Dumb Customers

Me: Tech support this is Bec, How can I help you?
Dumbass: My service is not working!
Me: Do you have a message on your screen?
Dumbass: No
Me: What can you see on the screen?
Dumbass: Nothing, It’s all black.
Me: Ok, well what lights are on the box?
Dumbass: What box?
Me: Your Pay Tv box - you know the one that submits your pictures?
Dumbass: Yes
Me: What coloured lights are on there?!!
Dumbass: Green
Me: Ok well your service is running
Dumbass: No it’s not, because I can’t see anything!
Me: What channel is your tv on?
Dumbass: It’s not on at the moment.
Me (for the love of christ!): Could you please turn your tv on..
Dumbass: Why?
Me: So we can see if your pay tv is submitting pictures to your tv
Dumbass turns tv on: Oh It’s working now, how did you fix that over the phone?
Me: Well your tv needs to be switched on for you to see the pictures!
Dumbass: Wow! you must be really smart, thanks for helping me! Really how did you know what the problem was?
Me: Lucky guess (retard!)
Me: Hangs up, sigh’s, and takes the next call - yay! it’s another one exactly the same…

Speaking to somebody today brought back strange memories of this guy I had to serve in my old job. He was the kind of guy who actually clicked his fingers to attract my attention while I was still with another customer. Despite this, I’m a friendly guy, and made the right sounds. He was after a file folder, which is simple enough, but not just anyone for after all he had his decor to worry about.

So he explained the situation. He brought some files a while back and needed some more. Problem is, his idea of a while is five years, and not really surprisingly things have moved on. We no longer carried the exact same budget 49p folders that we carried 5 years ago. Oh, they were clear alright, with the same number of pockets, but the spine and binding… Well that’s a different matter…

So he was pretty adamant and not so understanding of the whole idea of changing suppliers so I said I’ll see what the computer says we have left in the warehouse. At this point he expressed his surprise that staff nowadays didn’t know what stock the company kept. Despite the hundred of thousands of products he dismissed this as just another excuse…

So well, to get a discontinued product tracked down via the old suppliers and to place a special order at a cost to the store which would far exceed the three pounds he was going to spend would take a month. Did he really want to go ahead with this?

Yes… But he was outraged. In fact he had to spend a good five minutes explaining to me how when he ordered his new BMW with custom paintwork and interior, he had it shipped to the UK, and delivered to his house for only eighty odd grand how we as such a large company couldn’t do the same for a 49p file folder…

For fifty pence exactly how much customization can you expect to buy on a BMW?

I work at the moment at this database company who primarily deal with charity contracts. They get outsourced from the charities when they run campaigns too big for them to collect all the money. It’s then our job to bank it and enter all the information, fun no?

We all know how aggressive these charities can sometimes be when collecting money but mostly that’s down to peoples stupidity when replying. There’s a well known example of this at work. There’s this guy who thinks it’s a clever way to get back at the charities by sending a penny in cash to every campaign. Thus, due to free post, costing the charities more. Problem is he never checks any of the data protection boxes and so gets registered as a donator and gets his details shared.

So now, instead of just ticking one box to stop the spam, due to his spite he’s getting his mail box filled with letters from pretty much every charity asking for another penny.

In my opinion that’s pretty dumb…

I work for a store that is known to give things for free if they ring up wrong. So, a few people really look hard at the prices so they get stuff for free.

Well, we caught on to this and to make it easier for the people working there, we offer a huge, flat screen monitor that the customer can watch every item go through, showing a list of the last nine items to go through as well. That way, if we scan too fast, they can still see the item for a while to ‘correct’ any price that is wrong.

Yet still, day after day, I have people looking right at me saying ‘How much did that ring up?’, where there’s a big screen showing them exactly what I see on my screen. If that is not bad enough, I often get the “These are on sale,”. Well, if it’s on sale sir, it’ll show up on my register. And if you want to know what it rings up, look at the big screen idiot.

