New Years Resolutions

I resolve this year to blog a bit more regularly (not difficult given how lazy I've been recently)

I also resolve to stop exclusively picking on customers. To this end, I'm going to start revealing some of the boneheaded decisions and business practises of Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd. Frankly, in this year gone they've managed to go from minor hindrance to major fucking hassle.

Despite what you may assume after reading this blog, I mostly enjoy this job.

No, honestly.

But dealing with the fuckwits and lazy twats that seem to work for Royal Mail and Post Office ltd have utterly drained the life from me.

It's got to the point that I'm seriously thinking about jacking it all in and doing something easier and less frustrating instead. Collecting oiled up earthworms with chopsticks would fit the bill. It would also be significantly less pointless than some of the stupid tasks we have to do in this job.

It's little wonder that this company has been losing money for years. The Post Office has been ignoring the fact that out main source of income (pensions) are dwindling due to the fact that old people tend to keep snuffing it and younger pensioners (it makes sense) are actually capable of having a bank account which they can have their pension paid straight into. They've also failed to modernise while drawing out the inevitable closure period for far too long (more on this in a later post).

And as for Royal Mail, well, it seems that the best way to get promoted to management is to start as a postman but fuck it up as much as possible. Be slow, mis-deliver mail, turn up pissed, whatever. As long as you don't steal any mail (or get caught stealing mail) if you express an interest in management, you're there! Despite management knowing full well about all of these shortcomings. Presumably the rationale is that at least as a manager, they're not doing any real work so it doesn't matter if they fuck it up. This may also explain why they have about three times as many managers as they really need.

Do they offer any support for postmasters? Do they fuck! I've been here for nearly five years now and have not been offered any training at all regarding the sorting office. Actually, that's a lie. I've been offered training several times. On each occasion though, either it's been cancelled at the last minute or the manager has just not bothered turning up. Excellent!

Rest assured though, I'm still going to lay the cuss on the customers as well. Unless by some miracle, they all suddenly become polite, reasonably intelligent and pleasant smelling in 2009.

Fat chance.

Happy new year.

NEWSFLASH - Most boring stamp collector ever discovered!!!!

Stamps collectors are pretty dull people. However, you can kind of see the appeal if you've nothing better to do.

Personally, I don't really see the point of collecting stuff arbitrarily just so you know that you own it.

Picture stamps are borderline worth collecting as they might go up in value a bit. Unlikely though.

Normal stamps are dull to look at and not worth shit (except the face value of course).

We've just had someone in who was looking for a 5p stamp with the tear-off edges still intact AND showing an April 2007 printing date. We've probably got some in the safe but there's no way I'm waiting for the safe to open, going to the effort of getting them out of the safe, checking our stash of 5p stamps and then buggering up our system for counting our stamp stocks just so some twat can go home and wank himself senseless just he's now got the complete set of 5p stamps. I'd make a profit of fractions of a penny even assuming that our stamps are good enough.

Seriously though get a fucking life. When did you last have sex?

Dullard.

The media are cunts

Just a quick "thank-you" to all of the journalists and media types who have been harping on about credit crunches and recessions for the past fucking ages.

Cheers.

It's worked. You've managed to scare people away from spending money. More specifically, spending money in my Post Office.

Thanks to the constant bombardment of "every one's going to lose their jobs" and "your house is now worth marginally less than the cardboard box that you're gonna be sleeping in soon" everyone is now shit-scared about spending money. Not just those tiny minority that are in a small danger of getting the boot. Everyone. Including the pensioners who, correct me if I'm incorrect, are pretty unlikely to get made redundant.

Fortunately, my village is fairly well off. Not completely posh (we have our own ghetto where all the dole cheats live and a caravan site for the gypsies) but pretty safe from all but the worst economic downturn. However, all of the news in every form of popular media has been ramming this message of doom and gloom down our throats despite the evidence saying that things are not perfect but we're a long way away from the shit. What's annoyed me even more are the journos that have said "If we're not careful, we're gonna talk ourselves into a recession so we're not going to exaggerate. But we are totally fucked. I personally am stockpiling food and water and electricity for the inevitable breakdown in society that's gonna happen. In the meantime, I'm making extra cash by whoring out the wife."

Having spoken to some of my customers, it's purely because of what the hear on the news that they've stopped spending. They've paid attention to the huge "Economic clusterfuck" graphic that the BBC seems to be displaying for approximately half of each bulletin. Yet they seem to have missed out on the scant details that the media occasionally (and apparently accidentally) leave in their broadcasts. Allow me to summarise for the hard of thinking.

Things are a bit iffy for those in the manufacturing sector.

Loans and mortgages are a bit harder to get and a bit more expensive.

Inflation has gone up a bit but will probably come down as fuel prices sink and eventually household bills will also drop.

Interest rates will come down probably.

House prices have come down but were far too fucking high anyway. They will bounce back in a few years.

Things aren't so bad as you're led to believe.

If people do stop spending money, then we are gonna get shafted. If we keep spending (sensibly without borrowing what we can't afford) we're gonna reduce the effects of any downturn.

Old people generally smell and are stupid.

There you go, you're now much more informed than if you'd been reading the papers or watching telly. Cynic that I am, I reckon that a lost of the power behind the Media have a vested interest in temporarily sending the economy down the crapper for a while. It'll make everything cheaper for them so they can hoover up stuff when it hits rock bottom and then sell it at the peak just before they start the next round of stories about how everything's fucked again. And so the cycle continues. Plus, scary news sells papers.

So, next time you see any journalist, punch them in the face until they promise to stop scaring everyone.

Cunts.

Regulars - Mrs TMI

Mrs TMI is one of those old people who feels the need to share her medical problems with anyonw who'll listen. She doesn't even have to courtesy to wait until you ask her how she is. Not that I would anyway. Some customers you just don't ask how they are because you know that they're gonna tell you and that'll be five minutes of your life that you won't ever get back.

