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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Ooh, another one from my days as a shopkeeper.
Scene: I’ve nearly finished mopping my way to the door at the end of the day. We’ve been closed for about an hour. A customer comes knocking on the door.
…….Me: Sorry, we’re closed.
Woman: Can’t I come in and look around?
…….Me: No, sorry, I just mopped.
Woman: No, it’s OK. I don’t want to buy anything; I just want to look around.
Wow, what a deal. You mean I get to stay later, mop again, AND make no money?!?
Weirdest retail experience ever, I was working in the box office at a movie theater, when someone asked for two tickets to “The White Supremacy” obviously meaning “The Bourne Supremacy.” Her significant other gave her a hard time for that one…
How about the way it should have gone:
Me: “Can I help you?”
Customer:”I’m looking for non-fiction.”
Me:”What kind?”
Customer: “Just non-fiction.”
Me: “Okay. Over there are history, science, and
business sections. Let me know if you need assistance finding anything in particular.”
Customer: “Okay. Thanks! Did you want a blowjob for your trouble?”
@Git Em SteveDave:
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that has that type of problem on the phone. To make it worse my name is Christopher, but typically I go by Chris, so there’s no help there. When I was younger I worked in a call center that did pharmacy fulfillment for AARP pharmacy services (no kidding). I once had a retired gentleman in Texas with a thick Texas accent reply to my closing “can I get you anything else” speech by asking me to box myself up and come on down to Texas, because I sounded so sweet and pretty over the phone and I had been so nice. It was, without a doubt, the most interesting compliment I have ever received.
I used to work in a clothing store and had customers ask me if we sold pants or shirts or sweaters- very vague. When I try to narrow it down for them, because I’m not white, they just assume I don’t speak English (even though I don’t have an accent ’cause I grew up here…).
Do you sell pants?
Yes.
Where are they?
Well, they’re kind of spread out, what kind of pants are you looking for?
… The kind I can wear. You know, PANTS.
Are you looking for denim? Dress pants? Khakis?
~Sigh. Paaaaaants. You know, like *these* (points at her khakis). Like *those* (points at my jeans).
So are you looking for khakis or denim…?
~Sigh. NEVER MIND! I’ll go find someone who understands.
Jerks.
@ClevelandCub: Actually, IIRC, Ben over at the consumerist did a story on a guy who had a problem w/BOA b/c they wouldn’t help him over the phone. He was featured on NPR’s Wait, Wait… I actually enjoyed doing phone work when I don’t have to call people. When they call you it’s just so much more fun. We had this one customer whom everyone called “Aunt Bea”. She was a little “off”. She would call and give these long tirades about how her neighbor and her son would sneak into her house and steal her stuff, like the things you use to sew up turkeys to hold the stuffing in. Whenever she called, they gave her to me b/c I just loved talking to her. The trick was that if you even slightly paused when talking to her, she would interrupt you. You had to just blurt out what you were saying and not stop until she stopped. I eventually learned her name and would address her as she came in the store and cater to her every whim. She loved me and would complain about everyone else. I even went as far as to crawl under her car to assure her that the puddle was water from her AC, not her neighbor(who killed her husband by the way) cutting her gas line. I still remember the look of fear that would creep over the girls faces when they realized they had her on the phone, and they would give me the “help me” look.
After eleven years in the retail cosmetics industry, tried out various responses to people answering “Just looking!” when I ask “How are you today?” or even when I just say “Hi.” It seems women hear only a loud buzzing sound when I speak. That explains why I see the same blank, averted gaze whether I say back “…so you’re doing well then?” or simply “okay” and walk away. Maybe I would get a more lifelike response if I said “Hey, I’m being polite; stop acting as if you’ll be overtaken by my witchery if we make eye contact!”
@JDAC: No, I believe most of them. Ask me some retail stories some time.
