The store I work at sells furniture. So sometimes I get to answer the doorbell at the back dock. Mostly I don’t actually sell the furniture, but sometimes I’m the nearest warm body.
So one day last week, I opened the door, and found out that the customer had purchased something which came in a fairly large but rectangular box (as opposed to the large flat square boxes which contain table and chair sets).
She wondered whether it would fit in the backseat of her car. I had no idea, but the “boys” got the box and gave it a try. It failed.
She agreed to come back the next day, and tipped each of them-- one dollar.
Look, we’re a big box store and not really set up to accept/expect tips, but ok, you are feeling generous, and we do a good job, I can see it. But, we failed in our job and um, really? a dollar? Ok, if that makes you happy . . .
One of the guys was grateful for any windfall, the other felt bad because I didn’t get tipped (or just felt silly accepting a tip of any sort) and tried to offer me his dollar. No, really, just 'cause I stood around in the cold and the rain for a bit doesn’t entitle me to steal your hard earned dollar. Even if it is a mostly undeserved dollar.
I like to browse http://community.livejournal.com/customers_suck. I know I’ve been watching it for at least 7 years. Just keep in mind if you post there that you read the rules first, they are strict.
I only posted once, for something petty. I was a student worker at a college cafeteria at the time and saw a male drop a ton of plastic cutlery all over, and refuse to pick it up. I approached him and told him he should. Surprisingly, he did.
As a librarian, the only crazy customers I get are the students who think I can perform miracles when their paper is due in 23 minutes.
OK during a sabbatical from the car business I wound up managing the plumbing and heating department at Montgomery Wards.
One night I am working and a customer comes in a reads me the riot act because his water heater did not get installed that day. Now Wards was a fucked up organization, and my department was pretty well hosed due to how we had to do business. But with that said the one thing that worked like clockwork at my store was the water heater installations. If you called in before 2 I could get it done that day. No muss no fuss, it always got done.
Anyway I get this guy’s name and start trying to run down the fuck up. I can’t find this guy listed in my log, I go upstairs to the installation clerk’s office and I still can’t find anything with his name.
I go back down and ask for the installation address thinking it might listed under a different name. Still no joy.
So after 20 minutes of running like a madman all over the store trying to find out what was going on, I went back to the department to admit defeat and take whatever tongue lashing the customer wished to give me.
So I went to him and told him that I could find no record of him calling to have a water heater installed, I apologized and offered to get the information all over again and have an installer out first thing.
So he starts to unload on me. He is being very loud and pretty insulting. About 2 paragraphs in he says “I expect better service from Sears”
:eek: :dubious:
Excuse me sir, did you say you bought the water heater from Sears?
“Yes Goddamn it that is what I said.”
“Ah sir, you are in the wrong department.”
“Well where should I be?”
"I would suggest you try the Sears home Improvement department, which is in the Sears store about 3 miles from here, this is Montgomery Ward.
:smack:
He walked out and never said he was sorry for tearing me a new asshole.
Actually, you (and other people) should read Acts of Gord, about a guy who used to own and operate a video game rental and store. If you weren’t a believer in eugenics before reading the stories, you will be afterwards. Some people simply should not be allowed to reproduce.
Not to defend the jerk, but he was probably too humiliated to say anything to you after that. I know I would, even if I’d been perfectly polite about it the whole time.
Again, that doesn’t excuse his behavior, but maybe he realized at that point what scridnit he was being.
Caller’s $99 technogeek item is having hardware issues and needs to be replaced.
Caller: “This is how it’s going to go. You are going to have a new (device) hand delivered to me at my office WITHIN THE NEXT TWO HOURS (cx is 1,000 miles from me) AND you are going to reimburse me at my attorney billing rate of $250 per hour for the last hour and a half that I’ve spent arguing with your people about this!”
Me: That’s not going to happen.
What followed was a series of attempts by the customer to lecture me on Capitalism and the nature of Capital. I avoided the temptation to ask how the hell he thought that us spending hundreds of dollars placating and “reimbursing” him for an entirely reasonable repair process on a one hundred dollar device was in the best CAPITALIST interests of our company.
IMO asking if you can use a coupon is fine, but I think asking when or if a sale is going to be on is not exactly crazy but not exactly good manners either. You’re not *entitled *to a sale.
