Was *I* the sucky customer?

[Samaliel]

There is no acceptable reason for a store employee to say that to a customer. None.

You handled this exactly the right way.

I disagree. There is one and only one acceptable reason for a store employee to say that to a customer : if the store employee actually caught the customer doing crack on the premises of the store.

Anyway, I don't see any suck in the OP's behavior. The employee's attitude was unacceptable and the manager didn't accept it. Now, I'd feel bad about the guy getting fired, because that was not my intention, and I know being unemployed sucks.

However, if you feel bad about the whole situation, maybe it's because you failed to state some important piece of info. Did you have the time to explain him how outdated the item you were looking for was ?

If you're positive that you were polite all along and explained him with every details possible what you were looking for, then, there's absolutely no reason to feel bad about it.

[Metody]

Back in highschool, we used to say 'crack kills' to each other when someone was acting like a complete tool. So no, I don't think that he was implying you were selling drugs. I think he was treating you like you were a peer, or possibly a little lower than a peer. It was a lazy, crappy joke, the kind that anyone with a smidgen of brains knows you don't use in a work situation, especially with someone older than you. I suspect the firing was more over him not being able to find a displayed product (just how big was this store?) and being incredibly unhelpful, followed by being snarky to a customer, and topped off with a complete lack of caring about his job. If your job completely sucks ass, that means you have no excuse to not be good at it.

Or maybe he got fired because he actually told his boss 'Whatever'. I would have fired someone for that too. That phrase makes me see red for a whole horde of angry little reasons.

[Madhatter_67_85]

Nope you were not the SC in this case. Sounds like the kid was on his last chance anyways, you just happened to be the lucky one to get him out.

- Arguing with a customer about the existence of a product he had no clue about...Strike one
- Telling the customer "Crack kills"...Striiiiiiiike two.
- Shrugging off the manager with a customer present with a whatever.....STRIIIIIIIIIIIKE THREEEE!!

Ya outta here kid! Please let the doors hit you in the ass on the way out so you get that extra shove out to the street.

[Brightglaive]

......STRIIIIIIIIIIIKE THREEEE!!

Ya outta here kid! Please let the doors hit you in the ass on the way out so you get that extra shove out to the street.

OT
Madhatter, you rock. posting with style.
/OT

Wow a Laplink cable. Basically a null-modem cable or a serial cable with a null-modem adapter. Could be 9 or 25-pin......MAN!!! That brings back the days. Laplink for dos 5.0 and Interlink on Dos 6.0? pheewwww!!! You really know how to dredge up memories xaenon.

Did you actually ask him for a null-modem cable or a laplink serial cable?

That employee definitely had an attitude problem. If I am unfamiliar with something though, I don't act like it never existed. If someone were to ask me about punchcards for programming a mainframe I wouldn't say they don't exist. I might say, "it's highly unlikely that we carry any but I'll check."

Sounds like the employee got way too hot under the collar (because of his inflated opinion of his own product knowledge) and then vented at his manager when the manager showed him he was wrong. He's definitely not the brightest light bulb in the pack. He'll learn though.

[Madhatter_67_85]

OT
Madhatter, you rock. posting with style.
/OT

Takes a bow

Thank you. I can pull some good ones outta my ass every once in awhile. I haven't had the chance to use that one in a long time.

[xaenon]

Wow a Laplink cable. Basically a null-modem cable or a serial cable with a null-modem adapter. Could be 9 or 25-pin......MAN!!! That brings back the days. Laplink for dos 5.0 and Interlink on Dos 6.0? pheewwww!!! You really know how to dredge up memories xaenon.

Did you actually ask him for a null-modem cable or a laplink serial cable?

I did actually ask him for a laplink cable initially, figuring that since they sold the
software, it might click somewhere in his head what i was asking for. Alas, there
was no comprehension, so I tried describing it in terms of function. Again, no
comprende. Further efforts proved to be equally futile, and that's when he
denied that any such thing existed and turned snotty.

I could see him not knowing what it was, because as you've indicated, those
things are kind of a curiosity now. But when you need one, you really REALLY
need one! I probably should have just gone ahead and asked someone else,
and maybe we'd have both been spared the grief. Still, if I were doing his job,
and I didn't know about something a customer was asking for, I'd seek help
before simply saying it doesn't exist - especially so if the customer is claiming
that they've used them before!

[walking with scissors]

The manager probably deserves some of the blame for not training his employee properly or hiring someone with a little technical ability. My son the geek HATES going into our Radio Shack because they hire kids who know absolutely nothing about technical stuff at all and he finds himself in situations like yours.

[xaenon]

The manager probably deserves some of the blame for not training his employee properly or hiring someone with a little technical ability. My son the geek HATES going into our Radio Shack because they hire kids who know absolutely nothing about technical stuff at all and he finds himself in situations like yours.

