customers can be...UGH stories

[gammazetagrl]

UUUUGGGGHHH. for all of you who works or have worked in retail or customer service have u guys had any bad experiences with them? them being annoying, cheap, mean, or even just stupid? (i am trying to avoid that word but i couldnt help it).

i just got home tonight from another closing shift at blockbuster. this guy signs up for a new account and asks stuff like "if i dont return the movies and i dont pay the late fee will it ruin my credit?" (yes sir) "will they come after me?" (yes sir)...what, he's just planning to steal the stuff? and then, he rents out Cast Away which brings his total to a 3.69. He gives me a 20$ bill so I give him change of 16.31. and he tells me I shortchanged him. HuH? He said he gave me a 50 so I opened the drawer and looked at the pile of 20s (coz obviously if i mistook the 50 for a 20 it would be at the top of the pile of 20s). But of course, it was all 20s in there. there were no 50s in the drawer AT ALL. but this guy rants at me for 10 minutes saying his grandma gave him 50 and wont listen to me saying "well she made a mistake then" GRRRRR. My ex, who was in the register next to me saw me put the 20 in the first place and told the guy so and said if he wouldnt leave he was gonna get the manager and even the cops (now i didnt think he could call the cops for that but it did make the guy leave).

Anyway so do u guys have similar experiences that make u just wanna walk out work, go home and relax?

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"To supress our feelings only makes them stronger"--from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

[carnation]

Some guy tried to pull that scam on us at a multifamily yard sale. Unfortunately for him, he tried to pull it on a woman who's a police officer and part time Army officer and let's just say he left unsatisfied.

[KayDeeCareBear]

I work in the graphic design department at my University. This guy comes in one day from Project Volunteer and he's a REALLY nice guy and all, and so I go about explaining to him how the proceedures work, how he had to pay through an IRB (Internal Request Buy or something. It's how the Univ. pays for things through other departments.) And so, I took his order. Now, my boss made it very clear to me that I was NOT to EVER track down missing IRB's. That was the client's job. So, a week later when the thing hadn't come back, I didn't think anything of it, even though the banner I was to make was due in two weeks.

Two weeks passed, and the IRB was still nowhere to be found. Then I got a call from this guy, who was screaming and IRATE because I didn't have his order done. He didn't even let me get a word in that I was not responsible for the IRB's, and that he would have to call my boss. He finally hung up on me, and called who he was supposed to call. I found out later that he'd not even put the IRB through. He was holding on to it, and said, basically, "I won't pay for it until I get it." Well, this was a bit of a problem; see, we don't start work on orders until we get approval of funds, which means I needed that IRB to go through the system and come back to me before I could start it. I'd made that clear to him the first day I talked to him. Needless to say, his order wasn't ever completed. ::sigh:: I still feel bad, even though it wasn't my fault.

I also have customers that come in, wanting me to spit out an order for them in ten or twenty minutes. It takes three days for the IRB to go through, I tell them, but to no avail. They storm out of the room angrily, calling names I care not to repeat!

I work at the Ticket and Information Office on campus and we're considered an outlet for many local and national ticket vendors.

Anywhoo...when I first started my job we were in the process of selling tickets to a Green Day concert on campus. However, on my third day on the job, the concert gets cancelled because of a scheduling conflict between the band and their record distributor.

We issue refunds to the ticketholders and everything's going smoothly until one guy comes up to the office and bitches about how he didn't get his full refund. Our policy is while we do issue a refund for the ticket value, we cannot refund the service fee. In this case...the service fee was a whopping ONE DOLLAR. This guy gets his $25 dollars back, but he bitches about the one dollar. He mouths off to me and luckily my boss arrives to deal with him. My boss attempts to explain to him our policy but this guy insists on using excessive vulgar. He created a scene in front of a busy Campus Center.

A few days later, there was a Letter to the Editor in the campus newspaper written by that psycho cheapskate. He went on to tell the entire campus that my office was stingy and money grubbing...and we were only out to make a profit. His attempts to make us look bad was a waste of time, as almost 20 people wrote in support of our office. More students found out that this guy's gripe only concerned ONE DOLLAR...it was pretty embarassing.

The office stood together and defended ourselves, and because of that, that weirdo still hasn't gotten his dollar back.

[AGDsexysmoker]

i work at a video rental store too (like my gammazetagrl )... and stuff happens everytime i work, with out fail! my personal favorite though is when my ex and i were working together, sorting movies behind the counter... this lady comes in to fill out a membership and yells at my ex and i for goofing around (we were throwing movie boxes at each other)... well, after she bitched at us and left, we looked at her application. her occupation was a "self-employed actress"... now this is only funny b/c we live in the amish country of PA... give me a break!
another time, an idiotic 17 year old tried to run out of our store w/ a DVD player.... stupid, stupid boy...
also, today when i worked, this old woman came into tan. i am talking OLD... (yeah, we have tanning beds at a video store... don't ask)... she stood there and talked to me for 20 MINUTES about how the tanning lotion she bought last year was different... all the while customers were waiting and glaring at me. i swear, the DUMBEST people with the least common sense in the world come into our store. i get annoyed everyday. i guess i'm not a people person.. haha.

