I am frequently sent on maintenance trips to a nearby town, and unfortunately the only restaurant (using the term loosely) open when I get there is the local McIdiot’s.
Cashier: Welcome to McIdiot’s, may I take your order?
Me: I’d like a sausage biscuit and a small black coffee.
Cashier: A sausage biscuit…(pause)…would you like something to drink with that?
Me: Yes. I would like a small black coffee.
Cashier: A small coffee…(searches for button on register)…What size do you want?
Me: A small black coffee.
Cashier: (Still searching for button) Do you want cream or sugar?
In defense of myself, who is probably the subject of a similar thread that some Michigan theater employee is participating in somewhere as we speak…
I’ve been the dumbass who has actually asked this question,and it’s because some theatres also sell Icee-type things, and they use an entirely different cup for this. Since I am not a usual icee consumer, I can’t always immediately understand which unlabeled cup display are the icee cups. I need the long-suffering concession employee to actually point to the cup I’d be getting. Also, our theater is always having a promotion of some sort, a special Nascar Guzzler Go-Cup or a Megabuckets refill cuperoo or whatever is currently being pushed. The menu doesn’t always reflect that, so I need to know that if I order a “large,” will I be getting a normal large, or some sort of promotional thingie?
whimper I know what you mean, but mebbe we’re not all of us stupid, them among us who ask such dingbat questions.
2 nights ago, I was working back drive thru (order taking/casier) at like 10:30. one of the lot lights was off, so the parking lot looked darker than usual. Car pulls up to the speaker.
Me: Hi, can I help you?
Them: Can I get a #2 with a coke?
Me: $4.19, please pull to the first window.
I take their money, hand them a receipt.
Them: Wait, are you closed? It’s really dark out here.
Yeah, I like to sit around after we close, take orders, take money, and then laugh at all the stupid people who never get their food. Sounds like my idea of a wonderful way to spend a Wednesday night.
Retail sucks, I work at Circus Shitty(Circuit City) and I get the dumbest customers. Not so much the questions they ask, but what they expect to fit in their cars.
This one guy buys a 36 inch Sony Vega, heavy motherfucking tv, its probably around 350-400 lbs. He shows up in a Ford Thunderbird, wants me to put it in the trunk. This TV is bigger than his car.
These 2 dumb blondes buy a 35 inch GE tv, show up in a Mitsubishi Eclipse convertable. They have no other car, and say that they will return it if we dont load it for them.
A co-worker and I say fine, put the top down, top down, he and I carry the Tv over their hood, over the windshield, and set it in the back seat. I dont think that they ever got it out.
My brother used to work phone support for a cable company and had some real gems. I can only remember a couple.
After explaining what was involved with a certain free service they offered to subscribers, a customer asked, “How much does the free service cost?”
Another customer was having trouble programming certain functions into the company-supplied cable box. After my brother had spent some considerable amount of time talking the guy through a series of remote control operations, the guy interrupted and said, “Uh, wait a minute. Should I turn it on?”
Now, I may be living at home with my parents, but for nigh on to 32 years now I’ve been developing this thing I call a “life.” This “life” involves various pieces of equipment in order to make it more pleasureable; for example, clothes, CD’s, books, videotapes, furniture, dishwear, sexual accessories, bedclothes, momentos, knick knacks, wallhangings, decorations… oh, you have these things, too? What a coincidence! And if you were moving from, say, one house to another house, would you take these things with you? Yes, of course - otherwise, you’d have to start your “life” over from scratch, and boy, wouldn’t that get expensive! Whew!
A few years ago I was watching a womans basketball team being interviewed on TV after having lost whatever cup/trophey/medal they were playing for. A reporter asked the “How do you feel about losing the game?” question. The team captain looked at him for about 5 seconds and said “Oh we’re thrilled. Couldn’t be happier. How in the hell do you think we feel?”
It was great!
This was on the news yesterday and I was actually horrified.
