True enough. When I did tech support, getting around customer ignorance was something of an aquired skill. Some people had pretty ingenious methods. One guy would get users to tell him what they had typed – backwards!
This was a very smart move. It is extraordinarily difficult to proofread your own typing*. One commonly used proofreading trick is to catch spelling errors by reading the text backwards.
*I just know there will be a typo in this somewhere.
Does anybody else keep reading the OP’s name as Captain Doe Snot?
Just me? Alrighty then.
Just to give a different way of looking at things, it has been my experience that 1% of the customers cause 99% of the headaches. The customer is always right? Bullshit.
In my business we have gradually eliminated the 1% “true problem client”. Let my competitors have 'em.
I strive for excellent word of mouth advertising by the 99% of the people I deal with and wish to maintain. It has been my experience that the 1% problem folks talk with others of their ilk.
Granted, this may only be true in my line of work. YMMV. Professional driver on a closed track, etc.
Years ago, I was working at a grocery store. Like most supermarkets that sit on oh, about seven acres of land, this place had everything imaginable. Food, liquor, small appliances, hardware, video rental, some clothing, photo, and, in the summer, plants and sod.
A customer wheels up to me with her cart and asks where the tools were. At least I think she asked a question. “Tools?” isn’t the most articulate way of expressing a question when you’re in a seven-acre wonderland of stuff to buy. I direct her to Aisle 19, where we had basic things like screwdrivers, plungers and picture-hanger wire, and she trundles off. Ten minutes later, she finds me again and looks peeved. Again, she asks where the tools are. I said Aisle 19, and that if we didn’t have what she needed, the True Value two blocks away probably would.
“No. Tools! Tools! Bat’tools!” The mangled word “bat” jogged my mind to a promotion the store was running - we had a special deal on towels. Bath towels. I say “Ah! You want the tow–els. They’re at the end of Aisle 24.” It was a pretty good deal, and most of the store staff had already glommed onto the nice dark blue ones, leaving a vile orangy-peach and faded cranberry. Ms Bat Tools wasn’t too happy about this either, but she did accept a rain check.*
Same store, different day. A fairly elderly lady is hounding me to tell her where the Walgreens batteries were. “Ma’am, those would be at Walgreens, across the street.” :smack:
- We got these towels in crates built on shipping pallets. Picture a 4x4 foot pallet with cardboard sides nailed to it and filled with towels. We just dragged them out to the sales floor and watched as the whole county turned out to gobble up moderately priced towels of moderate quality. It was like some sort of horror movie, the way zombified people were snatching the things as if six bath sheets would protect them from the nuclear armageddon that was going to happen in the next week.
And when we ran out, they got MAD. I’m standing amid five of these huge crates, so you’d think it would be fairly obvious that we did have a lot of towels at one point and weren’t running a bait and switch scam by offering towels at two bucks each, but only having five in stock.
“You’re hiding them in the back!!” No. These damn crates of towels are so big, that when they arrive on the truck, they are pulled immediately to the sales floor - there’s just no room to stash them in back. “I don’t believe you!” <sigh> Yes, you’re right. I’m hiding towels! The manager’s office is stuffed with those fluffy, thirsty towels that you crave! I’ve hidden wash cloths in pill bottles in the pharmacy! AND YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY! Hahahahaha!! :wally “I wanna talk to the manager!” I’m sorry, but he seems to have been smothered when we stuffed towels into his office. Guess we should have let him out first.
During a recent visit to a local Asian restaurant, I overheard this exchange between another customer and the waitress:
Customer: Excuse me, what is this ingredient? I don’t believe I’ve ever had it before.
Waitess: Binkard.
C: Binkard?
W: Binkard.
C: Binkard?
W: Binkard.
C: Binkard?
W: Binkard.
C: Binkard?
Me, who has had quite enough of this: “BEAN CURD.”
(Still not sure why she didn’t say Tofu)
And right now I’m looking at a 2-disc jewel case that’s continuously trying to dissasemble itself. Every time I need Disc 2 I have to spend 30 seconds carefully re-aligning everything so the case properly closes again.
But yeah, both parties can end up sounding pretty stupid when a basic lack of referential common ground renders them incapable to communicate the idea that needs communicating.
Nope, sorry, I think you are wrong here. You are being way too literal. You refers to God, and it would have made sense…it just would have been a different movie altogether.
I’ve been opening CD’s for years, and just 6 months ago discovered that you press in on that little center clustery thing to release the CD…I’ve been prying it up by the edges for years, cuz no one, my children included, told me or showed me any different.
:dubious:
I have never pushed down in the middle of the CD to get it out. As a matter of fact I just tried with a number of different CD cases and it didn’t work for any of them. Now some, especially 2CD cases might do this, but I have always picked them up from the side.
I agree with you to a point there, flickster, but there’s got to be a cutoff at what level of stupidity you are willing to tolerate for a certain amount of time, and I believe the magnitude and duration of this particular incidence of stupidity didn’t warrant anymore tolerance. What’s she going to do? Complain to her friends that the folks at “CD World” are rude because they won’t tell you how to open it. That’s something I wouldn’t want anyone to know if it were me! She probably felt extremely stupid after she figured out how to open it and if not then you don’t really want her anyway. He is just an employee anyway.
“He” is a “she”. But other than that, yes. Thank you Merkwurdigliebe.
As far as the 2 disc cd cases go…I still sometimes have trouble with those. With some, you get to the second disc one way, and with others it is the exact opposite way. There is no way to know until you exert a fair amount of pressure onto it. They (that middle tray thingie) break off easily but as long as you don’t break it in half they are quite fixable…they’ll snap right back in.
Me too. I wish they’d be consistent with which way that middle plastic piece flips open.