Your customer service experience. The good, the bad, the funny, the outrage & bizarre.

Dreph

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During college I sold bread at farmers markets, never do this by the way, and I had one of my weird and honestly creepiest interactions with a customer there.

I sold a man a set of rolls and he turns takes starts to leave, and turns back and the following conversation happens.

Him: "What is your blood type?"
Me: "B-" (very confused and lying, because who tells a random stranger this)
Him: "Well that makes things a little more tricky, but if you need a kidney I could probably get you one."
Me: "Thanks?"

And he proceeds to hand me a note with a phone number on it. To this day I still have no idea what happened or why he thought I would want a kidney.
 

Tiger King

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PaulH said:
Never really done a heavy customer service job barring way back when in an Indian restaurant I worked at when I was 14-15. We had a customer who was a regular so I didn't want to insult... but mid way through his main course, he reached over to a recently vacated table I was cleaning. There was a half eaten tandoori chicken dish.

He picked it up, put it on his table and muttered: "So wasteful." I had to step in. I was kind of half shocked so I couldn't pull off my usual, cool, professional tone. "You're not seriously going to eat that, are you!? They left it on the table for upwards of 30 minutes and they attacked it with knives they put in their mouth. Besides, you're supposed to be paying us for food."


He looked at me like I was from Pluto. Just... I don't get some people. I could understand if it were some pauper... but this guy was always dressed like a successful accountant.
That's messed up.
When I was 16 I worked in one of those crappy places on the motorway/highway that has a McDonald's and petrol station on them.
One day I was cleaning tables and feeling very bitter with the world. People can be such pigs, smearing ketchup everywhere, chips left all over the place, and one massive prick had filled his burger carton with coke so when I picked it up it leaked out everywhere. What a comedic prankster right!?

Anyway, I worked with this small round Indian guy who was pretty challenged at everything. Life had thrown him a bit of luck in the form of an arranged marriage to a very beautiful, woman though, so I guess good for him.
Nice enough guy but he really struggled with everything, he was just slow at everything you know?
This guy got sacked because when he was clearing tables he was eating the left over food. Half eaten burgers, fries/chips, all went down the hatch. I once saw him pick a half eaten burger I had thrown into the bin/trash and wolf it down.
Pretty disgusting.....

A recent experience, not really customer service, but I went to look at a vw Jetta the other day at a local dealer. Think it was a 2002, body was in good shape, interior was ok I guess, brake pads were completely dead. I brought up the problem with the salesman and he absolutely would not shift on the price. So he was basically trying to flog me a car where I would have to get the brakes fixed immediatly. Crazy salesmanship!
 

Scarim Coral

Jumped the ship
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Oct 29, 2010
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The good
Pretty much anyone that mention that he or she had worked or is currently working in retail. In another word, they understand you from retail side of things therefore can NEVER be pissed at you!

The Bad
Every other customers that get pissy just because I didn't say "pleased".

Disclaimer- I have ALWAYS been polite to the customer! I will say thank you/ thanks most of the time (I forget sometime if I had talked alot to the customer and recently one customer got pissed that I didn't say it, that *****) and I ALWAYS say "take care" or "bye". I mean seriously, I KNOW I can never talk shit to the customer or my manager will get pissed at me which I do not want!
Anyway the reason I don't say "pleased" is simply because I get tongue tie. Seriously have you try saying "That will be one pound and thiry five pence pleased"? Ok most of the time I don't asked the change in full sentence but apparently, it seen I rain people parade just because I didn't say the magic words to make the rain go away!

The funny
Probably that one guy who actually laugh at my answer on why I used the detector pen (to test if the note money is fake or not) on drawing a moustach on the queen lip. Whenever a customer asked that, my answer is "if the mostache shows up then she's an imposter!".

The outrage bizzare
N/A

Also yeah I can agreed with Currys PC World-
I literally waited 3 minutes waiting to be serve on the til. Ok I can get it was Monday morning but hey! The retail I worked ALWAYS take piroty on serving customer on the til which I can fully understand and support as I for one hate waiting around! I mean seriously there was even one guy behind the til on the laptop!
 

