50+ Annoyances of Working Customer Service at Safeway

It's hard to believe, but I have worked at customer service for over two years now.  Things have changed in that department, but some things never will.  And there are certain things I hate when I'm back there.  Here's my list of them, 50, just like I did with checking:

1. A customer waiting for a while (long line, or I'm handling Western Union) just for something the self-checkout attendant could have helped them with, like a question, change for a large bill, or cigarettes.  I always feel bad that they had to wait.
2. A customer who comes back and needs something changed with their Western Union money transaction.  Usually, that requires calling WU, and it takes 10-15 minutes on average.  And if there's no management to call to help other customers, it REALLY sucks.
3. Being in charge of the liquor case key but not being able to get the liquor call because of customers needing help at customer service.
4. A customer complaining that Just 4 U doesn't work.  It's really not that hard, and it's probably something you did wrong.
5. Customer's getting upset at me enforcing rules, such as money orders are cash only (used to be), the limit for any transaction (WU, money order, etc.) is $3,000.  Do you want me to lose my job?!  Plus, I didn't make up the rules.
6. Customers who return 5+ items.  The more the worse.  Like really, what is your angle?  I call these people serial returners.
7. Customers who call and talk forever and ever on the phone, especially when I have things to do or people to help.
8. Customers who want lottery tickets when that particular game is drawing.  Know the rules and times, people, if you're going to waste your hard-earned money.
9. When customers bring their rotten food to get money back.  Either take a picture or just have your receipt, I will take their word for it 99% of the time.  Leaving me to dispose of the rotten food.
10. When I'm behind on my closing duties, yet customers keep coming or the self-checkout attendant keeps sending me customers they could help.
11. A checker making a mistake (scanning something twice, missing a 50% off item) that I have to fix.
12. People asking me things that not even management sometimes has a good answer for, such as why a particular item hasn't been in stock for a while, or why we stopped carrying a certain product.  THEY TELL ME NOTHING.  ALL I HAVE IS CONJECTURE.
13. A checker acting annoyed when I was crazy busy when they paged for an office call, and I missed it.
14. A checker needing help or an override when their problem was so simple/didn't require an override (like entering in the price manually when they could just type in the numbers next to the bar code).
15. Counting a till and it's way off for an unexplained reason.
16. Going to exchange a till that is a complete mess.  I never need store coupons!  Why don't you put bills and coupons in envelopes?  They are there for a reason!
17. The bill counter being a piece of shit and displaying "No call" for every bill, or getting a jam.
18. A person needing to do a Western Union transaction who barely speaks English.
19. A person needing to do Western Union who is unhappy with their policy (Only can be received in Euros, have to include a test question, etc.)
20. A customer needing help with the DVDxpress.  Safeway does not own, nor is responsible for it!
21. The phone constantly going off, especially when a holiday comes up and people ask our hours, or if there was a big storm and people call and ask if we're open.
22. The floral, deli, or meat department not answering their phone.
23. Customers calling for floral, bakery or meat after they've left, leaving me to answer the phone and tell them they can't be helped.
24. Something being down (Western Union, Money Orders, Orca) and customers getting mad at me for it.
25. People asking questions about Orca that even Metro Transit experts would have trouble answering.
26. People complaining about the price of cigarettes.
27. Someone asking for a manager (possibly a phone call) and they're busy (conference call, checking)
28. Starting my shift or getting back from break and the counter is a mess and unorganized.
29. Having to fill out a SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) Form because a customer sent over $3,000 or sent over $1,000 to China.
30. Trying to get stuff done like changing out checkstand changers, organizing the department, or doing pulls of large bills, and I keep getting interrupted by customers.
31. Needing a particular key (Lotto, Propane, Master) and it's not in its assigned spot.
32. Someone trying to return a gift card.  All gift card sales are final, and they always have been. I do the return, I get in trouble, and the store loses money.
33. Alternatively, people coming back with a gift card saying it doesn't work, or they peeled the code off like a moron and expect us to be liable and replace it.  You have to contact the company for whom the gift card is for!  Once we sell it and activate it, it's out of our control.
34. A customer not knowing how a product works and needs me to explain it to them like they're a freaking child.  I've had multiple customers come to me with the cartons of soup/broth saying the seal was already broken.  No, idiot, the seal broke when you opened it!  Also had a foreign couple that didn't know how to open a small trash bag.
35. Management telling me to pull customers from the self-checkout line because they failed to schedule enough checker help (and I have other things that need to get done).
36. Customers either not communicating clearly with lotto or changing their mind on either Mega Millions or PowerBall, forcing me to either buy the mistake ticket myself or have the store take it as a loss (because we can't cancel for those two games).
37. A customer having a lot of questions about a Rug Doctor (something I have never personally used).
38. When a customer tries to return a fairly expensive item without a receipt.  Either you're scamming us, or you're a freaking idiot.  If you buy an expensive item ($20+) and there is ANY chance you might return it, hold on to the freaking receipt!  Or at least remember the day you bought it.  I know for sure I have done returns on stolen items, but there's nothing I can do, because Safeway doesn't have clear-cut return policy rules nor do they help me with the ability to look up transactions by something other than day/checkstand number.
39. When a customer returns a food item they say was bad, and most of it is gone/eaten.  I'd say over half the time this happens they are trying to scam us out of a free product they actually fairly enjoyed.
40. When a machine malfunctions (Lotto, CoinStar) and I have to fix it while other customers need help.
41. When customers form two different lines, and I don't know who was next.
42. When I have to help a customer for a long time (Western Union, calling someone) and they don't allow me to help other customers in the meantime,
43. Repeat customers who always get pint-sized bottles of liquor.  They would save money by buying the 750ml every two days, but apparently, they can't force themselves to stop drinking.  Sad.
44. When I have a list of things to do that keeps getting longer, and I stress out about it because I'm too busy with customers.
45. When one of the national Lottery games gets a really high jackpot and clueless customers come wanting to buy tickets but not knowing what the hell they're doing.
46. Customers who send multiple Western Unions, not allowing people behind them to be helped in between transactions.
47. Getting a complaint about an unruly customer, a customer asking for money, and having to tell the manager.
48. When a customer has a deal on an item (such as Free on J4U), but we don't carry it. 
49. When I have to check because we're shorthanded, causing me to fall behind on customer service closing duties.
And lastly,
50. Having to deal with people.  That's it.  90+% of the people I deal with at customer service are people I couldn't care less about.

