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Lprsti99 posted:I'd assume it's more that Taco Bell is the usual destination for people who stumble out of the bar after last call, by virtue of being one of the few fast food places open that late. I wouldn't be surprised if managers at the Bell are Pretty close, yeah. We were told that our vigilantism cost us multiple customers, and wasn't what we were being paid for.
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Sep 29, 2015 01:55
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Dienes posted:Pretty close, yeah. We were told that our vigilantism cost us multiple customers, and wasn't what we were being paid for. Human lives are worth more than all the chalupas those assholes could buy in a lifetime, screw them. When I worked at an aquarium, I had an old lady come up to the front desk and demand a refund because she stood next to the sea turtle tank during feeding time and it splashed seawater into her mouth. We repeatedly warned people that the turtles splashed when feeding and even set up yellow "wet floor" signs in the splash zone, (usually the guests treated it as a selfie novelty) and what was her mouth doing open anyways? Was she hoping for one of the frozen squid? I also had to kick out a guy once for coming in drunk and starting a screaming match against the parrots. The parrots won, and everyone's eardrums lost.
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Sep 29, 2015 03:49
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During college, I worked at an office supply store. My worst customer there bitched me out because our computer duster had directions written en Espanol on them. In English, too, but also in Spanish. "It's ridiculous that I live in the United States of America, and our products are written in another language!" As I just stared at him, through tired, hungry eyes, envisioning all the whippets I could be doing with that can. I told him, "I make $8/hr. That is way above my pay grade, but here is the number for corporate if you'd like to let them know." And he got mad at me and said he wasn't going to waste his time calling corporate. The nicest customer I ever had was a little old woman who I would save coupons for when she came in to buy her ink. She used to stand around talking up her doctor son, and I've always had a soft spot for little old ladies, so it was the cutest thing. And then one day she brought in her doctor son, and properly introduced me to him and made him shake my hand, and it felt like she was trying to set us up. Which didn't work, but thanks lady! I appreciate you thinking I could land your doctor son! My own mom would run a background check on a guy if I came home with someone that I claimed was a doctor.
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Sep 29, 2015 05:39
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Lprsti99 posted:I'd assume it's more that Taco Bell is the usual destination for people who stumble out of the bar after last call, by virtue of being one of the few fast food places open that late. I wouldn't be surprised if managers at the Bell are Reporting drunk people who aren't causing a problem would be a bit of a dick move. Reporting drunk people who are attempting to operate a goddamn car? Major issue. I've stumbled out of a lot of bars and eaten a lot of lovely food late at night, but I sure as gently caress don't drive myself there because I'm not a reckless moron. Taxis will stop at McDs or Taco Bell if they are so directed.
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Sep 30, 2015 04:31
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PT6A posted:Reporting drunk people who aren't causing a problem would be a bit of a dick move. Reporting drunk people who are attempting to operate a goddamn car? Major issue. I've stumbled out of a lot of bars and eaten a lot of lovely food late at night, but I sure as gently caress don't drive myself there because I'm not a reckless moron. Taxis will stop at McDs or Taco Bell if they are so directed. I completely agree with you. I didn't say it very well, but I meant that the managers are probably encouraged not to report drunk people in the drive-thru.
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Sep 30, 2015 05:44
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I work in a pharmacy as a shop assistant. We get a really wide variety of people coming through. Bad 1. A kid came in recently and asked me to change over his coins. He had about $10 of 5 and 10 cent pieces (small silver coins, australian currency). I said it was too much, I could change one or two dollars for him. He scooped up his money and walked off saying that this was 'a racist joint'. 2. Something about pharmacies attracts the worst smelling people. I had a very sweaty old woman with a really yellow looking skin infection take a seat in our waiting area one day, much to the disgust of everyone around her. She wasn't rude or loud or anything, but just wanted to sit down for a minute, then bought some jellybeans and left. The smell lingered for a while, that was the issue. 3. There was one guy who started talking to me each time he came in, we got to know each other in that friendly customer/service person kind of way. I mentioned once that I studied photography for a little while and he told me he was a camera collector. 'Cool!' I'm thinking, 'old cameras are really great'. He then gave me a crappy business card he had and said I should come check out his collection. It seemed interesting, so I went. The collection was at his house, along with roof high piles of betamax tapes, old computer bits, and toys/action figures - the guy was basically a hoarder. I was there for about an hour looking at some of the stuff, it was a good collection. Then he mentioned that he wanted to catalog it all and start a kind of online museum, but he didn't know much about the internet. Long story short, I wound up helping him take some pictures of stuff but eventually I told him I didn't really want to do it for free, and explained about he would need a website and hosting etc. Most recently I've told him I can't help him out anymore (which is true), the last time he was in he said 'the guys who were meant to code it got hit in some kind of terrorist thing' so either it was poo poo luck or he got scammed. I'm kind of glad because he seemed really invested in the idea that I was definitely going to help him make his dream a reality. 