My favorite is the woman who accused me of making her look stupid when I worked at Things Remembered. She came in for a graduation present, and I suggested the desk clock with pen holder (her son was graduating law school). She bought it and asked me to write “Congratulations Steve, Class of 2000″ on it.
I wrote this down on the work order, but she started getting pissed off.
CUSTOMER: “No, no, no, you spelled it wrong. It’s C-O-N-G-R-A-D-L-U-A-T-I-O-N-S”
ME: “Ma’am, excuse me, but it has two ts. There is no D in congratulations.”
There was a line behind her, so I figured she didn’t want to look stupid. Still….
CUSTOMER: “Listen, I’m not taking spelling lessons from some high school drop out.”
ME: “Ma’am, I assure you I have a high school diploma and an associates–”
CUSTOMER: “I don’t care if you went to Harvard, I know how to spell congratulations, and there’s a D in it.”
ME: “Ma’am, I cannot take a return on a custom engraving, so I’m going to verify in the dictionary the correct spelling.”
CUSTOMER: “You’ll only see that you’re wrong.”
Without saying anything, I simply pointed to the word in the dictionary.
CUSTOMER: “Well, your dictionary is wrong!”
My dictionary was wrong very often, such as when it said that millennium had two Ns in it, or when it didn’t show the word “alot”.
Another thing that i forgot to mention that happened. My co-worker and I had already closed the store, and our store hours had changed some time ago. There’s one sign that’s built into the door with the old hours (which the owner is going to go back to the old hours eventually) and there was another sign with the new hours. Monday – Thursday we’re open from 10am – 9pm, Friday and Saturday 10am – 11pm, Sunday the same as mondays. Well there’s a guy who goes there regularly and he’s fully aware of our hours not only because of the sign on the door, but that when he was there with his wife at 8:50 pm one night he was teller her she needs to hurry because we were going to be closing soon.
The guy gets there on a thursday at 9:10 one night while we were already mopping the floors and taking care of funds. The “Open” neon signs were off (which are clearly displayed in the windows) and all but two lights in the store were off. He first tries opening the door, but to his demise it doesn’t. He knocks and you can hear through the windows there I’m like “Sorry we close at 9″. He’s like “What?”, so I held up 9 fingers and said the same thing again. I thought he left but then he’s knocking again. So I go to open the door and tell him we closed at 9. He asks “Then why does your sign say 10?”. I then pointed at the other sign that’s just right above the old one that shows the store hours, but he continued on saying “Well you guys need to get rid of that other sign, it’s confusing.” So i had to explain to him the whole deal about the change of hours were coming anyways and we put up that 2nd sign so it won’t cause confusion, which it hasn’t for others (except another couple who apparently didn’t see the sign). He then said “I just wanna exchange these movies for two more”.
Honestly I wouldn’t have had a problem letting him in to exchange them really quick if he knew which movies he wanted to get, but I had already cashed out all of the registers and done all of the nightly paper work, so there was no way for me to log everything back on without causing problems with the system, so I even went onto explain that to him. He still comes to the store as regularly as ever, but at least now he knows about the hours. It just gets annoying having to explain really simple things such as hour changes to someone that already knows about them.
[www.rinkworks.com]
Here are some funny tech support calls.
Apocalypto is about ancient Mayans I think, not Indians, but I guess to some all native peoples are the same.
I’ll never forget this one woman who was speaking with one of our managers. In an effort to sound informed, she kept referring to a conversation she had over the phone with our “corporal” offices.
@MikeGrenade: At my office, some people seem to believe they sound much more important, educated, and believable when they say “I was just conversating with So-and-so, and she told me I could just file X, Y, & Z papers for approval.”
I used to work at Barnes & Noble (forgive me), and once had a customer ask me where books on time travel were.
“No, not your Lit/Fiction section, please.” Then, taking a note from the quote in OP, “Where are your non-fiction books?”
A lot of them are apocraphyl, yes. I’ve seen them on Snopes, etc.
