Favorite customer quotes

[Troy McClure SF]

I'm killing time, pretty much, in the deli. Pacing, pretending to look busy. Guy comes up to the counter and asks, "Do you take money?" No more, no less. "Do you take money?" How does one ratiuonally respond to this? No, really. How? No explanation. "Do you, an urban supermarket chain, take money, by definition, what is taken for goods and services, which are precisely the things that one would find in a supermarket?"

---

My deli co-worker is making this guy a sammich, and he's swiping his card on the debit terminal. Guy turns to my co-worker, who is still making abovementioned sandwich, nowhere near the register (which is closed and locked when not in immediate use).

"Hey, is this thing broken? It says 'Closed.'"

You ever hear of Lewis Black? He does this bit about the Dumbest Thing You've Ever Heard. It goes in one ear and gets stuck. You slowly drive yourself nuts from the brain outward. Your brian aneurizes itself trying to figure out what the hell it could mean. Three days later, "they find you dead in your bathroom." I instantly realized what inspired this. It won't get out. How could someone say something so stupid? How could Darwin have been so wrong?

I'm gonna go bleed out my ears now. I suppose if it weren't for his horse, he wouldn'ta spent that year in college.

Add your quotes here, not the run-of-the-mill, "Where's the bread"-in-the-bread-aisle. I mean truly inspired dumbness. Plus, it's conveniently pre-posted in the Pit, which is the only place such a discussion could ever properly take place.

[Seven]

I had the joy of handling tech calls from ISP customers.

There isn't enough storage on the SDMB drives for me to type out all the dumbass shit I've heard.

[kambuckta]

I had a classic just a couple of hours ago. I'm a *shock/horror* telemarketer (for legit. charities) and was doing my spiel to sell raffle tickets for the Red Cross, when the guy said, "Yeah, I'll take them, but how do I send the money?"

I replied, "We enclose a reply-paid envelope to make it easier etc".

He came back with, "But I'm talking to YOU, how come you don't put YOUR name on the envelope?"

"Because..." I patiently explained..."the money goes to the RED CROSS, not to me personally, SIR. If you were to send the money to ME, then it wouldn't be going to a charity would it?"

"Oh", he said. "Yeah, OK. I get it now".

Geez, if I was clever, I could'a made myself a few bucks tonite!
And they wonder why telemarketing has taken-off in recent years........BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE STUPID. SHEESH.

[dantheman]

When I worked in a video store and Malcolm X came out (1992), the customer said she didn't remember the other nine coming out.

[hardygrrl]

hardygrrl - "BigAssBank Customer Security, hardy speaking, may I have your account number please?"


brain stem on legs - "Is that on my credit card?"






hardy - "At this time, your account is thirty days past due. I can't authorize a charge until you make a payment."


on crack person - " But it's an emergency!"


hardy - "Ok, what's the emergency?"


on crack person - "I need a new pair of Nikes."

[BoBettie]

"My Microsoft is broken!"

"The Internet isn't working"


Stop the presses- the INTERNET is down?? Holy shit! And your Microsoft is broken? Well, I know how much you use your Microsoft, so I'll get right on it.

Thank you God that I don't work in computers anymore.

Zette

(PS- almost forgot the call I got once from a user: "My powerstrip is on FIRE!!!!!!")

[Elenfair]

As told by a worker at Archambault music store in Montreal:

Customer walks up to him and asks:

"Excusez-moi... avec vous une copie du CD de Carmina Urina?"

loosely translated as: "Excuse me, do you have a CD of 'Carmina Urina.' "

Urina, in french, is the past tense of "to urinate" - perfectly gramatically correct, in this case, if the songs were about some broad named Carmina, who was gleefully pissing.

I just about lost it laughing... Orff probably twitched in his grave.

E.

[Elenfair]

Preview is my friend...

That should be "avez", not "avec"

Carry on.

[Scarlett67]

Originally posted by jjtm
I'm killing time, pretty much, in the deli. Pacing, pretending to look busy. Guy comes up to the counter and asks, "Do you take money?" No more, no less. "Do you take money?"

I think he was asking whether he could actually make a purchase at the deli counter, or had to take his stuff to the regular checkouts. Most of the grocery store delis in this area only package your deli stuff for you; you have to pay for it up front.

