Customers That Laugh At You

[Canadian In Maine]

Ever had that happen?

Like when it's really busy and you're wrestling with a plastic wrapped roll of coins and it won't open?

"Tee hee, look, she's freaking out!"

"Aww, look, she can't handle it!"

Or, they just assume that you can't handle something?

"Does that confuse you?"

"Maybe you should call for help?"

[Mr. Rager!]

A few times I've had a customer thinking they are going to be a wise-ass. I just point out to them that they are just being an ass though.

[kerrisan]

Those customers are the kind of people who give up when building something and say "the instructions must be wrong!" Just ignore them; they'll get nowhere in life!

[AFpheonix]

Lessee....
I don't wear red shirts anymore, since it's been pointed out to me on numerous occasions that if I'm running around like we do during a rush, my face tends to match my shirt.

I had one stupid old lady that set a bunch of stuff on the counter and went to go sit down, and someone else came up to get rung up on that register. Well, I accidentally rang up one of the old idjit's items with the second lady's stuff (These aren't large counters, and everything was adjacent to each other). She came running up yelling "you confoosed! what wrong with you?!" Uhhh....nothing's wrong with me, maybe if you kept your purchases with your person instead of piling them willy-nilly, this wouldn't be an issue....
She had an insurance issue, too, and at the time she had been waited on by a new tech that told her some misinformation, so when I had to set her straight, she wouldn't believe me because I'd made the ultimate mistake in her eyes by ringing up her items with someone else's.

[chainedbarista]

"you confoosed! what wrong with you?!"

she thinks you're confused?? what's wrong with you? more like what's wrong with HER. enunciate, moron and speak english, not hillbilly.

[TruthHurts]

One time during a particularly hellish shift the first room I went to requested only towels no service. After cleaning another dozen trashed rooms I was ready to go home and relax. I am angling the cart into the closet when the lady from the first room waves me over. She has decided at the last minute she needed service after all. This would not have been a problem except her asshat hubby had the audacity to point at me and laugh. "You were already to go home and now you gotta do our room. You look tired, bet you're super pissed at us"

It took all my energy not to shove that cart right back into the closet and flip him off before skipping home.

[ArenaBoy]

I have yelled at SCs for doing things they're not supposed to do and some people turn wiseass about it. I've been laughed at if I'm trying to catch a car that's not supposed to be somewhere or my personal favorite; being a hardass at the chains.

[Mixed Bag]

Another oldo, perhaps from a Matthew (don't know that to be the gospel truth, though):


They look at your name tag and make puns with the products in the store. I.E.: ( at the frame counter ) Hey, Matt...can you cut me a mat, Matt. ( Can I cut your throat!! )


Well, if employees are going to wear fake names sometimes, maybe they deliberately chose them for that effect--I know I would.

I hope the employee didn't go away Matt.

[biscuitchan]

Our system was being reeeaallly slow for no apparent reason and I pressed 'Total' once and it didn't go through, I said "Hmm. Weird, it's not going through...sorry about this." "Oh, press the button that says 'Total', that usually works." "(Haha, wise-ass.)...Yeah."

[squall]

I remember I was bending down zoning the bottom shelf of an aisle. Btw, I'm no stranger to being hit on or stared at by girls about my age and a little younger. So there I was bending down. It just so happened I had my butt facing toward the end of an aisle. I saw two cute young ladies walk past the aisle in the corner of my eye. They then take two or three steps back and lean back for a second look at my bum and giggled. They tried to walk away quickly thinking I didn't notice.

[Petronella]

The display windows in our store are horribly flimsy and poorly designed. There are all these little glass shelves that get unbalanced if you even look at them wrong, so we have to be very careful.

One day when I'd been working there a few months, I was either rearranging or cleaning something in there, and sure enough I touched the wrong corner with my elbow and one glass pane came smashing down on the tile floor and broke. Luckily no one was near that section.

I was annoyed enough that now I had to clean up the mess and that it happened when my AM was in the store. But then a pair of old bags in the store actually laughed at my mishap, and made some stupid crack, like "Oh, I won't be asking YOU to wrap anything up for me!" It was the angriest I've ever been at this job. I just swung around at them and gave them the biggest look of death ever, and they actually shut right the hell up! I think I might actually have said something back to them like "Well, good!"