Worse than retail is working at a bank. You know all those Consumerist posts about how banks treat their customers? They pretty much treat their employees the same.
It is astounding how many people would get angry when they tried to cash a check and were asked (politely) for ID. Especially if they were partially depositing the check. “But I’m giving YOU money!” No, dumbass, you’re giving me a piece of paper.
I always wanted to tell these people that we would put them on a special No ID list, so that if anyone claimed to be them or cashed a check made out to them, under no circumstances would we attempt to verify their identity. But we were not allowed to be rude
I used to work in returns, and the stories I could tell would go on for weeks. Probably the best one was when a customer wanted a reprint of his receipt. He was sending it in for a rebate, and thought it was too wrinkled. He had IRONED it, and being thermal paper, it turned solid black!
@LatherRinseRepeat: The happiest time of year brings out the worst in people. Been there, done that. Won’t do it again.
Concerning the posting on the blog about the grandmother pissed that the store sold her grandson “porn” in the form of Maxim. I still wonder why Maxim and the like can be in full view but they must.cover.cosmo? Never understood it.
@CPC24: I don’t know. I could see a store refusing a rebate because the reciept is too wrinkled. LOL They like refusing them for every other reason in the world.
Ugh, I’ve worked in retail and there are lots of bad customers. Once, a customer had a sixpack (bottles) of beer and wasn’t paying attention or has the worst motor skills ever and drops it on the ground. No, the handle didn’t break. They just dropped the whole thing. Glass and beer EVERYWHERE. The customer turns to me and gives me this look like “Why the hell didn’t you prevent gravity from letting that happen?” and proceeds to say “All this glass is really dangerous! You better clean this shit up right away before someone gets fucking hurt. I can’t believe you guys.”
Making only enough money to drive to work and eat is not worth that kind of poo poo.
@dry-roasted-peanuts:
I’ve done that several times, usually when I’ve been on my way home from work and happened to drive by the bookstore.
In our defense, we DO expect that, since you’re working in a bookstore, you’re likely to recall something you’ve sold a lot of (assumed when something is on a “Best Seller” list, as opposed to something stupid like “Oprah’s Reading List” or whatnot).
On the other hand, I can see some people getting uppity and bitchy when you can’t answer. I feel your pain – just don’t assume we’re intentionally being obtuse!
@thelushie:
People are stupid, religious, prudish, or some combination of the previous, and none of the magazines should be covered – that said, Maxim doesn’t usually run cover-blurbs about “10 Steps To A Better Orgasm” and “How To Please Your Sexual Partner,” so they don’t have to worry so much.
@mythago:
Banks are assholes, though. As are most of the tellers I’ve encountered. I used to make a daily business deposit when I was a manager, and they NEVER knew who I was. I know they see a lot of people every day, but I try to make it a point to remember people I see *every* day in the course of business. People get irritated when they’re asked for ID not because they’re being asked to verify their identity, but because it implies a lack of trust. Everybody wants to be well-known.
That, and a lot of people in many parts of the country are still used to our small-town banks, where we’re not treated like criminals, never have to ask twice for something, and have to try really, really hard to get assessed some sort of “fee”.
Oh, and they know our names, the names of our parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren.
@The Marionette:
Now that’s just stupidity on the part of the business. Any sign with new hours should be COVERING THE SIGN WITH THE OLD HOURS, not posted above the old hours. Don’t blame the customer on that one – you’re both wrong, but the business owner is more at fault here.
——————-
Here are a few from me:
I used to work at a deli, and we had double-doors at the front. We’d always lock one door during the summer, making an effort to keep the AC in and the bugs out. We’d place a sign on the door saying “Use Other Door.”
When that didn’t work, we changed the sign to read “Use Other Door ——>”.
When *THAT* didn’t work, we finally put up two signs. “Use Other Door ——>”, and “This Is The Other Door.” Yeah, still didn’t help. Our only consolation was that we’d get to see at least a dozen people slam into the wrong door every day.