Mrs TMI will launch into an update of how her latest appointment at the hospital went as soon as you've said hello. It's not just generalities like "it went well today" or whatever. Nope, it's in as much pointless detail as she possibly can.

This is all made even worse by the fact that it's a problem with her lady-parts.

Seriously, I don't want to hear about your womb. Are the doctors removing it? Cysts? Tumours?

I DON'T CARE!!!!!!!!

It's not as if she was ever one of the few customers who I actually like (honest, there are one or two). I never led her on into thinking I gave a fuck. I do my best to make non-committal grunts and disinterested expressions whenever she gives me the latest updcates. Subtle hints just aren't working.

It must suck having these medical problems. Does whingeing about them to anyone who'll listen and most who'd rather not help at all? Doesn't she get bored of, presumably, having the same conversation with everyone she meets?

.....And it's all your fault!

You know, I'm not sure if people really understand the concept of blame and who it's actuallly applicable to. Barely a day goes past without a customer holding me personally to account for something that's not my fault at all. Some of these you can kinda see why the customer thinks I'm to blame but some are just fucking stupid. But then a lot of customers are just fucking stupid.

One guy wanted to pay some cash into his Co-op bank account. Fair enough, we can do that. Unfortunately, Co-op changed the procedure about 3 years ago. Previously we needed the cash deposit slip from his paying in book. They're obselete now and so instead we have to use the debit card. This has several advantages for the customer. They don't need their paying in book, the cash is credited to the account a bit quicker and (for the real fuckwits) they don't have the onerous task of filling in a paying in slip (they are tricksy little buggers, all of a little tiny bit of writing to do).

Customer presents his paying-in slip and asks to deposit some cash. "Sorry." we say, "That changed years ago, and it's got to be paid in using your debit card."

Customer then gets in a flip and utters the words which we so much love to hear.

"But I've done it before!"

He then presents his paying in book as proof. We politely point out to him that his last cash deposit is dated five years ago. This cuts little ice.

"But I've done it before!"

We heard you the first time. If he's going to repeat himself then so are we. We re-iterate the fact that his last deposit was ages ago and things have changed since then.

Most normal customers would have not bothered with this argument and would have reached for their debit cards and have paid in the cash that way. Not Twatty McAnnoying-Twat. He's not got his card with him and can't be bothered to go home and get it. At this point he storms out but not before one last (stupid) parting shot.

"I need to draw on that account tommorrow and if there's not enough money in it then it's your fault!!! If I get any bank charges, I'm going to sue you!!!"

I wish him good luck with that court case and bid him farewell.

Old? Tick. Stupid? Tick. Iliterate? Tick. Obese? Tick. Gypsy? Tick. Annoying? Fuck yeah.

There are certain sections of the community that are more likely to get right on my tits than others. As you can probably tell from the title, the customer who inspired this post managed to fall within most of those categories.

This old bat has just opened a Post Office card account for her benefits of which she seems to get a shit load of (tick).

We kinda guessed that this was going to make life difficult for us because as well as being illiterate, she's got to be one of the stupidest people I've seen in a long time. To be honest, the mould under her fingernails (smelly? tick) is more intelligent than she is.

She finally stopped receiving her giro cheques and was told that her cash would now be paid into the account that we helped her set up (demanding? tick). First, she can't quite master the really tricky job of putting the card in the card reader the correct way round. It's hardly fucking rocket science. There's only four different ways it can possibly fit in the slot. Even a pissed up and retarded baboon could get it right fairly quickly. There's even a picture just above the slot for fucks sake. So, after about nine attempts to get the card in correctly we asked her how much money she would like. "All of it" came the inevitable response.

"Pop your number in please"

"What number?"

"Your pin number"

"What number's that?"

"The four digit number you were sent."

"Ahhh, this number" (brandishing a piece of paper with a number written on it.)

"Let's try it and find out."

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

"That was the wrong number."

"No it wasn't."

"Well, you might have caught a number twice. Try it again and we'll see."

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

"Hmm, that was the wrong number again. Would you like my colleague to help you?"

"Yes."

(Colleague reads number that's scrawled onto a piece of paper. The six is written backwards or may be a two. We can't tell. Colleague makes best guess and gets the number wrong).

At this point we tell her what's gone wrong and that she needs to call the phone number on the back of the card and tell them that she's locked the card up. This information doesn't seem to be going in.

Twenty minutes later, her son (who is a dead ringer for Cletus the slack jawed yokel in The Simpsons physically, mentally and even has an accent that suggests his family tree is deficient in the branch department) comes in and asks what to do. We tell him to get his mum to phone the number on the back of her card and tell them what happened. This is not good enough despite being the correct information. He demands the number of the department that issues the benefits. We tell him that they won't be able to help and that she needs to call the number on the card. He still wants the other number. Big sighs all round so we give him the number he wants. He then buggers off and we don't see him again for the next couple of days so we assume that things have been sorted out.

See if you can guess whether they have or not.

I'll give you a clue, this family is composed of slack jawed oxygen thieves who are so stupid and pointless that they'd cause Gandhi to passionately argue in favour of eugenics if he ever met them.

Today, family Idiot comes marching in to get mum's pension.

Upon her first attempt, the till tells her to get in contact with the card issuer. Translation, the card is still locked up.

"But I rang the phone number and they said that the money was in the account."

Did we tell you that there was no money in the account? Did we? I know this is probably going to cause you an injury but think really hard for a moment. Is that what we said or did we tell you that you'd fucked up with the pin number and the card was blocked until you tell them to unblock it? So now, please go away and phone the number on the card and tell them to unblock the pin. Is that difficult? I would write it down for you but seeing as you can't read, that'd be about as much help to you as you are to society at large. Actually, that's not fair. She might eat the piece of paper or burn it or something whereas she's nothing but a fucking parasite.

