Neener Neener = Fail

[Snowbird]

This is a story from way back when I was a young and naive sales person. I was an assistant manager at a tiny jewelry kiosk, the sort that sells gold chain by the inch, and it was a typically slow day at the mall.

A customer finally walked up to the counter and after a smiled greeting, she smiled in return and thrust her hand out at me. "Tell me, do you know what this is?"

On her finger was a polished stone, set in a gold band.

Now, being the naive thing I was, I didn't realize what she was trying to do but the sight of it made me light up with a smile, rather excited actually.

"Oh yes, that's a Petoskey stone from Fire Lake in Michigan!" I probably would have babbled on but the lady gave me a stunned look that turned sour, muttering "Well then, yes. Hmph." before she stalked away.

My boss mentioned later that I'd stolen her thunder, her gloating power in having a fairly rare stone that I really shouldn't have been able to name. How ironic was it that she picked the one sales person likely in a few hundred miles, not to mention in a completely different state from the rock's origin, that knew that?

I'd grown up near there and my family went to the lake for vacations. I still have one of the Petoskey stones I found and polished as a child, and use it as a paperweight. Silly woman. Not uber sucky but certainly snarky.

Here's a picture link from Wikipedia: Petoskey

Anyone else ever have a SC bent on one upping them?

[Trayol]

It makes you wish that you could have small multi-ethnic children singing "It's A Small World After All" in the background.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I've seen those,they are very beautiful. (I go to rock shows...gem and mineral exhibitions...and spent my life in close proximity to my rockhound naturalist great aunt and uncle). Didn't remember the name of it, but I sure remember the look of it.

Good for you for being able to takeher down a peg. What, was she just going around waving it under random people's noses trying to expose their ignorance of a not so common chunck of mineral or something? Some people have such issues.

[Rubyred]

Ooooh pretty....it looks like a giant glass honeycomb.

I wonder why she had such a big head about it? While it is pretty...you can FIND them right? It's not like she would have had to have been a trillionare to afford it?

[lordlundar]

Anyone else ever have a SC bent on one upping them?

You mean like the idiot I had who was telling me in no uncertain terms that a DVI splitter (he informs me it's like a cable splitter but for a DVI cable) would allow him a dual monitor setup? Or the state of the art HD video card he has doesn't have a DVI port? Or that an analog video signal would be better looking than a digital one? (could not clue into the concept of distortions)

In short, yes. I don't mind when I learn something new, but please, if you're trying to educate me, a)Don't treat me like an idiot, and b)Know what you're talking about.

[RebeccaOTool]

I have one of those somewhere--living in Michigan has its perks!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Fossilized coral. It would be neat to live in a place twhere such cool stuff was that common. It's very beautiful. I looked up rings made of this stuff just to see what they were going for. Hunnert bucks, give or take, usually. Not cheap-cheap, but not something to wave around like it's going to get people talking about what a high roller the wearer is. I mean, I found a picture of a fireplace surround made of the stuff. It ain't like it's diamonds.

I think she thought she was something because it's an unusual substance. But her behavior about it was just weird.

Guy wasn't a customer, but just kind of an obnoxious guy we knew that was always sucking up to me all the time. Wanted to brag to me about close to life-threatening peril he was in one day coming face to face with a hand-sized black-widow spider he almost walked into while hiking one day (giant spiders here in SC like to make webs across clear spots in the woods...trails are great for them. Often about face-height. I told him, "I think you would have probably been okay, that wasn't a black widow." He wanted to stand there and argue with me about how much he knew about stuff like that.

Sadly humorous facts about his insistance that he could have died and how brave he was:
Black Widows' don't exhibit the type of web-weaving this guy described.
Black Widows only get about an inch long, tops.
Black Widows live under things. They rarely are exposed, and even then, are very low to the ground usually.
Black and Yellow Garden Spiders and Golden Silk Spiders exhibit exactly the characteristics this guy described.
These spiders are not dangerous. Scary, but not dangerous.
I'm a freaking naturalist. An amateur one, but unless you are Wade Batson, Rudy Manke, or Whit Gibbons, don't even think you are going to argue something like that with me. I'm serious. Or at least be an amateur naturalist, too, and be able to give me an educated debate.

He did this in front of a large group of people, all of whom knew me. So ownage happened with no effort from me whatsoever. One of the guys was like "Dude...don't argue bugs with her, she will win."

