I admit it possibly gets really old after the third time but I found the comeback funny as hell.
Bolding Mine. I’m gonna use that term, Master Wang-Ka if that’s all right with you!
Chefguy, did you expose that candidate’s actions to his opponents? I sure as hell would have! Comedy GOLD!
More:
Do not make the stupid old “It must be free!” joke when something doesn’t scan. I’ve heard it before. More times than I can remember. If I had a penny for every time I heard it, I would be rich.
Do not follow me into the BREAK ROOM and then get pissed when I’ll won’t help you. I’m punched out, I have no obligation to help you, and YOU are not even supposed to be back here, dumbass.
Do not ask me to look for the state quarters. If my manager catches me rooting around in my drawer while you’re standing there, and I’m not processing a transaction, I’ll get my ass canned.
Do not bitch at me if we’re short-handed. I don’t make the schedule, and anyways, the lack of employees is even harder on me than it is on you.
If my light is out, it means my lane is closed. Don’t bitch at me. Contrary to popular belief, clerks ARE human, and we need to eat and take a pee every once in a while.
You may enjoy the Customers Suck web site. It has plenty of funny stories but it also gives customers a section to reply.
I can’t help thinking they came from the same place as ‘I shouldn’t have to do jury duty’ and ‘rewarding good students is unfair’.
Was a retail clerk for years. One of my favorites was a phrase, “You callin’ me a liar boy.” Remember this phrase, since it is a sure indicator that the scumbag in question is lying.
I remember one family of trogs that brought in a tricycle that had had the paint scraped off, rusted over, and scraped off again. The forks had been bent back. The head of this little clan tried to tell me that it had collapsed under his child's weight. I informed him that gravity caude such structural failures to occur DOWN, not back, this ran into a wall. "No it didn't" I then asked for an explaination of the brick dust on the handlebars.
Then, like it was going to intimidate me he said the ultimate phrase, "you callin' me a liar boy !" I smiled, and calmly said, "you know, I have never had anyone say that to me that WASN'T lying." The customer than asked to speak to my manager, who was unfortunatly not able to talk to them for a few minutes.
You see, he had been standing there during this whole exchange and was far too busy laughing to tell them to get out of the store.Correct. And in this case, it was coupled with a fragrance of urine.
As disturbing as the “Living With Michael Jackson” special was, one of the parts I found most reprehensible was the way he treated the people working at that horrible store where he bought his gigantic vases. Jackson kept going, “Yooooo hooooo! Hello??? Excuuuuuuse me?” and waving his bandaged hands around to get their attention, and when they came over it was, “I want this. I want to get this.” Dangling the baby out the window scared me, but his behavior in the store made me angry.
The one category of hints I do not see (yet) are tips for dealing with gift registries. Wedding registries, baby registries, etc.
**The gift registry is not a susbstitute for thinking about what you want to give the person. ** I will cheerfully help you figure out where in the store the irons are located and help you find the correct iron, or any other individual item. I will NOT lead you aroun the store locating every item on the registry. I will explain the registry and the store layout if needed. I do not know your budget nor do I care. I have no idea whether you are going in with three others and plan on spending one hundred dollars or whether you are broke and want the most bang for your ten dollars.
If I tell you something has gone clearance and we no longer have it that means it is discontinued and WE DO NOT HAVE IT. Look, I’m not lying to try to make my job easier. I will happily now spend time looking for some other item for you, but I can’t make the specific towels they requested appear on the list.
I do NOT know the people for whom the registry is for. This means that if we do not have the magic blue towels, I am not prepared to tell you whether you should buy the matching green towels or some other variety of blue towels. I can not tell you whether they would be happier with a gift of 8 washcloths rather than a complete matched set of floor mat, bath mat, hand towel, bath sheet and washcloth. I can’t even tell you what an appropriate amount of money to spend on them is. I will tell you that almost anything is attractive(in a bland convictionless way) as a way of trying to persuade you to buy something.
If someone has requested a specific baby outfit, it is not worth your time to try to figure out which one. At least at the store I worked at, clothing for newborns went flying out of the store and usually shows up on registries as things like “cher infant dress, pink” This tells me that it is the Cherokee brand, it is a dress and it is pink. We probably have 6 styles like that at any given time, mixed in with similar items which are not dresses. They do not stay in stock long. Therefore, you are often better off buying a pink dress that YOU think is cute and hope that the creator of the list likes it enough to keep it. I do not know that person and can not tell you which outfit she will like better.
My job, as seen by my manager, is to fold clothes, put up returned items, and help out on register. Guest service is “important” but usually not something I get credit for if the first two are not taken care of. I will try my best to help you, but I like guests who at least try to help themselves best. (Examples: The guy who wanted me to check the numbers of two pressure cookers and tell him which one was on the registry. He knew what he wanted and he found the item, just wasn’t sure of our numbering system. Other Example:The lady who wanted gerbil food. I told her I wasn’t sure if we had any. She said that it was usually located next to the cat and dog food and she was willing to look for it, but couldn’t find the cat and dog food. I told her where that was located(we were in the midst of a remodel). )
Can I please just add…
Serving a customer is not the same as being a servant to the customer. December '02 I worked as temporary help in the curtain department of a household textiles store. It wasn’t too bad - not nearly in the same league as, say, a toy store at the same time of year. The last week or so before Christmas we didn’t sell many yard goods, as most people who wanted to sew new window treatments for the holiday had done so, but we started selling more ready-to-hang curtains and drapes to the procrastinators. Most people who asked for help couldn’t find a curtain they saw on display, or asked if we had more of a certain product in the stockroom or in another size or color. But a couple times when I approached to ask for help, I would get, for instance, four packs of drapes dumped in my arms while the customer looked for another. The store has shopping baskets! :mad: Customers who took a curtain out of the pack, unfolded it completely, and then stuffed it in a corner somewhere also got to me. Folks, if you do something like that, and you can’t or won’t repack it, it is much much better to give it to a clerk! Or at least leave it in plain view!
Years before, working at a grocery store while I was in high school, I would get impossible requests from customers who got angry if I didn’t do it their way. For instance: “These things are crushable. I want you to put them in a separate bag, just one single bag, and I’ll put it in the passenger seat instead of the trunk so they won’t get crushed.” “Ma’am, it would be much better if I put it in two bags, would that be all right?” “No, ONE BAG I said!” “Then do you want me to put the bananas on top of the pie, or the pie on top of the bananas? It’s either that, or stand the pie on end, and hope the filling doesn’t leak.” “ONE BAG and don’t crush my bananas or my pie!” Bananas on the bottom, pie on top of those, and sure enough next week she’s back complaining that I bruised her bananas. Ayayay. :rolleyes:
::thinking back:: You know, I do believe you’re right. Every time that phrase was uttered, I was either positive or reasonably sure that the person using it was lying. And, as in your example, it was generally a painfully obvious lie. So not only was the person lying, but insulting my intelligence as well. Now, I know that a good many of my fellow clerks were not real quick on the uptake (I had to fix many of their mistakes, so BOY did I know), but even they were usually able to see through those baldfaced attempts at scamming the store.
Generally, I didn’t allow such attempts. In the convenience/deli/liquor store I’ve mentioned, I heard a lot of our less-desirable customers refer to me as “that hardass bitch”. I regarded it as a compliment. 