Generally stupid things customers do ... add you own

[Hicksey]

I'll start this with my worst pet peeve that happens at just about every department store.

Everyone thinks its a good idea to have a big reunion at the door to the store so that everyone trying to get in has to squeeze around them. Invariably, they give you a dirty look for daring to try to move by them into the store. I always start talking loudly to my wife about how nobody is genuinely happy unless they are in your way.

At Christmas people go right nuts. One Christmas at the crappy tire store here in Chatham, ON they had DVD players on sale for $29.99 a few years ago. Mike, a friend's uncle, was bringing out a new skid of them because the shelf had been emptied and they literally ran him over to get to the DVD players and trampled him to the point he was hospitalized overnight. Mike is not a small guy. He is about 6 foot and 215 pounds. But the mob just knocked him down and trampled him to get to their cheap ass DVD players.

[XCashier]

Yikes! Poor Mike. If it's any consolation, he's not alone, there are always news stories around Christmas time of some poor soul getting injured by an insane mob out to get the Hot Toy Of The Season or whatever's on sale.

Isn't materialism wonderful?!

[Lyse]

I just hate seeing people that act like it's a crisis that they can't get exactly what they want - NOW! In my opinion, the only thing that flipping important at a store would be medication. And even then, it would have to be precription medication. Otherwise, there are too many other choices out there. Oh, you might have to leave and go to another store? If it's important enough for you to scream at the poor kid stocking the shelves, then it's worth the extra time and effort to get it.

Maybe I'm just getting old and bitter people seem to seriously have their priorities screwed up. Instant gratification is not a frikken guarentee.
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Remember this, foolish mortals, when ye stare headlong into the mind-paralyzing void, the inky black nothingness of existence, the hellish yawning maw of the abyss -- it's pretty damn dark, so give your eyes a few minutes to adjust.

[kerrisan]

I have at least a couple.

1) Leaving carts next to the cart return in the parking lot. Not that it was too big a deal when I had to go get carts, but it just astounds me at how lazy people are. That, and it blocks parking spaces and raises the risk of hitting someone's car.

2) Customers who "used to work for (your company) for (so many) years." I don't care; let me do my job and you can be the customer.

[Worker-Intellectual]

One Christmas at the crappy tire store here in Chatham, ON they had DVD players on sale for $29.99 a few years ago.

Was that last year? I remember that... The best part for me was that they were in the computer at $39.99, and when we change the price, it doesn't actually change the price, it will show up on the screen as:

DVD player $39.99
VOID DVD player -$39.99
DVD player $29.99

Customers got so confused over that and thought that I was ripping them off...

And then if you forgot to change it, all hell would break loose because you would have to either send them to customer service or call a supervisor/manager over to void the transaction and do the whole thing again. And the manager working that day was a bit of a jerk when it came to voids... he complained that I had to call for voids too often (yeah, customer comes up, I scan their crap, they say they don't want it anymore, I'll just do it myself, oh wait, "operator unauthorized"), and one time when I was working in the garden center, I kept paging and paging for over 10 minutes because no one would come, called him and asked him if he could do one, he replied "Absolutely not!" finally one of the supervisors at customer service called me and let me use her codes, and I finally got to go on break. When I got back, and needed one for a customer who didn't want an item after seeing the price, he finally got out to the garden center, to complain that I was paging too much. "You have paged over 15 times today for voids, I counted. That's unacceptable." (yeah buddy, if only people would come when I paged them, maybe I wouldn't have to repeatedly page for 15 minutes).

Sorry for the insane rant, but that day was awful...

[friendofjimmyk]

Name dropping! I hate name dropping. I don't care who you know - I don't know you and there is no memo regarding treating your high and mighty ass any different from the next schlub in line.

[Cedophile]

2) Customers who "used to work for (your company) for (so many) years."

Isn't employee turnover wonderful? Welcome back to the ranks of the consumer!

[powerboy]

What I hate, is when customers acts like they are your friends, and then gets pissed if you cannot give them them that discount

[DesignFox]

What I hate, is when customers acts like they are your friends, and then gets pissed if you cannot give them them that discount

ooh I freaking hate that, too!

