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Jobsworths

Started by Camp Tramp, June 18, 2018, 01:11:33 PM

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Small Man Big Horse

I've never been ID'd in my life, not even when I was 17 and drinking in nightclubs which were supposed to be for over 21s.

New Jack

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on June 19, 2018, 01:06:26 PM
I've never been ID'd in my life, not even when I was 17 and drinking in nightclubs which were supposed to be for over 21s.

Sup, my fellow old-looking brutha?

Malcy

I remember going to see Avatar when it came out and fucking hating it. Left the cinema in a shitty mood after paying 20 odd Euro to sit in a freezing cinema for 3 hours watching a steaming pile of shite and went into the Tesco next door. Due to living abroad i was delighted to find 2ltr bottles of Irn-Bru so ditched the basket, went back and got a trolley and decided to do a big shop and take advantage of the lift home i had with me.

Went to the quietest checkout and loaded the whole conveyor belt with shopping. After serving the customer in front of me, the cashier took the next customer sign off the conveyor belt stood up and said 'sorry i am closed' and started walking off. She watched me put a whole trolley full on the belt. After a few seconds of pure disbelief I started shouting at her to come back and she made that tut through the teeth noise and sauntered away. I roared at the top of my voice for a 'FUCKING MANAGER RIGHT FUCKING NOW' and was ignored by every single member of staff in that shithole.

Absolutely raging i went to a self service machine which was doing its usual shtick of not working properly. Lost the plot, threw the shopping to the floor and stormed out. Didn't even get a reply to my complaint. I hope that bitch had a shit week after that. In fairness one of the people i was with put my shopping through and carried it to the car where i was chain smoking to calm down.

Sebastian Cobb

[tag]have you done your timesheet[/tag]

mothman

I got asked to provide ID to get into a bar in Annapolis. No idea why. I know I look younger than I am, but then again on the plane home a colleague (and good friend despite the 15yr age difference) convinced some people sitting across the aisle that I was his dad. So I don't know what to think, apart from the doorman taking his job too seriously.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on June 19, 2018, 01:04:45 PM
Whereas I actually do enjoy the odd half-cut adventure around the supermarket.

As do I.  Which made me not being sold the bottle of wine when sober all the more irritating.  I've purchased alcohol from that same supermarket multiple times before and since, when absolutely off my face.  "That'll be £3.49 for your bottle of tramp's piss, Sir.  Have a nice day" but the one time I try to buy a bottle sober, "oh no, we can't possibly sell you that".  Fuck's sake!

Jockice

I once went into an off-licence on the way round to a friend's house in London and the bloke behind the counter asked the guy with me (a friend of that friend) if I was allowed to drink alcohol. He should have said no of course. It's a very dangerous substance,

Sebastian Cobb

Once we tried to go bowling and a university LGBT society had booked out the entire megabowl. Despite there being lanes free and the LGBT's not seeming to be arsed the people at the megabowl were adament we couldn't bowl even if nobody minded.

Vodka Margarine

That sort of thing is unfathomable because it's actively batting away trade. More than once, I've found myself getting shooed off a pub table that has a reserved sign with a specific (much later) time on it. Alright mate, we're not so repulsive you'll need to spend the next two hours fumigating the table before 'Abigail' and her chums turn up.

Malcy

Quote from: Vodka Margarine on June 19, 2018, 09:06:19 PM
That sort of thing is unfathomable because it's actively batting away trade. More than once, I've found myself getting shooed off a pub table that has a reserved sign with a specific (much later) time on it. Alright mate, we're not so repulsive you'll need to spend the next two hours fumigating the table before 'Abigail' and her chums turn up.

Aye i've had that before. Really pisses me off.

AllisonSays

My 60-year-old PhD supervisor and his also-about-60 mate got ID'd trying to get into a bar in New York last year. I mean the law's the law but this is a grizzled, swan-necked historian in a cagoule looking every inch of his 60 years. They took it in good spirits but it's a a definite case of jobsworthiness.

Paul Calf

Trying to reserve tables in pubs should get you beaten up and barred on arrival. Fuck do you think you are? Pizza Express?

Vodka Margarine

Quote from: Paul Calf on June 19, 2018, 09:39:56 PM
Trying to reserve tables in pubs should get you beaten up and barred on arrival. Fuck do you think you are? Pizza Express?

Guilty as charged there. But I've only ever booked a table in my very friendly local where they (and I) couldn't care less who sits at my table before I arrive. Unless it's GG Allin and his edgy gang properly smashing it all afternoon, it's nothing a bit of Dettox can't sort out in a minute or two.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: New Jack on June 19, 2018, 01:10:42 PM
Sup, my fellow old-looking brutha?

