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

slightly off topice but was reminded whilst reading of a gentleman overheard at europes biggest classic motorbike show. Now, I probably have the exact date/make details wrong but the bike was an old old classic I think. I.e. rare!

Customer:"Is that a 1942 sundeam spligot tank? I've been looking for one of those for 15 years! How much is it?"
Stallholder:"50 quid mate"
Customer:"50quid? I'm not paying 50 quid for that!!"

I wonder sometimes, I really do!

Did I ever tell you about our neighbour - a cheeky boy who was about 11 or 12 at the time. He biked from our village into town and discovered on arrival that a screw was loose on his bike.

So he went into one of the bike shops (university = lots of students = lots of bikes = lots of bike shops) and asked them if they'd tighten it for him.

They demanded 5DM from him for the job. (Quite ridiculous, and the sort of thing that most people would have done for free anyway, especially when the safety of a child is involved)

So he asked them to loosen it again and told them he'd go to the other bike shop and get them to see to it for him. As far as I remember, they did and he did. No one in our street has ever gone to that shop again, which, anyway, is notoriously the most expensive.

i think the worst customurs are the ones who come in as the door closes, do a $300 trolley full and they only get out 5 minutes before you are meant to leave

I'm lucky if I manage that. Here in Germany the shop-closing laws are restrictive and stringent, and I very often don't get off work before the shops shut. Even yesterday, (Saturday) I was at the office all day, fighting a backlog. No shopping possible. My family of 5 will either have to go out for a meal tonight or find something in the freezer. We have no fresh fruit, and heaven knows what they're going to get on their sandiwches for school in the morning .....*rummages for a tin of tuna fish* .. Oh well, that's Ok then.

I'm sorry - but I'm always one who comes in half an hour before closing time and fills up the trolley for 200 euros or so.

Just to put you in the picture, until a couple of years ago, opening times were as follows:

Bakers and butchers would open at 6 am.
Supermarkets usually at 8 or 9 am.
They had to be closed by 18:30, with an extension to 20:00 on Thursdays only.
Saturdays they had to shut at 2 pm, except on the first Saturday in the month when they were allowed to stay open till 6 pm. (Except during Advent, when they were allowed to open until 6 pm all four Saturdays)
Sundays they did not open.
This was, as I say, absolute and there were no exceptions.

Since the law changed - very recently - they have been allowed to stay open until 8 pm every weeknight. Saturdays was extended to 4 pm and just very recently to 6 pm. However, many don't stay open that long, and most high street shops shut at 19:00 hours with a tendency to shut even earlier, because there is no custom.

They say that opening times are only worse in Holland. Or is it vice versa - the Dutch say that Germany is even worse off than they are?

Crikey! Do the sell programs for that?

I din't mind so much the folks that came in 1/2 hour before closing and made it out the door either just before or just at closing.

The ones that REALLY got my goat, were the ones who, after spending half the evening in the local bar, ran in 10 minutes to closing beacuse they needed something that couldn't wait until morning, and them spent 20 minutes "browsing", rebuffed all attempts to assist them to expidite their search, and then complained that you obviously weren't interested in making money if you wanted to turn their business away. They invariably said that they "bought thousands of dollars worth of books" and that they would "never come in here again".

Never washed with me, because I knew the people who spent thousands of dollars worth of books because you actually say them purchase more than a single $2.99 book, AND, usually didn't lord it over you when they did.

I really p!ssed off a couple of women who came in every night for a week, carried basket after basket worth of books into my section and hogged the tables where we had the demonstration software running. They would leave a hundred or so books and magazines (no exaggeration) along with their coffee cups, used kleenexes, and annoy us with hours of yaooing really loudly about their various ailments which usually involved their bowels.

Finally one evening, they acame in with their second basketfull of books and mags, and I stopped them and asked them politely, to take them back when they had finished.... They looked at me like I was insane and started back to their already tottering pile of merchandise. I said, that if they didn't take the goods back when they left, I would not allow them, in future, to dump them in my department.

They sat down and proceded to rant loudly about how rude, "we buy thaousands of books...", etc., etc. I ignored them and then at the end of their visit, got up to leave sans merchandise.

I stepped in front of them and said "I think you forgot something....

They freaked on me and started bleating about how they were going to report me, thousands of dollars worth of books.... never darken our doors again... To which I replied "and none too soon".