BONUS:
51. People that buy a lottery ticket and tell me to sell them a winner.  If I could control that, I'd sell myself a winner before you, fool.

Customer Service at Safeway - Everything We Do, They're Positives and Negatives

Having worked over two years at customer service, I have a pretty good understanding of all we do back there.  Sometimes I will do a ton of these in one day and sometimes I won't do it at all (except Lotto--people always come for Lotto).

Lotto: This is the one thing I'm guaranteed to do every time at customer service.  I'm actually surprised if I cover a break at customer service if no one comes for Lotto.
Positives: It's a game, and anyone who's worked over a game (amusement park, bowling alley) can agree that there is some aspect of fun to it.  And VERY rarely is dealing with a lotto customer stressful.  I know enough about the games that if they dispute something I have a good argument to back it up.
Negatives: People that complain about never winning.  It's not exactly designed to payout a lot, people.  People that play it so often that it gets annoying.  People that pay with exact change in cash that could do that very same thing at the lotto machine.

Western Union: This is the one thing I was most apprehensive about when learning customer service.  Now that I have it down, it's pretty darn easy.  There's always the occasional snag I'll run into (more on that below).
Positives: If I'm having a slow day, WU's help the time go by.  Most of them are fairly straightforward, and about half are with customers I help fairly routinely, so they know the drill.
Negatives: Helping someone and another person is right behind them and has to wait a long time to be helped with a quick thing.  Also, when snags happen, such as a customer not understanding something, or a change occurring in WU (such as a fee going up).  The worst is a customer needing a change on their WU that requires me to call and get their transaction refunded, and send it through again.  UGH!

Returns: This is something I was already accustomed to doing as a checker and SCO attendant before customer service.  And I didn't mind it at all.  But after working customer service for a while, I hate it.  People constantly try to scam us by returning items without a receipt which in that case always puts me in a tough position.
Positives: Nothing difficult about it, most of the time fairly straightforward.
Negatives: What I mentioned above.  Scammers.  I know I've returned items that customers have stolen.  There's not a lot Safeway does to help me.  They don't set out clear parameters on what I can or can't do refunds/returns on.  The more I've worked customer service the more I hate doing returns and refunds.

Orca: Dealing with Orca Cards is one of the easiest things at customer service.  Most people will just add money to their card when necessary.
Positives: Like I said, one of the easiest things to do.  Plus, it is informative for myself as a fellow Orca Card holder.
Negatives: When customers want to do the monthly pass and are clueless as to what amount they want.  When customers have questions about it (nearest Orca/Transit office for example) that I don't know the answers to.

Rug Doctor: Rug Doctors have to be one of my least favorite things to do.  I've never used one myself so it can be tough to answer people's questions about it.
Positives: Fairly straightforward, and when people return them it's very easy to deal with.
Negatives: Time consuming, usually makes people behind the person I'm helping have to wait.  Also when people have literally any questions about it.  I don't know how to use one myself, nor do I have the need to (I don't own, I rent).

Phone Calls: The thing I was most dreading when being trained at customer service.  Whenever I hear that "Attention Service Staff, 2, 0, 0" I always have to let out a groan.
Positives: Most of the time it's fairly straightforward.  Most of the calls are either for someone else (a manager, DotCom) or are a fairly quick question, often about a product.
Negatives: I don't like talking on the phone.  I have kind of bad hearing and have a lot of trouble hearing people through any static or an accent.  Also when people complain to me.  I've even gotten prank called once.  I felt a little violated.

Bookkeeping: My favorite part.  Get to handle money, account for it, balance tills, etc.
Positives: Very fun, VERY few stressful moments, get to handle money.
Negatives: When I'm bothered by a customer in the middle of balancing a till or doing something important, bookkeeping-wise, or when a till comes up quite a bit short.

Questions: This is a surprising amount of people that visit customer service.  Sometimes it's people simply wanting to know where something is (a product, the restroom), or sometimes it's a customer asking if we have more of a product.
Positives: I'd say over half are fairly straight-forward and easy questions to answer, and usually just take a few seconds.
Negatives: However, there are always customers who want something not in stock, or want us to carry a product, or want a particular item and are upset we don't have it.  If it was me in their shoes, I'd either go to another store or be content with getting a similar product. 

Money Orders: This is very simple, just ask the customer how much they want on their money order, they pay for it, the machine prints it out for them. 
Positives: Very easy, most people know exactly what they want and have the right payment method handy. 
Negatives: Before we changed our policy from Cash Only, people that would get upset that we wouldn't take Debit. Fortunately, we do now.  Also, people that have no idea what to put on their money order, or the rare occasion that people try to get a refund or get it cashed (No can do, amigo).

Well, that's pretty much all we do at customer (now guest) service.  There are odd requests here and there, but this is 95% of it.