for all those workers out there who hate customers

In My Humble Opinion
1

honestly, i hate customers.
they always think you are telling them a lie when they notice something is sold out and confront you with it.

Customer: “excuse me mr. employee, i noticed you are out of (fill in the blank). do you have anymore?”
Me: “no, i’m sorry. we are currently out. please check tomorrow.”
Customer: “are you sure? you don’t have anything in the back? can you please check?”
Me: “sure, let me go out of my way to make you aquantence. i only work here. i don’t have other duties but to serve your fat ass so that you may go home and remember that you didn’t need it. is there anything else i can get for you while i’m back there? maybe a margarita or a used enima kit?”
Customer: “i don’t like your tone of voice and yes, i would like a used enima kit!”

does this happen to you? if so, speak out and let the commercial world hear you!!! you make you minimum wage and you should not get pushed around! tell all here.

2

http:/www.customerssuck.com

Yer pal,
Satan

*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six months, one week, two days, 3 hours, 10 minutes and 58 seconds.
7685 cigarettes not smoked, saving $960.66.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 5 days, 16 hours, 25 minutes.

I slept with a moderator!*

[Edited by slythe on 10-18-2000 at 07:40 AM]

3

Yeah, I hate people who think you are lying and constantly repeat themselves, as if your answer is going to change.

Another annoying thing is when they recognize you but you are not wearing your uniform and they still ask you for help, as if just being there means you are still working.

Person: “Hi, can you help me? I can’t find the ‘any’ key.”
Me: “I am not working right now.”
Person: “But I’ve seen you here before. You helped me then.”
Me: “I am not wearing my uniform, hence I am not working.”
Person: “It’ll only take a minute…”

ARGH!

Um, this almost sounds pit-worthy.

4

Oh yeah, I hate customers! I hate customers when I’m in the checkstand and they can’t seem to figure out how to use the credit card reader, I hate them when they argue with me when I tell them the cilantro is next to the carrots and I have to go over and show them. But I especially hate them when they I am at the Cutomer Service desk and I have to explain to them that the product they bought was NOT on sale. I mean, our sign system is not diffcult to understand. I understood it before I even started working there. The problem for me at least is that I work in a store in a particularly affluent neighborhood and those people expect to have you licking their asses raw while they shop. :mad:

5

Great site Satan I’m taking that one and posting it at work.

[Edited by slythe on 10-18-2000 at 07:39 AM]

6

The customers can’t help it if those damn things suck! It’s never clear which direction the card should be facing when you swipe it. It starts asking you yes-or-no questions and you’re not sure whether you should press the buttons that say yes and no, or if you should press the little arrow keys that are (sort of) pointing to the words yes and no on the LCD screen. And no, I’m not one of those people who can’t work their VCRs. And no, it’s not hideously difficult. But it surely could be designed a hell of a lot better, and I’m not suprised that some of the less-than-intelligent people out there are totally baffled by the damn things.

Of course, none of this detracts from the fact that customers do suck, especially the one who’s usually standing in front of me, painstakingly writing out a personal check for a single pack of cigarettes as I get later and later for school.

7

I am sorry. I must apologize for my husband. He always thinks that stores hide all the good stuff “in the back.” I don’t really know where he got this idea. Every time I’ve asked an employee, “Do you happen to have any more of this?” they always say something like “No, check back tomorrow” or maybe even “We should be getting a new shipment of those Thursday.” They never keep a whole bunch of stuff just hiding “in the back”, waiting for you to ask.

Here’s a typical scenario:

Me: (at store) I really like this blouse, but they don’t seem to have my size.

Him: Well, you should go ask that lady over there if they have any more in the back.

Me: They never have anything in the back! They always say, “It’s all out there.”

Him: Fine! I’ll go ask, then. hmmph

He goes over, bugs salesperson, who looks at him with this annoyed face and says, “It’s all out there.”

I try to tell him, but he just won’t listen to me. The strange thing is, now that I think of it, I’ve never worked in a retail store. The closest thing was a library, where people would always think I was hiding the book they needed. He’s worked in at least two retail stores: a hardware store and a (text)book store. Maybe they had back rooms filled with all sorts of good things customers had to ask for. (Actually, I do know that the book store did have quite a bit of storage, but mostly of things not being used that quarter, not anything that anyone was likely to buy.)

