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Small idiot customer rant

J

JML755

Well-known Member
Was on vacation last week so I was catching up on errands. Took my chainsaw into the local Stihl dealer on Tuesday morning, figured there'd be no wait at the parts counter. Wrong. One guy, nicely dressed, talking with an accent, standing at the counter looking at print out of parts diagrams for a lawn tractor. He said, "no, don't see it on here". Girl on the computer said "try this one" and printed out another sheet. "Nope, don't see it here". After 5 minutes or so of this and about 6 diagrams laying on the counter, I asked what he was looking for. "The 4 inch pin", he said. Evidently, he came in with no model # and just said "I need a pin". Girl was printing out diagrams of various mowing decks. Finally, after a few more minutes (and more diagrams) I suggested he go home, get the model # and take a picture of the area he needs the "Pin" for. He thought that was a good idea but said he wanted to look at floor models to see if he could ID it and just walked away. The girl watched him walk off, waited a few seconds and with me staring at her, finally asked if I was just dropping off my saw. Grrr.

Still fuming and shaking my head about this, I went to Home Depot a short distance away. Got behind an older guy with an accent who kept telling the clerk "you charge me same price as before, right?" Did this several times, kept interrupting what the clerk was doing. I wanted to tell him to just let the clerk scan his stuff. Anyway, clerk finally gives him the total and he asks "Will you take personal check?". Clerk says "sure". Guy says "I be right back. I go to car to get check book" and slowly limps out of the store, oblivious to the fact that he's got a register tied up. My jaw dropped and I yelled "you've got to be kidding me". The guy just kept going. I went over to another register. Luckily, the store wasn't that busy. What a start to my vacation.

No wonder clerks and dealers get frustrated with customers if they have to put up with stuff like this all the time. What was interesting was that both of these guys spoke with heavy foreign accents and didn't seem to care about any inconvenience to others they were causing by their actions. Are people from other countries that oblivious to common sense/courtesy?
 
(quoted from post at 06:49:46 07/11/11) Was on vacation last week so I was catching up on errands. Took my chainsaw into the local Stihl dealer on Tuesday morning, figured there'd be no wait at the parts counter. Wrong. One guy, nicely dressed, talking with an accent, standing at the counter looking at print out of parts diagrams for a lawn tractor. He said, "no, don't see it on here". Girl on the computer said "try this one" and printed out another sheet. "Nope, don't see it here". After 5 minutes or so of this and about 6 diagrams laying on the counter, I asked what he was looking for. "The 4 inch pin", he said. Evidently, he came in with no model # and just said "I need a pin". Girl was printing out diagrams of various mowing decks. Finally, after a few more minutes (and more diagrams) I suggested he go home, get the model # and take a picture of the area he needs the "Pin" for. He thought that was a good idea but said he wanted to look at floor models to see if he could ID it and just walked away. The girl watched him walk off, waited a few seconds and with me staring at her, finally asked if I was just dropping off my saw. Grrr.

Still fuming and shaking my head about this, I went to Home Depot a short distance away. Got behind an older guy with an accent who kept telling the clerk "you charge me same price as before, right?" Did this several times, kept interrupting what the clerk was doing. I wanted to tell him to just let the clerk scan his stuff. Anyway, clerk finally gives him the total and he asks "Will you take personal check?". Clerk says "sure". Guy says "I be right back. I go to car to get check book" and slowly limps out of the store, oblivious to the fact that he's got a register tied up. My jaw dropped and I yelled "you've got to be kidding me". The guy just kept going. I went over to another register. Luckily, the store wasn't that busy. What a start to my vacation.

No wonder clerks and dealers get frustrated with customers if they have to put up with stuff like this all the time. What was interesting was that both of these guys spoke with heavy foreign accents and didn't seem to care about any inconvenience to others they were causing by their actions. Are people from other countries that oblivious to common sense/courtesy?
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I don't have a tale to recount, but I can certainly relate to what you are saying. My wife, when she is along tells me not to say anything, but I figure if no one wakes these people up, they will simply just keep doing it. They are basically so self serving, no one else exists. The scary part is
they vote also, so it is not a mystery as to why the country is in the finanacial state that it is in.
 
