You'll have to speak up, my ears are still ringing

[Boozy]

The grocery store parks their courtesy scooters for the disabled right outside my store. This is annoying at the best of times, since anyone who's having trouble operating or parking one asks me for help, since I'm standing five feet away and am wearing a nametag of some sort.

Nevermind that my nametag identifies me as an employee of an entirely different store. My store has nothing to do with these things, and having never used one, I don't know anything about them. So all day I'm telling people to go to the courtesy desk for help.

A week or so ago, I'm at work and I hear an ear-piercing and steady beep coming from outside my kiosk. BEEEEEEP. It's deafening. So I leave my kiosk and wander around for a minute before locating the source of the noise.

There's an elderly gentleman sitting on one of the scooters. He's got his arm rested on top of the instrument panel. I have no idea why, but it's clear that the scooter does not like this. It's screeching BEEEEEEEEEP at the top of its mechanical lungs. I cannot believe that he can't hear it.

Me (raising my voice over the noise): Excuse me, sir. Could you please lift your arm from the controls there?

Him: What?

Me: COULD YOU PLEASE LIFT YOUR ARM FROM THE PANEL, PLEASE?

Him: WHAT?

Me (realizing he's probably completely deaf, I start mouthing the words slowly, hoping he can read lips): PLEASE. REMOVE. YOUR. ARM. FROM. THE. PANEL. SIR.

Him: WHAT?

Hallelujah! He has lifted his arm from the instrument panel in order to hold his hand in a cup behind his ear (international symbol for "Speak up"). There is blessed silence, except for some snickering from a small gathering of shoppers.

Me: Never mind, sir. Have a good one.

Him: I'm a little hard of hearing, dear. You really need to speak up when you talk to your elders, you know.

I laugh, resist the urge to strangle him, and turn to go back into my store, and....

....BEEEEEEP! He's put his arm down again.

I walk over to the power cord and unplug the cart from the wall (it was charging). Silence, then a smattering of scattered applause from nearby shoppers.

Ten minutes later, I hear "Excuse me? Do you work here? Why is this cart not working?"

I had forgotten to plug the damn thing back in after he left.

[jjllbb]

You know....old people. Sometimes they can cause so much trouble!!

[taurinejunkie]

I hate having to deal with elderly customers; I understand that it's not their fault at all and there's quite often nothing they can do about it, but company policy is that if I suspect the customer will have a hard time writing the number down from hearing it on the automated system, I have to give it out verbally. I see that coming when it takes the customer about five seconds to begin answering my questions, as age has taken its toll on their brain power. This leads to horrible call times because I have to repeat myself several times throughout the call AND when giving the number, and also to only say one digit at a time, wait for the caller to write it down, and then say another digit.

This one time I found the number in about ten seconds, but then it took FIVE MINUTES! to give it to the customer. They'd taken it down one digit at a time, repeating after me to be sure they were correct. Then they read back the full number and it was of course completely different, sending me back to square one. Well maybe square two, as I'd already found the number. Rinse and repeat a few times, which is not good for my blood pressure or average call time. Some time after that call, I met my supervisor to review calls that had been evaluated. Turns out I could have simply transfered them the hard-of-hearing, confused customer. You can bet everything you have I'll remember that.

[Boozy]

You know....old people. Sometimes they can cause so much trouble!!

I wouldn't say they cause more trouble than anyone else.