Rant 'n Rave

Playing machines is quite a stressful activity in itself at times. Wouldn't you agee?

However it is made so much worse by poor surroundings and sub standard staff.

Allow me to illustrate.

On Wednesday I entered a big chain amusement arcade. It was in a city that gets mentioned a lot on here (this was originally posted on Arcadia), second only to Norwich.
It was opposite a lovely looking place called 'Club Release'. Someone was doing karaoke to The Mavericks 'Dance the night away' and outside were lots of people waiting to go to places like 'Wood End' and 'Henley Green' on the bus. At regular intervals drug addicts would walk along tapping people up and asking for 10p/20p/50p/£1/£2 for bus fare/a cup of tea/cigarettes/a new home for their kids e.t.c
Yeah, we all know where we're talking about now don't we?

I don't wish to slate all the staff in this establishment. Some do as much work as you can expect on £4.50 an hour and are pleasant enough. However there are a few exceptions.

Surely the most annoying member of staff there has to be 'Shan'?
He's the Indian guy with glasses, probably a student. I don't know.
Shan is about as much use to anyone as a fart under the bedclothes.
Ok. He's probably been there two days, probably been trained by someone on £5.50 an hour who doesn't give a shit either and he probably just wants to study whatever it is he's reading at university without standing around getting paid peanuts in a slummy arcade the wrong side of town.

My bugbear is that Shan just can't help being incredibly ANNOYING. I was playing Casino Crazy Fruits when a quid of mine got stuck. For the past ten minutes Shan had been pacing around and around and around and AROUND and I mean AROUND and around and A-f*****g ROUND a small cluster, very small as in cluster of two, £5 jackpot machines situated behind me and the Crazy Fruits.

That is on a par with having someone stare at you play. Whenever I turned around Shan wasn't staring, but I got the distinct feeling I was being watched non too furtively.

Anyway, here I was, a customer in distress. The mech was jammed up and now I needed help. was Shan there in my hour of need?

I turned around to see the back of Shan. Ten f*****g minutes he'd been pacing around, brushing against me as he pointlessly adjusted the ashtrays on either side of my machine. Jinxing me. Yeees, I'm a paranoid superstitious gambler. Ten whole f*****g minutes and as soon as there's a problem, he's out of there.

I called out but to no avail. Shan was obviously deaf. Or plain f*****g ignorant. I called out louder but he decided to pace around somewhere else.

I needed change anyway. A loud common woman (I'm no snob, but she was LOUD and COMMON) called 'Andrea' or 'Angela' or something like that was giving out change to another LOUD, COMMON customer who'd probably caught the bus from Wood End. Again I called out for change, but oh no. She's doing a Linford Christie to the back of the shop, probably to dive into her sack of emergency lard pies in case she goes wihthout food or cigarettes for two whole minutes.

In the end I just gave the machine a good shake. This failed to have any affect. So I just pulled it back and flung it against the wall. This caused an offending 'fake' coin (not mine!) to drop from within its innards and once more it was playable.

As I turned around 'Shan' was staring through the glass windows at me, from the entrance to the shop. I could have smashed up that machine with a sledgehammer and still I think he'd stare gormlessly back through his thick spectacles doing sweet F.A.

For the record, fat-loud-common woman would have suffocated me with her bingo wings.

Talking of bingo, now we have the bingo numbers coming through on the speakers. Put it like this, whatever unfortunate staff member was given the occupation of entertaining the blue rinse brigade certainly won't be finding work on local radio any time this year, next year or any f*****g year at all.
Devoid of humour and personality, it was a banal dirge of the most dreary nature imaginable. Put on The Specials with 'Ghost Town' and you have your perfect soundtrack to this dive.
Come on Jimmy Thomas! Sort you staff out!
Rant still isn't over.

Now the bingo caller was reading out the numbers for the free raffle. Thankfully as a girl called Emma was doing the draw I knew I had a chance. My next rant is all about rigged free raffles. Still we're, I'm, still ranting about customer service.

Well I won the raffle. I noted that another clueless zombie had been entrusted with dishing out the free plays.

Sure enough, the woman playing bingo got her free plays, but where were mine?

The rules are simple. It's the June promotion. You draw a raffle every hour on the hour. There are two winners in the shop. Each gets £5 of free plays. It's the 22nd of June. The promotion has been running for 22 days.

Ten minutes passes. Where is zombie head in the clouds girl?

Twenty minutes passes, I leave my Crazy Fruits with credit in and attempt to locate someone who speaks English.
I just miss someone going out on there fifty ninth fag break of the day. I hear someone playing Crazy Fruits.
IT'S SHAN!!! He's polished off my credit with his f*****g duster! He looks bamboozled as I explain to him. I remain polite, very polite. I even go the extra distance and explain that leaving a credit in the machine is what customers do when they want to keep on that machine. He looks at me devoid of humour and expression. He says nothing. Is this the face of all big companies? Is this the front line? The customer service? The faceless corporation with its faceless employees. I'd have more response from a dead parrot.
This S***boat staff member has ceased to be, is kaputt!
Another fat girl has taken to the shop floor. Now that Fran or Shan or whatever his f*****g name is has taken to limping about elsewhere and not polishing the start buttons of machines I'm playing with credits in them, I attempt to make it known that it has been a good twenty five minutes since I won the raffle and no one has given me my free plays. I'm still being polite saying please and excuse me - not an uppity arsehole like I'm being on this board!
Fat girl is talking to her mate about last night in Jumping Jaks doing triple vodka ice shakers or some other studenty pisshead promotions crap. She stares at me with expression, except this time it's pure poison. I don't care if she wants to talk with a mate, but at the end of the day she should realise that work is just that - f'ing blimin' WORK.
She apologises sarcastically to her mate (also a complete mong) and prances off into the back.

Ten flippin minutes later and two diversions to stop Shan polishing off another of my credits on Crazy Fruits and the original girl in charge of giving out the free plays appears. I ask her what is happening and she replies "I forgot".

I get my free plays thirty five minutes later and wonder how in a promotion that has been running for 22 days whereby TWO winners get prizes you can FORGET someone. Where do they get these people from? Thick-as-pigshit.com? I then ask if I can have a cup of hot salty water (tea) with no sugar. I know for a fact it will never arrive. It doesn't. Shan tries to polish my machine as I'm walking back to play it.
I resist the urge to punch him in the back of the head and eventually have to explain to him "THAT I'M STILL PLAYING IT!!!" as he is as deaf as a post.

Astoundingly I get my money back on it pretty much and decide to leave as fat girl no.2 is asking me how much I have won on it and how much I have put in. Perhaps she'll ask me to come out to Jumping Jaks later. No she doesn't. She realises I'm a miserable bastard - at least, she's got something right! She and Shan are closing in and now some guy's hassling me for 20p so he can buy some crack, except he made up some other excuse. It's the lying which annoys me, not the crack so much and the bus for Wood End has finally arrived and people with tickets for free plays are coming through the door. As it'll take 'em best part of six hours to get served they'll sit around watching, topless, chewing gum, looking hard, acting like #@#@#@#s, not playing anything.

I've had enough. I walk out.
It's such an abhorrent experience I consider going to Wood End on the bus to cheer myself up.

f*** about.
As they say.

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