Haha, no it is not my biggest complaint. It is just something that I have had a lot of lately and thought was annoying and funny enough to share. Also, that kind of person almost never tips at all.
I’m very fortunate. Most people who use libraries are pretty great. Oh, we have a few chronic trouble makers, notably folks who repeatedly “find” books on the shelves they claim we never checked in. And internet pervs who are convinced they have a constitutional right to camp out on the computers for hours on end, busily surfing porn and chat rooms (both prohibited by policy) and refusing to cede the computer to the next person waiting. Those are just routine itches though.
The ones that crawl under my skin are the self-annointed censors. The always, to a person, insist they “don’t believe in censorship BUT…”, then proceed to do exactly that. The covers of Cosmopolitan magazine because of the skimpily clad models. Explicit sex in paperback romances. A YA book about a troubled teen who’s tempted into drug culture as a panacea to his unhappiness–and refuses, but hey, drugs were mentioned. A slightly wacked “patriot”, deeply offended that we carry the Koran as well as the Bible. (He didn’t like that we offered different versions of the Bible either.)
We handle each challenge seriously and respectfully, even though it takes hideous amounts of time. And we haven’t removed a title from the shelves yet, btw. But their lack of self-awareness about their arrogance is really, really hard to take.
Veb
Ah-ha!
That’s a far bigger sin than not knowing how to use a snifter.
The thing that pissed me off most while I was working in the Temple to the Great God Murphy (known to the uninitiated as K-mart) were the ‘smart’ people who would come up while I was trying to count the number of inventory to be discounted.
Me: “Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-Five…”
Cust: “Hmm… if I get five of these, and three of those and another 8 of them I’ll have all the gifts I need for my twenty-two cousins.”
Me: “Thirty. Twenty-two… aw, shit.”
Then I moved down in the world: Answering the phones at a hospital billing office. I hate the way that so many people when they are upset about a bill begin the call by insulting the person they’re speaking with. Look, borons, newsflash: The poor schmuck answering the phone is the lowest person on the totem pole. He or she will try to help you, but you have accept that you’ll have to talk to a few people to get some assistance. This job was so stressful, when I left to go to boot camp I found the experience relaxing!
It’s really annoying when I’ve told someone good information and they act like, they don’t think I know what I’m talking about. Also annoying is when they insist I provide information on on a feature or how they can place something or get in touch with a competitor.
Actually, I can’t speak for most library customers, but my view of the open-mindedness of librarians was permanently stunted by one of the librarians back at my hometown. I went to the woman, who knew me from our church, and asked her if there were any way that the library might be able to get a subscription to Analog. She glared at me, and said in very frosty tones, “We won’t stock that kind of magazine.” With the subtext, ‘You should be ashamed you teenaged pervert for wanting to involve the library in your perversions. And if you leave now I’ll forget to mention this to your mother.’
Of course she’d been reading Jean M. Auel’s Valley of the Horses at the time. :rolleyes:
You wanted to read…science fiction!? You degenerate, you!
Kidding aside, the woman was a disgrace to the profession. Every profession has 'em, unfortunately. If belated apologies for her help, she was dead wrong, not to mention deeply stupid.
Right now I’m hassled by some high-minded folks, all offended that we carry graphic novels. Forget that they’re very popular. Forget that they’re valid formats in their own right. Forget that they’ve actually convinced some reluctant young readers that they actually like reading, and have branched out into more traditional books. They’re junk, and wastes of their valuable tax dollars. Presumably we’re supposed to hand the whippersnappers McGuffey’s Readers.
Sigh.
Veb
I work at a restaurant that is a little crossed over with fast food in a small airport in my city. We are the only place that provides food service and in the summer it gets quite busy. A lot of the people who use the airport are American and since summer season started, day after day, when I’ve rang their food up and tell them their total, ask me “Is that in American?”
Now, if I can take your attention away to my location for just one second…
WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!!!
Would I come down to the States (and I’ve been to Seattle a fair bit) and ask every friggin store if the prices were in Canadian???
Worse yet, when I say that all our prices are in Canadian, they come back with a “So how much is it in American?” :mad: :mad: :mad: If I knew how to convert $7.81 into USD mentally, in two seconds, I WOULDN’T BE AT THE SHITTY JOB!! :mad:
Thanks. And the only thing it really did for me is make me a book consumer instead of a library user. I certainly recognize, now, she was… making assumptions at the very best. And shouldn’t be the image I have of librarians. (Alas, killing any stereotype after it’s been re-inforced by experience takes time and effort.) At the time, as a gawky teen, I was just as glad to have a legit reason not to expect anything in the library for me (Having long since gone through the library’s collection of Edward Rowe Snow. Egads, I learned more about human evil and survival imperatives reading those books than most people ever imagined possible. And this was before I got into science fiction - from about ages 9 to 13. And some people were worried that SF would warp my wittle mind? Do people ever realize that the brouhaha about the Essex was only becaue they admitted in public they’d engaged in cannibalism? Not that it had happened.) except for the occaisional research project.
