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For the love of crimeny stop getting your kids to call. (NSFW language abounds)

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  • For the love of crimeny stop getting your kids to call. (NSFW language abounds)

    Okay, I'm not sure if this "parenting" fail falls under "lazy as fuck" "stupid as fuck" or "selfish and entitled as fuck" but here's what happened.

    I work in retail (a bookstore). The phone rings and I pick it up. It's a child. Immediately I cringe, because this isn't going to end well. It never does.

    I can hear Parent in the background (and rest assured, I'm using the term "Parent" as loosely as I can without spelling it B-R-E-E-D-E-R) coaching the child "now ask this" "now ask that". I feel like screaming. YOU ARE MAKING THIS CALL TAKE TEN TIMES AS LONG AS IT NEEDS TO TAKE. THERE ARE PEOPLE WAITING.

    Jesus tapdancing fancy-pantsed Christ, if you need to call my store for a product inquiry, by all means, call us! That's why we have a phone! But if you need to call my store because your child needs practice using the phone, stop. Pull your head out of your fucking asshole. Call Grandma instead. Grandma loves your kid and has time to put up with your shit. I don't (on either count).

    Here's the kicker. After about three years of hemming, hawing, and prompting, it transpires that:
    * Child wants to know if we have Product X.
    * Off the top of my head, I'm fairly certain we do. In fact, I can see it from the counter. I say as much.
    * Problem is, Product X has a name that's very similar to another product, Product Y... and they're two VERY different things (they just have really similar names, confusingly).

    So because Child doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about, and because "Parent" is too fucking lazy/stupid/selfish to get off his ass and make the call himself , what we end up with is "Parent" and Child in the store an hour later, getting pissy with my coworker because actually, while we have plenty of Product X just like I said, what Child ACTUALLY wants is Product Y... and we've sold out in the color Child wants.

    Which you would know, if you'd asked for the right fucking thing on the phone. Which you would have been able to do, if you hadn't put your phone-illiterate kid on the phone instead of doing it yourself.

    TL;DR Asshole "parent" is too lazy/stupid/selfish and entitled to make the call to the store himself. Makes his kid do it. Kids fucks up the call. They come in and find out that even though the staff gave the best information they could, being asked the wrong question in the first place means it's a wasted trip because actually we don't have what they want.
    Last edited by EricKei; 09-09-2018, 01:16 PM. Reason: Inappropriate language for children
    Now, I'd like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the terlet...

  • #2
    As to the classification, there's nothing that says this one doesn't check all three boxes.
    Personally, I'm lazy, but not the other two. If I've got to get off my buttocks to do something, I get up ONE TIME, no matter how long it takes, then I am freaking D O N E.
    Lazy, combined with stupid, leads to... well, most of this entire site. The entitlement is a overly-spicy condiment, really. [Which means it gets applied with a high-pressure hose, naturally]

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    • #3
      UGGHH that had to be one of the most frustrating things ever for you! WHY do people do this?

      Only thing similar I've experienced is when I had to make calls to people to see if they wanted to renew their ads, and they had let their child record their voicemail greeting.

      Tip: This is NOT CUTE. It's aggravating as hell, because it's usually a toddler who can barely pronounce the words. One such greeting was hella long. I hung up before it finished, because I had many calls to make and didn't have time for nonsense.
      When you start at zero, everything's progress.

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      • #4
        I used to hate when parents would try to get their very small children to tell me how much fabric they wanted, or even to choose the fabric. Okay, you decided to let you kid run the household and choose their own curtains even though the kid is 3 and either doesn't care, doesn't understand, or will change their mind a hundred times in five minutes. Whatever. At least have the decency to have decision made before you get up to the fabric counter. Not me or anyone waiting wants to watch you coax your child into a decision while holding up the line.

        "Oh, sweetie, do you want the pink polka dots, or the purple hearts? Well, what about the blue glitter? Which one? This one? What about this one? Are you sure?" In the middle of the questions imagine incoherent babbling, because said child can barely say his/her own name out loud much less decide on what color curtains. Mostly the kid wasn't even looking at the fabrics, because he/she was so bored or tired.
        Replace anger management with stupidity management.

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        • #5
          I used to work in a bar at one time that used to be a toy store. Let's just say that when you answer the bar phone and little Jimmy is asking about toys via parenting promt... It's incredibly awkward to have to ask a kid to put mommy or daddy on the phone so you can explain to them that the toy store closed down and they called a strip bar instead. Double points if they called again because they couldn't understand what out of business different store in this spot now. That place's phone number was tied to the building for some reason and the amount of kids on the phone...
          Don’t worry about what I’m up to. Worry about why you are worried about what I’m up to.

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          • #6
            welcome to my world in the pizza biz. We get this more times than it should happen. Drives me UP THE FRICKIN WALL
            I'm lost without a paddle and headed up SH*T creek.
            -- Life Sucks Then You Die.


            "I'll believe corp. are people when Texas executes one."

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            • #7
              Parents will send their kids up to the register to ask about something and they usually have no idea. Or they'll stand there and tell the kid to ask for some toy as they look terrified to talk to another human. My favorite is when they're trying to teach the kid how to shop. They have no idea about tax and hand me a ball of wadded up money that's either not enough or too much and they have no idea how to count it. I'm not here to teach your kid about money. Just run your card and let's all move on.
              I would have a nice day, but I have other things to do.

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              • #8
                RM - Drove us crazy at our pizza joint, too. All we could do is try to trick the kid into passing the phone back, especially as our POS at the time would not ALLOW us to enter orders without a valid phone nubmber. Good luck getting a kid who is only technically verbal to pass that along.
                "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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                • #9
                  I remember this when I was waitstaff. My parents were smart; they got all the menu discussions out of the way, so that when the waitstaff came to take the order the adults could put in the order for the young children in a reasonable amount of time. However, what I'd get is a young child who could barely say "hamburger" trying to tell me that was what they wanted, and the adults wouldn't speak up or they'd get snarky about me "not paying attention."

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                  • #10
                    Maybe start answering in a message type reply, cutting off the caller:

                    "Thank you for your message. Your call will be returned at our convenience. Goodbye..."

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