Bratti, I don’t get it. What’s so unpleasant about that? Was it that the guy was such a close talker?
Of course, my interpretation of this could be way off, but I’m gathering it was unpleasant because this guy was so dissatisfied at someone saying “hello” instead of “merry christmas” that he actually turned around and intimidated a bellringer (someone collecting for charity, for Og’s sake!) by getting in their face and bellowing “merry christmas” until the OP said it back to him.
Whattacunt.
Max.
Dear dumbass FOOD customers…pissing off the people who make your food before you have actually eaten it is frigging stupid and bound to end up being painfully stupid when some cook gives you a case of food poisoning on accident…not to mention how much of the varied human fluids you must eat compared to the rest of the normal population.
My most randomly rotten customer story occurred while I was working at Target. On this particular day, mid-morning, I had been asked to scan several aisles in the cosmetics department, which was adjacent to the jewelry counter. I was in charge of the jewelry counter for the day.
An older couple approaches me and asks for assistance at the jewelry counter. They are looking for a watch- just like the one a friend has. I ask a few questions- brand, gold or silver, what kind of clasp they want- and they don’t know. I’m getting decidedly frustrated with them. I’m only supposed to put two watches on the counter at a time- and I greatly prefer guests who spend some time looking at watches through the glass so that they can say “let me see the one with the blue face- no the oval blue face” rather than people who seem to think that my job is to take out all the watches until they find the one they want.
I lose patience and say something about preferring not to take out all the watches from behind the counters. the guests get mad- shouldn’t the customer be the first priority? I bite my tongue. They decide to leave. I try to say something about I’ll get someone else to help them but let them go. (I mean, what am I supposed to do- leap over the counter and place my body between them and the doors?) They leave. I mutter about people who can’t be bothered to look through the glass to pick out a watch to anyone who will listen.
A week or two later, my manager summons me to the back. The store manager recieved a letter complaining about me. It is a two or three page handwritten letter describing their experiences with me and suggesting that I may have been on my period and thus cranky.
I wasn’t. I know this becuase I was having my period the day that my manager made me read the letter. (I did not tell him that. First of all, I didn’t think he needed (or wanted) to know. Secondly, whether one has one’s period or not or whether one is suffering from PMS is no excuse. One should treat guests with patience- even when they don’t deserve it. Thirdly, what kind of person speculates on whether or not the female clerk is having her period in a letter to the store manager?)
The letter also states that this was the guests first time in a Target and they would not be back.
So I explain, and apologize, and promise to try to do better in the future- even with the truly exasperating.
My manager then tells me that the store manager found the letter hilarious- and therefore assumed that the guests were kooks and so my behavior had probably been acceptable for normal guests.
I worked for Domino’s for a year in the mid-80’s. Within the delivery area for my store was the state mental hospital. Long brick buildings with barred windows on minimally-tended grounds behind a low, stone wall. The sort of place that Frances Farmer would have been committed to in the 1940’s. The place Frances Farmer was committed to in the 1940’s. Scary, scary place.
I had a delivery to the maximum security ward. It was on the fourth (top) floor in one of the buildings, and the elevators were notoriously slow so I took the stairs. You can’t take the stairs to that ward. You have to take the elevator up, and send it back down before you ring for the attendant. When I got there, there was a guy with a police escort already talking to the attendant. He saw I was there, so I kept back a bit. The guy with the escort is showing the attendant some papers, and saying that the judges instructions were something-or-other. I figured he was there on behalf of a friend, trying to get some error corrected. No, after a couple minutes they escort the guy inside and that’s when I notice he’s wearing full manacles chained to his handcuffs.
The pressing business having been squared away, he went back into the ward, came back with the money for the pizza, I gave it to him and was gone.
Thanks to everyone that liked my Video Storey. I don’t have too many angry stories from that place as when it first opened, the owner decided that we really didn’t need the business of assholes.
Morons, of course, were in abundance.
Not sure what you mean by “boxes of hair”, but let’s assume you mean crunchy granola neohippies.