Taking it one step further (and this, again IMO, is actually taking it into crazy) was the customer who asked me if she bought an item at full price now and it went on sale later, would we refund the difference? Er…no.
Some stores do that, or did, anyway – I once bought a winter coat at a major department store; it went on sale a week or two later; I took back my receipt and was refunded the difference.
Of course, this was 20 years ago and the store (a Philly institution) has since gone out of business … but the customer wasn’t totally hallucinating this scenario.
Yup - this summer I bought a bunch of clothes on clearance on a Saturday - and was told by the cashier that they do additional markdowns every Sunday - and that if I brought back the receipt within 7 days,they could double-check and see if any additional markdowns were taken and they would refund me the difference.
I spent over $127 that day - and when I came back on Tuesday they checked my receipt and gave me about $17 back with no hassles whatsoever.
It’s a chain store, so YMMV. But a lot of chain around here honor a 30-day price reduction guarantee unless otherwise stated in the small print.
Lots of stores will do that, if the item goes on sale during their standard return period. Saves them from people who return the item at full price, and just buy a new one at the sale price. They won’t just mail out checks to everyone or anything - you’ve still got to call them or go into the store.
And asking if there’s a sale coming up - why not? Asking if something is going to happen does not imply you’re entitled to it. I’ve had salespeople out of the blue tell me not to buy something - that it was going on sale in a few days.
I was just lowly floor help so I don’t know all of the details, but in the liquor store I worked in during college this practice might get the manager in a lot of trouble. Using the number one selling brand of beer in the world as an example, the distributor would force us to sell cases that we bought at a discount from him for less than our regular prices – I am sure he couldn’t determine our price, but if he was selling us beer on sale, we had to sell that number of cases at a sale price. On the other hand, if we bought the cases at full price, the distributor didn’t want us having a sale. I think this must have been the distributor’s way of making sure that all of his customers got an opportunity to be the only store in a given area with Bud on sale, or something.
Typing it out here makes this look like a Sherman Antitrust Act violation, but that is how it was explained to me.
My only crazy customer story is a doozy – but the crazy customer is easily the luckiest person on the planet.
This liquor store sold lottery tickets, mostly the daily pick3 and pick4. – The big multi state jackpots hadn’t been invented yet and state big jackpot lotto games were not that big a seller here.
Prior to my term of employment at the store, our crazy customer (let’s call him Lucky – I got no clue what his name really was) had been purchasing pick3 tickets one day, reading the numbers from his trusty scrap of paper to our clerk when a mistake was made.
I do not know if the number was entered incorrectly, or if too many tickets were selected (if Lucky wanted to bet $10 on 234, we would print 10 $1 tickets – this would allow Lucky to cash the tickets singly without having to file anything with his Name/SSN) or, most likely, if the selected drawing was wrong (Lucky was in the habit of buying a lot of tickets for tonight’s drawing and then buying a lot of tickets for tomorrow’s in the same transaction) BUT Lucky ended up buying the mistakes.
I need to interject here that mistakes were like crack to a lot of the regular lottery players. They would get completely pissed off but buy them anyway because it was some sort of karmic prophesy.
Well, Lucky’s mistakes hit. $500 per ticket. At least 5 grand, probably more.
Lucky became a regular that day and I personally sold Lucky his favorite numbers on days (yes, multiple) when his number hit where he had 60 tickets. At least 30 grand – he would also ‘box’ his favorite number so they paid off at less than the $500 (not sure, maybe $200 or $250) per ticket.
I WISH I was that kind of crazy.
**Yes, I do like parenthetical comments. Why do you ask?
I think I may have posted this story here before in a similar thread.
About a year ago, a local clothing store was going out of business. I was at their going-out-of-business sale two days before they were closing their doors for good. I overheard an argument between a customer and a cashier.
The customer was buying a sweater for someone’s birthday next week, but she wasn’t sure if it was the right size or not. She wanted a gift receipt in case it didn’t fit.
The cashier (who was a lot more patient with her than I would have been), tried and tried to explain to her that a gift receipt wouldn’t do any good because the store was closing in two days. There would be no store to return it to next week. This was going to be an empty building next week. The customer just kept getting angrier and angrier and eventually the cashier went to get her supervisor. I left at that point so I’m not sure how the scenario ended.
