Firstly I’m sorry you had to meet these people. It’s sad to realise how dumb the public can be. :smack:
Secondly these stories made me laugh out loud! 
Some customers just don’t seem to think before they ask or act.
We had one of those infamous “free after rebates” computers which was the very basic model. A lady came in to look at it and asked if we had one with better features that was free. I guess thats not too stupid but we were amused.
Now at the music store we get calls everyday like this one.
“Do you folks buy used guitars?”
“Why yes we do!”
“Well I have one, how much would you give me for it?”
“I don’t know they vary quite a bit. Just bring it in and we’ll see”
“Well I don’t want to drive over there unless it’s worth it. It’s an electric, how much are they worth?”
“There are a lot of different ones. That’s not enough information to even ballpark it”
“It’s red”
“OHHHH that one. …”
Think people…I mean it’s entertaining the first dozen times or so but let’s just save each other some time shall we.
Hey Glee, I guess it saves time but you really don’t have to repost the whole huge thing just to comment on how funny it is. Just a humble suggestion. 
You know, there’s a possible explanation for some of these “Well, it has a blue cover and it was on Oprah” requests. It may be that the employee asked if they could help, as opposed to the customer asking for assistance.
Sometimes people really don’t know what they’re looking for. And they know they don’t know, but they figure they’ll know it when they see it. To that end, they head for the best-seller section, or the Oprah table (many stores do have a table just for Oprah selections), with the intention of grazing until they see a cover that matches with the vague picture in their mind. But then someone asks what they’re looking for, and they just blurt out the “I dunno…it was a mystery…it was on Oprah…there was a woman and a man…” ramblings that they’ve been thinking to themselves. Not because they expect that to make sense to anyone else, but simply because they were asked and feel they have to answer.
Now, I’m certainly not trying to excuse anyone who really does expect employees to be mindreaders. And if the customer calls the store, then yes, it’s on them to have concrete info. I’m also going out on a limb in assuming that bookstore (or any store) employees have little enough to do that they can approach customers, instead of getting buttonholed by one lookie-loo after another. But it’s possible, what I said.
Coffee shops too.
Customer: "I was in here last week, and I had the most delicious drink but I can’t remember what it was called. "
Me: “Do you remember what was in it?”
Customer: “Well, it was brown, and it had white stuff on top”
Me: “Was the white stuff whipped cream or foamy milk?”
Customer: “I don’ t know, but it came in a mug like this one.”
Me: “Did it have coffee in it? Chocolate? Any flavouring? Whipped cream?”
Customer: “Oh, I don’t remember …”
A blue cover and it was on Oprah? We could find it in a snap. But the run-of-the-mill customers would come up to the counter first, without even looking around, and ask, “I’m looking for a book about a murder that happened and this guy was killed. Do you have it?” So we play 20 questions trying to figure it out.
:eek: Have you been following me around? Because I do that! I think Rilchiam is right; we just say what’s in our heads, externalizing the thought process, in the hope that, by brainstorming with the clerk, we’ll get an answer.
And the jewelry store repair counter version:
phone rings
Me: Repairs, how can I help you?
Clueless Customer: Hi, I dropped off my necklace last week to be fixed. Is it ready?
It happened all the freaking time. No name, phone number, repair ticket number - nothing. I was supposed to be psychic and just know who they were and if their piece was ready. Jackasses, indeed. :rolleyes:
At the college bookstore where I still occasionally work, I was always amazed at the customers, typically community college students, who didn’t bring their class schedule with them to the store. We’d have to hand over one of the store’s course schedules and they’d spend eons poring over it to get the proper numbers so they could find their books.
Is there any store in America that will accept some numbers written on a slip of paper so long as the customer says “My mom wrote down her credit card number?” No, jackass, we can’t accept that. These people also tended to be complete frickin’ morons, who used up large quantities of our time before revealing they couldn’t pay for whatever they wanted.
At the height of rush, we serve hundreds of students a day, and we encourage people to help themselves as much as possible. Most come in, take a look around, then head off and start gathering what they need, even freshmen. Unless a customer is blind or otherwise impaired, I mentally start deducting IQ points whenever someone heads straight for an employee rather than taking a second to figure out the organizational system, which involves matching letters and numbers.