SlumlordThanatos

Lord Inquisitor
Aug 25, 2014
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Frezzato said:
I always return shopping carts to collection areas before I leave a place, and one time I was walking a cart back to a building and an employee reached out and thanked me. I was surprised and asked him how he knew I was returning the cart and not going in to shop. "I can tell from your body language," he replied, which still fascinates me to this day.
Cart pushers from Walmart stores around the world thank you for your service.

But the best story was when I was working Electronics. It was a few minutes before I went home for the night, and I was hanging out in front of the Electronics desk, trying to look helpful.

Well, this heavyset black guy took this opportunity and ran with it.

The guy was obviously stoned out of his mind; he was walking at a slow pace, and had the stupidest smile on his face. He looks at me, and beckons me over to him. "Hey, man!" he said. "I got a question for you."

"Of course, sir! How can I help you?" I replied.

He looks over his shoulder, and takes a moment to look around the store before he leaned in close to me and lowered his voice:

"Do you know where I can find some weed?"

"...I'm sorry?"

"Some weed, man. I'm dying here, do you have any idea where I could find some?"

Unfortunately for Stoned Black Dude, I was veritable stick-in-the-mud. I didn't even drink, and I wouldn't have the first idea of where I could find pot. But I never thought that I would ever have someone asking me for pot while I was working at Walmart.

Still, that was a welcome change from the tweakers who would come in and buy 5 cans of compressed air, huff it, and then come back the same day for more.
 

Fox12

AccursedT- see you space cowboy
Jun 6, 2013
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I was checking out a customer late at night. A skinny guy walked into the store and got a cup of coffee off the table. A few minutes later he walked past me and left the store. Me and the customer I was checking out gave each other a look. Then, with the most dead pan expression I've ever seen, the customer acknowledged the elephant in the room.

"I don't believe that gentleman was wearing any pants."
 

Kinitawowi

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Nov 21, 2012
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Parasondox said:
You don't have to mention the place you are working at now. Unless you work at Curry's PC World then please, by all means expose. As a customer, I dislike that store. Openingly misselling a service, giving misinformation and charging for something that could have been done for free.
Well, with all due respect, if it could have been done for free, why didn't you do it yourself? You want somebody's time and effort to do something for you? You're going to have to pay for that time.

(Yes, I work on the Knowhow counter at a Currys / PC World {DISCLAIMER: I'm speaking right now as an individual and any opinions I express here are in no way intended to be representative of those that may or may not be held by the Dixons Carphone Group}. Customers say they hate the place, and I can promise you that the staff hate it even more than the customers do... but uncomprehending whining entitled shits annoy me most of all. Both customers and management...)
 

Chessrook44

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Feb 11, 2009
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Closest I worked was as a cashier for a beach near where I worked. People would always be shocked that it cost money, and I had a whole shpiel for that.

"Twelve dollars to get onto the beach?! What the hell are we paying for?"
[Counting fingers] "Well you're paying to keep the beach clean, to keep the beach maintained, to keep the boardwalk clean, to keep the boardwalk maintained, to keep the beach safe, to pay for the lifeguards, to pay for US..."

By that point they usually get the picture.

Also, I would like to leave this link here... NotAlwaysRight [https://notalwaysright.com/] is a site FILLED with stories of this kind of stuff. Stupid, bad, and OUTSTANDING (in all forms of the word) customers. Worth reading for a chuckle, if you can stand it.
 

Parasondox

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Jun 15, 2013
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Kinitawowi said:
Parasondox said:
You don't have to mention the place you are working at now. Unless you work at Curry's PC World then please, by all means expose. As a customer, I dislike that store. Openingly misselling a service, giving misinformation and charging for something that could have been done for free.
Well, with all due respect, if it could have been done for free, why didn't you do it yourself? You want somebody's time and effort to do something for you? You're going to have to pay for that time.