4. We have a Mr. Sad Brains guy who used to come in with his wife, who never spoke. I think she may have been deaf or mute. The problem with this guy was no matter what you said he would always have a negative spin or response, I guess it just sucked because I was used to helping people out, but this guy looked and sounded really down all the time. He still comes in but I haven't seen his wife in some time. Hopefully things are ok, he isn't a bad customer but his constantly terrible attitude is a bit tiring. 5. We get a lot of desperate junkie types coming in, most of them just want to buy disposable syringes or something - they can be really demanding and rude, but some of them are methadone addicts so they are coming in with prescriptions from time to time. A few guys in particular call us constantly saying they need an advance on their medication, and it is really clear that they sell their meds to help make money, or just abuse them. One of these guys died recently though, and his dad bought in a kind of remembrance card which had pictures of him throughout his life, and it was unfortunate because his son had some really good stuff going on before starting drugs, and the dad obviously cared about him a lot. 6. We used to get large aboriginal families hanging out all day in the arcade out the front of our shop, this was ok except when they would fight and shout among themselves, and beg passers by for money. There was a period where people actively avoided the street we were on, there were also a couple of incidents of theft e.g sending their kids (toddlers) in to quickly steal stuff like it was a game. The same families would also come in sometimes to actually buy stuff, but were always really impatient and kind of intimidating to some of our staff (some of them are girls in their first job so like 17 years old). 7. Customers who come in asking for stuff, but reject all of your advice and act like they know what they need, even though everything they are suggesting for themselves is unsuitable (e.g 'painkillers will cure my cold'). Good 1. All of the old ladies who do stuff like bring us cakes, chocolate and thank you cards  2. A lot of the elderly men who come through are war vets, they are always really good to talk to and just generally easy going. 3. If there are stock shortages we might lend medications between local pharmacies on a sort of honour system, promising to sort out the stock later by returning it or paying for it. The good part is that most of the people who work in other pharmacies are cool, and it is nice to have them come by during work even if they cant stay long, we very occasionally have pharmacy meetups which are cool. 4. When a certain type of customer comes in (e.g group of young teen guys) and you're thinking 'god drat I'm not in the mood for this' but they end up being really friendly and you can serve them without having to call the drat police because one of them tried to steal the cancer research donation box.
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Oct 5, 2015 17:31
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I have way to many to recount but I'll try. I've worked at a Zoo, a pharmacy, Starbucks, Warehouse, and messenger. I could probably write a book. I've experienced first hand: Getting 90 cents worth of change violently thrown at my persons and getting screamed at "What the gently caress am I supposed to do with THIS!?!?!" because I refused to round up to a full dollar. Getting over 200 degree water thrown at me when I politely asked the crack-head to stop intimidating our customers (he was asking for money in the store by walking up to people sitting and leering over them demanding change- we had methadone clinics nearby). Watching my manager follow a rather large homeless black woman around our store stuffing paid killers in her bra. My manager then followed her out of the store to confront her and she just stopped, stared him dead in the eye, and just popped a squat and took a big steaming piss right in the entrance of the store. He was too freaked out to react. There was even a young family walking toward the store as well. A very confused person asking if we made Hot Dogs. I told them we dont make hot dogs in Starbucks which prompted him to clarify for me "Oh, You know, with bread." Seeing a line of limos and suits waiting for their Starbucks at 4 in the morning. Being asked by a customer if they can use a traveler's check, our store was close to the UN so we did. She started filling out the check while I helped expedite the line. After a few customers I noticed that she was still writing. She was Brazilian and wrote her full name - it looked like a passage in the bible of some noble. A Doctor arguing with me that the Fudge Chocolate cupcakes were in fact Vanilla Bean (because the sign said it was Vanilla Bean). A woman died in our cafe and no one realized until a few hours later (we all thought she was just old and taking a nap). My favorite wasn't so much a bad customer but just a funny situation. As I mentioned earlier, the methadone clinics, there were also a bunch of hospitals. So this huge family came to our store - most likely because they have pregnant relatives in the hospital. The Matriarch is taking everyone's orders and then walks up to the counter with her husband-who hasn't said a word. The Matriarch then rather efficiently gives me all the orders (confirming things- double checking others). Finally, once the huge order was all placed and I rang it up and told them the amount owed - the Matriarch turned to her still mute husband, pointed at him, and then walked away. The husband and I had a moment and he just sighed and took out his wallet. I had to stifle my laughter. Ritz On Toppa Ritz fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Oct 6, 2015 |
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Oct 6, 2015 21:17
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Cracker King posted:Watching my manager follow a rather large homeless black woman around our store stuffing paid killers in her bra.  Go on....
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Oct 6, 2015 23:14
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I work at a check cashing place. I've seen people get jumped over parking spaces here. People will take our bathroom key, walk in front of the bathroom and dump on the floor like it's the right to do. And then after they'll walk to the teller window and just stare at you like you're supposed to know what they want. Or they'll not notice that they're literally making GBS threads all over the lobby and slip on the way out.
