Job Descrip: Know Everything

[casey13]

So today I am working electronics and someone calls about a Boost Phone. He asks if I know about the Boost phones and I say that I know a little. After all, a lot of people call up about the plans or the actual phones we have in stock. Oh no, he goes into this description of trying to set the web browser. First of all, he doesn't name the style of the phone (we have three) and it's something that sounds very obscure. I tell him that setting a browser is out of my knowledge and he demands to speak to a manger. I tell him I'll ask the guy who deals with phones more often. He has no clue and says to recommend they call Boost customer service. I tell him that and the guy gets huffy and hangs up.

Ok, why do people assume we know everything about the products we sell? It is impossible to know every detail about a product, especially as we sell over 16 different prepaid cellphones models and that's excluding the contract phones. Then you have to figure in products such as stereos, DVDs, computers, televisions, cameras, MP3 players, and more. I can see if it was something like adding minutes. I add minutes to people's cells all the time because they don't know how to read or don't feel comfortable doing it. Not how to set the browser key or something like that.

What he actually said was something along the lines of "You press this button three times. Then you press the browser button. Then there's a button you push after you push the browser button. Do you know what it is?"

[EricKei]

I know your job would probably never allow, it, but this would be a literal case of "Tell the customer to RTFM".

[jjllbb]

I was 1 month into my current job and i had a lady freak out on me because I didn't know HOW much better these learning games played on the newer game system.

It wasn't enough that I knew one worked better than the other. I had to know HOW much. Or whether the difference was picture quality or a slight delay, or what-have-you.

People expect us to know everything about/ have tested and tried every product.

She literally huffed "I can't believe this! You are ridiculous! You don't even know about the products you SELL! I'm NEVER buying from here AGAIN!"

LADY, i work for a HUGE toy company. Lets see you memorize EVERY detail about all the thousands of products in store when all they do is hand you a name tag and throw you to the wolves. Nevermind that you'll be doing all this learning OFF THE CLOCK and on your own time since there is no other time to do it. Lets see how much you want to do that without getting paid.

[Spider Jerusalem]

I run into this kind of thing all the time, working in the photo lab and the camera department. The thing that really bakes my noodle, though, is when the same people expect us to know everything about everything, yet at the same time they argue with us or talk to us like we're idiots. Seriously, they'll ask questions about the most basic stuff that they could find in the instruction manuals, and when we answer their questions, they argue with us.

One that I'll never forget is this older guy who had asked one of my coworkers what kind of memory card Kodak EasyShare cameras use. She told him, "SD cards," and he argued and told her that she was "full of bullshit." (I didn't find out about this part until after he left.)

She came up to the counter and asked me, "What kind of card do the Kodak cameras use?"

I immediately said, "SD."

The guy said, "You're both full of bullshit!"

Now, if he hadn't believed us but had at least been civil about it, we would've pointed out the fact tags on our display cameras, which stated clearly which cards each camera uses. And if that still wasn't enough for him, I happened to have my own Kodak camera in my pocket at the time, and could've taken the card out and showed it to him. "Lookie here, it's an SD card. How about that?"

But since he immediately went for the "you're a liar/you don't know what you're talking about!" option, he needed to be shown the error of his ways.

"If you're gonna talk to us like that, you can find somewhere else to shop." Then I turned and walked away.

After he left, the coworker told me the first part and said, "That's why I asked you, just so he'd see that I wasn't full of shit." Though expecting an SC to admit that he's wrong was a little too optimistic.

Seriously, though, if you don't know something, why argue with us when we give you an answer? And if you know so damned much about it yourself, why are you asking us in the first place? If we don't know what we're talking about, why are we still working here? Do we actually have the answers, or are we all stupid just because we work behind a counter?

[bainsidhe]

Ha, same as when I worked in DVD/Music store. People would come up with a vague description and expect us to know which CD or DVD they were looking for.

Example:
SC: Where can I find a movie that had that one guy in it and they were fighting?
Me:
SC: You know, he and his friend were fighting and he was in this other movie with a woman.
Me: Do you know what genre? Some of the actors? What was the plot?
SC: C'mon, aren't you supposed to know these things?!?