Back in the eighties I had aspirations of becoming a pro bowler. I obtained a job at a pro shop to try to make a living . We fitted and custom drilled bowling balls for the customers usually while they waited.
I won’t call this lady crazy customer because I was probably as much at fault as she.
The lady came in and picked out a ball she liked because of the color. She asked if she could get that color in a 15 pound weight. Certainly, I went to the back and brought her one and she approved it’s color and bought it. I then asked if she would like me to drill it now or come back after the christmas run and have it drilled then when I had more time to work with her fit. She decided to have it done then. OK… I measured her hand and drilled it up really fast and brought it out. I even had her roll a few balls with it on the carpet to make sure of the fit.
All was OK untill I boxed it up and handed it to her. She said "I am sure HE is gonna love it"as she was walking from the counter.
RUT ROH!! this ball aint for her!. I called after her and found out she had purchased the ball for her husband. After I informed her that the ball was drilled especially for her fit and would not be of use to anyone else she was a bit dismayed.
I told her if her husband didn’t like it he could bring it back and I would plug and re-drill it for no charge.
We were both dumb asses that day!
PS: He did bring it back and I kept my promise. We both had a good laugh.
No, don’t backpedal. You are absolutely justified in your frustration. It’s not much to deal with as an employee when a customer wants to dicker, but when you’re a business owner, it’s a real slap in the face. Privately owned retailers as a rule offer far superior service to their big box competitors - else they do not survive. And yet there will always be that cross-section of customers who will try to haggle with you even if your price is lower than the competition.
I’m at Walmart buying about $18 worth of groceries. Just before she gets to me, I grab a chapstick and toss it in with my stuff.
Cashier picks up and rings up all of my stuff except the chapstick, and tells me the total.
I point at the chapstick and say “you missed that”
“That isn’t yours”
“Yes, it is.”
“No it’s not!” (angrily)
Person behind me says “Yes, it’s his”
I say “You picked up all the stuff around it, it’s mine”
Cashier, looking very disgusted, picks it up and adds it to the total, then rather than putting it in the bag with the rest of the stuff, snidely hands it to me and says “Here, this is YOURS”.
All while the manager stands incredulous about 6’ away.
That bowling ball story reminds me of when I worked at Kmart in the 80s.
A kid and his mother come in for a bowling ball. I helped them pick one out, sized it, and told them it would be ready in a couple days. I asked them what name I should put it under and the lady says “Lazzo, L-a-z-z-o”. No problem.
I get a call at home two days later from a co-worker. “This lady and kid are here to pick up their ball and I can’t find it anywhere!”
Me: Really? I remember them and I set the ball in the back for Dennis to drill.
Co-worker: Well, I can’t find it so I’m going to drill them another one.
Me: Okie-dokie.
The next day I’m back at work and look in the back.
Me: “The ball is right here, Dennis drilled it.”
Co-worker: “No, that one says Lazzo. They said they were the Vukovichs.”
Third co-worker who overheard us: "You dumb-asses. That was Pete Vukovich’s wife and their son (Pete Vukovich who pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers at the time). The kid’s name is Lazzo.
:smack::smack:
I don’t know if these qualify as “crazy customer” so much as “rude customer,” but I’ve had people come into my bookstore and ask to borrow a pen and piece of paper so they could write down the names of some books they liked and order them online from someone else later.
I also had someone ask if it was okay to take the subscription cards from magazines on my rack so they could go home and subscribe (Sheesh. It’s five bucks. Just buy a copy and subscribe starting with the next issue!).
The ones that bother me even more are the liberals who come into the store and hide or turn around the Sarah Palin books – and the conservatives who do the same with the Ted Kennedy books. Good grief. How petty can you get?
Had a nice moment last summer. A couple of women from New York City were in my store, and had made a few comments about how “quaint” the “little bookstore” was. One of them said “I assume you don’t have a copy of The Iliad?” Not “Do you have…” but “I assume you don’t have…”.
It warmed my heart to say, “Which translation were you looking for? I have several.”
Yes, my Montana bookstore has The Iliad. We have indoor plumbing, too.
