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

[funkyjiveturkey]

Anyway, I stop and just stare at him for several seconds, completely befuddled. He was returning a small audio adapter that was worth three or four euro. The price of petrol from there to here would have been ten or fifteen euro.

ah yes, i know this type. we have one that comes to my store on a regular basis.

and ye shall call him Returney McReturnington (yes, this is actually what our staff refers to him as)

for the obvious reason that he returns EVERYTHING!! like literally fucking everything he buys! we're a surplus store, which means exactly what it sounds like. second hand, refurbished, or if it's new it's extra stock that other stores, or our suppliers sell to us. so it's kind of a gamble with the stuff you buy, most of it's good but naturally some doesn't work.

for starters, he has a thick newfoundland accent (basically Canada's Texas), is overweight, doesn't know anything about anything he buys, and is always VERY rude to our staff. he buys several hundred dollars of shit, returns it all the next day, complains about how our store sells piles of junk and shit products, then he goes out to the store floor and buys several hundred dollars more of stuff!

one time doing the exact thing this man did for you. first he demanded that i assist him immediately while helping someone else while my foot was injured. after i go over and help him find the adapter piece he's looking for (which $0.99 canadian) he says if it doesnt work he's going to come back and return it, which would've cost him about 15 times that in gas (which per litre is still more expensive than this piece he bought)

 

[funkyjiveturkey]

okay okay, i got another one. this one isn't stupid, but it is funny in a stereotypical way.

a man in probably his early to mid 50's comes in. clearly a practicing jew; he had the yamuka (i don't think that's how it's spelled), curly hair, the star of david necklace and everything. obviously i don't care about that sort of thing, frankly i think people still pick on the jewish far too much in this day and age. but he walks straight up to the counter and says...

"hi, do you have any REALLY cheap hard-drives?" (he even put emphasis on the really cheap part)

me and my friend looking at each other holding back intense laughter and explained we didn't have any that fit the price range he told us.

 

[funkyjiveturkey]

C: Hey there. How are you? Listen, I need this f*cking etc.

Swearing continuously, even if you?re not layering abuse at the workers is not appreciated. There might be children about or people who are easily offended and while they might not complain to you they certainly will complain to us about leaving people like you into the store.

indeed some of the language customers use is attrocious around kids.

a couple comes in two weeks ago with their 4 year old little girl

"hey bud, how much are these LED strip-lights? i need some cuz my fuckin last pair blew cuz the god damn powerlines and shit went all haywire on me then the box shit the bed and......(AND IT JUST OGES ON AND ON)

one guy came in talking to me about security cameras, and is talking about how (and i quote) a bunch of "goddamn sand-niggers" are trashing his property, and he's saying this with his 8 year old boy standing directly next to him!

 

[Zyxx]

I spent a few months working at a used game store, akin to GameStop but dealing in older games as well. Whooo doggy.
Some samples:
"What's the number for Wal-Mart/Pizza Hut/Wingstop?" (all places within walking distance of this store)

(little boy translating for his non-English-speaking dad) "Can you make this cheaper?" No, little boy, please explain to your father that this is a corporate-run store.

"Do you have a Mario game for the Playstation?" I suppose I can't hate on someone /too/ much for this if they're genuinely not aware of the property/company divisions, but to me it's just incredibly common knowledge.


Man: "Do you have a book with all the cheat codes?"
Me: "All the cheat codes for...?"
Man: "Video games."
Me: "Wait, you mean all video games? Ever"
Man: "Yeah."
Me: "Pretty sure that doesn't exist, man. And if it did it would fill up this entire room and then some."
Man: (visibly disappointed) "Oh. So there's nothing like that?"
Me: "Well, there's this website called GameFAQS..."
(A coworker later suggested that I should have scammed him, charging him for our "company periodical" which was really just a printout from GameFAQS. While an amusing thought, I'm not /that/ much of an asshole.)

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I don't have any stupid questions that spring to mind, but there is one incident I've been involved in not long ago that still has me shaking my head in disbelief. I work in a general store run by my parents, so we do a little bit of everything: Take away, groceries, petrol, soft drinks, ect. We also do gas bottle swaps for gas barbecues. The gas bottles are kept in a wire cage out the front of the shop (Yes, there is a reason why I'm going into details).

ANYWAY, About a week and a half ago, someone wanted to do a swap for a gas bottle, which was easy enough to do. I rang the transaction through and got the key to the cage and went outside to grab the full bottle, when I saw his son outside, smoking. This was all well and good, apart from the fact that he decided that he needed to sit down and the nearest thing that resembled a chair was a particular wire cage...

It took a while for me to figure out what to say, but the most diplomatic thing I could think of saying was "That's an incredibly stupid thing to do..."

His response? *Looks down* "Oh yeah, didn't think about that..."

(This person is 18, btw, so old enough to realise just how dangerous smoking next to 18 9kg gas bottles is)