“Orifice Max” - hee! I work at “Maples,” actually, unless someone can find a better term for it.
Praise - you’ll turn my little head, you will.
Teemings Extras - I’d be honored.
Omipotent - I did say I am a very lowly goddess. I might have a magical anus of power, but that doesn’t mean I can spell.
Kat, I believe I know that woman. She has many, many brothers and sisters, as well. And they are all alike.
We called this the broken record method of dealing with customers :).
Aaah, yes, reminds me of several times where I worked at “Werwin Shmilliams” in a hoidy-toidy ‘90210’ town where every dumb floozy wrapped in a fake mink was an ‘interior decorator’. . . Like I need these things on my college’s Christmas break . . .
Interior Decorator:“I’m looking for the color on trim of the VanDault house across the way.*”
Tripler: “To be honest, ma’am, I can’t guarantee the color, but I’ll get you as close as I can . . .”
ID: “Well, why not? It’s right across the street?”
T:“To be honest, ma’am, I have no idea how old that paint is, besides the fact that it’s peeling and most likely oxidized, and without a physical chip or sample, I would feel really uncomfortable matching it by eye. . .”
ID: “Well, what if I go get a sample?”
T: “Hey, if you can do that, we can get to work! ::smiles::”
ID: “I’ll be right back . . .”
Two hours, and a couple of lattes at the Starbucks next door later. . .
ID:“Hi! I talked to you earlier. I have a sample. . .”
T: “Great! What have you got?”
ID: “A few flakes that I found on the sidewalk . . .”
T: (What the. . . I have a few square millimeters of flakes quite literally, a few square millimeters to work with? Oy vey!) Ma’am, was this is all you could find? It’ll be tough . . "
ID: “But I thought it was your job to match it. . .”
T: “It is, but I’m not letting you walk out of here with a color you don’t want. I’m going to show you what I can mix, but your not leaving without a gallon you can’t use. . .”
ID: “Then, what good are you? Is there someone else I can talk to?”
T: “Ma’am, no. I’m the only one here right now, and even if someone else were here, they would prefer more to work with . . .”
ID: “Let me talk to the manager. . .”
T: “Ma’am, I am the manager. I need more to work with. I can’t leave the store to go a block up the street and match it. If you can talk to the owner and get a sample, then I can match it.”
ID: “Well!”
ID storms off. . .
T: Thinking aloud: ‘Aaaah, one less suburban bitch I have to deal with . . .’
Chikki, just keep in mind one thing one of my personally favorite bosses once said to me: “You don’t get paid enough to deal with this bullshit.” If you feel the need, kick it upstairs. Other than that, send 'em my way. 
Tripler
Bring me at least a 1/2 square inch sample, please. . .
I don’t wish to diminish anyone’s bad times, or make fun of someone’s bad situation…
BUT, The BBQ Pit has some of the funniest, most cerebral writing I’ve seen on the web.
Be well, everyone.
That was beautiful, racinchikki! Positively fabulous!!
Years ago I worked in an electronics store, and the phone was answered “Hello, *********Electronics, may I help you?” A restaurant chain opened about 40 miles away, but people would get us instead of them by swapping two digits of the prefix. After a week or so of the regular greeting followed by them asking “Is this ******** Station?” and my telling them they had misdialed, my horns grew.
I started taking reservations.
Announcing specials.
Giving group discounts.
“Why yes Mr. Putzley, we’d be happy to seat you and your party of 20 in the small meeting room. Thursday at 6 will be fine, Sir.
For groups of your size, a discount of 10% applies to all orders, including surf and turf. I can have bottles of Chateaux Wasshe le Pup 1942 specially labelled as gifts for your associates, Sir. Very good. Thank you for letting us handle your affair, we’ll be waiting for you, Sir.”
It’s only (was then) 7 digits. Learn to dial, you boob.
When I get wrong numbers calling me at home, I am nice TWICE, the third time
“that son of a bitch owes me money, yeah he left town with that diseased whore he runs with, etc” , or some other evil story.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
unclviny
Ouch!