They leave. Less than chuffed.

One hour later, they troop back in again. At this point an almost identical conversation occurs except this time, they're a bit more annoyed. Christ on a bike. We've done our best* but they can't be trusted to follow some simple instructions. On storming out, the old woman says "What do you expect me to do? Starve to death?"

Frankly fatty, that's gonna take a while.

Fucking morons.

*Blatant lie actually, we could have phoned the card issuers then and there and spoken to them ourselves and got this sorted but frankly, we don't like these people so they can go and fuck themselves. For the sake of accuracy, it should read "we've done our best for all they know.

Old women, please grow old gracefully. Or at least stop wearing the low cut cleavage revealing top.

Is it too much to ask that old women cover up a bit more? Obviously not all old biddies need to wear more clothing. Some already look like they're dressed for a polar expidition even during the height of summer. Nope, I'm just talking about the ones who believe that they're still sexy and want to show it off to the world. A quick message to all those old bats.

YOU'RE NOT SEXY, COVER IT UP. YOU'VE JUST REDUCED THE CHANCES OF ME GETTING AN ERECTION AGAIN. YEEEEAAAARRRRRRRRCH!!!!!!!!!

Frankly, I have absolutely no desire to look at some wrinkly, saggy, liver-spotted old cleavage. Being male, I have an inbuilt reflex to stare at tits. It's just hard wired into the brain. Tits are generally great. Sadly, the tits-seeking part of my brain occaisonally hijacks my eyes and sends them in the direction of the dried up old bosoms. This is despite years of trying to train this reflex to only seek out young, pert, smooth boobs. Hmmmm, boobs. But I digress. It is easy to get distracted while thinking of breasty-dumpling though. Hmmmm, Boobs.

I can't remember where I was going with this. Hmmmm, boobs.

Oh yeah, old women PUT 'EM AWAY.

Conversely, young attractive birds, please can you wear stuff that's more revealing? I know that it's not been the best summer ever but do you realise just how much better service you'll get in this Post Office if you wear a bikini? Ideally a really tiny one. Finally, if you are female, young and attractive, can you make an effort to get served by me instead of any of my colleagues. I'm sure I have to serve a disproportionatly large amount of total munters while the top totty goes to a colleague. Arsebiscuits.

What, you haven't got any mail? What do you expect me to do about it?

I get a fuck of a lot of people ring me up and moan that they've not had any letters for the last two days and could I please look into it for them.

No, I can't look into it.

This is for several reasons. Firstly, your mail might be delayed somewhere else. Secondly, How am I supposed to track your mail? Royal Mail handles approximately 17 BILLION letters a day*. Only a very few of these are tracked with bar codes throughout their entire journey. The rest of 'em, forget it. If it turns up, great, if not, there's no way it's gonna be traceable.

Finally, I can't be arsed mainly cos you've pissed me off by moaning. So fucking what if you've not had any mail for two days. Who gives a rat's arse if the last time you went without mail for two days was back in world war two. Big fucking deal. I can pretty confidently state that the mail you would get is gonna be junk mail anyway.

Usually, I'm polite enough on the phone and say that I'll look into it but as soon as the phone goes down, so does my fat arse onto my chair.

This recently has in one case not been the best policy. Someone bitched and bitched and bitched at me about not getting any mail. After a bit more bitching, the even summarised their bitching in a letter and sent that to me as well (I shredded it immediately). I assumed that it was the usual case of some mail being a bit delayed and thought it best to ignore.

This turned out to not be true.

One of our relief postman is a total prat. He'd somehow managed to confuse the customer saying "I'm going on holiday for a bit." with "I'm moving forever please return all of my mail." and then put an unofficail note into the frame where the mail for that address is sorted.

Even worse, some other postmen completely ignored their training (Thou shalt not pay any attention to hand-written notes in the frames unless they hast been signed by God Almighty (or a manager)) and started returning this guys mail.

Fortunately, one of the two posties that are actually on the ball (if you're reading this, then you're one of 'em) spotted this note and binned it.

So, the moral of this tale is "Fuck it, it'll all work itself out without any effort from me".


* Very approximately, statistic may have been made up on the spot.

The macines are taking over...And they don't like gypsies.

Every so often we have a slight technical hiccup. Invariably, this is due to the PCs that the till software being ancient. Seriously old. So old that three or four years ago, the ram in them was doubled to 256mb. They run on Windows NT 4.0 (remember that?) so they're getting slower and slower and less and less reliable as patches and upgrades to the software we use clog up the systems. Joy!!!!

However, the problem we had last week was due to our broadband connention to the banking system. Everything was working fine for a while until one of our regular gypsies came in to get some cash from her dole scrounger account.

Her request for some booze money was denied. It wasn't the usual denial due to the wrong number or not enough money in the account. It was due to our connection to whatever server runs these accounts. We tried again just to make it appear like we give a shit (we don't, not for certain characters anyway) and it was refused again. We told her to come back a bit later and things should be back up and running by then. It wasn't as if she was in that much of a hurry cos the pubs weren't due to open for another hour.

Not long after, a pensioner wanted some cash from his account. We weren't sure whether it'd work cos they need the same connection. To our surprise, it worked fine and we were able to pony up some dough for him. For the next hour or so it worked fine and we were able to process banking transactions.

Cue the return of our favourite gyppo. As soon as she tried her card again, the system decided to go belly up again. Immediately after, another of our "travelling*" community came in for some more undeserved benefit cash. This was also refused. Smiles and giggles were supressed our side.

Five minutes later, everything was working fine again.

The only sensible conclusion to come to is that the Post Office computer network has finally attained sentience and has a grudge against gypsies. I can't wait until killer Post Office terminals from the future are sent back to kill the resistance leader before he's born. Or something.

