h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't work in retail any more. However, my very worst/weirdest "customers" live on in my nightmares.

These are just a few:

When I worked in a major Canadian "big box bookstore"...

There were the ones who "got happy with themselves" in the Erotic book section (even couples who had all out sex on the couch).

There was the blind man who "messed himself" and proceded to strip off all his clothes in the men's loo in order to have a bath in the sink.

The hooker and her mother who hung out between tricks. The mother kept smoking in the aisles (which is verboten in Canadian stores and is just plain stupid in a store filled with paper). The daughter once gave her dog a bath in the toilet of the "Ladies".

The husband of the ambassador of a certain middle-eastern country who was caught taking erotic books into the washroom and stripping the covers off them in order to shoplift them. Apparently, he didn't want his wife to know that he read such things.... If it hadn't been for the intervention of a certain "Federal Police Force" not only would his wife have found out, but he could have lost his prestigious University professorship, made the papers, and been deported.....

I would love to hear your stories.

How on earth can anyone follow that?

No doubt.

I did have a friend who worked in an eye clinic. One of the elderly, 'low-vision' clients reversed into another car, put it in drive, went over the curb, over the shrub and through an exam room wall.

That is a good one....

I know a girl who works in a bakery. She had a customer who wanted to know if the Apple Cinnamon Turnovers had any apples in them....

'apple turnovers...'

I've never worked retail. I'll have to ask my friends who worked in a department store during uni.

I work in a used cd store - people bring in the cd's they no longer want and we make them a cash offer - that's *offer* - for them. The problem with our system is that we'll make an offer on anything that looks playable, whether or not we already have 500 copies of it sitting in the warehouse (Hootie, Jewel, OHM, Blues Traveller, Natalie Imbruglia, Goo Goo Dolls... I could go on all night), unlike most other used stores who cherry pick what they think will sell and tell the customer to take the rest back we have no use for it. So we'll pay as low as one penny for certain titles. That really p*sses some people off

Like the bloke who came in a few weeks ago with eight cd's - four copies of one title and one of another, brand new, still wrapped. Said that he and his band had been touring and could we use them? Do you want to consign them? No, I want to sell them. Okay, I can offer you $1 a piece. No, I think I'll keep them. And away he went.

Five minutes later a different bloke comes in and says something about us being a ripoff merchant. Say that again? You're ripoff merchants. What are you talking about? My friend came in and you only offered him one dollar each for our cd. That's a slap in the face. We've been on the road for two months and you're being totally rude by offering us one dollar for each cd. I won't forget this place.

He tried to walk out of the store at that point but didn't make it all the way to the door. I was in the way. Okay tosh, so you've been on the road for two months. So bloody what? You think we owe you a living? You think we should pay good money for cd's that aren't going to sell, from a no-name band just because you've been sitting in a tour bus for months? We're not the bloody social services, we're a business. And if you walk in here shooting your mouth off like that you certainly won't forget this place mate because you won't ever be coming in here again. Now sling your hook and get a proper job.

I want to talk to a manager!

I'm the manager. I'm going to ask you to leave. If you don't leave I'm going to tell you to leave. If you're still here I'm going to call the cops.

You have no idea who I am!

I don't care if you're the Queen of England - if you come in here making threats and accusations you will be asked to leave or escorted off the premises. Your choice mate.

Then there's SC (the names have been changed to protect the terminally disgusting). This bloke makes me feel ill just to talk about him. There's always stuff dribbling out of his mouth. He has a little goatee and there's always stuff in it - sometimes it's food, sometimes it's snot and bogies. He has no manners - he'll start talking to us even when we're in the middle of a transaction with another customer. He leaves his crap all around the listening stations and walks off to look at more cd's.

A few days ago (when I wasn't there ) he asked to use the phone. Ten minutes later an ambulance pulls up outside the store. Turns out he thinks he's taken too many Pepsid AC tablets. The ambulance crew weren't best pleased about that and neither was the manager on duty.

He's barred now

You wanna hear about the time I spent as a bartender? Another time

I would LOVE to hear about the bartending...

How about my "revenge story"?

I am a little emabarrased about this, but, there you go.

One morning, just after we opened for the day (and we opened at 7:30), I was out on the floor doing my morning cleanup after the hordes the night before, when the phone rang. Usually, calls went to the information desk and then fielded to the various departments. However, the information desk wasn't staffed until about half-an-hour after the store opened, so calls were taken by whoever happened to hear the phone ring.

I take the call on the third ring.

"Good Morning! Big Box Bookstore! How can I help you?" I say in my usual telephone voice, which is unfailingly polite because, in my day, you were taught telephone manners.