I did that once. I used to have a private phone in my office that didn’t go through the receptionist. For reasons unknown to me I got a lot of calls that were meant for a local TV show that ran weekly contests.
People won prizes if they called a certain question. Some called me once, I would respond “My Employer, good morning”, obviously not the TV station. Some people would insist in telling me “the right answer” even if I had told them that it wasn’t the TV station and to check the number and try again. Some called my number 2 and 3 times again. I made a rule that if the same person would call a third time (caller ID) I would respond “Local TV Show, good morning” and then take the answer, ask for their ID Number (kinda like social security no.) and tell them to go pick up their prize on the show, live. No more calls from that one.
After some times it got boring so I requested the line to be removed.
Today, we closed at 8:00. We close at 8:00 on every single weekday that isn’t a holiday (on holidays we close at 5 or 6). We have been closing at 8:00 for as long as we have been open. We are never open later than 8:00, and never have been.
At 3:00 in the afternoon, I fielded a call from a lady who wished to know if we carried a particular piece of software she required. Indeed we do, and I told her as much, and quoted the price. She immediately hung up on me.
At 8:22, as I was mopping the tiles around the front doors, I heard a violent banging on the window. I looked out and saw a woman who appeared as a demonspawn of some sort, so angry was she. Her fist repeatedly struck against the plexiglass immediately over the large sign posting our store hours. Her hair was a mess, and her face was a mask of anger with flared nostrils, wild eyes and a frightening grimace. I timidly approached the door, flipped the switch that would allow me to open them partway, and risked the crack of doom.
“YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU CLOSED AT 8:00!!!”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we did close at 8:00. We always do on weeknights.”
“I JUST CALLED HERE ABOUT BUYING MICROSOFT ASSTISSUE 2003 PRO UPGRADE!!! YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU WERE CLOSED!!!”
“Ma’am, you called FIVE HOURS AGO. At that point, we were still open. We have since closed. We’ll be open again tomorrow from 9:00 to 6:00, early closing because of the holiday.”
“LET ME IN! I NEED MY MICROSOFT ASSTISSUE 2003 PRO UPGRADE!!!”
“Ma’am, even if I were to unlock the doors and let you in, you wouldn’t be able to buy your software. All the registers have been shut down and the safe has been counted and locked. We won’t be able to sell anything to anyone until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! IT TOOK ME FIFTEEN MINUTES TO DRIVE HERE AND I WON’T GO HOME WITHOUT MY MICROSOFT ASSTISSUE 2003 PRO UPGRADE!!!”
“Ma’am, if you’d like, I can get one of our copies off the shelf and write out a hold form for you, so you can be guaranteed a copy in the morning. But I am absolutely physically incapable of selling it to you tonight, because all the registers have been shut down and we can’t sell anything without the register.”
“THIS IS HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE! I’M GOING TO CALL YOUR HOME OFFICE!”
Good for you. I’m not sure what you expect them to do about it. I know you’re the Queen of Everything, but even then, there are procedures that need to be followed.
In order to open up the safe again, we’d have needed to call the General Manager and explain the situation to him; he’s on vacation across the country. Then we would have to call one of the other managers (the one closing with us was only a trainee, and can’t open the safe by himself) so they could bring us the keys. Then we’d need to count money into a drawer, open a register, sell you your fucking Asstissue 2003 Pro Upgrade, close the register, recount the safe, relock the safe, clean everything up again and go home later. Nobody was willing to do that for somebody who had insufficient proof of her claim to the title of Queen of Everything.
To say nothing of the fact that if it had been immediately after we locked the doors, and one of the registers was still open and if I had been of a mind to let you in because of that, screaming at me like a Balrog would have completely erased any and all goodwill I felt towards you, and it would’ve ended just as badly. You catch more flies with sugar than with Balrogs, my dear queen.
For the record, this is nearly verbatim as well as I can remember her speech, as are the last two examples in the original post and the addendum I posted afterwards. The first two are merely representative samples of the thousands of people I have to deal with, but the other four actually happened.