Oy vey. Granted, with a nickname involving the word ‘Otaku’ I think I qualify for a place in the choir on this issue. 
Have you ever tried asking those people if they agree that movies and TV are different storytelling formats than books? And that a story may be more powerfully told in one format than the same story told in another one? Not that I expect logic to be of much use… but you’re not likely allowed to use big foam cluebats.
Good one. I’m not one who thinks much of the way most Americans behave overseas, or even in Canada. (Can’t say anything about Mexico, never been there.)
Have you considered suggesting to you boss that setting up the register to let you have it make the conversions back and forth might be worthwhile if you get that much US business? With the amount of computing power available in most registers these days, it would be non-trivial to set up a program to let you put in a US$ amount and have it give you what the change would be Canadian (With a slight exchange fee built in, of course 
). Once the set up is made, though, using the program would be fairly easy.
When i lived in Vancouver (about ten years ago), quite a lot of the stores on either side of the border could give you your total in Canadian or US dollars, and would happily take either currency.
Of course, i don’t think this excuses ignoramuses who refues to adapt to the currency of the country they’re in.
We actually do have a button that converts the total into USD, the problem is, the exchange rate hasn’t been changed in a year, and last year, we gave a 1.30 but it’s dropped to 1.20 at our restaurant this year. Pressing it would lead to an incorrect total. Our boss seems to think it’s a small detail, nothing worth calling a guy in fix a small button. In the meantime, she’ll just let it aggravate us.
And thing is, most of us aren’t stupid. After working there for so long, I know that $1USD converts to $1.20CAD and $5 to $6, but when their total comes up, and they ask that question, and I tell them “Seven dollars would cover it, with our exchange rate.” they are unsatisfied with that because they want the EXACT AMOUNT because they don’t want Canadian change. :mad: That is when I want to do some serious strangling. :mad:
I know. It’s the same on both sides of the border at Buffalo/Niagara Falls.
I didn’t think you were. Nor am I.
Umm… never mind. :rolleyes: Bosses and customers: you can’t tell 'em anything and you can’t strangle 'em. No matter how much they may deserve it.
I do a small amount of freelance consulting on HR and labor issues. I do this only for firms/individuals I have a history with, and only on a very limited basis. My rates are very reasonable within the industry and because I’m doing this only for fun, I don’t include things like the cost of messenger services or phone calls or other random trivialities in my billing. Nevertheless, there are always people who think that they should get a break on the cost for the most piddling of reasons.
Last week, I sent a client a draft of a report in a Word document attached to an e-mail. A draft, meaning that it wasn’t final, it was for an interim review, it was only going to be seen by my point person, it wasn’t really formatted (and that was visually obvious, as the point person has seen my format before) and was entirely rough. Nevertheless, this is the phone conversation that we had upon his review of the draft of the report.
Client: “Hey Trace, got this draft of your report that you sent over.”
Me: “Oh good. Feel free to markup your edits right in the document and then send it back to me.”
Client: “Yeah, okay, oh, I’ve caught a few typos.”
Me: “Oh? I ran a spell check on it, but I didn’t get a second eye to proof it, since it’s still in draft form. You don’t have to mark them up, I’ll get them before the final version.”
Client: “Are you sure, there are like, three different places where you had errors that spell check wouldn’t catch, you know, there for three and “mist he” in place of “miss the” so I went ahead and fixed those right in the copy.”
Me: “Oh, thanks.”
Client: “So that should knock a few dollars off of the final bill, right?”
Me: - laughter -
Client: “Seriously, I did some of your work for you!”
Me: “(Client’s name), you’ve got to be joking.”
Client: “I deserve some consideration for what I’ve done here, I think.”
Me: “You fixed three typos?”
Client: “Yeah, three of them!”
Me: “Okay, well, let’s see, what is that, about ten keystrokes, right? That’s the equivalent of about two words, and I type 90 words a minute, so that’s 1/45th of a minute or 0.0003703704 of an hour, so that’d be worth, uh… $0.06. I’ll deduct that from the final total. Be sure to send that file back over at your earliest convenience, huh? Oh, oops, the baby’s crying, gotta run!” – CLICK –
:rolleyes:
I fully intend to completely markup the discount and denote the reason why. I’ll enjoy imagining the moment the point person’s boss sees it and wonders what it’s all about.
“I’m sorry, for inventory control purposes, we don’t serve shot-sized portions in snifters. You can have a full snifter-serving of cognac in a snifter, which I recommend because it allows you to take the time to properly enjoy the aroma and flavor of the wine, or you can have a shot in a shot glass. Which would you prefer?”
Why not let those self-annoited censors duel it out with those internet pervs? Might take care of two problems at once- and get a good bit of entertainment at the same time.
Don’t tempt a weak person, monica. Just…don’t.
Veb
With an arrested, unholy gleam in her eye.