*Very few of these "travellers" actually do any travelling at all. Until they start getting final demands for bills, parking fines or court summonses or similar. Then they tend to travell rather sharpish. In ther interest of balance however, not all of them do this. They just stay where they are, not get into trouble and scrounge far too much money off the state. Lazy bastards.

Stupid things that people say.

"I did put the right number in."

This is often said just as some one's debit card transaction/cash withdrawal has just been refused due to the wrong PIN being entered. Obviously, model of tact and politeness that I am, I always say something along the lines of "well, it is easy to catch a number twice" or some such crap like that. What I'm really thinking is slightly different.

"No you didn't put the right number in. If you had, I'd be handing over your cash/receipt and saying goodbye instead. You may have put the right number in but you did it wrongly. You twat. I don't care how much whiny bleating is now going to come out of your cakehole, you got the number wrong and no amount of your pointless noise is going to change that. I'd much rather that you'd got the number right first time then you'd be buggering off instead of fucking whingeing at me and wasting valuable oxygen. Try your number again and then please FUCK OFF!!!"

Can you read? Or listen?

Hnnnnnrgghhh!

That's the sound of utter frustration and contempt that I feel all too often when people present forms to me that haven't been filled in properly or aren't supported by the required documentation.

Allow me to elaborate.

Mail redirections are a particular source of wrongness and therefore irritation. Whenever we hand out a redirection form, we make a point of telling the customer to fill it in and bring it back with some ID/documentation and then we point to the list of acceptable ID and tell them what we need.

Invariably this is totally ignored.

Several days later, said customer will return with the form but no supporting ID. I don't want to be a jobsworth here but (pompous/serious hat on here) it is really rather important that mail isn't redirected fraudulently. If any old idiot could arrange for someone else's mail to be sent wherever they wanted no doubt we'd never hear the end of it. But no, we're being awkward that we can't process a redirection just on their say-so that they are who they claim to be. Fraudsters have been known to tell the odd fib here and there you know.

Only today a woman came in to do a redirection. Predictably enough, she didn't have any ID at all. I pointed out the list of stuff and told her we needed something from list A and something from list B on the form. Thirty minutes later she returned. Again, predictably enough, she hadn't read the list correctly and had bought the wrong stuff.

*sigh*

It's at this point that the customer gets annoyed at me personally because it's my fault that

A. We need proper ID to process this redirection
B. She's too stupid to listen to instructions
c. She's too stupid to read things properly.
D. She's fat and ugly and stupid.
E. She's going to have to walk home and then walk back here again and then walk all the way home!!! (she needed the excercise though, see point D.)

I soooooo love it when customers resort to getting stroppy when they're not getting their way. The number of times I've been tempted to turn round and say something along the lines of:

"Now that you put that argument to me so eloquently and reasonably, I'm going to change my mind and say a big "fuck you" to the rules and common sense and process this application. Clearly it is far too difficult to read and/or listen to instructions that are there for a bloody good reason. A big strop is certainly the best way of getting you own way. Congratulations on being terribly grown up and everything.

Oh wait, I've changed my mind again. Kindly shove your attitude up your arse and fuck off."

I never have but whenever I have a difficult customer, you can bet I'm thinking it.

Needless to say, the customer who I was serving stormed off and said that she'd send it off instead. I neglected to point out that she'd need to send off the same stuff with her application. Oh well.

Stupid things that people say.

This is the first in, no doubt, a long series of stupid things which people say to me all the fucking time.


"Can I have some stamps please?"

Of course you can you moron, this is a fucking Post Office. What did you think we sell? Secondly, can you be a little bit more vague? How many stamps? What sort? Please don't make me winkle out each detail one at a time. Also, if you commit the cardinal sin and say "Whatever," you're gonna get a book of 100 1st class stamps. Why? Cos I make a load on the commission.

Pricks.

Please don't cry.

Despite my best efforts not to (no, really) I've managed to make a couple of customers cry recently. I even managed to feel some sympathy for one of these customers. Not much, granted and I did try to surpress it as soon as possible but there was some. It took plenty of scalding showers to wash away the dirty feeling but I finally got rid of it.

Let me explain, the customer I felt a bit of sympathy for was a young and attractive lady (it's amazing how much better I'll treat customers if they have pleasing looking lady bumps). She was trying to tax a car that she'd just bought, having recently written off her last one (lady drivers eh?). Sadly, she didn't have the correct paperwork and I had to refuse the transaction. This set her off crying. But due to the breasts, the fact that she didn't get stroppy with me and the fact that she genuinely seemed to have been having a bit of a shit time of it recently, I did feel a bit sorry for her. Alright, I admit it, it was entirely due to the funbags.

The second crybaby, I had no sympathy for whatsoever. Frankly I was almost glad that I'd upset her and it was through no fault of mine either. Hurrah! Firstly, she was old and ugly so she was never going to engender any goodwill in my "special place". Secondly she came in on a friday afternoon at twenty nine minutes past five. This meant that our quick escape had to be put on hold and needless to say (although I will anyway) this annoyed us a bit.

Her: "I need this parcel delivered tomorrow."

Me:"I'm sorry (LIE!!), but our last collection was at 5 o'clock so the earliest we can get it delivered is monday."

"But I rang the customer care line and they said that the last collection here was 5:30."

"Unfortunately, they've misled you, the post has already gone."

"But they said that the collection was at 5:30"

"As I said, they were mistaken."

"But I need to get this delivered tomorrow. The customer line said you'd be able to do that. I asked them where I could get it deliverd tomorrow and told them that I could go anywhere."

"If you take it to the mail centre in our local metropolis, they're open til eight and they can get it delivered tomorrow for you."

"I can't go there!! I've got children."

*sigh*

"Well, in that case, monday is the best you're going to get."

"But I need this delivered tomorrow. I was up until three this morning finishing this off. And I was told that you could do that here."