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Oct 7, 2015 05:40
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Lprsti99 posted:
Beer's kind of a painkiller... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkb4GgPeCxc For content I worked in computer sales for a while and we had this kid who everyone hated because he was so interested in hardware and computers so he'd rant to everyone about them (not in a  way, he just really liked computers.) I guess they hated him because they were trying to make sales but here's this kid asking about how the computer was built and not buying any add-ons or whatever. He was my favorite customer because I would tell him about how to repair computers and we'd chat about hardware and stuff. I assume he's an engineer by now
Thin Privilege fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Oct 8, 2015 |
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Oct 8, 2015 03:53
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Thin Privilege posted:Beer's kind of a painkiller... I eventually realized that it was supposed to be painkillers, but the quoted text does in fact say paid killers, giving the image of forcing a bunch of hired guns to motorboat her.
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Oct 8, 2015 04:41
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Lprsti99 posted:I eventually realized that it was supposed to be painkillers, but the quoted text does in fact say paid killers, giving the image of forcing a bunch of hired guns to motorboat her. We all knew this would be the next step for the Hitman series.
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Oct 8, 2015 14:03
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Lprsti99 posted:I eventually realized that it was supposed to be painkillers, but the quoted text does in fact say paid killers, giving the image of forcing a bunch of hired guns to motorboat her. it was beautiful as written though.
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Oct 8, 2015 14:08
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I want this thread made into an Amazon Women on the Moon type movie. I've never worked retail. I'm not (really) successful either though. Some tech support things Got a ticket once to go fix a wireless mouse for a high ranking government official. "Its not the batteries" they told me, they already replaced them. I go down there, they're in backwards. We installed a big new multi function printer in an office, it was supposed to have a finisher with stapler but that part of the machine didn't arrive. We received an email from the client afterwards very distressed over this saying "It is unreasonable in this day and age for a person to have to manually staple a report/book". This email was printed and hangs up in my cube. We received notice a judge thought his new printer was too big. That wasn't his concern at all, he didn't like how the new printer matched the décor of his office. I should have been writing more of these down, there have been lots. Most people you work with or encounter are great, but "there's always one". I'll never understand how someone gets it in their head to make it their job to basically deter other people's.
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Oct 8, 2015 18:12
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codo27 posted:IT stuff Please report to the 'A Ticket Came In' thread so we can investigate your issue.
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Oct 9, 2015 04:12
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Reading through this reminded of probably the world's worst meet cute. I was a nerd in high school back in the 90's, collecting copies of 2600 like they were copies of Playboys or Penthouse. When the Internet suddenly became a thing, I suddenly had a decent skillset. All those fly by night ISPs suddenly became a thing. So one of the investors in the company I worked for offered to pay me $200 to set up his daughters computer in her dorm, because I was good with computers. I still needed to call to get network info, and all the phone lines were jammed. I'm good, but I can't beat busy signals. Then the investor tried to take his daughter and me out to dinner at a local steakhouse. I was grateful for a free steak dinner, but I had literally nothing in common with his daughter. So in the middle of dinner the Investor fakes a heart attack to take himself out of the date, just leaving us standing at a chain restaurant haggling over the bill. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Oct 9, 2015 |
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Oct 9, 2015 10:24
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Had a man bring his cordless house phone into radio shack thinking it needed a battery because it wasn't working. He had a thick Russian accent which isn't entirely relevant but it made this even more bizarre. He handed the phone to me across the counter, and the second I touched it I felt a weird and off putting stickiness. I immediately turned to my manager next to me and handed him the phone because we were friends and I wanted to gross him out. My manager looks at the guy and says "There's some sort of sticky stuff on here what is that?" The dude looks him dead in the eye and says, "I don't know but I use phone while I urinate and so maybe for this reason." My manager opened his hands and let the phone drop to the counter. There was laughter, there was embarrassment, then there was anger. Never saw that guy or his sticky piss phone again.
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Oct 9, 2015 18:36
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I'm a racist because I was the only person in a department and was helping a customer already. I didn't drop my other like raced customer to serve the different raced one.
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Oct 10, 2015 01:19
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PT6A posted:Why was there carpet in a bathroom? I rented a place once that had wall to wall carpet in the bathroom, kitchen, and utility room. It was just as hard to clean and gross as you imagine. Especially in that we were college kids and would often wake up out of a drunken stupor with our heads glued to the floor with vomit.
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Oct 10, 2015 17:55
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tater_salad posted:I'm a racist because I was the only person in a department and was helping a customer already. I didn't drop my other like raced customer to serve the different raced one. some people are just dicks. retail is utter hell. My ex-mother in law is from India, from a fairly well off background. (her kids had servants sleeping at the foot of their beds) She used to snap her fingers at people at like loving Target and tell them "Child/Boy/GIrl I was looking for this, *insert a loving ridiculous thing here like an ounce of saffron or the head of john the baptist*" Then, I personally witnessed her slap, or yell at, or just berate some poor minimum wage kid until I finally was like "I'm loving out, your behavior is embarrassing for a grown woman." I never went shopping with that lady again. the marriage didn't work out too well. foreshadowing. ANYHOW Back to real stories.