One slack-jawed guy walked up and asked if I could help him find an English book. Fine. It’s a freshman book, so I guess correctly that he’s new and it’s his first time buying books. I take him to the section, explain the organizational system, and model it by matching the letters and numbers, then handing him the book.
“Sociology?”
Fine. I take him to the section, point out the book and expect him to get it. Nope-he just looks at his sheet and asks about another class. I find it, hand it to him and prepare to leave.
“Where’s Subject X?” he asked. It’s alphabetically arranged, next to subject Y, but fine, I’ll take his dumb ass to it. On the way to the section, he says it.
“My mom wrote down her credit card number. Is that OK?”
:smack:
Another memorable time, a girl brought her textbooks and a basket absolutely crammed with stuff to my register. Spiral notebooks, binders, folders, pencils, erasers, highlighters, pens, a T-shirt, and on and on. That’s cool-she gets enough school supplies to outfit an Arctic expidition and we get a chunk of change.
I ring up and bag every single item, then ask if she’s paying with cash, check, or credit or debit card.
She pulls out the slip of paper with daddy’s credit card number.
It was completely obvious why her parents wouldn’t want her to have her hands on an actual credit card, but for fuck’s sake… :smack:
Well, I’ve been known to do this. I then allow the clerk to grab a pen, then ask my name, etc., when they are ready.
I’m so glad I don’t work in retail. These stories make me feel sorry for y’all.
Aww crap, and I thought the kids were morons when they brought the actual credit card to the store along with a hand written note from mommy saying “It is okay for little johnny to use my card- luv mom”.
Like that’s going to stand up when the charge is disputed- “But…but…he had a note. It was from his mother. I seen it. Honest engine I did.”
I don’t blame the kids in the bookstore, I blame their parents! Hell, I didn’t get my own credit card until, like, my sophomore year. I wouldn’t necessarily expect a freshman to know how credit cards should work, but their parents should!
At Bath & Body Works (not my normal stomping grounds, but I got a gift card from my aunt for my birthday) I ended up behind some woman with her two teenaged daughters.
The clerk said, “Um, I assume that you’re not ‘Frank’?”
“No,” she said, “That’s my husband.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t accept a credit card that doesn’t have your name on it.”
“But . . . it’s my husband.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, it’s store policy. It’s in the rules we get from the credit card company. It’s not allowed.”
“I’m not lying to you. It’s my husband’s card. Here’s my driver’s license. You can see that we have the same last name . . .”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we can’t accept it. Is there another card you would want to use?”
At this point, the woman clams up, and is just glaring hatefully at the poor clerk.
“Uh, ma’am? There are people in line behind you. Do you have another card you’d like to use? Or would you like to pay by cash or check?”
hateful glare
“I’m sorry, ma’am—”
“Yes you are!” she snapped, and huffed off with her daughters in tow.
Way to set a example for your children. Bitch. And all of this is over fuckin’ bubble bath and scented lotion.
This one, I don’t get. If I call a store and want to know if something is ready, I don’t know how the store has filed the orders. If I give you my phone number or my name or my order number and you have it filed under something else, I’ve wasted my time and yours. If I give you my order number, but you didn’t have a pen to write it down, I’ve wasted my time and yours. I phone you and tell you that I want to know if my order is ready and then you tell me what I need to tell you in order for you to check and see if it is. It’s not jackassery. I’m not psychic either, you know.
Heh. “It said ‘love!’ It’s legally binding if it says ‘love!’”
We essentially had a note-from-mom system. Parents could leave their credit card number on file with us, so it would be available for their students. They could make it a one-time deal, or they could leave it there across semesters. If they wanted to, they could even specify that it only be used for books or school supplies.
At another branch, a student was abusing this by buying huge numbers of books on his father’s credit card, then selling them or ripping off part of the receipt and trying to return them for cash. I’ve always wondered what next Thanksgiving was like in that household.