*bigger sigh*

"I'm sorry, but we can't (huge lie, about being sorry that is, not being able to do it was actually true)."

"mumble, grizzle, cry etc."

*flounces out*

Jesus H Christ, if that item was soooo important then why leave it til the last minute before sending it? If she'd been 30 seconds later, she would have saved herself all that aggro and getting worked up cos we would have been closed. Also, I get it, the customer care line made a mistake, repeating that fact isn't going to make any difference. What did she expect? "Oh, now you come to mention it, there is another secret collection that only the call centre monkeys know about. But we can only tell people about it if they constantly go on about it to us." I don't really care if you were up until three that morning finishing it off. Perhaps that was why you were so grouchy. Finally, what has having kids got to do with not being able to make a 20 minute car journey for something that is apparently realllllly important. You know what, I've got kids and I went to our local metrpolis just the other day. It was easy.

Silly bint.

I'm back and I'm pissed off.

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I'm a lazy bastard.

As I type this, our forgetful priest is in and asking my colleague whether she's going on holiday (his usual question to any of us except my Scottish colleague). My colleague has just (uncharacteristically cos she's usually very tolerant) asked whether there was a polite way of telling him to bugger off and mind his own business.

However, the priest is a mild irritation compared to the customer who I served first thing this morning. A regular customer sent a few items off and then tried to pay for them with his credit card. For some reason, my till told me that I had to retain his card. There was no question about it being a fraudulent or stolen card or anything but if I'm told to retain the card then I'm gonna do it (I was only following orders).

Naturally, you don't in this situation tell the customer that you need to keep his card and then ask him to pass it to you. For some reason, they tend to say no and take the card back. A little bit of subtlety is required. I asked him to pass me the card for a moment. He did and it was at this point that I told him that I had to retain the card. He wasn't best pleased. He asked why but I couldn't tell him cos I didn't know. He got more and more worked up and then demanded a receipt for it. I'd already passed him one and told him so (getting a bit worked up myself at this point). At this point a large number of toys were thrown out of the pram and he got the right arsehole that I'd dared to raise my voice. "There's no need to get ratty!" said the pretty angry customer hypocritically. By now I was pretty fuming cos I hate stroppy customers doing this sort of thing. It's fine for him to get pissed off and shouty but woe betide me if I show any signs of irritation. I've just got to stand there and take it and say thank-you for the privilege. YAY!!!

Sense prevailed cos I decided that and apology would be the best thing to offer even though an apology was what I was due from him. Apology uttered I was expecting things to calm down.

Nope.

"You can speak to me sensibly or not at all."

He said in an even more stroppy manner. Another apology and the old "I've had a stressful morning, I shouldn't take it out on you, sorry etc. etc."

"You and me are gonna have a falling out."

Another apology. He was wrong though. I've already "fallen out" with him. Stroppy cunt.

Then I had to bring up the subject of him paying the outstanding balance that he owed.

Oops.

This didn't go down well either. Eventually, I got the money and got rid of him.

However, it's soured my mood for the rest of the morning. I had to have a nice long rant to Mrs Popurnoinplz to try and get it out of my system. It mostly worked.

It really pisses me off that customers feel that they can lose their rags as much as hey want and we just have to stand here like punching bags and take it. If it weren't so bad for business, I'd be tempted to fight back (in fact I have once and that went rather badly, a future update will explain). Admittedly, some shop staff do deserve to have a rocket up there arses now and again but in the main there's usually no justification for customers having a major ep. In fact, it's usually counter-productive. A polite customer with a complaint will get much better treatment than a shouty one.

Regulars - Mr Grateful

Two or three times a week, Mr Grateful will waddle in to the post office. Our faces will fall. If it's a Thursday, he'll be clutching his chequebook and if it's any other day it'll be a handful of mail. So far, so not annoying. Allow me to explain why he bugs me so much. Unlike practically everyone else in the world, he's not managed to get his head round the concept of withdrawing money using a card. No no no, that's far to 1980's for out Mr Grateful. He's mastered cheques and that's as modern as he's ever going to get. We can cash cheques for certain banks over the counter at the post office. However, it's a bloody faff. It requires about 20 times more button presses till-side than a card based withdrawal and exactly a metric shit load of writing. And then to take up even more of my valuable time, he can't have a nice round amount, he's got to have some stupid odd amount of cash and then have it broken down into some bizarre varying denominations of notes and coins.

Throughout the transaction he'll be repeatedly thanking us and saying that he's very grateful (hence the nickname). Tell you what, we'll be grateful if you could learn how to withdraw cash like normal people and have a sensible amount as well.

However, this isn't quite annoying enough. If he's sending letters then he's go to have a proof of posting for it. No matter how trivial said letter is. It really gets on my tits that he thinks so little of the postal service (yeah, ok it's not perfect but still) that he's gotta get a proof of posting for everything. It makes me want to deliberately chuck his mail in the bin. So that's more of my time wasted.

The final nail in the coffin is his BT bills. This is a pretty small point but does excellently sum up the small-mindedness of the man. He posts off the payment for his phone bills every quarter. He could pay those over the counter. Does he want to do that? Does he want to save himself the cost of a stamp? Does he want to make sure that his bill is paid there and then without ANY RISK of getting lost in the post?

Does he buggery.

Why not?

Simple. He's not pleased with the idea of paying the £4.50 per quarter that BT charge for paying via any method other than direct debit. Therefore he pays his bill in the post and always encloses a letter to this effect. I'm sure BT couldn't give a fuck.

"look Bill, it's a letter moaning about the money we charge for the privilege of paying your bill."

"Hmm, well as it appears to be with the payment so I suggest that we chuck the rant in the bin."

"Super"

If you're going to moan about stuff then do it in a way that will actually work. Ideally, try swapping over phone suppliers. Even better, swap over to the post office homephone service and make me a few quid into the bargain.

Grateful twat.

