An unusually sucky customer

[dianeduane]

I’m very fond of the LJ community customers_suck. I read it often to remind myself of the dreadful crap that almost all service-providers have to put up with at one point or another… yet another reason to be nice to all the behind-the-counter people whose paths I cross. But also I read it because sometimes there’s just something so hilarious to be found there that it makes the whole afternoon or evening.

This is one. If I wrote this into a screenplay, my producer would send the scene back with “Not believable, nobody is really this stupid” scrawled across it.  …Nonetheless, what a great scene it would be to write.

Tags: customers+suck, supermarket, bagger, mistaken+identity, embarrassment, unobservant

Comments

[meijhen.livejournal.com]

All I can say is....wow. Yep, hard to believe people are really that stupid!

BTW, I love customers_suck too...sometimes the things that people do and say just amaze me!

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

LOL! I've actually been there for a similar story. For some reason, countessaleska exudes this aura of "I work here" whenever she's in any retail setting.

We were driving home from a SF con once and stopped for gas. Aleska was still wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, a Cat-in-the-Hat stovepipe hat, and her con badge (with a great big picture of a rocketship on it). She was at the counter waiting to pay for our gas when a guy came up and asked her to fill a propane tank for him. It took her about four tries to convince him that she didn't work there and he still looked snitty/suspicious about it even as we walked out the door.

The freaky thing is, this all played out as it did with her *dressed the way she was*. As we joked afterwards, maybe Propane-Tank Guy thought it was Casual Day at the gas station or something. :D

[bynkii.livejournal.com]

I think everyone needs to read CS as a reminder that customer service is not the same as servitude.

SOme of the stuff I see as another customer is just appalling

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Oh, you think she was stupid, you need to check out this genius (http://community.livejournal.com/customers_suck/9927632.html).

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*laughs* wow.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Read that one. OMG.

[genmaicha.livejournal.com]

I've had so many instances like that... Yes, it most definitely happens. A LOT.

If you enjoy CS, try http://notalwaysright.com/ too. Tends to be lower on the drama quotient than CS due to no comment threads, though also lower volume in anecdotes. (The drama quotient is one reason I stopped reading CS regularly, I have to admit.)

[janne.livejournal.com]

Me, I'm still totally weirded out at the concept of employing people to bag groceries at all. Surely the sane solution is for everybody to bag their own, it's not exactly rocket science.

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

Wow.

That is ... that is just a whole new level of short bus stupid, right there.

I mostly get mistaken for a librarian

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

I often head for the library self-serve terminal to find the location of books I want or to request other books in series I find on the shelves that look interesting. I can't tell you how often I get mistaken for a librarian just because I'm competent with this very simple machine, or because, in branches that have one, I can scan out my books on the self-scan machine, which even 9-year-olds can manage.

I don't understand why I keep getting mistaken for the laundromat attendant, though. All the attendants at our laundromat wear aprons and carry wiping rags. I always have an iPod on and load my machines with a distracted expression.

I'm also mistaken for a saleswoman at some of our local large department stores, but I think that's just desperation, because they're hard to find.

Then there are a couple of women I allegedly look just like... but that's another story!

[ailbhe]

That one is really something special. Very, very special. That poor, poor kid. I wonder how long it takes chemical cleaning products to make your mouth all burny?

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Well, let's find out, shall we?

http://community.livejournal.com/customers_suck/9951509.html

http://chokatobuttrfly.livejournal.com/304395.html

[silveraspen]

... oh, that's just amazing.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

This summer I've been living in a ritzier neighbourhood than I used to... I'm still getting used to the fact that all the cashiers want to bag my groceries for me. If I bring in my own reusable bag they actually take it from me, hang it on the bagging rack, and put stuff in it. One store today even had a bagger who was not the cashier. So weird.

[stokerbramwell.livejournal.com]

It happens all the time. I swear, where do people leave their brains...

If you like CS, you might also want to take a look at Not Always Right (http://www.notalwaysright.com). Endless hilarity abounds!

