And you can’t expect me to meet a deadline if you keep changing your fucking mind for no reason! Dumbass!
Christ. I’m sorry. I thought it was bad waiting behind these women for 10 minutes just so I can buy a fucking candy bar or something for $2. Who the hell spends $50 at Walgreen’s? Go to Target! It’s right down the street, 10% cheaper, has more than two employees in the building and more than one cash register!
I spend nearly all my time these days calling clients because they didn’t fill out the form right. And before you think, “Maybe it’s a problem with the form”, I mean I’m calling people up and saying, “Hey, we got those biopsy slides you sent…wouldja mind telling us what part of the patient’s body they came from and oh, by the way, what’s your fax number, and is anyone going to pay us for this?”
We get cases with post-its on them that basically say, “Dr. Smith wants this reviewed kthxbye.” :rolleyes: Gee, I wonder if that’s the famous Dr. Smith. I think I’ve heard of him…oh no wait. I haven’t.
My main beef with customers is when I ask them a question and they try to interpret it and answer what they think I want to know…instead of answering the question I have actually asked them.
Examples; “Has your business received any advertising in the mail from us?” “I have a friend who uses your services.” Well, that is very nice and we appreciate referrals, but that isn’t what I asked. “How many employees are there in your business?” “We want to cover two people.” That is also very nice, but not what I asked. Please people, just answer the actual question you were asked!
Oh oh, another related point. It is usually quite clear if a question is meant to be answered with a yes or no. When such a question is asked, it is not neccessary to spend 45 seconds to a minute or more answering. When I ask, for example, if there is an email address that I can forward the documents to…I do not need a full explanation of how you are having computer issues, don’t know how to use email and that your second cousin twice removed will be teaching you how six months from now. A simple no would suffice.
On the other hand, if I asked “Is there an email address we can forward things to?” I would be less than satisfied if the person answered, “Yes.”
But don’t you see that this is totally arse-around? You’re doing something for me, not vice versa.
I thank you, because I really appreciate this coffee (because my day has been crap / I’ve had customers scream at me / my boss has given me a last-minute assignment / it’s a lovely day and coffee just makes it THAT much better) … for whatever reason, your smiling face and delicious cappuccino have brought some extra goodness to my day.
So thank you. 
Whether you appreciate being thanked is another issue, and one I can’t help you with … but the thanks are genuine.
And no, I won’t say ‘You’re welcome’ because that, in my mind, turns you into a servant - someone who should be *thankful *that I’m giving their unworthy selves the opportunity to provide me with coffee. That’s not how I feel about it at all.
Oh, burn! You really got me there. How old are you?
Well I’m glad that you saw the validity of my comments. It’s nice to see that you’ve learned how to use capital letters.
I use “hacker style” (not British style): if the punctuation was originally part of the quote I’ll put it inside the quote marks, but if I added it I put it outside of the quote marks. This comes from *nix systems. In vi, God’s gift to the text editor world, pressing the period key repeats the last command you ran, so picture the effect of this hacker-style manual line:
Versus the effect of this American-style manual line:
If the user took this at face value and tried to delete a line by typing “dd.”, he would delete two lines. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you’re dealing with code you can break a program that way.
So I use hacker style to eliminate confusion, even at the most mundane level. I give this explanation to every teacher who claims my punctuation is wrong, and I refuse to change it even if they take points off.
Hey, sale pricing is serious business. In California, advertising the wrong price can mean the state (or county, whichever is running the sting) seizes the items and sells them for 100% profit. At a store like Walgreens, losing 20 boxes of $7 sinus meds can be a big deal–$140 of shrink is no laughing matter!
I actually like my job, for the most part, and anyway it doesn’t factor into my long-term ambitions. I like to think I don’t let my irritation at the little things affect my customer service. I’ve had enough compliments on my service skills and salesmanship that I think I have it under control.
I wish! Not gonna happen at my coffee shop (we can only sell drugs to our coworkers 
); it sounds like a particular notorious coffee shop at UCSD is a better fit for you. (Never been, but I’ve heard you’re more likely to get extra “sugar” in your coffee a la Starsky and Hutch.)
(Insert several other misguided posters with their hearts in the right place.)
No, if it were “thank you”, with emphasis on the word “you”, that would be perfectly cromulent (and extra polite, as you say). Instead, it’s a flat “thank you”, exactly like the one I give out with the coffee. The impression it gives is that I’m being completely ignored.
The weird thing is this doesn’t just happen every once in a while, when a customer gets distracted, or as an act of malice by a few assholes–almost everyone does this, almost every time. I can’t figure it out.
