Hilariously stupid customer stories

In your zeal to look too smart for your own good, you apparently missed this part of my post;

Try reading for full comprehension before engaging ego.

When they ask me to do what I’ve already done 6 times, I just count to 6 and say “OK, that didn’t work” :smiley:

I used to work in a drugstore, and I got this phone call:

Miss Anna Cephalic: Do you carry Vanderbilt perfume?
Me: Yes ma’am
Anna:What sizes do you carry?
Me: 1.7oz. and 3.4oz.
Anna: Which is bigger?
Me: :eek: Err, 3.4?

I wait tables. On more than one occasion I have had people ask me if the t-bone steak has a bone in it.

Do you tell them it has tea in it?

As someone who works in the paint business (and is currently watching that infuriating Lowe’s commercial with the ridiculous match requests) - I loved your stories. I work for a small chain, not a big box, but it’s the same all over. We actually do have an “accutinter” - it’s a decent starting point, but the colour is never accurate. We’ll match a colour, but request some time so we can tweak it. People want touch up quality and they want it now. “Lowe’s will do it!” Yes, of course they will, but touch up is a nightmare even with a fabulous match, and don’t forget the difference in sheen between brands, original colour fade/wear and tear, and all that good stuff. Fun, fun, fun, when working with customers who are go, go, go, now, now, now.

I do enjoy this common exchange:

Me: “Okay, when do you need this match?”
Customer: “Yesterday.”
Me: “Where were you two days ago?” :smiley: (I can’t say that to everyone, but I deal with a lot of contractors on a first name basis, so I can usually get away with it, but retail customers? Fuggeddit.)

My co-worker had a weird one today.

Customer: Can you tell me about anti-microbials and Microban?
Co-worker: Sure. Microban is an anti-microbial that inhibits the growth of mold, mildew, bacteria…
Customer: I know all about that. My husband and I are microbiologists.
Co-worker: …
Me, looking up from my paperwork behind the front counter: … :confused:
Co-worker: Well, what would you like to know about it?
Customer: What exactly does it do?
Co-worker: … it… inhibits… the growth… of… mold…
Customer: I know that. My husband and I are microbiologists.
They went around and around for a while, him trying to figure out if she wanted to know about its role in paint products, how it effected paint products, etc. No, it all came down to the fact that she already knew all that, as she (and her husband!) were microbiologists.*

We’re still unclear about what she wanted. Let me get my manager; oh, Mr. Pasteur!

    • Your suit’s lumpy and you smell awful. Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em. I’m a whale biologist.

I had one customer come in and ask for a movie- she didn’t know it’s name or who was in it or what it was about. All she could tell me was that it was on HBO an hour ago. What exactly did she think I was doing an hour ago (hint: working in a video store)

Another could not figure out alphabetical order. She got that movies were divided into genre, but she couldn’t figure out how to find a movie within a genre.

One walked up to the counter and asked for a list of movies. I told her what section they’d be in. She was shocked that she’d have to get the movies herself. She actually hadn’t noticed the giant store around her.

We had hundreds ask for their money back because “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” had subtitles. Others kept movies out for weeks, and then asked for money back because they “didn’t like it.” One guy ran over his video tape and wanted a refund because he didn’t get to watch it.

Don’t get me started on movies with “the little bars that are a conspiracy to make people buy widescreen TVs” or how “DVDs are a conspiracy to make people throw out all the videos they paid so much for.” (this was in 2004)

Every day we turned down people who wanted to rent a movie but had no Blockbuster card or ID and refused to open accounts. Inevitably they’d tell us the video store down the street lets them rent movies all the time with no account and no form of identity whatsoever.

Sometimes people would put their friends on their accounts, and then threaten to sue us all when their friends racked up late fees.

Others would tell us the whole movie rental business was a conspiracy to create late fees. Blockbuster even got sued once- they moved the time their rentals were due UP by 12 hours. It changed from midnight to 12:00 noon the next day because people wanted to turn their movies in on the way to work. People got angry and said that adding 12 hours was done to make them confused and rack up more late fees. Every day I heard about how the 12 hour extension was proof that Blockbuster was pure evil.

And the liars- don’t get me started on the liars. My favorite was the people who rented a few 5-day movies and one 2-day movie. They’d forget the 2-day rental was a 2-day rental and turn it in with the rest of the 5-day ones. Honest mistake and I did it all the time. But then when they got the late fee, they’d swear up and down that they turned in 2-day on time and it must have got lost in the store or something.

Yeah. Uh huh. Your two day rental got lost, and then just happened to be found and scanned in within 5 seconds of all your 5-day rentals. Sure thing.

Speaking of videos, I always got a laugh when I’d go to rent a DVD… And there was a ‘Be Kind – Rewind’ sticker on the case.

I work in a casino…if I started a post I’d never stop…OK, maybe one story.

We were playing poker and this poor older guy had absolutely NO CLUE what the hell was going on. I mean, there’s people that don’t know how to play, then there’s this guy with NO CLUE. I mean three-betting when he was playing the board, it was ridiculous.