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Oct 10, 2015 18:11
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I have... so many. So many. All bad ones. 1) Me: a nineteen year-old grocery store bakery employee. Other than a legally blind guy we called Buffalo Bill, I am the oldest night employee. The deli and the bakery are sort of connected in an L shape, so two girls who were hired together usually ignored their work to hang out with each other in the middle. I was leaving early that night, so I told the new girl to put all the bread into the proofer so that it could rise before getting baked in the morning. She did not. She left all the bread, buns and pastries out in the middle of the floor so that they quickly rose and then deflated. They had to bake it anyway, because we didn't have anything else. So, the next morning, I am in bright and early and I am putting these now rock-hard buns into the bulk bins. An older woman comes up to me. "What's wrong with the bread today?" she asks. I explain that one of the new girls forgot to put the bread away and they proofed incorrectly, so everything's a little funny looking, sorry about that. She peers into the bakery, where the only visible person is Annie, our baker, who at that point had been a baker for thirty years. Annie is Chinese, which I didn't think really affected her job performance, but what do I know? "They shouldn't be letting THOSE people into our country if they can't do a simple job," she sneered. I stared at her for a few seconds, and then shouted, "IT'S JUST loving BREAD." I want to point out that my manager heard and saw this happen, and I was not reprimanded. 2) Same grocery store: I was briefly a cashier before going into the bakery, by the way. A woman named Lilian, a regular, used to come in and annoy the gently caress out of everyone, seemingly as a hobby. She'd occasionally stand next to the cashier behind me and, in a stage whisper, say things like, "I don't like that blonde cashier, she looks like a whore." I HAVE EARS, LILIAN. She'd taunt the grocery manager for his weight, which he was really sensitive about, but she seemed to really enjoy making people feel bad. Anyway, she finally got banned after trying to steal a Butterball turkey by putting it between her legs and waddling out of the store. 3) One time at Blockbuster, a guy came in and stole a bottle of Sprite and a Spiderman DVD but while he was leaving he kicked my manager Lawrence in the dick. I don't know if he really counts as a customer because he didn't buy anything, but still not a very nice guy. 4) I worked in a pet supply place for a few years before FINALLY going to university. A guy we called Drunk Bowie used to come in, drunk, and try and badger our only male employee, Ben, into listening to the entire discography of David Bowie. Apt name, no? Anyway, the only thing he ever bought was Temptations treats and cat grass, which you can get anywhere, so I figured he was just sort of lonely. One day, he came in and didn't leave for twenty minutes, following Ben around, trying to give him money to listen to Bowie. He tried following Ben downstairs, and I told him to get out. He told me to go gently caress myself. Again, I told him to get out. He called me a dyke, suggested that I consider getting laid, and I again, told him to get out. Two other regulars were in the store, including Adrian, who had a poorly concealed crush on me. Adrian now asks him to leave. "YOU'RE A human being", shouts Drunk Bowie. Adrian laughs, shoves Drunk Bowie out of the store and onto the sidewalk. Meanwhile, my coworker Jenna is calling the cops, and goes outside to inform him of this. He scoffs at her and wobbles in place with a pouty look on his face. Ten minutes later, he comes back inside and goes, "HmmMMM, the COPS, HMMM? WHERE ARE THEY? I am a BUSY MAN YOU KNOW." Jenna turns to him and goes, "I understand. Would you like me to take your name and address, and the police can contact you another time." I don't know what kind of loving speechcraft this girl had, but the most satisfied look comes over his face, and he comes up to the counter and happily gives us all his personal information, tells Jenna he'll be in the liquor store if the cops want to talk to him, and then leaves. We never saw him again.
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Oct 10, 2015 19:54
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I think I've told this story on the forums before, but oh well. It's my all-time favorite, though the person in question wasn't actually a customer. This happened in about 2010. I was working the service desk at a bookstore in a midsized city -- helping people find books, answering phones, etc etc. Phone rings, and it's a woman who sounded a little spacy but otherwise coherent, asking to speak to someone named Craig. At that point I'd been at the store for a year, knew everyone who worked there, and knew that we didn't have a Craig. I told her this, and she insisted that I ask a manager, "just to make sure". The MOD was a guy who'd been there for a decade, and he said that no, there had never been a Craig at our location. Gregs, yes, but no Craig. I made sure the woman didn't mean Greg, and she said no, definitely Craig. I told her she was out of luck, so sorry, is there anything I can help you with? She said, "Well, this just doesn't make any sense. I knew Craig when he worked at [a completely different bookstore that went out of business in the mid-90s.]" I said, "Ma'am, you've called [my bookstore], not [that other bookstore], which no longer exists, and just to clarify, the last time you spoke to Craig was before 1995?" "Yeah," she said. "I don't understand why I can't talk to him." I would have ended the call, but by then a couple of coworkers were listening avidly, so I decided to see how far down the rabbit hole went when the lady said "Maybe you can help me. Can you get a lock off a storage unit?" "Uh you should probably get the management to open it for you? Or call a locksmith?" "I can't DO THAT," she said, beginning to get a little agitated. "They won't open it for me because it's not my storage unit, and the locksmith won't come either because it's not my storage unit." "So you're asking me to help you break into a storage unit? One that is not yours?" "YES." "I'm really sorry, ma'am, I just can't do that." "Well, YOU'RE no help," she said. Then, with the air of one delivering a death blow: "CRAIG would have done it."
