Poll of the Day > My biggest pet peeve working in a liquor store is

(+) Yeah! (+)

people who want something specific but don't know what it is.

I am not talking about people needing recommendations or people who are new to wine and spirits and just don't know too much. Need a good tequilla? Sure! Need a wine to pair with Easter ham? No problem. Something a 21 year old who has never drank before might like to enjoy on their birthday? Alright!

But the people who are looking for something specific but do not know what it is called infuriate me.

Today a woman comes in asking about ice wine. My store doesn't carry any ice wines to my knowledge. You'd think being the GM of a tiny liquor store I'd know if I carry a niche product like ice wine because it's so unique how could I not know? Now, I am not too experienced with wine, and ice wine is not really something i know much about. The only ice wines I have seen when I worked at stores that did carry them were all like $40+ for a 375 mL split bottle. Maybe I have something from my state(which has a lot of wineries that could produce ice wine up north) or Germany I don't know about, but I do know nothing on my shelves says "ice wine" on the label.

I tell her I don't have any, and she says she looked on the internet and it said I did.

I ask her what it is called and she says "I forget but it begins with an A"

Now sometimes something this vague does trigger a thought, but not this time. I showed her a few things that merely were sweet and began with an A and they weren't it so she walked away. I truly don't know what she wanted, since to my knowledge I don't have any ice wines, and I spent 30 minutes after she left looking for what it could be and I drew a blank. I just don't know how you could look up online to verify we have something and then also not know the name of it when you get to the store. There is a location that does carry ice wine 5 minutes away from my store but my colleague verified with her she was in the right spot.

That is a story from today but people all the time asking for specific bottles but not knowing anything about them happens a lot. Once in a blue moon we do find 'em for them, but you can't give me nothing and expect me to find it. I do try to help these people but it makes me so dang mad though when it takes up over 10-15 minutes of my time(because I do try to help. I WANT them to find it) because it is needle in a haystack even in a small liquor store when they don't know the name or anything about it.

I am going to go to work tomorrow and find the dang bottle. I'm learnin' about ice wines...I am determined to find it. Is it in my NY section? PA? Germany? Eswatini?

There is a good chance this customer was just wrong about things but I will kick myself so dang hard if I did have what she wanted but acted like an asshole and said I did not.

The thing is, when I picture Ice Wine, I picture
https://tinyurl.com/3tc5xzwu

the super expensive slender bottles.

This ain't over yet...

I've never even heard of ice wine. But then again, I don't really know anything about wines. Is that something worth trying? Is it wine you store in the freezer and suck on it like an ice pop?

Ice wine is wine made from certain styles(reisling, cabernet france, etc) where the grapes are harvested when they are frozen over. These tend to be super sweet if i recall correctly.

the only true ice wines ive seen were like $40 for a pint. If you think spending that much for 2.5 glasses of wine is col, go for it. If it is really tasty i'd consider it worth it but I have not had an ice wine so I cannot say.

I worked at one for a few years about a decade ago. In fact, I remember that my first day was May the 4th (Star Wars day) in 2013.

When customers asked me for pairing advice, I'd refer them to my manager. One time when the manager wasn't in, a customer gave me a hard time for "not being helpful". I reminded them that I made $10 an hour and absolutely can't be expected to know every product in the store.

I know extremely little about wine myself. I look stuff up on the computer a lot of the time. I don't really drink wine myself so I can't say a whole lot about it, but I get through it just fine with accumulated knowledge working in liquor stores and the internet.

you should consider getting help with your
argonautweakend posted...

infuriate me.

and
argonautweakend posted...

so dang mad

issues
i understand people can be frustrating but getting so emotionally enraged cant be healthy

My buddy used to work at a liquor store back in the day and I'd go hang out with him every now and then. Some interesting characters coming in, to say the least?

I would not have thought that would have been the biggest peeve, BTH. I would have thought a mini-mystery to solve would be more fun than ringing up Coors, myself. :)

You'd think the mysteries would be fun, and sometimes they are but often they are not. I would never walk into another business and do this. I understand places like car parts stores and electronics stores can get confused customers. Confusion or lack of knowledge is fine, I like helping people. But I would never go into an auto parts store and go "last time i was here i bought a radiator for my car but I forget the brand." and then you show them all your brands, and it isn't any of those, and then they still hem and haw over it expecting blood from a stone. Then they either just get whatever or leave.

