I love hearing horror stories from the retail industry regarding customers.  I personally am not in the retail industry so I don't have any stories to share. If you work at a place that deals with consumers (gun shop, truck shop, construction, whatever you are in), please share your story with the stupidest customer! I'd love to read it.

Don't get me started, Stupid people LOVE to go out to eat!

It's too stupid to talk about.

I've got several from when I was a contractor.

First was one roof we were replacing. Started stripping off the old shingles and discovered a second layer on most of the front of the roof. I quickly estimated how many additional squares, wrote up a change order, and the HO signed it. Several days later (after the job was finished and I was paid), the HO called me bitching because the insurance adjuster said I had overestimated the amount of secondary roofing, and wasn't going to pay but half the price I charged. He told me I needed to refund him $200. I told him nicely to get bent.

Same guy, we were framing and roofing an addition that was to be his wife's alteration shop. He found some lame-ass windows from an old sunroom at a yard sale, and wanted us to install them. So I did, the best way I knew how. They weren't to his liking, so he removed and replaced them. Oh well––I told him they weren't suitable for use in an actual building, anyway, and didn't meet wind codes.

Same guy, same addition. There was a phone line on the end wall of the existing house which was in the way of the hallway we were building. I told him as soon as I found it to be a problem that he needed to have someone move it. Two weeks later, come roofing time (and several reminders later), he still hadn't moved it. So I cut the damn thing.


Then there was the time I was working at Home Depot in Lumber/Building Materials, right after I started my business. A redneck couple comes in and says they need some hurricane straps for the porch they were building. I showed them the 12" twisted straps, which were like $.40 each. He grabs a "clip," (a Simpson H2.5A), which was about $.23 each, and asks, "Why won't these work? They're so much cheaper." I explain to him that the clips didn't meet current codes, and would be rejected by the inspector. He balks and says, "You're just trying to sell me the most expensive thing you have!" I say, "No, dude, I'm a licensed contractor who's framed over 300 houses in my career, and that's not gonna fly with the inspector. I think I know what I'm talking about." He bought the cheaper clips, anyway, stupid fucker.

Then there was the little Japanese lady we were doing some remodeling for. On one of the last days, I and my helper were installing a double interior French door. We were leveling/plumbing one side, so the doors didn't yet have the proper reveal. Right as we get the one side right, she comes barging through the doors screaming, "They ah wong! They not wight!" Yeah lady, no shit. So I explain to her what we're doing, and that they will be exactly right when we're finished.

Same lady, same job. I was sanding drywall, and I really had to pee. The closest public restroom was 10 minutes away, so I took the liberty of using her restroom in the hallway (away from construction). I finished, left, and later that day she called saying someone had broken into her house. I had to explain to her that I used the restroom.

That's what I can think of for now.

I had one customer today that made me contemplate the pro's and con's of going to jail for beating his head in with a shovel.



I don't feel like typing out the whole mess but he was an idiot.

I'll have to think this over tonight and come back to it in the morning, or later tonight.  I worked in car rental and spent a while in a smaller town.  There were some real doozies as far as stupid goes.

When I lived in Nome (Alaska) I managed a large hotel that did tours. One night after my shift I was standing on the BEACH when a woman from the tour group walked up and when she recognized me from the hotel, she started to chat. Looking out over the water see asked "What lake is this?", I told her it was the Pacific Ocean and if she went south far enough she would be in Hawaii. She responded (seriously I might add) with, "How far above sea level are we?". I responded with, "Do yo mean at your head or your feet? because at this point it does make a difference."

A plastic surgeon asked me if she was in danger of the vaporizer on her anesthesia machine potentially exploding. She was under the impression gasoline was used in the vaporizer to anesthetize the patient.

I'm assuming someone told her the vaporizer releases an anesthestic gas and she took it completely wrong. But still... gasoline?

It  had to be the lady in Richmond, Va. who had a Masters telling me she was going to visit her brother in N.J.  I asked if she was driving up I95, past Baltimore and Philly.  She said no, " I drive by Pittsburgh to get there."

Me: really?  Are you sure?
Her: Yup.  
Me: Oooookkkaayyyy, that seems to be the long way.
Her: Nah.

Back when I was a store detective, I once busted a guy for stealing a 7 dollar rain hat. When searching him, I found he had three thousand dollars in his pocket.

How stupid is that?