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Oct 11, 2015 09:00
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All you guys taking abuse during retail shifts are pathetic for not standing up for yourself versus rude and abusive customers. A customer calls you a whore and you do nothing about it, just post on a forum in all caps about how you can hear it. Like maybe take control of your work life and tell abusive customers they must leave the store or you will call security.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:54
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Nierbo posted:All you guys taking abuse during retail shifts are pathetic for not standing up for yourself versus rude and abusive customers. A customer calls you a whore and you do nothing about it, just post on a forum in all caps about how you can hear it. Like maybe take control of your work life and tell abusive customers they must leave the store or you will call security. I think it's really strange that you would single me out considering all I did was otherwise outline instances wherein I did stand up for myself. Also, I am sorry that I upset you by suggesting that I didn't tell Lilian to leave me alone, because I did. I'm not really sure how not giving you a blow-by-blow of a customer I interacted with ten years ago is going to help you if all you're going to do is jump to conclusions so that you can act like a colossal rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 12, 2015 20:03
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Nierbo posted:All you guys taking abuse during retail shifts are pathetic for not standing up for yourself versus rude and abusive customers. A customer calls you a whore and you do nothing about it, just post on a forum in all caps about how you can hear it. Like maybe take control of your work life and tell abusive customers they must leave the store or you will call security. It turns out it's actually a super bad idea to upset people who can complain about you to your bosses, who can then fire you for "being rude", which means you have no money and probably no job prospects because who wants to hire someone that offends customers? But hey, what do we know, we're just pathetic! I'm honestly not sure why you clicked on this thread when there was obviously going to be some complaining. To contribute, when I worked in a card shop a customer once made me cry during a shift. I had a killer headache and wasn't in the mood to be perky. As she was leaving, she snapped at me "You'd think they'd teach you to smile!" It was the straw that broke the camel's back  On the bright side, I work in a veterinary practice now and it's lovely. The majority of clients are so kind and respectful and they more than make up for the assholes. We have clients that regularly bring us gifts like cake and chocolate, and of course the animals are a great part of it too
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Oct 12, 2015 22:22
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Nierbo posted:All you guys taking abuse during retail shifts are pathetic for not standing up for yourself versus rude and abusive customers.
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Oct 12, 2015 23:38
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Nierbo posted:All you guys taking abuse during retail shifts are pathetic for not standing up for yourself versus rude and abusive customers. A customer calls you a whore and you do nothing about it, just post on a forum in all caps about how you can hear it. Like maybe take control of your work life and tell abusive customers they must leave the store or you will call security. Look at this guy who has never worked in Retail. People who talk poo poo to retail employees faces are pretty much the lowest form of human on this planet. It's super cowardly because you are actively talking poo poo to someone that can't retaliate because of fear they will lose their job. The worst are the guys that bully the women at my job because they are big and bad and the women are meek. Most of the women at my glasses job are in their early 20s and this is one of the first jobs they've ever had. They also know gently caress all about glasses so some people think that gives them carte blanche to gently caress with them. I'm a 6'4" 255lbs guy and its amazing how quickly they shut the gently caress when I sit down with them. You develop a thick skin working retail because you get numb to people calling you a loving idiot because their Doctor wrote the wrong glasses RX (because they answered the Doctors questions incorrectly). You get numb to people telling you "If you don't assist me today I will sue you" because you know that it's an empty threat and if they do the company you work for has much higher paid attorneys than Joe Blow off the street. Retail can be soul crushing, but it can also be rewarding when you help a child see clearly for the first time in their young life or when a person crying on the phone thanks you for helping them get a rental car. You say pathetic that we don't stand up for ourselves but honestly it's a culture where it's just not worth the effort and when you are done with a hard day at work you come home and vent about it on Somethingawful.com because thats your safe haven of protection.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:16
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I think "don't defend yourself against abusive dickhead customers because you'll get fired!!!" Is an entirely American thing. I worked retail when I was at Uni and any customer that decided it was a good day to be a dick got quickly put in their place. Not just by me, who lived with my parents and didn't have to rely on money to not be homeless, but also by people with families and bills to pay. If you were a arse to a customer for no reason then yeah, you'd get sacked. But if you were responding to someone being abusive to you, management would over look it. I'm from Scotland btw. I suppose it's to do with Americans who sue for literally everything and anything but stand up for yourself if you've been abused by an arsehole for gently caress sake. I suppose it's all part of the reason why America has the worst customer service in the world. Full of pandering, patronising robots who are to scared to say anything that isn't in the one hour induction video.
