My Freaky Friday

[calulu]

Yesterday was one of those "Calgon take me fucking awayyyyyyy" days because it was filled with freaks.

Gramps Forgot His Meds

I had at least four senior citizens that were mumbling incoherent messes. You'd ask them what the delivery address was and they'd put down the receiver and run to take our their dog or whatever. They'd be mumbling and fumbling around their room about how the Kaiser is trying to steal their onions and totally forget that they had put you on hold to get their address book. I had to hang up on no less than four of these last night. Time wasters.

My Lord and Savior made two appearances last night! Both irritating..

Jesus Take The Headset

Sucky Religious Girl called and wasted my time and helped tank my capture rate.

Me: droning out company spiel in monotone because it's been one of those kinds of nights.
SRG: I'm Amber calling from the Annoy The Piss Out Of You church of Chicago telling you that Jesus loves you and have a blessed day.
Me: You know if you weren't calling to wreck my capture rate my day would be a lot more blessed.

Jesus Stop Rubbing Roses On Your Hoohah!

So it's Friday night in the summer, which means one thing, crank phone call from teenagers would should be out smoking dope, getting drunk, going to concerts or getting laid. Instead they are inside alone pretending to be clever.

Me: Company spiel, someone shoot me please! I need a freaking vacay!
Jesus Boy: Uh, er, yeah, I ordered flowers for my wife and she had a severe allergic reaction to them!
Me: *big sigh, slaps self in head and continues* What type of reaction did she have, what type of flowers and could you tell me your name so I can pull up the other.
JB: She broke out in welts all over her pussy and the order is under the name Jesus Christ.
Me: *click*

WTF, if you're going to call up and try to mess with me at least be somewhat believable until you pull your punchline, like the guy calling to complain his sister Ophelia Hieny didn't get her flowers. Don't give it up too soon.

And This Is Why I Tried To Tell You To Call Back With The Right Information...

Thursday night I sold an order going on Friday during the day for an elderly woman's birthday. There was some problem with the order, in fact I was very reluctant to take the order, tried to get the caller to doublecheck her info and call back because she had given me three different versions of the address and I told her if the info was incorrect it would not be delivered. The woman sounded like a low life bar fly type and was insistent that the last addy she gave me was the correct one.

So... guess who I get on the customer service line about 10:30pm, all liquored up and ready to fight? Low Life Bar Fly..

Me: yawning out company spiel by then
LLBF: Yeah, I ordered flowers for my granny and they have not been delivered. What the fuck if wrong with you people!!!! I PAYED SIXTY BUCKS!! I DEMAND SERVICE!!!

Sixty bucks total doesn't get you much of an arrangement, a lily or two and a whole lotta filler so it's not like this is some huge expensive order.

So I get her information, pull up the order and read through the notes. The florist had responded in the morning to tell us that the address on the order was incorrect and they needed the correct address. I read where our CS team tried to call the sender no less than six times and left messages and emailed her twice to let her know she needed to get back to us by 4 pm or the order would be canceled and refunded.

Me: Ma'am, the florist could not deliver this because the address you gave us was incorrect.
LLBF: That IS the correct address.
Me: No ma'am it isn't
LLBF: That IS the correct address.
Me: No ma'am it isn't
LLBF: That IS the correct address.
Me: No ma'am it isn't
LLBF: That IS the correct address.
Me: No ma'am it isn't
LLBF: Oh for petes sake! It's a small town, Elizabethtown Ky, the florist oughta know where this is! Make him go out and drive around looking for it!
Me: I warned you last night if I didn't have an exact correct address that this would not be delivered.
LLBF: Why didn't you idiots call me back?
Me; Customer care called you 6 times today and emailed you twice. You did not call back within the required time frame and it's company policy if we cannot deliver something by the close of business in each area we cancel and refund the order. You didn't call back, the order was canceled.
LLBF: Are you calling me a liar? I have infrared graphics on my phone that shows when someone called and no one from your company called!! What are you going to do about my 87 year old grandmother being disappointed she didn't get birthday flowers!!! Eleventy11111111!!!!!!!!! I WANT THEM OUT RIGHT NOW!!!
Me: Ma'am, you don't have a correct address, it's nearly 11 pm in the delivery area so all florists are closed and we've refunded your money. There are ten calls sitting in the queue so I have to say good night since there is nothing more I can do for you. Have a pleasant evening.
LLBF:F*ck you, you C *click*

All this over a cheap ass 40 buck arrangement of daisies and carnations?

