The Customer is Always Insane, Pt. II

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I worked at a retail knife shop many years ago. Loved the job. We had one guy - early 20’s, fairly clean cut - that would come in once a week and ask to look at one particular knife (cheesy Rambo looking thing with a compass, hollowed handle with basic ‘survival’ tools - a very crap knife brought in for the OOhhh! That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife! clientele). We would take it down for him, he’d look it over, test the sharpness, take out the survival stuff, check to the if the compass was correct, then hand it back. Well, we sold it. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Sell stuff.
He came back, saw it was gone, blew a gasket. Didn’t we know he was saving up to buy it? He never made any comment that he wanted us to put it on hold for him, never said he interested in actually buying it. I ended up calling security on him when, in his tirade, he stated he had wanted some people to “meet” that particular knife.

After that he would walk past, stop, stare in the windows at us for a few minutes, flip us off, then continue on his way.

We also had the assorted wingnuts who, while holding knives, would tell us the best way to use them for killing.

What fun.

42

There are churches that are still against women wearing pants, cutting their hair, or wearing jewelry or makeup.

43

In high school I worked at a McDonalds. One night this lady come up through the drive-thru and ordered. We gave her the food and she left. A few minutes later she came into the restuarant and came up to the counter with her bag of food in hand. I was there and remembered her from a few minutes ago and seeing the bag assumed we messed up her order and I asked her if we had. In a pleasant tone she said yes and that she wanted to talk to the manager. I got the manager from the back and told her about the lady. The manager walked up to the counter and asked the lady what was wrong. The lady in an annoyed tone said her order was wrong. The manager apologized and asked her what she had ordered so we could remake it for her. The lady took the lid off her strawberry milkshake and threw at the manager, who was only about two feet away, hitting her right in the chest with the milkshake and yelled, “Fuck You!” and then stormed out.

The manager was pissed. The rest of us employees were laughing our asses off.

44

I laughed my ass off at that. I think somebody was pmsing.

45

About 12 years ago. Like Alice said there are still people around who think wearing pants make a woman a floozie - apparently the bible forbids women from dressing like men.

46

I was a checkout chick for about 7 months & we had customers who would pay for their groceries like that all the time. Less than fair on the other customers in the line. & the cashier (who counted our takings) was another fruit loop who would complain to our supervisors if the operators had to much coinage in our takings. The worst one was stopped by one of the long time checkout operators telling him she wouldn’t accept it & he would have to take it to a bank to get changed. & he just quietly pulled out his eftpos card.

Some people just value no one’s time but their own.

47

Shoulda come in the next day naked. Or in a burqa. Or naked under a burqa. Or something.

48

Yes, it’s completely inconsiderate. In my case there were no other customers, but the all-change bonanza was not very fair to the clerk who was waiting to close the store, since I had to wait for the change to be counted out, and then wait for the customer to go find an ATM. Grad students, you know?

49

Which is cute, because I’m pretty sure that everybody wore “dresses” back in Biblical times.

50

My youngest son actually goes to one of those churches, his is called Apostolic. They occasionally will invite me to functions, whereupon I will warn them, “I’m going to wear pants!”

51

My first thought was that he must’ve been paid by a vengeful ex or something. The sneakers indicate that he was pre-planning to run fast.

52

Are they the kind who haven’t heard of the 95/5% theory? It goes something like this- 95% of your customer service problems are caused by 5% of your customers. You’re better off driving that 5% away to your competition, so that the 95% of problems go to them as well.

That’s why the customer is not always right. Sometimes they’re the 5% of assholes who are wrong, and who your store shouldn’t want and should actively try to get rid of.

Case in point: In graduate school, some dumbass came into the sporting goods store that I worked in and wanted to buy the .22 rifle/scope combo. No big deal. I boresighted it, and explained that boresighting doesn’t necessarily sight the scope in, but should at least let him be on the paper right off the bat. I then proceed to explain sighting in- show him the scope adjustments, and even show him how they affect the crosshairs by having him look through the boresighter before and after changing the settings. He nods and agrees eagerly.

Fast forward a week. Same guy comes in IRATE that the rifle doesn’t hit where he aims. Says we sold him a crap rifle, and wants his money back. Well, we don’t take guns back after they’re fired- almost nobody who sells guns does.

I ask if he actually bothered to sight the rifle in. and he looks at us dumbly, and starts back with the crap rifle bit. Our manager eventually told him to take a hike and not to come back.

53

It was one of those “starter checks” without an actual name or address on it that banks issue for customers to use while waiting for their proper checks to be delivered, wasn’t it? My first job was a supermarket and those (along with out-of-state checks) alway caused problems. We were allowed to except neither and most people did not want to accept that.

Actually checks were the source of alot of customer issues. People would want to postdate them, write them way over the limit to get change, use other peoples check, etc. I was always ever so much fun dealing with someone blacklisted from writing checks. Especially after we switched to using a 3rd pary verification system. After that we couldn’t even tell them why their check was declined; the scanner would just print “Declined” on the back with a reference code and an 800-number for them to call on their own. Also if they bounced a check to any merchant that used that system it would be declined at every other merchant.

I did what was probally the worst thing I’ve ever done to a customer when I was 17. It was the first winter I was driving. It was near closing time and this woman had a large order. The whole time I was ringing her order through she kept complaining that I to slow; she had places to be, I didn’t know what I was doing, etc all the while speaking to me like I was five. I finished, gave her her total and she tried to pay with a check.