And to my coworkers: when the cafe puts out samples of upcoming seasonal products for other employees, it’s not for the purposes of staging an eating contest. One day we had to sample out enough of the upcoming summer products for everybody three times before the sweet, timid employee who’s–get this–busy doing her job instead of running to the back room to stuff her face, got to try them. She’s not a doormat, but she’s too nice to consider it an affront when she gets shorted, so we finally had to actually sneak samples out to her to keep them safe from the vultures. If you drink a (discounted) mocha and have a (discounted) chocolate doughnut and still need a plateful of cookie and milkshake samples to satiate your sweet tooth, it’s time to consider switching from pot to cigarettes before work.
Au contraire. I make cappucinos all day long for all kinds of people. And you could’ve gotten a cappucino from anyone–I have a handful of coworkers who could’ve made it and there are approximately 47,000 Starbucks locations within 5 miles.
You, however, are a significant part of the reason I have a job. Cappucinos are nice, but they just can’t compare to paychecks and tips. I’m not just blowing smoke up the customer’s ass when I say “thank you”–the company is failing and every transaction is potentially important to my livelihood.
PS: Don’t have a cow, mods–there are a number of coffee shops at UCSD and you’d have to know the local lore already to know which one I’m talking about. Think of the above as the West Coast equivalent of a bodega joke.
This is where you start saying “You’re welcome” to the customers instead, and watch the puzzlement crease their foreheads, often before they shrug and move on, but sometimes you’ll see one flash you a slightly guilty look before leaving.
Totally with you on this one. Last place I worked, we had two potluck dinners in three weeks. Many of us signed up to bring homemade food (I took baked mac 'n cheese and black bean/chicken chili) and the rest signed up to take care of plates, rolls, cups, etc. Even the guys who just wanted to eat took the time to stop by and grab a bucket of chicken or a box of doughnuts.
This one girl, who had signed up to bring the bowls for the chili and sodas, didn’t come through. Instead she brought fried squirrel, about 4 pieces. She of course proceeded to pig out on what everyone else brought.
Can you give a few slack points for people in their precaffeinated state, though? You’re right, they’re totally running on auto pilot, and their heads aren’t in the right place. They’ve regressed to the stage of toddlers, parroting back the last two words they heard - words that just don’t make sense at all, but Mommy keeps repeating them until you say them and then you can get your stuff. Just think of them as 180 pound toddlers with cell phones and you’ll feel better about the whole thing.
And this somehow ricochets me to my work rant, which is that I can’t figure out how to teach my daughter to say “Thank you!” Here’s the problem: generally, when she doesn’t say something correctly, we simply repeat what she said, but with the right sound, “Caileigh, get the ball!” I’ll say. “Baw!” she’ll say, and I’ll say, “Ball! Yes, that’s a ball; bring it here!” (Scintillating conversation, I tell ya.)
So, we’ve been trying to teach her to say thank you. We started out with me saying both parts:“Here’s your yogurt! Say ‘thank you’,” I prompt.
Silence.
“Thank you!” I say for her.
“You’re welcome,” I say for me.
So a few times it went like this:
“Here’s your yogurt, say ‘thank you’”
" 'ank oo."
“You’re welcome!”
Well, I guess she figured I was correcting her. So now it’s turned into:
“Here’s your yogurt, say ‘thank you’”
" 'elcome!" she says.
“No, say ‘thank you’”
" 'elcome".
“No, you say, ‘thank you’ and I say, ‘you’re welcome’.”
“…”
“Say, 'thank you,” I try again.
" 'elcome!"
It’s like playing Who’s On First with a teeny-tiny straight man. :smack:
Fried squirrel.
Fried.
Squirrel.
Fried SQUIRREL??! :eek:
Please tell me this is a slang term for something…else.
Yep, it’s slang. It just means any small mammal fried in oil, usually served on a stick and eaten with catsup and celery salt.
Around here, you usually find fried groundhog, though I understand that squirrel is more common back east. And of course they fry and eat copious amounts of nutria and coypu in New Orleans. It’s popular enough that the local nutria and coypu populations run a serious risk of extinction around Mardi Gras every year.
Yes, it is. Welcome to Parenthood. Treasure these moments…they’re so cute and they don’t last long at all (ivylass, who has a son about to graduate high school in a month. :eek: )
Zabali_Clawbane, when I first noticed the redundant thanking while working at a college bookstore, I decided I was going to say “you’re welcome” every single time anyone said “thank you” to me–every single time. Eventually they got the point; with those customers I had a long period of interaction where I helped them find their math book, then pushed through three rugby scrums and led an interrogation in the English section (Teacher? Section? Course? Subject material? Favorite color? Give me something, here!) that would have made Sam Waterston proud, and then helped them find their biology book and their psychology book and finally gave them directions to the cash register, which often had to be done four times. (You could say my college has low admissions standards.) That meant I could easily spend twenty minutes on one customer and process a lot of excessive thanks, and they got the picture. (Usually they got a nice little chuckle out of it, and we moved on.)
But in my current business, by the time I can say “you’re welcome” most customers have left my world, never to be seen again. And when I do get a chance to spurt out “you’re welcome” they don’t get it. So it can get a little frustrating.