Perhaps this is subliminal revenge???

I’ll try to keep a tighter rein on him. He generally hates shopping, anyway, so that makes it easier to leave him at home.

8

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had no customers. Your employer would go bankrupt and you would be out of a job.

9

re: “stuff in the back”

While shopping in Old Navy, my daughter and I found some cute rainboots, but they didn’t have her size. Because they are a seasonal item, I asked the salesperson if they would be getting more stock or if that was it. She buzzed someone in the stockroom on her headset, and the stockroom person looked through some boxes for me to see if they had her size. So, in this case at least, there actually was “more in the back.”

They also keep additional stock of their jeans on the upper shelves (above the regular stock.) The salespeople will use a ladder to look up there if your size is out. It never hurts to ask. Of course, the corollary is, it is always appropriate to believe the sales clerk when she says they don’t have any more.

10

Spoken like a true customer. Yeah. That’s what this is about. We all want to be out of a job. :rolleyes:

It’s called venting and in reasonable doses it’s healthy.

11

The webdesign firm I work for is located in the back of an Antique Store (2 companies, 1 owner)and even though the lights are off in the front part of the shop and the sign says CLOSED, people will invariably try the door anyway.

I know nothing about Antiques, but they insist on browsing…I let them in to look but will politely tell them the owner is not there and I know nothing at all about his stock and will be of little help. I no sooner go back to whatever I am working on at the moment when the questions start.

What part of “I know nothing of Antiques, and can be of little or no help” do people not understand?

I realize that stores need customers, but we do most of our selling of wares on line!!!

12

It’s all a vicious circle.
We customers treat you customer service people like dick heads because of a slight we’ve experienced. Then you customer service people treat us customers like assholes because we treated you like dickheads, at which point we customers treat you customer service people like morons because … ad nauseum.
Can’t we all just get along? Before you know it these factions will organize and arm themselves. There will be guerilla raids, assassinations, riots in the street. Then where will we be? Ferchrissakes, with that kind of obstacle, I’ll never get extra whipped cream in my white chocolate mocha.

13

Hey! I’m a MODERATOR OVER THERE!!!

Kewl!

14

I treat customers politely, but they always dump on me.
I’ve actually had to go home from work a couple of times because I had panic attacks at the thought of facing another customer. I’m not kidding.
It is a sucky, sucky, sucky life, working retail.

15

I worked for Sprint PCS for awhile. Often times, the latest phones would be so popular, they would last for a day, maybe two in the stores before being sold out. Sometimes it would take awhile to get more phones in. The salespeople, wanting to assure more sales for them, would hold a few phones for customers that had requested it ahead of time, telling them to basically “get your ass down to the store now because the phone is in.” Ocassionally, we would “run out” of phones, but still have a few left over anyway being held for select customers.

Morale of the story: The store might actually have something held in the back, but they ain’t selling it to you.

16

You know, I’ve worked retail. I worked in a Waldenbooks for nearly four years, including three Christmas seasons (and if you ever want to see the most stressed people around, look at retail workers during the holidays). And yeah, I had bad customers, and I vented. Lots. I got sick and tired of the store looking like a bomb had gone off in it, or customers who didn’t understand the “wait in one line for the next available register” concept.

But you know what? Sometimes, just sometimes, there really is more of it in the back. Particularly in stores that sell things like consumer electronics, they simply don’t have room for all the stock on the floor. If you’re a register jockey, or just got into work, there may be unopened or newly-delivered stock in the storeroom that you don’t even know about. Someone may have bought the last model on the shelf and it hasn’t been restocked yet.

So you know what you can do? Take your lazy ass back there and look. Or call someone who will look for you. But to complain because somebody really wants to buy Item X, and they want to buy it from your store, validating your employment and making sure you get paid? Puh-leeze. Get over it. Because if there is one in the back, and you don’t look, I’m going to get it from your competitor, and I’ll make sure your superior knows that you couldn’t be bothered to check. Hell, at many stores, you don’t even have to leave your location to check the inventory; you can use a hand scanner or pull it up on a PC on the sales floor.