I've got a few to add-
1) the guy that sneaks in the door last minute and will "just be a second" (then proceeds to keep you there well past close)
2) coupon whores who "forgot" or "lost" their precious coupon and argue for the discount anyway. (right...let me just knock a few bucks off your purchase for giggles)
3) the whiners- "can't someone else ring me up?" (when all registers in the store are being used). Um...yea, let me pull another register out of my ass...?

[Lulu]

Oh this is easy...my personal pet peeves :

1.) Wandering off mid transaction. Yes, your credit/debit card may take longer than a nano-second to go through, that doesn't mean you get to wander off and then look all suprised when I call you BACK to the counter to put your PIN in!

1 a.) Don't then, when you've FINALLY dragged your sorry self back to my counter, produce another 6 items you want to buy, because now it'll have to go through as another transaction and you know it. Saying to me "Oh, just add this on!" doesn't make my till magically capable of pausing a transaction.

2.) SC : "I'm here to pick up the book I ordered."
Me : "Ok, what was the name of the book?"
SC : "You're asking me?! I've no idea!" / "Oh I can't remember things like that!" / "Can't you just look it up?"

Nuff said

[Imogene]

SC : "You're asking me?! I've no idea!" / "Oh I can't remember things like that!" / "Can't you just look it up?"

Nuff said

Hated that when I worked for Chesterfield. I'd have people coming in to pick up movies for someone they're assumably related to.
SC: "I'm here to pick up a movie. It's for 'Huffman'."
M: "What was the movie?"
SC: "I dunno."
M: *stare at the spines of some fifty or so DVDs standing upright in the cabinet, none of which are called 'I Dunno'... then look at box of hold DVDs/VHS, and what a mess it is, add to that the fact that easily seventy five percent of my coworkers would just drop movies in there without leaving post-its with the name/ date they held it for, so it'd be a lose movie, with no ID as to why it's down there, sigh* "I'm sorry, but unless you know the name of the movie, I really can't just pull it out of thin air. The only place the movies are labeled by name is on the front, and it's no simple task to pull out every single movie just to find the one with your last name on it. Plus, 'I'm here to pick up a movie' could possibly mean any number of things. 1) You reserved a movie, it'd be over here behind the counter. 2) You ordered a movie, which would put it over here, crammed into the tiny little cabinet, hence previous 'no simple task' comment. 3) You called up and put a movie on hold, and, since no one put a note on it, I put it back out about ten minutes ago, to make room in the Hold box. Now then, what the was the name of the movie?"

[Hicksey]

I have at least a couple.

1) Leaving carts next to the cart return in the parking lot. Not that it was too big a deal when I had to go get carts, but it just astounds me at how lazy people are. That, and it blocks parking spaces and raises the risk of hitting someone's car.

2) Customers who "used to work for (your company) for (so many) years." I don't care; let me do my job and you can be the customer.

I have to agree with you about #1. However, I think it goes beyond laziness to the realms of sheer stupidity. How lazy and retarded do you have to be to walk a cart halfway across the parking lot to a cart corral and park it in the space beside the corral?

On #2, I usually use that to my advantage. I talk them up with a couple of SC stories and then usually get a little bit better service than they offer the average customer. That little bit of empathy (in my experience anyways) tends to make their day better.

[rvdammit]

I have to agree with you about #1. However, I think it goes beyond laziness to the realms of sheer stupidity. How lazy and retarded do you have to be to walk a cart halfway across the parking lot to a cart corral and park it in the space beside the corral?

Here, in the UK, most carts have a little doofer on them that you have to stick a pound coin in to release them from the nest. To get your money back you have to return them.

[Hicksey]

Oh this is easy...my personal pet peeves :

1.) Wandering off mid transaction.

OMG!!

As I read more and more of this site I am starting to see some use for eugenics. However, in some cases its more amazing that these people have even figured out how to procreate in the first place.

[Hicksey]

Here, in the UK, most carts have a little doofer on them that you have to stick a pound coin in to release them from the nest. To get your money back you have to return them.

We have those here too, but here people think that 25 cents for a cart is cheap. You would not believe how many people STILL steal the carts. In fact, we have one store here that has sort of a lojack-for-carts deal AND the doofer on them and those carts are routinely stolen and the doofer wheel replaced. It is absolutely amazing the lengths people will go to get their own personal shopping cart.