Stupid Customers You've Had? — Page 3

I currently work at Coldstone Creamery and, no joke, someone came in today and asked if we had coconut ice cream, but pronounced it "cok-o-nut." I about peed myself.

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I was giving a tour of my school, and some one asked what the ratio of gay to straight males is in our musical theater department.

Oh, Rose...don't you love it when they bring up intelligence? Especially when they are brainless hicks!

I love difficult customers that have NO idea what they are talking about, and then they imply that it's you who is the problem...

Ugh

Not for nothing, Becky, but when I shop (in NYC), although the screen says hand card to cashier, they never take it. They say just ignore the screen!

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matt, we have so much in common! I get those school groups on matinee days also. We prefer that each kid has his own ticket-it's faster to scan that way, rather than me being given a wad of 350 tickets all in one, so that I have to peel each one away and scan it.

Do the "teachers" comply? Not all of them. They want to do it their way.

Also, having taught for 25 years, I have little tolerance for the 350 kids screaming when they enter the theater. Do the teachers/chaperones do anything to try to quiet them down? Nope. I have to do it, and then the teachers glare at me.

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I work at the Lyceum theater, Millie, and let me tell you, these kids are so excited to see "Inherit the Wind", they just can't contain themselves. It is a great play, but for teenagers these days? They're just glad to be out of school for the day.
The school gets the tickets in advance, but the concessions are not included. And neither are the tips, people!!!

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So right!!! Thanks for pointing that out, I will now do penance.

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I used to manage the Box Office at a small regional theatre. One morning a gentleman came into the lobby and proceeded to run up one side of me and down the other for about five minutes, complaining about the lousy seats we'd given him for the previous evening's performance.

I noticed he was waving this ticket stub around that didn't look like our ticket stubs. I asked to see it. The stub was for the tour of Cats at the huge gilded chandelier-filled touring house across town whose lobby could not look any more different than ours.

I explained this to him. With an exasperated grunt, he turned and walked out as if it were my fault he was an idiot. He didn;t even apologize for needlessly chewing me out!

I also loved it when people would rush up to the Box Office before a show in a panic, angry that we'd sold them seats that were not together. Then when you explain to them that seats 2, 4, 6 & 8 are together, they get defensive and start threads about rude Box Office people on theatre chat boards.


Last one - Kiddie dance schools rented our theatre every summer for their recitals. Competition was so fierce among the mothers for prime seats that they slept on the sidewalk overnight before tickets went on sale. One woman came to the theatre the day before and hid in the ladies' room at closing time. She slept on the sofa in there (she knew the janitor so he didn't tell on her)and so got to be first in line the next morning.

This would have been perfect for her but she had to go and get cocky about it. An hour before we opened, she felt the need to poke her head out the front door and taunt the other mothers with "They should be letting you all in in about an hour. It's all in who you know," she laughed. Of course they all called the dance school and told on her. Her daughter was tossed out of the school that day.

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I love to vent, but I never order a Venti.

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When I worked with the Corrections Department, we had a program for convicted drunk drivers. They would come in for the class (which was held on a Saturday morning) drunk. We started giving them all breathelizers and would get about three in each class that showed up drunk. Their excuses were always entertaining. SOOO many of them said, "No, I swear I didn't drink. But I use mouthwash! It's the mouthwash!" Well, if they're using enough mouthwash to get themselves intoxicated, I need to be buying stock in mouthwash. Then there were excuses like, "Well, I didn't know it was a pitcher of beer until after I drank the whole thing," or "The PO just told me not to drink a LOT of alcohol!"

I have another one: In our fitting room, customers are only allowed to take 8 garments in at a time. There are clearly marked signs outside the fitting room entrance telling customers about our policy.

So one day while I'm doing fitting room duty, this woman comes in with this cart full of clothes. I mean, filled to the top. She asks "Can I try all of these on?". I told her that she could only take 8 in and she pouted about how we really should give people notice about that cause she was unaware of our policy. I would have pointed out the signs, but I didn't feel like arguing.

Then there are the ones who absolutly insist on taking their cart inside the fitting room. These are small rooms, mind you, so there's very little room for carts. We're supposed to offer to keep their carts in a special area that's set aside for them. Well after they insist on taking them in, you can always hear the carts banging around inside the fitting room, as people try and move around them while they're trying stuff on.

It's quite entertaining.

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Updated On: 6/18/07 at 10:22 PM

I once had a customer come up to my register growling. I was wondering why he was growling at me, but decided to ignore it and go on as usual. When I asked "did you find everything all right?" he went into this big rant about the sales staff. Apparently, he came into the store looking for an ink cartridge for his computer. He didn't bother to look at the old ink to see what kind it was he needed, nor did he bother to check the model number of the printer. All he could tell the sales person was the brand of printer it was, and expected him to know what kind of ink it was from that. The guy told him that that was not enough information for him to know the exact cartridge, and the best he could do was guess. He told him he would need the model number to know for sure. Of course, the kind he guessed was wrong, and the guy brought it back. And again, he didn't bother to check the model number. So the sales person takes another guess, and again it's wrong. So this was the guy's third trip to our store. He claimed he was mad for a salesperson's incompetance. I didn't have the energy to point out it was his own incompetence that caused his grief.

I had to quit that job. For the sake of my sanity, I couldn't do it any more.

I'm just reminded of a story when I was shopping in Montreal. I went into a store and started browsing. I found lots of things on the first, floor, and when I went to the 2nd floor, all the saleswomen stood around, no one asking me if I needed anything. When I was done browsing, a saleslady comes ups to me and hands me her business card and says, "Please show this to the cashier downstairs so they know I helped you so I can get commission".

She had never approached me, nor helped me in any way, and the GALL.

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