My AM bustled over and distracted the old bags and got them away from me and the broken glass, I think they did actually end up buying stuff that day, but I certainly did not help them!

The AM wasn't angry with me at all (I've seen her come close to losing it with SCs as well), because I hadn't actually said anything too bad to them. She did mention that it was the first and only time she'd ever seen me look upset in the store!

[Susie Derkins]

One of the few times I ever lost my cool on the job was when a woman laughed at me, but it wasn't just that. I used to work in a deli and this dingbat came up during a rush and asked for a pound of potato salad. I scooped up what looked like a pound, set it on the scale, and sure enough it weighed in at 1.00 lbs, right on the money. I printed the label, stuck it on, and tried to hand it to the heifer. That's when it began.

She screamed, "YOU ARE TRYING TO CHEAT ME!!!"

Heads everywhere turned to look. It got deathly quiet.

"I'm sorry?"

"YOU ARE TRYING TO CHEAT ME, I'M NOT STUPID!! LOOK AT ALL THE EXTRA ROOM THERE IS IN THAT CONTAINER!!"

I quickly tried to explain that if she looked at the sticker it would show that there was exactly a pound of potato salad in there and that the containers were made to leave a little extra room. She stood there, with her arms folded, shaking her head back and forth as far as anatomy would allow, and kept saying, "YOU FILL IT FULL, YOU WILL NOT CHEAT ME!!"

So with people still staring at us, I took off the sticker, opened the tub back up, and put in another spoonful of salad. I tried to put the lid back on, but it was of course too full at that point, so I had to scrape some off the top first. That's when she started laughing at me.

"I KNEW IT WAS TOO FULL!!" she cackled, looking around to see who else was watching the idiot deli worker get her comeuppance.

I calmly stuck on the new sticker (1.29 lbs, I will never forget it), and as I reached over to hand it to her I leaned in close and whispered, "You take this now, and get the f*ck away from me." I had murder in my eyes and I guess she could see it. Her eyes opened wide. She took the potato salad, wheeled right around, and took off at high speed.

I kept expecting a manager to come back and have a talk with me or maybe even fire me, but it never happened. Either she figured out what a cow she was being, or she was so dumb that she forgot it ever happened as soon as something shiny drew her attention. It was not my finest moment, but I had a shorter fuse back then and that woman pushed every button I had.

[Dips]

I answered a customer email once and made a typing mistake.

The customer wrote back and made sure to use the same typo about ten times with quotes around it.

Grrrr....

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I have on more than one occasion, put my pen down on the counter, paused while staring at the counter, then raised my head and stared straight at a customer in the eyes with the "Do you want this order done or not?" look.

Amost every time, their attitude does a 180. Or at least swerves back onto the road of reason. I think two things are happening. One, people often don't realize how much a jerk they are being, and two, they sure don't expect to have someone give them the Mommy Death Stare. And they don't like it much. I think they found the idea of someone registering their crappy behavior and reacting to it unnerving. Most SCs, I believe, forget that an employee is in fact a real, living, feeling person.

I think at Kinkos, so many of the customers there understood that ultimately, they needed us. Power point presentation for a meeting? Thesis due in a couple days? Banner for trade show tomorrow? It's not like a burger you can send back. Screw up at Kinko's and it might be your job. I can personally promise you that nobody at the store I worked would ever consider screwing over a customer on purpose, no matter how big a jerk they were. It just would not have happened.

But they didn't know that.

[Mixed Bag]

stared straight at a customer in the eyes with the "Do you want this order done or not?" look.

I guess it's the look that's more effective than the words; also, having had that said to me as a customer with a valid point, I wasn't satisfied (then again, I wasn't placing a critical order for my company, and if my employer is the one paying and doesn't mind a policy, I'll set aside most of my crusading impluse).

Sorry on behalf of your customer, Dips--as a good speller and punmaster I have similar first impulses and have to know when to restrain them.