17

Me too, me too!!! Okay, it was only for one year, but Christmas time at a mall bookstore is freaking insane!!! I just remember having lines all the way down the length of the place.

Anyway, the worst was when the computerized inventory said that there were, in fact, a few copies of the book in question, and you run in the back and can’t find it and then back to the section and can’t find it and then you start running all over the damned place and you can’t find the freaking book that they want and then you remember that a couple of them were put on hold and you’ve wasted a half hour looking for this stupid thing and then you can’t sell it to the customer anyway… They hate that.

18

one thing that really wets my whistle are the people who walk around looking for what they want and when they don’t find it they confront you about it in this manner:

THEM: excuse me, i noticed that you don’t carry item X.
can you check in the back?
ME: (i already know we don’t carry it) i’m sorry but TARGET sell such an item.
THEM: well why not? (SAY IT WITH ME NOW!) WALMART carries
it and they sell it for $$$.
ME: we are not WALMART.

how many times have you heard this? whether you work at WALDENBOOKS, there is someone who says that BARNES & NOBLES
has it! like they want you to run to your stockroom and somehow magically produce such an item because someone else has it. uuurrgggghhhh!!! i know that everyone has heard that one!

as for no customers-no work! there is such a concept. i could be a school teacher. students aren’t customers. or i could own a monopoly such as the local electric company. yeah they have customers but when was the last time that the utility company(s) actually treated you like you were their most valuable and influential customer or “client”. yeah right. you get treated like you need utilities and we aren’t going to give it to you unless you pay our prices. point in case: OPEC .

it’s a good thing to vent. atleast we can share our bad experiences and laugh.

19

They keep telling me that the customers pay my salary, if that is so the cheap bastards owe me a raise!:smiley:

I work in a call center and we certainly get an earfull from some of the worst scum sucking leeches out there. But there are some great advantages to working on the phones. For example, if a customer is unreasonably abusive we have the option of just hanging up on him, essentially like booting him right out of the store on to the sidewalk.:stuck_out_tongue:

I sell satellite subscriptions so unfortunately we have to tell these people how to work their systems. Some can be incredibly stupid, especially considering the prevalence of dishes in the rural south east. Some of my favorite lines are: “What button do I ‘mash’”(yes every single on of them says “mash”, edjumacated people say “which button do I press”). “I need to renew my prescription”(instead of subscription).

THe most stupid people have the wrong number but refuse to beleive you:

“Thanks for calling Satellite TV, how may I help you”?
“Is this Sprint”?
“No, you have the wrong #”.
“Are you sure”?

Like they think I am going to change businesses all of a sudden!?!?:rolleyes:

20

Where to begin?

Please, please, all you people who loathe customer service…GET OUT!! There are so many jobs out there, they all pay better. Why do you stay?

Customers are everything you claim. They’re often rude and incredibly cloddish. It’s astounding how many signs you can put up an they won’t read. They want what the mega-store has at the mega-store price. They want service without paying more. Customers kids will destroy your store if you don’t watch out for them…the customers sure won’t. Every price increase is a rip off. Everyone else sells it for less. Directions on products are written for dummies, but it might well have been in Greek because the customers won’t understand. The customers want you to also be a library, an office supply store, a bank, a Post Office, and an intermediary on their personal phone calls.

I could go on and on. The customers suck site is a fun release, but you can experience a more personal touch by just getting your co-workers together for an evening to rant.

But then DEAL WITH IT. If you choose to stay, explain the customers how to use the product. Show them the big display right under their noses. Smile when they complain and try to make it right as best you can. Politely keep their kids in line. Listen patiently while they tell you about their knee operation. Make dealing with customers a challenge. We once discovered that if we hung 11 signs over the seed rack saying “All Seeds $1.00” that customers would finally quit confusing the weight tag on the back with the price! It felt great! We won! Keep performing customer service and watch how fast your business will pick up. People are starved for exceptional customer service. It is the single easiest way any retail business can be successful. Become an expert at dealing with customers and then ask your boss for a raise. You’ll get it.

Do it until you can’t stand it or stay and make it a career. Just don’t get so worked up about it. People are into their own lives and their own realities and it is no reflection on you. I love customer service and I hate it. Probably like most people and their jobs.