One Time at truck shop...Doing a printout. The driver asked me what it said. I pointed to the prinout and said. "It say's you had a burger in New Mexico last thursday" He said "No shit It can tell you that!" One time at the truck shop. A driver came in saying he could not unhook. Said there was no handle. I went out to fix it. Pulled handle unlocked fifth wheel. Unhooked trailer. Went back inside. Driver blushed and said. " I did'nt look on that side of the tractor". One time at truck shop... driver said his brake's did not work....Everytime he pulled the yellow button back out the truck would not move. I have dozens more.

A client was building an addition onto someone's house, and approached us to handle the roofing portion of the addition.  Being a tile roof, we had to find out what tile was on the existing house so I could bid the correct tile.  He put us in contact with the lady of the house, who told us, "I know exactly what kind of tile it is.  I'll come in to your office and show you."  Since many homeowners still have the  original paperwork from when their house was built, we took her at her word that she knew the manufacturer, profile, and color of the tile that was on her house.  

When she came into the office, I asked her what tile she had.  She said, "The red kind."

I have bundles of stupid walk in everyday. My favorite was beig called a "dirty fucking liar that would argue about what color a white sign was" after I told him kansas city is south of omaha.

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In for lulz because these threads always deliver.

Cyclopropane?





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I had a customer try to use two 50% off coupons on her purchase, she basically thought 50% off + 50% off = free. She got all pissed because it didn't say there was a limit as to how many coupons you could use, so I asked her If she had three coupons, should I then give her money out of my till?
That shut her up, and she never came back.

Then I had a guy walk into the shop while I was mopping the floor, he looked at me with this big grin on his face and threw himself down on the floor and started yelling he was gonna sue me because I didn't have a wet floor sign. I just gave him a blank stare and said "Yeah, OK......"
He called the next day and wanted to "Settle out of court" so I hung up on him. He called back like three times that week saying "Let me talk to your manager!" and I'd say "No" and hang up. Nothing ever came of it. I hope he really did hurt something.

My wife works in auto parts and has for the last fifteen years(she's not your typical female, knows more than alll the guy's in the store)  She told me about this guy that came in and got a set of front pads for his car, checked out and getting ready to leave comes back in and says now where do these go?   AYFKidding me.

Stop at a waffle house one morning after a cleaning job(own a carpet cleaning business).  2 women standing outside smoking, ask..........You clean carpet?

I work at a big box home improvement retailer. I was walking through the paint department one day and a guy asked where the camouflage spray paint was. I showed him where the spray paint was and all the colors that comprise camouflage. "You don't sell any that just comes out of the can camouflage?" Uh, no we don't.

A college professor who took his motion detector completely apart as in un soldered the components on the board, then could not get it to work again. The dumb ass called us and wanted us to replace it for free! He paid us for a new one.

Does she get a lot of the "know-it-all" types?

I neither know where to start, nor where to end.

I work for a wholesaler. I was talking to a retailer. Short version, he used this sentence.....





...."I don't need the profit".

Aren't all the good ones already in the "Ask a *** anything" threads?

Nah. It was either Isoflurane or Sevoflurane. Flammable anesthetic agents haven't been used on humans in this country for decades. This woman was in her early 40s so I doubt she ever used them. Also she specifically mentioned gasoline. She really thought gasoline was used.  

ost...I love these threads...

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"You clean carpet?" Means want to bang us silly, ya know for future reference.

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"I need fwee refill" says the asian guy, as he holds out a box of empty chick fil a chicken nuggets

Had a user come back from vacation. She called the help desk because she couldn't log in to the system. No big deal, lots of people forget their passwords after 2 weeks on vacation.
Only she hadn't forgotten her password. She forgot her user name. Our user names were comprised of first initial and last name. She forgot her fucking NAME.

LULZ



 

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

What was his screen name?

Too many to remember, but I'll post them as they come to me.

Had one guy looking at a pair of really nice speakers and I say to him, "These speakers are truly AWESOME."
He decides to go nutbag religious on me and says "No. Only God is awesome."
To which I reply, "No, these are definitely awesome... and they're actually real!"

Way back when I worked at Six Flags Over Texas. 75% of the hundreds of thousands of visitors could nott count past 3. .

Had a woman that couldn't remember the code for her food stamp card and wanted us to just give her the food.

The Taliban.

We had a lady on one of our boats one time look at an offshore drilling rig we were passing and asked, "Is that a man-made or natural object."  And you guys think the Grand Canyon is a miracle of erosion.