No dogs allowed stupid

Just what part of "no dogs allowed" do people have a problem understanding? We've got a nice sign on the door which should make it pretty fucking obvious and since when did normal people take dogs into shops anyway? It's just not done. The number of people who bring their dogs in and when told that they're not allowed, respond with something along the lines of "I'm only gonna be a minute." is unreal. Whether you're going to be in here for a minute or an hour is irrelavent, dogs still aren't allowed in.

It's especially annoying when I don't notice the dog until the customer is at the counter. They tend to get a bit pissy then. One fella said he'd take the dog out once I'd served him. That's kinda missing the point though isn't it? Surely he was going to do that once I'd served him anyway.

Just yesterday, an older lady got rather stroppy with me for asking her to leave the dog outside. "I can't leave him outside, he'll run away!" She didn't have a lead for this dog, she was carrying it. Correct me if I'm incorrect here but isn't the point of walking your dog that it actually walks? If you're gonna carry the bloody thnig around then why bother with a dog? Get a fucking teddy bear or something. Idiot.

The customer is always desperate for cash.

In a tradition nealy as old as the Queen giving out Maunday money to pensioners, we have to give out a heck of a lot of dough on Maunday Thursdays. Pensions and other benefits are almost always paid out on Mondays or Thursdays. As the natural instinct of your average coffin-dodger is to get their pension as soon as possible we're usually pretty busy most Thursday and Monday mornings anyway. However, as we're closed on Monday all benefits that would normally be due then have actually been paid in today. Yay! A double whammy of piss-drenched, senile money grabbing oldies and benefit cheats!* Just what we like. What is it with these people? Why are they so desperate to get their hands on this cash? It's not like they're living hand to mouth and need all of it as soon as they can get it. Some of them (this is not an exaggeration) have difficulty closing their wallets because they've got so much cash in them. Yet still, as soon as the cash is in their account, they gotta have it. Perhaps they're gonna spend it in all of the shops that are closed over the weekend. Hmmm maybe not.

Old people, I don't think I'll ever understand them until I am one.


*Actually, only one benefit cheat that I know about. You know who you are. Yes, you. The one that drives the 200 yards or so from your house and parks on the double yellow lines outside every saturday to cash you cheque so you can go and spunk it away on booze, fags and, judging by the size of you, ALL the pies. And it's only 30 odd quid. I mean, for fucks sake, if it's not popped through letterbox by 11:00 then there's no need for you to come down and hassle me to see if it's been delayed. Jesus, go without until Monday you money grasping bitch. You're not that hard up you know. And your husband too. Don't get me started on that oxygen thief. I know he's apparently got some rare problem with his back that stops him from doing any work at all but how come he works as a handy man for one of the local business? I bet he's not told anyone about that has he? Is it really fair that he earns more than a lot of honest, hard working people for sitting around on his fat arse, shoving pies and fags in his fat face while lying about his "disability"? Is it? Is it??? No, it isn't. I hope you feel ashamed of yourselves. I bet you don't though. Fuckers. Send 'em to the work house until they buck their ideas up.

Regulars - Annoying old priest

The regular annoying forgetful priest is making his presence felt. He was in here with his usual request for a telephone directory. However, it's getting more urgent. Instead of just asking where he can get a phone book from ("try calling BT" is the usual reply). He said it was important that he got a phone book because "I'm a member of the clergy!!!" Try asking God then.

My Scottish colleague has started to have a little game with him recently. As the priest invariably asks where in Scotland he's from and what clan he's a member of, my colleague has started changing his answer every time. So far he's been from Glasgow, Edinburgh, The Outer Hebrides and a few others. He's also been from the Stewart clan ,the McTavishes, The MacDougals and the McDonalds (He's loving it).

It still doesn't make his visits here much less painful but it's a help.

The customer is always tight

There's a fairly common I find myself having with customers that can be paraphrased thusly:

Customer "I need this package to arrive as soon as possible in America or THE VERY WORLD WILL END!!!"

Me "We can guarantee it there in two days for £50"

C "That's too expensive. Have you anything cheaper?"

Me "We can send it in about 4 working days for £7.50"

C "That's still too pricey. What other services are there?"

Me "Normal airmail is £4.20"

C "Still too much."

Me "Surface mail is £2.50 but can take up to 2 months"

C "£2.50!?!?! Is there anything for less?"

Me "You can chuck it in the sea and hope it gets there for free."

C "Perfect."

Me "What about the world ending?"

C "Fuck it. I can't afford £2.50 to get this package halfway across the world."

Me so funny!!!

I crack me up sometimes, I really do. Just a moment ago, a young and attractive lady needed to post a letter to Spain. It just so happened to cost 69p. As the stamp was all she needed, I said to her:

"69 please."

Hahahaha.

Boy, was the smile wiped off my face when she vaulted over the counter, whipped my trousers off, had a good nosh while shoving her minge in my face.*

It does however bring me to the other things that are said on a regular basis that sound a bit rude. Even though I don't deliberately say things which are ruder than they need to be.** Some of these phrases are:

"Put it in all the way."

"It's too big for that, try the other hole."

"I'll take it in the oher end."

"That's a large package."

"Push it in harder."

"Suck my balls."***

Sometimes it's like Carry On Postman in here. Snurk-snurk.


* Not even remotely true.
** Also not true
*** Actually true. Used when the staff ask for something above and beyond the norm, ie. holiday, time off ill, wages etc.

Regulars - Mr Dazed and Confused

Mr D and C is yet another of our older customers. He manages to take being a dithery old twat who hasn't got a clue to new levels without having any form of dementia or anything. He's just naturally fuckwitted.