----
I've told this one before, but what the heck: I make jewelry and sell it at summer festivals. At one show I was in my booth and making stuff while I sat there, as I usually do. I had three or four pairs of earrings going when a man came in and started telling me about his flea market about a hundred miles away; he was looking for vendors. I told him I don't do flea markets, and he looked around and said, "Oh, yeah, your stuff does look very nice . . . but you don't actually make all this stuff yourself!?"

I gave him the blankest blank look I could muster (to keep from rolling my eyes) as I held up my hands -- pliers in one hand, earring-in-progress in the other, beads and jewelry parts strewn all over my table. No, dumbshit, I'm just the troll that sits here and runs the booth. The talented artist is up in her enchanted tower.

I have another crazy customer who's a regular, but I won't discuss her in detail here. Suffice it to say that she could use some serious meds. She's a huge pain in the ass to deal with, but since she always spends mucho dinero when she sees me, I'll put up with her as long as her checks don't bounce.

[belladonna]

I worked in an engravers shop once back in college. We also made keys, with one of those huge, loud, counter-top machines that makes the whole room shake when you use it. One time I was grinding up a set of keys with my back to the counter, hands thrumming, ears aching--and I hear this half-hearted "hummph, excuse me, hummph" behind me. It was a guy who was trying to get my attention, but wasn't really brave enough to actually shout, you know? So I thumb off the machine, turn around holding five or six keys, with key-dust all over my smock and the guy at the counter smiles at me and says.......


"Do you make keys here?"

[Cheesesteak]

Used to work at Radio Shack, a woman and her daughter come in looking for plug converters for use in Europe. I mention that they really needed to get a voltage converter to go with the plugs, since Europe is on a higher voltage.

I get tons of push back, the girl says "I went to Europe before and didn't need a thing like that!" blah, blah, blah it goes on for like 10min. At that point mom says "Was that the trip where your hairdryer caught fire?"

[ApeHead]

My favorite from my ISP tech support days...

Customer: "I have a problem. I just deleted the Internet."

Only through superhuman force of will did I avoid responding: "Dammit! Now I'm out of a job!"

[SisterCoyote]

Hm.

At Disneyland:

SC: How can I help you?
Weird Woman: I need to find the castle.
SC thinks: We're standing in the Castle Christmas Shop. You just walked across the moat. HUH?
SC (baffled): Well, Ma'am, if you step back out the door and look up...
WW (huffily): No, I mean the other castle.
SC: Small World?
WW: NO. The OTHER castle.
SC: Florida?
WW: There is another castle in this park. I am supposed to meet my daughter at it. Where is it?
I ended up sending her to the miniature castle at Casey Jones just because that was the only place I could think of.

=====

Also at Disneyland:

"Where's Magic Mountain?"
(After the 100th or so time this question was heard...)
"Well, you exit the park and take the 5 freeway until you reach the 210..."

Usually, we just asked did they want Big Thunder Mountain, the Matterhorn, Space Mountain or Splash Mountain.

=====

And, a question that they told us we would hear, but I never believed it until I did:

"Are you open until you close?"

[Hamish]

I just used some of these in the bad customers thread, but I'll include some new ones:

From the magazine store I work at:

"Which of these magazines have ads for Absolut vodka?"

"I'm looking for a magazine with an article about art -- it's not an art magazine, it just has an article about art this week..."

Holds a movie with a huge pink label across the title that says Anglais/English: "Is this movie in English?"

This one a coworker told me yesterday -- "Look, I don't have any money. Can I take it anyway?"

"Can I take thismagazine and photocopy this article?"

After a magazine fell out of a shoplifter's jacket. "How did that get in there?"

From a shoplifter, after I told him to give back the magazine he put in his jacket, and while he was slipping a second magazine in there: "You're only accusing me because I'm black. You're racist."

After I was unable to answer a man's question about the compatibility of software for one of the 100's of programs on the French PC Driver magazine's CD: "You shouldn't be working here if you don't know the stock."

I get this one all the time. Montreal is 60% French-speaking, and the province is 80% French-speaking. So I shouldn't have this conversation once every couple weeks:
Customer: "I bought this earlier today, and I'd like to get my money back."
Me: "My company has a no-cash refunds policy unless a product's defective. you can excahnge it for something else, if you like."
Customer: "It is defective. It's in French."

