What are the silliest things you have had customers ask for?

[Rapscallion]

I- Hmm... Balsa's that really soft stuff, isn't it? That wouldn't work...

Technically, it's a hardwood. Physically, it's no such thing.

Rapscallion

[Inker]

Things I've been asked:

At the Bookstore:
"Do you carry porn?"
"Do you have any pet food?"
"Where is your daycare?"
"Do you sell cameras?"

At the Theatre:
"Do you show porn?"
"Can I preview the show before I buy a ticket?"
"Can I sit in on rehearsal before I buy a ticket?"
"I liked the show, can I/my child/my dog/my grandma be in it?"
"Do you serve alcohol during the show?"

[Lace Neil Singer]

At the garden centre pet section:

"Do you sell puppies?"

"Can I buy your parrot?"

"Can I buy some hamsters to feed to my snake?"

At the supermarket:

"Do you sell bearded ham?"

"What's non fat yogurt?"

[ThePhoneGoddess]

When I worked at the hotel/casino we used to get one hilarious request constantly. We used to get guys from the rural areas in Idaho/Oregon/Montana who would go to Alaska as loggers for 6-8 months at a stretch. Then when they'd come back, they would all have several thousand dollars to blow, so of course they would drive down to our casino on the Idaho/Nevada border.

Okay, this is Hicksville, USA. The town had maybe 500 people living there. Most of the employees were bussed down from the Idaho town an hours drive north. These loggers would come in, get really plastered, and then go to the hotel desk, where numerous young, pretty girls worked, and ask for hookers. Very loudly and belligerently. "WE WANT HOOKERS! There's gotta be some hookers around, right? Where are they? This is Nevada, dammit! There's supposed to be hookers here! Where's the local whorehouse?!" etc.

Eventually we would get it through their drunken skulls that there were no prostitutes to be had in our tiny little border town. They would then resort to propositioning us. "Hey man! I GOT $500 DOLLARS HERE! That's more'n you make in a week, isn't it? You'll earn it in an hour, sweetie!" At which point security would mysteriously appear and toss them out on their asses.

[HappyFun Ball]

I was once asked, when I worked at a sandwich shop if the Cabo Chicken had chicken on it.

[Mark Healey]

I work for a national hardware store, so far I have had customers ask me for auto parts, fishing supplies, pet supplies, all variety of home electronics, furniture, and the one that beats all was for our clothing department, specifically womens and children's.

The Ace hardware near me has a shelf of auto accessories and some common parts (fuses, etc), non consumable pet supplies, kitchen appliances, computer cables and some hardware (USB hubs and Routers), and patio furniture, So those aren't that unreasonable.

I work in a bookstore and someone called asking for wigs.

[powerboy]

When I worked at my last job, which was strictly an Anime Shop. We had a couple of people come in and ask for a coffee. It was understandable because we had a coffee pot out. But that was because we were going to having a coffee shop inside the store. But the sad thing is, for a tiny strafoam cup, they wanted to charge $3.00 for one and $1.00 for a refill. I never understood why they wanted to run it that way.

[Tria]

What is a Route-44 milkshake? Sounds large...

And tasty....

[HappyCthulhu]

Had some guy ask for toothbrushes....at Dillard's. Well, to be fair, we did carry electric ones. No, that's not what he wanted. He wanted a regular toothbrush. Apparently Dillard's=Wal-Mart in his mind.

Actually, the best manual toothbrush I ever owned I got at Dilliards back in the early 90's.

[edible_hat]

My son used to work at the Dollar Tree(everything $1) long ago, before they had refrigerated cases for sodas and waters. He had people come in looking for milk and lunchmeat. Also people looking for computer games. Somehow I think if you're only paying a dollar to buy a video game, its probably gonna suck pretty bad.

Video games are like hookers - they don't get better with age, just cheaper.


Working at a convenience store, I get all kinds of requests for stuff we don't have (I guess the thinking is "You're a convenience store, you must have everything!")