[Mr Hero]

Kaiser is trying to steal their onions

I tied an onion to my belt since it was the style at the time. Now we only had yellow onions because of the war. I chased that Kaiser but gave up after dickety six miles.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I tied an onion to my belt since it was the style at the time. Now we only had yellow onions because of the war. I chased that Kaiser but gave up after dickety six miles.

And they needed those onions to wear on their belts, which was the style at the time...

[calulu]

And nickels had bumble bees on them....

[Jay 2K Winger]

And nickels had bumble bees on them....

Gimme three bees for a quarter, you'd say...

[Luna Baby]

and in E-town, KY, it's just like all other smaller cities--there's always multiple streets/road with very similiar names. Like Miller St., Miller Ln., Miller Blvd., etc. If you don't know the exact address, you MUST get it before you call in the order. Lord help her grandma if she needed 911 service and granddaughter was the one to call for help.

[Titi]

And LB that is EXACTLY why 911 got the software to show exactly where the person is calling from. (Although I'm just glad we didn't have a fire at my house when I lived in Maplewood, NJ. Because I got lost when I first moved there and went to fire station to see if they could help me and they told me that the street that I lived on didn't exist and I was either mistaken about the street I lived on or I was just trying to prank them. The map of the town proved that the street I lived on did exist.)

[DGoddessChardonnay]

And LB that is EXACTLY why 911 got the software to show exactly where the person is calling from. (Although I'm just glad we didn't have a fire at my house when I lived in Maplewood, NJ. Because I got lost when I first moved there and went to fire station to see if they could help me and they told me that the street that I lived on didn't exist and I was either mistaken about the street I lived on or I was just trying to prank them. The map of the town proved that the street I lived on did exist.)

That software is great and used by the 911 center in my area, but it's most useful if you have a landline phone. With mobile phones, it's harder at times to pinpoint where the caller is located (especially if the caller is using an older cellphone that came out before GPS) and the dispatcher will ask for additional information, such as the nearest cross-street or landmark. But with a landline phone, they can automatically pull up your address on their system.

Even with a landline phone, the 911 dispatcher could still ask for additional info, such as nearest intersection or cross-street (I think those are the same thing) if you are on a street that has a similarly-named one in town, which we have a few of those.

We have Elm Street (North and South)
North Eugene Street
South Elm-Eugene Street (starts south of downtown area, where S. Elm and N. Eugene merge and become one road.)

Luckily the road I live on is the only one with its name, so it's not hard for the nearest fire station to respond to calls in the neighborhood. We're also not far from the station, so 5 min. at the most.

[DeltaSierra]

With regards to the flower story, my brother worked as a pizza delivery guy and it amazed me how many people didn't even know their OWN addresses to have the delivery, let alone somebody else's.

That said, despite the fact that a $40 arrangement of carnations and daisies would be called "cheap ass", they're my favorite flowers LOL!! I get boquets of these quite often, because they aren't too expensive, and they last quite a while (especially the carnations.)

[calulu]

Oh I agree on the carnations! I love tiny pink carnations and get big bunches of those and alstrolameria from the wholesaler and make my own arrangements. They last a long time. I think they are pretty.

My remark about the cheap ass was more towards the attitude of the customers. It's is always the ones that purposely order the least expensive thing, grumble about how expensive it is and how they expected more for their money that go nuts when something goes wrong and shrieks about how they spent a 'whole forty dollars...eleventy111!!!!!!!!!!' like it's a zillion bucks that I was talking about. That entitlement whore attitude of I'm spending SOOooooo much money with your company you better wipe my fanny, kiss my ass and treat me like some precious coddled perfect being. These are the ones that will cuss you out because their order wasn't delivered because they ordered for an area being evacuated for a hurricane or flood or natural disaster (yeah, this happens) or refuses to accept florists run out of flowers, things happen or they might be ordering for an area with very few florists. No matter what type of discount you offer them or how you offer to rectify the situation they morph into assclown territory.

People ordering the higher end arrangements very rarely behave like that. You call them up to tell them the florist needs to substitute some of the flowers or that the one florist in the area asked if it's okay to delivery tomorrow instead or Wednesday or whatever and most of them are pretty cool about it. It's the people ordering the lower end stuff that act a fool.

