Our reader Eyebrows McGee pointed us to a fun, albeit slightly depressing (if you’re concerned about the future of the human race) website called NotAlwaysRight.com, where retail veterans post transcripts of their worst customer interactions. Read for fun, but also for examples of how not to behave as a consumer.
Me: “Can I help you?”
Customer:“I’m looking for non-fiction.”
Me:“What kind?”
Customer: “Just non-fiction.”
Me: “Okay…do you want history? Or science? Psychology??Business?”
Customer: “No, just NON-FICTION!”
Customer: “Tell me; is your cleaning solution toxic?”
Me: “You mean the stuff we use to clean fresh ear piercings?”
Customer: “Yah, that stuff.
Me: “Well no sir, I don’t believe it’s toxic. There isn’t really anything in here that–”
Customer: “–because I ingested a whole bunch of it!”
Me: “Why?”
Customer: “I was out of mouth wash. I needed mouth wash.”
Me: “But it isn’t mouth wash…it’s used to clean piercings…”
Customer: “I know, do you think I’m stupid?! That’s why I’m worried!”
Customer:“These things don’t work! They are hard to swallow and I nearly choked to death.”
Me: “Ma’am, they are suppositories. You don’t swallow them, you insert them rectally.”
Customer: “What does that mean?”
Me: “You unwrap them and insert them in your rectum.”
Customer: “What’s my rectum?”
Me: “Ma’am, please forgive me, but your rectum is your butt hole.”
Customer: “Well up yours too!” *stalks off*(This is not the first time someone misunderstood when we explained how to use a suppository. It’s the only time we can tell a patient “up yours” and get away with it!)
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Being able to fight back against deserving customers is one thing I really miss about my days at the porn store. My first day I was told by two other employees plus the manager to not take crap from anyone that came in. Customers, vendors, anyone.
I miss that place sometimes.
@pegr: Kenticky? Is that anywhere near Ihoi?
@Git Em SteveDave: Ha! Now you know how I felt all the time. My answer to “Hey honey, where’s the potato chips” was something like “Two aisles that way, sweetie.” It got me some funny looks. I don’t think they knew they were doing it.
Hrm. Link doesn’t work. Too bad.
Me “Thank you for calling Best Buy”
Customer “Can you put me through to the electronics department”
Me “Ma’am can you be more specific?”
Customer “I just need to speak to a salesman in electronics!”
Me “The whole store is electronics, what are you looking for in particular”
Customer “give me the damn electronics department, PLEASE!”
This customer got loud and rude. So i re routed them back to the menu.
as some other stories have demonstrated (such as the ones about banks cutting off customers who call too much), running a successful business isn’t just about pleasing and keeping your good customers, it’s about minimizing how much you have to deal with and spend money on bad customers…
Speaking of bookstores, I always see signs that say, “Fiction and Literature.” Can anyone tell me the difference?
@nsv: You have no clue. I apparently sound like a woman on the phone enough to confuse my boss(it CAN be fun sometimes). It’s great when I call up somewhere, give them all my info, down to shoe size and what I’m wearing, and they say “And who am I speaking to?” John “I’m sorry miss, I need to speak to the account holder, John.” This is John “Oh, I’m sorry” It’s OK ::teeth grinding as I try to send death through the phone line::
@Ryan H: I might be weird, but I always believed the courtesy goes both ways, and courtesy includes being gracious with the rude. So if a CSR is short with me, I brush it off if they are ultimately helping me get what I want. I have better things to do than hissy it out with some dick at a department store.
@sophistiKate: Tahini is a main ingredient in hummus. Now I know why I couldn’t find it in the spice aisle with the sesame seeds.
@Michael Belisle: I like to go back and forth between the two when I have time.
To complete the cycle of suck: My Bad Boss
@ptkdude: I sure hope there are no paramecia in my Parmesan.
@bonzombiekitty: Oh I can believe it, I just wish it wasn’t so!
I have worked retail, once at an opticians in London (first ever job, fired after 2 months) then at a Whole Foods in Virginia. Somehow, I never got a bad shopper, except for those blowing their WIC in a Whole Foods…
I often frequent that site. I like it a lot. It’s much better then the Livejournal community “Customers_Suck” where employees whine about actually having to do their job.
@monkey33: Please tell me you are making that up!
