Record-breaking SCs

[Ghel]

I knew today was going to be kind of sucky just because it was (1) the first business day of the week, (2) the first business day of the month, (3) the day after a holiday weekend, and (4) the first day back from vacation. This means (1)a bunch of cranky coworkers, (2) extra reports to pull, (3) lots of extra customers, and (4) having to catch up on my work I missed (which nobody ever bothers to do for me).

SC #1: calls the second we open. She wants 14 money orders made out, which she will pick up before noon. I check what type of account she has, and it's our club account, so she doesn't get charged for the money orders. I deflate slightly, since I can't tell her that it costs $28 for her 14 money orders. But at least I don't have to type up the money orders myself - I pass it off to a teller.

By 9:05, the lobby is packed with customers.

SC #2: Asks me when the next of his 22 CDs will mature. Complains that he might have to cash one in to pay insurance. (Same guy normally has an inch-thick envelope of $100s in his pocket.) Brags that he visits friends at the hospital just for the free coffee.

SC #3: Pulls savings bonds out of his safe deposit box. Asks for the value of each one as I type them in. Instead of asking me to tell him when they reach a certain dollar amount, totals them on the back of an envelope. Asks me if a savings bond bought in a later year might be worth more than the same bond bought earlier (due to changing interest rates). To humor him, I tell him "anything's possible," even though I'm quite sure it's not. Cashes 50 of them and deposits the money in his checking account.

SC #4 (not quite so sucky): Wants to know if they're fully FDIC insured. After figuring out that there's no good way to title their accounts so that they're fully insured, they ask me what I would do. (DANGER! WARNING!) I say that I'm comfortable with the bank's stability, so I, personally, wouldn't worry about it. They're happy with that and leave.

SC #5: Wants his IRA funds transfered to another institution. Not so bad by itself (it was a small amount), but he does this every year - makes his annual IRA contribution with us, then transfers it someplace else. And I forgot to charge him the $25 fee for closing his IRA.

He leaves, and now it's 10:00. This has to be a record (for me, at least) - 5 SCs in 1 hour. Now the lobby's cleared and it's quiet - for the moment.

The rest of my day was comparatively uneventful.

[ArcticChicken]

SC #2: Asks me when the next of his 22 CDs will mature. Complains that he might have to cash one in to pay insurance. (Same guy normally has an inch-thick envelope of $100s in his pocket.) Brags that he visits friends at the hospital just for the free coffee.

What a fuckwad.

[Ghel]

Yeah, the guy's a real piece of work. I could do a whole post about what a penny-pincher he is.

Great avatar, BTW.

[marasbaras]

I fail to see how ANY of those were sucky. They were people doing normal banking.

#2 is a jerk ... but, how was he sucky with the OP?

[Enjis]

I must admit I see nothing sucky with a lot of the customers...they were doing normal banking things. Unless they were yelling or being insulting....which was not stated.
Sure, it was annoying work, just because it was so petty and tedious...but it was normal banking stuff, as far as I can see.
The customer who deposits into an account and then transfers it to another institution is really annoying tho. I would wonder if it was even legit to do it like that...

[Ghel]

I fail to see how ANY of those were sucky. They were people doing normal banking.

#2 is a jerk ... but, how was he sucky with the OP?

I cut out a lot of context to shorten things up.

#1 HAS a checking account. There's no reason she needs to send money orders with her bills. She's never overdrawn or anything that would require guaranteed funds like that. Yet she does this all the time. She called at the busiest time of day on the busiest day we'll have in months to get a crapload of money orders.

#2 wasted 10 minutes of my time and caused other customers to wait so I could verify information that we had just mailed to him the week before. Then he went on to brag about how much money he has and how little of it he spends.

#3 wouldn't tell me ahead of time what value he was shooting for with the savings bonds. Instead, he wasted his time, my time, and other customers' time by adding them himself. What should have taken 5 minutes took 20.

