The Customer is Always Stupid
Well, it’s been a week today since I quit smoking, and I think I’m doing good. I decided to just go cold turkey. Why prolong the inevitable? Anyway I thought I’d do another easy post since my concentration still seems to be…..something something.
Anyway, I found another website that should be good for at least a half-hour of blowing off work. It’s called The Customer is Not Always Right, and any site that delves into the hateful, ignorant, idiotic, mouth breathing, polluted mass of the general public is always good for a laugh.
A lot of you know that I spent a few years working for the PA turnpike as a toll-collector, so I have a few quick ones of my own to add to the mix as well. For the real horror stories (and to find out why I have such low regard for humanity) read this post that I wrote almost a year ago.
Anyway here are some of my own, much shorter TCINAR moments….
–Me: It’ll be $7.50 please..
Cust: I’m not paying you anything. It was raining the whole way, and I couldn’t even see the road and that’s not fair.
Me: Um, $7.50
Cust: Well it’s not right. Here. (pays me)
– I had a redneck pull up in a pickup truck who didn’t want to pay because, “Pennsylvania sucks.” And he didn’t pay until the state police showed up. Then he payed.
– An irate, effeminate guy came along and refused to pay until I “enlisted the response team” to find his hairpiece. Which apparently cost over 5 hundred dollars. He finally paid but spent a good half hour flipping between hysterics and tears in my lane.
– One guy was so upset about the condition of the road that he wanted to talk to my supervisor…who he insisted was the governor. So I gave him a number (I made up) to the governor’s desk.
– And the best one was a carload of beautiful, yet single-celled blonds who presented me with a ticket from Valley Forge which is about 20 miles outside of Philly. I worked at the Pittsburgh interchange.
Cust: How do I get to Philly?
Me: Just go back the way that you came for about 6 hours.
Cust: Oh fuck. We were supposed to stop in Philly.
Me: You just drove 300 miles too far.
Cust: Fuck.
Is it tuna or chicken?
Two samples from TCINAR…
#1 – Me: “Hello. You’ve reached [company]. How may we help you?”
Customer: “Hi, I recently purchased a carbon-monoxide detector thingies from here, and I was just wondering what to do if it goes off?”
Me: “Well, you would have to call emergency services and leave your house immediately.”
Customer: “Okay.” *long pause* “Could you hang up please? My phone broke and won’t let me end conversations but I have to call 911.”
Me: “Wait. Your alarm is going off? Ma’am, that’s dangerous! Get out of your house now!”
Customer: “Oh, I threw it in the garbage disposal, it’s okay.”
Me: “What?”
Customer: “Hey, like I said before, could you hang up?”
#2 – Customer: “I need a card.”
Me: “Ok, what kind of card are you looking for?”
Customer: “It’s for my brother-in-law. He just had his foot amputated.”
Me: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. We have ‘get well soon’ cards right here.”
Customer: “Well, he’s not really going to get better, is he?”
Me: “Well, we do have sympathy cards over there.”
Customer: “I don’t really like him.”
Me: “What about a blank card? You could write your own message?”
Customer: “You mean a card with nothing in it?”
Me: “Yes, that’s what blank cards are.”
Customer: “Well I’m not paying for that!” *leaves*
What was your worst/funniest interaction with the window licking public?
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When I waited tables there was a family that would always order from the menu and ONE of them would get the buffet or salad bar… and then share it with the others. Every time. I had enough one day and kept tabs on who ate what and charged for it. The mother just couldn’t figure out why they should pay extra. She was a stupid bitch and barely tipped so I didn’t care if they ever returned.
Oh yea, if they’re going to be doing that they better be tipping like 40%, that’s what I would do. You gotta pay that juice!
I love a really smorgasbord, or even a middle of the road Chinese buffet, but I just could never eat the Ponderosa or similar type-o-crap. But a good one, I could eat my weight in shrimp.
Thanks Mrs. D!!
And Jess needs some support up there, don’t you think?
Some support and possibly some areola reduction surgery as well.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
That’s so funny. People are so dumb. I gotta think about my stupid customer tricks a bit and I’ll come back.
DUDE!!! Kudos on the smoking thing!! Mee and you!! 6 months and still going strong. It get’s easier, i promise, but I still want one. I guess that never goes away.
So we will keep each other honest. And by all means, help me loose weight! I am on this Tirad diet. I’ll explain later , but I need to eat a protein, a carb and a fat at each meal. I’ll let you know how it goes.
