Rachel

Wedding venues

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:01:43 GMT

Looking for wedding venues is a bloody nightmare. Especially if you want a cheaper place.

We saw the Jersey Farm website the other day when searching for a nice place. Phil's parents used to go regularly, although apparently the food has gone downhill since the original owners retired. Nevertheless, they have a fairly decent wedding package so yesterday (Fri 2nd Jan) I thought I'd give them a call...

-ring ring-

"Hello?"

"Hello... is this the Jersey Farm?"

"Yer."

"Ah good, well we are looking for wedding venues at the moment as we're newly engaged, and we were wondering if we could possibly arrange to come and have a look round your facilities?"

(flippantly) "Well you can't today, we're CLOSED." (Note: it said nothing about this on the website and I'm afraid the batteries in my Psychic Senses have run out... plus we only wanted to make an appointment for later in the month, not to come round that very second!)

"Oh - right - I had no idea. Err.. well.. could we perhaps phone tomorrow to arrange coming to look round?"

"Yeah."

"Right, thanks.."

*no reply*

*puts phone down*.

Nice one Jersey Farm, that's a good few grand you've just lost. From the sound of the voice and the fact that it diverted to a mobile when I called, it sounds like it was the OWNER who answered! Nice one mate, good to see you obviously aren't desperate for business at all - no credit crunch for you eh?

Arrgg, anyone suggest any nice places in Darlington or nearby that won't royally shaft you for a nice wedding and reception?

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:32:39 GMT

My Mum is currently having some trouble with BT - she signed up for ADSL and hadn't received her equipment for weeks on end.

After spending hours on the phone trying to get the Indian guy in the call centre to understand her situation, she gave up and called back the next day. (I also tried to call, was transferred to SIX different departments, none of whom helped me - it was shocking).

An English woman answered, understood the situation and sorted her out, apologising profusely.

That's not the bad bit though.

The bad bit was what she said to the woman who helped her. "Yes, those people don't understand, do they? It's ridiculous! Are there a lot of Pakistanis in India? There must be!"

HEAD. DESK.

This is what I just posted in co_workers_suck.

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:51:02 GMT

This is why I quit my part time job working in retail.

Me: Uni student *waves*
J: Area Manager (runs 5 different stores in the area, visits each one for a couple of days at a time)
Customer: Lady I was serving at the time.
M: Coworker, has been working at the store for 7 years, knows a LOT about it, more than the managers in fact

Bit of background:
Ever since I started this job, I was told by my managers that due to problems at Head Office when they moved, a lot of products were scanning at the wrong price. The rule was to change the price that comes up on the computer to the price on the ticket. Unless the ticket was showing a cheaper price, in which case we gave the item to the customer at that price. I was never told of any changes to this rule.

However if you need to change a price on the till, a supervisor has to come over and put their super-secret code in to authorise it.

This was a Saturday, our busiest day. The shop was packed out and there was quite a large queue at the tills.

Customer comes up to the till to be served, the item is tagged at £34.99 but is scanning at £29.99.

Me: *scans item* Oh, it's not scanning correctly. I won't be a minute.. sorry about this. *calls for J*
J comes over
J: What is it now??? (no, I'm not exaggerating her tone of voice - this is how she spoke, or rather barked, 24/7)
Me: This item is scanning at a different price, and I just need you to authorise the change to the price on the ticket, please. (it was a very regular occurance, nothing out of the ordinary at all)
J: What?? Just give it to the lady at that price!
Me: ... I was always told to change it to the price on the ticket by the other managers, I haven't been told of any policy change?
J: Ugh, you don't know what you're doing. Staff here DON'T KNOW what they're doing, OBVIOUSLY.
Me: (speechless)
Customer: (mortified, giving me "wtf, why is she being such a bitch?" looks)
Me: I'm sorry, I didn't know there was a change in policy, I was never told..
J: Get out of the way and let someone who knows what they're doing deal with the situation. Staff here don't know what they're doing, it's RIDICULOUS.
Me: (stands back, starting to get upset but determined not to show it in front of her)
J: This item is showing a description of £34.99 but is scanning at £29.99. WHY???
Me: It's a Was-Now item (if something has been a higher price previously, it shows up in the description of the item so we can tag it as reduced).
J: No it isn't.
Me: I think it is *in head - I KNOW it is* - that higher price was in the description.
J: No, no, no, NO, NO. *NO*. M (coworker), get over here and work this will you, I can't work this till.
M: Yeah, it's a Was Now item.
J: RIGHT.
J: (walks away from till leaving me to finish serving the customer)
Customer: Oh my god, why was she so nasty to you?
Me: (tears welling up) I don't know.
Me: (finishes serving customer, apologises for the wait).

I asked another co-worker to cover the till for me, then went upstairs to the staff room and cried. One of the store managers saw me in tears but didn't bother to come and check that I was OK.

The very first thing I did when I got home was phone Head Office. The high up guy I spoke to said I had to lodge all grievances with my Area Manager - which was J!! He expected me to make an appointment with her, with no backup with me at all, and basically tell her that she wasn't doing her job correctly. All I wanted was for her immediate supervisor, or whatever, to have a word with her. An Area Manager shouldn't be acting like that anyway.

FWIW, I did make that appointment with her, and she denied it ever happened. The most I got from her was "Well if I *did* say that, then I'm sorry".

This woman has created so much low morale within the store (it's a small store), I can think of at least 3 people who quit solely because of her - and I only worked there for 5 months.

I have many more stories but they're probably not interesting to anyone else :/