Okay, this is more general stupidity than customer stupidity, but why do my customers feel they can share their political views with me? Especially the fascists and the conspiracy-theorists? Here I am, pinned behind the counter and required to smile no matter what. I do not want to know what segment of the population you think should be all killed off. I do not want to know what the Freemasons and Illumanati are doing. And for the last time, just because I am an English-speaker, I do not agree with you that anglophones will wind up in death-camps if Quebec ever separates. Thank you and good night.

And why is that at least once a month, someone will come into my store asking if we sell toothbrushes, always close to closing time? Why do so many people need toothbrushes in the middle of the night? And why do they come to a magazine store to look for them?

[zev_steinhardt]

If you love this stuff, you'll love Computer Stupidities.

Zev Steinhardt

[MrVisible]

Summer. Block Island, a little tourist trap off the coast of Rhode Island. Not too long ago.

The island has huge breakwaters, made up of VW Beetle-sized rocks, that extend a quarter mile out into the ocean, protecting the little harbor. Enormous feats of engineering, which the waves batter day after day, spectacular testaments to human perserverance and the usefulness of really big cranes.

I was working at a restaurant that had a spectacular view of the harbor. A woman was sitting at a window, eating lunch, contemplating the view. I could only wonder what thoughts she was entertaining; was she musing on the vastness of the ocean, the imponderability of its depths, the futility and nobility of man's struggle to hold it back?

As it turns out, no. She turned to a nearby busboy, got his attention, and asked:

"Do the rocks in the breakwater go all the way down to the bottom?"

[zev_steinhardt]

I used to do customer service for a fairly-large electronics retailer. I did CS for the catalog sales (so I didn't have to deal with customers face-to-face, thank God).

At one point, we included some software (for free) to customers who bought a scanner from us. One day I get a call from a customer who bought such a scanner. She complained that the software was for a PC while she had a Mac (the scanner was compatible with both). When I told her that the software was a freebie and that we didn't have the Mac version of it, she started ranting and raving. In the end, she demanded a written apology from the president of the company for sending her software she couldn't use. She didn't get it.

Another doozy was from a customer who wanted to return a game he bought for his granddaughters for Christmas. He said the game was defective. OK, no problem so far. I asked him for his order number, but he didn't have it. I asked him his name and he gave it to me. A search of the order database turned up no match. "Are you sure you bought it here?" I asked him. He was sure. Finally a lightbulb went off inside my head and I asked him when he bought the game. "Oh, about three years ago." (Our company only keeps the 1.5-2 years of data in it's active database). Sure enough, I checked the old orders and found his order. I patiently explained to the man that this was well beyond our 30 day return policy and that there was nothing we could do for him.

Another "winner" was the guy who wanted to return a reciever that he bought. Try as hard as I might, I couldn't find his order anywhere. Finally, it came out that he didn't buy it from us; he bought it from a Radio Shack in Nevada (our company is in New York). It turns out that someone at a third store sold him another unit which, he was told, would work with the receiver he bought from Radio Shack. Turns out that salesperson was wrong. He figured that since we sold that item, we had to take it back from him. Mind you, we didn't sell him either unit! He hung up insisting that he was going to send it back and that we were giong to credit his credit card. I don't know if he actually sent it back...

The ultimate winner was a customer down in the Virgin Islands who ordered a large TV (I don't remember the exact size, but it was over 40" and cost an extraordinary amount of money to ship). Anyway, I get his call and find out that the TV is sitting on the beach by his house and he wants to return it. Why? Becuase he can't get it in the front door...

Thank goodness I don't do Customer Service anymore...

Zev Steinhardt

[RickJay]

MRs. RickJay would like to repot that whilke working in the IT department of a school board, she was asked by a principal why he could not send an E-mail to Jane Smith.

She looked it up and discovered that there was no Jane Smith in the board's E-mail book. He replied; no, I know she doesn't have E-mail. How do I send her en E-mail?

Mrs. RickJay: But... uhhh... but... if she doesn't have E-mail, she can't receive any.

Principal: But *I* have E-mail, so I want to send her an E-mail. What's her address?

This went on for twenty minutes.

