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I've had a lot of odd jobs. Waitressing, dog washing, unloading trucks, I've done quite a lot, so here's a few short stories of the "wonderful" people I've come across over the years, counting from least annoying to most:
10) Old Lady- I worked at a thrift store, and the mix of odd- to say the least- customers, 45+ hours of being behind a register, school and being 6 months pregnant was wearing on me. This lady insisted on wrapping her own items. I said no, because it was hard for me to keep track of what I had wrung up if she did. She made snarky comments the entire exchange ("Your not doing that right", "I could have fit that into 1 bag!"), and then she came across a broke item (a piece of dollhouse furniture in a bag, the broken piece was in the bag and could easily be glued on) with no price. I said I would take it to my manager, Telly, and ask him the price but she insisted on doing it herself. She came back and was irate that it wasn't 99 cents. "It's just because I'm a woman," she said to the lady in line behind her. This understandably made me a bit upset, as Telly was a sweetheart.
"No, I buy stuff here all the time, most of the time it's twice what he-"
"You," she said, "shut up, you've caused enough trouble."
Arg.
9) Jeans Lady:A misunderstanding- Same thrift store. I had a lady with a 20% off coupon. I rang almost all of her stuff up except a pair of jeans which had no price. I asked Telly, and he said $9.99. I thought that was a bit high, so I went back to her and said $7.99 (we punched in all the amounts by hand, so price adjusting was easy). She thought it over and decided not to get them.
She comes back 5 minutes later and decides she wants the jeans.
"I still get the 20% off, right?" she asks.
"No, I'm sorry ma'am, I can only do that on one transaction, unless you have another coupon."
"You're full of shit!" She throws down the jeans and storms off.
Cut to a few weeks later. It's 99 cents day-which means certain color tags are 99 cents. A co-worker ringing up people comes over to me with a pair of pans and says "something doesn't look right". I look them over and realize this was a pair of pans that someone had brought over to my register yesterday (a gentleman had noticed one was priced lower than the other and wondered if he could get them both at the same price- it ended up to where the lady who prices things took them to the back and the poor guy couldn't even get the pans 'because she wanted to reprice them'). No way they're magically 99 cents the next day (something has to sit around for 3 weeks to get priced at 99 cents). The sticker must have been ripped off something else and stuck to the pans.
My co-worker goes back and tells the lady sorry, but they're not 99 cents, and gives her the quote for what we normally price pans at. I look over, it's the Jeans Lady. Crap.
She (the jeans lady) comes over and tells me that I'm being unfair and that I need to leave whatever emotional baggage I have at home and stop taking it out on customers. I get berated for 5 minutes on what a horrible person I am and she storms off. Then every time she comes in after that I hear her talking loudly to her daughter (I assume) about how I'm a racist (?) and should get fired.
Man was I happy to quit that job.
8) Canadian Guy- Next job! The one where I think I lost my ability to care! It's an inbound call center, which basically means we take orders for any of those neat informertial (sp?) products you see on TV. We sold over 50 products, from make-up to Oreck vacuums. Canadian guy wanted a program that increased your reading speed. The order was going smoothly until we got to shipping. Now the commercial says free shipping, but like most infomertials there's a bit of fine print, and that fine print was 'free shipping for anyone in the contenential (sp, again?) United States'. This guy was in Canada, so the shipping would be $10.
"but it said free."
"I'm sorry sir, but that's only for people in the US."
"But I'm in Canada, it's not that far, and the commercial said it would be free."
Now, we can't just 'take off things', because of the computer program for ordering. I can't, my manager can't-no one can, but this guy wouldn't hear a word of it. The conversation went so far downhill that I had to repeat this question MANY TIMES:
"I'm sorry sir, but there's shipping. We can't take it off, do you want this product or not? We can just cancel the order if you want and you can call customer service."
"But-"
"Do you want it or not?"
"But-"
"Do...you...want...it...or ...not?"
"But-"
"Doooo...you...waaannntt..it...?"
The girl in the booth next to me was laughing her ass off.
7) Prank calls- We also sold 'size enhancement cream' for men, if you catch my drift. I don't care how funny you think it is, please don't call up and ask about penises, or say your name is 'Long Dong John.' We've heard it all before. A LOT.