My biggest pet peeve about working in a liquor store was the amount of already drunk people that would show up. Or when someone would drunk drive into the building. Or how there'd be airplane sized bottles of empty liquor all over the parking lot. Or how people would bang on the door before opening to buy their lil pint to drink on their way to work.

argonautweakend posted...

Ice wine is wine made from certain styles(reisling, cabernet france, etc) where the grapes are harvested when they are frozen over. These tend to be super sweet if i recall correctly.

the only true ice wines ive seen were like $40 for a pint. If you think spending that much for 2.5 glasses of wine is col, go for it. If it is really tasty i'd consider it worth it but I have not had an ice wine so I cannot say.

Price various pretty dramatically depending on where you live. It's not nearly that expensive near me because we have local wineries that produce it. Not something you're really supposed to sit and drink a "glass" of anyway. It's considered a dessert wine and it's much sweeter than normal wines. When it's served formally, it comes in a small slim glass. Similar to an absinthe glass or small aperitif glass.

Jen0125 posted...

My biggest pet peeve about working in a liquor store was the amount of already drunk people that would show up. Or when someone would drunk drive into the building. Or how there'd be airplane sized bottles of empty liquor all over the parking lot. Or how people would bang on the door before opening to buy their lil pint to drink on their way to work.

These things are all annoying but they do not annoy me more than what I posted about even if they are more serious issues that potentially affect every one of us. But I guess working at liquor stores for 5 years has kind of desensitized me to the actual dark side of the business in a way.

argonautweakend posted...

These things are all annoying but they do not annoy me more than what I posted about even if they are more serious issues that potentially affect every one of us. But I guess working at liquor stores for 5 years has kind of desensitized me to the actual dark side of the business in a way.

Yeah if a woman asking for ice wine is more annoying than people drunk driving to and from your business and buying alcohol drunk then we have way different thresholds

Getting sexually harassed by men 20 years older than me was pretty peevey too

Well the annoyance is people wanting something but not knowing what it is called almost expecting me to be a mind reader. I guess this could be more of a general retail complaint but it happens way more at the liquor store than anywhere else I have worked.

That is not nearly as serious of an issue as drunk driving but for whatever reason it annoys me more. I guess working in a liquor store for so long has kind of desensitized me to the dark side of it all. If I have enough evidence to deny somebody from purchasing, I would. I have done this before, but only a handful of times because I have to follow a policy that gives me little room for error and falsely accusing somebody.

You got any Pappy in the back?

But it also comes down to when I say "pet peeve" the issue isn't supposed to be something really serious. Nobody would ever say "One of my biggest pet peeves is people who murder others". The definition of 'pet peeve' doesn't really clarify the severity of the complaint, but I've only ever used it for small but annoying stuff.

argonautweakend posted...

but only a handful of times because I have to follow a policy that gives me little room for error and falsely accusing somebody.

Yeah I was only able to do it once when I worked at a liquor store and it was a regular who got regularly denied and would just come back later so they didn't make a fuss

redline65 posted...

You got any Pappy in the back?

My store will never get Pappy or really any of the fancy bourbons that people obsess over. It makes my job so much easier knowing my product selection is fairly basic but I don't have to deal with multiple calls a day about those things since people generally know the stores in my chain they can acquire such things once in a while and ones they never will.

People having vague ideas of what they want or think they know and then having you trying to accommodate that is always annoying.

With my job at the bank it's always people calling in saying 'I thought my balance was ___' but it was never ___ so I have to figure out how they made that up. I've just given up on those. I say 'do you have any missing deposits? Checks outstanding? Charges that need disputed? No? Then it's right.' I'm not sure what the equivalent for your job would be though. Maybe 'we don't have it go away'

Most people understand we don't have it, but I always verify if the customer has a minute that it can be found at a store under 20 minutes away. The people who go "nah we don't have it" but don't even bother to use our system wide search to find it probably get the most flak from customers, but they are putting in bare minimum of effort so I can understand that.

I had a licensee(bar/restaurant) call and ask about an order they placed from a vendor for pickup at my store. They sent a guy in to get their orders and wondered where X order was. I was at first thinking my clerk made a mistake so I double checked the order and the physical orders in our back room and it wasn't there. Turns out it was an order not yet shipped, as he should have seen from his e-mails it was due on X date and it wasn't that day yet.