Retail jobs: the dumbest customer question you've been asked?

[Spygon]

Similar one i work in a phone shop.

me "sorry we are out of stock of that model at the moment"
customer "but i want one now"

Oh you want one now i thought you were just asking about it i will go out the back and summon one from the damn ether.

Also once had a customer that was arguing with me about trying to upgrade his phone a year early.
He shouts at me "i pay your wages" sorry you pay £20 pounds a month you do not "pay" my wages the phone network does and i would like to keep my job thank you.

Also the classic just a quick inquiry ...two hours later still talking to the same customer.

 

[RicoADF]

* SNIP for obvious reason*

hifive mate! *message sent from Telstra HTC Velocity 4G*

Seriously though from what I can tell most of the stigma is from when Telstra was government owned and also just after going private, they were expensive compared to others (mostly on the lower end plans as Telstra has always been a premium provider). However they have learnt there's value in supporting the lower end as of late.

 

[Nubrain]

Oh my the stories. if you want proof that some people just shouldn't pass on their genes than work in retail.

My first real job out side of school work terms was working at a local family chain of video stores. It was a pretty fun job mostly and we had a lot of regulars that were normally wonderful. It was at the time that VHS was just starting to die but we still got most of our movies on DVD and VHS we had one lady that only rented VHS and insisted that they were rewound. (we had a tape rewinder for such things and a lot of people did forget to rewind) but she was polite about her quirk at least. We also had a number of mentally handy caped people that came in to get either kids movies or wrestling tapes and I actually loved dealing with them as they were all sweet hearts once you got to know them. So there I was 3 weeks on the job thinking that retail wasn't that bad and why did everyone say that it was?

Then he walked in and slammed the movie that he was returning on the counter.

c: This movie froze in the middle and wouldn't play the rest of the way. I want my money back. (Our new releases were less that 3.50 with tax but I seem to recall this being an older movie so he likely payed less than $2 for the rental.)

Me: Oh I'm sorry about that sir If you like you can go pick out another movie right now and I'll give it to you at no charge. (that was the store policy for that case refunds were next to impossible to do in our dos run computer system (hooked up to the dot matrix printer that needed the connected paper with the dot ribbons on the side.)

C: Why would i want another movie from this (insert profanity) place? You clearly aren't doing your job you shouldn't rent people movies that skip don't you check them all when they come back?

He was clearly getting very upset and raising his voice quite a bit and me being the retail rookie that I was made my first mistake and tried to reason with him. Explaining that on a slow day we still got 50-80 videos back a day and that number went up to 200-300 on the week ends and while we check to make sure the disks were all there and that they had no obvious problems like cracks that unless a customer tell us they aren't working we have no way to know and that watching all those videos to check them is just not possible not to mention that being a family store we were not allowed to have anything on that was rated higher than PG13

As you can imagine he did not respond well to this and in the end I had to call my manager in (she wasn't at the store...she was never at the store but that's another story) so she could do the refund because being a newbie I didn't have the clearance to do a refund. I almost quit on the spot but luckily I stuck it out and for the most part the rest of the customers were great with a few hiccups and a learned how to deal with the few unreasonable ones.

A year later the horrible manage ran the store into the ground and I moved for a job with great customers and bad management to one with great management and horrid customers. i worked at a call center that really treated the workers great and did all kinds of freebies and stuff to make everyone feel happy so there was lest turn over. which was good because we were taking calls for Sprint customer service and a lot of the customers had either started crazy or were driven that way by some of the other branches.

By then i knew to roll with the punches, agree with the customer and not take anything personally.

i still recall the woman who after getting her bill paid asked me if I knew a good place to get my nails or hair done not seeming to realize that i was in Canada and not in the same city or state that she was.

Then there was another woman that called because her phone wasn't working we weren't technical support but we had a few things we had to try before we could transfer them (is their account off because they haven't paid their bill? is there an outage in the area? if it was just activated make sure it was programmed right.) and the last thing we have to get them to do is power cycle the phone by turning it off and then popping out the battery for a few seconds. That seemed to fix 90% of things that I had seen but this woman told me that her phone didn't have a battery. i think that maybe it was sent to her without the battery and that's the problem but she quite loudly and rudely tells me that I was stupid and that her phone didn't need a battery and i didn't know what I was talking about and that she needed to talk to some one in technical support. i gladly did so as it was time for my break writing a note on the account that I checked for outages and account problems but i could not get the customer to power cycle the phone as she insisted her phone didn't have or need a battery. I always hoped the guys in tech got a chuckle at that one.

Then there was the many people that would have problems and insist they were not calling from the cell phone that would click out when I told them to do a power cycle.