[Lissla Lissar]

From a friend who worked TechSupport (everyone who was at TorDope already heard this):

"It keeps saying, 'insert disc three', but it was so hard just getting the second one in..."!

[Troy McClure SF]

Originally posted by Scarlett67


I think he was asking whether he could actually make a purchase at the deli counter, or had to take his stuff to the regular checkouts. Most of the grocery store delis in this area only package your deli stuff for you; you have to pay for it up front.

Yeah, that's what I reckon he meant. Seems a bit silly when he was standing directly at the payment counter, with the register screen glaring at him about a foot in front of his eyeballs.

I swear, pretty soon I'm gonna be giving very SDMB-like responses to these schmucks.

[Neurotik]

While working at Knott's:

"Where's Space Mountain (or Thunder Mountain, or Small World, or the Haunted Mansion)?"

At Disneyland. This is Knott's.

[Hamadryad]

This wasn't a customer. This was an employee. But it's golden.

Me (at drive-through): I'd like a 9-piece McNuggets with hot mustard sauce and a small coke.

Her: What size coke?

Me (I know it's hard to hear through those things, no sweat): A small.

Her: And a nine-piece what?

Uh....
Nine pieces of hamburger. Nine french fries. Eventually the phrase "Nine pieces of your head on a stick" became a catch-phrase for a few friends and me.

Does McRestaurant HAVE a nine-piece anything else?

[NotWithoutRage]

Originally posted by Hamadryad

Does McRestaurant HAVE a nine-piece anything else?

They have Chicken Selects, too, but as I recall, the new incarnation comes in 4 or 6, and the old one came 5 or 10. Maybe those wings?

[Wabbit]

We still get the occasional person here who wants 'the Internet' on their computer. Haven't come up with a sufficiently snappy response to that one yet.

[Larry Mudd]

My all-time favourite is the guy who asked me how to connect his stand-alone fax machine (purchased elsewhere) to his computer (also purchased elswhere.) Being abnormally dedicated to the concept of Customer Service, I spent half an hour consulting service manuals for products we didn't carry, because the customer insisted that his wee thermal fax was "compatible." After confirming that there was no RS232IF upgrade available for his tiny fax, I asked him why he was so certain that he should be able to connect it to his computer-- perhaps the salesman that sold it to him led him astray? No: "Well, it's beige, and my computer is beige, so it should be compatible. It's false advertising if it's not."

Also a fave: The customer who insisted that repairs to their colour-laser copier should be covered under the terms of their service contract, after they ruined two of the drums & some other parts by trying to feed a T-shirt wrapped around a piece of cardboard through the damned thing. "But you said it could handle T-shirt transfers!" Sorry, chump, but you'd best be investing in some Freakin' Moron Insurance.

[Dragonblink]

"How much is a hundred-dollar gift certificate?"

[Derleth]

Larry Mudd: I have a black laptop talking to a white printer just fine. Apparently, your moron never heard of integration.

What would Dr. King say?

(LET ME OUT OF THIS COFFIN! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I'M STILL ALIVE!)

[Becky]

When I was working as a floormat, er receptionist, at a local animal hospital, we would often get phone calls from distraught owners certain that their little fuzzywuzzy was going to suffer a painful and untimely death if not seen immediately by one of our esteemed docs. We found it easier to schedule them in to an already tight schedule than to try to reason with them.

One of these owners arrived for the appointment with her little Bichon.

I asked, "What are you here for today?"

Her (distressed) response: "Pookie has dandruff!"

My brain melted.

[ladybug]

A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers told me she was having computer problems and asked me if I could e-mail her what she needed. So I asked her what files she wanted.

She told me I needed to send her the network because she accidentally deleted it from her computer.

I tried to explain that the network was separate and she just needed to restart and reconnect. She kept insisting that she deleted the network from her computer and wouldn't be able to do any work the next day unless I sent her another copy.

After about five minutes I gave up trying to explain it and sent her a few files. To this day, I think she thinks I was just being a bitch about it.

(I know she wasn't a customer, but she made my head hurt).