The story is that a guy currently serving time for child abduction claims to know the whereabouts of a girl who has been missing for about a year. He claims that he kidnapped her and gave her to someone and he doesn’t know what this guy did with her but he’s pretty sure she’s still alive. Well of course they have to go interview the kids aunt or something. They ask what she’s heard and she explains that apparently this guy was the one who kidnapped the girl and he passed her on to someone else.
The reporter then asks: "To do what with her?"
The poor woman actually flinched like she’d been slapped, but she had the grace to reply that she was not given any further information. Good God! I would have let loose on the guy with every horrible scenario I’d been imagining over the past year. “To do what with her?” INDEED! That’s just disgusting.
This is true. But half the time, we’ve got lines with at least half a dozen people waiting to order. It’ll take at least five minutes to deal with everyone, and may take as much as ten (depending on what the people order). In that amount of time, you’d be surprised as to how few people actually think about what they want to order beforehand. Also, you’d be surprised as to how few people pay attention as to what’s going on directly in front of them…
Case in point (a stupid-ass fucking question comes in at the end of this): In the middle of a big-ass fucking rush (it’s the day after Christmas), a guy orders a pretzel. Now, for some reason, our pretzels are very popular, and as such, we run out of them really quick. So I tell him that they’re still frozen, and I can pop it in the microwave and nuke it for a few minutes. He says that’s fine, so I go and do it. After a couple minutes (which is an ETERNITY when you’ve got people in line), his pretzel is ready, I serve it to him, and everyone’s happy.
The woman behind him walks right up to me mumbling (loud enough so I can clearly hear her) about the horrible, slow service at the theater. With a wry grin, I ask her, “Can I help you, ma’am?” (yes, I’ve trained myself to refer to people as “sir” and “ma’am”).
Was my computer actually tested for compatibility with Windows 2000?
<look up customer info, computer was manufactured in 1997.>
Yes, Mr. Dingleheimer, although your P-166 POS was built in 1997, we were able to test Windows 2000 on it. Not only do we make computers here, but we are also the world’s leading manufacturer of Flux Capacitors, so we were able to go back in fucking time, and test it.
Verily, the such trivial constraints such as the fact that the operating system you’re asking about didn’t exist at the time your computer was made mean little to us, since we get to bend reality in order to make you happy.
Sarah, I feel your pain! I work in a bookshop, and although I don’t wear a uniform or anything like that, I do wear an identifying, conspicuous, pin. I don’t know, people seem to think it’s polite to ask if you work there, for some reason. No! The stupid pin is a fashion statement!
Anyone who has ever worked in a bookstore will recognize this one. “I don’t know the title or author, but can you help me find it?” This is kind of a frustrating situation, but I try to deal with it as best I can. Do they know what it’s about, is it old or new, did they read about it in the paper, or see it mentioned on a certain TV show? My store keeps the books reviews from the NY Times, the SF Chronicle, and the local paper as well, and searching the websites of TV talk shows is often successful as well. But some people… I mean, if you don’t have any information on a book whatsoever (“I think it has a blue cover, or maybe green” doesn’t count), you are not allowed to get upset when I can’t find it! Maybe I should be flattered that there are people out there who think I’m omniscient?
When I worked box office at a movie theater, I’d often get people walking up to my window (which was inside a mall) and asking, “What’s playing?” or “What time is Movie X?” Hell, I dunno, let’s consult the giant signs hanging on the window on either side of me! If I felt like being condescending, I’d reach forward to the window and tilt the sign back so that I could read it to them. “Let’s see…according to this, it’s at 1, 4, 7, and 10…”
slight hijack, but I thought y’all might enjoy this story: one of the strangest problems I had to deal with in that theater happened while I was tearing tickets at the door. A mother and her kids had bought tickets to the show, but the little girl in the group (probably about 4 years old) was too scared of me to come up to the door. I was the biggest guy she’d seen in her life, I guess. So, I got down on my knees until they got her through the door and into the theater (entirely my idea). Ain’t that just the cutest thing…
Even worse are the “questions” from some NBA post-game interviews, which are basically just compliments about how great the interviewee and his team played.
