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

Ooh, I've got one! I've got one!

I was helping out at my Mum's cafe - a tiny little place attached to a garden centre - and a couple came in. They asked if we served alcohol, and I said we didn't, everything we did have was written up on the blackboard. They said OK and sat down. I went to get the order pad and a biro from the kitchen. I come back. The following conversation ensues:
Them: 'Can we have a bottle of wine please?'
Me: 'I'm afraid we don't serve alcohol. We do teas and coffees and fruit juices' .
Him: 'Oh, alright, you did say, didn't you. I'll have a coffee.'
Her: 'Well, can I have a glass of wine, then.'
Me: 'I'm sorry, we don't have any wine.'
Her: 'A sherry then.'
Me: 'We don't serve any sort of alcohol, I'm afraid. We aren't licensed for it.'
Her: 'How about some brandy?'
Me: 'Brandy is alcohol too, Madam.'
Her: 'I'd better have a coffee too then.'

I write the orders down and go to the kitchen. My Mum takes the coffee out to them when it's ready. When she comes back she asks me why I didn't tell them we didn't serve alcohol because the woman had been asking for wine....

I am utterly baffled.

Perhaps they thought it was some form of speakeasy or "after-hours" club and if they were persistent you would bring out the secret stash of liquor....

Or perhaps they were simply complete and utter gits...

Sometimes I think that a lot of these incredibly annoying customers do it on purpose...

I've known people who just *loved* to go out in public and speak in nothing but a foreign language to everyone, just to see what kind of reaction they can get.

Reminds me a little of the list of things to do when you're bored at walmart. (any other large discount store would probably work too)

Just in case you've never seen a list...


http://www.geocities.com/skrelborn/walmart.html

Makes me think of the time when I worked at a Towers Department store, in the Stationary section.

We had 6 rows of freestanding shelving units, about neck high which were where the paperback books were displayed. I came back from my supper break one evening and when I rounded the corner into this area, discovered that someone had spent quite a long time unrolling roll after roll of Scotch tape round, and round, and round all the shelving units I think there were something like 12 rolls used.

Just in case you hadn't all seen these:

Games to play at the checkout

A513631 is amusing for those working on the checkout
A506404 - be warned, this one is for annoying customers

How many of us know how names are filed? By family name and in alphabetical order, right? It's something I learnt at the age of five when I heard how the register was called in class. It's always been that way in any walk of life that I've ever... er, walked through, like the library for instance - authors are arranged on the shelves by family name, not by first name.

And yet so many people who come into the store can't seem to grasp the idea that Jimi Hendrix or George Harrison are filed in H - not in J or G. And someone actually asked me yesterday (a well dressed man who looked as if he was holding down a job of some responsibility) if Hootie and the Blowfish were in H or B? (By the way, WTF are you doing buying H and the B anyway? )

This person also couldn't grasp the fact that a CD maxi-single (a fancy-schmancy name for an EP) wasn't a full length album. How do these people get through the day in one piece?

They just ask shopkeepers to help them.

We had a new guy start who, when I commeneted that someone had been shelving books incorrectly and that they should be in alphabetical order by the author's last name, said "Why would you do that? In every lirary, they are shelved by publisher..."

I said... "Oh???? Since when? For the last 100 years or so librarians have been using the Dewey-decimal System. You would have thought that Earth-shattering news might have made the papers."

"Well, that's how we should shelve tham.... It makes more sense than how we are doing it."

"Well, I'll pass along that suggestion. It is sure to take the bookselling world by storm."

.... and this moron was hired off the street as 50 cents an hour more than I was getting..... and was fired about a week and a half later after I made a complaint about his making more money and the fact that he stuck price-stickers with 666 on them all over the store. I was given my raise retroactively, too.

*bookmark*


This isn't a retail story, simply an observation. I just got back from vacation, which was great fun, and allowed me to people-watch. I saw all sorts of folks, but the ones who baffled me most were on our "Grand Tour" of Yosemite.