Story 2:
After getting sick of so many people standing in line for ten minutes trying to decide what to order and holding up the other customers, asking us for items that weren’t on the menu (old specials, etc), asking for the ingredients of each sandwich on the menu despite having a detailed, well-organized menu in front of each register (I’m not talking about one sandwich, there are/were plenty of people who ask about EVERY sandwich on the menu), etc etc, one of the managers decided to try and do something about it.
So he put up a sign. A sign which read “Don’t Be Stupid.”
Inevitably, someone would take offense (OK, it was MEANT to be offensive to these people), and something resembling the following would ensue:
“Is that s’posed to be about me?”
“Are you being stupid?”
“… … NO.”
“Well, then, it isn’t about you. Next.”
There was also the inevitable “What’s that supposed to mean?”, which resulted in a blank stare.
Oh, as a final note:
Responses to sites like this are very telling. They act just like the “Don’t Be Stupid” sign.
The only people who took offense at the sign are the ones at whom the sign was directed – the only people who take offense at these sites are the ones who do and say the stupid things.
@JDAC:
I don’t know how I missed that comment, I think I’m trained by years of “First Post” to skip the first few.
Those stories about CD-ROM cupholders and the “Any Key” aren’t myths, they’re folk tales. Decidedly unverifiable, but there’s more than enough anecdotal evidence.
And even today, if you work long enough in a PC service facility, you’ll still run across enough broken CD-ROM trays to wonder if some people never got the news.
a lot of good anecdotes here. i don’t know if i would classify all these people as stupid or bad customers. many of these situations just show a basic inability to communicate, or language barriers that exist. or even haste in the case of asking where the horseradish is only to have an employee point to the shelf right in front of you. i’ll admit that happens to me more than once simply b/c i’m rushing.
but here’s my bad customer stories:
-question. question. question. question. do you think they sell this cheaper at wal*mart? goes to wal*mart, comes back to tell you they saved $5 & then asks if you can help them set it up.
-customer buys expensive electronic unit & return 2 weeks later. comes back in to buy again, you sell them the unit they bought the first time & they get pissed off. “but this was USED BY SOMEBODY ELSE. i DEMAND a new one!”. no sir, it was used by you & should serve your needs well. see you in two weeks.
-customers with cellphones are always bad customers. put the goddamn phone down for 2 seconds & relate to the person standing in front of you. it’s rude, obnoxious & it slows everybody else down while we wait for you to say “buh-bye. uh-huh. i love you, too. ok, talk to you later. yup, later. ok. bye. call you soon. bye.” don’t do it.
-or my personal favorite: woman comes in & asks to use the (not really public) restroom. we oblige (hoping we’ll see a sale). anyway, we all pretty much forget about her until about 30 minutes later when she trudges out the front door – w/o so much as browsing or even a thank you. one of my co-workers goes to use the restroom & comes back moments later whiter than a ghost. it took an entire bottle of bleach to clean that restroom – i still have nightmares. needless to say, the restroom was only open to little kids about to pee all over our floor after that.
Funny stuff. Heehee…
this has brightened my day SO MUCH!!!
for real.
Yay, my thingie got posted!
When I was managing editor on a newspaper, the #1 thing I got complaint calls about was crossword puzzle problems. (Do. Not. Screw. with crossworders!) But the #2 thing, which totally deserves to be on this site?
PEOPLE COMPLAINING THEIR HOROSCOPE WAS WRONG.
I mean, seriously, wtf, dude? It’s a NEWSPAPER HOROSCOPE. We had ten months of them after the woman who wrote them died! You could replace every third word with “fish” and it would make exactly as much sense. But people would call and just SCREAM at me when they, like, didn’t meet a tall dark stranger. Or tall dark fish, for that matter. They wanted to know what kind of crap operation I was running, the newspaper was for facts, and how could they possibly trust my front page if I couldn’t even get their HOROSCOPES right?
Oy vey!
