Please be advised that XXXXXXX & Associates does not currently employ
anybody with mind reading ability. As such we must ask for your cooperation
in actively supplying us with the information we need to satisfy your needs.
To that end please make note of these problems we have faced in the past as
your help in correcting them is greatly appreciated.
When sending in orders it is imperative that information be included with
the project. Simply sending a picture or disc doesn’t adequately convey what
you need us to do with it.
While it is helpful when you put packages to a particular person’s attention,
it is also helpful to provide references to previous conversations, particularly when
they occurred more than 90 days in the past. We do take notes and make every
effort to remember all our phone calls but unfortunately, and as I’m sure you
can attest* it’s difficult to remember exactly what we talked about more than a
few weeks previous.
When calling to follow up on an order please make sure to identify yourself.
Simply saying “where’s my order?” when the phone is answered doesn’t provide
us with enough information to give a satisfactory response. Information such as
who you are, what company you are with and the nature of your order is all most
helpful.
As soon as we can locate a legitimate, certified telepath to assist us with your
needs we will be happy to do so, but until then if these simple guidelines are
followed we can assure you more efficiency in the processing of your request and
more information available when you call to ask for it.
Sincerely
Photopat
*and often have when calling us to ask for our help in finding a project you’ve lost,
sometimes before even sending it to us.
Just because this is a museum doesn’t mean we know the hours, admission prices or gift shop contents of all the historical sites in town. Don’t get angry when I tell you I have no idea when the Native American museum is open or if they have certain things in their collection.
We are not an appraisal service. Frankly, we don’t know the value of everything in our collection, let alone some piece of junk you found in your uncle’s garage. Likewise, when you tour our facility, it is quite annoying to your guide if you continually ask how much things are worth. This isn’t an antiques shop.
You apparently are laboring under the assumption that all of those DO NOT TOUCH! signs do not apply to you. Yes, I know you’re “not going to break it” but honsetly, I don’t care if you think you “know what you’re doing.” We don’t want your greasy fingerprints all over the artifacts. I don’t wear these white cotton gloves for their fashion appeal.
I know I’m young-looking but on occasion, I do actually know what I’m talking about. I know you’ve always been told this was your great-great-great-great-great grandmother’s wedding dress from 1802, but, see, they didn’t have zippers back then, nor sewing machines.
Movies are not the best way to learn your history. Little House on the Prairie was not a documentary. I will try not to laugh when you argue with me, citing a John Wayne movie, but it’s very difficult.
Oh, do I feel your pain. I worked at Dodge City’s Boot Hill, and the number of people left stammering, "But…but…it wasn’t that way on ‘Gunsmoke…’ was staggering.
They haven’t gone through one of those voice-mail hells before this point, have they? It’s frustrating to go through those, punching in my order number and whatever else, and then have the person who finally picks up not have access to that information I just punched in. :mad: If the person I talk to doesn’t even get that information, why did I just spend all this time punching it in?
Nor are they a good way to learn astronomy, or any of the sciences.
This has always amazed the hell out of me, too. Why the fuck do they need to “confirm” all your details when you’ve just had to give those exact details in order to get through to a human being in the first place?
A-freakin-men. Bell South even tells you that you “may” have to give your information to the operator again. “May?” I always have to do it! It’s not so bad with the phone number, but I hate it with credit card companies!
But I also agree with the OP. Assuming you haven’t just gone through 20 voice menus, you shouldn’t expect the person on the other end to magically know who you are and what you want!
Amen to this one. I’ve mentioned it before, but some people are just too stupid for words.
I used to work in the service and repair department of a large jewelry store. When people dropped off stuff for repair, we’d point out the invoice number (in red) on their claim ticket and say, “You need this claim ticket to pick up your item. This is your item number if you want to call and check on it.”
Everything was cross-referenced so we could look it up by their ticket number, name or phone number.
Several times a day, people would call and ask simply , “Hi, is my bracelet ready?” - no name, no number, nothing. As if their bracelet is the only one we have.
If we asked for a ticket number, they’d say, “What ticket? I don’t think I got a ticket.”
Yeah, sure you didn’t. You just dropped off an expensive piece of jewelry and didn’t think to get a claim ticket? I don’t think so.
One of my clients called and immediately launched into a whole conversation. Once he finally paused for breath I said “Who is this?” You can’t believe how affronted he sounded! I may as well have asked what his grandmother’s vagina looked like, specfically in comparison to his mother’s.
So you know what he says to me, all indignant like? Hand to Og: “Even people I’ve never spoken to recognize my voice.” I was speechless.