[Aphthartadocetist]

I used to work in a hobby shop. At the register I stood in front of an enormous battery display. Of course, people would, at least once a week ask me: "Do you have batteries?"
My two best retorts:
1. "No" to which I usually received a puzzled look as they realized there were batteries staring them in the face. Some merely walked away.
2. "No, I'm the new plug-in model", an outside-the-box answer which left them either thoroughly confused or jumpstarted their critical reasoning center (which all good satire should do).

May I suggest you all out there in retail land use these responces when appropriate!

[even sven]

Oh man, I've got two gems from today alone.

I work in an auto parts store. We had some hippies come in today and ask if they could borrow some tools (we will loan out basic tools, but not enough to disassemble your car in the parking lot). When I said "No", he said "Oh man, you gotta, like, buy stuff here?!?!"

And then some slimy man called me "Goddess-face". Goddess face? What kind of tumor does it take to warp a brain to the point that it thinks calling anyone "Goddess-face[b] is a good idea????

Let's see...my favorites from the video store was when The Mexican was out and someone asked "Do you have an Mexicans under the counter". Of course, it was also great fun to watch people constantly ask us "Where can I find Snatch?"

[Neidhart]

originally posted by SisterCoyote

"Where's Magic Mountain?"

Give him directions to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps.

[Largo62]

Sorry I have nothing to add, except to say this is one of the more entertaining threads I've read in a while. You could all take standup comic Bill Engvall's (sp?) advice and just say, "Here's your sign."

[hardygrrl]

One from today....

I work in the fraud unit at a credit card company. People committing fraud will call in and try to pull stuff with us. Morons.


This assclown calls in and is trying to pretend to be his father in order to take the account over. I can tell just by the voice - he sounds about 20, our true customer is 56 - he's full of it.


So I pry a little further. I ask him where he has his checking account (gives wrong answer) and where his social security number was issued (no clue). He still claims to be the customer even when I ask "I know you're not Mr Smith, who are you?".

So I tell him I need to review the account, conference call the true customer, explain the issue and bring on the idiot.


Exact exchange ...

me : Mr Smith?
both men : yes?
True customer : Gary, YOU BASTARD!

I had to hit mute and stuff a hand over my mouth.

[Neurotik]

Originally posted by hardygrrl
where his social security number was issued (no clue).

OK, I'll bite...how do I know where my social security number was issued? My card doesn't say...

[butter pie]

I work in a framing store. We have about three hundred custom frame samples on the wall behind the counter, and the entire store is absolutely nothing but frames of all shapes and sizes, except for a very tiny section with some art supplies. There are frames in the middle of the store, and all around you no matter where you stand.

This woman came in last week and walked up to the counter, and one of the other girls says "Can I help you?" and the woman says "Yeah... I'm looking for a frame..." and then she must've had a brain fart because it took her about three minutes before she described what she was looking for exactly.

I was walking by at the time, so I see this lady walk up and say "I'm looking for a frame..." with this kind of spaced-out expression on her face. I laughed about it then, but we actually have this quite a bit. I've also been asked "Where are your frames?"

[Medea's Child]

I work at a small drugstore of a national chain. Most stores in the chain are much bigger, many 2-3 times larger. There is a large chain supermarket across the street from my store. We don't stock much in the way of produce or milk. We don't stock any. I got into the following arguement with a customer one day.

"Where's your milk?"
"We don't carry milk [grocery store] is across the street and they even have a generator."
"I hate going in there, seriously, where's your milk?"
"We seriously don't have any."
"Not even in the back?"
"No. Sorry. Here, let me grab a flashlight to show you out."

Our power had been out for a good 15 hours at this point, in 70-80ºF weather. I don't know about you, but I refuse to drink milk that is *that* spoiled.

[WortMeWorry]

I made an ice cream cone for an order, however I unlike some of our crew made it the proper size. I hand the cone to the customer. She tells me the cone is Too Small. I assure her she was getting cones which were Too Big. She asks for the manager. I smile and reply," That would be me. ".
After several seconds of muttering and sputtering she replies.
" You can't be the manager. "
After more argument I turn to the crewperson in the window and told her I was going home, I couldn't be the manager.
Unfortunately it didn't work.

[kambuckta]

Originally posted by ApeHead
[b]My favorite from my ISP tech support days...

Customer: "I have a problem. I just deleted the Internet."