The only way to stay sane in retail is to accept that it’s an inevitable part of your job to be involved in people’s mental disorders.
One we see on an almost daily basis in cosmetics is the lady who has nothing better to do than continually buy/return/buy/return/buy/return. Of course this is totally legitemate because she keeps discovering that she’s “allergic” to the products, she just happened to not have a “reaction” until she had used over half of it. Right…
My other pet peeve is that people don’t seem to get that we work on commission. Now I certainly have no issue with spending time with a customer trying to help her figure out what exactly she wants, but I feel no obligation spend an hour doing your makeup for a party/night out/prom when you are not a regular client and you’ve made it clear that you don’t want to buy anything, you just don’t want to pay the $30-$50 it would cost for a makeup application in a salon. Do you also expect someone to do your hair for free??
Tips: If you want your makeup done, at least buy the lipstick (and do not return it the next day!), and please don’t show up on a Saturday afternoon and get pissy because I can’t accomodate you right that minute–there are lots of other people that want to shop on Saturday afternoon, too, so call the day before (even a few hours before!) and make an appointment.
People get irritated when they’re asked for ID not because they’re being asked to verify their identity, but because it implies a lack of trust. Everybody wants to be well-known.
@RvLeshrac: No, not everybody.
I honestly don’t care if store or bank employees recognize me or not as long as they are polite. I also wouldn’t expect bank tellers to stop asking for ID even if they did recognize me.
I’ve been guilty occasionally of such stupidity, though I’ve also been a first-time customer in stores and been treated as if I were an idiot by the clerks because I don’t know where things are; they work there, I don’t. People should differentiate between inexperience and ignorance, which are excusable, and stupidity or not paying attention, which aren’t.
The type of stupid customer that really gets my goat is the impatient idiots…you know the type, the morons who think pushing *you* from behind is going to make the checkout line and/or clerk in front of you move faster. It’s especially annoying when they shove a shopping cart into the back of your legs, in which case I usually put my foot on the bar between the front wheel and shove it back into said moron.
Another form such idiots take are the ones who “think” that because you’re not standing close enough to hump the ass of the customer in front you, that they can somehow butt into the line. (I usually leave about two feet between myself and the person in front of me.) That sort of moron I usually grab by the collar and pull them back out of the line.
heres a site i ran across a while back, still fun to read [www.actsofgord.com]
@pegr: For some reason, that reminds me of something a co-worker once told me about. She used to work in a porn shop, and once she got a guy who came in and asked if they have any snuff films. Just FYI, don’t anyone do that, they will call the cops.
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.
@The Marionette: I weep for humanity.
I worked tech support for a company that did Dell support. I worked specifically on desktops…
I get a guy calling in, his desktop won’t turn on, it worked fine the day before… I start troubleshooting it, going through the basics, and then get to the point where I’m about to tell him that we’re sending a technician out the next day… when I get this -
Caller – Hold on a minute, the power in my apartment just came back on.
Me – Sir, do you have a battery backup or a generator?
Caller – No, do I need one?
Pebkac.
I used to love dealing with the “IT Departments” that would call in… I’d start troubleshooting, and they’d immediately say “no that won’t work.” My response – “Have you tried?”
“No, but I know it won’t work.”
/eye roll
One I get all the time at work:
“Do I have to pay back loans?”
It’s pretty hard to say, “That’s the definition of a loan” with a straight face.
I worked at KFC in high school and had this little gem at the drive thru:
Woman: [orders a whole bunch of food] and a large chocolate shake.
Me: I’m sorry we don’t have shakes.
Woman: You don’t have shakes?
Me: No, I’m sorry we don’t.
Woman (sounding incredulous): You don’t have shakes?
Me: No, we don’t
Woman (just making sure): You don’t have shakes?
Me: No.
The third time I was tempted to say something like: “Let me check [pause]. No, in the last 4 seconds we have not started selling shakes.”