6) Mark the Masturbating Guy- Would call up and ask about products, actually seem interested in the products, and would listen through your entire sales speech. Unfortunately he was also going "Ohhhh...yeahhhh..." and "uuuhhhhh...." the entire time. He would even give you his address if you kept talking.... "One...seeeeeveeeenn...ohhhh...threeeeeee!" Everyone got to know Mark by the sound of his voice within a month of working there and would just hang up on him.
5) Cranky Old Slavic Lady- "I am the one asking questions! You will tell me the price!"
Me- "Well we have 3 different choices, one is the-"
COSL- "No! I don't want to hear sales pitch, tell me the price!"
Me- "well which product are you looking for (this was Rosetta stone, the language-learning thing, we had 26 languages in 3 different formats)?"
COSL- "Which languages you have?"
Me- "Well we have 2 different kinds of Chinese, Russian, Spanish..."
COSL- "Don't read your script! just tell me price!"
Me "Well it depends on if you want the mastery edition or the-"
COSL- "You're reading you're script!"
Me (staring at wall)- "Nope (I had them all memorized by that point anyway)."
*lady hangs up*
4) I want to return this (working at a board game store)- Returns are always fun. This guy was just annoying because he had his receipt, but half the packaging of the product was missing. He threatened to call his lawyer, and the news and was basically a raging douche who made me call the head of the company on his day off.
The guy got store credit out of it, dammit.
3) Yorkie Lady (working as a dog groomer)- Lady came to pick up her yorkie. Terry, one of my co-workers who had been a groomer for over 25 years and had worked countless dog shows, had done her dog.
Turns out it wasn't her dog...and it had been cut wrong, according to her.
"Well, how would you like it done?" Terry asks the lady. The Yorkie (the black and brown tiny dogs with long hair) had the traditional long show-coat. As far as I could tell the damn thing was perfect.
"Well," said the lady. "Shorter."
"Shorter off the bottom?" Terry asks.
"No, all the way around, like a Yorkie is supposed to be cut."
"Like..." says Terry, visibly getting annoyed, "A puppy cut?"
"Look, I just want a Yorkie cut!"
I quickly pull out a book and show the lady a picture of a Yorkie. "That," I point to the picture. "Is a Yorkie show cut." It looks exactly like her dog. I point to another picture, where the dog just has short hair all the way around. "That's a puppy cut." The lady pulls the book out of my hands and flips back and forth through the pages as though trying to see if I was tricking her. She sighs, grabs the ticket and walks away.
Freaking brilliant, lady, really.
2) Jerkwaddius Maximus- Back at the informetial order-taking place. We also sold a series of self-help cd's by a lady named Lucinda Basset. I hated taking these orders, really, but this guy really took the cake as far as bad orders went.
I let him know about how the dvds and cd's worked and what they were supposed to do. He seemed congenial and said heard heard of Lucinda and her program before and was really interested and wanted to give them a try. I let him know about the return policy, and then the big whammy-the price.
Jerk-"You mean I have to PAY FOR IT?"
Me-"Yes sir, but if you don't think you can afford it customer service will work with you and gets payments to something you can afford (it goes as low as $10 a month, or if you're in really bad shape they'll sometimes give it to people for free)
Jerk- "I thought this program was supposed to help people and you guys are just trying to make money?!"
Me- (to be fair I thought the program was a bit overpriced, but did he really think he was going to get 10 dvd's, 3 cd's and 2 books for free? when even on the commercials it told you there was a fee?) "I'm sorry sir-"
Jerk- " NO! You're not sorry! You're just trying to make money and take advantage of people that need help! You're just a scam artist."
Me-*nervous laugh*
Jerk-" THAT! That's right there's a nervous laugh! You know I'm onto you! You're sick, taking advantage of people like this!"
Me- "Sir you said you were familiar with the program, I don't see-"
Jerk- "NO! I'm not buying your program! Take me off the list and delete my information! This is a %(^* scam and you are going to be reported to the police!" *hangs up*
Me-.... "Yup...cigarette break"
1) Why didn't you just say so?- Newest job in which I sell underwear, at a place that is famous in the US for panties and lingerie catalogs. Now I can't say this lady was the worst customer I ever had, but frankly I wasn't used to people acting like this that didn't at least have the anonymity of a phone to hide behind.