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Oct 13, 2015 07:09
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reformed bad troll posted:I suppose it's to do with Americans who sue for literally everything and anything but stand up for yourself if you've been abused by an arsehole for gently caress sake. Nah, it's more to do with the idea that an unhappy customer will tell 10 of their friends not to shop there, who will each tell 10 of their friends, ad nauseam. Combine that with the fact that most retail stores are run by corporations, who will gladly take the chance to fire someone who has given them 'good reason,' so they can replace them with a new person making minimum wage, saving the $.15/hour extra the original person was making, and you get a culture where standing up for yourself will cost you your job.
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Oct 13, 2015 07:43
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I use to work in disaster recovery cleaning up homes and businesses after fires and floods. Sometimes we had to deal with people on the worst day of their lives. One job I always remember was a fairly large house that was 3/4 burnt down. Most of the roof had fallen in and the whole place was going to be demolished. We were only there to salvage what we could. Normally by the time we get to a site the insurance people have taken the owners away to a hotel or something but in this case we get there in the morning to find that the owners had come back. They were in the unburnt part of the kitchen trying to make tea for everyone on a camp stove. These people had just lost virtually everything they owned and here they are asking us if we'll take it black because the milk had gone off. Some good news, the cupboard were they kept the crystal and china that was precious to them was unaffected despite been in burnt out room and buried in rubble. The funny thing about that job was that generally more people had lost the nicer they were. The only rear end in a top hat customers we had were the ones with very minor incidents. Also I agree with the above poster that pandering to the customers is a mostly American thing. At a grocery store I use to work at a customer yelled at the young girl running the deli. The owner happened to come past just after and found her crying. He got the story out of the girl and then stormed out to the parking lot where he chewed out the customer and then banned him from the store. We were expected to stand up to rear end in a top hat customers.
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Oct 13, 2015 12:08
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Lprsti99 posted:you get a culture where standing up for yourself will cost you your job. even if there were NOT a legitimate job shortage in the United States the employer culture in US has changed so much since the recession hit. I would be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts it may be some part artificial depression on the part of employers in order to keep that whole "well you are lucky to even have a job" mentality around for a while yet.
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Oct 13, 2015 12:45
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People who actively go into stores to be assholes (and yes, those people exist) often choose whoever they think is weakest, or least able to defend themselves. Until I was about 22/23, that person was always me, because I was very small and young looking and people assumed I was around sixteen. Last year, a pipe burst upstairs in the department store I was working at, and the customer washroom was broken. A woman approached me and asked where the other washroom was, and I told her, unfortunately you're going to have to go to the coffee shop across the street, which I had cleared with their owner and he was happy to accept our customers. She smiled at me and nodded. Then, she walked away and started talking to my manager, who in addition to having a very thick accent, also had a deformity in her eye due to an accident with the awning outside. This woman started screaming at her about the fact that we were legally required to have a washroom (we were not, but okay), and that in retaliation, she was going to "piss on [our] loving floor, how do you like that". She didn't, but about an hour later one of our handbag vendors pissed in the parking lot against the door because he didn't want to use the staff washroom.
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Oct 13, 2015 16:05
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I worked at HMV for over 3 years, so I have some stories. There was one guy who used to be a regular. He was very old and had a long, Santa beard that was covered in crumbs and saliva. He always wore the same stained sweatshirt and baseball cap. He never talked. He would walk into the store, grab the first things he saw and take them to the counter. He might have a work out DVD, a country cd and a season of Doctor Who. We would tell him the total and he would put money on the table, but it was never quite enough money. When he was short 50 cents or so, some of my coworkers would let it go because all he did was stare. I always got him to give me the proper amount. Although one time, he brought 2 CDs to the counter and after I told him the total, he opened his wallet and showed me that it was empty. I told him he couldn't buy them without money, so he left. I think that was the last time I saw him. An old coworker said she saw him at a hospital she was working at. I had nicknamed him Starey Beardo. Then there's Shawn. Oh god, Shawn. He smells badly of BO and cigarette smoke. His fat gut is always exposed under his shirt. He would call pretty much every day, sometimes two or three times a day to ask about a CD or to ask what music DVDS were coming out on Tuesday. To top it off, he mumbled and was incredibly difficult to understand. We had to get him to repeat sometime three or four times for us to understand what he was talking about. He flirted a lot with my teenage coworker and made her very uncomfortable. He also once pointed out that my butt crack was showing as I was on the floor, leaning over to put stock away. Thanks, Shawn. The mostly ridiculous customer was Dartboard Lady. I asked if she needed help with anything and she said she wanted to know the size of the backing for a Son of Anarchy dartboard we had. The box didn't say anything about a backing. My coworker Jackson and I were trying to help her out. Jackson went to the store website to see if any info was there and then went to other sites online, but he couldn't find anything. As Jackson was using the computer, I was talking to the lady at the counter. She was quite mad. She started ranting about how the customer was always right and that our Sons of Anarchy merchandise wasn't official and she was going to take photos of it to show the owners of the show to prove we were selling illegal bootlegs. She also said she wanted the number for head office because we were being so unhelpful. She said "I'm going to call them and they will put an X on this store and that would be bad." She seriously talked like a 5 year old. We gladly gave her the number for head office, who she proceeded to call right away and spent a good twenty minutes on the phone while still in the store. When my one coworker asked her again if she needed help, she got yelled at and the lady finally left the store. The next day, my manager said she got a call from head office about her employees acting "inappropriate and unhelpful". She was very confused because she knows we aren't like that, but we explained the situation to her. For good customers, we had Cam. He came in a few times a week to pick up new CDs or Blurays. He was a very fatherly fellow and we would have some good conversations. Very pleasant to talk to and always thankful for our help. During Christmas season a couple years ago, I had a couple who were looking for How to Train Your Dragon on DVD. The system said we had a bunch in stock, but they weren't anywhere on the floor. After a lot of searching, I went to the back and managed to find them all there. Just doing my job and finding something for someone, but the guy was so thankful afterwards, that he found me after making his purchase and gave me 5 bucks for helping them. Really made my day.
