Regulars- Miserable Old Bastard

Possibly not the most imaginative nickname it's all you need to know about him. He's old, he's a bastard and by God is he miserable. So far in the few years I've been here, I've not yet seen him looking anything other than as he's just heard that his entire extended family is dying slowly and horribly of The Aids and some one's just raped and murdered his beloved family pet.

He's not the most talkative fella either. It's probably just as well cos I suspect that if he did engage me in conversation, it'd be a monologue of whining and moaning about the usual old people topics. 99% of the time all he'll say to me is "All of it please" referring to how much of his pension he'd like. This is accompanied by him thrusting a piece of paper in my direction with the amount written on it. I can't be bothered to tell him that I don't need this information cos all I do is press the "all of it" button on my screen. Sadly his usual pension is nearly 300 notes which he wants entirely in fivers. When I first started here, he's get pretty arsey on the few occasions that we were low on fives and I had the bare-faced cheek to try to give him anything else. Through patience and bloody-mindedness on my part however, I've weened him down to about 40% fives and the rest tens. I'm looking forward to his next visit though. We're really short of fives so he's only getting the one.

OMB is one of the die hard queue-ers we have. Not surprisingly this group is made up exclusively of coffin dodgers. Every Monday morning, there they are, patiently waiting for 1 second past nine o'clock so they can look at their watches and tut if we're not open by then. These queue-ers have obviously got so ingrained in their habit that they haven't realised that they don't need to queue at all. Due to attrition and the fact that the elderly have a nasty habit of snuffing it occasionally, the group of people who will wait outside my Post Office for up to a whole hour is down to a rather pathetic three. I don't think that they've considered that it's a bit of a waste of time to spend an hour queuing when most Mondays, the maximum they'd have to wait is about five minuted if they turned up at 9 o'clock instead. Don't these people have anything better to do? They're old and going to die soon, surely they'd be better off filling what's left of their existence with rich and fulfilling experiences rather than hanging around catching fatal flu bugs. Idiots.

What's 30 foot long and stinks of piss?

The Post Office queue on Monday morning. Boom Boom!!

You'd be amazed at just how stinky the general public are. It's not just the stereotypical stench of piss that certain old people reek of though. To be fair, most old people are niff-free but there are some who really could do with a good hosing down, a change into clean clothes and ideally a hermetically sealed nappy. A fad for garlic capsules has also spread throughout some of our coffin dodgers. Although we're too polite, we'd love to point out to them that odour free they are not. It's a sad state of affairs when I try to do a whole transaction on one lungful. At least they're not gonna have a problem with vampires. Or anyone with a sense of smell for that matter. Certain members of our local travelling community have managed to dodge soap for quite a while. Generally, when we spot 'em coming in we do a pre-emptive air freshener spray followed by another as soon as they're out again. Often this is not enough. Smelly buggers.

The worst stink offender was an old fella who also happened to be a chicken farmer. I don't know a great deal about chicken farming but I'd guess that he perhaps had slightly too close contact with his birds. He used to come in covered in chicken shite. Not just his clothes but his hat (I thought that chickens couldn't fly. The mind boggles as to how it all got there), face and hands. He only appeared to have one set of clothes and predictably enough was the type of customer who faffed and got confused thus making any transaction with him about 5 times as long as it needed to be. Literally he would make your eyes water.However, there is a happy ending to this tale. He died. Although he's probably a little bit more smelly now (probably not much though), at least I don't have to put up with it.

As much as I dislike the smell of stale piss, sweat or chicken poo I'd also like to point out that it's possible to go too far in the other direction.This particular sin seems to be committed most often by old ladies. Perhaps is because they get bought gallons of smellies for Christmas every year and feel the need t use it all up. More likely it's to mask the smell of stale piss and/or slowly decomposing flesh. I'm sure half of our clientele are undead. They just seem to be fixated on pensions instead of braaaaains. If there is a zombie apocalypse and it happens on a Monday morning I don't think I'm going to notice for a while.