That guy was a wanker. Not because of that, but he was one, so the ownage was very satisfying.

[Geek King]

Anyone else ever have a SC bent on one upping them?

Oh, lord yes. Everytime someone would come up spouting a popular urban myth, I had to curb my baser urges. You know, the ones that involve beating the target with their own monitor?

Or my new favorite, the SC who "read it in a magazine the other day." Especially fun in the IT field when I can pick apart their poorly researched article and tell them [politely] why that doesn't work in every scenario, including the problem they are having now.

[Plaidman]

that a DVI splitter (he informs me it's like a cable splitter but for a DVI cable) would allow him a du .

Zzzz Zzzzz J/K Man

Yeah, I have people telling me all the greatness of their million dollar jobs, and their 50,000 dollar cars, and their 10,000 dollar clothes. Yet they have to use food stamps for junk food, and have no ID for beer.

Strangely enough they think all that stuff impresses me, and that I will give them beer.

Even more strangly, it never has worked O_O.

I also put off this aura of not giving a shit. (Which has a bad effect for the times that I do care )

On the other side of the coin. I wish I could speak all lanagages fluently, just so I could be like whats up man! when someone who doesn't speak english comes in. Now THATS customer service

[Interior Desecrator]

I've encountered the clients who have done just enough research to be dangerous. These are usually the ones who think everyone is out to screw them over and showing their intelligence will prevent me from pulling one over on them, which I wouldn't try to do anyway. I had one lady who had spent WAY too much time researching kitchen remodeling on the internet. (She deserves her own post, so I won't go into detail.) She was fairly argumentative and insisted that the facts she somehow garnered from the internet were THE standards in cabinetry. Nevermind the fact that I'm the one who gets paid to this for a living, and nevermind that the installers handling her kitchen have over a decade of experience. No, you're right, lady! We don't know anything!

BTW, that's a gorgeous stone!

[Snowbird]

Rubyred, those stones were plentiful enough at the lake (at least when I was a kid, I don't know now), that I had amassed a huge collection of them before my family left. My mother did make me give all but the one to a local vendor who sold the polished stones... and now that I think about it, had sold me the stone polishing kit that I'd used to make them so pretty. I didn't make a dime, I was a slave to retail even then!

And color me impressed, Recovering Kinkoid. You know your stuff.

After thinking about it for a while, I really do believe the lady was already knowledge trip (much like a power trip) gloating by the time she even got to me, which would explain the flourish and self satisfied smile, rather than a 'guess how much this cost me?' gloat. I had much more than my fair of those people at that kiosk too, ugh.

[edicius]

I have one of those somewhere--living in Michigan has its perks!

Ah yes, the lovely stones of Petosky. I know I have a boatload of those back at my parents' house in Michigan. I think if you grew up in Michigan, it's a requirement to own at least one.

[Record Store Tough Guy]

This would usually happen about once a week at the record store. Sometimes they would be doing it to lord their knowledge of some obscure (to them; to us it was usually common knowledge) bit of trivia over the lowly clerks, who would then quickly deflate them by exhibiting a more extensive knowledge of the subject; sometimes they would just assume we were to young to be familiar with a band, despite being surrounded by hundreds of albums on a daily basis.

I actually had someone come up and say they were looking for a specific band, and that I was probably too young to have heard of them. The band they were looking for? Led Zeppelin.

No they were not making a joke. Yes I made sure to point out that not only was I familiar with Zeppelin, it was, in fact, one of my favorite bands.

I mean seriously, how can you not have at least heard of Zeppelin?

[TruthHurts]

We had a hotel guest express interest on one of the plants on our property. The manager tells him what the plant is and a little about it. A couple hours later I walk by him and he asks me if I know what the plant is. Before I can answer he tells me what it is and quotes everything my manager told him, he then starts boasting about how "rare" the plant is and "how only a few" people knew what it was.

I was too dumbfounded to do anything more than smile and wish him a good day.

[Imogene]

A coworker tried to impress me her first few days with knowledge of 80's sitcoms.
When I was able to rattle off trivia from... Hong Kong Phooey, she said, "You're too young to have been around then..."
Sure, I was no more than ten by the 90's, but I did watch a LOT of TV back then.

Then she tried it again a few days later, only to have me remind her about Hong Kong Phooey, and its now become a joke between us.