Good for a giggle, but surely these are about as believable as the apocryphal tale of using the CDROM drawer as a cup holder?

Mind you, people are idiots, like Kevin James...

I'm sure there are many, many more than that. Granted, most people who would say those things aren't Consumerist readers who even understand things like math.

Link doesn't work.

Awesome. Chocked full of hearty win goodness.

Maybe we broke them. It comes up as the first hit on Google, but it doesn't work.

This has to be like, the first Consumerist '/. effect'

Awesome.

I got through the first two pages, then it died trying to load the third. Looks like a lot of people are trying to get through their Monday workday just like me...

No, some of these are pretty accurate. I work at a college bookstore, and once had a customer say to me "The library has books?"

@Buran:

Link works, Site is down

This is my new favorite site; I look forward to NAR (and Consumerist!) popping up in Google reader. I believe that many of them are real, because they're just too weird to be jokes. However, some of them are essentially old jokes or at least old stories, like this one from today:
Guy cutting the line at airport counter: Do you know who I am?
Ticket agent, on PA: Ladies and Gentlemen, we have someone here who doesn't know who he is. If anyone knows him, please come to the desk.

@JDAC: I too would like to believe that these are fake, but I really can't put it past people to say these things.

I've worked with the public for 20+ years (waiting tables, retail, call center, coffee shop) and I've gotten some silly and mean customers.
Not one of them made me want to post online to some site showing how dumb or silly they were.

My own story comes from my brother who used to be a bartender at a Japanese club:

Brother: Hey you're that singer from Whitesnake
Man: Why yes I am (very smug)
Brother: Didn't we kick your ass last week for getting drunk and abusing the bouncers?
Man: Uh....
Brother: Yeah, don't do that again. Now what can I get you?

The only person I have ever wanted to post online about was the lady who told me she shouldn't be expected to read because she bought over the limit of soda (and I told her before hand 4 was the limit, and even told her to ring the 5th as a separate order so she could bypass the limit). I lol'd.

There's also customerssuck.com. Can we overload that one too?

STOP BLAMING THE CONSUMER. I AM SO SICK OF PEOPLE ON HERE THINKING THAT THE CONSUMER IS EVER WRONG OMG!!!

I think this is a good dose of reality for a site like consumerist. It isn't always the buisness that does wrong. People make mistakes, be them a consumer or a buisness. I while these postings are cute because they show off confused or ignorant customers, a lot of customer expirences I've had are with people who are irate, and think they are always right. I wish there was a site to rant about customers that are jack asses.

I still recall the day one of the pumps at the station I worked at said it was leaking, so the Veeder-Root system locked the station down. Since we couldn't pump gas, he put signs on every pump across the handles(used old dot-matrix paper) that said Pumps broken. This did not deter people. So we put trashcans/cones/displays in front of every pump. Yet again, not a deterent. So we place cans in the entrances. People drove OVER the curb. The funniest was I worked the overnight shift, so I had all the lights except the booth's back office lights off, even the oval(amaco). Guy pulls up and wants gas. I tell him our pumps are down. So he asks where he can get gas. I point to the Exxon across the street, which is lit like a Christmas tree, and the guy is out pumping someones gas. His response? "They don't look open"

The all time best was when we ran out of regular. Someone came up and asked for regular. I said we're out. He points to a different pump and says, "what about that one?". I said they are all out, the main tank is empty. He looks at me a second, and goes "Even that one over there?", pointing at another pump. I never doubt the stupidity of people.

I was in college from 1989 to 1994. During that time, I worked as a computer lab attendant. Part of the duties were the sales of floppy discs. (For those too young to remember, these are magnetic discs that are built on a very thin, flexible substrate, and then enclosed in a shell. The 5¼" held about 360kB of data and 3½" held 720kB, and later 1.44MB.) In this time range, the technology was in transition, and both the 5¼" and 3½" varieties were in almost-equal use (with a slight preference for 3½").

A frequent statement from people wanting to buy a 3½" floppy disc was "I need to buy a hard disc," thanks to the fact that the exterior of these discs is a hard shell, versus the soft shell of the 5¼" variety.