Last week (as mentioned in a previous post) we had a ‘10% off everything’ sale, so naturally it was busy, now, a postal worker asked me if we had a film in stock, some guy standing behind him (who looked like he had no concept of ’selflessness’) starts making a noise about how the postal worker was taking up more than 30 seconds of my time, so the postal worker wanders off feeling rather dejected…

This loud-mouth steps up, he’s in bicycle pants with a bright blue shell-suit top and bright blue goggles, he asks me if we carry a book, I check our computer and it’s not there, I run out to the stock-room and the woman in charge of the books has already gone home, so I’m told to tell him we don’t have a copy, as I deliver the bad news to him his brow creases and he virtually shouts ‘well, I’m the author, this book came out last week, it is meant to be in EVERY store.’

Now upon this news I decide ’screw this, I’ll get the manager’ I interrupt the managers important phone call with another branch and the guy (who wasn’t even intending to buy anything) starts giving the manager shit, total time wasted with this loser? nearly 30 minutes combined…

A customer brings a compact DVD box up to my colleague with the intent of buying it. I go out back to retrieve the DVD player to come back to find the customer asking my colleague whether it plays DVD’s and VHS videos. My colleague calmly explained that being a DVD player it only plays DVD’s.

The customer seemed perplexed by this as on the box it said DVD video. My colleague explained in depth using a DVD box for explanation that DVD video means DVD discs. This shocked the customer and she wouldn’t pay £40 for just a DVD player. Five minutes later she returned to me and asked to see the player. She pointed to a small plastic bag and said “Is this it?”, tapping the empty bag, “Oh…” she goes. “Oh.. K.” I said, and went to retrieve the player. Showing it to her, the compact box not much bigger than a standard VHS. She seemed shocked and said “Where does the video go?”…

Dear oh dear… Dumb customers..

Today is one of those days, I’m sure the majority of store clerks know what I mean, it’s one of those days when 90 percent of your customers buy single small items and pay using large denomination notes.

Well, as I said, today is one of those days for me, but what is really getting my back up is that this afternoon, one customer comes up buying a single envelope, handing over a twenty pound note, when I explain that I am low on change he starts insulting me personally, blaming me for having no loose change, my only thought “It’s thanks to guys like you that I have no change.. thanks”

So what did I do? I gave him his change in the lowest denomination coins I could find…

At work we were holding a ‘ten percent off everything’ sale in celebration of the Christmas season, as if the giant sign located mid-store isn’t helpful enough, within 5 minutes of the sale coming into effect, a customer walks up to me with a DVD box set and simply asks, ‘is this included in the 10% off everything sale?’

I had a customer bring me two dvd’s that were in our ‘bogof’ range, one priced at £14.99 and one priced at £19.99, after running them through the till the total sum was £19.99.

The customer started to complain because she wanted the £19.99 dvd for free, not the £14.99, it took 5 long minutes to explain you couldn’t choose which dvd you got free…

It was early in the morning and this event pretty much set the tome for the rest of the day. A gentleman approaches and begins to explain that he brought a double CD for Christmas. He then began to explain how the second CD wouldn’t work despite trying it in various CD players around his house.

He then went on to explain how the fact that this one CD not working ruined his Christmas for his family as they now had only one CD to sing along to. He seemed to want me to not only fully comprehend this fact but to feel such a deep sense of guilt for his families loss that I start to break down into dry sobs in front of him. Before I started crying though I decided to ask to see the CD.

After seeing the item I asked him to repeat the methods he tried to get the second CD to work before pointing out that in fact, as noted on the front of the case and on the second disc, the second CD was actually a DVD. “But it still didn’t work in my CD players” he carried on… “Yes..” I countered, “That’s because to play DVD’s you need to play them in DVD players, do you have one?”.

Indeed he did. Despite a month to figure it out, trying it countless times, he never figured to put the DVD in his DVD player. When he finally realised his mistake, instead of the usual tutt and “Silly me”, to save face he could only say “Well, when I brought it the case was pretty scratched!” before walking out…