I got a good taste of that yesterday afternoon when I had a guy call and the first words out of his mouth wasn't an inquiry if we could do an order but a long rambling unibomber style rant about how the customers is always right, florists are wrong for closing early in his area and with the economy being so bad those florists should do whatever he liked for the price he wanted at the time he wanted. It was 5:30 on a Saturday afternoon and no one in the Orlando area was open and he called me to complain, not order flowers. I could not help but point out that a) a business owner has the right to set their own hours, b) everyone was closed by 5:30 pm nationwide, c) the customer is not always right and d) the economic crisis does not give anyone the right to dictate terms to a business owner. He was pissy with me but quite frankly I didn't care, he wasn't calling to order, he was calling to complain about his local florist being closed. People like that I'd rather not take their orders because it's going to go wrong in some little way and it will suddenly be an emotional tsunami of cursing and crazy. Let those people pick up their arrangements at Wal Mart and Safeway.. which is what I ended up telling him to do.

[BookstoreEscapee]

That said, despite the fact that a $40 arrangement of carnations and daisies would be called "cheap ass", they're my favorite flowers LOL!! I get boquets of these quite often, because they aren't too expensive, and they last quite a while (especially the carnations.)

My roomie came home the other day with a big bunch of dyed carnations (). Some of them are blue, and match the cobalt-blue vases that she put them in. The rest are bright pink and orange and green and yellow. Nice and bright and cheery on top of the TV.

My remark about the cheap ass was more towards the attitude of the customers. It's is always the ones that purposely order the least expensive thing, grumble about how expensive it is and how they expected more for their money that go nuts when something goes wrong and shrieks about how they spent a 'whole forty dollars...eleventy111!!!!!!!!!!' like it's a zillion bucks that I was talking about. .

My brother and I ordered flowers for my parents' anniversary last year, and I think the total came to $50-something (with a discount that I get through work with 1-800-Flowers). I realize in the flower world this is cheap, but for me it's not exactly peanuts (but worth it for my parents) but if something had gotten screwed up I certainly wouldn't have gone crazy on them.

[csquared]

We have Elm Street (North and South)
North Eugene Street
South Elm-Eugene Street (starts south of downtown area, where S. Elm and N. Eugene merge and become one road.)

Be glad they didn't tell you Peachtree in Atlanta. There are 71 streets with Peachtree in the name.

http://www.pba.org/programming/progr...tasounds/1294/

[calulu]

My roomie came home the other day with a big bunch of dyed carnations (). Some of them are blue, and match the cobalt-blue vases that she put them in. The rest are bright pink and orange and green and yellow. Nice and bright and cheery on top of the TV.



My brother and I ordered flowers for my parents' anniversary last year, and I think the total came to $50-something (with a discount that I get through work with 1-800-Flowers). I realize in the flower world this is cheap, but for me it's not exactly peanuts (but worth it for my parents) but if something had gotten screwed up I certainly wouldn't have gone crazy on them.

Fifty something with a discount is not cheap! That would have been nice and respectable order, something nice.

The forty is with delivery and is all carnations and filler. And again, it's attitude, not money, it's the ones calling up saying *big sigh 'well I guess I HAVE to order flowers for Ma/Cousin/Whatever even if they are freaking ex-pen-sive! What's the cheapest thing you got?' another big martyrlike sigh* It's always the ones that ask for cheapest that claims they got robbed when the florist delivers a vase arrangement standing 16 inches high and filled with daisies or carnations. If someone is that pinched for money and acting like I'm extracting a pound of flesh I point them to the Wal Mart or Safeway where they can get something in the price range they were thinking.

Carnations can be safely dyed all sorts of fun colors (unlike roses which croak in a day if you dye them!) Just be sure when you use bright, cheery dyed ones not to freak out if they permanently stain a vase. I bought crazy-dyed daisies once because they were cheery and fun, put them in my nicest vase and I'm still scrubbing the strange tints off the glass...LOL

[EricKei]

Be glad they didn't tell you Peachtree in Atlanta. There are 71 streets with Peachtree in the name.

Oh Gadh. I lived there for a couple of years...

to name but a few...

peachtree (plain)
peachtree battle
peachtree ferry
peachtree commons(?)
peachtree peachtree peachtree peachtree peachtree spam and peachtree
peachtree dr/st/ave/cir/ln (add the above to any other combo shown)

[tamezin]

Sixty bucks total doesn't get you much of an arrangement, a lily or two and a whole lotta filler so it's not like this is some huge expensive order.

All this over a cheap ass 40 buck arrangement of daisies and carnations?

Keep in mind, this wonderful specimen of excrement was 100% bat S#it crazy...I totally agree.

If 60.00 doesn't get you much of an arrangement, I don't think I would want to purchase through your company. I would deal directly with a local florist. I understand way back when (before the internet), it was difficult to do if you didn't know the area. Those roadblocks don't really exist anymore, if you put some time and thought into the process.

Whether it was 40.00 or 60.00 both of those amounts are a substantial amount of money (to me), especially for something that is going to die in 7 - 10 days.