(Yes, I work on the Knowhow counter at a Currys / PC World {DISCLAIMER: I'm speaking right now as an individual and any opinions I express here are in no way intended to be representative of those that may or may not be held by the Dixons Carphone Group}. Customers say they hate the place, and I can promise you that the staff hate it even more than the customers do... but uncomprehending whining entitled shits annoy me most of all. Both customers and management...)
Because this was 5 odd years ago. And I did not know much about tech then. And the issue at hand was installing an anti virus software. The staff member said, "because this laptop doesn't have a CD drive, you can't install NORTON 360. So how are you going to protect your computer". What then later discovered, was it had a product code as well as the CD. So that's misinformation. And with all respect, staff shouldnt have to lie. Not entitlement, just a little bit of honesty. Yeah, I know you have targets to reach because all head office sees are figures and numbers and you get flagged up when you don't reach them.

And seeing as you work for Knowhow, why does it take 6-8 hours to install and set up a laptop?
 

Parasondox

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Chessrook44 said:
Closest I worked was as a cashier for a beach near where I worked. People would always be shocked that it cost money, and I had a whole shpiel for that.

"Twelve dollars to get onto the beach?! What the hell are we paying for?"
[Counting fingers] "Well you're paying to keep the beach clean, to keep the beach maintained, to keep the boardwalk clean, to keep the boardwalk maintained, to keep the beach safe, to pay for the lifeguards, to pay for US..."

By that point they usually get the picture.

Also, I would like to leave this link here... NotAlwaysRight [https://notalwaysright.com/] is a site FILLED with stories of this kind of stuff. Stupid, bad, and OUTSTANDING (in all forms of the word) customers. Worth reading for a chuckle, if you can stand it.
Isn't that what local taxes are for? Towards maintaining the beach. It's like parks. Parks are looked after and maintained by the council. If it's getting money from tourist, then that's okay? Maybe? Wouldn't that effect local businesses too?

I have no clue what your local area does.
 

DudeistBelieve

TellEmSteveDave.com
Sep 9, 2010
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I worked 8 years in retail. Grocery. Waldbaums, a chain that has since went bankrupt.

Evening shift. It's me as closing cashier, a girl several years my junior "running the front". Yeah it kinda sucks when younger people with less free time than you are promoted to better positions. Whatever, she was a nice girl. I liked her. If I didn't, I wouldn't of done the following in this story.

So closing shift, the store is dead. And, we were on the verge of bankruptcy anyway so last couple hours you can pretty much just hang out. So homegirl is sitting opposite my till on the public bench, reading her phone. I'm doing whatever. This odd little man in his 20s comes up and asks to speak to a front end manager.

Now chain of command, I call homegirl over to deal with the customer. Guy simply wants to know if a blonde woman came in and bought Cooking Wine about an hour ago. Homegirl says "I was ringing... I think so, but I'm not positive. We get a lot of customers."

Guy says okay. He leaves. Were both like, "that was weird."

about an hour and a half later, he comes back with the alleged Blonde woman. Stick thin, but shes tall. Both of them really quickly corner homegirl on the bench, and she's completely caught off guard. Blonde woman is like "Did you fucking tell him I bought cooking wine?"

Bewilder, homegirl reiterates to the blonde woman that she said it was possible, that she honestly didn't remember. This doesn't satisfy the blonde woman. What we'd piece together later is that you can get drunk off cooking wine, and she must be a recovering alcoholic and the weird little man is her boyfriend whos pissed off at her.

Anyway, this conversation is getting very intense. I'm standing there thinking, "Holy shit, this Blonde woman is going to wolverine claws on homegirl!" so I... and I can't believe I did this because I was opening myself up to being attacked: I put myself in front of homegirl.

Blonde woman, she don't like that. "Why the fuck are you getting inbetween us, I'm not going to attack her!" she yells. I'm thinking bullshit! But I just just smile and ask sweetly as I can "Would you like to speak to a store manager?"

End up getting Al. Al typical 45 something dude. Tall.

So Al gets explained the situation. Al goes to the blonde woman: "I don't understand the problem here."

Blonde woman wants proof to that she didn't buy Cooking Whine. At this point, shes demanding that we pull up the security camera feed and go through all that footage to prove that she didn't.

Al goes, "Yeah. I'm not doing that."

Blonde woman goes, "I'm calling the police!"

Me and Al both go, "Um.. I mean you can if you want, but they're not going to do anything. There hasn't been any sort of crime here. bye."