No amount of explanation would yield the desired semantic correction with some users. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but we had an old 5¼", full-height, MFM hard drive that we kept in a drawer and would pull out in times of failure to get through, put it on the desk, where it would land with a thud, and declare the price to be $300.

Having worked in many bookstores, I can personally vouch for the non-fiction section story.

Working at Kroger while I was in high school, I once had a woman ask for "paramecium cheese". I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, so I asked her what it was used for. Once she said you put it on spaghetti, I knew she was talking about Parmesan cheese. It took every ounce of restraint I had to keep from calling her a moron.

@Balisong: You ever get the, "I'm looking for a book by that guy who wrote the book they made into a movie a few years ago?"

[dtost.blogspot.com]

And thats all I have to say about that!

I've seen plenty.
I am proud to call myself a part of the Dogbert's New Ruling Class, and as an "elitist" I laugh at what the In-duh-vidual spouts out of his mouth.

"Man, I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!"

"You couldn't pay me to work on commission."

"They're going through paper like it grows on trees."

[www.unitedmedia.com]

You're only an elitist if you're smarter than the average person...

My favorite, from my occasional lunchtime hangout:

Waiter: "Can I get you something to drink?"
Customer, in to watch soccer during lunch while nursing a $1.50 coke: "No. I'd like a coke."
Waiter: "Arrrtrghgghg!"

@JDAC: If you don't believe stuff like that this is true, then you've never worked in retail (or haven't worked in it for long enough).

One of my favorite stories from being a cashier is when I was putting away returned merchandise. I was standing in the cereal aisle. The cereal aisle had one side of the aisle filled with nothing but cereal. As I'm putting a box of cereal away a guy taps me on the shoulder. I turn around so that my back is facing the massive wall of cereal. I ask the guy if I can help him, and he looks at me and asks me "Can you tell me where the cereal is?". I simply didn't know what to say. Somewhat blinded by the oddity of it, I pointed over my shoulder and said "right here". He got all mad. "Well, you didn't have to be so rude about it!" and stormed off.

@Angryrider: You're only an elitist if you think your little cesspool of knowledge is better than the next guys cesspool of knowledge.

@ptkdude: heh, you remind me of when I was a bad customer at Kroger. Where's the sesame paste? The helpful employees ran all over trying to help me. When we got to produce (no idea why it was in produce), the produce clerk said, yeah, it's labelled "tahini." Then the other two clerks said I should have said tahini initially; they'd have taken me right to it. I say I'm the stupid customer in this case, because it's tahini that I wanted; I just stupidly assumed that they'd have no idea what I was asking for and though sesame paste would be easier for them.

Working at a UPS Store, 2 common questions I got were:

"Do you guys Fedex here?"

and..

"Do you guys ship stuff here?"

@Git Em SteveDave: Can't remember that one, but I got a couple of "The cover is purple."

Regarding story #3, I had a friend who worked at a pharmacy for a while that made things like creams and suppositories for the nether regions. Apparently, there are a number of men out there that don't know what testicles are or what the scrotum is.

The average (median) IQ of a human being is 100. In my experience people with an IQ of 100 are only slightly brighter than a bowl of split pea soup. So...100 being average, it follows that half the people are even dumber than that.

@Git Em SteveDave: I asked that question once. It was for a cookbook but I couldn't remember the name of the book or author.

Worked in a bookstore, got this one fairly regularly:

C: I'm looking for a book.
M: Ok, what's the title?
C: I don't know, but it's new.
M: Ok, who wrote it?
C: I don't know. I think the cover is blue.
M: ... Ok. What's it about?
C: I don't know. I think it's on the best seller list?
M: Who's best seller list? New York Times, Ophra, Amizon?
C: I don't know.

@JDAC: You mean we can't do that?
[i161.photobucket.com]

@Balisong: "The Cover Purple"? Didn't that have Oprah Winfrey in it?

