The customer is always insane

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
141

Wow, with his family there as well you say? That kind of thing makes me both angry and sad. He got arrested and hauled off on front of his kids over something that petty and stupid. I don’t even want to guess at what their home life is like.

We had a lady who wanted to return something that was non refundable. English was her second language and her 10 yr old daughter was trying to translate while her 8 year old son waited. It was near closing. It took twenty minutes to finally get her to understand she couldn’t get a refund but she could get an in store credit. That wasn’t good enough and she simply refused to leave without her money. We asked her politely several times, closed the door and locked it because it was closing time, which was when she called her husband to tell him we were holding her against her will. Now he’s screaming at the assistant manager over the phone who just hangs up on him. Her kids started to cry which she blamed on us. The police show up and tell her she’s trespassing and if she doesn’t leave he’ll arrest her. Then she finally leaves.

142

That’s okay, because that one just so happens to be my birthday. And you can bet I’m bringing a dino with me to dinner.

143

Heh. My nickname was “Lumpy”.

WTF? How did the trainees have access to their iPods and cellphones? Didn’t those get stashed away at the initial shakedown?

I had a lighter I bought in Zefat, Israel confiscated. :frowning:

:smiley:

Aren’t sock monkeys from Anaheim? Of course they like Mexican!

144

My, er, Sock Monkey would need for me to sew him some pants so he wouldn’t get arrested for public indecency. :eek:

145

You have to let them pee or shoot them.

146

At least for a while, we were allowed to have ipods and cell phones in med-hold, although the cellphones had to be the pay-per-minute tracfones that had could be used for nothing except calls and text messaging (no cameras, no internet).

I could see the reasoning behind the iPods. There was nothing to do, especially with the almost total lack of any kind of actual training going on. I thought the cell phone idea was kinda stupid, espeically since they invariably ended up being used for talking to trainees of the opposite gender, dorm-to-dorm. Of course, I also thought it was stupid because it would require me to purchase another cell phone when I had a perfectly good one locked up in civvie luggage.

That said, 319 started to buckle down on the trainees again around the time I left Get Fit, so they may not have any of that stuff right now.

147

You have an Anatomically Correct Sock Monkey? My monkey is a female only by courtesy. Anyway, I bet the Prehistoric Creatures didn’t wear any clothes.

148

That makes some sense. That’s true about the cellphones–right before I separated there was a major meltdown about illicit communication between genders. Several trainees were actually sneaking out and having sex in various places around the base, and we had a setup in (I think) B6 where there was a little hole under the door in the day room, that opened up to a hallway in one of the girl-dorms. We would pass our ID card under the door and the girls on the other side would pick which guy they thought was the cutest or whatever, and write a little letter and pass it back with our ID and theirs. We’d write back and forth on the same sheet of paper, fold it up and write both names on it so the go-between on either side could pass it under the door and the other one could get it to the right person.

When the TIs found out about all this, there was a system set up for trainees to confess their involvement in it and get lighter punishment, or to drop dime on other trainees and get no punishment. I was scared shitless since I was going to separate fairly soon and the punishment could screw that up–but thankfully, my involvement was so minimal (fairly innocuous chat about our lives on the outside, no solicitation of any kind) that nobody ratted me out, or if they did the TIs decided not to pursue it.

149

Thanks for all of the laughs!

I have a Baby Sebastian doll from the TV show Dinosaurs who is going to be going out to dinner with me!

150

I’m just talking out of my ass here, but I was pretty sure that you had to serve sit-down meals to be required to have a restroom for customers. My guess is that they thought you would panic and let them use the employee restroom.

151

AYE!

152

There have been a couple of public service messages on TV here about not putting diesel in gasoline-powered cars. Self-serve has been making inroads on the formerly ubiquitous full-serve stations. The complicating factor is that there are light cars, 軽自動車 (kei-jidôsha), which are very small, have engines under 600 cc, and incur cheaper taxes than regular cars. Diesel fuel is commonly known as 軽油 (keiyu, lit. “light oil”). To people who have never pumped their own gas, I guess it might seem reasonable to think, “okay I drive a kei car, so I should use kei fuel.” Apparently some knuckleheads have actually followed through with this and filled their tanks with diesel. Fixing that probably costs more than those tinkertoy cars are worth. I’ll bet they wished they’d asked an attendant for help.

153

As I was reading your story, I kept flashing back to this classic exchange.

154

man I got a couple of these.

One of my favorites was from this past summer, working in the produce department, idly putting stuff on the shelves.

A man come in, grabs a couple of russet potatoes, and bags them. Starts walking away, then turns around thoughtfully

Man: Are these potatoes?
Me: <speechless, mouth opens and closes a couple of times> uhhh. Yeah.
Man: Oh good!

and walks away. Seriously. who doesn’t know WHAT A POTATO LOOKS LIKE.

another customer, standing, no kidding, in plain view of the table.

Genius: where do you guys have bananas
Me: (polite employee response) right here!
Me: (what i was thinking) well, I dunno, it couldn’t possibly be this WALL OF YELLOW FRUIT 5 FEET BEHIND ME COULD IT?

then absolute nutjob, I think he was a war vet, buying birdseed:

Him: I love birds
Me: oh that’s nice
Him: I hate cats though. Cats are evil.
Me: uh?
Him: they kill birds for no reason. They don’t even eat them, they play with them and then kill them.
Me: uhhhhhhh
Him: they’re evil, they kill for fun. So I sit in my back yard when I feed birds and shoot any cats that come.
Me: (considers asking if he eats the cats, or just kills them for fun, and whether he is therefore as morally reprehensible as said cats) oh. ok. (decides not to question a crazy man)

now, SAME CUSTOMER, later in the summer
(helping him take his groceries out)

Him: I carry my gun around in my fanny pack.
Me: :eek:
Him: one time a guy stole my fanny pack, and I chased him down, and beat him with my cane.
Me: :eek:
Him: then I took my gun out and waved it at him and he ran away. Nobody messes with me, I used to be able to kill a man in a second in 6 different ways, now Im not as fast so I need my pistol
Me: uhhh. Have a nice day <runs>

155

I made him myself.

I couldn’t imagine a Brontosaurus in anything but a silly hat and a fluffy tutu.

156

Yes, that sock monkey DOES need pants if he’s to go out in publlic.

157

Well I’ll be damned.

158

Aye.

159

To sum up: the average bad customer is a brontosaurus who smells terrible, doesn’y wear pants, harrasses the staff and other customers, and mastrubates under the table. :stuck_out_tongue:

160

I can affirm that possums most definitely have teeth. And they are bleeping sharp. I have been bitten by one. One the shoulder. Through a shirt, a sweatshirt, and denim jacket, and I still bled (a little tiny bit, but still). Of course, I was at the time, pulling him out of his cage by his tail (it was the recommended method).

This was a volunteer animal rescue place. I was also attacked the herd of deer. Did the wolf harass me? The ferrets? The hedgehogs? The various birds of prey? No, bleeping Bambi and his friends decided that the 5’4" 16-year-old that was bleeping washing dishes for them was dangerous and should die.

The lady in charge told me to knock them down. Yeah. RIGHT.

I still like possums, but I hate deer.

(anyway, stuff like this is why I won’t work retail. But I still love customerssuck.com. Except for the poor punctuation and grammar.)