That’s awesome that you’re still at it. I quit last year for a year, but stupidly decided that I’d drink and smoke again for 3 months for fiesta season. Neither was worth it or fun. The first time I had that book I told you about and that made it really easy, but I’ve since given it away. So another week and I’ll be great.
I’ll have to look up this Tirad diet, I’ve been gone a little while, haven’t heard of this one…
Thanks Candy!!
I have nothing to add other than THOSE ARE SOME NASTY TITTIES!
Yea, they’re not looking so hot are they? I want to say that they’ve seen better days but she isn’t even that old so….
Thanks Candice!!
Good job on the quitting smoking dude! Keep it up!
It’s amazing how stupid customers can be. But, I did LOL at the person who tried to direct a customer to the “get well soon cards” when he said his BiL had his foot amputated. I would have said “He not going to get his foot back!” haha
We had lots of weird customers back when I managed a pizza joint in college. Most were actually pretty entertaining, but some were way more hassle than they were worth.
Thanks on the props Jay; it’s for life this time. You managed a pizza place? In college? Damn, you probably have stories that would beat my turnpike stories like a red headed stepchild. You gotta break some of them out over at your place.
Thanks Jay!!
Just yesterday, I was late on the mail route and when I called the post office about something, the little shrew who works the counter told me that two people had already called, wondering why their mail was late. People really wait for mail to their roadside box-on-a-post? WOW. You know it’s gonna get worse. I read the year-old post, and man did you seee it all. No wonder they wear surgical gloves now. I totally share your viewpoint, Scott.
The little shrew….hahahaha you gotta tame that shrew man.
I remember waiting for my mail quite often, even when I got older. There’s nothing quite like the anticipation of hoping your Little Orphan Annie decoder ring has arrived. Now I don’t get any mail. And when I do, I have to go get it between 10:45 and 11:00. I really miss the old roadside delivery.
You’re going to accumulate the tales my friend!
Thanks Dan!!
My niece worked for the phone company. During a strike, she had to man the phone lines as she was a supervisor. She told one caller he had to deposit fifty cents more, and he said he wasn’t going to. She said if he didn’t, she’d lock the phone booth door and call the police. He paid. Now there’s an intelligent dude for you.
Speaking of quitting smoking: I did it cold turkey as well. I was up to 3 packs a day some fifteen years ago, woke up, started to light up, and said, “what the fuck am I doing?”, tore up my last pack and haven’t touched em since. I did, though, use toothpicks as a replacement and probably went through a whole rain forest 🙂
. . . and definitely tuna 🙂
Ha some people are just that paranoid. My great-aunts from Italy would have believed that one for sure. They used to be afraid to death if you said anything bad about the president.
Thanks Jammer!!
Damn, a week? Great job. You are so on your way….
Yea, I’m feeling it now! Another two and all the nicotine will be gone!
Thanks Pamela!!
hahaha i loved working at the claims and returns section in an electrical department store here while i was at uni. So many stories… so many dumbass customers.
one time:
cust: – this very expensive stereo wont play cds
me: – ok, does it give you any error messages?
cust: – dont be daft girl it wont play any, I wont have myself repeating the problem to you again and again. I need a new replacement stereo.
me: – proof of purchase please
cust: – Spend all this money for nothing! doesnt work!
me: – um… your receipt is outside the 30 day exchange policy, if its not working we can send it for a repair under warranty
customer: – I will NOT! i demand a new stereo! see for yourself it wont play CDs! wont let me open the CD storage! wont let me do anything!
me: – *grab the stereo set it all up and start to question the lady*
soo you plugged it in right?
cust: – of course i did! you implying im stupid!?? it wont play CDs again again again *slams hand on desk*
me: – and you read the instructions on how to use the stereo?
cust: – are you mocking me!? i am not an idiot, I want to speak with your manager! i want a new stereo, i paid $500 for this and it doesnt work!
me: – (by this time a bit of a crowd has gathered at the claims/returns desk because she is raising her voice, creating a bit of a drama and I know by now what the problem is)
Ok that wont be a problem, I can call my manager but i just want to ask one last question….
cust:- (looking at me with one eyebrow raised, face all red)
me: – um… did you by any chance remove the little plastic sticky tape that is covering the CD insert case?
(i peel the plastic tape..put in a sample CD and blare the stereo really loudly)
A few customers who were standing behind me tried to hush their laughter, others shook their head… the customer herself took deep breaths… said nothing except… “that’s fine, just pack it up for me and ill be on my way”.
lol
that was a sweeeet ssweeet day.
Wow, that is a great story. I would be just stupid enough to do that one myself. The only difference would be that I would never be rude or loud, because I know I’d end up embarrassing myself. The very first thing I’d do is call over one of my friends like you who would know about removing sticky tape and whatnot.