Tagged.  

When I worked at Home Depot, I saw a fat dude in sweatshorts going through the crown molding, picking out all of the longest pieces.  When he got to the register he was astonished when his bill was in the hundreds.  He thought that the price per LF (Linear Foot) was per individual piece.  This was why he spent twenty minutes picking out the longest ones.  

I worked at Sea World, San Diego, the summer before I went into the Air Force. We had just opened the new Shark Encounter and I had a woman come up and ask me, "When is the next shark show was at?". I replied, "Ma'am, about the only thing we've been succesful teaching sharks to do is to eat".

Had another lady say, "I've been in this park all day and haven't figured out what the heck a Shamu is".

When I worked at UPS I had a lady demand to know how much a book of stamps cost and then became irate that I wouldn't sell her a book. She didn't accept the answer that I worked for UPS, not USPS, she thought we were a subsidiary or package division of the Postal Service. That was a long conversation.

Had a lady call up the security police desk one night. She demanded to know why a C-130 was hovering over her home. I told her that C-130s don't hover, and if one was doing that, to get out of her house immediately as it was crashing. I had to talk to the commander the next morning about that one.

An Asian lady who spilled coffee in her laptop & wanted it fixed under warranty.
It ended up being a chargeable repair even though she threw a fit.
About a month later her son dumped his milk in her laptop & we went through the same ordeal again.
She was a VP in the IT Dept.

Had a customer bring in a stereo to our repair shop and ask if we could give him a repair invoice to give to his insurance company to claim it as lightning damage. No big deal, this happens a lot and we usually pop it open and verify that it's lightning related and off they go to their insurance co for reimbursement. FYI, we charge a $25 bench fee, which is also usually covered by the insurance co.

Welll..... I open up his unit and find:
Tinfoil wrapped around the fuse
loose change and screw driver bits laying loose on the  PCB
EXTREME corrosion from liquid spills (and matching cup ring stains on the top of the unit)
the original case screws were missing and had been replaced with 3" drywall screws which had pierced one of the circuit boards.

I wrote up what I found and told him to have a nice day.

OK, a story from my days on the phone at Natchez Shooters Supply...

Working at home depot ,long ago , a guy comes in to buy a battery for his drill , battery is 45 bucks and he says I love the drill I'll take 2. I tell him that the drill he loves is on sale drill AND 2 batteries for 35 . Guy insists on buying 2 batteries until I show him the box with the sale sticker and the two batteries AND drill in it... Then he tried to play it off ... I iust wanted to be right didn't care about his bottom line .

I hope you gave them plenty of "customer service."

Preferably the high explosive kind.

Had someone accuse me of lying after flight at FL 300 (30000 feet), because his "altimeter watch" only said we went up to 7500 feet.   No more announcements from the pointy end after that for a long time.


By the way I did want to ask him about the whole airplane vs. treadmill thing.

+1

had a customer come in for a trouble shoot of his car audio system because his amp quit working. He says to me "I know it's getting power because when I touched the power lead to the case it sparked.

I told him that if it worked before that it certainly doesn't now.

One of my buddies worked phone support for gateway computers, said one night a woman called to complain that her retractable cup holder in her tower broke.

Yep true srory

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Was that Lemonjello or Orangelo?

You have no idea how many of them I get.  I usually will send them to the newest wet behind the ears DA that is working, when he comes and asks me how to do something or what something is called I just smile.  I once had a guy come in and tellme that he needed a guys help on an old car project (Husband and I build hotrods for a living) I let the newbie work on him for almost 45 minutes before I set the starter he needed on the counter and walked away, needless to say cust is now one of my regulars. The list goes on.

I ran a full service Exxon gas station back in the early 90's



A lady in a Sedan De ville came in and wanted a fill up and check everything.



I was under the hood while two of my guys got the tires and windows



it was a late 80's model and I had my hand in past the fan belt to put the power steering cap back on and bam!

this crazy woman hits the ignition to start the freaking engine.



It almost got my fingers, so close!



I went around to her window and yelled "what are you doing starting the car, you know I was under the hood working?"

She said "I was hot and wanted the air conditioner on"



I gave her a good lesson on safety about what could have happened and her reply to me was



"I'm sorry, I'm not from around here"

The one that never comes to compromise. He was lead outside and beaten to death with fry pans. But that was then and this is now...




Maybe I should check statutes of limitations on that.