Ahmad Rashad: Hey _____, great game. Mind answering some questions? Player: Sure, go ahead. AR: You were really on fire tonight. 43 points, 12 rebounds… P: Yeah, I… AR: Your team really pulled it together there in the fourth quarter. P: Yeah, we…
Just once, I’d like to see one of the players say something like, “Thanks, but that wasn’t actually a question, now was it?” I guess the NBA on NBC higher-ups never bothered teaching their reporters the difference between “interviewing” and “kissing ass”.
Having worked in retail, I can appreciate the frustration of answering boneheaded questions like “how many pieces in the 15 piece bucket?” all day over and over. What gets up my nose, though, is being treated as if the stupid questions have been asked by me personally on a daily basis ever since the employee’s job began.
I once bought stamps at a variety store/postal outlet; I’d never been there before. When I was ready to mail my letter I looked around for the mailbox. A postal outlet has got to have a mailbox, right? To my surprise I couldn’t find one so I asked the teenaged girl at the cash register.
Clerk: It’s over there. (pointing across the room towards racks of postcards, a display case, a counter with pens and phone books etc.)
Me: Where? (looking in the direction she’s pointing)
Clerk: (exasperated sigh) There. It’s right there.
Me: Sorry, I’m not seeing it. It’s right where?
Clerk: (patronizingly) Look, see the nice lady in the red coat? Well, dear, it’s right behind her.
At that moment, the woman who had been using the counter to write a postcard or whatever stepped aside to reveal the waist-high mail slot built into it.
Me: So, you’re talking down to me because I couldn’t see the mail slot being blocked from my view by that customer?
Clerk: (pause) Uh. (pause) (sheepish giggle) Uh, sorry, but it gets aggravating answering that question all the time.
Me: If it happens all the time then maybe, dear, you should hang a sign from the ceiling that says “Mailbox” on it with an arrow pointing the damn thing.
She looked at me like I’d just spun straw into gold.
And just how in the name of God did he manage that? Maybe I’ve forgotten my IAs-and-stoppages for the M-16, but I don’t recall that the proper action for a stuck casing was “just snort that sucker outta there.”
Probably the same way guys with glasses get those shoved into their face: dumbass was too close to the “carrying handle” and normal recoil brough the two into contact. That’s also a good way to get excess CLP mist blasted into your eyes, BTW. [sub]It comes up through the joint between the butt-stock and the upper receiver. Not fun. Back off and get some eye relief![/sub]
A random number of years ago, I spent a summer working on a small island off the coast of New England, in a seafood restaurant by a harbor. Beautiful spot, especially with the very impressive breakwaters stretching out a half-mile into the Atlantic. Breakwaters made of enormous, Volkswagen-sized rocks, mind you. Gigantic piles, in other words, of enormous rocks.
I was back in the dishroom, doing the usual dish-dog thing (dishes, mostly) and enjoying the latest by Tom Waits, when a friend of mine, a waiter at said restaurant, walked back into the room. Normally, he was energetic and cheerful, a witty conversationalist, and a bon vivant. Right then, he looked like an extra for Dawn of the Dead. Stunned. Lifeless.
I asked him what was wrong.
A woman in the lovely restaurant patio, overlooking the harbor, where these two huge freaking arms of great big stones stretched hundreds of feet into the ocean, had just asked him a question.
“Do the rocks in the breakwater go all the way down to the bottom?”
I used to work at a software company here in Seattle. The name of it is three initials, let’s say ZRX.
I’m standing at the front desk, chatting with the receptionist. Phone rings. She answers: “Good morning, ZRX.”
Pause.
She says: “ZRX.”
Pause.
Says again, slowly: “Z, R, X.”
Pause.
Says: “The letters. Z, R, X.”
Pause, as she listens.
Then she rolls her eyes and hangs up.
Me: “What was that?”
Her: “He wanted to know how to spell it.”
Oh, hey, Nacho4Sara: I don’t know if Ikea gives bonuses for good ideas and suggestions, but why don’t you recommend to management that all the employees wear big buttons that say, “Yes, I freaking work here”?
Ha! I think Sara’s would have to say “So don’t bleating ask!” as well. You know, just to make it clear, as the people she seems to have the misfortune to deal with would need the extra reinforcement.
