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

[Kinitawowi]

"Do you sell Chinese keyboards here?" No sir, this is England. China is that way.

"I want to buy a RAM." Word of advice kids - if you're asking your mum for technical gifts for Christmas, be specific. We also got a poor sod returning NSMBU today because it didn't run on his daughter's Wii. I think the manager agreed to the refund mostly out of pity.

"How do you install Office?" Wouldn't be so bad, if not for the fact that it came from one of the sales guys whose damn job is to sell Office.

Numerous others, most of which have slipped my mind right now.

 

[darthmj94]

Not my own experience, and not really a question but this story really shows the headaches you can get working customer service.

My mother used to work as a customer service manager at a grocery store chain called "Publix" (They are mostly set up in the south-eastern U.S.) and one of the stores policies was to replace or refund anything a customer returned with a receipt if they were "not satisfied with the product", no matter what condition it was in, so some elderly customers would return bottles of wine with only about an ounce of wine left in it, six packs of beer with one can left, cartons of fruit with 5 perfectly good berries in it, and loafs of bread with only one slice left in the bag, and the store would refund every last penny to these cheapskates. It is not like they were low on money either because the town we live in is a tourist hot spot in Florida, most of the customers are rich beyond compare.

But the worst example is this, the store also had a place where you could get carryout store brand food, things like chicken strips, wings, and salads. Some people would buy a full chicken strip dinner of about 10 strips, and then return the bag they came in about 3 hours later with a tiny piece of chicken inside the bag it came in, claiming that they "were not satisfied with the quality of the food" and get the full refund.

It was the tourist's special way of saying "I have more money then you will receive in your entire life, but I still wont pay for my food"

How long did that policy last before management decided they were sick of having their profit destroyed?

I honestly don't know if it is still going on, no one in my family works there anymore.

 

[JochemHippie]

Now I don't walk retail, but I've had some pretty daft people approach me.

- I'm building for a festival, stacking some sub speakers. This festival is in a public park, so you'll have people walking by all the time. Now, these speakers weigh about 100kg each, I'm stacking them, ALONE. This guy stops and looks at me blankly for about half a minute before asking, me (Covered in sweat and some groaning as I lift them up) "Are those heavy?" ...

- Working in the concert venue, like I always do on weekends and I"m mixing for this Jazz band and an old dude walks up to me, while I'm infront of the audio board, mixing. "Do you really know what all those buttons are for?" I just stared him off, luckily it's not in my job description to deal with people like that >.>

- I'm mixing at a christmas show in a church, all fancy and dandy. Then this old lady walks up to me in the middle of the show. "Can you dim the lights? They're awfully bright" Well no fucking shit...


And then ofcourse the countless amounts of musicians who supposedly know better then me how their instruments should sound. Asking for a sound they can't describe and then getting mad when they don't get it >.>

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Now I don't walk retail, but I've had some pretty daft people approach me.

- I'm building for a festival, stacking some sub speakers. This festival is in a public park, so you'll have people walking by all the time. Now, these speakers weigh about 100kg each, I'm stacking them, ALONE. This guy stops and looks at me blankly for about half a minute before asking, me (Covered in sweat and some groaning as I lift them up) "Are those heavy?" ...

- Working in the concert venue, like I always do on weekends and I"m mixing for this Jazz band and an old dude walks up to me, while I'm infront of the audio board, mixing. "Do you really know what all those buttons are for?" I just stared him off, luckily it's not in my job description to deal with people like that >.>

- I'm mixing at a christmas show in a church, all fancy and dandy. Then this old lady walks up to me in the middle of the show. "Can you dim the lights? They're awfully bright" Well no fucking shit...


And then ofcourse the countless amounts of musicians who supposedly know better then me how their instruments should sound. Asking for a sound they can't describe and then getting mad when they don't get it >.>

All of that.

[HEADING=1]All of that![/HEADING]

Another one I've gotten is where I'm laying cable and some guy came up and asked, "Do you really know where they go?" No, I'm just hoping for the best...

My other favorite is where someone in the band knows exactly how the house sounds better than I do, never mind that they can't hear it, but, gosh darn it, they can sure feel it. >.>

 

[RicoADF]

The stupidest has to be "Do you work here?", but since that has been said, I will have to say:

"Where is the store's parking lot?", The best part? I was standing literally 5 steps from the exit door, within view of said parking lot.

And for one that made me want to punch someone in the face:

"Why should I listen to someone who's balls hasn't even dropped yet?" "Entitled" WIC customers are a different brand of sub-human...

EDIT:
This is from an experience at a store I DIDN'T WORK AT. I went over after work, still in uniform, no name badge. The store's (employee)dress code was black shirt and khakis, my work uniform is blue shirt and khakis.

A customer comes up to me and asks me to help them get something off the top shelf, i told them that I don't work there and I go back to browsing. They come back with a manager still complaining that I'm "Not doing my job.". I turn to the manager, he looks at me and to the customer, and tells her again that I don't work there. She throws a fit threatening to call corporate over it.

The manager leans in close to me, asks me my name and if he can "fire" me. So we stage this "firing" and I finish my shopping, and I end up getting a gift card for my "troubles".

Very interesting to say the least.

That's a good one, bet you and the manager had a good laugh about that one afterwards

 

[cerebreturns]

Not a question but I worked in a bookstore and a random customer had a hissy fit because I didn't know what book one of the column writers in a random newspaper talked about this week...

 

[TimeLord]

24th December 2012. 5pm (one hour before closing for Xmas)

Customer: "Do you have any fresh Turkeys left?"

Me: "No sorry"

Customer: "Why not?"

Me: ...

Because it's 5 in the afternoon on Xmas eve you fool! Everyone with half a brain bought their turkey days ago when we had hundreds in stock!
Can't say that to their face though

 

[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".