Could you possibly be a bit more vague?

[RealUnimportant]

I work in a railway station in the UK. We have a massive customer base, made up of every kind of SC and EW imaginable. What with immigrants, foreign exchange students & tourists, as well as illiterate natives, I have to decipher all kinds of grunts, mumbles, neeps, nops, & squawks into location names & product types. I'm used to it, but sometimes you feel like they're making it harder on themselves on purpose... Today I had the best/worst case yet. (Names and places are changed to protect the sucky.)

Me - The Protagonist, your narrator
SC - The Antagonist

SC - Ticket!

Me - To? *If they're terse, I'm usually terse back when I can get away with it.*

SC - Ticket!!

Me - There's over 3000 stations* in the country, can you narrow it down a little?

* An educated guess, which turned out to be remarkably prescient

SC - I can't hear you! Ticket!

*despite being a large man, I am accused of being very soft-spoken so I lean right down to my highly sensitive microphone & kindly repeat my earlier estimate for their listening pleasure.*

SC - Trumpton! *yes, everything they said was an exclamation.*

Me - Trumpton Town, Trumpton & West Chigley, or Trumpton Camberwick Green?

SC - Trumpton Camberwick Green!

Me - Single or Return?

SC - Return!

Me - So, you want a Return to Trumpton Camberwick Green? Excellent. That'll be 5 pounds.

SC pays, I hand over the tickets
Me - One return to Trumpton Camberwick Green. (And if you'd just said that to start with, we'd have been done 90 seconds ago.)



I'm so glad that we're not even expected to have good manners in my role; I do, I have excellent manners - I just reserve my best behaviour for those that deserve it!

[Clover]

Good grief. People seem to expect us to be able to tell exactly what they want from the slightest hint. I can't count the times someone came in when I was working the front register at my first job, or the cigarette counter at my second, and had someone tell me they wanted a pack of smokes, then stand there looking at me expectantly. There's like three hundred different brands here, and several different flavors of each of those! I'm going to need a little bit more information than just 'smokes'.

[C. Cecil Ivanish]

Had a funny experience recently in a railway station.
Went to buy a ticket, stated my destination and the fact that I wanted a single.
The man at the window asked me "Yes, to where?"
I repeated where I was going.
"OK, single or return?"
"Single please."
"It would be £x.xx. Uhm... you told me where you were going the first time, right?"
"Aye"
"Sorry, most people don't so it comes automatic".
Had a good laugh.

[BrenDAnn]

Ugh reminds me of when they come into the c-store and request "A can of Skoal" or "A can of Copenhagen" and I turn and look at the dozens of varieties of each rather pointedly. People just don't get it. That or they ask for a specific brand of cigarettes but not the size or style (light, full flavor, etc). Learn to describe exactly what you want and life will be MUCH easier!

[Stryker One]

Good grief. People seem to expect us to be able to tell exactly what they want from the slightest hint. I can't count the times someone came in when I was working the front register at my first job, or the cigarette counter at my second, and had someone tell me they wanted a pack of smokes, then stand there looking at me expectantly. There's like three hundred different brands here, and several different flavors of each of those! I'm going to need a little bit more information than just 'smokes'.

Why not just select the most expensive pack on the shelf for them?

[Teskeria]

Me - The Protagonist, your narrator
SC - The Antagonist

SC - Ticket!

Me - To?

SC - Ticket!!

Me: Oh! You want a ticket to wigglesbottom on the pole (wonder if there is such a place). Certainly. One way is 4378 pounds, Round Trip is 8755 pounds. As you can see, you save a pound when you purchase the return at the same time.

SC: No I want Trumpton Camberwick Green! (with luck they'll add the single or return themselves, otherwise I would assume . . .

Me: A single to Trumpton Camberwick Green.

[MoonCat]

Next time just give them a ticket to Nunavut.

[skeptic53]

At least once a week:
"What medicine did this other clinic prescribe?"
"You should know, it's a little white pill..."

At least once a day:
"What pharmacy do you want that sent to?"
"Walgreen's"
"Which one?"
"The one on the [main drag highway]."
"Which one?"
"The one in [neighboring suburb]."
"Which one?"
"Uhhhh....."
"The one across from the florist or the one by the Dairy Queen?"
"Uhhh.... how about Rite Aid instead?"
"Which one?"

(lather, rinse, repeat)

[RealUnimportant]

Me: Oh! You want a ticket to wigglesbottom on the pole (wonder if there is such a place). Certainly. One way is 4378 pounds, Round Trip is 8755 pounds. As you can see, you save a pound when you purchase the return at the same time.

On other occasions with other customers I have used "should I pick a destination for you, or do you have a preference?" or started naming stations 200-500 miles away... Sometimes it helps focus them, other times, meh.

[wolfie]

Me - The Protagonist, your narrator
SC - The Antagonist

SC - Ticket!

Me - To? *If they're terse, I'm usually terse back when I can get away with it.*

SC - Ticket!!

Me - There's over 3000 stations* in the country, can you narrow it down a little?

SC - I can't hear you! Ticket!

