Captain2
Don Corleone
Big Daddy Cool
Posts: 1,990
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Post by Captain2 on Jan 31, 2013 13:50:19 GMT -5
Working at a grocery store I had two customers come up to me with a thing of meat for stews that said "12.99" on it, it clearly had the sticker right on it and even scanned at 12.99 as it should. They insisted it had been on a shelf that said it was on sale for three dollars. I called the meat department but nobody picked up, they claimed they had been talking to someone back there so I recommended they go back to talk to them in person because at the very least I'd need a sticker fixing the price and I couldn't leave my cash because I had a huge line. They said that they'd just wait for me to get the meat department on the phone rather than go back and talk to someone at the counter there themselves. I had them staring at me for nearly fifteen minutes as I put the other customers through, called the meat department AND paged the meat department.
Finally they got bored, took my original advice and went back, talked to someone actually in that department and came back with a much smaller amount of meat accurately priced for 3 dollars.
I was really annoyed both with the meat department people and those folks who saw fit to stare at me and not take any initiative themselves to fix that silly problem.
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Post by wrestleauthor on Jan 31, 2013 15:45:32 GMT -5
The "customers" who used to annoy me the most were the ones who'd come in, ask a million questions (most of them stupid), waste over half an hour of my time - that could've been used waiting on someone who was actually there for a purpose - and then walk out without buying anything....and the same people did this EVERY DAY. It got to the point when I saw them coming, I'd just duck in the back.
Now you know why I prefer solitary work.
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Post by KStrick on Jan 31, 2013 15:53:11 GMT -5
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Post by Ishmeal Loves BBL Bayley on Jan 31, 2013 16:00:50 GMT -5
Because I live in Montreal, there are a lot of times when I can get terrible customer service but what saves me is my size. I think a lot of people are afraid to be outright rude to me because of it because they think I may go psycho on them and do something. However, I work in daycare and I'm in charge of the waiting list. Getting daycare here is a nightmare due to our 7 dollar a day program and as a result waiting lists are massive and it's normal to wait years for a spot and you may not get one anyways. So I get a lot of parents coming in who treat me like I'm the most evil son of a bitch who ever existed. I've been called racist, corrupt, I've had my family history called into question, my mother's been insulted, etc. I've been laughed at, mocked, given the finger, threatened with a lawsuit, lied to, been subjected to tons of manipulation attempts, offered bribes and once was offered a roll in the hay. One parent got in my face so much that she was trying to get me to hit her so she could turn around and say I tried to assault her. I didn't bite (but boy was I tempted). A lot of our clientele are also immigrants. So when they come they speak in their language and then speak to me. It is so obvious that they're saying something insulting about me but then become sugary-sweet when talking to me in English. I live in Sudbury and one of my favorite things to do when people try speaking in french in front of me to so they can be rude is to reply to them in french. never assume someone can't understand you just because you're speaking in a different language When I was in high school, I worked at a Roy Rogers on the New York State Thruway. We got LOT of French-Canadian customers who would talk in French to each other, then speak broken English (a lot of times faking it) to me. I took French all throughout school. French-Canadian French is somewhat different than native French, but similar enough to pick up on what people are saying. I used to love answering them in French about a menu question, especially if they had just been talking shit. Got a lot of shocked looks.
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Post by pepsitwist on Jan 31, 2013 16:13:39 GMT -5
I'm sure some of the English posters will remember Woolworths. It was my first job aged 18. I can vividly recall people throwing money at me and the counter when it came to paying for their goods. This was after they'd ignore my polite 'hello' - these people would say nothing the entire time.
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Post by Famous Rocking Chimes on Jan 31, 2013 16:44:33 GMT -5
I have two stories, and amazingly they both happened on the same day during the same shift.
During an 8 hour shift that I went through on a Sunday the rest of us staff discovered we were going to be incredibly short staffed for the day, leaving just me, two other store assistants and the branch supervisor. Since this was during the first week of December, needless to say it didn't bode well for how quickly we deal with customers. Thankfully most people in Broxburn appear to be calm and rational with the exception of two particular individuals.