At this point, weird little dude is tired of the Blonde's bullshit and storms out. She remains in the lobby for several minutes on the phone, presumably with the police. eventually she leaves, but not before saying to us:

"You're ruining a BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP!" Yes, with the same dramatic tone that you would expect. We mocked her for the rest of the evening.

Parasondox said:
PaulH said:
infohippie said:
Hell no. You couldn't pay me enough to work retail. I KNOW people are assholes, no way would I want to deal with the general public. On the other hand, I also believe that retail staff are actual people, which seems to be a pretty unusual belief itself, and I will go out of my way to treat them as such. I'm proud to say I am never the asshole shouting at the cashier about my crappy expired coupon, or some similarly entitled crap. Retail staff will always get a "please" and a "thank you" from me.
I don't know ... a lot of people are alright when you scrape away the neuroses and narcissism. You know when I got the most abuse? When I was a teacher. Parent-teacher interviews ... ugh. Some students may be bad, but parents are worse. Someone once offered me a shot at year advisor ... nooooooo hooooooo hooooooo waaaaaaay~~~. You could've given me an extra 20k a year ... still wouldn't do it.
There has been a lot more stories about parent teacher conflict in the past few years now which i just don't understand. when I had my parents evening, my mom and other parents would be on the side of the teacher because, well, they were teaching us little shits. Today it just seems like the parents, some not all, are even bigger shits. No teacher deserves that abuse from a bad parent.

TEACHERS ARE NOT PARENTS TO YOUR KIDS.
Hell I can explain that. I went to public school. I have plenty of stories of teachers fucking me over and abusing their power.

I permanently have that bias against teachers, if I had kids in school I wouldn't believe a damn thing they said.
 

Parasondox

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Jun 15, 2013
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DudeistBelieve said:
Parasondox said:
PaulH said:
infohippie said:
Hell no. You couldn't pay me enough to work retail. I KNOW people are assholes, no way would I want to deal with the general public. On the other hand, I also believe that retail staff are actual people, which seems to be a pretty unusual belief itself, and I will go out of my way to treat them as such. I'm proud to say I am never the asshole shouting at the cashier about my crappy expired coupon, or some similarly entitled crap. Retail staff will always get a "please" and a "thank you" from me.
I don't know ... a lot of people are alright when you scrape away the neuroses and narcissism. You know when I got the most abuse? When I was a teacher. Parent-teacher interviews ... ugh. Some students may be bad, but parents are worse. Someone once offered me a shot at year advisor ... nooooooo hooooooo hooooooo waaaaaaay~~~. You could've given me an extra 20k a year ... still wouldn't do it.
There has been a lot more stories about parent teacher conflict in the past few years now which i just don't understand. when I had my parents evening, my mom and other parents would be on the side of the teacher because, well, they were teaching us little shits. Today it just seems like the parents, some not all, are even bigger shits. No teacher deserves that abuse from a bad parent.

TEACHERS ARE NOT PARENTS TO YOUR KIDS.
Hell I can explain that. I went to public school. I have plenty of stories of teachers fucking me over and abusing their power.

I permanently have that bias against teachers, if I had kids in school I wouldn't believe a damn thing they said.
If you don't believe anything they say, how is any matter mean't to be resolved? Plus just because your past experience with teachers were bad, doesn't your childs one will be too. Don't pass on your bad experience onto your kids. That bit is addressed to everyone.
 

Kinitawowi

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Nov 21, 2012
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Parasondox said:
Kinitawowi said:
Parasondox said:
You don't have to mention the place you are working at now. Unless you work at Curry's PC World then please, by all means expose. As a customer, I dislike that store. Openingly misselling a service, giving misinformation and charging for something that could have been done for free.
Well, with all due respect, if it could have been done for free, why didn't you do it yourself? You want somebody's time and effort to do something for you? You're going to have to pay for that time.