I can relate to a lot of those. I work customer service for an engine and parts distributor and have a few things I’d love to say to some of these people.
Giving me a part number is a lot more helpful when you tell me what it is you want me to do with it.
Companies do not make one line of engines, nor do they make only one engine in a given line. Telling me you want a carb gasket for a Kohler 18 horse engine is as useful as telling me you want the rear passenger door for a Ford car.
We have nothing to do with the things our engines are used in. Giving me a model number from the thing our engine is in gives me no clue what engine is in the thing.
You’re a dealer. You have microfiche. You have parts lookup software. You have two arms, two legs, a heartbeat and a brain. Please do not call me to order parts without having a single part number at hand because you’re too damn lazy to look it up yourself.
Please do not choose “customer service” from our phone system’s menu when clearly what you want is technical support or AR/AP.
Your life story is wholly uninteresting. If you want proof, ask the six people in the telephone queue your tale is pre-empting.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to put tours on hold because one of the people in the group wants to relate their utterly unimportant family history to me. Yes, your great-great-great grandfather was in the Civil War. That’s cool. So were a lot of other people’s great-great-great-grandfathers. How utterly fascinating that your ancestors were farmers in this area! So were 85% of the rest of the people. It doesn’t add anything to the tour to announce in ringing tones that your great-grandfather was in WWI. Thank you for reciting your geneology-- I’d really rather stand here and waste time listening to it than finish my other tasks.
Nearly as bad are the people who want to point to just-about-everything and say, “My grandmother had one just like that! Let me tell you all about it, and several tedious tales of my family’s interraction with this object!”
We have an exhibit on the 1950s right now. I hate it with a burning passion, because what should be a fifteen-minute-walk-through consistently turns into a forty-five-minute trip-down-boring-memory-lane. Yes, I don’t give a flying fuck that you once had shoes like that, nor do I wish to hear your tales of listening to Elvis records. You know why? Because I just heard the same fucking story from another group less than an hour ago! Yes, your mother had a dress like that, and no, I don’t give a shit where she wore it.
Now, don’t get me wrong-- not everyone’s stories are boring. I once gave a tour to a woman who hid Jews in her basement during WWII in Germany. I wish I could have spent all day listening to her. But on the whole, tales about undistinguished ancestors don’t add much to the tour experience.
Just out of interest, Lissa, do you believe that one of the purposes of historical exhibitions is to give people something to connect to, a way to recover and understand and appreciate their own past? Or it is there merely to serve a narrowly didactic purpose. It strikes me that the sort of stories you describe are, for these people, anintegral part of their experience. I don’t think it’s quite the same as someone ranting on about unrelated family history to a customer service representative.
Oh, I’m sure some of these people have some genuinely interesting anecdotes from their lives, but Jesus H. Christmas there’s a time and a place for everything, and when your soft-shoe down memory lane comes at the expense of every other fucking person’s expense then it’s just about time to cram a ball gag in it and move on!
One retail job I worked at saw an elderly gentleman – very nice by all accounts, polite as you please, who was just hitting his verbal stride when he yanked out his wallet and unfolded it to allow an entire fucking photo album to accordion down to the floor. It would have been an amusing cartoon moment if I wasn’t the one about to be introduced to the entire 20th century.
Tried that. He just kneeled over my prone “corpse” and spoke louder, gesturing with greater emphasis at each photograph.
His head of steam did eventually run out when he realized that he was still the head of what was now a line of four people, but apparently didn’t have the prescience to realize he was the reason it had grown in the first place.
I love the elderly, really I do, but it is a cruel, cruel joke on humanity that age robs them of the ability to understand how much of a pain in the ass they can be sometimes.
Or maybe it’s just that they prefer it that way. Upon further consideration, I’m rather looking forward to the day when I can be a pain in the ass with complete impugnity.
I understand where you’re coming from, but relating one’s memories and family history has its time and place. Interrupting a tour and subjecting a group of uninterested strangers to a lengthy ramble is not appropriate. Generally, people are there to view the artifacts and learn more about the rich history of our area, not about the geneology of one of the tour group members.
Of course, I din’t mind a quick tale or two during the tour, but when the group is contantly delayed by endless reminiscing, I know I’m not the only one annoyed. Sometimes, it can greatly add to the educational value of the tour-- such as if we’re talking about a railroad, and someone mentions their grandfather helped to build it. A few of those stories can enrich the whole experience. But when someone yammers on and on about their mother having a kitchen table just like that, it benefits no one.