After the guy walked out you were waiting because of the clerk not the guy, should have just cleared the register and rang you up.
 
Clown customers know how to work the system with chain stores and I am surprised the chain stores are not stuck in paralysis because of it. Nearly all chain operations have a complaint toll-free number which is abused beyond belief with people who are trying to milk the store dry as opposed to helping it run better by bringing a legitimate complaint forward. One of the results of this is most of the (small) store's personnel is always tied up with the squeeky wheel customer because if they do not Mr. Squeek will call with very nasty but unfounded complaints about the help.
Maybe the small power equipment manufacturers have similar issues with complaint lines.
 

someone had been emailing the wife about a horse for a couple of months. Finally set up an appointment and showed up yesterday. We set aside a couple hours for them. Showed them all that was available, answered ????'s etc... Get back to the house after almost 4 hours and the lady asked my wife if the place she works is hiring because she can't get a horse until she gets a job..............

I suffered another set back in my people skills progress............... Wife just about lost her bearing also....
 
Some day the shoe is on the other foot. There will be a day you'll need extra assistance and someone behind you will be in a hurry, but we all tend to have a self importance view of the world. Slow down relax and the outside world is an enjoyable place to be.
 
(quoted from post at 10:10:37 07/11/11) After the guy walked out you were waiting because of the clerk not the guy, should have just cleared the register and rang you up.
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The clerk (a young man) seemed just as flabbergasted as I was and I'm sure was trying to decide just what to do. Don't know if they cover that situation in whatever training class they give them. In any case, I didn't wait around to see if he did just that and it's not fair to blame the clerk for the actions of someone else.
 
(quoted from post at 07:49:33 07/11/11) Some day the shoe is on the other foot. There will be a day you'll need extra assistance and someone behind you will be in a hurry, but we all tend to have a self importance view of the world. Slow down relax and the outside world is an enjoyable place to be.
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There is a broad, highly visible, line between needing extra help, and being intentionally difficult.

Don't tell me going to the car to get your checkbook is a cultural thing. It's pretty much universal the world over that you bring the means to pay WITH YOU into the store. In most parts of the world you don't even have a car to leave your checkbook in!

In many parts of the world if you don't have the money to pay with you, you get run out of the store, and/or beaten, and/or arrested for vagrancy! They don't give you a chance to run out to your car to get your checkbook. You get clubbed like a baby seal with the 2x4 that you were trying to buy.

Only in America can you be a total tool at the checkout counter, simply because you can, and get away with it.
 
The dealership that I worked in in the late eighties was right in a small town. One year a guy rented a small garage right next to the store. He started a mower sales and service business. His main line was Yardman. The are a off Yellow and blue green color. This guy was an idiot. He sold mowers for $50-100 over cost. I went an talked to him one time and he said he only used to make $200 a week at his old job so if he made $100 per mower he only had to sell two each week to make as much money. What??? I asked him if he had figured his overhead. He asked me what that was. I told him it was his cost of running his business: his rent, electric, insurance, water and sewage. He said that was not much as he was paying $300 each month rent and it must have the utilities in it as he never had been sent any bills. Plus he never needed insurance. ???

The real funny thing was that this town had a population of 300 people so how was he going to sell 100 lawn mowers each year??? Well you guys can guess how long he stayed in "business". The town finally figured out he was using utilities. They back billed him for what he had used. Nice $3000 bill. LOL He closed right down.

Now the big problem he caused for us. For the next 4-5 years his old customers came in to us trying to get parts and service. Yardman mowers are a low end mower to start with so you can imagine the customer he sold too. They would come in and swear that we had sold them the mower because we sold yellow and green ones too. The parts man just about had several heart attacks dealing with these idiots.