"I have been on hold for 15 minutes! Why can't you people ever answer the phone right away???" an irate customer screeches in my ear...

Hhhhmmmm.

- I answered the call on the third ring

- The call came in on an outside line

- We haven't been open for 15 minutes

- And you are screeching in my ear....

"How can I help, you." I ask cheerily (or as cheerily as you can through gritted teeth).
"I doubt it!!!" (not exactly an answer to my question)
"The trivia game about Canada do you have any left!!! (not a question but a statement.)
"Ummm, what's the name of this game?"
"How should I know? It's your store! Don't you know what you have in your store???"

Well.... truth be told
1)It isn't MY store. It belongs to a faceless corporation with about 5 billion dollars more than I do at this very moment
2)I DO know what we carry in the store and
3)I know the names of perhaps 5000 books in my head and can get the names of an infinite number more given the chance. If you don't know what you're looking for, how am I supposed to know....
4)We don't carry games. it is a bookstore...

However, the customer is always right, the customer is always right, the customer is always right. I wrack my brain.... Game... Trivia... Canada.....;."Ma'am, We don't carry ......" I am interrupted

"Come on... I don't have all day.... " More about being on hold for 20 minutes....stupid people.... ...idiots... yadda, yadda, yadda....

I finish my sentence "....games.... I haven't ever seen a game here. However, I can check with someone. One moment please..."

"Don't you put me on hold... I've been on hold for half an hour already... I want you to tell me if you have that game. I saw the thing last week so I KNOW you have it!!!" she screams....

"Ma'am, if I don't put you on hold, I can't go and look, nor can find someone to ask. If you like I can take your name and number and call you back." This is obviously not a suitable solution and I am a complete moron for even suggesting it. I know because she tells so. Finally, she "lets" me put her on hold.

I race off to see if we have a Canadian trivia game in the gifts section. I look in the bargain section. I even check in the basement in case it was taken down there. No Canadian trivia game. I go to the office... no one in the office. Of course! All the managers are in their weekly meeting ....... outside the store......

I go back to the phone. "Ma'am, I can't find anything that resembles a game, or a trivia game, or a Canadian trivia game.... The managers are all in a meeting outside the store so I will have to take a message and get one of them to call you back. I am very sorry [I'm not, really....]."

Welllll! When the screaming stops, I have her name and phone number and the promise that my a$$ is in a sling because I am a complete moron, an idiot, rude...... etc., etc., etc. ....... just another example of how service these days ......blah blah blah..........

When the managers get back from their meeting, I pass along her name and number, and the request as well as an outline of the abuse I had suffered on the phone. The GM (who has never heard of the trivia game either, and certainly hasn't ever seen it in our store) calls her.

Apparently, she is as sweet as one could be.....and remembered she had seen it at the deaprtment store next door. I stew for the rest of the day until, in a flash, I come up with a brilliant revenge plot!

A few years ago, when in London, England, I noticed that the local "ladies of ill perfume" have business cards detailing their various specialties in phone boxes all over town. Quite eye-opening, they were!

That night, armed with her name and phone number, I print out about 500 little cards, offering her services as

"Mistress (insert name here)"
Specializing in domination and humiliation
Call 555-1212, after midnight only.

I post these little cards all over town. I put them in phone booths. I put them in bus shelters. I put them on tables in bars.

I spend weeks distributing them.........

If you want to hear me telling my story on the radio...
http://www.cbc.ca/workology/logs.html#sep23
It is the September 2002 show in the last 5 minutes or so.... the "Dominatrix Revenge".

You are the master and I bow down before you

"We are not worthy, we are not worthy"

That is fantastic Mudhooks! Well done. A victory over the stupid people if I ever heard one.

Ste

Well.... The best revenge story I ever heard was a "really crappy boss" revenge.

The boss was rude, overbearing, and an all-round jerk. He often required people to work overnight to finish work.

One of the things that would really set him off was when someone touched his lunch in the office fridge (or if he thought anyone had touched his lunch)....

One night, this particular office peon was doing yet another overnight shift. As she was having a snack in the lounge, she noticed that the boss' lunch was sitting in the fridge. In his lunch was a banana.

What with being ticked off at having to pull, yet another, all-nighter, the boss being such a complete p***k, and it being something like 3am.... our heroine reaches in the bag, takes the banana, and does what any woman would.... and.... well... does something rather intimate with it..... puts it back in the bag, and heads back off to work.

She nearly pees herself the next day when the boss sits down at the table, and eats the banana.

Personally, I think she went a teensy bit too far... but you gotta admit that it was a pretty damn inventive revenge.

Hey Mudhooks.