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Your producer hasn't worked in a service industry like the ones described, right?

[kayshapero]

If I wrote this into a screenplay, my producer would send the scene back with “Not believable, nobody is really this stupid”

The trouble with fiction that, quite unlike reality it has to worry about versimilitude.

Let's hear it for assumptions - I still recall with amusement the time the guy at the department store who was updating my credit card record by hand (this was a LONG time ago), and was so certain that it must be actually my husband's card that he got our names backwards on the form and had to do it all over again...much to the entertainment of everybody behind me in line who'd heard the whole thing and thus new better than to blame ME.

[kayshapero]

Wow - that poor kid; it's hard enough to live to become an adult without having none in your vicinity.

[kayshapero]

Sounds like there's a market out there for "sorry, I don't work here" buttons. Though if the convention t-shirt and badge don't work, I suppose they wonldn't either.

And then there was the time a guy came up and had an argument with a Firesign Theater button I was wearing which said "everything you know is wrong." Life is strange.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

One of my friends got a hold of cleanser when he was very young, squirted it in his mouth, and spent a few weeks in the hospital as a result. The nurses called him "Mr. Fantastic..."

The orange cleanser story is a beautiful, scary case of cognitive dissonance in action. "It can't be harmful, because if it were, I wouldn't have given it to my child. I did give it, ergo..."

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

*loves Firesign Theater* I had a homemade "Unconscious Village" shirt once. People thought it was a real store. Wackiness ensued...

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

I get mistaken for an employee of most retail stores and supermarkets. My response: "Man, I wish I were actually employed. I need the money."

I can understand if I were wearing my red New England Aquarium polo shirt to Target (where employees wear red polo shirts). Heck, the logo for Target is a bullseye, while the aquarium logo is a fish that resembles an eye:

I kept my shirt when I went on maternity leave, and later on they changed the uniform colors to teal. So, it's fairly easy to mistake me for a Target employee.
However, it doesn't seem to matter where I am, or what I wear; everyone wants me to help them. I guess that I must have a face that screams: "I'm here to help."

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

Our stores here do it. They didn't in Pennsylvania, or Florida - just Texas.

I always tell them to help someone else, because I bring my own bags, including insulated cooler bags, and I'm piucky about my bagging :D

[janeway216.livejournal.com]

I guess that I must have a face that screams: "I'm here to help."

That's pretty much the only thing I can figure. That, or I just have an aura of helpful competence/"I know what I'm doing". It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm wearing, someone will ask me to help them find something or get something down off the shelf (although I've never had anyone insist that I bag their groceries for them, how amazingly tacky.)

My favorite so far? To set the scene, I am at a hospital visiting a friend of mine who has been admitted for surgery. I am wearing a t-shirt, jeans, a cardigan sweater and a sticker on my chest that says "Visitor." A hospital employee pushing a trash can gets on the elevator with me, asks me to push the button for his floor -- normal so far -- and then starts chatting to me about work and asking me if I know where X department is. I give him a bewildered shrug and a blank stare and he apologizes, saying he thought I worked there. I still can't figure out what made him think that.

[agawa-jean.livejournal.com]

I love customers suck, and it has definitely helped me rant about some choice customers. My favorite has to be the time we had a lady instruct her 2-or-so year old son that it was perfectly fine to pee on our sidewalk! This was a restauarant, so even more ick for the people eating. D: People are so clueless sometimes!

And I love that there's a place for the "wage slaves" to rant!

[kankurette.livejournal.com]

I had that in Sainsbury's, sort of. Their uniforms are quite distinct - dark blue polo shirts and name badges - and I wasn't wearing anything LIKE a Sainsbury's uniform, and some dumb bint asked me if I worked there while I was in the shampoo section. DERRRRRRRRR.
I don't know what's stupider, people who ask you if you work somewhere when you're not wearing said place's uniform, or people who ask you if you work somewhere when you ARE wearing the uniform. No, I go round wearing WH Smith polo shirts and sweaters and badges with my name on for fun. Idiots.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

"FISHSTICKS!"