Case in point, a while ago we had a petition regarding the desicion to close the Post Office card account. This is the account that coffin dodgers, dole dossers and benefit cheats get their money paid into*. Anyhoo, we were asking the oldies if they'd sign it. Mr D and C did. However, he got the wrong end of the stick and thought it was a petition about closing my Post Office. We didn't realise this until a little bit later when we saw that he was waiting outside, telling people to sign the petition otherwise the Post Office would be closed. I went out and put him straight.

"It's not the Post Office that's closing, it's the account that your pension is paid into."

"I see."

"Could you stop telling people that this Post Office is closing then?"

"Yes."

Ten minutes later, a customer asked to sign the petition because the old bloke outside had told him that we were closing down. Another trip outside and another friendly word later.

"I see."

"Are you sure? It's the pension account you have that might be closed. NOT the Post Office."

"I see."

I think you can probably see where this is going. Doddery old twat. After another chat 20 minutes later I decided to give it up as a bad job. We got a shit load of signatures for that petition. It might even have guilt tripped a few people into using the Post Office when they might not otherwise have done. It's a very irritating way of possible getting a few extra sales though.

Throughout the whole proceedings (and indeed, throughout his whole life) Mr D and C had a fairly vacant looking grin on his face. It pretty eloquently says "I don't really understand what's going on but I'm quite happy about it."

He also has a really annoying habit of trying to get me to say "I'm free" a la John Inman. So far it hasn't worked. He attempts it every fucking time he comes to the counter. Still, it's probably a fresh joke every time to him. I don't mind engaging in a bit of repetitive banter with some of my customers but there are limits


* In the interest of fairness and balance and that, not all people who use the card account fall into the catergories listed. One or two of them don't.

Most "interesting" smell ever.

I had the huge misfortune of serving one of our regulars today. He's always been a bit of a stinker but has clearly taken the sport of being a smelly bugger to olympian levels. He exuded a very strong and very complex aroma. After much wine-ponce type analysis I've finally come up with the best way to describe the stench.

Take 3 pints of fat man sweat.
Add 1 pint of horse sweat.
Add 1 pint of 3 day old piss.
Add an average size dog poo.
Liquidize a well done steak that's been left in a hot and humid place for a month and add that.
Mix well.
Leave to fester for a week.
Place in a bucket and insert head.

And the scariest thing about this? He runs a hotel in a nearby village. I hope his attitude towards the hotel's cleanliness is a bit better that his attitude to personal hygiene. Repeat business must suck.

I think you'll find that it is fair.

Please don't expect any sympathy if you come in here to tax a nearly brand new Lexus 4x4 and have to spend £300 to tax it for a year. If you can afford to spend (and I've checked the prices) over £30,000 on a car then £300 per year is a drop in the ocean you tight arsed wanker.

"Wah-wah-wah, it's not fair. It's not a proper four wheel drive, it's only two wheel drive most of the time. Boo-hoo-hoo. I can't afford that much. Why do they pick on us drivers of large engine, highly polluting unnecessary ponce-mobiles?"

If I had my way you'd be charged a shit-load more. And it'd only go up every time you whinged about it.

Computers? Fuck 'em!

I'm as big a fan of computers as the next guy. Assuming that the next guy has bought into the myth that using computers will save time, effort and give back so much more useful information than was available before.

I'm starting to think that computerising everything is not always worth the effort.

I've been struggling on with my swanky new till for a while now and am finally pretty happy with the set-up of the till itself. The software for it, on the other hand, is a great big pile of steaming horse-shit. It's OK for keeping the prices and descriptions of all my products backed up. It'll allow me to adjust those prices and whatnot without needing to fiddle with the till itself. Even though it's actually far quicker to do so on the till itself. It'll even allow me to download the sales data so I can see how much of each item I'm selling.

Great.

Sadly, the one main function that I really really want from this till is to analyse the sales data week on week. Can I do that? Can I fuck. The only sales figures the software will allow me to view is what I've just downloaded from it. As soon as you download one weeks data, last weeks data vanishes off into the ether. Fucking excellent. Will it export these figures into a spreadsheet so I can analyse them there? Nope, that would make far too much sense.

The best I've managed to do, is put the sales figure manually from one program into a spreadsheet. Y'know, by hand. Without the aid of computers and stuff doing it automatically and easily for me. I'm starting to get really fucked off with spending fucking hours every fucking week doing this. It wouldn't be quite so bad but as new products are added on to the till, it fucks up the positions of everything that was already on the spreadsheet and I've then got to spend my remaining free time checking that I've not accidentally buggered up the last few weeks worth of stuff. The stuff that I checked last week. And the week before. As you may be able to sense, I'm a tad peeved about this.

I'm now faced with a very annoying trilemma (what do you mean, that not a word? It is now, FUCK OFF!!!). Do I carry on doing what I'm doing to the point where I don't even have to time to sleep cos there's so much old data to check? Do I spunk away £500 on some new software that might actually do what I want it to or do I give it all up as a bad job and miss out on some potentially very useful sales data?

Also, my anti-virus software keeps alerting me to the fact that I have a wireless keybaord and it may be a keylogger despite the fuck knows how many times I've told it to ignore it and Windows media player keeps fucking crashing the second I try to listen to music on it. With this added annoyance and the lack of soothing music, I've been a bit on the stroppy side. Unlike my normal tolerant and even tempered self you understand.

La-di-dah

What is it about people with double-barrelled surnames? They're the most picky, demanding and borderline rude (without resorting to obvious rudeness of course, that would be far too common) twats I have to put up with.

And they've invariably called their children Quentin or Hugo or India or some pseudo-posh name. Christ on a bike, why don't they just call them pleasebullymeformyentireschooltime and get it over with?

Pretentious upper-middle class twats.

