Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Moments

[LightningPRS]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Here's a questions I get asked constantly, and I've never understood it.


"Do you work here?"


I've been awfully tempted to reply with "No ma'am/sir, I'm just a really big fan of this store and in my free time I like to head over here wearing a polo with their logo on it and a name tag, with a radio and an access card with the store's logo on it clipped to my belt" Its at its most ridiculous level when I am actually performing a task. For example the last time I was asked, I had a large metal shelf in my arms and was positioning it on an aisle. Dude comes around the corner and asked me if I work there. I could see if I worked at a department store where there is no uniform but only name tags, and someone didn't see the name tag...but I don't...

Ok, this one I can relate to, but in the exact reverse. I work for a merchandising/vendor company, and reset teams comprised of my and other people's companies comes in to do these resets. I can't tell you how many times, being in the same position as Flux Capacitor describes, shelf or products in hand, and customers walk up asking me, in jeans and usually a flannel shirt, "where is so and so?" Also, while on a Winn Dixie reset team, a WD employed reset clerk WOULD be wearing a WD uniform, but being as she was not an employee of any specific store, even she, someone who looks just all other store employees, might not have a clue where certain items are. So for me, I wish more often, in a store's uniform or not, customers would ask this question before just assuming the person works at the store (and then proceeds to at times get mad when I tell them I don't where *insert product here* is).

 

[MetalPants]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

In regards to the 'do you work here' I once had a customer with a sense of humor about it. I was loading a bunch of boxes onto a cart to go stock, and she comes up to me, and asks "Do you work here?" pauses a couple of moments and then continues, "Or do you just like randomly handling boxes?"

Stuff like that is awesome; I love waiting on people with a sense of humor.

 

[SeerSGB]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

I get to go to a meeting with one of the "Here's your sign" club today. One for my clients, whom I do graphic-art, computer repairs, and web-desgin for, who has about knowledge about the internet and computer tech as a rock, it seems. The ignorance isn't so bad, I can understand it considering their background, it's just the eye-rolling moments of it that makes me dread meeting with them.

A few greatest hits:

"So all I have to do is take them this disc and the printers will know what to do"

(Note I put full notations on a readme file on the disk, inside the liner notes, on the front of the disc, and given a copy to client, detailing the paper-size and paper-color the printer needed to use. Had even explain why that color of background was needed and how it was a cost saver for them cue phone call 3 hours later)

"It didn't print out the way you said it would, and the printers not sure what the problem is."

(Get on the phone with the printer, discuss what is going on. Surprise, my client had chosen a different color background and asked for some of the fonts to be changed but not their color, and the printer couldn't make it come out the way she wanted. Some god awful eye bleeding combo of bright neon pink paper and some funky font. )

"Oh I didn't know it had to be what was on the disc, my little-girl thought the other stuff looked prettier."

Or the gift that keeps on giving: How did porn get on the company computer?

Met with them one day to help sort some comp. problems. Start sorting through the files on the computer, when I noticed a bunch of hidden folders on the "C:" drive. No biggie, not any of my business, right? Right, till I noticed that they were eating up a lot of HD space, like 3/4 of the available space on the drive. So I figure I better check them out and make sure it isn't viruses or something other shit that's going to make my job twice as long as needed. Start opening them up...uh, yeah, well, someone had some interesting tastes in porn. Everything from girl on girl to SM to tentactle-rape, pic and videos, and cybersex chat-logs galore. Do a little more snooping, and realize it was the 18 year old son, who worked afterhours in the store stocking and cleaning, that was using the comp at those hours-- though, I suppose it isn't snooping when dumbass uses his real name in cybersex sessions.

Purge the porn off the comp, defrag the HD, get paid. The client asks what's up, the son has the "please don't tell mom" look on his face, and I tell her that it was just a bunch of junk files, their gone now (which the son about shit himself when I said that) and it shouldn't be a problem.

Jump ahead about 3 weeks, and here we go again, and another huge batch of porn has to be purged off the comp. I get Jr. off to the side and tell him, if I ever have to come down there and clean his wank material off the computer again, I was printing all out and giving it to his mother. Got called the next morning and get told to come down and help them shop for a laptop, cause her son needed one for school.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Haha, that's priceless. I'll bet you get asked to clean up his laptop when he inevitably fills it with that crap.