It's a curse, isn't it? And seemingly something I've always suffered from, when Mrs SMBH saw my baby photos she claimed I look like my grandmother in them.

Noonling

Quote from: Vodka Margarine on June 19, 2018, 09:06:19 PM
That sort of thing is unfathomable because it's actively batting away trade. More than once, I've found myself getting shooed off a pub table that has a reserved sign with a specific (much later) time on it. Alright mate, we're not so repulsive you'll need to spend the next two hours fumigating the table before 'Abigail' and her chums turn up.

I'm enraged by this post. A name as lovely as Abigail shouldn't be used as part of an anecdote.

Unless it was genuinely reserved for someone called Abigail, but even then you should just replace it with a name that doesn't hint at an occult temptress.

imitationleather

Although I agree reserving pub tables is S4C, if you're the downtrodden pub employee who doesn't get to decide these things I bet some people are a right fucking nightmare to get off the table once they've had a skinful.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Paul Calf on June 19, 2018, 09:39:56 PM
Trying to reserve tables in pubs should get you beaten up and barred on arrival. Fuck do you think you are? Pizza Express?

This, you either go in and hope you can claim a table or book out the fusty mostly disused lounge with the rusty jonny machine in the bogs that still has an 80's porsche on the front.

Vodka Margarine


Blue Jam

#48
Quote from: imitationleather on June 19, 2018, 10:28:56 PM
Although I agree reserving pub tables is S4C, if you're the downtrodden pub employee who doesn't get to decide these things I bet some people are a right fucking nightmare to get off the table once they've had a skinful.

At a certain craft beer bar in Durham I once had a bartender ask me to move to a different table because the one I was on was "reserved". When I pointed out the lack of a sign on the table, I was told "we need this table for the band". There wasn't supposed to be any band on that night, but I gave up arguing and reluctantly moved from my nice, bright table by the window to the only other free table in a dark corner by the toilets. I sat there seething for about ten seconds... before I watched a group of blokes sit round the nice window table and noted that while they didn't have a single musical instrument between them, they did look like a bunch of big, threatening hardnuts.

The bartender had sounded rather panicked and I wondered if they'd threatened him- and I felt bad for him then. I had been angry about his bullshitting, but then I realised he was probably just trying to avoid a kicking. That place was a nice specialist craft beer place which was great for a quiet drink early in the evening, but around 6pm on a Saturday it would get busy and suddenly transform into Gary Central.

Still, that incident put me off going back in the evening all the same. I know bar staff have a responsibility to avoid trouble, but do they also need to avoid turning away well-behaved customers and giving their warmest welcome to Legend Gary and his mates and driving away the customers who don't get into fights and chuck pint glasses off the balcony? "Sorry, could you move please? We need your table for those hard cunts who are threatening to kick my head in" doesn't make for a great atmosphere either.


petril

Quote from: Blue Jam on June 20, 2018, 12:24:40 AM
At a certain craft beer bar in Durham I once had a bartender ask me to move to a different table because the one I was on was "reserved". When I pointed out the lack of a sign on the table, I was told "we need this table for the band". There wasn't supposed to be any band on that night, but I gave up arguing and reluctantly moved from my nice, bright table by the window to the only other free table in a dark corner by the toilets. I sat there seething for about ten seconds... before I watched a group of blokes sit round the nice window table and noted that while they didn't have a single musical instrument between them, they did look like a bunch of big, threatening hardnuts.

The bartender had sounded rather panicked and I wondered if they'd threatened him- and I felt bad for him then. I had been angry about his bullshitting, but then I realised he was probably just trying to avoid a kicking. That place was a nice specialist craft beer place which was great for a quiet drink early in the evening, but around 6pm on a Saturday it would get busy and suddenly transform into Gary Central.

Still, that incident put me off going back in the evening all the same. I know bar staff have a responsibility to avoid trouble, but do they also need to avoid turning away well-behaved customers and giving their warmest welcome to Legend Gary and his mates and driving away the customers who don't get into fights and chuck pint glasses off the balcony? "Sorry, could you move please? We need your table for those hard cunts who are threatening to kick my head in" doesn't make for a great atmosphere either.

giving in to that fear is a self destructive spiral. high turnover, habitual police presence. avoidance from swathes of potential customers. closure when the Gary Posse fail to move on. best to leave them to their own nightmare, I suppose.