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it's hard being a princess...AGD

[nucutiepie]

I am a hostess at a small but very busy restaurant. Because of these two factors, we dont take reservations (we cant afford to have people be late to their reservation, or have incomplete parties showing up... it makes us lose money.) Anyway, many a time I have had a large (between 7 and 11 people) party arrive around 7 PM on a summer friday or saturdat (the BUSIEST time) thinking its their God-given right to be seated immediately at a table (this restaurant also only seats 60 people, adding to the problem). When I give them their expected wait time, I generally tell them to check back with me after half of it has gone by (if an hour wait, come back in 30 minutes) because sometimes we just get a lot of tables opening up all at once. Well, more than once, I have had parties come and check back with me EVERY FIVE MINUTES... sometimes for an entire hour and a half! I understand that their kids are hungry, their feet hurt, etc, and I do whatever I can to help them out (I'll offer to get a plate of appetizers for their kids, suggest a good walking route, offer them whatever seating options I might have available) but it has come down to the point where these people are yelling in my face and I am trying, as hard as I can, to keep my smile big and my voice sweet.

Other nights I bus tables... this wouldn't be so bad except it makes you smell AWFUL and drunk old men come on to you like you wouldnt believe.

[juniorgrrl]

I work at a Babbaages (video game store). Usually, its pretty cool, but there are some real morons in the world.

People are convinced that Microsoft's new X-Box, coming out in November, will be able to play all the Playstation games. And they argue with us when we tell them it doesn't.

There are also the people who insist on calling the games "tapes." PSX and Dreamcast use CDs. N64 uses cartridges. Nothing in the store is a tape.

And then there are people and their kids and their damn Dippin Dots ice cream. That crap spills everywhere on the floor. But its not nearly as bad as popcorn :angry:

I hate working retail, but its better than not having a job at all!

[SH80]

Originally posted by juniorgrrl:
I work at a Babbaages (video game store). Usually, its pretty cool, but there are some real morons in the world.

People are convinced that Microsoft's new X-Box, coming out in November, will be able to play all the Playstation games. And they argue with us when we tell them it doesn't.

There are also the people who insist on calling the games "tapes." PSX and Dreamcast use CDs. N64 uses cartridges. Nothing in the store is a tape.

And then there are people and their kids and their damn Dippin Dots ice cream. That crap spills everywhere on the floor. But its not nearly as bad as popcorn :angry:

I hate working retail, but its better than not having a job at all!

People calling CDs and cartridges "tapes", that's ghetto! Or, trailor, whatever the person's background..... That's a pet peeve of mine too.

Jr-girl if you think retail is bad, working in a restaurant or fast food place is 10 times as worse!

[SH80]

Originally posted by juniorgrrl:
I work at a Babbaages (video game store). Usually, its pretty cool, but there are some real morons in the world.

People are convinced that Microsoft's new X-Box, coming out in November, will be able to play all the Playstation games. And they argue with us when we tell them it doesn't.

There are also the people who insist on calling the games "tapes." PSX and Dreamcast use CDs. N64 uses cartridges. Nothing in the store is a tape.

And then there are people and their kids and their damn Dippin Dots ice cream. That crap spills everywhere on the floor. But its not nearly as bad as popcorn :angry:

I hate working retail, but its better than not having a job at all!

A girl working at Babbage's, that's cool and rare! I will love to work at one at mall by my house, but I don't want to get shot. Despite that the mall is in a good neighborhood, it dosen't have safest record.
It's a hangout for thugs and truck drivers for some reason.

gammazetagrl: That is a classic scam. When I was in high school I worked in retail and one of the first things I learned was that particular scam. Good for you for not falling for it.

[SilverTurtle]

People are stupid. I have worked in fast food, restaurants and retail most of my working life. Now I work at a copy shop, but there's definately a retail aspect to it.

My favorite, yet most annoying, is when customers disagree with you (as someone already mentioned). Like they will ask me all about products and services we offer. When I tell them the machine capabilities, or certain limitations of products, they proceed to disagree for sometimes 20 minutes. You know, I am a trained professional. I do have a clue as to how our machines work.

Older men (mid 40's and up) are the worst about this. I think they think I am just a dumb girl. Sometimes I just want to kick them!

The other annoying thing is when people flip out about the price. Yes, having us custom-design something on the computer and then print out a huge full-color sign is that much. No, there are no deals for "frequent customers" (Even though I work here at least 40 hours/week and have never seen you in my life).