That reminds me of a similar experience I had. Dude came in with his laptop to have the data backed up. His hard drive was nearly full, so I knew I'd have to split up the files into segments because he wanted them all on DVD. I open up his My Documents folder (which was by no means hidden) and found a few hundred folders. And they were all named according to the types of files that were inside. They were names I can't repeat, but they had to do with women and various other species. What really made it gross was there was a little cartoon sticker of a dog on the palm rest of the laptop. Needless to say, I told my managers, they told me to finish the job and be done with him, since he'd already paid. I wore gloves.

The guy came back weeks later with *another* hard drive. Thats when my manager explained that we had inadvertently seen what was on the computer and were not comfortable with working on any more of his stuff. He got really mad and actually accused me personally of being into that stuff, and that I also enjoy child pornography. That was a fun day.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Wow. The porn stuff is amazing to me. I can say with complete honest, that not one kilobyte of my hard-drive has porn on it.

 

[Holdfast]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Or the gift that keeps on giving: How did porn get on the company computer?

Met with them one day to help sort some comp. problems. Start sorting through the files on the computer, when I noticed a bunch of hidden folders on the "C:" drive. No biggie, not any of my business, right? Right, till I noticed that they were eating up a lot of HD space, like 3/4 of the available space on the drive. So I figure I better check them out and make sure it isn't viruses or something other shit that's going to make my job twice as long as needed. Start opening them up...uh, yeah, well, someone had some interesting tastes in porn. Everything from girl on girl to SM to tentactle-rape, pic and videos, and cybersex chat-logs galore. Do a little more snooping, and realize it was the 18 year old son, who worked afterhours in the store stocking and cleaning, that was using the comp at those hours-- though, I suppose it isn't snooping when dumbass uses his real name in cybersex sessions.

Purge the porn off the comp, defrag the HD, get paid. The client asks what's up, the son has the "please don't tell mom" look on his face, and I tell her that it was just a bunch of junk files, their gone now (which the son about shit himself when I said that) and it shouldn't be a problem.

Jump ahead about 3 weeks, and here we go again, and another huge batch of porn has to be purged off the comp. I get Jr. off to the side and tell him, if I ever have to come down there and clean his wank material off the computer again, I was printing all out and giving it to his mother. Got called the next morning and get told to come down and help them shop for a laptop, cause her son needed one for school.

This one's classic.

 

[MIB]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

One wonders why people send their computers to the shop with a metric ton of porn on it to begin with. They're called CD-Ws, people! Use them!

 

[trampledamage]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Haven't worked in a shop for a long while, but I had an hilarious conversation with a customer once, his initial question has become lore in my family for mind-boggling situations:

"Hello, I'd like to buy a book for my wife."

"Sure," say I, "what sort of books does she like?"

*blank look* "I don't know. What sort of books do you like?"

"Well, actually, I like crime novels but let me show you some others too"


I can't actually remember what he bought in the end!

 

[Manticore]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

One wonders why people send their computers to the shop with a metric ton of porn on it to begin with. They're called CD-Ws, people! Use them!

That's why I never bring my computer into the shop.

Though honestly, I've tinkered with it/rebuilt it so often that I doubt any shops would take it!

 

[Guartho]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

I can't actually remember what he bought in the end!

Didn't he end up with Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying?

 

[archeryguy1701]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

So, I have two guys who are always in the lab when I'm working. They've been there nearly every day since I started last semester. At least every day or every other day, I have to reanswer the same questions and walk them through the same steps. Over and over and over and over again. I have no problem with teaching the same person the same things a few times. I have no problem with teaching different people the same things. But after 8 months, I would love to hope that they have at least retained some of what I've told them. Hell, I've taught these two how to save at least a couple dozen times by now.

 

[PsychoPere]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

[...] after 8 months, I would love to hope that they have at least retained some of what I've told them. [...]

I have a co-worker who has been at our pharmacy for just under a year or so now, and this is a common problem with her. She's lucky I don't work with her often, or I'd call her an idiot as often as I did to the last idiot who worked there (which was basically every five minutes).

 

[archeryguy1701]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

I don't know. I can understand coming in and not knowing how to do it, and I can understand needing to be reminded on occassion, but having to show the same thing every time, and sometimes a couple of times a night, is wearing on my wee-little nerves.

 

[Aragorn]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Has a customer ever asked you a question he/she already knows the answer to, and when you give it to them, they get pissed off at you because they think you're talking down to them?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

I can't actually remember what he bought in the end!

Didn't he end up with Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying?

"No, we don't have Rarnaby Budge, by Charles Dikkens, and perhaps to save time I should add that we don't have Carnaby Fudge by Miles Pickens or even Stickwick Stapers by Farles Wickens with four M's and a silent Q!"

