Aparrently I look like an idiot

[Millahtyme1983]

About a week ago I had to close the seafood department in my store because the person that was supposed to didn't show up. I never really liked doing seafood because for some weird reason customers are a lot more annoying and sucky in front of the seafood counter than the deli counter even though they are the same people.

This one woman asked for three fillet's of haddock (pronouncing the word fillet as fillette) and as I am putting them on the scale in a sweet singsongy voice like you would hear when a mother is talking to her infant

"that's one, that's twooo, that's three...Very good"

I think maybe this was a failed attempt at being polite, but I always find patronizing to be more rude than being an outright a-hole.

[Andreamic]

I hate it when customers use that voice to me, but yesterday my manager noted that , like him, I use that voice back to customers when couting lottery back to them, adding totals, etc. He said it was like the voice of a Special Ed teacher

[RecoveringKinkoid]

One of the maddest I've ever gotten at a co worker was when I had one do this to me. End of the day, the lady was simply trying to be polite and easy to work with. In reality, she was notoriously VERY hard to work with. But I do believe she meant no real harmin this instance.

She was a director and during shoots would say stuff over the headset to the camera crew like "Do you think you can get this shot? If you feel comfortable getting this shot, go ahead."

Our issue was that we were professional cameramen. Yeah, we could get the freaking shot. Just say "Get this shot." and we're on it. We took it as patronizing. Frankly, it WAS patronizing. Ended up having a Come To Jesus meeting in the control room with this director and got the air rather nicely cleared. She simply didn't realize how she was coming across.

[Kara]

Not customer related, but on the subject of seafood and coworkers. When I worked at Kroger (about 7 years ago), the seafood manager told me she was training a new girl and at one point the girl asked her if they usually were very busy. The manager replied they weren't too busy most of the time, that is, until Lent comes around. And the girl's response:

"Who's Lent?"

She didn't last long.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I had a coworker do that to me once. She was a tiny little woman with a serious smoker's voice, but she always talked in that kinda cutesy voice (think Carol Channing on Free to Be You and Me)(the fact that she was a relatively functional alcoholic may have had something to do with that, but I digress). We were both cashwrap supervisors, and a couple hours after I got there I did a cash pickup on my drawer for $400 and gave it to her to double count. She counts it and says, "You're not allowed to do that!" like you'd say to a little kid sneaking into the cookie jar. Apparently the day before they decreed that pickups were not to be more than $300. Of course, this was not posted anywhere, I had not worked the day before and no one told me when I came in. Gee, howz about speaking to me like the adults we both are and telling me they changed a rule? She meant to be jokey but I found it really annoying.

[myswtghst]

To me, any tone of voice I use for my dog/kitties is insulting when used on me. It's a tone of voice you use to basically talk down to someone of little intelligence, and I can't stand it when people do that, no matter how they mean it.

[0oAmericanGirl]

"Who's Lent?"

aww, how cute

[BrightEyedKitty]

I take it she wasn't Catholic.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Had something like that happen to the female technician I had at my shop. As she was writing up the job order and taking down the list of symptoms the computer was having, the woman who owned the comp was describing the problems in baby talk. My tech didn't think anything of it since people often describe computer problems in various levels of non-technical ways.

However it was when the woman told my tech "Now you run along and take my computer to that nice man over there so he can get it fixed for me." in the sickeningly sweet way, that my tech had a look that was 30 seconds from critical mass.

I went out there to see what was going on and the woman thanked me for looking at her machine, again in that sweet way. I looked at my tech and said "I'm busy on the server for the School Board, do you mind working on this one for me?"

The woman was agast and started complaining about how she didn't feel comfortable letting a woman work on her computer. I asked her "Why? She has her A+ cert for working on computers, she's a Compaq Systems Engineer, a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Novell and Cisco trained and has 6 years experience. Technically she is more skilled than I am."

"Then why are you the Manager? Why not her? If she's better than you than why isn't she in charge?"

"Because I trained to be a manager as well as a tech...she didn't."

She shut up and left. Her computer? She was quoted a three day repair since it looked like a defective component that we needed to order. It wasn't and my tech fixed it in 30 minutes. I made the managerial decision to give it the remaining three days of bench testing to "make sure the repair held".

As they say on Robot Chicken..."douche"

M

[BookstoreEscapee]

I take it she wasn't Catholic.

I'm not Catholic...I know what Lent is! My college cafeteria always had a lot of non-chocolate desserts during Lent

[It's me]

I take it she wasn't Catholic.

It's not just Cathoics who observe Lent... Protestants do as well: Anglicans, Lutherans....

[Becks]

"Who's Lent?"

That ranks up there with the coworker of my mother's who asked what religion the Pope is the head of.

[reformedwaitress]

That ranks up there with the coworker of my mother's who asked what religion the Pope is the head of.

Is it bad that I don't find that, or the "Who's Lent?" question stupid? Just because you don't know about a religion doesn't mean you're dumb. It just means you weren't raised in that religion. You hear about "the Pope" all the time and you can usually deduce that he's some kind of head of a religion, but they very rarely ever say "the Pope, head of the Catholic Church" or anything.

*shrug*

Maybe it's just me but I find nothing at all wrong with these questions.

[trunks2k]

Well as far as the Pope goes, I would assume that people would know what religion he is the head of because it should have at least been talked about in history class. Basic European history had to have at least discussed the Catholic church and, in turn, the Pope, since a good amount of it's history is heavily influenced in that.

Then again, I learned all that in a private, Catholic high school. I don't know exactly what the public school kids were taught, or if they even got at least a brief overview of European history.

Not knowing what Lent is is a bit more understandable.

[Becks]

Maybe it's just me but I find nothing at all wrong with these questions.

I don't know...I was raised in a household that was not in any way particularily religious but I know these things.