I was working near the bra and panty section when a co-worker asked me for some help. She was the only girl in the very busy fitting rooms, and a customer asked her for some matching panties to some bras she had picked out. Problem was, she had 6 different bras in 6 different colors, and no mention as to what KIND of panty she wanted.
I quickly threw together a couple different pairs in different colors to give the lady an idea of what we had, then asked my co-worker to let me know which style she liked and I would get her more.
10 minutes later the fitting room girl is back, looking like she's about to cry. "I have all the rooms full, 6 people in line and this lady is screaming at me to get her something," she says to me.
I sigh, load up a couple more bags in different panties and give them to the lady.
A few minutes pass and my manager Hope comes up to me. "Could you get me some white undies? Lacy?" I nod and load up yet another bag (we have A LOT of underwear to choose from, okay?).
A few more minutes pass and I hear screaming from the near the cash registers, I have a guess as to who it is and pop my head around the corner.
"I'm sorry you're not satisfied ma'am but-" Hope is trying to say.
" I WAS BACK THERE FOR 40 MINUTES AND NOBODY HELPED ME!"
"I'm sorry, here's our satisfaction hotline number, I'm sure they can work something-" Hope says, passing a card to her.
"ALL I WANTED WAS A PAIR OF WHITE LACY UNDERWEAR AND YOU GUYS CAN'T EVEN DO THAT! IT'S LIKE SHOPPING AT WAL-MART!" This lady is literally in Hope's face, yelling, with a bunch of other customers around. I sigh and grab yet another bag of the only white underwear that lady hasn't tried on and hand it to the irate woman.
"I'm sorry ma'am-" Hope continues.
"STOP APOLOGIZING, YOU'RE ONLY MAKING ME ANGRIER!" -the lady literally says this. What the heck is Hope supposed to do at this point? Who the heck acts like that, anyway? I hand the lady the bag. She paws through it, pulls out a pair of underwear and says ( to Hope)"THERE! That's what I was asking for the whole time, was that so hard?" Then, to me, "Thank you!"
Wow. Consumer culture it it's best.
10) Old Lady- I worked at a thrift store, and the mix of odd- to say the least- customers, 45+ hours of being behind a register, school and being 6 months pregnant was wearing on me. This lady insisted on wrapping her own items. I said no, because it was hard for me to keep track of what I had wrung up if she did. She made snarky comments the entire exchange ("Your not doing that right", "I could have fit that into 1 bag!"), and then she came across a broke item (a piece of dollhouse furniture in a bag, the broken piece was in the bag and could easily be glued on) with no price. I said I would take it to my manager, Telly, and ask him the price but she insisted on doing it herself. She came back and was irate that it wasn't 99 cents. "It's just because I'm a woman," she said to the lady in line behind her. This understandably made me a bit upset, as Telly was a sweetheart.
"No, I buy stuff here all the time, most of the time it's twice what he-"
"You," she said, "shut up, you've caused enough trouble."
Arg.
9) Jeans Lady:A misunderstanding- Same thrift store. I had a lady with a 20% off coupon. I rang almost all of her stuff up except a pair of jeans which had no price. I asked Telly, and he said $9.99. I thought that was a bit high, so I went back to her and said $7.99 (we punched in all the amounts by hand, so price adjusting was easy). She thought it over and decided not to get them.
She comes back 5 minutes later and decides she wants the jeans.
"I still get the 20% off, right?" she asks.
"No, I'm sorry ma'am, I can only do that on one transaction, unless you have another coupon."
"You're full of shit!" She throws down the jeans and storms off.
Cut to a few weeks later. It's 99 cents day-which means certain color tags are 99 cents. A co-worker ringing up people comes over to me with a pair of pans and says "something doesn't look right". I look them over and realize this was a pair of pans that someone had brought over to my register yesterday (a gentleman had noticed one was priced lower than the other and wondered if he could get them both at the same price- it ended up to where the lady who prices things took them to the back and the poor guy couldn't even get the pans 'because she wanted to reprice them'). No way they're magically 99 cents the next day (something has to sit around for 3 weeks to get priced at 99 cents). The sticker must have been ripped off something else and stuck to the pans.