Hilarious!
Thanks Susi!!
I’ll be back later when I think of a good story…..
You must have a thousand about out of control patients…
Thanks Nursemyra!!
Yes! But I’m not allowed to write about them
Just use a fake name….
When I was an undergraduate, I worked as a night security officer at an up-scale hotel. I walked into the lobby one night and heard this irate woman dressing down the night clerk. I asked the woman if I could help her and she launched into a bizarre screed about how the hotel was screwing everything up and then she stopped and said, “Well, we shouldn’t be treated like common scum, we’re from Harvard.”
The wealthiest among us are the worst. I had to go to high school with some of the richest kids in the Northeast, and I caddied to make money for college….
Then I’ve lived up and down the Gulf Coast in Florida….
They can be ridiculously stupid AND mean.
Thanks FJ!!
There’s several but one particular instance comes to mind:
A customer walks in Sam’s Club (only we call them “members,” ostensibly because they buy a membership and not because a majority of them are tools) and gets thoroughly irate that we don’t have another electro-cart available so that he doesn’t have to continue his up-to-this-point successful walking career. Well, since we can’t manufacture one on the spot, he raises hell and our GM gives him a blank giftcard to do some shopping with.
He racks up $1200, which I would imagine was $1150 more than he was planning to spend, as I think he was just there to putter from free sample to free sample before leaving with some lunch meat or something.
Too many companies refuse to fire the customer.
Wow, so they’re like super Wal-Mart people? Not like people in a super Wal-Mart but like super high class Wal-Mart people because they have to pay a yearly membership fee for the privilege of buying tubs of off-brand mayo? Holy shit do I have another blog idea for you! You’d never run out of material.
That story teaches all the wrong lessons. I’d scream at anybody from the broom pusher to the CEO for a couple minutes to get a grand worth of free shit. Great story!
Thanks CLT!!
HA. You know…as stupid as people are, many times I think I wouldn’t want it any other way. Life is more fun when the stupid are playing along. Cheers scott!!
They definitely provide a measure of daily entertainment, but considering the hassles….I’d rather watch them from the other side of a glass cage.
Thanks Matt-Man!!
Ya but……the Pennsylvania highways “do” suck! They always have, ask any long time trucker.
That’s some funny shit Scott. You really could put out a book with toll booth stories. What would even be better is a movie.
Yea Micky, just about everything about living in PA sucks, that’s why I left. The truckers were surprisingly nice to me though. They often offered sandwiches and/or drugs and whatnot. Maybe they just liked my lips…?
A movie? I’d never be able to compete with the likes of Gigli.
Thanks Micky!!
Hope you will keep it up. Your lungs will silently thank you with the next breath.
Yea Corve, this one’s for life. My lungs are loudly thanking me already.
Thanks Corve!!
I love the car full of single cell blondes
I wonder – did you have to explain them how long 6 hours is?
I worked in the giftware department of Macys. Woman comes up to me with a silver candy dish marked “floor sample” and asks if I have a “virgin” dish
I explain that it’s the last one
She swears people have eaten off of it
I take it in the back, scratch the tag off, wipe it off and bring her back her “virgin”
bhahahha good one dianne
If only the restoration of virginity was so easy and surgery free….ahh. That’s hilarious; I wonder what she thought people ate off of it….plastic cheese and crackers? You should have told her that that particular tray was only used by naked supermodels to serve cocaine to rock stars at Macy’s late night extravaganzas.
Thanks Dianne!!
Some great stories there, Scott. I particulary liked the one about the gift card. I actually side with the customer there and have to admit it sounds like something I would say. Sorry.
Yes I loved that one as well, but it’s filling my head with crazy ideas. Maybe we could run a string of irate old man scams all over the Northeast?
Thanks Don!!
I have to find more time to come visit. I miss your blog. On April First, it was my one year anniversary of quitting smoking. Remember back then?
Wow Tracy, congratulations! That’s exactly the day I quit this year too. Coincidence? Maybe. I remember it like it was 12 months ago.
Thanks Tracy!!
are you still quit? Next year, we can celebrate together.
Oh yea, easy as hell now.
Good boy. It gets easier every day. I think about it once in awhile now, but I know it would make me sick. The smell of someone whos been smoking reeks. Yuck. You can live longer now.