DArtagnan

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on June 18, 2018, 01:47:07 PM
I steal from the supermarket at every opportunity that presents itself. the carrots-for-other-things thing is chicken feed.

It's not always easy to discern sarcasm in the printed word, but if you really steal from the supermarket at every opportunity, and can blithely tell the world on an open Forum, then you must be a 24 carat dozy cunt, in my opinion.

DArtagnan

Quote from: AllisonSays on June 19, 2018, 09:15:49 PM
My 60-year-old PhD supervisor and his also-about-60 mate got ID'd trying to get into a bar in New York last year. I mean the law's the law but this is a grizzled, swan-necked historian in a cagoule looking every inch of his 60 years. They took it in good spirits but it's a a definite case of jobsworthiness.

While I'll willingly agree that your example looks like jobsworthiness, long ago I was in a bar at Tampa International Airport, Florida.
I ordered a double Crown Royal Canadian Whisky, and a glass of Pinot Grigio.
The barmaid said, "Do you have I.D.?"
I said, "Are you kidding?" I was maybe 57-59.
She said, "No I.D., no drinks."
My wife had my passport, she showed the girl, and said, "He's nearly 60 for Christ's sake."
She said, "I don't care if he's a Civil War veteran, Hillsborough County law says that all purchasers of alcohol must produce I.D. prior to being served."
So although I thought she was being a jobsworth, she was complying with a local statute.

steve98

Are you a Civil War veteran?


Icehaven

Quote from: Vodka Margarine on June 19, 2018, 09:06:19 PM
That sort of thing is unfathomable because it's actively batting away trade. More than once, I've found myself getting shooed off a pub table that has a reserved sign with a specific (much later) time on it. Alright mate, we're not so repulsive you'll need to spend the next two hours fumigating the table before 'Abigail' and her chums turn up.

Unless there's a serious risk of the place closing down and them losing their jobs then I'd imagine the barstaff are more concerned about not having to clear and clean up the table before the reservers turn up, particularly as they probably won't lose those customers anyway, they'll just move to another table or stand.

I'm not a fan of pub table reserving at all though, it does just seem 'wrong' in normal boozers, and worst of all is when there's not even a time on the signs. My sort-of local is a bog standard Green King and we go there to eat fairly regularly, and a few weeks back we went in at about 5pm and found half the bloody tables simply 'reserved' with no start time so had to sit in a corner right by the toilets. We were there for the best part of 2 hours and not a soul sat at the 'reserved' tables the whole time.

On the flipside for my boss's leaving do we booked a table at a chain restaurant/bar in the city centre (think it was an All Bar One) for a meal. We presumed the eating area with the reservable tables would be separate from the general bar area, but it turned out it wasn't, so when my boss and his girlfriend had arrived at about 7.15 they were directed to a table in the middle of the bar with a bit of A4 with 'reserved from 7pm' on, and people naturally sitting there ignoring it. I didn't arrive until later but apparently when they'd said they'd got the table reserved and asked them to move they got really arsey and the staff had to get involved. Had we realised we were going to be eating in the middle of a noisy crowded bar we'd have booked elsewhere anyway, and it's a bit stupid to expect half-cut people in what was clearly primarily a drinking establishment to not sit at an empty table just because there's a piece of A4 on it too. It's a case of one place trying to be both things and ending up just pissing everyone off.

Icehaven

#55
Quote from: DArtagnan on June 20, 2018, 01:00:09 PM
While I'll willingly agree that your example looks like jobsworthiness, long ago I was in a bar at Tampa International Airport, Florida.
I ordered a double Crown Royal Canadian Whisky, and a glass of Pinot Grigio.
The barmaid said, "Do you have I.D.?"
I said, "Are you kidding?" I was maybe 57-59.
She said, "No I.D., no drinks."
My wife had my passport, she showed the girl, and said, "He's nearly 60 for Christ's sake."
She said, "I don't care if he's a Civil War veteran, Hillsborough County law says that all purchasers of alcohol must produce I.D. prior to being served."
So although I thought she was being a jobsworth, she was complying with a local statute.

Fair enough but did she have to be so fucking rude about it? (The barmaid, not your wife.)

It's one thing if you have to do something pedantic or patently daft because your job and/or the law requires it, but at least accept that you're going to get a lot of people complaining and moaning that it's stupid and jobsworthy and make both their and your day a lot better by not being a cunt about it to boot.
When I worked in public libraries we were supposed to only let people take books out without their library cards if they could show us ID. Invariably there were some colleagues who couldn't hide their delight in refusing to issue books to people without any, obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves, as if they'd become librarians with the sole purpose of making sure as few people as possible could actually borrow books. The very same people were also the ones with the absolute worst attitude towards the public full stop, with countless tales of rude customers and times they'd been sworn at etc., and I used to think ''Good, you probably bloody deserved it.''