(Yes, I work on the Knowhow counter at a Currys / PC World {DISCLAIMER: I'm speaking right now as an individual and any opinions I express here are in no way intended to be representative of those that may or may not be held by the Dixons Carphone Group}. Customers say they hate the place, and I can promise you that the staff hate it even more than the customers do... but uncomprehending whining entitled shits annoy me most of all. Both customers and management...)
Because this was 5 odd years ago. And I did not know much about tech then. And the issue at hand was installing an anti virus software. The staff member said, "because this laptop doesn't have a CD drive, you can't install NORTON 360. So how are you going to protect your computer". What then later discovered, was it had a product code as well as the CD. So that's misinformation. And with all respect, staff shouldnt have to lie. Not entitlement, just a little bit of honesty. Yeah, I know you have targets to reach because all head office sees are figures and numbers and you get flagged up when you don't reach them.

And seeing as you work for Knowhow, why does it take 6-8 hours to install and set up a laptop?
If it was five years ago that somebody said 6-8 hours, then it would have been recovery media. Built in partitions do the job for the majority of people these days, but there's still an astonishingly large number of customers who expect a laptop to come with a pile of CDs to reinstall everything with if it all goes wrong. And the software most of those things used to break the partition down over multiple DVDs was slow as balls; 45 minutes per disc (if it didn't fail halfway through because reasons) and anywhere up to six discs (HP and Asus tended to be the hungriest, but it varied from SKU to SKU)? Yeah, it took ages. It's all done on (hideously rubbish) USB sticks these days of course, but we'd still rather tell a customer it'll be three hours and finish in two than tell them it'll be two and take three.

The other thing is that while we'd love to spend all our time in the clinic staring at one setup, it just can't be done. Doing a setup, without recovery media, was (back then) theoretically doable in about fifteen minutes (it's slower now because of software downloads, but). Doing a clinic full of setups, and jamming in everybody's lunch breaks, and covering for sickness and stupid meetings and understaffing, and dealing with all the customers that come to the counter, means that occasionally a setup got stuck waiting for an interaction. Back then it might have been waiting for half an hour (or more!) for one of us to get free of whatever we were doing, spot a setup in progress and change the disc. Management (where I am, at least) insist that whatever setups or instore booked in jobs we're doing come lower on the priority list than whoever's stood at the counter right now screeching about their fridge. It sucks and I've spent years going round and round with them about it. Nothing changes.

The Norton thing... yeah, that blew. Sorry about that one. We had (and probably still have) sales staff who genuinely didn't know how to setup laptops. One guy once told us that he would deal with a setup himself because he'd promised the customer some short turn around time; his next question was "okay, so how do you install Office?". And that was when installing Office was easy. Optical drive-less machines were a relative novelty when Norton was still the antivirus KPI... (Also, we had customers who refused to allow their machine to be connected to the internet under any circumstances until their antivirus was installed. How were we meant to download it for them then?)
 

SiskoBlue

Monk
Aug 11, 2010
242
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I've done my stint at retail. Never again.

Losing it over ?1:
I went to the local mini-market with my 4yo son in tow. I needed a trolley but it had the ?1 lock on them and I had no coins. I pop up to their checkout, like I had many times before and said "Can I change this ?5 note for some ?1 coins so I can use your trolleys".
Her: "We can't open the cash registers unless you buy something"
Me: "It's for your trolleys. How do I use your trolleys if you won't give me change"
Her: "We can't open the cash registers unless you buy something"
Now, I know what this is. It's an anti-theft, anti-con tactic. There are grifters who can befuddle checkout people so they end up giving away ?10 or something. It also baffles armed robbers because their attention is narrowly focused and bizarrely has caused many of them to leave without stealing anything. I'm a dude, carrying my 4yo son in one arm, and it's for their fucking trolleys.
Me: "Well, let's pretend I'm buying this Snickers bar" (placing a snickers bar on the counter).
Her: "Are you buying the Snickers bar?"
Me: "Let's say I am..."
Her: (She scan the bar, opens the till)
Me: "STOP! I've changed my mind. I don't want the snickers bar..." (She actually goes to close the till, she's extremely thick and doesn't seem to understand what I'm doing) "... since you have the till open now, WOULD YOU MIND GIVING ME CHANGE WITH A ?1 SO I CAN USE YOOOOOUUUR TROLLEYS!" (Aggressively thrusting the ?5 note at her with my one free arm).
Her: "We can't open the cash registers unless you buy someth..."
ME: "ARE YOU SERIOUS!? IT'S OPEN RIGHT NOW!!?"
Her: "Yeah, but are you buying the SNickers bar?"
Me: "YES!! I'M BUYING THE SNICKERS BAR!!"
Her: (Gives me the change for the bar which I promptly leave on the counter) "You've left your snickers bar" (She still seems deeply confused about why I'm angry).
Me: "I DIDN'T WANT THE FUCKING SNICKERS BAR" (To be fair, it was a very stressful time in my life and have since divorced. Fun times)
I storm out of the shop, which was a bit awkward because I still needed to do the shopping, so slammed my son in to the trolley. He's asking where the snickers bar is, and I storm back in to the shop, all eyes on me. I then have to shop, later coming across the girl in the back corner being comforted by a co-worker and she weeps about the horrible man that used logic on her.