Hey, don't laugh, that happened to me last year, after my kid decided to screw around with the 'puter one day, compressing files and generally creating mayhem. While I could 'connect' via my ISP, there was no data coming through, and so, effectively, the internet had been 'deleted'. Big pain in the arse that was!

[delphica]

My favorite call ever.

I work at a college. We had a problem with one of our dorms, the phone service was out for quite a while, a few weeks. To make up for this inconvenience, we put a FREE cell phone in every RA's office (one per floor) for the students to use. I admit it was not as good as having your own phone, but it was FREE. In order to keep them from going missing, the students had to use them in the RA's office.

I got a call from a mother. She was hysterical. They were paying good money (she tells me) to send her son to college, and we have no phones, and so he has to call home on his own cell phone, and his cell phone bill is now $700 and she thinks we should pay it.

Me: But there are free phones!

Mom: No, there aren't. You owe us $700.

Me: Yes, there are. Every floor has one free phone. Your son can use it any time, 24 hours a day.

Mom: There are no free phones. My son has no free phone on his floor. You owe us $700.

Me: Ma'am, I've seen the phone with my own eyes.

Mom: I'm going to get my son on the line, and he's going to tell you there is no free phone on his floor.

Mom (to son): Tell this woman that there is no free phone on your floor.

Son (shocked): Mom! I would have to GET DRESSED if I wanted to use the free phone!

(pause)

Mom: YOU GEE DEE (she said "gee dee," which I love, because I say it too) LITTLE PISSPOT! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD YOUR FATHER BUSTS HIS HUMP TO SEND YOU TO THAT SCHOOL?? (and on and on)

Man, she completely forgot I was still on the line and finally calmed down and made her son apologize.

I loved that phone call.

[hardygrrl]

Originally posted by Neurotik

OK, I'll bite...how do I know where my social security number was issued? My card doesn't say...

Usually where you were born/grew up. We have a database that verifies social security numbers to names/addresses that also gives state of issue.


The first three numbers indicates which state issued the ssn. Each state is assigned a prefix block. I have the list at work.


Fun with fraud, I have it every day.

[Some Guy]

Okay, so I used to work at one of those big-ass chain bookstores - I'm sure everyone's seen the basic layout: reqisters and queue line near the exit (generally with a big sing indicating that the registers are there) , plus a big desk in the middle of the sales floor with a sign that says "INFORMATION".

That desk is there to give people information.

Regardless of this fact, any time the checkout line got more than three people long, someone would inevitably sidle up to the INFORMATION desk, and ask (if we were lucky they would ask rather than simply demand), "Can you ring this up for me?"

"No, sir, this desk is only for customer information."

"But I just need you to ring up one thing for me."

"I'm sorry, but there's no register here. All our registers are over there."

"You should have a register over here."

Arrrrrgh!

[castle_bravo]

The retail store I work in sells its own brand of soda and does not stock any two litre bottles of Coke, Pepsi, etc. We do carry the 12 can packs of them, however.

One day a customer walks through my line and asks where our two litres of Coke are. I politely inform him that we do not carry Coke, but we do carry the store brand. He says he wants Coke, so I tell him we do stock the 12 packs. He doesn't want a 12 pack and demands to know where the two litres are. I patiemtly tell him that we don't have any. He starts yelling and making a huge scene saying that we are a store so we have to carry Coke. I mean, yes we are a store, no we are not required to carry Coke, so don't whine to me about it.

===============

My all time favorite -

Customer - Do you print checks here?
me - Yes, would you like that printed for the exact amount?
Customer - Yes. (hands me the check)
Me - Uh, excuse me, but you have to sign the check.
Customer - What, you mean it doesn't print the signature for you?

Oh. my. god. What is the world coming to?

[MarkF]

Hmmm. Silly customer enquiries. Always more fun (IMO) when injected with humour while the customer is there.

Working in record shops offers many classic moments.

(Some of these may disclose my age btw )

Customer "Do you have maltloafs "Bat Out Of Hell?"

[When Herb Alperts "Rise" was released as a single, very popular as a 12" single]

14 Y.O. schoolgirl "Do you have a 12" rise?"

Me [blushing and shuffling slightly] "Well, um, no... but I can manage a 7"?

Customer "Do you have the Sex Pistols Bollocks?"

