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

Back on the subject of bad customers, I used to work for a company that made scales for retail and industry. Each scale came with maintenance and user manuals, which had always been printed. Then one customer asked us to do the manuals on CD, like Micros**t and other software companies do. So the next time we shipped an order to them the manuals were just on CD, as they had requested. Not long after, we had a phone call *complaining* that there weren't any printed manuals. When it was pointed out that they had requested manuals on CD only, they said, "Well, we've found we can't work with these manuals. We want printed manuals as well." Which meant it was all a pointless exercise.

I thought *all* exercise was pointless...

(a napkin)

about 5 years ago, when i was a slim young thing(uk size 10), i worked at radio rentals(now defunct)as a sales advisor. we rented out tvs, vcrs etc and every month this old boy, must have been in his 80's, would come in to pay his rental and flirt with me(!). in those days, rr supplied our career wear, which was a skirt and blouse. in my case, being 5 foot 10, the skirt was a bit on the short side. then the uniform changed so that female staff wore trousers(so much more practical when lugging 28" tvs about). he came in, and asked where my skirt was. i replied that the uniform had changed and female staff now wore trousers. 'i don't like that,' he replied. 'it made my month seeing your stocking tops.' what confused me was that i never wore stockings and suspenders for work, just thick, black tights(or pantyhose if you are across the pond). i think he saw what he wanted to see. he was quite annoyed about the change of uniform.

I worked at a department store here in Canada (Towers) in the late 70s. We wore these horrible polyester outfits. The guys got pants, but we got a dress. It was a sort of off-puke-colored base with (matching?) plaid trim.... Needless to say, we looked and felt awful.


We used to have all sorts of people with mental problems in the first store I worked in and among the memorable was "The Plastic Lady" who wore plastic dry-cleaning bags next to her skin and between each layer of clothing. She even had some stuffed in her ears and chewed plastic. I hate to think where else she had it stuffed...

She also had a "thing" about women who wore red. If she say a female customer with even a pair of mitts that were red, she would chase them around the store screaming "JEZEBEL! JEZEBEL!" at the poor terrified woman.

Imagine how she felt when the company gave us all bright red pant-suits! She never came back after we started wearing them.....

Bookmarking - with a toothbrush (dry)

You Jezebel, you!

at both of the last two stories. I'm hoping he was a sweet but funny old man rather than a creepy one, Daraline.

sweet old boy type, thankfully.

xx

I just recalled this event at the previously mentioned Towers store (for Torontonians, the store at Carlaw and Pape where several episodes of "Degrassi" were filmed, including the "shoplifting" "buying a bra" episode)....

The women's washroom was the most disgusting place, but we had to change in there, as we shared our locker room with the male staff. Gives me chills just thinking of the condidtion of the floor. One day, a customer frantically waved down a manager and said she was sorried about he mother who had gone into the washroom, and had not emerged. She didn't answer to her calling and she was worried.

It turned out that the woman had had a heart attack while on the toilet and fallen against the door. One of the stockboys had to crawl under the door (on the horrible floor), lift her back onto the john so the door could be opened..... Now THAT is a job one would not want to do twice in a lifetime....

*wonders what happened to the poor woman*

I went to a 'Dealing with Difficult People At Work' training session last week, where one of the suggestions was 'The Pumpkin Method'.

Basically, the idea is to replace any unsavoury words a customer may say to you with the word 'pumpkin'.

So when they say 'you are a **** load of *** ***** here!', you actually hear 'you are a pumpkin load of pumpkin pumpkins here!'.

Could that ever work? Surely you'd end up laughing and making things worse.

One of my colleagues got the wrong end of the stick, though. He thought you were meant to say "I'm sorry, but could you repeat that using the word 'pumpkin' instead of your expletives?"

David

Hmmm, so they were basically saying you should just take all the abuse the customers threw at you? Nice.

Speaking of which, how did pumpkin ever become a term of endearment in America?

Because of the wonderful pies we make from it?




At least that sounds like a plausible explanation to me...

no weirder than any others, such as my little cabbage (or was it cauliflower? can't remember now, sure loup or one of our other french researchers will correct me!).

Mon petit chou"" in French (not to be confused with "Mon petite crotte" (sp?) which to my friend's horror meant my little sh!t)

Pumpkin
Porkchop
Sweet Potato

just a few