As for foreigners here. I can deal with most of them other than the Pakistani and East Indian ones. They are the most arrogant people in the world. They are used to treating women like crap so you should see how they treat clerks. I saw a big old gal at the grocery store drag one of these little arrogant a holes out the door after he tried that on her. LMAO I wished I had a camera. When she came back in I asked her is she was worried about being sued?? She said heck no and grinned at me. "I am more protected than him". You see she was a large African American single mother. Yep she was right. LOL
 
whats even worse is when the clerk dont know what their doing. especially when you have like 3 carts of stuff and you have a discoun or something and they have ring everything up again, as soon as i hear that i just want to leave the stuff there and walk out the door. spent about 2hrs at the register at tsc one day because the clerk had no i dea what they were doing. frustrating.
 
The odd idiot here and there I can tolerate.........most days. What really gets me is one particular checkout clerk at the grocery store here. He is ALWAYS in the express lane but he is far from speedy. Often his is the only lane open. He will engage customers in conversations about everything, often holding up the line quite a lot just by having to finish his stories (which are nothing that anyone is interested in hearing). Add 30 seconds to a minute to every customer when you are the 3rd or 4th in line and it becomes VERY frustrating. One guy behind me one day said something like "he always f*&#!ng does that, p*#^@@es me off". And he's right, he always does it. I am too polite to but one day I will be in a hurry and in a bad mood and I will remind him (politely of course) that he is working in the #$@$%#$@$ EXPRESS LANE!!!!
Other things that get me is checkout clerks that pay absolutely no attention to what they are doing just blindly scanning your items and having a conversation with someone else half way across the store. No respect for the customer at all.
Rant off
:)
 
Might be a good place for a not so new but still training employee. Trouble is, this guy has been there for years!
 
I have noticed many many times that women at the check out will be told what the total is and then open their hand bag dig around in it for their purse, then find the money. As if the idea of paying was a complete surprise.
 
Some well dressed older gal was in front of me at Safeway the other morning- had 4 cartons of strawberries, little bag of oranges and a pineapple. Supposedly the strawberries were discounted, and she kept arguing with the clerk about the price. Clerk kept her tongue, and did a bunch of gyrations with the cash register, and the gal ended up with a bill for $5.95. I know the pineapple was 3 bucks, and figured the oranges were about the same.

After customer left, I said to the clerk "Looks to me like that lady just got those strawberries for free." She smiled tightly and said "You're very perceptive. The customer is always right."

I did catch a glimpse of a name badge on the customer- she was in town for some kind of evangelical religious convention. Real Christian lady, right there. . .
 
Well, as long as you are on the subject and the complaint department is open, I will rant too.

I just hate it when in the checkout lane anywhere, and the person in front of me stops what they are doing to answer their cell phone and have a stupid conversation....burns me up every time. I feel like just grabbing the phone and chucking it accross the store--then quietly leaving without my merchandise.....
 
(quoted from post at 10:43:18 07/11/11) evangelical religious convention. Real Christian lady, right there. . .
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Don't get me started............... I've never seen a crook that never boasted of their religion............... Same for the majority of thieves that I've run across........
 


LOL I worked customer service in the PX on my last tour of Germany part time. Keep in mind that there are no pawn shops there. Smart young mothers would buy something expensive on payday and then refund it a day or two before the next payday after their spouse had blown the rest of their money. So a day or two before payday you could expect to stand in line for at least an hour and most times more. And that was with 3 of us doing refunds. I had a guy stand in line for over an hour for a 15 cent price adjustment that should have been fixed at the cheak out. I told the guy that if his time was only worth 15 cents an hour my room in the barracks could use a good cleaning! He tells me "my wife made me come back for it". The I gave him his 15 cents out of my own pocket because it took antoher 4-5 min to fill out the paper work. So he tells the manager I was rude. So with him standing right there I tell the manager (good guy) what happened and what he had said. The manager lost it right there and was laughing at the guy.....needless to say nothing more was said.

The customer IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT! But the customer is still the customer.

Between idiots, rude folks and people just trying to rip the store off I can say that anyone working customer service long term is a sadist or moron!

Rick
 
Was driving through the town of Umatilla Oregon one night (At the time, population of maybe 3,000 and largely agricultural) and there was a "Going Out Of Business" sign outside of store. As I got closer, I noticed it was a piano and organ store...in a town of 3,000...in the middle of nowhere. Of course it was going out of business!
 