 

[captcalhoun]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Most people in retail and service see hundreds of people per day. I can tell you, its pretty damned hard to find the energy or inclination to even smile, much less speak, after the first couple of dozen. Its nothing personal, its exhaustion. Most of us don't get paid just to stand around recharging our 'smile!' battery.

fuckin' A!

one thing that pisses me off more than anything is people walking in the shop and telling me to 'stop looking so miserable' when i'm standing there with a completely blank-vacant look on my face, staring at the magazine rack opposite the counter.

i actually had one customer tell my boss that i'm 'always pissed off' in front of me. i said 'um, no i'm not' and she was like, 'yeah, you are' and i'm like, 'no, really, i'm not, i think i know my emotional state, thank you.'

AND THEN she carries on, claiming i'm pissed off, pissing me off and THEN has a go, cuz i got pissed off. so i said, 'OF COURSE i'm pissed off, you're accussing me of being PISSED OFF when I'M NOT!'

the boss just after she left.

 

[KiraDax]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

i actually had one customer tell my boss that i'm 'always pissed off' in front of me. i said 'um, no i'm not' and she was like, 'yeah, you are' and i'm like, 'no, really, i'm not, i think i know my emotional state, thank you.'

I've never understood customers like that. The sheer irrationality of thinking that pointing out someone's alleged bad mood will somehow magically improve it...even if I wasn't feeling mulish before the encounter, I certainly am afterward.

It doesn't help that I seem to have a naturally 'pissy' face.

 

[Guartho]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

i said 'um, no i'm not' and she was like, 'yeah, you are' and i'm like, 'no, really, i'm not, i think i know my emotional state, thank you.'

AND THEN she carries on, claiming i'm pissed off, pissing me off and THEN has a go, cuz i got pissed off. so i said, 'OF COURSE i'm pissed off, you're accussing me of being PISSED OFF when I'M NOT!'

Are you sure that's a customer story? That sounds like a marriage story.

 

[Cicero]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Back in the early days of camcorders, my stereo store rented out one for Betamax, called Betacam. One day we had a guy return a Betacam and then come back, a few hours later, a little panicky to get the tape back that he'd accidentally left in the machine. We hadn't played it, but from his obvious relief in retrieving it, we wish we had.

You young'uns may not get this next one but anybody over forty will: A buddy worked in the stereo section of Montgomery Wards just off of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in the late 1960s. A hippie returned a TV he'd purchased a week before. He complained it lost its picture each night and went to static. While they returned the set, the store staff wondered if the static was preceded by the Star Spangled Banner.

Did televisions stations used to play the national anthem before going off the air? (I've only seen stations go off the air a handful of times, usually in small towns, but I was born in the mid-80s.)

 

[Cicero]

Re: Your "I Won't Say Anything, but this Customer Needs a Brain" Momen

Honestly, I have days where I won't even recognize my own family if they walk into the store. Just last week, a district manager that I've worked for over the last year walked into my store, and I was so frazzled that I walked up to her and started asking if there was anything I could help her with as if she was just another customer.

That may very well have made a good impression!

On the topic of being mistaken for an employee, once I went shopping in Target wearing khakis and a red polo shirt, which, as many of you know, is their company uniform. Another shopper approached me and asked me where an item was but quickly realized from the humorous look on my face that I wasn't an employee. However, since I knew where the item in question was, I directed him to it!

I'm often asked questions at Target, even though I usually wear dress shirts (only one of which is red), or polo shirts of various shades of cool colors. I don't know why people think I work there. Maybe it's my tendency to wander around looking at things while my family is shopping.

In regards to the 'do you work here' I once had a customer with a sense of humor about it. I was loading a bunch of boxes onto a cart to go stock, and she comes up to me, and asks "Do you work here?" pauses a couple of moments and then continues, "Or do you just like randomly handling boxes?"

Stuff like that is awesome; I love waiting on people with a sense of humor.

Once, at Borders, I was having trouble finding what I was looking for in a very disorganized section (the employees apparently had given up on it, as every weekend it lost about half its order). I had about half an hour that I needed to kill, so I set about organizing the section in accordance with the signs posted on the shelving. After about fifteen minutes, one of the employees came up to me and asked if I worked there. Apparently, the staff had been trying to figure out why they didn't know the person organizing that section.

When I explained that I'd some time to kill and had just become frustrated by how hard it was to find what I was looking for, they thanked me for cleaning up the section (though, understandably, they didn't offer help so much as an explanation of why they'd given up on those particular shelves).