The first customer came up to me at the kiosk saying that she had bought a newspaper for the sole reason of wanting the TV guide that came free with it, only to discover that there was no actual TV guide in it. Trying to be as helpful as I could, I offered to look through that particular batch of papers to see if I could find one that contained the TV guide. Doing so would mean I would have to leave the kiosk for a period of time with only one other person on the tills and the store was already busy enough as it was. I flicked through each paper and it turned out that none of the papers actually had the TV guide in them. I apologised to her and said that it appears none of our papers have the TV guide in them. She starts getting a bit peeved off to say the least and states that she only bought the paper for the TV guide, and that she should either get a refund or I should go into the backroom and see if there's any TV guides there. All the while her screaming child is doing everyone's head in. Eventually I asked the branch supervisor if we keep separate batches of TV guides lying around as I was still relatively new at the time, and he said that if there was no TV guides in any of the papers there was none at all. At this point she goes into "Sick of this" mode and asks to speak with my supervisor and I was more than happy to do so because I couldn't be bothered with her any longer. First of all, if she only wanted to get the TV guide why didn't she have a look through the papers first to see if there was any in them? Secondly, even if she didn't the TV guides are thick and have a plastic bag around them which pops out from the edges of the pages so it would've been easy to notice anyway. And thirdly, there was a perfectly fine paper shop ACROSS THE DAMN ROAD, why didn't she go there first? I know this because she said she was going there after speaking to my supervisor (I ended up giving her a refund, which could've been done earlier if she hadn't been so difficult).
Later on the guy who was also on the kiosk with me was asked by a Polish guy for Windsor Blue (a brand of cigarette). Broxburn is a haven for Eastern European immigrants and we get customers like them all the time. Some are really nice while others appear to have left any decent manners back wherever they came from. This guy was part of the latter. His accent was so thick that my colleague thought he was asking for Rizla Blue cigarette papers. After being unable to understand what the guy was saying, the customer blew a gasket and started screaming and swearing at my co-worker to the point where he just gave up and held up a box of Windsor Blue and the customer said "YES THAT ONE! MAYBE NEXT ****ING TIME YOU REMEMBER THE ****ING THING!". Keep in mind that there was a whole line full of customers with children nearby and here was this childish asshole losing his mind and throwing a hissy fit because we have to be fluent in Polish accents now that he's here in Scotland. I just glared at him the whole time and I came so damn close to telling my co-worker not to serve the guy based on his shitty attitude. To top it off, he threw all his money on the counter and was just about to walk off before my co-worker called him back because he hadn't given him enough. That didn't exactly help matters and the guy eventually threw a £10 note at my co-worker and told him to keep the change. Everyone else in the line and myself were commending him for not saying anything back to him or even refusing to sell the guy. It was absolutely shocking behaviour and I've always said to myself that I were to ever get abused like that from a customer I would just refuse to sell them whatever they were wanting. There's being rude and then there's being a complete arse.
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jan 31, 2013 16:50:03 GMT -5
Probably the guy that called up, demanded I refund his money. Without giving a name, or an order number... or anything that I could actually use to see what he was talking about... not that it mattered since I as a customer service rep was unable to do anything regarding refunds... and upon telling him this yelled f*** you into the phone and hung up.
Don't remember any other bad customers off the top of my head but he sticks out.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jan 31, 2013 16:52:53 GMT -5
Yeah, I've worked for a few companies - British Gas is the main one here. It's a hard job in winter, because you're booking appointments and everybody wants their boiler servicing RIGHTTHISSECOND when they could've done it in Summer when...y'know...old people aren't dying from the cold. The sheer laziness or cowardice or whatever the f*** from so many people I worked with. All I did was say "Totally understand where you're coming from and I can see why you'd be frustrated, but you have to understand - if we send an engineer out to take a look at your boiler, which is perfectly fine and working properly, that means we've got an engineer who can't get to a 90 year old woman with no other heating who might not last the night." Firm truth, solved the issue, made people realise they weren't being as reasonable as they should've been, and it stopped people from wanting to speak to supervisors. How hard is that, really? Other people just said "Can't help you, sorry. No, I won't give you my last name. Fine, I'll get my supervisor." That supervisor will then spend half an hour on the phone to someone you could've dealt with in ten seconds, and now another poor old lady's freezing tonight. I worked for Homeserve, and some of the customers we go in basically this exact situation were ridiculous. We had a customer once who had reported her broken boiler because it gave hot water but not heating. When our guy left, he had turned the boiler entirely off and the woman was calling to complain. I called the engineers (who aren't allowed to give their diagnosis to the customer then and there because they need to run it by us) and it turned out the boiler was 1. about 30 years old and so not worth repairing 2. completely freestanding, it was only attached to the house via the water pipes 3. leaking carbon monoxide and that if they'd left the boiler on another day or two it was likely everyone in there would be dead. The woman would not accept this, no matter how many times I told her. She was demanding we send someone out to switch it back on so she had hot water at least, and I told her that we would never employ an engineer who'd do that, and that it wasn't getting fixed because any single part would be worth more than the boiler was now. I was on the phone to her for 45 minutes, and eventually my manager gave me permission to cut her off because she wasn't getting it at all. Only customer I've ever been allowed to cut off in the six months I worked there BTW.