Best scene I saw at an Express lane was when a lady (?) in front of me piled over a dozen items on an Express counter that clearly stated "6 Item Or Less".

The young lady clerk politely asked the customer which 6 items she wanted to buy.
 
My personal favorite is when people stand in the check out lane for 10 minutes, stand there another 5 while the clerk rings everything up, gives 'em their total, THEN they pull out their check book and SLOWLY start writing the check.

People these days act as if they're the only one on the face of the earth.
 
I pulled into gas station to fill up ,,all pumps busy . Waited and waited , of course I had the car trailer hooked up and didn;t want to jockey around to another pump ..after awhile I did so . Went in to pay and there is the gal with the car blocking pump sitting down and eating a sandwich after she had gassed up . I did ask her if she thought blocking the pump was being considerate at all ,,she just looked at me with deer in headlight look ...Needless to say my cup of pop got tossed in her car window as i left .

Now ,a friend told me this gas pump story . Guy was yaking on phone by pump , filled up ,,continued on phone instead of going into pay , when he finally did, other guy went over verified keys were in ignition , then rolled windows up and locked the doors !! lmao !

I tend to fill up , then drive up to store front to pay ,getting out of the way for the next customer. although lotof places are prepay these days
 
I don't like Menards. Never have. In fact I hate the place and will usually go a few extra miles to hit a Home Depot or Lowes instead. But sometimes the job dictates that I have to go to Menards. Usually I get into a bad mood just going into the place.
So last week I went there to pick up a couple of items for work. Standing in line with 3 other men about my age while two women are getting their items rung up by the cashier. Actually one woman was doing the buying the other was just along with her friend.
So talk, talk, yak, yak,can't find her credit card, dig through her purse, not paying attention, dawdle, dawdle, yak, yak.
I finally got tired of waiting and said (I have a big, deep voice) "Let's go dear".
Whoosh! with fire in her eyes she turned around to see who said it but none of us guys in line said a thing. Just looked at her. Could have been any one of us. The fire went out when she couldn't tell which one of us had said it but she she quickly signed the pad and went on her way. Yak, yak, yak.
After she left the guy behind me nudged me on the shoulder and said "Good Job"
The guy in front turned and said "Imagine being married to that woman!?"
The camaraderie helped diffuse an otherwise teeth grinding experience and we went our seperate ways in a little lighter mood.
 
There's been a few times when I've been waiting at a deli counter or somewhere else, that doesn't have an official line to stand in, and the person behind the counter either doesn't want to acknowledge you or helps someone else that just walked up while you've been patiently waiting for 5 minutes or more. What I've found usually works when they seem to be ignoring you, is to tap a coin on the glass or the counter. I was told once to stop tapping on the counter. I said if you wouldn't have ignoring me, I wouldn't have to tap on the counter for you to notice I've been standing here for the last 5 minutes.

Fast food places can be bad too. They ask what you want and then ask if it's to stay or to go. You tell them what you want and it's to stay in. Then they take your money, give you change and ask again what you ordered. Then they start putting your order in a bag to go, often with part of order wrong.
 
I am so very glad that my life is apparently not nearly as busy as the collective lot of many of you. I can't think of a single day in my life that has been so busy that an extra 30 seconds to 3 minutes of time would have ruined it.

So many people today talk about the youth having an entitlement attitude. Isn't an expectation that you spend the least amount of time possible in a store, an expectation that when not met causes distress, anger and retribution also a feeling of entitlement?
 
Ryan , glad to see someone has it figered out! People die from the stress of trying to change the unchangable. Who's gonna have the accident from uncontrolled anger? These people have not a worry in the world and go through life stress free and live longer than the customer behind them in line. It isn't what happens around you or to you...it's how you let it affect you. You will NEVER change these people!! So stay home or learn how to handle it and enjoy life! THEY ARE!
 
Do you drive 65 in the left lane of the freeway too? Nonchalantly going about your business? Oblivious to the 20 cars stacked up behind you while you fiddle with the radio to catch the Jack Benny show? Entitled to drive the way you feel because you own the roads as much as anyone?
If so, please remember that 3 minutes of MY time are not yours to waste.
 