The best one by far though was the man that wanted to know if I could put a credit on his account real quick without opening it and would not give me the information to get into his account unless I agreed to try to credit it first. he argued with for 10 minutes straight to try to get me to just try to put a credit on it or to catch me into promising that i would sight unseen. he finally gave me the phone number with the agreement that once i reviewed his account if there was any valid credits that I would see they were applied. not surprisingly when I opened the account there was a big red note saying that the customer was not to get any more credits and that if he wanted service he needed to pay his bill. looking into it he's had his phone for over 8 months and had yet to make a payment but had manged to keep his service on by scamming credits. I saw that he had a credit block on the account meaning that a supervisor would have to put a credit on if one ha been truly needed I also saw that he had called 5 times that day and each person had refused him credit. i'm quite sure that he hadn't payed until this day.

I think though the worse part about that job though was the difference in training in the different groups we had 6 weeks of training in a class room and then 2 weeks of taking calls with a great amount of extra support before we're really on our own. the sprint stores however have a short training video and a high turn over rate. I'm sure there are some long term people at those stores that are top notch and know their stuff every bit as much as i did but we never heard from the customers they served. so any call that started "I was at the sprint store and...." you knew nothing good was going to follow that and that you're in for a long call.

 

[Riddle78]

Computer store. Someone walks up to the counter with the biggest monitor we have and asks "How much memory does this computer have?" I shot him a look,and told him that it's a monitor;all it does is give you a picture. I then pointed him to the towers and components and said "Those make the computer itself." When he tried to argue,I cut him off and said, "Who's the one behind the counter here? I have this job because I know computer hardware." My manager had a good laugh when the guy left after buying a tower and about two thousand dollars worth of components. Next day,someone else came in,and brough one of our copies of Skyrim to the counter and asked if it would run on their PS3. I told them that,no,it won't because this is the PC version,and this store only serves PC users. Couple hours later,he brought in his computer...A dinky little ten year old laptop. I think you can guess his next question.

Gotta love how people don't understand the technology we've come to rely on and build our society on,eh?

 

[thiosk]

The vast majority of the planet is really stupid. It's astounding the first time you notice it. Classless, obnoxious, rude, annoying, and really, really stupid.

There is no shield betwixt ye and they in a retail job. Heck, you might even be one of them and be too stupid to realize it. I think it's no surprise that most of these stories come on Black Friday or related shopping times. Crazy oozes out of the woodwork on those days. I shut in on those days, draw the blinds, lock the doors, and load all the firearms.

 

[Ultress]

While not stupid per se this was probably the strangest:
Woman: I'd like a single(hamburger) with tomato.
Me: I'm sorry could you repeat that?
Woman: Yes I'd like a single with tomato.
Me: Ma'am we don't sell hamburgers.
Woman:This isn't Wendy's.
Me: No,dear this is Taco Bell.
Woman: Oh, ok sorry to bother you*leaves*

I'm still not quite sure what that was about.


Also for stupid,This was day after they'd just released the Doritos Taco and my mamger and I have a bet to see how long it will be before some asks if we have it in a soft shell. I tell him give'em 5 minutes. Not even 5 minutes later guess what some one asks.

Secondary one: A man calls in saying we messed up his order last week so we ask him what he had and he mentions an Item we haven't had in about a year. After we tell him as much, he says ok I'll just wait till you do have them.

 

[Phasmal]

Customer: Is this buy one get one half price?

Doesn't sound that stupid at first, but the store was plastered in `EVERYTHING IS BUY ONE GET ONE HALF PRICE!`.
It's on the shelves, the windows, the products, and every time a customer comes in the store we say `Everything's buy one get one half price!`.

Me: Yes, everything is buy one get one half price.
So they put the product down and pick up another one.
Customer: How about this?
Me: Yes. Everything is buy one get one half price.
Customer(annoyed): Well how am I supposed to know which ones are buy one get one half price?
Me: Everything is.
Customer: Well I don't see any signs!

 

[cerebreturns]

Hmm, now that I think about it I had a woman call up at the bookstore over the phone and go through a list of books she was looking for.

...they were all books on bondage.

She then proceeds to explain why she is looking for bondage books and trying to make me not think she's a freak.

After 10 minutes of listening trying to help her, learning that she was a school teacher, married for most her life, didn't have sex until she was in her 20s, and about as many other things as I could possibly not care or want to know I finally felt so awkward I just handed the phone off to my manager.

 

[Maxy]

Customers *repeatedly* asking for discounts on stuff after ive already politely told them no. My current record is 4 times in a row.
Them "If i grab three of these can i get a discount?"
Me "We do offer discount for RACV card holders but other than that no"
Them "But if i buy three can you drop the price a bit?"
Me "We dont do direct discounts unless you have an RACV card sorry"
Them "They are pretty expensive, if i grabbed three can you just drop the price a bit?"
etc, etc

Occasionally ive had customers come back annoyed asking why their shower caddy has rusted so quickly, after i explicitly told them not buy that one cos its made of chrome (im guessing they think im just trying to make a few extra bucks off them by pushing them towards the stainless steel...)