Glad I don’t work in retail anymore. Working the phones can be equally frustrating. I work in credit card collections and when someone calls in I usually ask for their CC number first. Once in a while I’ll ask for their account number, hear them pause a moment only to reply with: “I only have my card number”. Groan.
@Michael Belisle:
that one had some sort of reorganization like 6 or 7 years ago that vastly reduced its readability, and I hadn’t noticed any updates any of the few times I’ve looked at it in the last several years. Did things actually pick up again?
@Ash78: I worked at Wal-mart when I needed a job. I think there are a lot more idiot customers than employees. Like the time I was closing my register and a woman came up, crawled under the rope with the closed sign on it and asked me if I was open. Um, no….see that obstacle you had to go under? Yeah, it says “Closed”, as does the sign on the belt and the fact that my light is off.
@nadmonk: Wasn’t that a scene in “No Country for Old Men”?
Next stop: coffee table book! What a great idea!
@blackflag55 – when the natural history museum in [my former city] had a “Dinosaur’s Alive!” exhibition with robotic/animatronic critters, they reported that they had to refund a couple of idjit’s money because, “these are FAKE dinosaurs, I paid to see LIVE ones!!”
RULE ONE: PEOPLE ARE MORONS
As sad as these are to believe, if you’ve ever worked in retail or customer service they are all too familiar. I worked at Blockbuster in college and this is my favorite: a customer dropped their movie in the box sometime over night, but instead of the actual movie, it contained a personal porn movie. When the wife came in to rent a movie later that day, she was informed of this error. She immediately starts yelling about how there are no porn movies in her house, we confused her with another customer, we’re only doing this to embarrass her in front of everyone else (which, if she didn’t start yelling, no one would have known), we are liars, cheats and thieves, etc. She stormed out spewing hatred the whole way. A short time later her husband shows up, looks around and sheepishly hands me the movie from his briefcase. I hand him his porn movie, he mumbles sorry and quickly leaves.
@mizmoose: RULE TWO: If you don’t agree withe Rule One, it applies to you.
@carbonmade: What would have been better if the women in said movie wasn’t the one who showed up. Hilarity ensues.
I work in a cafe, and one day we were serving fresh out of the oven banana nut bread. A man walks in, looks at it, asks “Is that banana nut bread?” To which my co-worker replied “Why yes it is sir, would you like a slice?” The man than asked “Do you have any without banana?” We didn’t know how to answer that…
@carbonmade: Couldn’t you have saved her a lot of trouble by saying the movie that was returned was a home movie, and not a personal porn movie?
I swear I waited on the ‘non-fiction’ guy from the first example back when I worked for Borders back in the early ’90s. Our conversation went something like this:
CUSTOMER: Do you have a non-fiction section?
ME: Anything in particular you’re looking for?
CUSTOMER: No, just non-fiction. Where would that be?
ME: See that section over there, the one marked ‘FICTION’?
CUSTOMER: Yes.
ME: Everywhere else.
@dry-roasted-peanuts: oasted-peanuts:
At the bookstore I worked at while going to school the official answer from our manager to any customer looking for “That book by that one guy” was “The guy who wrote the other one? I’m afraid we’re out of that one.”
@man_in_plaid: Well, the banana nut bread ain’t got much banana ‘init. It’s got less than the Banana banana spam banana nut bread.
But seriously, I’ll eat his banana’s. I love em. I ordered….OK, this is getting too silly.
@B: Judging by her reaction, I’m sure he tried sidestepping it, but she probably MADE him tell her. Like “BTW, you returned a home movie by accident last night.” What kind of movie. “A personel one.” I don’t know what you’re talking about. What was in it. “Uh, two people engaging in adult activities”. WHAT! HOW DARE YOU SAY I HAVE PORN!!
@B: I didn’t tell her it was a porn movie. I just handed it to her. The title itself gave away the type of movie it was.
@Git Em SteveDave: Yes, that is pretty much what happened. I don’t remember the name of the movie, but it was pretty obvious it was “adults only!”
Working at a UCLA coffeehouse in the early days of the frozen blended coffee drink phenomenon:
CUSTOMER: Can I get an Ice Blended, please?
ME: Sure.
CUSTOMER: But can I get it hot?
The best one i know of my old manager at CVS told me about. The dialogue isn’t exact but you can get the idea.