Working at a video store:
Customer: "Can you recommend a funny movie?"
Me: "Well, this one is popular at the moment..."
Customer: "No, I didn't like it"
Me: "Here's 2 or 3 slightly off-beat comedies [i.e. they don't appeal to everyone but some good cult funny films]"
Customer: "No, I don't like those. What I want is a REALLY funny film".
This happened constantly, and the implications seems to be that somehow I know what's really funny but I'm being a dick and refusing to share it. I'm not a fan of people who treat me like I'm lying but if there's just smarmy enough I'll somehow let them on the inside of the loop. Morons.

Pizza Delivery:
Customer makes a complaint saying they got food poisoning from our Pizza (Pizza Hut). I went and picked up the pizza during the day so it could be tested. Management's way to resolve the issue, a free pizza coupon. Customer uses that coupon that very next night. Speedy recovery I guess.

30 minutes and it's free! I have a fucking watch you know, AND I know when you ordered your pizza, it's on the docket, so just saying "It's late!" does not qualify you to a free pizza. Also, don't think you're clever ordering to the wrong address. These kids ordered to 69 blah blah street when they actually lived at 60. First time it took 5 minutes to clear up. They wanted a discount but I was so quick it was still well within 30 minutes. I was suspicious so asked management to put a note on that address that they did this. They tried it again the next week and I drove immediately to their house because the dude at 69 blah blah had said "I never order pizza?". Again, "It's late!" I pointed out that I was there literally 18 minutes after they'd ordered, so no, it wasn't late and we were aware of what game they were trying to play. Do it again and you're black listed. They tried it the following week. I had them black listed. Obviously it worked at some point but teenagers are the worst sociopathic bastards.

Buying a phone:
I'm an older dude and in the days where minutes and text limits mattered I was shopping for a new phone (before smart phones) and was looking for a budget package). I even had a piece of paper saying how often I texted and phoned and what numbers so I could do the maths and figure out the best deal. Meet young Australian Asian girl 10 years my juniour who proceeds to tell me the phone I want is this one because "it's what all the cool kids have". I explain that I neither care about the cool kids or wish ever to aspire to their lifestyle. "But this is the coolest phone (i.e. most expensive and pointless)" "No" I say. "That sales pitch won't work for me. I'm looking for a good deal, not to be cool" I'm practically begging her to sell to me but she doesn't get it "You really want this one, it's the one the cool kids have" Literally repeitition. "Thank you but clearly you don't have a clue what you're doing. I'll go somewhere else".

Not sure if it's better or worse having worked retail. I'm probably more sympathetic to retail workers because of it, but I also have less tolerance when I can see their bullshit.

Here's a tip if you serve a counter with queues like a bar or service desk. If it's not ridiculously crowded I mean. When a new customer queues up, acknowledge them with eye contact and maybe a "We'll be with you in a minute". People will wait patiently until doomsday if they feel their existence was acknowledged. So many places customer service people deliberately avoid eye contact in some kind of head-in-sand approach of assuming if you don't look at me, you won't have feel bad making me wait. But if you're waiting in a queue and you're not sure they even know you're there, customers will get mad. Really mad. One second of eye contact could save everyone a world of pain. Also, if you are in a long queue don't be a dick and take ages when it's your turn, I may in fact snap one day and kill you for the selfish prick you are.
 

