"Boneless olives" and other madness

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Customer: Where are the supplements?

Me: What kind of vitamin supplements are you looking for?

C: The supplements.

Me: Yeah, but what specifically are you looking for? We have a large selection.

C: THE SUPPLEMENTS.

Me: They're over here.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

I sent my boss on a mission to get more carabineers. They had to be rated at least 3200lbs. He went to the store to ask for '3000lbs Caribbean's'. He wasn't that impressed with the laughter he got (although he later admitted that he wasn't fully listening).

[Lace Neil Singer]

Sounds like the morons who come up to the till and ask for "cigarettes" and then... stop speaking, look at me expectantly and then get pissy cuz I ask them what brand.

"You know," snaps the SC. "What I normally buy."

Bitch, I get hundreds of customers in here every day. I don't remember every single person unless they're one of our nice regulars, ie the taxi drivers, who come in several times a day. You, however, I do not recognise so if you've come here before, I don't remember you. Just tell me what damn cigarettes you want, like a normal person.

[Javarod]

The chunky burger one actually makes sense since the Chunky line has or at least had a burger soup, sirloin burger i think.

[Shalom]

T"But it's got a blue cover! Why can't you help me?"

The public library in the next town over from mine actually put up a display rack of books with blue covers a couple of weeks ago, for people exactly like this.

[wolfie]

This is like the bookstore customers who want a book, but don't know the title, the author, or what the book is about. "But it's got a blue cover! Why can't you help me?"

The public library in the next town over from mine actually put up a display rack of books with blue covers a couple of weeks ago, for people exactly like this.

Let's not forget that library books lead a hard life, and it's fairly common for the library to need to re-bind books that are falling apart. These re-bound books are typically done in a single colour that varies from library to library. Red tends to be fairly common, but blue has a significant following.

[Chromatix]

If you hear the word "sauce" in the middle of a stream of Japanese, they are specifically referring to Worcestershire sauce (or something so similar that it makes no odds), which is universally applicable to food in much the same way as soy sauce isn't (but Westerners think it is).

There is a different word - tare - for other kinds of sauce.

[pzychobitch]

What the fuck is a boneless olive? lmao

[dalesys]

What the fuck is a boneless olive? lmao

I pity the poor sod who can bone one...

[Javarod]

I pity the poor sod who can bone one...

I see what you did there.

[Catwoman2965]

I work in a women's store. Where we have all sorts of variations on various articles of clothing. "I'm looking for those black pants, you know, the ones I saw in the catalog" lady, we have umpteen styles of just that, so you'll have to be a bit more specific.

But more often than not, they'll ask me for something, I go hunting all over the store and in the stockroom, and not find it. Then, by some miracle, we stumble upon it, and its NOTHING like they initially described to me. They'll ask for some top that has short sleeves, and a pattern. Item ends up being a solid, smooth, 3/4 sleeve cardigan.

[Legacy_of_Torment]

I think the most ridiculous thing a customer has asked me for, was probably "A token."
When I assumed she meant a gift card, she got snippy with me and yelled "No, a token!!"
After explaining we didn't sell gift tokens anymore, but she could put as much or as little money as she wanted onto a gift card, I thought her head was going to explode, she went that red with anger. Apparently she meant a membership card.

[Geek King]

What the fuck is a boneless olive? lmao

Hmm, some olives are stuffed with garlic, and I guess that could look a bit like bones to someone with no common sense. Maybe they were looking for plain olives?


To be fair, when I was a kid, I thought the pimento was part of the olive, as it was years before I saw an olive that wasn't pimento stuffed

[Jester]

* "Chunky burger". He didn't want ground beef or hamburger patties when I asked if that was what he meant, and then offered that it was "chunky burger in a can". Turned out he was looking for Campbell's chunky soup.

Campbell's Chunky Soup Sirloin Burger. Delicious stuff. This one I can kinda see. I'm not dismissing the stupidity, mind you, but I can kinda see this one.....barely.

So much fun when a customer comes up to me and states "I want one of those salads with chicken on it."

...All of our salads come with chicken. Even more fun when I've taken 5 minutes to explain all off the salads and how they differ and the customer says "One of the ones with chicken on it! I don't know what its called. All I know is that it has chicken on it!"

"I want that rum that you recommended to me last time we were in town, but I don't remember the name. You know, that one rum." My bar specializes in rum, and has over 200 different rums. I deal with tons of tourists every day, and have been working there over 7 years, and recommend dozens of rums to people all the time.

They were all out of the extra virgin olive oil... so I got this bottle of "Really gets around" olive oil.

Then of course there's the Lindsay Lohan olive oil. It's cheap, it's easy to use, it's been used many times by many people, and you can put anything in it. Best results are obtained when you mix it with alcohol or coke. It's especially popular in the California penal system.

This is like the bookstore customers who want a book, but don't know the title, the author, or what the book is about. "But it's got a blue cover! Why can't you help me?"

"Can I get a beer?"
Sure. Any particular flavor?

I get this one far more often than you'd think. And far, far more common:

"I'd like a rum. A good one."
Did I mention that we have over 200 rums? A lot of them are damn good!
I can usually help these people by asking some qualifying questions so we can narrow down what kind of rum would be best for them.

[wolfie]

"I'd like a rum. A good one."

Why can't some distillery come out with cheaply-made spirits of all varieties (rum, vodka, whiskey, etc.) in a quality that would make Bacardi look like a premium brand, and sell them under the brand name "A good one"? Would be perfect for customers like these.