The Customer is always stupid

It's a real shame that most customers have come to believe that they are always right. They're not. Not by a long shot.

Being behind the counter of a Post Office I get to hear some really stupid things. Fairly often too. My favourite quote of all time from a customer is:

"Do you know where I can buy some stamps?"

Well, duh! Here perhaps. I know that the Post Office has kind of branched out a bit into new products and some old ones have fallen by the wayside but stamps?!?! Either the guy didn't realise that he was in a Post Office or he didn't realose that we sell stamps. Either way it's difficult to argue he's anything less than a fuckwit.

The customer is always rude. And stupid

Recently a customer came in to get his motorbike taxed. Sadly his reminder was out of date because he was a bit late (6 weeks) cos he was waiting for his MOT. I asked him if he had his log book as we could use that to tax it instead. At this point he got the right arsehole and asked (in a pretty stroppy way) where it said on the reminder form that he needed his log book. I politley informed him that because he was so late, his reminder was out of date and the computer we use wouldn't let us issue a tax disc using it. He repeated his request for me to show him where it said he needed his log book on the reminder form. At this point I realised that I was fighting a losing battle and he'd stopped listening to me. Nethertheless, I carried on trying to help him tax his bike despite the increasing amount of rudeness and attitude that was headed in my direction. I asked him if he'd declared the bike as being off road. Nope. It was sitting on his driveway and if that's not good enough for the DVLA then tough. I then told him that he should have declared his bike off road otherwise the DVLA are going to catch up with him and fine him. "But my bike's been on my driveway, I didn't need to declare it off road as you only need to do that if you're not going to use it for six months or more". Where he plucked that load of bollocks from I have no idea. I told him that this was not the case. At this point he flipped, pulled his documents back and stormed off shouting, "You're always coming up with objections to me taxing my bike."
Boo-hoo twat. If you could pick your toys up on the way out I'd appreciate it. If he thought about that last statement for a second, he'd have realised that he was talking out of his arse. It's not in my interest to turn business away. I get paid for doing tax discs therefore I should be trying to do as many as I can (within the law of course).
Taxing vehicles is probably the cause of the most aggro out of all of the transaction we do. If someone hasn't got the right things with them then it's our fault. Not theirs for not reading the form or picking up the wrong bit of paper or not having enough money or being late. I've managed so far not to lose my temper at anyone when they've pulled this sort of thing. It's only a matter of time though. Twats.

Regulars - Robert

Every Post Office has their regulars. I'd imagine that every Post Office has their own "Robert" too. Like so many of my customers, he's an old fella and he's a bit pongy (the two go together more often than you'd think). We all do our level best to avoid serving him as we don't really want to hear (in unnecessary detail) about the dull events going on in his life (medical complaints, family troubles, steam rallies he's just been to, more medical complaints etc.) for the next ten minutes.
He's friendly and polite enough but the smell combined with the boredom is something that it's funny to watch a colleague deal with but as annoying as hell to put up with yourself. Being as I'm the boss, I can excuse myself whenever I spot him and hide until it's safe to emerge. Unfortunately sometimes I get lumbered with him however. This does provide plenty of amusement for the staff. Especially the mental block he has with my name. When we first came here, he managed to get it right. Over the years however, it's kind of slipped a bit. Nowadays it's a rare occurrence for him to get my name right (despite the name badge I wear). The biggest laugh comes when he starts using the wrong name, slips in a few correct ones and then veers back off into the land of wrongness. Extra bonus points for each alternation between names.
Not only is he dull and a bit too friendly to myself and the staff, he's like that to total strangers. When it's been busy in here I've seen him work through the whole queue trying to have a chat. As the customers don't have to be polite to him they can tell him to bugger off. I wish we could.
For some reason he feels the need to buy at least one of our £5 watches every week. I know they're not going to last a lifetime at that price but they can't be breaking that often. My mind boggles with what he does with the things.
Harmless but really annoying.