#4 were sucky mainly in that they were poorly informed. They didn't want to learn about FDIC insurance. And giving advice to customers that could be construed as legal advice is strongly cautioned against.

#5 does this every year. There's no reason he couldn't just take his contribution directly to the other institution. He claims he gets a much better rate there. I might say we could use the deposit, but his $2000.00 annual contribution that he pulls out at maturity isn't going to break the bank.

Basically, I feel that each one was wasting my time with trivial things (or things that should have taken much less time than they did). If it had been any other morning, or if they had not all come at once, they would not have been quite so sucky.

[marasbaras]

#1 HAS a checking account. There's no reason she needs to send money orders with her bills.

Maybe she likes doing it that way. Your bank offers the service, she is using it.

#2 ... Then he went on to brag about how much money he has and how little of it he spends.

Annoying, yes.

#3 wouldn't tell me ahead of time what value he was shooting for with the savings bonds. Instead, he wasted his time, my time, and other customers' time by adding them himself. What should have taken 5 minutes took 20.

Some people like their privacy.

#4 were sucky mainly in that they were poorly informed. They didn't want to learn about FDIC insurance. And giving advice to customers that could be construed as legal advice is strongly cautioned against.

So what? They wanted you to answer a simple yes-or-no question. And, apparently, you couldn't.

#5 does this every year. There's no reason he couldn't just take his contribution directly to the other institution. He claims he gets a much better rate there. I might say we could use the deposit, but his $2000.00 annual contribution that he pulls out at maturity isn't going to break the bank.

Maybe the paperwork to change things sucks. Maybe he doesn't feel like dealing with the paperwork for something that happens only once a year.

You know, quite bluntly, so what if a customer takes more time than is optimal. We are NOT all educated on all of your policies, rules, services, etc. That's why YOU are there. To help us.

Really, you should set the bar higher for suckiness.

Are these all frustrating? Sure. I can see that. Did they suck? Only #2 for being a jerk.

[Raieth]

Maybe she likes doing it that way. Your bank offers the service, she is using it.
Annoying, yes.
Some people like their privacy.
So what? They wanted you to answer a simple yes-or-no question. And, apparently, you couldn't.
Maybe the paperwork to change things sucks. Maybe he doesn't feel like dealing with the paperwork for something that happens only once a year.
You know, quite bluntly, so what if a customer takes more time than is optimal. We are NOT all educated on all of your policies, rules, services, etc. That's why YOU are there. To help us.
Really, you should set the bar higher for suckiness.
Are these all frustrating? Sure. I can see that. Did they suck? Only #2 for being a jerk.

I personally take offense to you going off like this.

Whatever happened to the board I signed up for? Where you could post anything remotely sucky or annoying so you could get it off your chest.

Now-a-days if what you need to vent about isn't an epic tale you get constantly criticized about how the situation isn't sucky. I can see the suck in all those situations. Think about it like this:
#1: Customer pays in pennies. Yeah we are required to take them and they could be a doll while paying. But it's still annoying.
#2: Was a jerk, no translation necessary.
#3: That's like asking the cashier if their credit card has fraud watch. Valid question, wrong person to ask.
#4: In all honesty I couldn't see anywhere that this guy had an account with her bank. He just makes that one deposit a year and then transfers it out. Seriously, what's the point?

If this board continues to raise the "suckiness" bar higher and higher, there is a good chance I will no longer subscribe here. I didn't join some high and mighty club with high standards that looks down on those with average tales.
No, I signed up to join a group of people that could truly understand my need to just let out the frustrations of the day, without the condescending prejudges that happens everywhere else.

And as a note: Gravekeeper, our local celebrity, frequently adds things that are on par, or below, this level of suck. And no one ever mentions anything. Is it because he happens to have a way with words that he appears to get special treatment?

[NateTheChops]

Not to add to the tension, but just being a cashier for Rank-Aid I feel your pain.