I also had someone once who absolutely insisted that he bought a hamburger from us the week before. This was not an A&W KFC, I suggested that he had bought one from the A&W store across town, but he insisted that he got it from us. Then he demanded to talk to the manager. I informed him that I was the manager, he asked to speak to someone who had worked there longer, there’s a reason why I was the manager on Friday nights…
@LogicalOne: I know our store has all the fiction/poetry/essay books in one section of the store. I think that’s why it’s not just “fiction.”
Today at work we were discussing when we would finally receive the tax stimulus check. I turned and asked a co-worker if she got hers and she says “What check?” We explain and she says “I never heard of that.” And I have the pleasure of managing people like this.
I have personally had the same “where is the non-fiction section” conversation, almost word for word.
While working at a restaurant-
Customer: “What type of meat is in the sweet and sour pork?”
Me: Thinking “Ok, is this a joke? Is she thinking that we don’t use real meat?” I look at the customer, nope she’s serious, and she has no clue what she just said.
Customer: Wondering why I’m giving her a puzzled look. Suddenly dawns on her what she said. “Oh my God, you must think I’m an idiot!”
While working at a call center-
Me: “…I have you phone number as xxx-xxx-forty-five hundred.”
Customer: “No it’s xxx-xxx-four, five, zero, zero.”
Me: “Yeah, forty-five hundred.”
Customer: “No, four, five, zero.”
Working a bookstore I have had that conversation but people are nice when I point out to there there is no place like that.
I had a bad customer one day who complained about how things were setup I said I was sorry but would try and fix things but he said how our store was lousy and competitors were better than we are. That hurt since I was trying to help and get comments to improve things. But the day after I had four customers express a lot of thanks for me helping them and my friendly attitude and that made up for the guy.
@dveight:
The caller was an English teacher. 123-456-4500 isn’t “one twenty-three, four fifty-six, forty-five hundred”, it is “one two three four five six four five zero zero.”
(For the record, it isn’t “one two three four five six four five O O,” either. “O” isn’t a number.)
I’m just sayin’.
if you think any of these are fake, please keep in mind that any walt disney world cast member [employee] will confirm that the number one question asked at the disney theme parks in orlando is “what time is the 3 o’clock parade?”
here are a few i keep on my website that actually happened to me or my coworkers at disney or from my hotel job
***
(at the top of the stairs leading up to the 2nd floor)
tourist: “Excuse me, where are the stairs that go down?”
***
tourist: “Does my ticket work here?”
cashier: “May I see your ticket and I can check for you?”
tourist: “Oh, I didn’t bring it with me, I left it at the hotel for safekeeping.”
cashier: “Well, can you tell me what kind of ticket it was and maybe I can help you answer that?”
tourist: “It was the square one.”
***
(at a counter to pick up prints of pictures you designed on a computer)
fairly famous actor: [looks at printers and CD burner] “I’d like a coke.”
***
Guest: “Why would I bring my driver’s license with me? I only drove a couple of hundred miles to get here, it’s not like I’m from another country”
***
guest: “I’m booked for two nights, but I’m going to need to extend through tomorrow night too”
clerk: “well, we are sold out at this time but I can take your name and if we have any cancellations we can extend your reservation”
guest: “well, you’d better make sure someone cancels because I NEED to stay tomorrow night too.”
***
guest: “yes, you have me in a room near other people. I need to be in a room with no one else around.”
clerk: “I’m sorry ma’am, the hotel is sold out this week. any room I put you in will have people in the nearby rooms”
guest: “well, why is the hotel sold out?”
***
guest approaches the desk with a laundry bag full of clothes and a suit jacket over his arm: “i need to send all of this out to be dry cleaned and pressed “
clerk: “ok, the jacket too? if so it needs to go in the bag”
guest: “but if i put it in the bag it will get wrinkled!”
clerk: “yes but the cleaners will press it for you”
[he continued to argue so we just took it on the hanger and put in the bag after he left]