Regulars - Robert again

Just had another visit from Robert. To save you the dull minutiae of the 15 minute long conversation, here are the salient points in an easy to read format:

Number of moans about his bad leg: 6

Number of time the name he addressed me with alternated: 4

Number of watches bought: 2

Number of notepads bought: 1

Number of CD's bought: 2

He also managed to surprise me by saying that he's got a large pile of CD's that he's not got round to listening to yet. I was briefly tempted to ask him why he keeps buying more but the money-grabbing bastard in me prevented that. Just on the off chance that he changed his mind about buying more. It wouldn't entirely surprise me to find out that he's not even got a CD player.

Lame car tax protest

As I've mentioned before, car tax is a bit of a headache. The latest installment of car tax related embuggerance occurred this afternoon. An elderly lady came in a asked me if it was true that the annual tax rate for her car had gone up from £100 to £115. As she didn't have any of the documents for her car I couldn't confirm or deny this (there are far too many tax brackets depending on age, emissions, engine size etc). She then got the arsehole because her car's only got a small engine and she shouldn't have to pay much tax for it.

I'm terribly sorry. I'll have words with Gordon Brown next time he pops over and see if I can get a special dispensation for her. Y'know, cos she asked me so politely and I have such a big sway over the tax policies in this country. While I'm at it, I'll see if I can swing an increase in her pension too shall I?

Jesus H Christ. What was the point of her rant? If she comes back to tax her car and refuses to pay the full amount then I'll refuse to tax it. It's as simple as that. The DVLA won't hesitate to fine her for not paying her tax if that's how she wants to protest. It's not as if she's short of a few quid. It was a nearly brand new car for fucks sake. Don't tell me she can afford a 7 grand car a couple of years ago but now can't afford an extra £15 for the whole year to tax it. Nope, she's as tight as a gnat's chuff and really annoying to boot.

Also, why do people act like it's my fault personally that they have to pay car tax and things? If you don't like paying your car tax then write to your MP or organise a protest do something that might actually change it. Getting a strop on at me will change preciesley nothing except for my mood.

Who will rid me of this irritating priest?

A new regular has recently appeared on the horizon. We knew from the first time he came in he'd be a regular and he'd be a pain. There was something about him that my highly trained postmaster-sense (a bit like spider-sense but more interesting) went off. Obviously a few return visits have proved me correct.

The first time he came in, he asked if we could help him out with getting a bus pass. Easy. We gave him a form and told him to fill it in and bring it back with some id and photos.

The next time he came in, he asked if we could provide him with a bus pass. We gave him another form and more instructions. We then resigned ourselves to a run on our bus pass forms and many more visits.

The weeks went past and the bus pass forms were duly given out. As he became more comfortable with his lovely new local Post Office, he got chatty. This is fine when you're not busy and you're talking to someone who is both interesting and possessed of a functional memory. As you can probably guess, he fell into the catergory of not fine. Pretty far away from fine as it happens. In fact, bloody annoying.

As we got to know more about him (retired vicar, hence the title of this post) and a few more details the penny dropped and one of my colleagues remembered a phone call she'd had while at work. It was from a retired vicar who was looking for a nice village to retire to and had heard that this village was rather pleasant and could she recommend living here. Of course she could. It's great here. There's plenty of amenities and a lovely Post Office.

Bugger!

Needless to say, my colleague has been suitably punished for inviting this irritating twat to my (and it is mine) village.

I've been trying to put him off coming here by loudly taking the lord's name in vain whenever I see him. And talking about satan too if I can get away with it. It's not worked.

Just for the record.

If I ask you to put a return address on the top left of the front on an international parcel, it's because I'm supposed to. It's not an invitation for you to get the arsehole with me. I couldn't really give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut whether you take my advice or not but it would be unprofessional not to offer it.

If you then follow that up with another strop because I won't give you two proofs of posting for one item of mail then I'd have to offer some more advice and advise that you take your attitude, shove it up your arse and fuck off.

That is all.

To me, to you.

Nope, I've not just served the Chuckle Brothers, it's what old people like doing with their money. As they don't waste nearly enough of my time already by doddering around, not being able to find their cards/bills/letter/whatever or just droning on and on and on with banal and irrelevant details of their dull lives, a lot of them play pension ping-pong. Normal people when paying bills seem to manage passing me through all of the things they want to pay, letting me process them all and then paying for the lot in one go. This would be too easy for your average coffin dodger. A typical transaction can involve being passed a gas bill and the payment. I'll then process it and give change. I'll then be passed another bill and the payment which I'll process and then give the change. If it's just two bills, I'm getting off pretty lightly. The record is six. As annoying as this already is, it's topped off by the final transaction being the OAP getting their pension out. Their pension which would have invariably covered all of the bills they've just paid and given them change. Why the smelly buggers can't just hand me the bills and ask me to take it out of their pensions, I don't know. Actually, I suspect it's cos they're so desperate for human contact that being glowered at by me is the most pleasant human interaction they've had for a week.

It'd be a relief if the Chuckle Brothers came in frankly. At least their capering and tomfoolery wouldn't be accompanied by the acrid stink of week old piss.

Pricing out of proportion

The "new" pricing in proportion rules have been in force now for over 18 months (or so, I can't remember properly and my research dept is too lazy to find out for certain) but it's still tripping people up. This is despite every address in the country getting a size guide when it was first introduced and there being a fair amount of publicity in the run up to Christmas. However, I still have a little bit of sympathy for some people caught out by this. But:

People who can't be bothered to check the sizes and weights - FUCK OFF.

People who come in to pick up a surcharged item that's blatantly too large/heavy and then moan and bitch about it like I'm holding their firstborn hostage and it's all my fault personally- FUCK OFF AND DIE IN A FIRE

People who moan about the system being too complicated - GROW A BRAIN AND FUCK OFF

The bloke who, just now, moaned about having to send his letter as a packet (and therefore more expensive) who asked me why I sell envelopes that size - FOR LETTERS THAT ARE THAT SIZE YOU TWAT, NOW FUCK OFF

People who are surcharged for items that are ever so slightly too large or not actually too large but have been incorrectly surcharged - SORRY