Grrr. Cell phones. I work in a photocopy joint, and it is INCREDIBLY difficult to get a correct order from somebody who’s on their cell phone. My personal policy - and I got my manager’s permission - is to bypass the person on the cell phone and continue working down the line; when they get off their call, I will take them as the next person. I am very polite about it when they DO get off their phone and come roaring at me that they were there first; “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it looked like you were on an important phone call, and I didn’t want to interrupt anything.”
We have two areas in the store: full-serve and express. If you would like us to do your work for you, feel free to leave an order in full-serve; we will give you a turnaround time based on how much work we already have, and yours will be done as soon as possible. If, however, the full-serve time is too long, you may use express, which is a self-serve area. We have an employee out there (usually me, but sometimes only the girl I’m training as my replacement) who will be glad to show you how to work the equipment. Please do not go up to the self-service assistant and tell her she’s going to do your work for you. ASKING us to do your work for you will invariably get a cheerfully chirped "I can show you how to work the machine! It’s actually pretty simple; you just - " while we walk you over and make you push all the buttons yourself. TELLING us we’re going to do it will piss us off and earn you a cheerfully chirped “I can show you how to work the machine” and then you interrupt and say “I want YOU to do it for me” and then we cheerfully chirp “If you need an employee to do it, you can place an order at the front counter and they’ll help you as soon as possible!” and then we take the next person in line, who is perfectly willing to be shown how to do it. I have one customer in particular who comes in every month, shoves a blueprint at me, and says "My secretary always does this for me. " He doesn’t say “Can you help me,” he doesn’t say “I need a copy of this,” he just shoves it into my hands and says “My secretary always does this” and then goes into the other room and gets himself a cup of our complimentary coffee. Oooh, that burns me up, and so far I haven’t figured out a way to use my cheerfully repetitive chirping against him because he leaves the room and to follow him would be considered starting shit. I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING SECRETARY. Your secretary probably gets paid at least half again as much as I do. Do you SEE the ten other people in the store who also need my help?
I also hate it when people complain about the prices to me. I do not have any influence on pricing at all, and it just makes me feel bad.
We have one professor who’s written his own book. He’s a complete asshole.
He calls up and asks us what size blue books we have (blue books are bound sheets of paper that many professors ask their students to use on tests). I tell him that we have 8.5 by 11 and 6.75 by whatever. They both have eight pages, sixteen if you count them front and back. He asks us to get 12 page blue books.
Now, I’m fairly sure that there are no 12 page blue books, well, anywhere. I tell him so, but I assure him that no one at our location can order anything, as we don’t have the authorization, information or will to do so. He starts yelling at me to get him some fucking 12 page blue books. I try four times to get him to listen to me telling him the number of the lady he needs to talk to. I tell him her number three times and I offer to transfer him. He asks me what her number is. I tell him (again) and he slams the phone down.
Ten minutes later he calls back to inform me that the lady he just called is going to order him some 12 page blue books and that he wants to speak to my supervisor. She takes the phone and is on for 30 seconds or so. Then she hangs up. She immediately calls the supplies buyer and she tells her that there are no 12 page blue books available in any of their catalogs. My sup tells me that he told her that there were no 12 pagers and why did I say there were?
Argh.
Also, people who throw money at you. Credit cards thrown so I have to fish behind the counter to get them. Dollar bills crumpled up and thrown at my chest. Finally, anyone who brings something up to the counter, doesn’t have enough money, and leaves it sitting there.
People actually do this? Where they grew up, did they have diminuitive dark people who bowed to them all the time and called them “massah”? What the hell kind of mindset do people have where they think that is appropriate?
Ugh. Disgusting. I was going to check in with my Subway whines, but this just turned my stomach.
Me: unloading computers from a pallet in my bright red polo shirt, with the clearly visible CompUSA logo, and my clearly visible CompUSA name tag
Customer: walks up to me, looks at my shirt, then looks at my name tag “Do you work here?”
Me: eyes start to glaze over…
Me: scanning bar codes on hard drives to update shelf price tags
Customer: walks up to me Excuse me, but could you tell me where I can find the hard drives at?"
Me: eyes start to glaze over…
Me: explaining the differences between one printer and the one next to it “This printer is capable of printing in six colors, and would therefore, be better for printing photos. This other one can only print in four colors.”
Customer1: nods in understanding “Oh okay. That sounds good.”
Customer2: sees me already helping a customer, but decides to interrupt anyway “Hi, I need a laptop. Can you help me?”
Me: “Do you need some help today?”
Customer: “Yes thank you. I need some ink for my printer.”
Me: “Okay. What printer do you have?”
Customer: “I don’t know.”
Me: eyes start to glaze over…
Me: “Do you need some help today?”
Customer: “Yes. I need a memory card for my Treo 600.”
Me: unsure of what kind it takes “Okay. What kind of memory does it take?”
Customer: rudely “Well, I don’t know. You should know that.”
Me: biting my tongue to prevent myself from also being rude
Just a small sample.
cardsfan1975