And then sometimes people flat out lie to your face and you know it and you just want to call them on it. But of course, you have to make them happy and be all polite to them ("No, Mr. so-and-so. I was working here then and it still cost that much..")

I'd better stop ranting...

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SilverTurtle

Phi Beta Fraternity: National Professional Association for the Creative & Performing Arts

[This message has been edited by SilverTurtle (edited June 17, 2001).]

[KayDeeCareBear]

Heeheehee... On this note, about telling people how stuff works and having them argue about it...

In the fall, we hade two of our frats come down and stretch the limitations of our banner printer, seeing which one could come up with the better banner, week after week. Now, ABC fraternity was rude and obnoxious, called back every 10 minutes to see if their banner was printed, etc... While XYZ would call back once a day to check on their banner's status. At this point, I was still learning how to use the printer, so when ABC came in to my office, telling me how to use the printer and to get their banner out NOW, I wasn't too happy. I ended up running out of paper, much to my annoyance, since ABC started bringing me piles of scrap paper to use. I ended up telling them that I would have their banner the next day, and I would even put it up myself, provided they never contacted me again. The next day, XYZ came by, and these are like, the nicest guys in the world, and while I'm sitting there not knowing what to do, or why the heck I can't get the printer to print, the one XYZ guy is sitting there making really GOOD suggestions, and eventually, between him and I, we got not only his banner to print, but the ABC banner as well. since it was almost 8 pm and already dark, they also walked me to my car. I guess this was a case of rude, obnoxious customers turned not-so-bad... But I still don't get along with the ABC guys. Gr.

[Chief]

I used to work as a cashier in a grocery store during the summertime, in high school as well as the first two years of college. One time one of the items we had on special was Prego spaghetti sauce or something like that, where the 16 ounce jars were buy one get one free.

So this snotty woman comes through my line with a couple of jars of Prego, and she says to me, "Make sure you ring those up right; they're buy one get one free." Well, the sale prices are programmed into the computer automatically, so I scanned the jars and they came up full price. She got all pissed off and said, "See, you rang them up wrong; they're buy one get one free."

So we called the manager over to settle the dispute, and we looked through the circular ads, and sure enough, the 16 ounce jars of Prego were buy one get one free. Unforunately, this dumb broad had picked up a couple of 22-ounce jars, which in fact were NOT on sale. We pointed out her mistake to her, and she got all huffy and said, "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm just not good with gimmicks."

I wanted to say to her, "Well, I'M sorry, but there's nothing at all 'gimmicky' about items being on sale at the grocery store. You just can't deal with the fact that either you're too damn stupid to notice what size jar we had on sale, or you're dumb AND shifty enough to try to pull a scam on us by getting the larger size jars and claiming that they are the ones on sale." I don't remember if she ended up buying the 16-ounce jars or if she had us take the Prego off her order altogether. But what a dumbass.

Oh, another way the customers would piss me off is when the store closed at 8:00 and they would come in at 7:58 and wander around the store for half an hour, taking their sweet time to grab items off the shelves. Then they would come up to the checkout and ask, "What time do you close?" and we'd say, "We closed a half hour ago," and then they would say, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't know you closed at 8:00!" Like hell you didn't. You mean you didn't notice that you were the ONLY customer left in the entire store, that the lights in all of the deli cases and freezers were turned off, and there was no one standing behind the counter at the meat department or the bakery? Idiots.

[ZTAngel]

I work for a retail store which have very modern registers. We can find out exactly how much a customer paid for an item at the time of purchase by either scanning the receipt or their credit card. Well, a customer came in with a return. She had no receipt or credit card citing that the return was a gift (for all those out there... if you're buying someone a gift... give them a GIFT RECEIPT so they won't run into problems). I had to scan the gift. The computer will give me the lowest sale price. The shirt came to $9. The woman threw a fit. Her screeching voice was heard all throughout the store. "I know my sister paid more than that! She's not cheap! You're stupid! You can't work the computer!" When she called me stupid, that was the last straw. I looked her right in the eye and said, "Why don't you go to another register and see if they'll do the return for you because I refuse to help you if you're going to give me that attitude." I was shaking bc I was so mad. She swore a few times and then looked at me and said, "I'm reporting you to customer service!" I laughed and said, "Go ahead. Third floor." So, she went and told on me. Customer service was on my side thankfully. They looked up in their the books the price history of the shirt and found out that the shirt went on sale 1997! (it was now 2001) The last shirt in stock was purchased the week before (most likely by her sister). The shirt was never higher than $12 originally. I'm guessing that woman went ahead and complained to her sister.

[Thrillhouse]

Fellow grocery store workers worst fear. The big family that comes in 2 minutes before close. Happens all of the time.