Well eventually he actually hits a hand. Board reads A J J 6 9 or whatever. He’s in there raising up a storm (which nobody knew where the hell he was since he’d be doing the same thing with 35 in this hand).

So eventually they cap on the river and the guy turns over J3 for trips. Everyone’s astonished, he actually had a hand. Unfortunately the guy he was playing had KJ and had him beat. He…was…livid.

“WAIT!!! I HAD THREE JACKS!!!”
“Yes sir. So does he.”
“But I have THREE of them!”
“Yes, he has three jacks also, but he has three jacks with a king.”
“HOW MANY JACKS ARE IN THIS DECK.”
“There are four sir.”
“BUT I HAVE THREE!!!”
“YES. You play JJJA9. He plays JJJAK. He has you out kicked.”
“NO! I HAVE THE THREE JACKS!”
“He does TOO sir. You have three jacks, HE has three jacks.”
“SO HOW MANY JACKS ARE THERE?”
“SIR! There are FOUR.”
“HOW CAN I HAVE THREE JACKS, AND HE HAS THREE JACKS, IF THERE ARE ONLY FOUR JACKS?!?!?”

Oh the entire table was rolling. :smiley:

… which is, again, not relevant to what I quoted.

Why do I doubt you will take this advice?

It seems Wal-Mart in Cincinnati can’t sell you something without a zip code - and I don’t have one. Same folks I guess. :rolleyes: :wink:

That makes you sound like your crazy to me, and not the guy. Don’t bother explaining it any better for me either.

Ditto. I think it might be because he (like I) was unfamiliar with how casino poker works, not because he’s stupid.

I think employees in all fields sometimes fall into the Specialized Knowledge trap - assuming our customers know what we know because we’ve been doing it so long it feels like Common Knowledge. When they don’t know what’s so obvious to us, we think they’re stupid, when they’re merely ignorant (in the most innocent sense of the word).

I know, for example, that those “Be Kind Rewind” stickers are in fact security stickers. :wink: They’re there so you don’t shove the box in your pocket and walk out of the store with it. The fact that they have words on them is incidental at this point. Blockbuster will keep on using them until they run out - no need to buy new security stickers when the old ones work just fine. (We had newer stickers at our store 10 years ago - it was a silver bar in a clear sticker and actually hid better in the box or on a videotape. I had no idea anyone had any of the old ones left!)

I haven’t a clue what he said either.

Not being a poker player, I would like to know one thing though: I’m sitting at a table. I have five cards in my hand. Three of them are jacks. Another guy has five cards in his hand. Three of them are jacks. So where did the other two jacks come from? Wild cards? :confused:

Er. In Texas Hold-Em, there are several cards dealt to the middle of the table that are shared by all players in common. The second and third jacks in both hands were in common, in the middle of the table.

Back when I worked for a phone company, I had a caller who had a guest make long distance calls and she needed to figure out how much that person owed her for the calls. There were pages of calls on her bill and she hadn’t sorted them out yet as to which were hers and which were the guest’s, so no way I could total them for her. I suggested that she figure that out and add up the charges for each of the guest’s calls. She had no idea what I was talking about. I tried a couple of examples along the lines of “OK, say the first call is your guest’s and that one cost $1.53 and the second one is hers too and that one was $2.18 so you add those together and it’s $3.71” and she had no clue what I meant. I finally asked her, “Ma’am, do you know how to do addition? You know, like 2 plus 2 is 4, 5 plus 5 is ten?” She replied, “I know most of it.” I finally told her to find someone in her area to help her to do the math.

I can’t fathom how someone can go through life without being able to do basic addition and subtraction.

Ah. As I said, I don’t play poker. On the couple of occasions when I did (as a kid), everyone had his own cards.

How is that possible if there’s only one deck?

1 deck 4 jacks
Player 1 has 1 jack
Player 2 has 1 jack
In the common cards* in the center of the table there are 2 jacks.
1+1+2=4
Player 1 uses his 1 jack + 2 common jacks for a total of 3 jacks.
Player 2 uses his 1 jack + 2 common jacks for a total of 3 jacks.

Better? If it helps I didn’t understand it at first either.
ETA: *No clue if my terminology is correct

I once returned a 5 day rental to my local store and forgot about it. A week later I got a bill for it in the mail. I drove down to the store and told them that I had dropped it in the bin on such-and-such day. It being a slow period, the person working went and checked.

Sure as shit, it was sitting on the shelf with the rest of the movies. Some dumbass hadn’t checked it in before restocking it.

You were probably playing 5-card stud. I would think, though, that having five cards face up on the table would be a pretty good clue as to how the game works. Sure, they both had three jacks, but only two cards in their hand–there has to be a shared card in there somewhere.

It sounds a little weird when explained, but I’d hope it would be fairly self-evident at the table, especially if he’d been there for a while. Some people truly are clueless, aren’t they?