(Customer walks into CVS and heads to the photo lab, manager walks up to assist her) *The names have been changed to protect all those involved.
C: I want to pick up some pictures i ordered online.
M: Ok, whats the name.
C: Susan Myers*
M: (searches for pictures) I’m sorry I can’t find any pictures with that name.
C: (getting angry) Well i ordered them 2 hours ago and was told they would be ready!
(Manager continues to search and turn up empty handed while the customer gets more and more upset)
C:(irate) Thats it, I’m never shopping at Walgreens again!
M: Ma’am, this is a CVS.
(customer looks confused, then storms out)
@BeFrugalNotCheap: To the customers credit, she was just confused about the library having course required textbooks, not books in general.
While in high school, I worked at a local seafood restaurant. One night, I was working as the cashier when a man came in with his girlfriend to pick up a to-go order. I started looking for his name on tickets. I couldn’t find a ticket there or in the kitchen, and none of the waitresses had taken an order. When I asked if it could be in another name, he angrily insisted he had placed the order himself. After double-checking, I told him we simply didn’t have any record of it, but I offered to take his order and have it made as fast as possible. At this point, his face was very red, and I think he would have walked out, but his girlfriend talked him into waiting for the food.
So he starts placing his order consisting of several different meals, and I have to stop him when he tries to order one particular plate, since we had been out of the main ingredient all day.(Everyone who could have possibly taken an order was aware of this) This was apparently the last straw, as he throws up his hands, yells “Forget it!” and leaves with his girlfriend.
About 45 minutes later, the guy comes back in, alone this time. He waits quietly in line, then proceeds to place a carry-out order, looking very sheepish the whole time. I don’t make any remark about his previous trip. After placing his order, he asks “What’s the telephone number here?” I give him a carry-out menu with the number on it, and he says thanks. Then with a very embarrassed smile, he says he had accidentally called another restaurant with the same name. In a city about three hours away. With a different area code. At least he was both nice enough to apologize, but I can’t imagine the teasing his friends must have given him before forcing him to come back.
I’ve worked in several crappy retail jobs during my college years. If you really want to get a taste of wacky and absurd customer behavior, try working at a mall during the Xmas shopping rush.
Mizmoose – Robert Heinlein “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
He was so fracking right.
But then, high school first year Latin I was stupid enough to ask “What do they speak now in Italy, if they don’t speak Latin?” And yet, I finished three years of Latin.
@mizmoose, well to be fair, they did advertise them as alive.
Idiot customer stories are great, but a lot of these customer bashing sites tend to forget that there are idiot clerks too.
@LatherRinseRepeat: Try a supermarket when there is a rain storm or snow storm coming. The three items people buy most in those situations? Milk, bread, and toilet paper. If anyone else out there has cashiered, can you back me up?
I noticed a lot of these complaints about customers is because some clerk expected the customer to know as much about an item as the clerk knows. Its like a starbucks barista chastizing some customer because he didnt know all about the different kinds of coffee they have (or the special names for the sizes).
“STUPID CUSTOMER!!!!!”
@ophmarketing: I think there are people out there who honestly mix up Fiction and Non-Fiction.
I used to work at Target, so I dealt with my fair share of retards.
(Woman walk up, and literally leans on the iPod display)
Woman: Where do you keep the f**king iPods?
Me: *cough* *pointing behind her*
Woman: Oh *dirtiest f**k you look I’ve ever seen*
I worked at a bookstore and had that first conversation almost verbatim on more than one occaision.
I used to work for Sprint PCS Collections. When people had been past due for 90 days, their service was shut off. Anytime they tried to dial a number, it would automatically route them to collections.
I had one call that went like this:
Me: I’m sorry, sir, I can’t turn your phone back on until I receive a least the 90 day past due amount of $35.11.
Him: Are you kidding? Do you know how much I’m worth? I am not going to pay $35.11. Turn my f#*$@ing phone back on now.
Me: I’m sorry, sir, I can not turn your phone back on until I receive the $35.11.
Him: I am worth millions. $35 is like pennies to me!
Me: Then let’s go ahead and take care of this small payment and we can get your phone turned back on.
Him: I am on a private beach in Maui that I paid tens of thousands to rent. *rant, rant, rant* I am not paying a stupid $35.
Me: Then I can’t turn your phone back on.