My co-worker goes back and tells the lady sorry, but they're not 99 cents, and gives her the quote for what we normally price pans at. I look over, it's the Jeans Lady. Crap.
She (the jeans lady) comes over and tells me that I'm being unfair and that I need to leave whatever emotional baggage I have at home and stop taking it out on customers. I get berated for 5 minutes on what a horrible person I am and she storms off. Then every time she comes in after that I hear her talking loudly to her daughter (I assume) about how I'm a racist (?) and should get fired.
Man was I happy to quit that job.
8) Canadian Guy- Next job! The one where I think I lost my ability to care! It's an inbound call center, which basically means we take orders for any of those neat informertial (sp?) products you see on TV. We sold over 50 products, from make-up to Oreck vacuums. Canadian guy wanted a program that increased your reading speed. The order was going smoothly until we got to shipping. Now the commercial says free shipping, but like most infomertials there's a bit of fine print, and that fine print was 'free shipping for anyone in the contenential (sp, again?) United States'. This guy was in Canada, so the shipping would be $10.
"but it said free."
"I'm sorry sir, but that's only for people in the US."
"But I'm in Canada, it's not that far, and the commercial said it would be free."
Now, we can't just 'take off things', because of the computer program for ordering. I can't, my manager can't-no one can, but this guy wouldn't hear a word of it. The conversation went so far downhill that I had to repeat this question MANY TIMES:
"I'm sorry sir, but there's shipping. We can't take it off, do you want this product or not? We can just cancel the order if you want and you can call customer service."
"But-"
"Do you want it or not?"
"But-"
"Do...you...want...it...or ...not?"
"But-"
"Doooo...you...waaannntt..it...?"
The girl in the booth next to me was laughing her ass off.
7) Prank calls- We also sold 'size enhancement cream' for men, if you catch my drift. I don't care how funny you think it is, please don't call up and ask about penises, or say your name is 'Long Dong John.' We've heard it all before. A LOT.
6) Mark the Masturbating Guy- Would call up and ask about products, actually seem interested in the products, and would listen through your entire sales speech. Unfortunately he was also going "Ohhhh...yeahhhh..." and "uuuhhhhh...." the entire time. He would even give you his address if you kept talking.... "One...seeeeeveeeenn...ohhhh...threeeeeee!" Everyone got to know Mark by the sound of his voice within a month of working there and would just hang up on him.
5) Cranky Old Slavic Lady- "I am the one asking questions! You will tell me the price!"
Me- "Well we have 3 different choices, one is the-"
COSL- "No! I don't want to hear sales pitch, tell me the price!"
Me- "well which product are you looking for (this was Rosetta stone, the language-learning thing, we had 26 languages in 3 different formats)?"
COSL- "Which languages you have?"
Me- "Well we have 2 different kinds of Chinese, Russian, Spanish..."
COSL- "Don't read your script! just tell me price!"
Me "Well it depends on if you want the mastery edition or the-"
COSL- "You're reading you're script!"
Me (staring at wall)- "Nope (I had them all memorized by that point anyway)."
*lady hangs up*
4) I want to return this (working at a board game store)- Returns are always fun. This guy was just annoying because he had his receipt, but half the packaging of the product was missing. He threatened to call his lawyer, and the news and was basically a raging douche who made me call the head of the company on his day off.
The guy got store credit out of it, dammit.
3) Yorkie Lady (working as a dog groomer)- Lady came to pick up her yorkie. Terry, one of my co-workers who had been a groomer for over 25 years and had worked countless dog shows, had done her dog.
Turns out it wasn't her dog...and it had been cut wrong, according to her.
"Well, how would you like it done?" Terry asks the lady. The Yorkie (the black and brown tiny dogs with long hair) had the traditional long show-coat. As far as I could tell the damn thing was perfect.
"Well," said the lady. "Shorter."
"Shorter off the bottom?" Terry asks.
"No, all the way around, like a Yorkie is supposed to be cut."
"Like..." says Terry, visibly getting annoyed, "A puppy cut?"
"Look, I just want a Yorkie cut!"
