I have a habit of playing with my hair, not even being aware of it.
Well, when I was working at Kmart, this one old guy came up to me the one time and said, “Why do you play with your hair?” And I just looked at hime and said, “Oh, I don’t know, just a habit I guess.” And he said, “Well I don’t LIKE it!”
Oooohkay.
And do NOT get me started on the old people who would ask me to rifle through my drawer for state quarters.
When I worked at McDonald’s as a teenager, I would routinely get parents that would go completely postal if we didn’t have the correct Happy Meal toy that their child wanted. (Sometimes, even better, there was no child involved and I was dealing with an adult that just really wanted to complete his collection of Happy Meal Power Rangers or whatever.)
However, the best was one day when a mild-mannered parent came up – not in the middle of lunch rush, bless him – and politely inquired whether I could try to find him a different plush Babe: Pig in the City toy, because his daughter already had the sheep. He was polite and we weren’t rushed, so I said, sure, and went rummaging through our box o’ Happy Meal toys. Unfortunately, the Babe promotion was ending that week, so all we had was the sheep and the toys for the next week’s promotion, which was some kind of monster movie.
So I stood up and showed the guy what we had: “Well, we don’t have a plush sheep toy, but we do have this… um… cockroach. That transforms into… I think a rat.”
After a beat of silence, we both cracked up. He was like, “Yeah, no, I’ll stick with the sheep. Thanks anyway, though.”
I’m a co-manager in a little home decor store, and I got snippy with some folks a while back. We were having nasty weather and I had just watched a tornado rip through Murfreesboro on live TV. I came out of the breakroom and discovered half my employees and half my customers standing outside, in front of our large glass facade, watching the sky.
“Let’s all get away from the large wall of glass, please,” says I. I took a tone with them so there wouldn’t be any argument. Everybody shuffles back in and a couple of the kids actually thank me. They had gotten a little nervous.
One lady, of course, decides to complain. “We’re just seeing what’s happening,” she says, “It looked like there were swirling clouds.”
“Well, it’s a lot safer inside then,” I replied, exasperated.
“We would have come back inside if it turned in to a funnel cloud!”
“That’s common sense for you.” I said, and walked away. Snippy and rude? Yeah. Would anyone have been hit by falling glass if the worst happened? Nope. She was a twit. A couple of weeks later my boss calls me in to his office and says there’s been a customer complaint about me. Apparently, back when the weather was bad, I had been “irate and ironic.” All I could do was laugh. Twit.
From NotAlwaysRight:
Me: “Sir, your computer is all ready to go. We got all the viruses off of it.”
Customer: “Question: do you get viruses from looking at porno sites?”
Me: “Yes sir, the majority of those sites contain viruses.”
Customer: “….hmm…well then, I’ll probably be back here soon.”
How dare you, sir! Being all ironic with simple minded customers. You’re confusing them!
Spoken like a true expert.
Any time I talk to any kind of CSR, this is pretty much the first thing out of my mouth. It makes things go much more smoothly if they know that (a) you’re not mad at them, you’re mad at the company and (b) they’re not responsible for whatever stupid thing got messed up or whatever stupid policy the company enacted.
(Apologies for further distracting from the OP.)
Apparently you have never met my ex, who would go batshit crazy/mean for a few days each month.* That is exactly what my first impression would be.
*Need I mention that there was no attempt at amelioration and never even a hint of an apology?
My Thesis Director thought the reason I gave him an ultimatum (which I acted upon, thus getting a MS without thesis rather than a PhD) was 'cos I was PMSing.
After he’d stolen my research.
Yes, some women are total bitches when PMSing. Yes, some guys are total dicks while the traffic light is red. But the problem is when the joke becomes the default thought.
Mrs M has been known to blame not only being on the rag and being pre-menstrual, but being mid-cycle. All she needs now is to advance “post-menstrual” as an excuse and she’s covered four weeks out of four, I figure.
When my Cheatin’ Ex broke off our engagement, I kid you not that my sister enquired politely as to the state of her hormones. And a lady friend once made the same enquiry as to another woman who’d been giving me shit. So I guess both of the above must have been shallow sexist thugs prone to whining about how women wouldn’t go out with them.
(Actually there was someone up-thread who went for years complaining about their lack of opposite-sex action, but it wasn’t SSG Schwartz…)
Only some? I used to be a night clerk for 7-Eleven. I swear, I was convinced the flying saucer had landed right across the street and they headed for the nearest lights…