Unless you want to wear a hat that indicates you are the kind of person who gets annoyed when you’re offered help, I think you’re just going to have to suck it up. The idea that being offered help is an intolerable intrusion is silly.
Eh, sometimes. I’ve worked several retail jobs and 90% of the time I was asking people if they needed assistance because, you know, that was my job to help customers.
The part that is objectionable is people offering something they do not have. Offering help is not at all the same thing as actually being helpful.
Yeah, I’m not going to play hypotheticals about what this person does or doesn’t know. I just can’t imagine living a life where I get enraged by people offering to help me even if it turns out that they can’t provide what I need.
And then, of course, you’d bitch if you went into a store and nobody bothered to offer you help when you needed it. :rolleyes:
Wallace’s dog, of course.
Ahem.
I think this 10-second video sums up the OP’s experience, and mine whenever I shop for electronics.
The few times me or my wife have actually asked a question about a product, usually no one knows the damn answer.
Does this phone have a micro SD slow inside the battery compartment.
Uhhhhh…let me find someone else…
Repeat
Uhhhhhhhh it says here you can stream music why do you need a card?
:rolleyes:
5 seconds online…nope it doesn’t.
I think this thread is a great illustration of why retail work is detested.
Do I win this week’s installment of “Pedantic Wars”? :p:p
Would that not be ‘Pedant Wars’?
Golf clap. clap clap clap clap.
It’s permissible in cases of stubborn ignorance.
Ahem: Wallace’s dog is Gromit.
You learn something new every day. I’m not being snarky (because I know this is a thread full of snark) but I never heard them called receptacles. We call them outlet boxes (including my father who worked in construction). If they’re installed in the wall, we just call them outlets. Maybe it’s a regional thing. But if you had asked me where the receptacles were, I’d have sent you to the trash cans.
I’d call them a wall socket, a wall plug, or a double plug - at any hardware store back home I’d expect them to know what I was talking about
And nobody seems to have considered so far
- Perhaps the OP was looking confusted, which is why the employee butted in?
- Perhaps the employee was being a bit snarky at the stupid jerk who asked for a lamp in the bulb dept, but realised their mistake, leading to point 3
- Perhaps, based on experience, the employee has found it best to let the customer explain what they want - because too many customers ask for the wrong thing and then get snarky when they are shown up?
It’s not really a matter of dumbing down or a even a regional thing. It’s a matter of certain people feeling the need to use the “correct” names for things and looking down on those who don’t- even if 99% of the population doesn’t use that name and it leads to misunderstanding. If I’m going to Home Depot to buy a “flood lamp” I’m referring to the fixture. Otherwise, I’m buying a bulb for my flood lamp and my answer to “what are you looking for ?” would have been “Bulbs for a flood lamp”. After all, if the bulb is a “flood lamp”, what is the fixture called - “A fixture that takes bulb lamps?”
I suspect the OP also professes not to know what a “flat head” screwdriver is - I know it’s actually called a “slotted screwdriver” and I also know that many, if not most people use the “incorrect” name.
We’d just be subjected to rounds of questions about our hats then.
Being offered help is occasionally annoying to me, as I may be deep in thought and do not welcome the interruption. I don’t expect that the offerer should know this, but if I really want to shut down further interaction, I will attempt to convey my desire to be left alone with a clipped “no thanks” that some may call rude.
Being offered help by someone who turns out to have no familiarity with the products on the shelves is nearly always annoying. Now I am supposed to behave exactly as if there was nothing wrong with the behavior? Doesn’t that mean I am assuming they have no desire to do better? Even if they don’t want to improve, I’d at least like to discourage the person from approaching me in particular in that store ever again, which means being at least a wee bit off-putting. Ideally they will conclude that they ought to learn the basics as customers are visibly annoyed that they don’t know them, but even if they just conclude that I am a big meanie and best ignored, that’s better than encouraging them to persist in bugging me.
Well, one can’'t spell grude without “rude”.
That depends entirely upon whether the wars are pendantic, or the participants. [sub]OK, you got me. Gaudere’s law and all, ya know[/sub]