Well actually it was three checks, all written by her ex-husband, and made out to her, not the store. In total they added up to $70 over her total (cashback limit was $20). I told her we couldn’t accept them and she blew a gasket. I got my supervisor and she told her the same thing I did. Then she started going on and on about how I accused her of being a thief, that I was cursing, that I had made a vulgar sexual comment, :mad: that she does this all the time, etc. She finished by demanding that she be allowed to take her groceries home, and she’d bring in cash the next day. No dice so she ended up storming out cursing about how she’d “have our jobs” :rolleyes:, that the store lost a customer etc.

The sup let me go off register and do returns for the rest of my shift (about 20 minutes). The store closed and I got in my car to drive home. On my way over the mountain I passed a car that was stuck in a snowbank on the side of the road. I stopped and the driver came up to my car. Yes, it was her, the bitch from work. She was alone and her cellphone wasn’t working. She didn’t recognize me at first; then got very, very quite and stared at me.

I told her to go fuck herself and drove away. Yes, that was a pretty cruel on my part. Never saw her again, but there was nothing in the news the next day about a dead woman being found on the side of a local round either.

54

Hahahahaha!

55

Now there’s an example of karma biting you in the ass!

56

When I was the Truck Gate Supervisor, I trained and told my people “One in ten will be a problem. One in one hundred will be a BIG problem. Since you deal with 60-90 trucks a day, that means you’re going to be dealing with 6-9 assholes a day and 3-5 major league assholes a week. As far as I am concerned, YOU OWN THIS GATE. Act like it. Be nice to everyone, even the assholes, because it drives them fucking nuts when they’re fuming and you’re still smiling and polite. Remember that YOU are the one who has the power here, not them. I promise that I will back you 100% on anything unless you’re deliberately fucking with someone.” (and I did, every single time.)

While I was there, we implimented a policy, with Management Approval, that people who went too far would be barred from entering the property. They’d be required to park their truck outside the gate and we’d have the yard dogs come out and get their trailer. We ended up doing that to only a few over about six months, but once the word got around to the truckers, it was a good threat. Shut it up and shut it down, or you can park out there and we’ll take our sweet time getting around to dealing with your load.

And then we also had two truckers barred from the facilities because they made threats of violence or of vandalism. Which also made a sweet threat for the truckers who started to walk down that road. “We can make it so that you never visit here again. How will your company like that one?” Given that we had 11 cameras in and around the gate, it was easy to point at them (and the signs that lied and said everything was being audio recorded) in order to tell them that we had everything on camera and were not afraid of what we were doing there.

Before I became a supervisor, I worked midnight to 8am, alone at the gate. We’d only get 10-25 trucks at night, almost all of them either in the first hour, or the last hour of the shift. One night about 3am, I was letting a guy out the gate and had to inspect his empty trailer, company policy, to ensure that he wasn’t stealing anything. Well, he decided that he wasn’t going to open it, and I’m not allowed to touch it. So I refused to open the gate and let him go until he did. He started ranting and raving, then threatening violence. Saying that we’re out there alone in the middle of the night and there’d be no one to help me or stop him. I laughed, pointed at the great big “audio and visual surveillance” sign, at the five cameras immediately available, and started wandering back to the gate house. “All I gotta do is go inside, lock the doors and call the police, and you aren’t going anywhere.” He responds by saying that he’ll just run the gate. “Ok, then I’ll tell the police to look for the truck with the chunk of my gate sticking out of it’s grill. Then you can be charged with that too.”

He opened the trailer for me.

And then the next day we reported him to his company and he was barred for life from the property.

57

Some customers do seem to think that phrase is actually magic, and will somehow bend the salesclerk or manager to their wills. More usually, the customers who repeat this phrase are trying to get something that they haven’t paid for and aren’t entitled to.

Well, I can’t blame you for what you did, or rather what you didn’t do. Maybe she learned a lesson that day. Probably not, but one can always hope.

58

Know what? Until you mentioned it, I never even thought that the sneakers meant pre-planning. :smack: I just thought it showed he was eccentric, wearing a suit with sneakers.

I still think it more likely he was a pervert who got off on humiliating/assaulting a good looking stranger, but obviously, I’m no detective - I totally missed the sneakers thing.

59

That reminds me. I worked at 7-11 in NJ for quite a few years. One of my regular customers was a very inconsiderate old man named Nathan. He’d come in nearly every morning, about 6:30, the busiest time of the day. I’d always have his pack of Newports ready, just waiting for his money, and he STILL took about 2-3 minutes of my time every day. He’d wait in line for maybe 3 minutes, while I rang up a dozen coffee-and-donut customers, with the line out the fricking door, and NEVER take out his wallet until AFTER I had rung up his cigarettes. Half the time, he could’t get his giant, scrap-paper-filled wallet out of his pants for 30 seconds, then not be able to find money in the mess. A handful of times, a customer behind him would holler at him - thank god, they knew me, and knew it wasn’t my fault.

Fast forward about 7 years. I moved to San Francisco, got married, and had come back to NJ to visit. We went to the bagel store, and on the way out, there was Nathan, seemingly wandering through the parking lot. I said “Oh, shit” to my wife. He saw me, and said, “Hey, man how are you? Haven’t seen you in a while! Can I get a ride?”

I was incredulous, so much so that I almost caved. But I said, “Are you kidding me?”, proceeded to tell him what I thought of him, and left his ass standing in the snow.

Joe

60

I read that Phil Spector did this once when paying court ordered support to ex wife Ronnie. Except it was like a huge truck with nothing but change. He only got away with it once until he was told to stop doing it that way.