Work rants- bring your worst clients, customers, and coworkers.

The BBQ Pit
1

I figure we’ll all have plenty of stories that can go here, so let us complain, yes?

Ahem, let me start:

*"But my boyfriend lived with me that whole year! He didn’t work! I practically supported him! Why can’t I claim him?"
*

Honey, just because your dumb ass supported a leach doesn’t mean you get to claim him on your taxes. I’m glad you eventually wised up and kicked the loser to the curb, but sadly there isn’t a tax benefit to you doing so. Unless the Feds have started issuing an “Earned Idiot Credit,” in which case, I know a lot of folks who will be getting a nice refund this year.

And you’d be surprised (or perhaps not) how regularly we get people asking questions like the above. “But, but, but! My cousin’s baby’s mama’s aunt twice removed’s nephew’s wife’s kids lived with us for 3 weeks- why can’t I claim them as my dependents!?” Bah. Bah, I say!

As a side note: can you people please Fabreeze your records or something before you bring them in? I mean honestly, how can you not notice that your stuff REEKS of years of smoke? Hell, the records are BRIGHT YELLOW. I had to stick your crap in the next room and I can still smell them! You = disgusting. I can’t even imagine what your home must smell like if a piece of paper that was filed away in some drawer for the last 2 years smells this bad.

I suppose these aren’t the worst of the worst, but they are what is bugging me now. What’s bugging you?

2

How many extended returns have you guys had?

3

You mean how many have we put on extension? Don’t you work for the place we do it through (since you could e-file some of them thar extensions, although we only did some like that)? I’m sure you could go stalk me and check.

Probably 20, though I’m not 100% sure. Most of our clients came in on the 17th (although a surprising number came THE NEXT DAY) asking for extensions. We don’t do much annual tax prep anyway, so it was just the regulars being their slacker selves.

4

Deleted Post

5

If .pdf’s printed at a consistent speed, I’d be happier. Why does one print at a normal, Word document rate, and the next prints S-L-O-W as molasses? I print dozens of e-mails plus their attachments every day. Most of those attachments are .pdf’s nowadays, and a queue of nine or ten of the slow-printing variety ties the printer up something fierce. It’s a lot of fun when the other four or five people needing to use the printer can’t get a document in edgewise.

I swear, the advent of easy scanning just shifts the work around. Instead of printing your own work, you print the other guy’s work, and vice versa. I’ve changed from a legal secretary to a full-time .pdf printer, and it sucks.

6

Wish I had some horror storys but since my paycheck is the end result of my customers problems or needs (or wants for that matter ) it’s hard to work up really bad feelings about them :slight_smile:

Although, some days are better than others.

7

There’s already a thread here about the lady who insisted we were covering up letters to the editor.

Here’s another one.

A young man, 21 years of age, died recently - hit by a car. His family placed a news obituary with our paper. Now, there are news obits, which I do, and memorial obits, which the classifieds section does. News obits serve to inform the community of the dead person’s passing, and when their services are. Memorial obits serve to commemorate the lives of the deceased.

News obits are considered newspaper articles, and are therefore free. However, they are very impersonal and they stick to facts only, no personal or religious endearments. Only close family members are mentioned by name; grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins are not listed by name, but by number (as in, he was survived by three aunts). However, we do list boyfriends, girlfriends or fiances because that person was obviously the closest person to them.

Young man died. He had a girlfriend who he had been with for three years. They had a child together and another on the way. Three years. Two kids.

The mother apparently didn’t like his girlfriend and insisted that she be excluded from the news obituary as she wasn’t real family. This is exactly how this conversation went:

Her: “I don’t want her in the obituary.”
Me: “That was his girlfriend, ma’am. They lived together for three years. Don’t you think he’d want her in there?”
Her: “This isn’t about him.”
Me: incredulous “You’re kidding, right? It’s his obituary.”
Her: “She’s a bitch.”
Me: “That doesn’t really matter. This is a newspaper, and this is a news obituary. We consider ourselves purveyors of truth. If you want to hide the truth, you’ll have to contact our memorial obituary department and pay for it. Her name is going in the news obituary.” click

My boss backed me up, and the girlfriend tearfully called to thank me the next day.

What a cunt.

~Tasha

8

How about college students?