I guess I can contribute one good story:
One day I’m working the register when an older woman comes in. I can tell she’s in a bad mood and get that “she’s gonna be trouble” vibe. Sure enough, after I’m done waiting on her she calls over my boss and tells him I had called her an “itchbay.” Now, he didn’t know what that was so she carefully explained to him that “itchbay” is bitch in pig latin. Say what? Now I hadn’t called her anything of the sort and the couple standing right behind her backed me up when I claimed innocence. Still, the boss told her he’d have a word with me, and after she left, did indeed have a word - or rather a laugh - with me. And of course, I called her much worse than “itchbay” after she’d left. 
Annoying jackass customer habit: change-tossing - you know, the people who, when paying, throw their change down on the counter (like they’re throwing their dog a treat) instead of handing it to you. :mad:
pssst – “honest Injun.” (Discussion of the etymology and political correctness of this term are best reserved for another time and place.)
I agree. When I call in something like this, I’m going to give the bare minimum of information so that the person on the other end knows what to ask me.
There is indeed a delicate balance between too much information and not enough. Usually the clerk has a good idea of where this balance is; the customers, usually much less so.
For instance, at my coffee shop it would have been very useful for people to say “I’ll be having a dessert, a bar drink and a regular coffee.” That way we can do what we need to prepare for each (ie walk the customer to the dessert case, get the barista ready to take an order, and know to direct the customer to the self-serve coffee area).
Whereas if they walked up and said “I’d like a nanaimo bar, a medium decaf Italian latte with skim Lactaid and a medium coffee with half Irish Cream and half dark roast,” I’d have to take the whole order again anyway once I got a pen.
And if they ordered a nanaimo bar, and then once I’d fetched it and rung it in they then ordered the latte, and then once I’d rung those in they’d mention the coffee, well, that would be a big pain in the ass for all the other customers who can’t be rung through because my customer’s order is in the register.
It’s like ordering dinner over the phone from restaurants. I know they’re going to ask me a bunch of questions so I try to anticipate the most appropriate one to ask first.
More of a bad customer service story, but it fits with cosmosdan’s comments above. We bought a new car a few months ago. I had a very good idea what I wanted, did a lot of research on the net, in Lemon Aid, etc. and was basically working out the minor details by the time I went to an actual dealer. I was looking at an end-of-run model, so the only option was buying a car off the lot, and there were only three local dealers who had any in stock.
I stopped at Dealer 1 en route elsewhere because they had one out front and I just wanted to sit in it and give it a quick check for comfort, sight lines, etc. No problem, a salseman came over, listened to my request, opened the car up for me, and thanked me for my interest and gave me his card. They didn’t have a lot of cars left in stock and none of the colour choices we preferred, however.
Went to Dealer 2 with my wife. Saleswoman spent a lot of time telling us about her excellent sales record, but seemed distracted and not too interested in actually selling us a car. She finally handed us the keys and let us take one out on a test drive (by the way, is it normal to do this without asking to see a driver’s licence or at least some proof of identity?). Was still very distracted when we dropped off the car and left.
Dealer 3 was next, and we were hit by the stereotyped hard sell. I told the saleswoman up front that we were still looking at this point, and would not be buying until later (we wanted to pay cash and wouldn’t have it available for a few days). She was determined that we wouldn’t walk out of her office without a signature on the dotted line. I could recognize almost every hard sell trick in the book as she escalated, right up to the “bring in the sales manager” ploy, and it would have been funny if I hadn’t been so annoyed (I would have gotten up and walked out, but both my wife and I are unwilling to be rude to others even when they seem to merit it). Eventually we escaped her clutches.
We went to Dealer 1, met with a friendly, laid back, salesman who dealt with our priorities rather than his, and paid $100 more than we were quoted at Dealer 3 (never actually got a quote from Dealer 2) for a car in a colour that that my wife had initially ruled out (although she decided she liked it when she saw it) because we appreciated their attitude so much after the other dealers.
(yeah, I know. I did it on purpose as to not cause any unneeded controversy)
The place I worked, we always gave out a repair ticket with a number on it, and we told them they needed that ticket to check on it, and to pick it up. It was all cross-referenced on the computer with the customer’s name and phone number so we could look it up by any of the three. If they said, “Hi, this is Mary Smith, is my repair ready?” we could at least look it up by name. Most people would say, “My ticket number is M12345, is it ready?” and that was the best way. It was just amazing, though, how many people would blindly call and ask, “Hi! Is my necklace ready?” with no other information. Those are the jackasses.