 

[Smeatza]

I once had a customer call me, aggressively asking if he could get a refund for an item bought on our online store without actually returning the item. When I said no he told me to "fuck off" and hung up.

Two weeks later I recieve a phone call from the same customer saying he is billing us for his time as I had said I would call him back 2 weeks ago (which I didn't) and he's had to stay home to wait for a call for 2 weeks.

The insolence.

 

[Daggedawg]

"Oh, you speak English? Great! Can I buy the iPhone 5 here and take it home and use it there?"

"No, they only work here in Japan."

"That's crazy. Why?"

(Hell if I know)
"They're locked to this region."

Repeat another 20 times. I didn't really enjoy working in retail.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I work in a restaurant, for the public obviously so here's mine.

We have a self serving salad bar in the restaurant which we fill up regularly. Now, there are 6 sauces ALWAYS on display, same 6 sauces every time. Low fat vinaigrette dressing, honey and mustard, mayo, thousand island, blue cheese and red french dressing (or red devil).

People often ask which one is the red devil.

Not only is that the only bright red sauce, but they are also labelled.

Spoiler: Off topic stupidity

We've had people complain their coffee is too hot. We've had people complain their gammon/ ribs aren't cooked because they're still pink. Not to mention the amount of people that don't know what a rare steak is. "Excuse me my steak is full of blood", "That's because that's how a rare steak is supposed to be madam", "Oh I don't like that I'm not paying for it".

 

[deviltry]

Working in the IT teenager area, repairs:
"It throws a pop up that says something" - I always replied "then it's something wrong with your computer". Then they go "that's what I'm saying to you" or they call me an idiot.

People also brought their computers from homes. I found one dead hamster and like three cases filled with dirt (I asked if by any chance they were keeping plants on top of their PCs, "yes", "well, don't", "why?", "radiation from the CPU kills plant life", "oh my goodness...").

Or working in another IT area when I was a teen, sales:
Talking with customer for 15 minutes, asking him questions about what he will do with his computer, going through all computers we have on sale. So I point out the best one for him (you know I'm being a consultant, he like asking for my help, it's also not his first PC, but an upgrade, and he used his PC for Word, IE and mIRC) - "oh no, that's too cheap", selects hi-end somewhat workstation type - I say yes this will last longer, but it's better to upgrade for a cheaper one earlier. Then he ignores me the second time (oh yea a god damn expert is telling what suits your computing needs, nah, ef that!) and buys a PC with the same CPU, less RAM and a GOD DAMN 6800GT (that was teh shit, after that summer's job I bought 6800GT and drooled at Doom 3) for his text processing and IE (yeah he said "games are stupid and a waste of time").

But later I learned how to be an IT salesman - "what do you need it for? aha.. aha.. aha.. buy this one, perfectly balanced with good CPU and good VGA, NEXT!"...

And now I'm working as a .NET developer. All should be rainbows and unicorns, like no more grandmas bothering you. Oh hell no. You're halfway through a project, bam "slight specification modifications" come in - two week's work gone down the drain. "We will have to delay your project for 2 weeks" - "hell no!"; "then you will have to pay more for our overtime" - "hell no!"; "good bye and you are not getting your deposit back" - "screw you imbeciles". Aight.

Or the odd request to program something close to a god damn Skynet, lol. Like "this should crawl through our competitor websites, learn new design if they update their site, read news and stock info and predict the god damn future prices (together with fuel prices calculating shipping costs!), get a photo of some product in various angles and add to our listings beggining from front/left side/back". Well we name realistic price for that, like more than a million euros and they call us incompetent imbeciles, because his nephew could do this in a month for a hundred if he had the time with Turbo Pascal and HTML.

 

[Bernzz]

I'll turn around the thread. This is a fairly stupid question I asked, and probably the among dumbest this hotel clerk ever heard.

I had been in Australia for less than a year, and had to travel for work. I must add I don't care for sports in general. I was staying in this hotel in Brisbane, and upon checking out I noticed that one of the four nights I had stayed was being charged fairly higher than every other night.

Naturally I asked why was I being charged like that.

Turns out that night, there was a big Rugby match, one on the State of Origin series, and those nights, scores of fans travel to the appropriate city to attend matches, maxing out the hotels.

In my defence, I had no way of knowing, but everyone, and I mean everyone in Australia knows about it. Its a big thing

We do? Sure, I'm not from Brisbane, but I have a hard enough time remembering what month the AFL Grand Final is in, and everyone know that. I'd ask the same question as you, I have no fucking clue about State of Origin. XD

OT: Having only done work experience in retail, I only have one stupid question. There I am in K-Mart, putting up a display, when this guy comes up to me.

