Kaitie and I have noticed – repeatedly – a strange phenomenon. At night and on weekends, the employees at our various AAFES establishments are friendly. They smile at you when you approach the counter, ask you how you’re doing or at least answer when you ask them, and thank you for your purchases. This seems to be even more true at the 24-hour Shoppette. They’re like cheerful vampires who come out at night and feed on the smiles of happy customers. What’s even weirder? It happens in the food court, too.
Ok, in all fairness, I should admit that over the years I’ve come to know many very pleasant AAFES employees. The entire group at Laughlin was as nice as could be, and a lot of the ones here are, too. I can think of a few bases I’ve been to (I really should say “posts”) where that’s not the case, however. It’s just that I can’t think of a single time when I’ve interacted with an AAFES employee outside peak hours and had them be anything less than courteous.
Of course, I’ve yet to meet RobertM in person… 
-Farva
Great Scott! First!
I know i like working Mid Shift on my base because i don’t have to deal with nearly as many people. It especially makes working the gate a lot more pleasant.
Remember when everybody raced for the first comment?
That being said, I think this is the first time someone has been featured by name in the blog portion. Can I be featured in a CAP strip!?!? Please!!
lol
Todays training topic:
You and Doc_brown as of 0630Z ish now have your submitted posts from 2300Z ish showing up.
Thoust had to wait for the UK sunrise to be unmoderated.
Its a scary thing, the deadly F I R S T filter, and you said it twice, but not in the old sense!
Other than that.. good post & LOL.
AH. thats why it was under moderation!! haha I couldn’t figure it out…
Dude, that’s why a couple of the Mildenhall night shift ladies were at my wedding. They are always so friendly and nice, that we became friends. Everytime we go to the shoppette we have a habit of staying longer than normally intended, because we’ll just sit there and chit chat. Especially when things are really slow.
Could it be that the employees you speak of are AD folks with a second job?
That was me up in Alaska. PT at the pizza place in the bowling alley. (I also did it at a place at Robbins, but that was under services) Cool thing was that we were right across from billeting, so everyone TDY for Cope Thunder (Red Flag AK now) would eventually find their way over. Got to meet lots of cool folks af many different nationallities.
And my policy was always be extra nice for the cops, fire department, and hospital folks. Never know when you might need their help.
A few of them are actually local nationals and then I believe a majority are dependant spouses. At least the ones here at Mildenhall/Lakenheath area.
I like the “No Cash Back” sign. While Minot is good about being able to give cash back, McConnell was horrible. If they did give cash, it was always small bills, like 1′s and 5′s. I wouldnt put it past them to give out quarter rolls in lieu of bills.
“Vulgar Vulture.” “Minot.” I’m starting to recognize where you work(ed) out there.
I don’t think so. I tried to get cash back yesterday before going out to alert. I went to the Shoppette, and both registers weren’t giving cash back, and the ATM was out of service.
Our shoppette sucks. lol.
Never tell me you stopped at the shopette before alert??? *gasp*
Or was it before pre-pre? Don’t forget your briefcase! Does the “shopette” still have the furniture store in it?
Make the memories stop, make the memories stop!
McConnell has been pretty good about it whenever I try to do cash back, although I only ever do cash back for like, five or ten bucks (lunch money, pretty much).
Hey AFP, you’re a former Chinese linguist at McConnell? Just happens that so am I. Where do you work at?
crap. your gravatar again. 1999 episode on CC tonight, Bender in the Robot Fight League.. that very image of Bender holding up APPLAUSE!!! (next one the PILOT! Original!)
songf*ck time… its a small world after all… (repeat over and over again)
I just notice you got your gravatar turned the other direction. Now you can “observe” the CoinForce ad………..
Ususally if I’m getting cash back at Minot, it’s first thing in the morning before 0700; that might be why I have better luck. As for McConnell, they we horrible about cash back for quite some time, regardless of when I went in. I know they got a new manager shortly before I left, so the cash back issue may have been resolved. Or maybe I was just unlucky 90% of the time.
Hmmm……Minot…..McConnell…….you don’t happen to drive a vehicle that looks like a cow do you?
Looking forward to meeting you in person one of these days!
It’s true, it’s true. The evening-to-closing shift in my Shopette has this wacky guy with the glasses talking to every customer in the line.
Agreed– it seems at my shoppette this lady makes it a point to engage with all the customers. She’s alittle but on the elderly side but always very polite and cheerful
Did I link to the correct AFBlues, or an alternate universe? People saying nice things about AAFES?
IMHO
I just thought of something. Does RobertM stand for Robert Mitchum?
LOL
I am no more a movie star than the RobertM below is an organist. (‘sides, Mitchum dised in 97)
I am Robert M(something), really, and around HQ I could be called Robert Mayhem.