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jan 31, 2013 20:35:26 GMT -5
I thought of a few other bad customers... though most of them had legitimate gripes but were taking it out on me, a person with no authority to do anything about it.
Edit: Though there were also a few occasions where I had to pretend to be my managers manager, to get people off the phone because they didn't believe that a woman was in charge of the call center.
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Feb 2, 2013 11:21:52 GMT -5
I work at a grocery store and man do i have stories. One day when i was working the register an older lady and her grandson came to my line. She wrote a check, so I politely asked to see her ID. She replied, "what for?" I told her it was to verify the information on the check and it was for her security. She gave me a dirty look and said, "I don't want him to see my address. He might be a gangbanger." (i'm hispanic btw). I kept my cool and assured her that i was not a gangbanger while her grandson was extremely embarrassed. What did she think I was going to do? Break into her house and steal her Epsom salts and Dentucreme?? Grocery/convenience stores may be the worst for customers. I remember at my first job I scanned in over $100 worth of stuff for some guy and his son. After the final price rung up the father said, "That's not right. It can't be that much." I asked him what he thought rung up wrong and he said, "I don't know, but there is only about $40 worth of stuff here." So I said I'd check with the supervisor (since I wasn't going to just ring up all that stuff again since I knew it was the right price). The supervisor on shift was generally kind of a jerk so she got snippy with me and told me to go work in the aisles. After the customer left I came back and she told me, "Yeah, you rung up everything right. Idiots."
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Feb 2, 2013 11:34:23 GMT -5
I work at a grocery store and man do i have stories. One day when i was working the register an older lady and her grandson came to my line. She wrote a check, so I politely asked to see her ID. She replied, "what for?" I told her it was to verify the information on the check and it was for her security. She gave me a dirty look and said, "I don't want him to see my address. He might be a gangbanger." (i'm hispanic btw). I kept my cool and assured her that i was not a gangbanger while her grandson was extremely embarrassed. What did she think I was going to do? Break into her house and steal her Epsom salts and Dentucreme?? Grocery/convenience stores may be the worst for customers. I remember at my first job I scanned in over $100 worth of stuff for some guy and his son. After the final price rung up the father said, "That's not right. It can't be that much." I asked him what he thought rung up wrong and he said, "I don't know, but there is only about $40 worth of stuff here." So I said I'd check with the supervisor (since I wasn't going to just ring up all that stuff again since I knew it was the right price). The supervisor on shift was generally kind of a jerk so she got snippy with me and told me to go work in the aisles. After the customer left I came back and she told me, "Yeah, you rung up everything right. Idiots." it always amazes me how people sometimes have zero concept of how much a full cart of groceries costs. this isn't a personal anecdote but a few weeks back we had a customer who insisted on repeatedly referring to one of my co-workers as a gay slur beginning with an F to the girl who was putting his groceries through,for seemingly no reason. even if you have a problem with people having different orientations, you'd think the guy would be smart enough to realize that's not something you just go around shouting loudly. some people have no tact. he's lucky he wasn't talking to me about my co-worker that way. on the same day I had a guy who was leering at the girl in the next cash, pretty much had his eyes glued to her ass the whole time,wasn't even being subtle about it, and he insisted upon encouraging me to join him in being a creeper. when I told him this is my place of work and I don't objectify my co-workers he got pissed at me and didn't seem to understand why I didn't want to join him.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Feb 2, 2013 12:10:57 GMT -5
it always amazes me how people sometimes have zero concept of how much a full cart of groceries costs. My ex wife used to get people yelling at her because they thought that she'd got the price of an item that's 50% off incorrect. Keeping in mind she doesn't even do the calculation, the till does, so it's like a next level of dumb.
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