Your son and I have something in common, then. RS used to be *THE* place to
go for many of the things I needed as a electronics hobbyist, but that was back
in the days when they were partnered with Tandy, a *REAL* electronics parts
warehouse in Ft. Worth. Tandy used to publish a huge catalog once or twice a
year and if you couldn't find some electronic component in there, it probably didn't
exist. You could order anything from Tandy through your Radio Shack store.

Today, unless you are buying a cell phone, they really don't seem interested in
dealing with ya. There are a few 'Shacks' still around that have knowledgeable
staff, but their number is dwindling rapidly. It seems the quality of their stuff
has really gone in the dumper, and today they focus more on widgets and
gadgets than any real hardware. They still have a token selection of individual
parts and basic hobbyist supplies, but it ain't what it used to be. Not by a long
shot.

I suppose I can't blame them for 'evolving' this way - the market I represented
years ago has largely vanished, and if a store like that is to survive, they have to
change their product line. Seriously, they need to change their name, too - instead of 'Radio Shack', they should become 'Wireless Shack'. You absolutely
CAN NOT walk into those places without them shoving a cell phone under your
nose.

[PepperElf]

yeah the kid was rude.
but i can't say the boss was wrong for firing him publicly

1) he was rude to you when you simply tried finding an item.
2) when the boss showed him that the item exists he was rude to the boss too.

so it's likely it was a long issue, but obviously it didn't seem like the kid cared to change.

and hey nothing sucks more than being told "that doesn't exist" when you know it damned well does.
I remember trying to buy a coax male-to-male "bullet" from radio shack (think coax cable, just without the cable portion). I used them at work so I knew they existed, but... radio shack only made the female-to-female bullets so the clerk figured that... not only did they not exist anywhere in the world, but i must be wrong about what part i had handled at work.

[LostMyMind]

They still make laplink cables? Wow, I think I still have mine somewhere in a box in the back of a closet under 100s of other boxes.

The kid screwed himself. I'm sure there was a folder full of complaints.

Wow a Laplink cable. Basically a null-modem cable or a serial cable with a null-modem adapter. Could be 9 or 25-pin......MAN!!! That brings back the days. Laplink for dos 5.0 and Interlink on Dos 6.0?

I recall the cable being a cross-over cable, very much like a cross-over network cable. My laplink cable has both parallel and serial connecters on one cable. But then again, that cable is almost 15 years old now. Man I used the hell out of that cable. The days before cheap memories.

[Samaliel]

Just be lucky they don't tell you that the item you're inquiring doesn't exist when you have one in your hand.

[Broomjockey]

No, you absolutely weren't the sucky one there. And I could even forgive the manager firing in public if it was a simple "You're done. Go clean out your locker."

I disagree. There is one and only one acceptable reason for a store employee to say that to a customer : if the store employee actually caught the customer doing crack on the premises of the store.

I dunno, I wouldn't mouth off to a crackhead. I'd run and get security.

[BlackIronCrown]

So, what do you think? Was I an asshole?

Ditto everyone else. He dug his own grave there.

[xaenon]

They still make laplink cables? Wow, I think I still have mine somewhere in a box in the back of a closet under 100s of other boxes.

The kid screwed himself. I'm sure there was a folder full of complaints.

I recall the cable being a cross-over cable, very much like a cross-over network cable. My laplink cable has both parallel and serial connecters on one cable. But then again, that cable is almost 15 years old now. Man I used the hell out of that cable. The days before cheap memories.

Yeah, they still make them, and you are correct, they were crossover-wired. Hell,
I could cut the ends off a pair of old printer cables and with a meter, a diagram,
and an hour to kill I could make my own. But I pitched out all my old printer cables
years ago (along with much of my other obsolete equipment I'd been hording since the 1980s).

I think if your cable has both serial and parallel on the same cable, it's probably
a genuine Laplink item and not a generic item like I was looking for. Can you
imagine if I'd asked him for one of THOSE? "yeah, it has serial and parallel
connections on both ends and it's for transferring data from one machine to the
other via those ports...." I think his brain would have thrown the proverbial rod.

The old serial and parallel laplink cables are getting hard to find locally - usually
you gotta order them from somewhere on the web. So, as I'd mentioned, I could
kind of forgive the guy for not knowing what it was - he'd probably never had
anybody ask him for such a contraption. But to flat-out claim they don't exist,
insult me, and cop an attitude when it was clearly demonstrated that they DO
exist....

I wouldn't have even needed such a thing except I was working on a very, very
old laptop, an old Compaq 486sx. My neighbor owned this thing since it was new
and she'd never needed anything more powerful until recently, and needed the
data moved off the old laptop to her new one. But those old 486s never had
USB, CD-burners didn't even exist then, and I didn't have any PC-card NICs
lying about - at least, none that would have drivers available for DOS/Win3.x.
And doing this job with floppies would have taken ages - assuming that I still
have floppies lying around that aren't completely trashed by now (haven't needed
them in a long, long time...).

[mischugenah]

Well, the kid was right-- crack does kill. And his crack killed his job