   1.  To the students who plagiarized assignments recently:

How stupid are you? How stupid do you think I am? Do you think I couldn’t tell that you merely copied and pasted things from various websites to put into your papers, because your own original writing is not even close to the mediocre quality of what you stold? How could you be so stupid as to think your extremely limited skills would get you through a composition course? Why the hell can’t you remember that I warned you and your classmates early on about plagiarism, what it is, how to avoid it, what happens if you do it…You had a quiz on it. You had a handout. I wrote it on the board. It’s in your textbook. You did exactly what I told you not to do. Fucking dumbasses. It has been reported, and you will be hearing from the higher-ups.
Good riddance.

  1. To the whiny ass bitch student who thinks she can negotiate everything:
    Your paper was due a week ago. Actually, it was more than a week ago, and you still have not turned it in. I told you to turn it in. You also know that there are penalties for late work. Now it’s so fucking late that I am unlikely to accept it at all, and then you’ll be in my face whining again next week like the mosquito that you are. Too bad there are rules against swatting you away. Your classmates all turn their work in on time. Why the hell can’t you? Oh wait…maybe you’re busy plagiarizing like your idiot friends.
9

How about college students?

   1.  To the students who plagiarized assignments recently:

How stupid are you? How stupid do you think I am? Do you think I couldn’t tell that you merely copied and pasted things from various websites to put into your papers, because your own original writing is not even close to the mediocre quality of what you stold? How could you be so stupid as to think your extremely limited skills would get you through a composition course? Why the hell can’t you remember that I warned you and your classmates early on about plagiarism, what it is, how to avoid it, what happens if you do it…You had a quiz on it. You had a handout. I wrote it on the board. It’s in your textbook. You did exactly what I told you not to do. Fucking dumbasses. It has been reported, and you will be hearing from the higher-ups.
Good riddance.

  1. To the whiny ass bitch student who thinks she can negotiate everything:
    Your paper was due a week ago. Actually, it was more than a week ago, and you still have not turned it in. I told you to turn it in. You also know that there are penalties for late work. Now it’s so fucking late that I am unlikely to accept it at all, and then you’ll be in my face whining again next week like the mosquito that you are. Too bad there are rules against swatting you away. Your classmates all turn their work in on time. Why the hell can’t you? Oh wait…maybe you’re busy plagiarizing like your idiot friends.
10

How about college students?

   1.  To the students who plagiarized assignments recently:

How stupid are you? How stupid do you think I am? Do you think I couldn’t tell that you merely copied and pasted things from various websites to put into your papers, because your own original writing is not even close to the mediocre quality of what you stold? How could you be so stupid as to think your extremely limited skills would get you through a composition course? Why the hell can’t you remember that I warned you and your classmates early on about plagiarism, what it is, how to avoid it, what happens if you do it…You had a quiz on it. You had a handout. I wrote it on the board. It’s in your textbook. You did exactly what I told you not to do. Fucking dumbasses. It has been reported, and you will be hearing from the higher-ups.
Good riddance.

  1. To the whiny ass bitch student who thinks she can negotiate everything:
    Your paper was due a week ago. Actually, it was more than a week ago, and you still have not turned it in. I told you to turn it in. You also know that there are penalties for late work. Now it’s so fucking late that I am unlikely to accept it at all, and then you’ll be in my face whining again next week like the mosquito that you are. Too bad there are rules against swatting you away. Your classmates all turn their work in on time. Why the hell can’t you? Oh wait…maybe you’re busy plagiarizing like your idiot friends.
11

I love my job. No, really. What I don’t love is people who gripe to me about why they only got this big a tax refund, or why they had to pay. I also don’t love my boss, who doesn’t return his phone calls. “Yes, sir, I gave him the message. I also gave him the message yesterday.” But I can’t make him call you back. What am I supposed to, hold him at letter-opener-point until he returns all his phone calls? I kind of have other work to do, sorry.

12

“I reinstalled my computer and now my email doesn’t work”

“Ok well we’ve got over 1200 email accounts here that are working just fine. Perhaps call your ISP?”

“My Outlook doesn’t work. Please check the server!”

“Ok but did you call your ISP? You just made a bunch of changes. We’ve gone through all the email setup steps, all your settings regarding us are fine. There is nothing wrong on our end…”

“But Outlook doesn’t work.”

“Ok did you try sending with your AV scanner off? Did you check your firewall settings?”

“My email doesn’t work.”

“DUDE SOMETHING IS WRONG ON YOUR END. YOU ARE NOT DOING THE THINGS I TOLD YOU. PLEASE STOP CALLING.”