I hope not to start a political debate in this thread, nor do I wish to incur the wrath of reasonable people of either wing. However:
Being of a rather left-wing bias, I tend to think of ultraconservatives as representing a larger proportion of the world’s braindead population. Yes, I freely admit this is a biased viewpoint. But I could never understand why people thought of liberals as flighty and/or stupid.
Well, my encounter with the Greenpeace renters gave me a window into that world. A few anecdotal datapoints have led me to believe that left-wing looniness is directly proportional to the percentage of hemp in one’s wardrobe.
(Ones? One’s? Is there an apostrophe?)
Case in point: The other day I was approached by a very forward young man, who was wearing, like, totally smokable sandals. He wanted me to sign a petition to prevent Bush from signing a bill to help mercury-infested ducks stop drying out the wetlands. Or something.
I really didn’t have the time, but asked if his organization had a website. “Dude, is that like a computer thing? Yeah, Ezra has a computer back at the commune.” So what’s the URL? “The whah?” The address? “Oh, it’s like doubleyou-someshit-dot-com or some shit.”
Anyway, I was able to find the address through google, and saw that they accepted donations online. When I saw Hemp Boy a little later, I explained that I would examine the website and possibly make an online donation with my credit card. “Whah? You can, like, use one of those plastic money thingies to, like, do a computer dot-doubleyou-dot-someshit? Woah.”
I assumed this was a comment on their intelligence (or lack thereof), from the expression “dumb as a box of hair”.
Ah. Is that smarter or dumber than a bag of hammers?
Probably for the same reason you call us stupid cavemen.
Oh, yeah. Case in point: My first job was as a dishwasher in some hole-in-the-wall food joint. There was one little old gray-haired lady that would come in with her friends once a week for lunch. She consistently would send her food back untouched because it was “underdone, nearly raw!” Every time. Without even tasting the dish. Finally, one of the cooks simply took the meat patty from a burger she had returned, dropped his pants and rubbed it all over his genitals. After picking off a few hairs, he put it back in the sandwich and the dish was returned to the customer. She ate it.
Once again, let’s not get into a political war in this thread. I was just trying to set up a scenario.
I remember one particular episode that happenned to me a number of years ago.
I was working a 3rd shift job at a self service gas station/convinience store. One particular day it was towards the end of my shift, in mid December. There were a number of customers there waiting in line as I was having them pay for their gas and other items and I was working alone.
One guy came up and he started screaming (Literally) that the paper towels had fallen out of one of the holders at one of the islands so He couldn't clean his car windows. "I thought the basic idea behind self service was for us to be able to clean our own windshields!!! HUH!! How the FUCK do you expect me to clean my windshield if the paper towels are on the ground!! Huh!! Huh!!"
I quietly explained to him that I was sorry that the paper towels had fallen on the ground and that I was also sorry that I didn’t have the opportunity to pick them up due to being busy. The guy stormed off. The person behind him in him shook his head and said “Sheesh!! What a grouch.”
What I wanted to say to the grouch (and I’ll admit that I barely held it back) was “NO!! The general idea behind self serve is for you to save a few cents per gallon of gas thorugh elimination of some poor schmucks job!!”
You try your best but sometimes…
Look, guys, I’m all for getting revenge on bitchy customers, but let’s not get all illegal about it, shall we?
I guess I should mention that I do not condone this activity, nor did I participate in it. I still get queasy just thinking about it, and it occurred in late 1971.
Let’s see, which one to tell, which one to tell…ah!
I was taking breakfast orders in the back drive-thru at McDonalds. A guy comes through the line and orders a Sausage McMuffin with egg, but not the usual round egg, he wanted the folded egg like the ones that came on a Bacon Egg and Cheese biscuit. Oddly enough, the register didn’t have a button which allowed a person to customize the shape of their food, so I had to stop taking orders and go speak with my co-workers in the grill and front drive-thru. Naturally, despite my best efforts, the wrong sandwich was handed out. A few moments later, this waste of space drove back through the parking lot in order to throw his circular egg at me. If I had not had the window closed, it would have hit me in the face.
Then I jumped out the window, tore off his round balls, stomped them flat, and served them to him on an English muffin.