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Oct 13, 2015 17:25
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reformed bad troll posted:I suppose it's all part of the reason why America has the worst customer service in the world. Full of pandering, patronising robots who are to scared to say anything that isn't in the one hour induction video. You are getting your oversimplifications mixed up: America has good customer service and bad customers, Europe has lovely customer service. I used to work at a movie theater. One time a man who purchased a ticket to a late show began drinking alcohol and became belligerent in a theater. Customers complained, so the manager asked him to leave, to which he said "No." The police were called, who also asked him to leave, and he again said "No." The police then grabbed him out of his seat and pulled him into the lobby hall, where the drunk man punched one of the officers, for which he was inundated with pepper spray and drug outside into their vehicle.
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Oct 14, 2015 16:40
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When I was a tiny gothy-looking 18-year old working at a bookstore, a customer accused me of being a satan worshipper. I figured she was an ignorant conservative Christian or something, but then she started pointing and shouting that I had stolen her personal diaries and published them as the Bridget Jones-diaries to make money to fund my satanic purposes, and that she knew that she was on the Satanic death list, at which point I realised she was mentally ill, which is much more forgivable. I still got pretty shook up from the shouting, and we eventually had to get security to remove her from the store. Poor lady. Good customer: The guy who has on his way to the airport and had been given a bottle of very good wine from his job or something, but since he couldn't bring it on the plane with him, he just gave it to me as he was buying a book for the journey 
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Oct 14, 2015 20:03
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One of the crazy homeless people that lives in the store during the day said to a manager, "Your transgender employee is yelling at me in my head." The other night I got a cop who tried to intimidate me into serving him from the deli while I was taking the till and clocking out. Repeated to him that we were closed and I wasn't going to serve him. He asked me my name and went from manager to manager complaining, but fortunately the managers at night aren't retards. Eventually he found somebody who went in there and gave him whatever crucial thing he wanted. So many bad customers. The good ones are unremarkable. Customers that are too nice are also bad customers.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:51
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a dog from hell posted:One of the crazy homeless people that lives in the store during the day said to a manager, "Your transgender employee is yelling at me in my head."  This is kinda sad, to be honest.I REMEMBERED A GOOD ONE. At the illustrious BAKERY I worked at, I was responsible for writing custom messages on cakes. Other than a few really good ones, ("Please write "CONNER HAS A DICK FOR A FACE") most of them were pretty unremarkable. One night, a slim young woman comes in and selects a nine inch, round chocolate cake with blue flowers. It's pretty plain. I ask what she'd like written on the cake. "Oh, no, that's okay. I'll eat it in the car," she says, winking. I laugh, as this is my favourite joke. ("Would you like this newspaper in a bag?" "No, thanks, I'll eat it in the car." This is especially funny in sex shops.) Anyway, she walks off with her cake and about half an hour later, I go out to the parking lot for a cigarette. I see her in her car, eating the cake with a fork.