The only "blubbering idiot" moments I have like this is due to the mouthbreather employees at places like Walmart. Then they act like I'm the idiot just because they failed 1st-grade enunciation and smoked a blunt in the parking lot before work.

Most of the time, I just try to be extra-nice. In fact, I always try to one-up the niceness of the employee, which usually helps me get what I want.

@ViperBorg: I see that picture, and I can hear the grinding gears when the computer tries to retract the tray.

While working at a university library:
"Hey, uh, where are all the books?"

While working in a restaurant:
"I don't like my food, but I like his; and he doesn't like his food, but he likes mine. We want a refund."

And while interviewing a clerk while doing some SOX 404 work:
"So you take the average?"
"No, we don't take the average. We just add them all up and divide by however many there are."
...

You can't make this stuff up.

My darling bride operated an independent bookstore for years. Our favorite Stupid Consumer asked for photo-books on dinosaurs.

"S'cuse me?"

"Photographs of dinosaurs."

"We have illustrations of dinosaurs, but no photographs."

"Why not? I'm sure Barnes and Noble has them."

"Because dinosaurs lived about 45 million yars prior to the invention of photography ...."

You're right ... can't make up this stuff.

My favorite we had when I was in telephone tech support was the body shop customer that used his high pressure air compress (the same one used for the impact wrench) to "gently" blow the dust out of his computer...along with his graphics card, modem, network card, various cables, etc.

I have fun issues like that at my gig (university A/V dept). Like the people who persist in calling LCD projectors "overhead projectors". Just because some of them are mounted, quite literally, over head does not give them the same nomenclature as those transparency projectors. What happens when I wheel a portable one in on a cart? Is it still an "overhead"?

Of course, the best one was when someone requested a "slide projector" from us. Silly me, I thought they needed a carousel projector...you know, the old school Kodak things. Delivered it and then the student actually asked, "Where do I plug in my laptop?"

*facepalm*

@Git Em SteveDave: HA! It's already dead. I just put it in for the photo-op. :)

@BlackFlag55: It's strange how people read fewer books because of TV/internet/video games/work and yet more idiots come into book stores and libraries...

@nadmonk: Hilarious!

"I need a wireless internet cable."
"Do you have ethernets?"

And, my personal favorite... standing about 20 feet in front of a giant wall of display TVs... customer comes up..
"Do you guys still sell TVs?"

It's really a negative feedback loop caused by the fact that a certain number of people are fundamentally stupid and unpleasant.

So, you get the sales people who are forced to deal with these assholes all day. You know, the ones who make stupid demands and then glare at you and say 'the customer is always right' with a look daring you to contradict them so they don't feel bad when they make up shit to complain to your manager about.

Bitter? Me? Never.

Good consumers are really the exception rather than the rule. This site represents a severely self selecting group.

So, pissed off sales people dealing with so many bad customers end up acting the same way with the few good ones. And the good customers get mad because the sales people are treating them the same way they treat everyone else. So they act pissed off with the next sales person who then treats them like one more dumb sheep.

And the actual assholes in both groups keep the vicious cycle from breaking.

Not so much a bad customer as a not terribly observant customer:

A few years ago I worked in the grocery department of a supermarket. I worked hard, so I was fairly well muscled, but had long hair and other... identifiable feminine objects. A customer walked up to me as I had a pickle jar in each hand, stocking the pickle section.

"EXCUSE ME SON, WHERE'S THE PICKLES?"

I turned and looked and there was nobody there but an old man, who was suddenly closely examining a jar of pickles and pretending that he wasn't the one who asked me that question.

@balthisar: I love your story. I am am frequently at the store looking for unusual ingredients and having to guess what strange description of something I barely understand will make sense to someone else who probably also barely understands it. (And, yes, I do cook dishes so complex I have no business cooking them.)

@Cervantes3773:

While working at a university library:
"Hey, uh, where are all the books?"

Long ago as a video store clerk:

Customer: You got any f**k flicks?
Me: What?
Customer: You know, f**k flicks?
Me: Oh. You need to visit our store in (less-uptight county next door).

Before you ask, it was in Kenticky...