You’re nuts!
No, wait, his nuts.
You know, this guy was over the top at the end, I’m sure, but he doesn’t seem that unreasonable.
And most likely he was - salesmen are not notorious for being all that truthful about how promotions work and when they’ll end.
And there’s that salesmen problem, again.
And it’s his job to educate your store managers because, uh, because…?
Oh, they’re not your managers, apparently, but y’all let these people slap your brand on their building, keeping them in line with your corporate policies is your problem, not the problem of your customers.
So it’s reasonable to expect that you will be able to purchase $50 worth of service for $25 indefinitely?
It’s been two decades since I worked any type of retail, and I’m sure I would have stories had I not repressed the memories so deeply that it would take years of intense hypnotherapy to retrieve them.
Having said that, to a small extent, I agree, in principle, with jacquilynne. Perhaps these were customers who exploded just for the purpose of exploding. I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t tell. However, a few (not many) of these sounds like it was more a customer service issue versus a customer issue. Again, using Sierra Indigo’s post (not the only one, but a good one), depending on the customer’s tone and attitude from the start (which I readily admit to not knowing), this may have been diffused. I’m not saying that it would have been easy, and I know they don’t bay customer service reps enough to truly care about each and every person who calls, nor do I expect CSRs to be empaths able to discern how best to diffuse any person. It’s just that sometimes, policies aren’t clear and customers won’t know the little details.
I’m reminded of a thread I read on the customerssuck board many, many, many moons ago. It was about how a supermarket gets “dumb” customers who don’t know how a chicken gets cut up to be roasted/fried/whatever. I like to think of myself as somewhat intelligent, but I hadn’t a clue as to their methodology, which I guess would make me a dumbass in their store. I know that no KFC or Popeye’s around here cuts it up like they did, so it’s not a defacto global standard, yet they expected anyone and everyone to know that 'that’s how it’s done".
Never excusable, however, are people who come in the very minutes before closing and proceed to keep staff late. When I’m Emperor of the Universe, it will be legal to lobotomize such customers via an icepick to such their earlobes. Stores will then be allowed to display the corpses as a warning to the next customer who wastes time after closing. [Please note - entering 2 minutes to closing, going right to what you want, and paying cash or credit card is acceptable. Paying by check - you’re pushing it.]
Another former Montgomery Ward clone here.
3 yrs in paint and hardware. No way I could possible remember one in particular of the irate paint customers.
Worked a year in shoes. (with one coworker, who I swear was the prototype for Al Bundy)
Most of the shoe customers were fine. WAY common for ladies to insist that they are at least a full size (if not 1-1/2) smaller than they actually are though. “Let me bring out a 9 while I’m at it because this style runs especially tight”. No biggy, got used to it.
One thing though, ask ANY shoe salesman about gay couples. (A gay man shopping solo is no trouble) It’s not about homophobia it was about pain in the ass tire-kickers.
- Ward’s demographic wasn’t in the market for designer italian loafers, so we didn’t have any. You want Gucci shoes, get on a ‘plane and go to freakin’ Bloomingdales…this is a Monkey Ward store in a mostly straight, mostly blue collar suburb already. Straight men don’t generally buy shoes to be fashionable. You’ll sell 200 pair of plain oxfords for every Italian designer loafer.
-I think it’s that if two men are enough different to be attracted to each other, then there is no friggin way in hell they are going to ever agree as to what looks good on man feet.
-Suppose you have a straight couple buying shoes for her: She wants something that makes her look pretty and feminine. He wants something that looks sexy. There is no fundimental conflect there. Gay couple: He wants something that is cofortable and doesn’t stand out much. Mate wants something that looks shiek and sexy, and doesn’t make his feet look to big. Yup, stereotyping, guilty as hell. Every damn time, I swear.
So I learned: Out of earshot of mate, say to one who will be wearing shoes: “I’m going to set these aside for a couple of days…if you change your mind, you know where to find me.” About half the time they’d come back the next day ALONE, and buy them. Still it was a lot of time and effort for a maybe sale.