Him: This is ridiculous! I’m canceling Sprint and switching services!! *click*
@celestebai: Be funny if you said “Well, I can see that you’re not roaming, and since Maui isn’t in our coverage zone, I don’t know how you’re making this call. Can you let me speak to a cabana boy please?”
Yeah, me too, as a gas station attendant:
Guy: WHERE’S YOUR WATER AT? (ignoring long line of customers requiring attention)
Me: In the back case at the bottom.
Guy: (wandering around) WHERE’S THE WATER AT?
Me: Right in front of you.
Guy: WHERE’S YOUR WATER MAN, I’VE ASKED SEVERAL TIMES NOW WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?
Me: (to customer) Hold on a second. (walks over, points directly in front of guy) Right there man.
Guy: OH!
Me: (walking back) Sorry about that…
Guy: DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER WATER, THIS ISN’T THE RIGHT SIZE!!!!!
Me: No, sorry sir. All our water is right there.
Guy: (shoving way to front of counter) I’LL BUY THIS AND THE CHANGE ON PUMP 5 (THROWS me something like $1.67 which I leave on the counter)
Me: Excuse me, but these other people are in front of you. (ignores him and helps others)
Guy: RAR RAR RAR BLAH BLAH BLAH YOU ARE STUPID ETC (as I help other customers who were in front of him)
Guy2: You are really having problems today huh? (to me)
Me: No, some people are just rude, I’m not having any problems.
Guy2: Well, get it together! This is no way to run a gas station! (stalks off cursing at me)
Me: Ok… (finally it’s Guy’s turn) Alright, you wanted this water and the change on pump 5.. So that means that you’ll get $.17 on 5.
Guy: No, I want it on pump 5.
Me: The water is not free, it costs money. Therefore, you will have .$17 on pump 5. Thanks, have a nice day. (turning to another customer)
Guy: NO! I WANT THE WATER AND THE GAS, GIVE ME THE CHANGE ON PUMP 5 AFTER YOU RING UP THE WATER!
Me: OK, done. You have $.17 on pump 5.
Guy: ……. I just want the gas actually.
Me: Get the fuck out of here before I pepper spray your ass. You have $.17 on pump 5.
Guy: OK. (walks out of store, forgetting water)
I once had a table I was waiting on leave no tip on “Donate Your Tips To Charity” day. I also had a table order two steaks, eat them, and then complain that they wanted a refund because they thought they were ordering cheesesteaks. We brought up the “eating the whole damn steak” incident, to which they replied…
“Yeah…when I saw two expensive steaks come, I was very surprised”.
I don’t doubt a word on that site.
@CaliforniaCajun: Ha! I used to have customers enter my small store all the time to participate in this exchange. (Note that I am typically behind the counter or otherwise clearly occupied with some activity.)
Customer enters.
Me: Hi, how are you doing?
Customer: I’m just looking.
Me: Oh, um… that’s nice?
@dry-roasted-peanuts: Lol, I’ve had something very similar to that happen to me. Someone called our store to see if we had a certain movie. Now mind you I’m not very much into movies for the most part (despite me working at a movie store), but someone called and it went like:
C: Yeah do you have that movie with the Indians? It was on Showtime last night and I wanted to see if you had it.
M: Could you be more specific? I’m not sure which movie you’re asking for.
C: It had some Indians. They were sacrificing people.
M: I’m sorry, it doesn’t really ring a bell to me. The only movie I’ve really watched all the way through with Indians was “The Last of The Mohicans”.
C: Nah, it’s not that one, it’s the other one with (insert an actor’s name I wasn’t sure of).
M: Hmm, I’m not sure I’ve seen it. The thing is if it was on Showtime it’s probably a semi-old movie, almost a year old.
C: Do you have the number to Showtime?
M: No I do not
C: Do you think comcast will have it?
M: I’m guessing they would since they provide that channel. You should give them a call and see if they can help you with the name and then call back when you find out
C: *click*
She then calls later and says her co-worker said it was Apocalypto, which we do have there in fact, but I haven’t seen it for myself and didn’t even know it was about Indians. And there’s been times where someone’s brought a dvd back either horribly scratched or damaged (cracked) and admitted that they accidentally did it and asked for a credit on their account for it. Now any normal person would know if someone damages something they would pay for it, or at least not ask for compensation for their OWN damages that they did to someone else’s property, but she was being persistent with it.