They went and got the manager who took one look at the pile of books and mags, kleenexes, coffee cups, wrappers, etc., and told them that, in future, they would be allowed to take one book at a time or none at all. They were gobsmacked.... (wish it had been literally).

Oddly, despite the fact that they never darkened our door, our total sales didn't dip... wonder why?

you get 'em all, don't you?!
and yet you seem like such a calm and reasonable soul.

Sure... until I get right, royally p!ssed off.

I have been known to throw a wobbler and write notes expressing my indignation. The more indignant, the larger the paper. When I get to the point where I haveput up a 1/2 sheet of newsprint, I am passed being reasonable and into you had better hide out for a few days and perhaps send me flowers.

I have only once "gotten even" with a customer, though.... or maybe a couple of times with shoplifters, but they were hardly in a position to complain. The latter I am taking the 5th on.

Hey Mudhooks, get a second identity and tell us your tales!

worlds stupidest parents awards:
(background knowledge: i'm a lifeguard at a pool)

one adult, 2 kids both non swimmers, one pair of water wings.
can you guess what the guy did????
rather than buy another pair of water wings the guy gives his kids one each, and then swims away

World's Stupidest Parents Part II

Gave their twin sons a pair of roller skates for Christmas - between them.

And I'm guessing they weren't conjoined...

I've already mentioned this over at the h2g2 Guild of Librarians page, but thought I'd share it here as well, despite librarians not really being in retail.

It's that time of year when the freshers arrive at university, all eager and excited, very rarely stopping to assess whether what they've just said is even remotely sensible. Sample queries from this week:

- Can you tell me where the library is?

- What am I supposed to be doing at the moment?

- I did a piece of work on my computer at home. Why isn't it on my
computer here?

Things that make you go

David

Hmm, perhaps I should point out with regard to the first one that it was asked at the enquiries desk IN the library...

David

You most likely have poeple thinking you are a bookstore. Cartainly, when I was working in the bookstores we had people who thought we were a library.

Some of them were people who used the terms interchangably but knew they were in a bookstore; others were simply confused and sdjusted to the fact that, despite their initial thought, they were in a bookstore; but the last group, by far the largest, never could get it through their heads that we were not a library and no matter what you said, they would hang on to the belief that you MUST be lying to them.

What they would have done in a ibrary, if and when they ever found one, was anyone's guess. They certainly couldn't read, and I doubt they could handle the awsomely complicated process of opening a book, even if they could read.

Not really retail, but In my current job as a translator I get some of the weirdest customers....

Telephone rings:

Customer: Hello, can you tell me how much it will cost to translate a the user manual for a substation transformer control panel into english.

Me: Certainly how long is the document?

Customer: I don't know!

Me: Ok, is it an MS Word document?

Customer: Erm, I suppose so!

Me: Ok then, if you open the document, press tools then statistics it'll give you a number of words...

Customer: Erm, but I haven't actually written the document yet!

Me:

Another one

Customer: Why haven't you returned that translation I asked for... It was supposed to be returned by now!

Me: Yes madam, I sent it to you by e-mail this morning and you replied saying thank you.

Customer: But I thought you were sending me a disk.

Me: No, the document is an attachment to the e-mail I sent you.

Customer: But I need it on a disk so I can give it to our publishing department.

Me: Erm, why don't you either forward it to them directly by mail or copy it onto a floppy?

Customer: How do you do that?

Me: Never mind, I'll put a disk in the post, you'll get it tomorrow!

This happens on an almost daily basis - and the frightening thing is is that the companies involved are some of the biggest in the world!

Here's my pick of the week. In order to combate the MSBlaster virus, I have to tell people what to do. It's not hard and I talk them through the entire process.

Me: OK, click start and then Run.

Customer: Start and then what?

Me: Run

Customer: OK, there a box up and I've clicked OK.

Me: No, cancel that and go back to run.

Customer: OK.

Me: Type in "services.msc"

Customer: Ser...vi..ces....

Me: .MSC

Customer: Dot M.....

Me: S....C

Customer: S...C

Me: Now press return.

Customer: OK (The only thing he did right.)

Me: Now a window will appear with a long list in it.

Customer: Yes, I've got that.