You do a nice line in re-telling urban myths. Dont you have any true stories ?

I can't vouch for the second revenge but the first one is true...

Oh come on Mudhooks. That old story about printing up cards has longer whiskers than my grandad ! How Do you go about printing up 500 cards in a single night and spreading them around ? please..

funny to see these stories again tho.

Choose to believe or choose not to. It is true.

Obviously, you haven't heard of the magic technology of the "home computer" to which you attach a marvelous labour-saving device called a "printer". You put paper in one end and in minutes you can have hundreds of printed documents of your very own....

Of course, if you only have one the Fred Flintstone version which requires a monkey to chip out a page at a time.... I guess this is lost on you.

I've worked in state parks for many years. Thus, I collect STUPID TOURIST questions. Some of my favorites:

*"When do the deer turn into elk?"

*"What's the elevation here in the wintertime?"

*"Will the rattlesnakes bite me if I pick them up?"

*While I was working at a park called Bottomless Lakes: "Are the lakes really bottomless?" (I so terribly wanted to answer, 'why don't you swim down and find out for yourself!')


I think my all-time classic waste of effort was a conversation I had years back, working the visitor center at a campground. A middle aged woman walks in, and says, "I'm lost." Not an uncommon statement. But the confusion that follows....

"Ok, where did you come from?" I reply.
"I don't know."
I show her a map, giving her the options for getting to the campground. None of them ring a bell. She has apparently been teleported to my visitor center while blindfolded and sedated. So I give up on that technique.

"Where would you like to be?"
"I don't know." Followed by more time showing the map and explaining options around the park.

"What would you like to do while you're here?" All I get is a blank look. "Did you want to camp? Birdwatch? Hike? Fish?"

"I don't know. Not really."

At this point, ~15 minutes into the conversation, I've lost patience. "Well, m'am, I'm sorry, but if you don't know where you want to be, what you want to do, or even how you got here, I'm afraid I just can't help you!"

She was angry, demanded to see a supervisor. I called my boss in, he tried for quite some time to communicate, but had no better success. She finally went away in a huff, to our great relief. I've always wondered where she wandered off to from there...

Obviously, you just don't know how to deal with insane alien beings who are teletransported inot Provincial/Stat parks...lol.

I always loved the people who were looking for a book. They didn't know the title, they didn't know the author, they didn't know the subject..... it might have been blue.... they saw it 3 years ago....

The first day our store was open to the public, a woman came in to the computer book section where I worked. She was looking for a book. Again, didn't know the title, subject, or the author... However, she did know it was "a standard in the industry". When I pointed out we had a lot of computer books that were "standards in the industry" She got mad and said "I thought "****" have every book." and stomped off.... Had she waited I would have told her how impossible it would be for a store to have "all the books".

There was the portly German tourist who came up to me when I was sitting at the Information desk.... "Do you haff trrrrousers?"

I thought for a brief moment he was getting fresh and wanted to know if I was wearing pants... No, he wanted to know if we carried pants. I said "We are a bookstore".

"So? Haff you no trrrrousers???"

What the h*ll kind of bookstore is this, not carrying trousers!?!?!?

You mentioned alien beings... Bottomless Lakes, the park I mentioned above, is located near Roswell, New Mexico. If you're a UFO buff, you'll recognize the name as a place where aliens supposedly landed in 1947. We'd get the "true believers" out there. A typical conversation:

Visitor: "Have you seen the aliens?"
Me: "No, sir, I haven't."
Visitor: "Well I have! Back in 1983, when they took me up into their ship..."

You didn't dare argue with them, or laugh. You just nodded, smiled, and did your best to take their money and get away as quickly as possible!

So, I guess you can't fill us in on alien probes...

I had a friend who had a weird retail experience (as the customer). She went into one of those stores where you have to be buzzed in and out (and where there are no price tags). As we worked at the National Gallery across the street moving paintings around, we dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, and steel-toed boots. This was how she was dressed in this hoity-toity shop.

The impecibly-dressed attendents stood in the far corner whispering amongst themselves. Whenever my friend asked a question, one of them would go back and huddle with the others and then come back and give the answer (even asking the price on an item entailed a huddle). Finally, she decided that there was nothing that she could possibly purchase and decided to leave. She walked to the door and went to open it. It was locked, of course, and when she said "Excuse me..." one of the women sidled up and asked... "Can I he-l--l-lp..you???"

"Yes... I'd like to LEAVE!!!!"

After yet another whispered huddle, one of them finally buzzed her out. For years our theory was that aliens had decided to "study humans" by opening a store. They got the basic concept right, but didn't have the fundamentals down. The store finally went out of business. No wonder.......