Mind you, I'd have preferred to tour Yosemite at my own pace, but my sister and I were on a tight schedule and wanted to see as much as possible. Thus, the tour. We wound up on an open-air tram in the Mariposa grove, the largest of the three Sequoia groves. Out of a group of 50 or so people, I'd say a good quarter of them barely even registered that they were in a forest, let alone that they were in one of the oldest, largest groups of trees on earth. Their sole concerns seemed to be where they could buy postcards and when the next bathroom stop would be.

Amazing.

Back when I was in college, my family and I took a trip to to see the pictographs (rock-paintings) at Agawa Rock* on Lake Superior.

I had brought my camera along and was taking photos of the paintings and plants and the woderful scenery.

I had spotted some Indian Pipe** growing up through the leaf-litter and lay down on the ground to take a better photo. Several children stopped and asked what I was doing and I explained and showed them the plants and told them a little about how and where they grow and that they one didn't see them very often.

"Cool!" they all said.

A parent came up and said "What's THAT?"

I repeated my explanation about the plant, and that it has a symbiotic relationship with fungus, how I had only ever seen photos of them before because it was pretty rare to see them.

"Yeah.... but what does it DO?"

I thought for a moment about what a stupid question that was... and said "Its an accountant for a large firm in the city."

The guy stared at me and grabbed his kids and stomped off.

For Gods sake! It was a beautiful plant growing in the woods. What does it do.... Yeesh.

* http://www.whisperwood.net/pixnpgs/ls/ls2.html

** http://www.wellesley.edu/Activities/homepage/web/Species/pindianpipe.html

Thread derailment, but that is a well cool plant Mudhooks. At least you managed to tell the kids /something/ before Trogdar the Retardinator came and dragged them away.

I used to work at Gatwick airport in the late 80's, and I am convinced EVERYONE at an airport leaves their brains in the back seat of the car.... for example.

1) Excuse me have you seen my plane?

answer was usually along the lines of "do you know what it look s like?"

2) How do I get upstairs? usually asked whilst standing at the foot of a flight of stairs or escalator . Eventually I ended up saying things like use the pole vault like everyone else)

3) When is my flight leaving? to which I waould ask "who are you flying with?, which I didnt think was unreasonable. Replies to that ranged from a sensible "British airways, Delta etc. to the insane, "my brother/wife/husband etc....

4) Where is the arrivals hall? (95% of the time whilst standing under a 20 feet long bright yellow sign saying "arrvials".

5) "Can I park here?", asked at one of two places, either at the entrance to a car park or next to a big sign that says "your car will be towed if you park here".

A word of warning....airport workers get VERY bored of the travelling public and play games to while away the hours in an air conditioned box with little or no daylight. The word game is often played....for those who dont know it goes something like this. If two or more workers are together, each takes turn to nominate a word that the next in turn MUST use in answer to the next question from a grockle (tourist without brain). We did restrcit it to no obscenities, mainly to keep our jobs! Strange thing is most people didn't bat an eyelid when being directed past the aarvark on the corner of the departures lounge, or the submarine at top of the stairs!

Oh happy days!

Having spent four hours in the International Terminal of Sydney airport whilst seeing my boyfriend off after his trip over here, I can safely say that the retardination of the grockles isn't due to their own stupidity, more to the terrible fluro lighting and idiotically set out check-in desks between them and the departure lounge. It's one thing if you're there as part of your job, you gain an immunity. But for a casual visitor, that place is harsh. I ended up with a spanking migraine and could positively feel my IQ falling with each fifteen minutes I spent in there.

I can understand your feelings after four hours in a terminal building....but can you imagine having to spend 8-12hrs there! Every day... It has been years since I worked there, and I do make a point of making sure I am a grockle whenever I go away on a flight!! Just to be on the other side of the fence so to speak!

I managed to get one young woman very yesterday

Like so many other people in this country she hadn't signed her credit card, and so I asked (as I always do in those circumstances) to see her drving licence. Firstly she gave me a quizzical look. then she said 'It's in the car. Do I have to go and get it?' 'Well, if that's where it is, yes you do.' 'Give me back my card while I go out there.' 'No, I'll hang on to it so that I can check the name when you come back.' *Harrumph* ::STOMP STOMP STOMP::

When she returned, I checked the names, and it was indeed her card. I closed the sale and handed it back to her. She snatched it off me, did the same with her receipt, and left with a face like thunder.