Him: "Excuse me mate, do you know where the high visibility work clothing is?"

Me: (bear in mind this was my last day of the singular week I'd be working there, so five days in the store, mostly spent out the back unpacking stock) *looks around* "Oh, they're right over there, sir."

The thing is, where I was standing, there was a pole (and lots of clothing obscuring the way as well) between me and the high vis stuff. Where he was standing? Clear line of sight, to the high visibility stuff, and him only a few metres away at that.

Facepalmed once he'd gone.

 

[deviltry]

I'll turn around the thread. This is a fairly stupid question I asked, and probably the among dumbest this hotel clerk ever heard.

I had been in Australia for less than a year, and had to travel for work. I must add I don't care for sports in general. I was staying in this hotel in Brisbane, and upon checking out I noticed that one of the four nights I had stayed was being charged fairly higher than every other night.

Naturally I asked why was I being charged like that.

Turns out that night, there was a big Rugby match, one on the State of Origin series, and those nights, scores of fans travel to the appropriate city to attend matches, maxing out the hotels.

In my defence, I had no way of knowing, but everyone, and I mean everyone in Australia knows about it. Its a big thing

We do? Sure, I'm not from Brisbane, but I have a hard enough time remembering what month the AFL Grand Final is in, and everyone know that. I'd ask the same question as you, I have no fucking clue about State of Origin. XD

OT: Having only done work experience in retail, I only have one stupid question. There I am in K-Mart, putting up a display, when this guy comes up to me.

Him: "Excuse me mate, do you know where the high visibility work clothing is?"

Me: (bear in mind this was my last day of the singular week I'd be working there, so five days in the store, mostly spent out the back unpacking stock) *looks around* "Oh, they're right over there, sir."

The thing is, where I was standing, there was a pole (and lots of clothing obscuring the way as well) between me and the high vis stuff. Where he was standing? Clear line of sight, to the high visibility stuff, and him only a few metres away at that.

Facepalmed once he'd gone.

Well to be fair if I go into a store to buy stuff I rarelly use (like something for my car or some nails) and I know that I won't identify that rare stuff just by glancing over, I go inspecting items one after another and yes sometimes consultant shows up offering help and the item is next to me, because I haven't got there yet.

Although high visibility clothes... Hmm...

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Not retail, but when I worked in food service, I had worked at a pizza buffet for a year and a half. Someone came up and asked for a pizza with only pepperoni on it, and the brought it back complaining that we had put cheese on it, too.

 

[Pipotchi]

I worked at a train station in the UK and if we were closed at the weekend (engineering work) the front barriers would be closed, all the gates would be closed and I would have a solid wall of poster boards saying station closed coupled with constant announcements saying station closed no service etc.

Customers will still open the gates, move the boards aside, and crawl under the gates in order to access the platforms then ask me when the next train is

The mind boggles

 

[Northern64]

Working at Walmart, the questions I get are numerous. The common ones are things like:
"Do you work here"?

"Are you the only one working right now"?
As if I just like standing behind the till and directing 12 people like a traffic cop.
"Can you open the cabinet"?
Wouldn't be doing my job if I couldn't

But my favorite is when people will ask about an item in the flyer, which is national by the way. When they discover that this store didn't get the shipment become enraged to the point of not wanting to know that the store 10 minutes away did get it and still has half a dozen left.

 

[scarletStiletto]

Overheard a couple.

Starbucks at Stansted airport, the woman in front of me reached the till and asked, "Do you sell coffee?"
At least she found the right place.

And once in a Games Workshop, waiting for my boyfriend to finish shopping, someone came in asking "where are the games?". It sounded like they were quite used to that question though, and politely directed the customers to the nearest GAME.

 

[SquidVicious]

Not really a question, but I never tire of telling this story.

When I was 18 I was working in my second lumberyard and on one dreary Saturday this homeowner, in a desperate attempt to "help" the guy he had contracted to section off one room and make it into two, came in to pick up the 2x4 studs. Now I don't expect everybody to know that 2x4 isn't exactly 2 inches by 4 inches (it's more 1 1/2"x 3 1/2"), but this guy went berzerk on me, accusing us of cutting them down. He was also quite upset that they had things like knots and wanes (all common in spruce and fir lumber) and decided that he was going to use a rough face cedar 2x4 because they were exactly 2 inches by 4 inches. I obliged him, changed his invoice so we were billing him for cedar instead of spruce and sent him on his way, doing my best to not crack up as he drove out of the yard. About an hour later the contractor comes back in with the cedar and changed them out for the spruce, while we had a great time laughing about how stupid that guy was and how after getting reprimanded by the contractor, he went into his office and closed the door.

In terms of questions, a lady once asked me if it was bad to eat the concrete mix.