[dwc1970]

As a former office supply store worker, I have plenty of stories to share. What follows is just a small sampling from my archive of stupidity experienced in retail. Some I skipped because they are too long or were recurring problems that I dealt with.


A lady needed a backup tape, so I showed her the ones we had. She said it was described as 3.5" and holding 1.44 megabytes. I then asked her if she meant that she needed floppy disks. She said this wasn't what she was after. I showed her the disks and pointed out that they were 3.5 inch disks that hold 1.44 megabytes each. I had her look at the disks and I explained to her that floppy disks are the only type of storage medium I know of with these specifications. She insisted that this wasn't what she was needing, so I just gave up and thought, "whatever."

A guy asked me if he'd lose all his computer information if he unplugged his system. I told him he'd lose anything that wasn't saved, but everything on the hard drive will still be there. I was so tempted to tell him that he'd have to reinstall everything since the data would leak out of the electrical cords when they are unplugged. He probably would have believed me, too.

I had a moron customer who didn't understand how connecting to the Internet worked and how he was to retrieve email. I told him that the computer had to be connected to a phone line via a modem (unless he was using DSL or cable, which I highly doubted as this guy was too stupid for me to have bothered explaining this) I quoted him that day as saying "I thought email came through the computer, not the phone." Okay, whatever you say, sir.

We had clearance bins out on the floor one day. They were very clearly marked. One was for items under $3.00, one was for items that were $3.00 to $5.00 and one for items that were over $5.00, pretty simple for those of us who paid attention in kindergarten, but it seemed that some people were absent the day they covered counting numbers. I had two people on the same day who must have been confused by the complicated verbiage on the sign that read "over $5.00" and were asking me what it meant. Stunned by their utter stupidity, I was at a loss for words in trying to break it down into even simpler terms that maybe their puny brains might actually understand.

A guy ordered a couple lap desks, which are those boards with a pillow underneath them so that a person can lay it on his/her lap and have a flat surface to work on. The packaging showed someone using a laptop computer on the desk. When he came in to pick them up he thought that the computer came with the desk! They were $14.99 apiece and he thought that they came with a computer?! If that were the case my car would have been about $75 and my house could have been paid off within a couple of paychecks. Can people's IQ's really go this low?!

Well, that's only a couple months worth of highlights and this post is already getting pretty long, so I will just leave at this for now.

[Darth Nader]

"Does this camera take pictures?"

After a fairly confusing conversation, I figured out she was asing if it was a digital camera, or film-based.

One time, this clearly drunken shopper waved a cheap (US$8.96) universal remote about three inches from my face and demanded to know why it was so expensive. Knowing they were gonna be kicked out of the store anyways, I let them know the true reason: "Just to piss you off-- we heard you were going to stop by, and thank you!"

Then there was this shopper who asked me if it wouldn't be much cheaper just to buy the monitor and keyboard, and connect them directly to each other. "I don't need the modem, I just want to read email."

Also-- After installing Mandrake 8.1 last year, I found that I do in fact have the ability to delete "The Internet"... I did so, just because, but it seems not to have worked. Silly me, mistaking a shortcut to my KPPP dialer for the power to RULE THE WORLD!

[Dragonblink]

I was just reminded of another brilliant customer. I too worked at a big chain bookstore with prominantly marked registers near the exit and information desks on both floors. The upstairs information desk, which faced the top of the stairs, had a large sign which stated in capital letters, "ALL REGISTERS ARE LOCATED DOWNSTAIRS."

So I'm standing at the info desk and a high-school aged girl comes up to me and hands me a couple of CDs. "I'm sorry," I said, "I can't ring these up here, you'll have to go downstairs."

"But the sign says that all your registers --"

"Are located downstairs. That's right."

There was a moment of silence as she glared at the sign, then she stomped off downstairs. I have yet to figure out exactly what she thought the sign meant.

[Horseflesh]

Originally posted by Wabbit
We still get the occasional person here who wants 'the Internet' on their computer. Haven't come up with a sufficiently snappy response to that one yet.