Me: It's listed alphabetically, so scroll down to the start of the "R"s

Customer: OK, I'm at the Rs

Me: You are looking for REMOTE PROCEEDURE CALL, nothing else.

Customer: OK, I've got remote access protocol.

Me: No.

Customer: Remote services...

Me: No...

Customer: Remote server...

Me: NO!

Customer: Remote proceedure call.

Me: Yes, now you want the FIRST one.

Customer: OK, I've got two, which is it?


It went downhill from there.

Crikey....

A friend works in the online department of a local community college. Many of the instructors, even ones for programming courses, seem to have not the foggiest idea what they are doing when they prepare a course for online students.

The latest one was that one of the instructors (who actually did know what she was doing) prepared notes for the students which were accessible for download. The other two instructors, the ones running the course, decided that because she actually knew what she was doing she was a danger to their jobs and assigned her to teaching duties only.

They decided, however, that although they didn't like her having prepared all the material, they were not above using the said material for the course.

Hoewever, since they no not the first thing about accessing the online material and do not understand how the online courses work cannot access the course material they, in essence. wish to steal for their own use. Now, technically, the material belongs to the college, but still, this other woman is not getting the recognition for having prepared the materials in a format which is ideal for the course.

The two other women want the course material, but rather than tell the students to download it for their convenience, they want simply to print all the material out and hand it to the students. This more or less defeats the purpose of having the bleeding thing on line... eh?

Anyhow, yesterday, one of the women called in the morning to ask that my friend convert the material into a word document and email it to her.

First of all.... the thing is WAY, WAY too big to email, so my friend said, "I can put it on a CD for you..." Apparently, that was fine.

About an hour later, on her return from the loo, someone told her that the woman in question had come by looking for a package that would have been left for her.

She called the woman and asked if she had expected it that day. She had. She was more than a little put out that my friend told her that, as that was the case, there was no way that she would be able to help.

My friend was just a little put out that this person expected her to drop whatever she was doing and do something that clearly not her job anyway, in order that this person could more easily steal another person's work, not to mention waste way too much paper.

here, have someand. you must need it!

xx

I sympathise with Mudhooks: most of my working life has been spent in bookshops, and I've seen all the same sorts of customer as the ones you've mentioned. It's so true what you say about people expecting you to mindread: "I want a book, it's blue and about yay big... no, I can't remember what it's about, but my friend recommended it. Have you got it?"

So many people have walked past all the displays to the counter and asked things like, "Is this a bookshop?" or, "do you sell books?"

A tall, sad-looking man approached me once and stood at the counter disconsolately.
"Can I help you?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.
"Some tea," he said.
"Tea?"
"Tea."
"I'm afraid we don't sell tea. This is a bookshop."
He stared at me forlornly. I decided to direct him to a shop that did sell tea.
"What sort of tea do you want?" I asked.
"Tea," he said.
"Tea bags?"
"No."
"A cup of tea?"
"No."
"Tea like dinner?"
"No. Tea." There was a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
"...Tea leaves?"
"No. Tea. Tea."
I gave him directions to a tea shop and a supermarket, and he thanked me and left, looking pleased.
He walked straight into the camera shop across the way, and proceeded to have exactly the same conversation with them.

I've always wondered whether he ever did find some tea....

Like the French man who came into the bookstore where I used to work and asked for "pelicule"...

Not knowing the word, we directed him to the French bookstore that occupied the other end of the same large room as our shop. He simply looked over at it and contiinued to ask for "pelicule". I tried looking "pelicule" in our French-English dictionaries and came up empty.

Finally, someone went and got the person from the other store and she asked him what he wanted. "Pelicule" said he. All our questions were answered with either blank looks or "Pelicule". The French book clerk said aside to me that the only word she knew as pelicule is dandruff.

This was when a little bulb went off and I looked up dandruff in the French dictionary and the description for dandruff was sort of described as a "film of dead skin on the scalp".... FILM...

I asked (in French) "Are you looking for something for your camera?"

"Pelicule"....

Finally, I simply said that he should go across the street to the photography shop which he finally did. A few minutes later the clerk from the photography shop came over to ask us what this person was looking for. "He keeps asking for pelicule.... the only translation I know for that is dandruff!"

I said that I THOUGHT he was looking for film.

Later that day, the clerk came over again and said that he showed him all the film and film was NOT what he was looking for.

I still have no idea what this guy was looking for.