I quickly pull out a book and show the lady a picture of a Yorkie. "That," I point to the picture. "Is a Yorkie show cut." It looks exactly like her dog. I point to another picture, where the dog just has short hair all the way around. "That's a puppy cut." The lady pulls the book out of my hands and flips back and forth through the pages as though trying to see if I was tricking her. She sighs, grabs the ticket and walks away.
Freaking brilliant, lady, really.
2) Jerkwaddius Maximus- Back at the informetial order-taking place. We also sold a series of self-help cd's by a lady named Lucinda Basset. I hated taking these orders, really, but this guy really took the cake as far as bad orders went.
I let him know about how the dvds and cd's worked and what they were supposed to do. He seemed congenial and said heard heard of Lucinda and her program before and was really interested and wanted to give them a try. I let him know about the return policy, and then the big whammy-the price.
Jerk-"You mean I have to PAY FOR IT?"
Me-"Yes sir, but if you don't think you can afford it customer service will work with you and gets payments to something you can afford (it goes as low as $10 a month, or if you're in really bad shape they'll sometimes give it to people for free)
Jerk- "I thought this program was supposed to help people and you guys are just trying to make money?!"
Me- (to be fair I thought the program was a bit overpriced, but did he really think he was going to get 10 dvd's, 3 cd's and 2 books for free? when even on the commercials it told you there was a fee?) "I'm sorry sir-"
Jerk- " NO! You're not sorry! You're just trying to make money and take advantage of people that need help! You're just a scam artist."
Me-*nervous laugh*
Jerk-" THAT! That's right there's a nervous laugh! You know I'm onto you! You're sick, taking advantage of people like this!"
Me- "Sir you said you were familiar with the program, I don't see-"
Jerk- "NO! I'm not buying your program! Take me off the list and delete my information! This is a %(^* scam and you are going to be reported to the police!" *hangs up*
Me-.... "Yup...cigarette break"
1) Why didn't you just say so?- Newest job in which I sell underwear, at a place that is famous in the US for panties and lingerie catalogs. Now I can't say this lady was the worst customer I ever had, but frankly I wasn't used to people acting like this that didn't at least have the anonymity of a phone to hide behind.
I was working near the bra and panty section when a co-worker asked me for some help. She was the only girl in the very busy fitting rooms, and a customer asked her for some matching panties to some bras she had picked out. Problem was, she had 6 different bras in 6 different colors, and no mention as to what KIND of panty she wanted.
I quickly threw together a couple different pairs in different colors to give the lady an idea of what we had, then asked my co-worker to let me know which style she liked and I would get her more.
10 minutes later the fitting room girl is back, looking like she's about to cry. "I have all the rooms full, 6 people in line and this lady is screaming at me to get her something," she says to me.
I sigh, load up a couple more bags in different panties and give them to the lady.
A few minutes pass and my manager Hope comes up to me. "Could you get me some white undies? Lacy?" I nod and load up yet another bag (we have A LOT of underwear to choose from, okay?).
A few more minutes pass and I hear screaming from the near the cash registers, I have a guess as to who it is and pop my head around the corner.
"I'm sorry you're not satisfied ma'am but-" Hope is trying to say.
" I WAS BACK THERE FOR 40 MINUTES AND NOBODY HELPED ME!"
"I'm sorry, here's our satisfaction hotline number, I'm sure they can work something-" Hope says, passing a card to her.
"ALL I WANTED WAS A PAIR OF WHITE LACY UNDERWEAR AND YOU GUYS CAN'T EVEN DO THAT! IT'S LIKE SHOPPING AT WAL-MART!" This lady is literally in Hope's face, yelling, with a bunch of other customers around. I sigh and grab yet another bag of the only white underwear that lady hasn't tried on and hand it to the irate woman.
"I'm sorry ma'am-" Hope continues.
"STOP APOLOGIZING, YOU'RE ONLY MAKING ME ANGRIER!" -the lady literally says this. What the heck is Hope supposed to do at this point? Who the heck acts like that, anyway? I hand the lady the bag. She paws through it, pulls out a pair of underwear and says ( to Hope)"THERE! That's what I was asking for the whole time, was that so hard?" Then, to me, "Thank you!"
Wow. Consumer culture it it's best.
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