We’re always happy and polite over at powerzone
Hope you enjoy the extra dollars in your paycheck Friday… You’re welcome.
I have my fingers into everything. (STS)
I had forgotten friday is pay day
It can happen. When I worked AAFES, management was trying to squish my soul by being as useless and annoying as possible. But I prevailed! I was always cheerful, always happy, and I always always treated my customers with respect. (It’s hard to stay angry at someone when they’re being so gosh darn nice to you!
)
Everyone else I worked with, however, was as grumpy and apathetic to customers as you could expect. >_>
However, I dumped AAFES as quick as I could. Ugh. Terrible job because of terrible management.
@CadetMajorMcClure Well for my name Also being RobertM mine stands for Mitchell
now, everyone searching for me will find you, Robert Mitchell… ba-ha-ha-ha!
Working civilian foodservice, night shift is kinder because we have time to be. I pull both shifts, and the fact is, at night I have time to ask you about your day. During lunch, I don’t have time to use full sentences. Even if we are slow at the exact moment you come in during the day, all I’m worrying about is how much longer you’ll be before I can go back to prepping food. Makes all of us a bit short.
If you ever want service with a smile from day time AAFES employees then come to Misawa AB. I don’t think I’ve ever met more friendly AAFES folk.
He said Posts. You mean the Army PX’s have not so nice employee’s??? *GASP*! This is not true! They ignore you when you ask questions about products, giving you that oh so peaceful shopping experience of not having to listen to them talk. Or if they do acknowledge you, it’s a very short answer of “I don’t know, I don’t work in this department!” then walk away. Or the really super sweet ones that take your product to the back to check on the price (because we have very small PX’s here in middle Franconia, Barvaria, Germany with no price check machines) and don’t return for 10 minutes and then says, “I don’t know.” I am shocked that you, Farva, would slam the Army and their lovely PX’s in this forum.
As a fellow ground pounder, I second everything the Chief just said, but I do have to agree with pretty much everyone else about the night shift folks. I was the PMO’s night shift duty officer for 18 mos at Ft. Useless (oops, I mean Ft. Eustis) and the three ladies that rotated the 2400 to 0800 shift in the Shoppette were awesome.
This isn’t about customer service people, but since the topic today is AAFES, here’s my latest shocker. I ordered blues MSgt (First Sergeant) stripes from the AAFES website, which were backorded at time of order (2 days ago). I ordered them because my local MCSS hasn’t had them in a long time and doesn’t know when they will. Today, I got an update that they’ve gone from backordered to “no longer available”. How is that even possible?
The AF did away with Shirts? Well, I was going to string out the rest of my career doing special duties. Guess I’ll have to find something else for SNCO…………..
Maybe you can find SMSgt or CMSgt first shirt stripes, and cut the diamond out to stitch onto your MSgt stripes?
I am looking for your name on that TSgt promotions list Farva! I hope to see you on it!
Nope. My career field is God-awful for promotions. I had no hope this year.
SSgt Re-cert for you to eh. Ya me to, Congrats?
I was more than 40 points off. I’m sure I would have p***ed someone off and lost the line number anyways. Besides, I like being the D student =)
I noticed that people at Peterson AFB AAFES are a lot friendlier! Not just night shifters!
Congrats to those who made Tech! So, did Coffman make it??
Well, at Semyor Johnson AFB the three AFFES people I did intract with, were “sorry” I had to wait for my pizza to be cooked at lunch time> The woman in the uniform shop was only waiting for closing time and didn’t even ask if she could help me. I haven’t checked out every person there but becouse of the demographics it seems that wasn’t the worst. At Fort Benjiman Harrison PX and comissary, their were only 4 or 5 kind people and the 20 to 30 others were horrible. I was chewed out from a shelf stocker for riding in a electic whellchair when my feet were hurting from a surgery I had a few years ago. So the story was my dad was recovering from major heart surgery and he had sit in it for a while but he had to stand up for ten mins, so I decided to rest my feet and take the chair for a while, keeping it with us. Well so i get in a cart jam and the stocker said that i shouldn’t be in the whell chair and said it in the nastyiest way possible. HATED THAT PLACE FOR THE REST OF MY TIME THEIR>
I’d be like, “Excuse me, but I have a medical issue, so back off!” What a douchebag!
And I still wanna know if Coffman is a Tech Select…that’ll probably piss Barbie off!
He doesn’t have enough TIG.
Awwww…now Barbie can’t get him back by buying all the Tech stripes close to his sew on date! Oh well, maybe next year! I’m sure the other people he pranked would like to get in on that.
Ha, my wife started her first day at work at the BX today, so I’ll refrain from snarky AAFES comments for the time being, but she thought the strip was pretty funny too.
You’re right about Langley. I’m TDY here and the employees were very nice.