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

[Trekker4747]

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

Another thing that really drives me nuts are people that are like "Well I need it today for such and such." Saying that you need it is not going to make me magically make some appear. If we're out, then we're out. Tough luck.

I had one guy who even tried to guilt me by saying that the head of a certain corporation based in the town I work in drank this kind of pop that we were out of. Like hearing his name is going to make me suddenly remember some that we have that I didn't see when I checked for you a minute ago.

No doubt.

"We should have some in tomorrow."
"Well. That doesn't help me tonight, does it?!"

I learned very early on in my career not to tell people that it *will* come in or to do this:

"Well, the truck is here and we're expecting some on it, should be stocked by tomorrow morning?"
"Can't you pull it off the truck?"
"It just backed up to the dock, it'll take some time for them to pull that pallets off of it and tehn for us to find it."

Lady got in a real huff after that. Yeah, let me get a pallet jack, pull out all of the pallets on the truck, find the ONE item you want, break down the pallet (severly compromising the ease of nightstock to use it) and then given to you. Be back in an hour. I was 15 when I did that, as I said very early in my career, lady got *real* bitchy about that.

Now, a REASONABLE person would just come back the next day and not, I dunno, expect the one thing they want to be sitting right there on the first pallet off the truck, sitting on top, with a pretty bow on it or something.

 

[MetalPants]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.

So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

 

[KiraDax]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.

So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

You shouldn't have greeted them at all.

...except then, of course, they would have gone to a manager and complained about how rude and unsociable you were.

 

[PsychoPere]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.
So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

My guess would be that they didn't listen to a word you said, but knew you had said something and so assumed you asked if you could help them find something.

Not any better to simply be ignored, true...

 

[Trekker4747]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.
So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

My guess would be that they didn't listen to a word you said, but knew you had said something and so assumed you asked if you could help them find something.

Not any better to simply be ignored, true...

That doesn't make it better. Want to be greeted by friendly staff? Then listen. "How are you doing?" and "Can I help you with something?" don't sound anything alike.

 

[cultcross]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.
So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

My guess would be that they didn't listen to a word you said, but knew you had said something and so assumed you asked if you could help them find something.

Not any better to simply be ignored, true...

That doesn't make it better. Want to be greeted by friendly staff? Then listen. "How are you doing?" and "Can I help you with something?" don't sound anything alike.

I remember the first time I went into an American store, I was 15 and it was an outlet store of some description in Maine. About 5 seconds though the door cheerful American-shop-assistant says loudly and brightly "So how's everyone doin' today?!"
I think I managed a very British 'very well thank you' in a small voice and scuttled out of the shop very fast
Got used to it though, I love it when I go over now, have a conversation with the staff. So much nicer than the grumpy old farts you get here. Just a bit of a surprise the first time!

 

[PsychoPere]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.
So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

My guess would be that they didn't listen to a word you said, but knew you had said something and so assumed you asked if you could help them find something.
Not any better to simply be ignored, true...

That doesn't make it better. Want to be greeted by friendly staff? Then listen. "How are you doing?" and "Can I help you with something?" don't sound anything alike.

Oddly enough, I do believe I said that that doesn't make it any better. I'm fully with you on that, and have been requesting large neon signs at our pharmacy drive-thru reading "NO CELL PHONES" ever since I started working there.

I hate people who talk on their cell phone while trying to talk to me. The questions that I have for them are far more important than their damned conversation about having ran into so-and-so at whatever goddamned place. Oh, how I wish I could get away with telling someone that me "interrupting" their conversation shouldn't be an "inconvenience" or a "bother" to them because they came to me. It's even worse when I'm in the middle of a sentence, their phone rings, they tell me "Hold on" and answer the damned thing. That's what voicemail is for!

 

[Trekker4747]

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

The pharmacy I use has a sign on it that says something like "due to privacy laws we can't help you while using a cellphone," I wondered if it was really or law or if someone got tired of helping people who use their phone while at the drivethru.

But, yeah, I reached a point where I won't even go up to a person at the counter if they're on the phone. Part out of respect and a life time of learning not to interupt people on the phone and part out of not wanting to interact with people who're half paying attention to you.

 

[cultcross]

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

My guess would be that they didn't listen to a word you said, but knew you had said something and so assumed you asked if you could help them find something.
Not any better to simply be ignored, true...