I aim to please Just be happy I'm not aiming at you lovely people

On an unrelated note, why do do many people seem to be unable to take no for an answer? Almost every time that we tell someone we won't be able to buy the discs they brought in to sell (usually because they're loose CDs with no case or artwork, or, like the bloke yesterday who brought in a bunch of loose LPs), they sometimes standing there rooted to the spot and unable to grasp what we've just told them, sometimes they try to persuade us that these are really good titles and we could surely sell them if we put them into a jewel case, sometimes they try to give us a hard luck story and tell us how they really need the money, sometimes, after we've told them that one of the pawnbrokers may pay 5c a piece for them, they ask for the names and addresses of all the pawn shops in town, sometimes they try to haggle with us and say something like 'Can't you just give me a dollar each for them?', sometimes they spend 10 minutes trying to make us believe that these are rare/out-of-print/incredibly collectible/'go for $80 on eBay', sometimes they ask us if we sell used jewel cases so that they can buy some and *then* sell us the discs (this is where we tell them that cases will cost more than what we'll end up paying them anyway).

Usually, after we've told them for the tenth time that we won't be buying their discs, they get the message and slope off as if they've just been told that their winning lottery ticket is a forgery. That's when the goes off in their head and they wish that they hadn't taken all their CDs out of the cases, thrown it away (together with the artwork) and put them all into those things like photo albums so that could carry them around more easily.

I have one of those photo-album thingies for CDs in my car. I've discovered that the trick is to *keep* the jewel cases and inserts at home!

I have to second Top Hat's defence of stupid people in airports. I'll also point out that flights may be leaving at an ungodly hour, or the passenger may have already been on a flight, so has had little rest despite the fact their body clock is saying it's 2:30am. Plus it gets hammered into us that we *must* be there two or even three hours prior to departure (otherwise the waiting area looks a bit empty), which induces a sort of needless panic that the check-in desk is going to slam the shutters down if your not there in the next 10 minutes.

Myself I spent quarter of an hour running around like a headless chicken trying to get some money to pay the excess on my baggage (nobody told me the limit was lower on this flight than every other transatlantic flight I've ever been on. Admittedly it was only the fourth transatlantic flight I'd ever been on) before realising I had a debit card. In any shop this would be the first thing to spring to mind.

I have only had a few problems at airports, but they have been needless ones, really.

Once, when returning from London (UK), we arrived in Toronto late at night and needed to get our own baggage from the Canadian Airways luggage office (something I had never had to do before or since). This office was in the depths of one terminal and we had 15 minutes to get the bags and then to get to the other terminal in order to make the last flight to Ottawa.

We ran down to the location we were told to go. There was a non-descript counter, completely unmarked, and unattended. No bell, no way of summoning someone. Finally, after banging on the counter for several minutes, some boob sloped out of the back, clearly annoyed to have been disturbed. "No luggage here...." and turned on his heel.

One of our number ran up to find someone to help us find the right place.

This person came down and walked behind the very same counter and came out a couple of minutes later with the same guy carrying our luggage. He slammed the luggage down on the counter and stomped back into his office and slammed the door.

We made our flight with seconds to spare and I called Canadian and Air Canada (I was flying Air Canada). No apology, no nothing.

Several years ago, I travelled to Iowa which necessitated stops in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. I had 2 hour stops at each airport, so planned to stop at the gate, sign in, get my boarding pass and run off to grab something to eat.

At every single stop, I would get to the gate 1 1/2 hours before my flight, only to find they were loading the plane. This did not mean that my flight was leaving immenently. It meant that we were loaded onto the plane and sat for 1 1/2 hours in a taxi-line.

When I arrived in Chicago, the airline was offering $600 US to passengers willing to fly to Dallas and THEN to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I thought about taking them up on it, but since my flights the day before had been cancelled because of terrible tornadoes, I just wanted to get to Iowa ASAP. The $600 would more than paid my entire trip and the rental of a car.