At this point, an appropriate answer is "I'm sorry, but none of our trains go to a small town on highway D32 northwest of Ann Arbor Michigan". They probably won't recognize that you're telling them to go to Hell (had to look it up in a large-scale atlas - the standard one doesn't do towns that small).

Ugh reminds me of when they come into the c-store and request "A can of Skoal" or "A can of Copenhagen" and I turn and look at the dozens of varieties of each rather pointedly. People just don't get it. That or they ask for a specific brand of cigarettes but not the size or style (light, full flavor, etc). Learn to describe exactly what you want and life will be MUCH easier!

One semester I worked as a crib attendant for a first-year machine shop class. Quite a few students put "tap" on the list of tools they needed, without specifying a size. I'd give them a 1/4-20 (only tapped hole in the project was 1/2-20, but it was a harmless wrong tap - would drop straight through the pilot hole). If they asked for "1/2 inch tap", I'd get out both the 1/2-13 and 1/2-20, tell them that one was the right tap, and the other would ruin the workpiece - please tell me how many threads per inch you need.

[dalesys]

...Quite a few students put "tap" on the list of tools they needed...

Left or right hand? You realize you have to use a left hand drill bit for the hole if you're going to thread it with a left hand tap.

[Buglady]

I get "dog food!" as a respose to "Hi, how are you?" all the time. (I work in a pet food store) I've always felt a little sorry for those folks; I imagine you must be feeling fairly unwell if you compare your state to dog food...

I'm slightly less amused by "Dog! Food!" as a response to "what can I help you find today?". We're a pet food store. We have approximately a kazillion kinds of dog, cat, hamster, fish, bunny, lizard and bird food! You've only narrowed it down slightly by saying dog food, as that's about half of our SKUs. Yet people roll their eyes and huff and sigh as though being asked to specify is a terrible burden.

So I have started giving them either the biggest, most expensive bag of food we have, especially if the customer is a brittle, overly-dieted woman who is holding a tiny purse dog - or the smallest, most specialized bag of Princess Foo-Foo Puppy Nibbles* if the customer is large, male, and attempting to look tough. I call it a social experiment :innocent:

(*not an actual brand)

[Little Retail Rabbit]

I travel by train frequently, and while some of my friends from out of my area love to slag off my local station, I have no bloody idea why! Yes, its not the snazziest station in the world (I've seen a lot worse!) but its not falling apart or dirty and I find the staff are great. Most of them recognise me and ask me how I am, and if its not busy I might have a little chat with them. Great guys there...when I planing a lone trip to London (just to prove I could do it!) one of them suggested I go by Victoria rather than Waterloo because it would save me £10. They do things like that a lot. On big fares they sometimes try shave off a little bit for you by making it a return to some nearby smaller station or something, because if you're coming back late at night, you won't need to go through the ticket barriers XD

Wish the bus drivers around here were as helpful; most of them are douches.

Oh that reminds me. On my first day at secondary school I was getting the bus home for the first time ever on my own. My mum asked me to go with another girl in my year and her older brother who would be getting off at the same stop. They didn't tell me what the name of the stop was and only said "Just follow us, we want to show you our stop!". They got on ahead of me, then I got on, gave the driver some money and try to walk on. He stopped me and asked me where I was going. Now keep in mind I was a wee little girl who had never rode the bus before without mum and didn't know the name of the stop, but I remembered my suburb and said "Bedhampton." He said "I'm not going that way." Technically speaking he was right, although the stop was around the corner from my house, it was literally just outside of Bedhampton (I didn't know that then) I looked at my "friends" who just stared at me blankly and didn't say the name of the stop, and the driver made me get off the bus crying. I used my money to ring my Nana from a phonebox and get her to pick me up.

I never spoke to those "friends" ever again <.<

[Sapphire Silk]

At least once a week:
"What medicine did this other clinic prescribe?"
"You should know, it's a little white pill..."

At least once a day:
"What pharmacy do you want that sent to?"
"Walgreen's"
"Which one?"

Ugh. I get this almost every time I work hospice triage. Someone will run out of medications, and I'll have to call in a script to their pharmacy.

They'll either not know which medicine they ran out of:

SC: The fluid pill!
Me: Which one? You're on two!
SC: The white one!
Me: That doesn't tell me anything.

or not know which pharmacy they use.

SC: Walgreens!
Me: OK, which one?
SC: The one on High Point Road!
Me: Which one? There are several.

Oh that reminds me. On my first day at secondary school I was getting the bus home for the first time ever on my own. My mum asked me to go with another girl in my year and her older brother who would be getting off at the same stop. They didn't tell me what the name of the stop was and only said "Just follow us, we want to show you our stop!". T
I never spoke to those "friends" ever again <.<

No offense, but I think your mum has to take some ownership of this. She should have told you the name of the stop, and not depended on other children, one of whom was your own age, to get you where you needed to go.

Something like this happened to me when I first started riding the bus. Mom forgot to tell me what the bus number was. I get out of school and see a sea of yellow buses. I didn't know which one was mine, and just picked one. Fortunately, the bus driver realized he hadn't seen me on his bus in the morning, and got a teacher. It took awhile to get it sorted out, which held up ALL the buses, and left me very embarrassed when I got on the bus last and everyone realized I was the reason they were late going home from school.