk up to check out, still barefoot, preach to the cashier he chose that day, and leave.
It was always a new cashier, too.

The guy that got busted taking pictures of the girls butts with his cell phone. He had a dog he took pictures of, and he would use them to get younger female employees to engage with him. He would call us "young lady."
Guy moved away.

Woman that wanted the frappe discount from cartwheel. "I can't figure out this phone stuff, it's just too complicated. Isn't usually this crazy, but has a lot on her mind." I explained the only way to get the discount was with the app on her phone.
The light must have come on because she said "Oh well that's easy!" Got her coffee, made a return, repeated she's not crazy... and then went and did some shopping. My cashier came up later and started talking about the lunatic he had to deal with. I described her. If was her.

Ehhhhh there's more. Just can't remember them right now.

Edit: some of this is Spot. Some of it is from another retailer I worked at prior, some of it is when I worked at a little sandwich shop. Forgot to clarify. I've been in customer service for over twelve years. Small-ish town.
 
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BullseyeBlues said:
Last year my store had a serial pisser. He'd always piss in the biggest planter he could find (usually also the most expensive) so we were told to be cautious zoning seasonal, and his signature was leaving an empty gigantic McDonalds cup and an empty giant can of Arizona tea in the puddle of piss at the bottom of the planter. Never did find out if our old APTL caught the guy or not.
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That’s disgusting.
 
shortstuffishere said:
I know other countries are pretty fast but then again they've had theirs for 10+ years..
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My experience is, the readers themselves are faster in continental Europe, but cashiers aren't particularly quick, at least in France and Belgium. The cashiers aren't slower than certain American chains like Safeway or Wally World, but they are noticeably not-quick.
 
There are some drug dealers that use my stores parking lot to do their drug transaction.
 
We’ve had a (we think) homeless person who started coming in to “nap” on the patio furniture in seasonal. After the 2nd or 3rd time, AP woke him up and told him he can’t and he left. A couple days later, he had pulled out a folding chair (again in seasonal,) took it in the back corner and fell asleep. I guess this time, a guest woke him up and asked if he was okay before they notified a TM. He left before AP could find him. The following day, he was found curled up on a futon. AP was off, so the LOD asked him to leave and warned him if they caught him again, he would be banned from the store. He’s been seen in the store since then, but I guess he wasn’t sleepy 😛
 
We have several homeless who would grab a bag from an empty checklane, come over to the dining area & grab handfuls of condiments, napkins & utensils until AP threatened to trespass them.
 
That reminds me of the grazers in PFresh that would come in, eat grapes or something from produce, and then leaving.
 
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