Parasondox

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Jun 15, 2013
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Kinitawowi said:
If it was five years ago that somebody said 6-8 hours, then it would have been recovery media. Built in partitions do the job for the majority of people these days, but there's still an astonishingly large number of customers who expect a laptop to come with a pile of CDs to reinstall everything with if it all goes wrong. And the software most of those things used to break the partition down over multiple DVDs was slow as balls; 45 minutes per disc (if it didn't fail halfway through because reasons) and anywhere up to six discs (HP and Asus tended to be the hungriest, but it varied from SKU to SKU)? Yeah, it took ages. It's all done on (hideously rubbish) USB sticks these days of course, but we'd still rather tell a customer it'll be three hours and finish in two than tell them it'll be two and take three.

The other thing is that while we'd love to spend all our time in the clinic staring at one setup, it just can't be done. Doing a setup, without recovery media, was (back then) theoretically doable in about fifteen minutes (it's slower now because of software downloads, but). Doing a clinic full of setups, and jamming in everybody's lunch breaks, and covering for sickness and stupid meetings and understaffing, and dealing with all the customers that come to the counter, means that occasionally a setup got stuck waiting for an interaction. Back then it might have been waiting for half an hour (or more!) for one of us to get free of whatever we were doing, spot a setup in progress and change the disc. Management (where I am, at least) insist that whatever setups or instore booked in jobs we're doing come lower on the priority list than whoever's stood at the counter right now screeching about their fridge. It sucks and I've spent years going round and round with them about it. Nothing changes.

The Norton thing... yeah, that blew. Sorry about that one. We had (and probably still have) sales staff who genuinely didn't know how to setup laptops. One guy once told us that he would deal with a setup himself because he'd promised the customer some short turn around time; his next question was "okay, so how do you install Office?". And that was when installing Office was easy. Optical drive-less machines were a relative novelty when Norton was still the antivirus KPI... (Also, we had customers who refused to allow their machine to be connected to the internet under any circumstances until their antivirus was installed. How were we meant to download it for them then?)
The 6-8 hour set up was last year. Thank you for the honest answer and yes all in retail have to deal with the backroom, work politics that affects are job and then makes it seem you are doing the work of 5 people, while still trying to reach targets, less to no breaks and mystery shoppers who don't know the current situation of the store and head office who only sees numbers, figures and red & green.
 

DudeistBelieve

TellEmSteveDave.com
Sep 9, 2010
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Parasondox said:
DudeistBelieve said:
Parasondox said:
PaulH said:
infohippie said:
Hell no. You couldn't pay me enough to work retail. I KNOW people are assholes, no way would I want to deal with the general public. On the other hand, I also believe that retail staff are actual people, which seems to be a pretty unusual belief itself, and I will go out of my way to treat them as such. I'm proud to say I am never the asshole shouting at the cashier about my crappy expired coupon, or some similarly entitled crap. Retail staff will always get a "please" and a "thank you" from me.
I don't know ... a lot of people are alright when you scrape away the neuroses and narcissism. You know when I got the most abuse? When I was a teacher. Parent-teacher interviews ... ugh. Some students may be bad, but parents are worse. Someone once offered me a shot at year advisor ... nooooooo hooooooo hooooooo waaaaaaay~~~. You could've given me an extra 20k a year ... still wouldn't do it.
There has been a lot more stories about parent teacher conflict in the past few years now which i just don't understand. when I had my parents evening, my mom and other parents would be on the side of the teacher because, well, they were teaching us little shits. Today it just seems like the parents, some not all, are even bigger shits. No teacher deserves that abuse from a bad parent.

TEACHERS ARE NOT PARENTS TO YOUR KIDS.
Hell I can explain that. I went to public school. I have plenty of stories of teachers fucking me over and abusing their power.

I permanently have that bias against teachers, if I had kids in school I wouldn't believe a damn thing they said.
If you don't believe anything they say, how is any matter mean't to be resolved? Plus just because your past experience with teachers were bad, doesn't your childs one will be too. Don't pass on your bad experience onto your kids. That bit is addressed to everyone.
*sigh* Innerwalter gonna blow some exhaust here.