-specific car parts for models phased out in the 1950s.
-gay porn. On finding we didn't have any, the SC whinged about discrimination (sometimes we do have gay porn, we get a random selection of whatever our supplier has).
-2600 magazine (can't get it locally except at Borders. There was one guy in Melbourne selling photocopies but he got shut down fairly quickly)
-snake food ("Come on, you have dog food and cat food...")
-ammunition (in Australia you can only buy this from gun stores or shooting clubs)
-sex toys
-directions to the nearest crack house (and it turned out there was one just up the street, I found out when they got raided)
-handcuffs ("Well, you've got that hat with "security" written on it, so naturally I assumed...")
-fireworks (you need to get a permit and go to a fireworks store)
-fishing supplies (understandable when I worked at a store a short walk from the beach, but it still happens at a store an hour's drive from the beach)
-marijuana ("I know you won't have it on the shelf, but I was wondering if I could buy some from you personally?")

And just the other day somebody asked "Why do these satay chicken rolls always smell like peanuts? In fact why does all satay stuff smell like peanuts?" when I told him that satay sauce is made from peanuts, he said "Cool, I didn't know that."

[Pagan]

Actually, the best manual toothbrush I ever owned I got at Dilliards back in the early 90's.

Where was this? The one I worked at and all the others I've been in have never carried regular toothbrushes, just electric.

[LoneWolf]

I think I had the best one last week. I work for a huge telecom business. Our shop is, however, very small. We only sell things for mobile phones and just a few things for the phones one has to hook up to the phone line at home. So we don't have much, the store is about twice the size of my bedroom.

I have people coming in asking for a new computer mouse (the one from last week), asking for a little jack plug piece that enables little jack plugs to go into the large 3,5 cm sockets, usb - com port cables for printers and faxes.

I once even got asked for a phone case for the iPhone. The iPhone will be sold for the first time in January in this country. I know some already have it, some people ask if we can unlock it to make room for a Dutch provider instead of AT&T.

Another hilarious one was an American girl who came in with her Dutch boyfriend and she asked if there was any possibility if I could do a contract for Sprint or Verizon from here. I only happen to know those are US providers because of reading this site and then decided to search for some background info. So I politely said no. I feared a 'why?' question, but luckily it didn't come

[Forensic Waitress]

I use to work in a very well known women's fashion store in Australia. It has always been women's fashion, including some lingerie. It always shocked me when women came in, especially near father's day and Christmas, asking for men's boxers as gifts. I simply told them we had never stocked men's items and to try a different store down the road from us.

[Seolta]

Silk bedsheets, at a K-mart. Sorry, we don't carry those. "Well, how 'bout satin?" Nope...I'll be happy to show you the nicest ones we do carry, which are these Egyptian cotton sateen sheets here...

What made it even better? Was telling my supervisor about it afterwards, and the store manager overheard and said, "but I thought those ones there on the end were satin."


Apparently Reference librarians get the best questions, though...like the patrons who come in wanting a photograph of Zeus/Jesus/Buddha/Noah/Athena/Osiris/etc. Not a drawing or painting, not a picture of a sculpture, an actual photograph of the individual him/herself. They don't understand why this just isn't a feasible request. These are common enough that at one point we were discussing the merits of dressing someone up in costumes, taking snapshots, and selling 'em as genuine photographs of the divine being(s) in question.

[Anriana]

~A cable tech at the house within an hour (during third shift and Christmas)
~A credit for three months of service (they were too busy to call before today)
~A credit for the $500 they lost because they can't play in an online poker tournamnet or because they can't use EBay or because they can't day trade.
~For me to resume their services when they were over $1000 behind on payments.
~To speak to the CEO of the company at 3AM.
~Compensation for malware/viruses/etc they had gotten while using our internet service.
~For me to force our engineers to use back up servers so the service wouldn't be completely down during maintenance.
~For me to tell them how much I make per hour and credit them 8X that amount for the 8 hours they had spent calling our company.