Live longer? Awwww shit….
funny stories, great post, i lauhged my a$$ off! what a great job scott! jobs like that keep giving and giving via the hilarious stories…i often wondered if someone could actually smoke a doobie in one of those booths…i digress. okay here goes nothin’, i’d definitely do that chick (i cant say her name cause seems no one think she’s hot but me!)what are you all a bunch of sexless robots? c’mom get real! 🙂
Yea, I can verify that you can in fact smoke a doobie (amoung 100’s no, no 1000’s of other things) in a tollbooth. Plus they’re climate controlled perfectly so you’re warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The pay was around 20 and hour but with unbelievable benefits, vaca’s and holidays.
Well if you did her, I would definitely watch. I’m not that cold, dead and robotic. Can I watch? Please…
Thanks Lynn!!
*laughing* i love it when they beg!
I’ll bet you get a lot of that too!
I was working in a photo lab during my Uni days and this guy comes up to me and asks “Do you sell photo frames?”. Friggin dumbass, the entire shop was covered in photo frames. It was only after my sarcastic reply did I notice his seeing-eye dog! Whoopsie! He later told me he was testing the dog and had asked him to find photo frames!
Oh my God, you must have felt awful! We’ve all had those horrible faux pas moments though. At least he was more than cool about it though.
BTW, if I had a Seeing Eye dog, I’d have him searching out all kinds of interesting stuff for me!
Thanks Frigginloon!!
that’s classic loon!
How did I miss this post?
I worked in Customer Service for 4 years, and I had my share of idiots. but if someone ever said something to me even remotely like “I’m not paying you anything. It was raining the whole way, and I couldn’t even see the road and that’s not fair,” I would have no choice but to cut the bitch.
(I’m assuming it was a bitch?)
ps. The fact you gave someone “the Governor’s number” kills me…
Actually B, it was a woman. A 300lb plus redneck women, and life had been consistently unfair to her before she ever took the entry ticket. I should have cut the bitch, I was even a part-timer in the ‘cut a bitch’ (aka bakery union) business back then. I guess it never occurred to me at the time….damn.
I hope she didn’t plan on using that number to beg a stay of execution for her dad on death row or anything.
Thanks B!!
we’re still laughing about this post today here in florida! i agree with b, thinking up some random number was a great idea!
I did too much of that to begin with. I did anytime anyone ever had a complaint with me about anything….bwahahaha.
God bless each and every one of those people; without them there’d be fewer things in the world to laugh at. I tried to be a toll collector once, but they never called me back. You just never get tired of proving how much cooler you are than me, do you…
They definitely provide the world with endless material. Without stupid people there would be no Seinfeld, Curb, or for that matter any cable TV at all…
They don’t have any temps at all in PA. What state was this?
Thanks Rooster!!
Kansas.
You still there or are you not in Kansas anymore?
That was terrible.
That was hilarious! Laugh out loud hilarious!
I’ve got so many stories of dumbshits swimming around in my head, I wouldn’t even know where to start, although one of my favorites ends with my father at the McDonald’s drive-thru [and you have to imagine the conversation leading up to this point], saying, “No, just two coffees, hold the cheese!”
Hey Desert Rat, it’s great to see you again! I believe that Wal-Mart and McDonalds provides an opportunity to take out 9/10ths of the stupid people on the planet. If we could just strategically bomb each and every one at the same time.
Thanks Desert Rat!!
Sad, but true! The stupid people and the wardrobe challenged in one fell swoop. Hey, don’t faint, but I posted at Notes – added comment moderation, which I hope isn’t too tedious. Figured out the reason I was being spammed with Viagra links was because one of my tags was “Ed” – who is my painter! Ha!
Faint? That news makes me dance!
No, most people have the spam protectors nowadays, not problem.
ED will undoubtedly bring you some Viagra and the other 10 erection meds beating down your door!
I worked a cosmetic counter at a large department store about 20 yrs ago. Let me tell you…never fuck with women who spend that kind of cash on their faces. Anyway, a crepe-faced woman came to the counter with a lip-liner refill cartridge, you know the kind of thingy that snaps into the end of a pencil device so you can define your old squishy butthole mouth before you apply frosty pink lipstick to it. Anyway she says to me: “It’s broken.”
Me: “Oh, I’m sorry. Let me see what I can do.”
I observe that the cartridge looks as though it’s been in a garbage disposal.
Me: “Um..what’s happened to it?”
Her: “My husband tried to fix it with a pair of pliers. You see, it won’t twist up anymore!”
Me: (as calmly as possible) “Ma’am, it’s empty.”
There was no end to what some women expected for their purchase…apparently an endless supply of lipliner
SOunds like sage advice to me. That was a hilarious story!
Thanks Mick-Chick!