Thats very logical and wise advice. I recognize that. Unfortunately, Anger doesn't follow any logical arguments.

And I'm still angry about my experience going through school. Any opportunity I get to fuck with faculty, I'm probably going to take. Fortunately for everyone, I don't want children. Probably will never happen.

It's amazing. 27 years old, I'm nearly a decade removed from that part of my life, but just thinking about it I'm still angry about how I was treated then. It's not something I'm ever going to let go, unfortunately and I have to live with that.
 

Eclipse Dragon

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I worked in retail for six years at a shoe store and now I do custom artwork full time for t-shirts (and everything else) and freelance on the side. I've gotten pretty used to working with people and I don't mind it too much. There are of course a few instances that stand out in my mind.

On the retail side (customers)
-Once had a person come into the shoe store and ask if we sold cigarettes.
-Quite a number of people would ask us if we sold kid shoes, though there was a giant sign that says "kids shoes" right in-front of their faces when they walk in the door.
-Also the people that come in two minutes before closing (and they're aware of it), spend three hours looking around the store and buy nothing.

I always enjoyed it though when a customer is being rude toward me (and of course I can do nothing about it) and another customer pipes up in my defense.

On the retail side (corporate)
We're going to forbid you from confronting shoplifters and you can't even call the cops, nope not even stealthily. The only thing you can do to prevent theft is provide excellent customer service, oh, but we're also going to cut your hours into oblivion, run the store on a skeleton crew and complain that you're not doing enough to prevent theft.

---------------
On the art side (customers)
-Just because it's found on Google images, doesn't mean it's free.
-Commissions are a service, I deserve fair compensation, exposure won't allow me to eat and certainly doesn't pay off my student loans.
-Arranging clipart in Microsoft Word does not make someone a graphic designer, nor does arranging text in Photoshop that one time.

For the most part though, people are really passionate about art commissions and I want to feed off that passion like some kind of vampire. Their happiness keeps me going, just as long as they're the type of person who understands I'm not magic, are willing to pay me for my time and are capable of being happy.

On the art side (corporate)
-I will draw the topless confederate flag waving stripper, pole dancing on the back of a tow truck, because if I don't, I will get fired, but I don't really want to and it makes me die a little inside.

However asking me to draw an old-timey portrait of a dragon who is also a Nazi general... is strangely awesome.
 

Blacklight28

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Eclipse Dragon said:
However asking me to draw an old-timey portrait of a dragon who is also a Nazi general... is strangely awesome.
Please tell me you still have this and can show it to us.
 

Fox12

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Parasondox said:
The best customers I have dealt with were the elderly couples. Or just any in pairs. Friendly, honest, just want to know they are buying the right thing and no one is trying to mug them off. Maybe it's because I have worked with the elderly before and I know how to to interact with them, but I see some colleagues and staff in other stores just treat them like crap and I hate them. Going to a store may be their only time to interact with someone, so why not just give them a decent few moments of your time. I know most of us are glued to our phones and don't wish to interact with humans face to face, damn millennials (you're 25, Para), but speaking to someone else who isn't shackled by tech for a few minutes, can brighten up their day a little.
Weird, I've had the exact opposite experience. In my experience, the elderly have been rude, belligerent, ignorant, entitled, and sometimes a little racist or homophobic. They always act like everyone owes them something. The younger customers, by comparison, tend to be energetic, nice, and polite. It doesn't help that the older customers are impolite, and always trying to get away with things. Maybe it's just something about that generation where I live. Obviously everyone is different, but as a rule, if a customers being an asshole, they're almost always old.
 

Eclipse Dragon

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Blacklight28 said:
Eclipse Dragon said:
However asking me to draw an old-timey portrait of a dragon who is also a Nazi general... is strangely awesome.
Please tell me you still have this and can show it to us.
It's fresh so I don't have it to show yet. However! I was once talked into drawing a cigar ad inspired image of a dragon who is also a pope (thanks to this fine community we have on the Escapist).