(quoted from post at 05:32:30 07/12/11) Do you drive 65 in the left lane of the freeway too? Nonchalantly going about your business? Oblivious to the 20 cars stacked up behind you while you fiddle with the radio to catch the Jack Benny show? Entitled to drive the way you feel because you own the roads as much as anyone?
If so, please remember that 3 minutes of MY time are not yours to waste.
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No I don't. I try to be considerate. I also do realize that life happens and developing contempt for a person simply for temporarily slowing me down is stupid.

By the way, in your example assuming you wish to drive 72 mph instead of 65 mph, you would have to follow a person for a full 33 miles at 65 mph in order for them to "waste" 3 minutes of your time. In most cases it won't take more than about 3 miles to find an opportunity to safely pass meaning that the individual actually "wasted" a whopping 16 seconds of your life.

Just how busy is your life? Because you just spent that much time reading this reply and contemplating if you should reply. Sorry I "wasted" your time.
 
(quoted from post at 21:44:47 07/11/11) I am so very glad that my life is apparently not nearly as busy as the collective lot of many of you. I can't think of a single day in my life that has been so busy that an extra 30 seconds to 3 minutes of time would have ruined it.

So many people today talk about the youth having an entitlement attitude. Isn't an expectation that you spend the least amount of time possible in a store, an expectation that when not met causes distress, anger and retribution also a feeling of entitlement?
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You're missing the point. It's NOT that an extra few seconds or minutes would ruin anyone's day or that any of us are ENTITLED to spend the least amount of time in a store. The point is the increasing amount of rudeness and inconsideration for others that is evidenced by the posts on this thread. Eating a sandwich while others wait for a pump? C'mon. As Ultradog points out, it's not your ENTITLEMENT to waste other people's time.

Politeness and common sense seem to have gone away with the advent of technology. I try and hold the door open when entering/exiting a place of business for people coming the other way, especially if they're women. Used to be you always got a smile and "thank you". More than once I've had people (usually young women) on a cell phone walk through while I'm holding the door blabbing away oblivious to everything around them. Nary a nod, thank you or any acknowledgement that I was being polite to them.

No, it's not US that have a sense of self-importance, it's the people who lack common social skills. And it's getting harder and harder to just ignore this rude behavior.

I applaud Ultradog, Bryan in Iowa and others who are calling these people out. If no one does, then they will go on thinking their behavior is appropriate.
 
(quoted from post at 18:44:47 07/11/11) I am so very glad that my life is apparently not nearly as busy as the collective lot of many of you. I can't think of a single day in my life that has been so busy that an extra 30 seconds to 3 minutes of time would have ruined it.

So many people today talk about the youth having an entitlement attitude. Isn't an expectation that you spend the least amount of time possible in a store, an expectation that when not met causes distress, anger and retribution also a feeling of entitlement?
Click to expand...

It's not the extra 30 seconds, 3 minutes, or whatever that's upsetting.

What's upsetting is the total and utter LACK OF RESPECT FOR THEIR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

You know what got us here? It's that "let it go" attitude.

Used to be that it was socially acceptable to call someone on being a rude, arrogant piece of excrement in public. They'd usually get the message. Now it's not politically correct, and a "hate crime" if it happens to be someone with a different flesh tone.

Now you're the bad guy for expecting the same level of respect that you afford to others, and you should flog yourself with barbed wire in front of a shrine to the Virgin Mary in penance??

No. This is not something I should have to apologize for.
 
Have to agree, this expect respect stuff they have been telling these kids in schools and the let it be thing has seen us become rude by being oblivious to everyone else. Kinda like the people leaving a shopping cart in the center of the isle while they read every label.

Rick
 
Not saying there isn't enough rudeness to go around , and not condoning it either. There ARE ways to handle it and there ARE ways NOT to! By the way , next time you run down that ole duffer in front of you , just take a visit to the store or other with your aged dad or grandfather. Just might give you a different perspective on things! You WILL be there some day. Shall we have them lock you up to keep you out of "everyone's" way??? Everyone has "baggage" and everyone has a bad day. All accept for the perfect people. Ive had your disease....age cured it!
 
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