[sally_maria]

Would I choose to go round wearing this shade of orange if I didn't have to?

I can just about understand people seeing someone in a uniform and being unobservant enough to miss that it bears no resemblance to the one normally worn in that shop - but if you're not even in uniform it really makes no sense.

[megabitch.livejournal.com]

I was wandering around a local hardware/home improvements type shop near here. I was wearing an akubra (australian hat, always gets mistaken for a "cowboy hat" in UK) and a lightweight sleeveless jacket of many pockets (aka hamster jacket. I was carrying a tin of paint and some brushes, was moving pretty fast as I went from aisle to aisle collecting the rest of the things I needed. Three different people stopped me to ask me where various things were - each time I pointed them in the right direction and then, out of curiosity, asked them "Why did you ask me? Do I look as if I work here?" and all of them admitted that they had just assumed I worked there regardless of my clothing because "you look like you know where things are".

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

My favorite anecdote, however, does not involve being mistaken for an employee.

I used to carry my newborn in a baby carrier on my stomach, so that she could look up at my face. One of my teachers had bumped into me when I had my ultrasound, and made me promise that I'd visit her at the junior high school to show off the baby. So, newborn in tow, I dropped by my old school just as the fall semester was starting.

As I walked down the hallway, one teacher started berating me for bringing a doll into class. I tried to explain that I wasn't a student there, and that, yes, there was an actual BABY so could she please keep her voice down? However, she was having none of that nonsense! Oh, no; she insisted on giving me detention and then sending me to the principal's office... which was fine by me, since that was my destination. ^_^

When I told my friend, the new principal, over tea, she laughed so hard that it shot out her nose. "SERIOUSLY?"
I nodded, "Yep; she thought that I was fourteen."
Sagely, the principal mused, "Well, you are short." Then she called the teacher in, who tried to backpedal so fast that I swear she left skidmarks on the carpet.

[sally_maria]

I know the kind of hat you mean - I have several friends who wear them.

Maybe it is a question of being able to find where things are more easily and you get better at it if you work in shops - I know I'm much better at reading and noticing signage than a lot of the people I shop with.

Then of course you get the time with a manager at work, wearing a suit but working moving stock around. Customer asks him if he works there and he says no, he just likes putting stock on shelves - they believe him and start going away. :-)

[agawa-jean.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, sometimes people miss details. I honestly don't care if a customer's polite - hey, if I'm in customer service, I am paid to help them, after all! I myself often use "Excuse me, do you work her?" politely as an opener to talk with employees - it's pretty obviously a rhetorical question, but it's something to get the ball rolling.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Boston, it was bag your own groceries. The first time we went grocery shopping in Florida, it was like "Whoa, people do the bagging *for* you?!?"

[kayshapero]

Grin. I borrowed their title "We're all Bozos on this bus" for a short story once - actually a game writeup of a RPG run that came out sorta like Animal House in space. :) It's on my website with some other stuff in the "fiction" section.

[kayshapero]

Guess so. Mind you, you never know what things'll lead to. When I was in college (and thus traditionally broke) and I told they guy who tried to sell me something silly as much and asked, jokingly, if he wanted to hire me... and he did. :) So I wound up selling silly things too for awhile, part time. (Specifically "Crazy Bottles" - glass soda bottles heated and stretched into weird shapes and filled with a mixture of glitter and shampoo that made strange color patterns.)

[kayshapero]

Once upon a time, I went to a local eatery and got some iced tea. My very first sip was so caustic that I spit most of it back out, put the drink back down, then rinsed my mouth out with a LOT of water while my companions informed the waitstaff. Apparently it had been insufficiently rinsed (possibly not at all) after being cleaned with caustic stuff, then refilled with iced tea. I had a sore throat for a couple of days. This is NOT the sort of thing you want to play with. I've added that poor baby to my prayer list; if I knew where he was and who his folks were I'd be seriously considering calling Child Services as well...

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

"I win!" :D

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I was hoping someone would recognize the reference. :-)