Luckily, I did turn it down. Just a few minutes after boarding the plane in Minneapolis, I started feeling sick...... VERY sick. I think that a combination of not being able to eat except for tiny granola bars provided by the airline (2 of them, for 8 hours) and some soda-water and pop, and the nervous tension of being raced on and off planes only to sit and wait, that finally hit me.

By the time I arrived in Sioux City, I thought I would have to be removed by an ambulance I was so sick. However, I had a brief moment of feleling better and was able to get off under my own steam. I was there to meet my sister who I had never met in my life before and was so glad to do that.

Had I taken the offer of the airline, I would have been arriving in Dallas when I started to get sick, and had 2 legs left on the journey.

I was sick for 3 days, sicker than I ever care to be again.

I decided that from then on, I would bring my own food and plenty of it.

Back when I was in college, I went to Italy, via Paris. I asked for and paid for )as far as I knew) a ticket that would allow me to return within 3 months.

I arrived at the airport in Toronto, and the Air France ticket-taker took my ticket, whited something out and scribbled something over it. Since they didn't ask me anything or say anything about it, I didn't think anything much about it.

I arrived safely in Paris (though with terrible heartburn, as the only thing the airline had to drink was red and white wine, and beer. Their drinking fountain was broken, so I had to have red wine... I had heartburn for years after that), had a wonderful visit, headed to Florence, where my fiance was living for several months. That ended rather badly after Christmas when he started giving me the bum's rush and when pressed to explain, told me it was because his fiance was arriving. I said "I thought I was your fiance."

"You were. But now I am engaged to her."

That brought my holiday to a screeching halt and I headed bak to Paris to head home.

I arrived in Paris and waited outside the Air France office from the crack of dawn.

I handed my ticket to the clerk and said I wanted to book my flight home.

"But you can't go home yet. Your ticket says you must stay for more than 3 months!" He points to the white-outed and squiggled spot on my ticket and says "See."

I stared at the ticket and just burst into tears. I blubbered out my disasterous engagement, I had a huge bandage on my forehead where I had stitches put in (the fiance took exception to actually getting angry about being dumped and punched me into a wall), and now THISSSSS.....

This very kind fellow sat me down, handed me some kleenex, and endorsed my ticket without taking any money from me. I had a flight booked for the end of the week.

I asked if there was any way I could get home any sooner. "Don't push your luck."


The one thing that really burns my butt is people, usually business people, who sit in the bar long after they should have booked in, keep all the other passengerssitting waiting on the plane, and then come running onto the plane pretending they just gotoff a flight.

The last time it happened, several of us expressed our indignation because we had seen them in the bar when we were on our way to the gate 1/2 an hour before.

You know those old people you see sometimes, talking to themselves as they walk along the street? Here's the story of how I learned to respect them.

Every week, a pair of old boys came to use our photocopier. They were both quite doddery and walked everywhere arm-in-arm, chivvying each other along. They were always disarmingly grateful for our service, never shouted at us, and they brightened up the whole place. They were well known around town and never seen apart.

One day, one of them came into the shop on his own. His arm was crooked at the elbow as he affably chivvied himself upstairs. He stood at the copier, talking himself through everything, as he normally did with his partner. He paid for the copies with disarming gratitude and went on his way, chivvying himself along, his head cocked towards his crooked elbow.

The following week he was there again, alone, repeating the process. When he turned up alone for the third week running, I asked after his partner. His face crumpled; his eyes brimmed.

"He passed away," he said. I was stunned.

He thanked me for having noticed: he said he hadn't realised anyone had cared about them, but since his partner had died, the shopkeepers all along the street had been asking after him. (Of course: we shopkeepers remember the nice ones.)

He showed me the newspaper cutting he'd been photocopying, which displayed a picture of his partner, wearing a uniform covered with medals.

"He was a war hero, you know. We fought together."

And thanking me again, he chivvied himself out of the shop.

that's a nice, if sad story sideliner.

xx