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Oct 15, 2015 01:59
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I work front desk at a private hotel for cancer patients and a lot of our guests are fine, nice people. Most of the time they're just grateful that we're here, we're clean, and we're cheap, but some of the time they're not at all grateful, and are just as lovely to us as if we were some fleabag casino hotel. Now and then we get the ones who're having an existential crisis and lash out because dying sucks, and I can forgive them, but most of them are just assholes. My least favorite are the demanding and impossibly entitled baby boomer types who arrive with a preconceived notion of how things are going to be and throw actual tantrums when the reality turns out at all different, like the guy who screamed at me and threw things because our parking garage was full, or the one who yelled at me on the phone about how the queen bed was actually a full bed. I didn't even have a response - he'd decided it was a full bed, and a full bed it would be, so I told him to talk to my manager in the morning. Probably the most interesting thing about the job is that I get to be a consistent face for the guests, who are often here for months at a time, or return every couple weeks. Usually this means developing a nice rapport, which (I hope) they seem to find comforting, but it also means getting to know people who might not survive their treatment. My coworker was really familiar with a guest and one day, unexpectedly, the guest's wife showed up and said, "Here's Alex", and put an urn on the front desk. My coworker started crying and she touched the urn and kind of laughingly told off his wife for surprising her like that, and then they both cried and hugged and said goodbye to each other. One guest checked in and for a while was a huge pain in my rear end. On one of his first days with us, he called down while I was already busy, wanting to know how to get to "that laptop repair place in [neighborhood I've never been to]". He seemed to know absolutely no details about it, not even the name, just that it's "up by the big bank with the clock tower, you know, the one by the burger place?" I even went in with street view and found what might possibly could've been it two years ago, but I told him I just couldn't turn anything up, and he got snippy with me and I got snippy with him and it was really frustrating all around. When I hung up the phone, I felt a little bit triumphant that I couldn't find it. Part of me didn't even want to find it, like I somehow wanted to punish him for not knowing anything about it, and having the gall to pester me for so long and insist that it has to be, must be there. For the next few weeks I even took a little bit of pleasure in rolling my eyes and sighing when one of the fifty people he was trying to keep in contact with in his hometown would call me and confusedly say his name, and I'd say "Oh, you want his room. I'll put you through. Please ask what his room's phone number is", and then inevitably they'd call me back the next day and the next and I only got more annoyed by the whole process and this guy and even his room number. He slowly got his revenge on me. The first was that, eventually, I found out that his room's phone was actually having trouble, and couldn't be called directly, so if it was a hassle on my end, it was a necessary one. The second was that he was dying. Very slowly, over the course of his stay, he was dying. His treatment wasn't taking hold, and his body was giving up. When he'd arrived, and I'd checked him in, it had been on his own two feet, unassisted by cane or walker. After a couple months, the cane and walker gave way to a wheelchair, which he limply pushed himself around in. Eventually even this became too much of a struggle, and a caregiver was hired on. When I came in one day, a milkshake cup from the burger place up the road had been left on the counter. My coworker, who'd cried over the urn, picked it up and dropped it unceremoniously in the trash and said, offhandedly, that it had been his. He'd been drinking it in the lobby, she said, and it was so sad how he was so weak he couldn't even lift it, and his caregiver had had to feed the straw into his mouth. The last time I saw him, before his wheelchair turned up in the back room with a clinical little return note on it ("REASON: DECEASED"), he was lying on a deck chair on the patio by the kitchen. It was a hot, sunny Saturday, and some of the other guests were sitting at the tables eating lunch, and there he was, among them, sleeping, wrinkled head buried in a toque, wiry body draped in comically large pajamas. He looked dead, and for a moment I worried that he was, except I could see his chest rising and falling. And then I realized, even worse than that, was that he must know. I imagined knowing that you were going to die soon, and I imagined lying on a deck chair on a busy patio, surrounded by happy, rolly people eating lunch, in the hot sun, knowing. cash crab posted:Anyway, she walks off with her cake and about half an hour later, I go out to the parking lot for a cigarette. I see her in her car, eating the cake with a fork. Wow, I can't believe you actually got to meet Tina Fey! Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Oct 15, 2015 |
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Oct 15, 2015 03:57
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cash crab posted:At the illustrious BAKERY I worked at, I was responsible for writing custom messages on cakes. Other than a few really good ones, ("Please write "CONNER HAS A DICK FOR A FACE") most of them were pretty unremarkable. One night, a slim young woman comes in and selects a nine inch, round chocolate cake with blue flowers. It's pretty plain. I ask what she'd like written on the cake. Hyperactive thyroid possibly?
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Oct 15, 2015 12:25
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| # ? May 6, 2024 10:47 |
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Magic Hate Ball posted:I work front desk at a private hotel for cancer patients and a lot of our guests are fine, nice people. Most of the time they're just grateful that we're here, we're clean, and we're cheap, but some of the time they're not at all grateful, and are just as lovely to us as if we were some fleabag casino hotel. Now and then we get the ones who're having an existential crisis and lash out because dying sucks, and I can forgive them, but most of them are just assholes. My least favorite are the demanding and impossibly entitled baby boomer types who arrive with a preconceived notion of how things are going to be and throw actual tantrums when the reality turns out at all different, like the guy who screamed at me and threw things because our parking garage was full, or the one who yelled at me on the phone about how the queen bed was actually a full bed. I didn't even have a response - he'd decided it was a full bed, and a full bed it would be, so I told him to talk to my manager in the morning. good writing there. you should write more.
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Oct 15, 2015 13:03
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