BJBMK2

Not sure if it counts as "jobsworth" as much as it does "a bit thick", but here's my Getting Id'd At A Supermarket story. Was buying JD at Tesco's. Checkout girl asks for my ID. Now I was 21 at the time, and still had the baby face that, ironically, the JD would soon dispose of, so I had no objections to this. However she gives it a stern face, looks up at me.

"I can't sell you this alcohol"

"What? Check the birth date, and you'll clearly see I'm over 18".

"I'm sorry sir, I am unable to..." blah blah

This back and forth keeps going back and forth. A manager walks by, I get there attention, because I want to make a complaint, like the self entitled consumer I am. The checkout girl shows the manager my passport, fighting her corner. The manager gives her a look, then gives me a look, then points to the passport, "No, don't look at this bit, look at THIS bit".

He was pointing to the expiry date of the passport. That's what she'd been looking at. NOT my date of birth. The expiry date. Of the passport.

Now...what was going through the checkout girls head during all this? Did she think that was my date of birth? Did she think I was born in the fucking future? That I've travelled back from 2021 on a Terminator-esque mission to prevent myself from...buying some JD? I'm sorry sir, you can't buy this alcohol, because you haven't been born yet, so your technically not 18, your actually -4?

I left the Tesco in a state of confusion and anxiety, that may well have lasted into recent years.

imitationleather

There is some stupid rule about them not accepting expired passports. I don't know why this is. In case you pass on your old passport to a doppelganger who happens to be under 18 for them to use?

The time it must take to check the date of birth and the expiry date. I got the impression that when giving ID a lot of them are just like "Oh I've been handed some ID. That's enough for me" and don't actually check it, they just want to see if you have something that probably says you're over eighteen on it.

Jockice

Quote from: icehaven on June 20, 2018, 01:13:25 PM
Fair enough but did she have to be so fucking rude about it? (The barmaid, not your wife.)

It's one thing if you have to do something pedantic or patently daft because your job and/or the law requires it, but at least accept that you're going to get a lot of people complaining and moaning that it's stupid and jobsworthy and make both their and your day a lot better by not being a cunt about it to boot.
When I worked in public libraries we were supposed to only let people take books out without their library cards if they could show us ID. Invariably there were some colleagues who couldn't hide their delight in refusing to issue books to people without any, obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves, as if they'd become librarians with the sole purpose of making sure as few people as possible could actually borrow books. The very same people were also the ones with the absolute worst attitude towards the public full stop, with countless tales of rude customers and times they'd been sworn at etc., and I used to think ''Good, you probably bloody deserved it.''

The biggest jobsworth I ever met in my life was in a university library when I was doing my degree. There's a new accessible one been built since but this one was in a position where I had to either go up a flight of stairs or get a lift at the other end of the building. As I was on crutches at the time I found it knackering. There were a couple of blokes on reception who were very helpful, usually taking any books I had to return and putting them in the returns box a few metres away. It was literally a minute out of their lives but they'd do it with good grace.

Anyway, one day I turned up with a bagful of books that had to be returned that day. There was a different, younger, bloke on reception that day. On reaching the reception I realised I'd left my library card in the car, so explained that I wasn't planning to take any books out, just bringing them back, so could he let me through to do that. Nope. He wouldn't. And he wouldn't take them through for me either, or even look after them while I went back to the car. Not his job you see. I was absolutely raging and as I turned away made a sarcastic comment which he took great offence to, asking in an aggressive voice what I'd just said. "You heard,'' I replied. I ended up just leaving the books on a table nearby and some other member of staff must have seen them lying there and returned them. It certainly wasn't him. I never saw him after that day though. Hope the prick got sacked.

There was also a woman who worked in the cafe at the place I go swimming who refused to serve anything from the breakfast menu at one minute past midday, even though other staff would. I don't get it. Did she really think she'd get sacked for that?

Icehaven

Quote from: Jockice on June 20, 2018, 01:46:24 PM

There was also a woman who worked in the cafe at the place I go swimming who refused to serve anything from the breakfast menu at one minute past midday, even though other staff would. I don't get it. Did she really think she'd get sacked for that?

She didn't want there to be less sausage and bacon for her lunchtime sandwiches.