Really the most common ones in my store are the people who aren’t sure what they’re looking for. I regularly get stuff like:
They were talking about this book on TV last week. It’s new, it has a red cover, and it’s about that guy that used to work in the White House.
My friend recommended I read the series about the dragons. Do you have it?
Sometimes they’ll just remember the author’s first name. Sometimes they’ll tell me one of the main characters, but tell me that’s the author. Sometimes they just remember a couple of words from the title (or worse yet, synonyms of words in the title).
I have come to enjoy those. They’re like a puzzle or brain teaser. If I’m not too busy, I’ll work on them for a while, and when I actually find one of those books, the customers are incredibly impressed. That’s how we get repeat business, because the big chain stores won’t (or can’t) do that.
I’ve got countless bookstore stories but one of the best ones (which happened to a colleague, not me) was where a woman asked for help finding a book which she got and then turned to my colleague and said
Customer: Great, now could you get me a copy?
Colleague: What’s wrong with that one?
Customer: I don’t want a display copy dear, I want one to take home.
Colleague:
Apparently this woman thought that all the books on the shelves were for display and that we must have had another bookstore in the back that the customers weren’t allowed into. This would have (possibly) been understandable if it were a small bookstore and there was only one copy of each book, but I worked in a pretty sizeable store and there were clearly lots of copies of most of the books on the shelves.
So you take that copy into the back with you, put some kind of a special sticker on it, maybe wrap a little plastic around it. Then bring it back out and sell it to her.
The very first job I ever had as a baker’s assistant, was in a restaurant. One of our specialties was big pieces of home-made pie. So one of our best waitreesses comes back with a piece of blueberry pie that has had one forkful eaten, from the tip. She said the customer asked if it had been warmed in the microwave, and when she said it had they said “I thought so, I could taste the microwaves!” and demanded another piece of pie. So Helen put it in the freezer for a minute, trimmed the tip, put it on a fresh plate, and gave it back to the guy. He was perfectly happy with his “new” piece of pie.
To give the customer just a little credit, he complained directly after the first taste. He didn’t eat three-quarters of it and then say how bad it tasted.
That used to happen all the time at my sunglass store. Of course, we did keep extra stock of some styles- ie. the ones we sold a lot of, but if we kept multiples of every stock number we’d need a forty-foot warehouse behind the twenty-foot shopfront.
-“But I want a new pair!”
-“These are new, sir.”
-“No they aren’t. They’ve probably been tried on a hundred times!”
-“No, they’ve been tried on a dozen times at most. We clean each pair thoroughly, and we won’t sell a scratched or otherwise damaged item.”
-“That’s still too much.”
-“Well, sir, you don’t have to buy them if you’re uncomfortable with that.”
-“I want to see a manager.”
-“I’m the manager, sir. If you like, I can call the district manager. I can save you a lot of trouble, though.”
-“How?”
-“Well, he’s going to ask if you’re wearing pants.”
-“What? Why?”
-“Because then he’ll ask if you asked the cashier for a ‘new’ pair of pants when you bought the ones you’re wearing.”
-“What does that have to do with anything?”
-“Well, the ones on the rack were probably tried on by other customers before you bought them, just like these glasses; I can personally guarantee, however, that this pair of sunglasses-unlike the pants- didn’t go anywhere near another customer’s balls.” long silence
-“Er… do I get a case with them?”
-“Yes, sir, and a one-year warranty.”
-“Well, alright. Do you take travelers’ checks?”
I must be a right dummy I didn’t understand a word of some of the computer related stories BUT heres my contribution.
Working in a holiday camp in the bars many,many years ago.
I’m behind the bar in a show bar,the whole area is jam packed shoulder to shoulder when a woman that I’ve never ever served before in my life let alone in that venue says to me
I’ll have the same again(NO please or anything)
I’m sorry but I didn’t serve you last time,what are you drinking?
Beer.
What kind of beer?
I dont know.
Well was it Bitter,lager,mild or Stout ?
I dont know.
Well what colour was it,Black,Brown or wheaty?
I dont know.
Pointing to a pint on the bar,was it like that ?
Yes.
By this time there is a huge tailback of thirsty customers so I pour her a halfpint and ring her money up.
She takes a sip,No thats not it I dont want this.
I pretended not to hear and served someone who wasn’t obviously brain dead.
And we dont get tips as a norm barring in the U.K.
Sainthood aint in it.
Of course what we meant was made on the premises. No frozen pies we took out of a box and heated up. I made pie crust from scratch, cooked up big batches of pudding for the cream pies and big batches of cherry and apple pie filling. I whipped up meringues, I cracked eggs,measured sugar and spices, and so on.
Anyone want me to bring grasshopper pie when I come back?
Recently, I ate at a restaurant in a National Park which had house-made salad dressing, I think. Now that I go to post that, I’m not sure, but it seems like there was at least one sentence on the menu where “home” would have fit but wasn’t presumably quite accurate and was replaced with “house”. Home and house may be synonyms when discussing where people live (even if it rubs this apartment-renter the wrong way), but they are not interchangeable in idioms.
And then we left the National Park and saw a couple of places advertising “Antique Tables–Made Daily”–Um, no, I think you’re a little unclear on the concept.
I was under the impression that in some places (like Saskatoon) no longer allow restaurants to call it “home-made.” It has to be “home-style” or something else, since obviously very little food sold, outside of bake sales, is actually home-made.
No, thanks, but you reminded me of something. There’s one grocery store I know of that usually has tart, red cherries, and for only a week or two. I’ll have to drop by there and see if they’re in yet.
I make the crust from scratch, too. Wish I knew how to make the bottom crust a little crisper. (metal pan, pre-bake it slightly?) Top, edges, and filling I’m pretty good it, but the bottom gets just a little soggier than I’d like.
Okay, then, I’m still confused. You automatically disbelieve that anyone who says they haven’t screwed up a system enough to require a complete reinstall? Why couldn’t they just have been careful?
True, prebake them slightly, but here is the great secret… put some dry uncooked rice (1/2 cm or so) on the crust’s surface. It absorbs the steam as it escapes from the pie crust, so it doesn’t sit there and steam the surface. Don’t use instant style rice - it will stick to the crust, ruining it.
A while ago I posted a thread about me not wanting to pay $200 for sunglasses that a dozen idiots have put their paws all over, even if the clerk has “cleaned” them by wiping with a grimy, dirty rag that’s been collecting dust by the register for six months.
Pants are a lot less fragile than polycarbonate sunglasses, not to mention cheaper.
I didn’t read it as disbelief of someone claiming that they hadn’t done that (something like “Oh, no, I haven’t done that. I try to be very careful.”) but rather of anyone claiming it would be impossible for that to happen (the “I’m too cool/wonderful/godlike for that to happen” angle). Basically, someone with the attitude that they’re all that and a bag of chips, and they never have and never will make a mistake.
I would, if you’re assuming that your talking to someone who uses their computer the way potential hires would be. No amount of “careful” is going to prevent it, eventually, something is going to get FUBAR’d.
Possible to avoid if you’re just using a small set of end-user applications, but if regular jiggery-pokery is what you do, then “Nothing bad ever happens to me” is a bit of a whiffy answer.
I installed Linux a while back with the intent of finally learning how to use it. Even Ubuntu/Kubuntu (tried both versions), the most user-friendly distro, got buggered up enough that I had to do a full reinstall three times, all while I was simply learning how to get things configured.