Oooh, I get this one all the time. If I know the person and have some time to beat around the bush, this is my response:

Me: "You sure you're department budgeted for this?"
Him: "Uh, yeah, I think so..."
Me: "Okay, we'll just have to slap several hundred terabytes of hard drive space in there, install some OC48 lines, maybe a thousand or so processors, and 256 GB of memory. We'll need to look at battery backup solutions as well. Can't have the Internet going down because of a stupid power outage."
Him: "Really? All that?"
Me: "Yup. Where's your computer?"
Him: "Under my desk."
Me: "It's gonna have to move..."

Other smartassed responses:

Them: "My computers frozen!"
Me: "Don't touch it! I'll bring over a heat lamp now so we can thaw it out. Hopefully it's salvageable."

Them: "I lost my password!"
Me: "Have you checked behind your computer? Sometimes they fall out the back."
alternately:
Me: "Look in your purse or in the back seat of your car. They're always in the place you least expect them."

Them: "The Internet is down!"
Me: "Hmmm, lemme check." *Hold phone up to keyboard and tap random keys* "Hit Refresh Page now. How's that?"
Them: "Great! You got it going!"

Them: "The Internet is slow!"
Me: "Oh wait, the Internet Knob was set to Slow. Let me turn it up." *pause* "How's that?"
Them: "No, it's still slow."
Me: "Well, give it some time. It needs to warm up."
(I actually installed a knob from a junked microwave on our wall and labeled it Internet: Do Not Touch! with Off thru Fast hash marks so our visitors believed we had this wondrous thing.)



My favorite comment so far is from a user who knew a little about computers. Not stupid, just phrased poorly: "My mouse balls are dirty."

[yosemite]

Dear dear. If ever I feel like I am a bit of a dim bulb, this thread will remind me that I am not the worst out there!

When I worked retail I had some dumb questions, but I won't cite them here. I just had a few lapses in my otherwise polite and chirpy retail persona, where the real smartass came out. Fortunately, I didn't get fired. (Not that I was ever that bad...)

I worked at a fabric store. We had special measuring tables in the middle of the store, where people could bring up fabrics, laces and trims to get them measured and cut by an employee, who would write down the yardage amount and price of the fabric on a special slip of paper. The customer would then bring up the cut yardage (or cut lace, whatever) to the register and have it rung up.

When I worked at the register, customers were forever coming up to the cash register (which clearly did not have enough table space to measure and cut fabric) and want something measured and cut, and I'd have to send them to the cutting table. It was pretty irritating sometimes—we even put signs up saying that the register was not a cutting table, but people kept on coming up wanting us to cut their yardage. (Even huge-ass bolts of fabric—how did they see us making the space to measure it on that little register area?)

One day, a lady comes up to the register with a spool of lace and asks, "How many yards are on this spool?" There was NO room at the register area to measure anything (full of merchandise and clutter) so I couldn't imagine how she thought I'd be measuring it for her there. Something came over me, and I took the spool of lace, put it to my forehead (a la Karmac) and said, "It feels like ten yards." The woman blinked and said, "No, I wanted you to measure it." I then directed her to the cutting table.

Another time, the register cash drawer was open for a longer than usual time (I was counting something up, or looking for something in it). The annoying tone the register gives off when the drawer is open was going on and on, as the drawer stayed open. A woman waiting at the register says, "What is that sound?" I say (without thinking), "It's coming from inside your head!" I immediately apologized, amazed and appalled that those words came out of my mouth. But the woman said it was OK, and kept on laughing and tittering. As she walked out of the store, I could still heard her laughing.

[nightshadea]

I just posted this in the customers suck thread but I hrlped run a used video game business that my boss ran out of her home and a swap meet/flea market

First thng wed be asked is "do they work "

Other times wed get people who bnought broken or non working things from other places and swear they bought them from us

Or like the lady that bought a atari game and tried to put it in her sega genesis ...

When the cd doms and consoles came out it became a hassle ...... Lots of people thought you could put sega cd 3d0 ps1 ect in a pc and vice-versa

customer comes up to the stand holding the playstation she just bought

This dosent work she says.....

Yes it does I say since It was mine until last week .......

Well I tried tp play this <insert pc game here > in it and it didnt work

When she showed me the game I said thats not made for a ps1 its for a computer

Well the lady at wal-mart told me i could play cds in it.......

I patiently explained yes you can play music cds and and cds specfically made for the machiene

I guess she wasnt happy becuase she thought she could play computer games on it

She ended up selling it back to us at a loss .....