We get one or two of these sorts of calls per month. Oddly enough…they just stop calling. I guess their email “magically” starts working…

13

Consistently, at Walgreens, my worst customers–the ones I greet with a smile on my face and “oh shit” in my heart as they come up to my register–are the middle-aged women, black or white, doesn’t matter, who have a whole shopping cart full of crap…and a fistful of coupons. It isn’t the old ladies with coupons, because they know exactly what they want, and it’s only a few things, and they don’t have issues. They boost the blue shopping basket with the raisins and the mandarin oranges up onto the counter, hand over the coupons, and they’re done.

No, it’s the forty- and fifty-somethings who just can’t do it without arguing.

They aren’t just going to hand me the coupons like good little girls, oh no. They’re going to argue with me about at least one item.

“[No Item For Coupon]. Ma’am, I’m sorry but this isn’t the right Glade Air Freshener for the coupon.”
“What?” Truculent. Glaring. “It had a sign on it back there, said ‘1.99 with Coupon’…!”
“[uh huh] Let me get a manager…”

And they are going to stop me at least once as I ring their crap up, “Wait, how much was that?”, suspiciously.

“It rang up at 2.99”.
“I thought it was on sale!” Truculent. Glaring.
“[uh huh] Let me get a manager.”

And I get on the horn and then stand there smiling off into the middle distance while Management deals with the Super Shopper.

14

How about college instructors? In a composition course, no less.

Stold?

15

Because no one with education can make a typo.

16

Because typos are more likely to occur when the person typing is a bit bent out of shape.

17

Season of the Plagiarists
says it better, anyhow.

18

typo? I doubt it. The word is “stole”.

“Stold” is what a 2nd grader would say.

19

Customers who just don’t want to pay their bills.

If you’ve got a reason for overlooking your bill, fine. Just let us know, we’ll work out a payment plan to help you get the bills paid without our phone getting cut off. Hell, if something really tragic has happened (like your son killed himself or your house burnt down), we’ve got a hardship team who’ll do the same, but give you, like, five months to pay it all off.

But what really chaps my hide is the ones with an attitude…

They haven’t paid their bill in three months (this is cell phone or landline) and have been restricted or cut off completely. So they call up spitting fire - “How dare you cut off my phone?”

If you ask them why their payments are so late? “I don’t know/I didn’t have the money/I couldn’t be bothered paying it”

If you tell them to restore their service they’ll have to pay in full today? “I don’t have that much money! Can’t I just pay $50 and you put my phone back on and I’ll pay the rest in 2 weeks?!” (yeah, because I believe you’ll stick to this arrangement when you can’t even stick to our basic payment terms)

But the best are the mobile phone customers. Usually if their phones cancel, there’s a cancellation fee for break of contract. Before we’ve gotten to that point, though, there’s been at least 2 bills showing all balances outstanding plus a late payment reminder letter or two, plus a text message sent to the phone, plus the phone is restricted to incoming calls only before we suspend it with no service - and after that they’ve still got another 2-4 weeks before we cancel it. But jeeesus, if we cancel it… “How dare you cancel my account? I’m not paying that cancellation fee, fuck you, I’m going to the TIO (ombudsman), I’m not going to pay that and if you put it on my credit report I’m going to go to A Current Affair and report you ripoff merchants!”

It’s not a hard concept. The bill has a due date on it. If you can’t pay by the due date, call and let us know and we’ll let you know how far we can extend the payment date by. Yet every day there’s at least a handful who decide that they don’t have to pay their bills, yet they should still have full service to run up as high a bill as they want.

20

People on cell phones when I’m trying to ring them out. I have to ask them a lot of questions, like what type of payment they want to use, as I have to enter that into the computer before I can complete the transaction. They yak and yak, making me wait, and making the other people in line wait. It usually goes something like this:

Me: Your total is $39.72. Will you be using credit or debit, sir?

Cellphone Asshole: (on phone) Yupyupupyupyupypuyupyup uh-huh uh-huh yupyupyupyupyupyupyup…

Me: …

CA: Yupyupyupyupyupyupyupyupyup uh-huh uh-huh yupyupyupyupyup…

Me: (noticing the glares of the people behind him) Sir? Credit or debit?

CA: <look of evil> I’m on the PHONE! (on phone) Yupyupyupyupyup uh-huh uh-huh…

Me: sigh…