[Mark Healey]

I'm in a bookstore with 40,000 books. They're used so they're all priced individually, even the when it is the same edition of a given title.

There is always some yahoo in the opposite end of the store holding one aloft and shouting"How much is this?".

[MannersMakethMan]

I used to work for one of the country's biggest catalogue shops, and when I'd get a query about an item, it always shocked them that all I could do was flip to the page it was on and read what was written about it there. No, surprisingly enough, we don't get set homework and have to memorise every detail about every item in the book. There are no stock ninjas to accost us when we're in the middle of carrying out a flat pack wardrobe asking about the relative benefits of the products on page 432, firing us if we fail to give an accurate answer in less than 40 words. Yes, you probably should just read the product description in the book...

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Ok, why do people assume we know everything about the products we sell?

Because they've never worked a day of retail in their lives and don't understand that our product knowledge comes in the form of big binders full of instructions, figures and specifications we never get a chance to look at because we're too busy, y'know, working.

Or in some cases management throws product knowledge completely out the window just to get a warm body where they need it. This is how I came to work in outdoor lawn and garden. The manager started up the computer lawn and garden training program, skipped to the quiz at the end, and put in all the correct answers. This at a time when lawn and garden was much bigger than it is now, and the company called its lawn and garden workers consultants, thus giving off the impression that we were all master gardeners and horticulturalists who knew everything there is to know about growing stuff.

Years ago, I had to deal with this guy tut-tutting us as we tried to figure out how to work a display home theater system, saying "You are the best advertisement your competitors could have." Umm, in this town our competitors are Rex (now defunct and I seldom heard anything good about them), Wal-Mart (where the electronics people don't know the first thing about electronics and might not even have electricity at their own home judging by the looks of some of them), and a few independent electronics stores where the employees are probably very knowledgeable about the products they sell, but are much more expensive than the other places, and you've probably ruled them out already if you're here. And frankly, our business isn't hurting any, even with the "best advertisement" we're supposedly giving them. So get off your high horse already.

[EricKei]

Ha, same as when I worked in DVD/Music store. People would come up with a vague description and expect us to know which CD or DVD they were looking for.

The scary thing is, I know a guy who probably *could* come up with half a dozen titles off the top of his head from a description like this. Then again, he ran movie rental stores for something like a decade, and is a huge movie buff. He's one of those people who never loses at "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon"...>_>

[Jay 2K Winger]

I'll occasionally get someone who'll ask something like that about X at the wholesale club. I'm always up front and admit that I either "don't know anything" or "don't know a whole lot" about X. And if the customer asks, "Aren't you supposed to know these things?" I always tell them, "They don't pay me enough to memorize everything about everything we carry," which usually gets a laugh.

[Hyndis]

I used to work for one of the country's biggest catalogue shops, and when I'd get a query about an item, it always shocked them that all I could do was flip to the page it was on and read what was written about it there. No, surprisingly enough, we don't get set homework and have to memorise every detail about every item in the book. There are no stock ninjas to accost us when we're in the middle of carrying out a flat pack wardrobe asking about the relative benefits of the products on page 432, firing us if we fail to give an accurate answer in less than 40 words. Yes, you probably should just read the product description in the book...

Its funny, its the exact same for me.

About half of the calls I get result in me telling the person to make a ticket so we can replace their product. Note that there is about a paragraph description of how to do this directly above the phone number they used to call.

The other half of the calls I get is where I read them the product page, which has all of the settings they need. This, too, is on the website that they got the phone number from.

Then maybe 5% of calls I get, maybe, are ones where there is an actual problem to solve.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I frequently get calls from people wanting to know why Xbox live is acting screwy or why their PS3 won't go online through their router (of course it's impossible for me to know without seeing the network setup) and get huffy when I tell them I don't know.

I am quite skilled at identifying a game from an obscure description but it's because I've worked around them so long and have become familiar with the titles.

[EricKei]

I am quite skilled at identifying a game from an obscure description but it's because I've worked around them so long and have become familiar with the titles.

Now *that*, I can do ^_^ If only because there are far, far more movies out there than games. That little 50ish years of additional time to make them makes a difference

As for PS3 errors...their website has a nice long list of error codes that they can look up and fix themselves.