That doesn't make it better. Want to be greeted by friendly staff? Then listen. "How are you doing?" and "Can I help you with something?" don't sound anything alike.

Oddly enough, I do believe I said that that doesn't make it any better. I'm fully with you on that, and have been requesting large neon signs at our pharmacy drive-thru reading "NO CELL PHONES" ever since I started working there.

I hate people who talk on their cell phone while trying to talk to me. The questions that I have for them are far more important than their damned conversation about having ran into so-and-so at whatever goddamned place. Oh, how I wish I could get away with telling someone that me "interrupting" their conversation shouldn't be an "inconvenience" or a "bother" to them because they came to me. It's even worse when I'm in the middle of a sentence, their phone rings, they tell me "Hold on" and answer the damned thing. That's what voicemail is for!

Had a guy on Monday answer his cell phone while in the lock-up cage in the back of a police van. Started having a conversation about being nicked with his mate, sitting there with handcuffs on chatting away on his phone. People don't seem to know how to say 'ill call you back' anymore.

 

[PsychoPere]

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

I can certainly see that reason working as a way to get rid of cell phones at the pharmacy. HIPAA doesn't allow a health care provider to discuss a patient's medications, medical history, etc., with anyone except the patient if the person in question is 18 years or older (or they've signed a HIPAA authorization form). Since a pharmacy can't control who is on the other side of the cell phone, and also can't control what that person may be able to overhear, it makes sense to me to ban cell phones on that ground.

The last thing anyone wants, after all, is a damned lawsuit...

 

[Hofner]

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

Fully understand what you are saying Holdfast, and biggest change that came about because of this is DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THE PRELIM MEETINGS WITHOUT KNOWING THE END USE OF THE PRODUCT.

To be fair we did pump the customer for information they were rather tight-lipped about it other than they needed it to be lightweight, inexpensive and bright orange. Normally in these situations the customer is very forthcoming about what the product is and does... once in awhile you get one who is concerned about security, hell we had one customer at the sheetmetal plant I worked at over the winter who refused to tell us the end use of the product because he was afraid we might steal his design. I mean come on now... We've got your print right here, we can figure out from the symbols that this is some kind of guide for a roller assembly, why not just tell us it's for a custom-designed printing press up front! We have an expert who has 25 years building parts for printing presses if he had been involved from the beginning we could have shaved six weeks off the design process.

Heey, I used to work at a plastics company in the R and D dept doing physical testing. Ever heard of the Izod test? I didn't work in the molding lab but I used to interact with those guys a lot in my work.

When I was reading your first post about the orange plastic I was wondering what the heck? In my experience the chemist or customer rep ALWAYS know exactly what the end-use of the plastic is going to be. In many cases they can't even begin without knowing. How come you didn't find out? Then I started thinking the customer must've been withholding that info and sure enough you confirmed it in the above quoted post. I agree, they should have told you.

I don't know about your company but at the one I worked at, we had varying degrees of security to protect the customer. In general we were not to discuss specific data outside of work. Not that everything we worked on was top-secret; most of it wasn't. But some of it could be somewhat sensitive. No biggie, just a general rule. There were also some restrictions on taking work home, at the least you had to clear it with your boss.

In some cases the security was tighter. I know that sometimes the chemist could not discuss the end use but then his/her job was to determine what properties to look at, and I, the technician performing say the tensile test don't need to know.

I remember a couple times my company did work for the Defense Dept. and was pretty high security.

Robert

 

[ed629]

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

One thing that really gets me is when I simply greet a customer with a 'good morning' and they say 'no thank you'.

So what, should I have greeted them with 'fuck off'?

I've said stuff similar to that. One day I went greeting people with "Hi there, how you doing douchebag!" Out of some 30 or so people I said it to, only one actually stopped and looked at me and said "Excuse me." And even he didn't catch exactly what I said.

 

[archeryguy1701]

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

^Just an experiment or were you having a bad day?

 

[ed629]

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

^ I'd say 90% experiment and 10% bad day.

 

[zwangmedico]

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

There's just got a lot of tantrums...making the day bad!!

 

[tharpdevenport]

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

There's just got a lot of tantrums...making the day bad!!

 

[TheSeeker]

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

Impressive. Almost three years since the last post and then BAM!

 

[MetalPants]

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

I thought necromancy was a forbidden art.

 

[Gepard]

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

And probably a spammer, too, judging by the rank and sig link. I'm impressed, actually – thread necro and advertising all in one.