SC #1: I swear that some people just sit by the phone most days and wait for the exact second we open to ask us questions like this. It's especially annoying when we have a whole line of customers who have been waiting outside to get their paper and what have you. So while dealing with them and being one of the only two cashiers on in the morning, I have to answer a multitude of questions from peope on the phone while trying to ring up people who are cranky and irritable themselves.

SC #2: This guy kind of reminds me of the people that come in with a huge wad of cash. Either they just got their government assistance or it was pay day or whatever. But the smallest bills they have are always 50's and 100's and it's all they have and I either have to break a bill with the safe or I lose what little bit of cash I have in my till until the manager gets back from his morning coffee-breakfast-smoke break that takes him an hour.

SC #3: There's nothing wrong with someone asking questions. But I do sympathize with the way people expect you to have the right answer to everything. Being a cashier and not a pharmacist for example, I can't recommend medicine to any of my customers. But some of them will ask me time after time, after time, after time, what they should use to cure their (insert affliction here). It wouldn't be bad if they didn't keep asking me every single time and instead asked the people who are standing behind the counter with the large white letters above it that say PHARMACY.

[prb]

#2 sounds like my grandmother.

She has a sizeable sum of money, mostly in Oil (oops, mistake on her part, I warned her though), and is VERY cheap.

She usually gives me my paycheque 2 weeks late EVERY MONTH. (Yes, I work for her ) Even then I have to beg her for it.

She bought a 3-quarter-of-a-million-dollar house, and instead of hiring someone competent to do the work, she hired someone who was just fired from his janitorial job at a bakery, paying him $300 per week for landscaping, painting, plumbing, flooring removal, flooring installation and having the lot re-graded. She then complains that he doesn't do anything property (um, he doesn't know how) and tries to get out of paying him the measly $300 per week based on that.

[marty]

I can completely see getting frustrated at things that may seem trivial to others when you're trying to catch up on so much work. Nothing worse than stupid question day after a holiday..

#3 reminds me of the people who bring in 5,000 games to trade in and want to know the trade value of every single one. "This is worth this, this is worth this, this is worth this....someone please kill me."

[protege]

SC #5: Wants his IRA funds transfered to another institution. Not so bad by itself (it was a small amount), but he does this every year - makes his annual IRA contribution with us, then transfers it someplace else. And I forgot to charge him the $25 fee for closing his IRA.

I'd be *very* careful of this one. Sounds like someone's doing a little money laundering, or *attempting* to do some.

[Madhatter_67_85]

I'd be *very* careful of this one. Sounds like someone's doing a little money laundering, or *attempting* to do some.

Not necessarily. Could be the institution he is transferring the funds to has no brick and mortar building close by for him to visit or it could be a strictly online instutition. With either one he may just prefer to do the initial transaction in person so that he can verify it gets done to an IRA account and then from there it is just a matter of doing a wire transfer.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

1. Not sucky. So she wants 14 money orders made out; that's a normal banking thing. It may be time-consuming to make them all out, but these things happen.

2. Definitely a jerk.

3. So he asked his question to the wrong person. Not sucky. You can't expect everybody to know exactly who to address their question to. It may be frustrating, but that's your job.

4. May be more than the yes-or-no question it appears. But at the same time asking a question is not sucky, even though they could've did more research on their part.

5. Not knowing anything about IRAs and what is involved in transferring them among financial institutions, I can't comment on this one.

In summation, I see customers who may be mildly frustrating and take up more of your time than you'd like, but I can't call them sucky if they're otherwise polite. And since you didn't mention any rudeness out of them, I have to assume they were polite.

And finally: While this site is a great place to vent about your day, it shouldn't turn into complaining about having to do your job and deal with slightly difficult people. Customer and sucky customer are not synonymous.

[Saydrah]

I opened this thread expecting OP to work at a record store and have had an SC in fact go around breaking the inventory!

No, I have not had that afternoon coffee yet, thank you for asking.