Customer Service Thread

Some higher-up or another at work has decided that if people are scheduled long enough to need a lunch break, the manager is doing their job inefficiently. That means as few shifts as possible that run longer than 5.25 hours, which in turn means they want it to be impossible to work a 40 hour week. What. The. Fuck.

@Enzel Oh boy, my workplace schedules hours like that too, although I think it also takes into account how busy the previous few weeks were, too.

 

"Can I have back the coupon I used last week?"
Am I psychic? How am I supposed to know what coupon you used last week? "The coupon for [item A] you just bought?"
"No, the one I used last week!"
"The one for [item B]?"
"No..."
After going through her entire stack of coupons, it turned out to be the only coupon for extra store rewards points. Sweet Primus couldn't you have said that in the first place?

 

Let me tell you about this little old Asian lady customer who should be incredibly annoying, but who I kind of love. She's always micro-scrutinizing everything I ring up in case the discounts aren't right and seems to find it hard to process things like "that one will come off at the end" or "yes, it discounted correctly as I've told you several times now, see, it says so right here". Her son's always with her and runs some interference, seeming mildly embarrassed on her behalf, but mostly she's just... really sweet. On one of my first few days at this job, when I badly needed some encouragement, she gave me a little paper heart and a Hershey's Kiss. Yesterday she was giving all the employees she interacted with a paper Christmas tree cutout and a tiny candy cane.

Turns out I can put up with a lot if I'm appreciated for it. Who knew?

 

to the jackass who made me hunt through the store for giraffes, and call our much busier other location for pictures of all their giraffes and never came back
and the bitch who unfolded half a baby display and didn't buy anything

fuck you all very much

 

This was my first year working the photo lab on Christmas Eve and the two days prior, the single busiest time of the year for that department. So many calendars. So many photo books. Me, another photo clerk and a manager couldn't keep up. We had orders running multiple hours late. We didn't even have time to call everyone and tell them their orders were hours late, so some of them came in at the "expected" time and got mad. Thank goodness I have Christmas day off.

 

If you use a coupon on your purchase, you cannot later return it for the amount that it would have been without the coupon. Arguing with us about this will not help.

 

I worked at an ice cream booth at the minnesota state fair once (dairy bar in the food building for those familiar with the fair :P ) and one day I saw a customer walk up to the register next to mine and ask for a cup of vanilla frozen yogurt. Now, the owner kept switching flavors of stuff year to year to try and find what would sell well, and we only ever have one flavor of frozen yogurt. It was raspberry this year. My coworker starts explaining this and the lady gets so upset and is trying to insist on getting frozen yogurt. Another worker, standing next to me, informs me that this specific lady does this every year at the fair and it takes her like five minutes of talking to the manager to go away.
I just. how does that happen? how does someone come to a ice cream stand at the state fair just once every year to terrorize us about our frozen yogurt stock????

 

"WHY AM I ONLY GETTING FIVE DOLLARS BACK!!!!!"

"b-because... that's... that's what you paid for it???"

"IT WAS MORE THAN THAT!!!"

"you... you only paid five dollars... i don't...i can't give you more than what you paid???"

also speaking of coupons yesterday i had a lady rip her phone out of her tiny little granddaughter's hands, causing her to scream and cry, so she could get a coupon for an extra 5% without having to use her jc penney card. people continue to astound.

 

I was prepared to be chill about working on Christmas. It will be easy, I thought. Most people will be home, we'll have a few embarrassed shoppers who forgot a thing, no biggie.

why are we so crowded suddenly

 

So, now that I'm in a better mood and can type this without swearing...

Our holiday season has been pretty stressful and by yesterday we still had like 15 overdue orders? (As ive mentioned before, i work in custom framing) From the 19th thru the 24th. But we did get all the ones that were gifts prioritized and finished. So I was sorta relieved. I had to work Xmas Eve and I was hoping for a nice quiet day where I could finish the rest without being interrupted.

There were a few people needing last minute frames and I helped them pick stuff out that was ready to use, but other than that, it was uneventful until this guy comes in. He had 3 posters and said he wanted to take advantage of "that special" his friends had told him about. It took me a few minutes to figure out he was talking about a promotion where you got a choice of 1 of 5 frames, a single mat and standard glass under a certain size for a flat fee, that the company has been running all month.

I pull out the stuff he can choose from and explain that there are no exceptions if he wants the deal. Ok. He keeps picking out mats that aren't covered by it and I have to keep steering him towards ones that are, but otherwise it seems to be going fine until I get to the third poster. All of a sudden he looks down at me holding the samples against the corner for him to see what it looks like and goes "Wait, why are you touching it? What if you got fingerprints on it???"

I'll say here that it is technically policy for us to wear these disposable cotton gloves while handling artwork. In reality we only tend to when the artwork is especially old or fragile or has a delicate finish. Otherwise its really hard to get anything done because you can't grip for shit, it's hard to type, the velcro from the frame samples pull them, etc etc. Huge pain in the ass. These were heavy paper posters, and I hadn't noticed they were numbered at the bottom to indicate they were like 1/1000 limited run or whatever.

I apologized and went to put on gloves. The guy then asks me why I haven't put away the first two posters yet in a way that implies I'm being careless with them. I explain we have to measure art a second time after an order before putting it away to make sure everything is correct. He starts going on about how I "need to learn to respect artwork" and that he wants me to do it right now, and proceeds to watch me like a hawk while I lay them flat in sleeves.

After that the entire time I'm trying to finish the order so I can ring him up he lectures me about how careless I am, how shocked he is, how he's worried about how they're going to turn out, repeating the same phrases several times even though I've already apologized several times, acknowledged them, assured him we will be very careful. I ask him if he wants to see a manager, he says no. He keeps peering at the posters trying to find fingerprints and finding nothing. He informs me this is the first time they've been removed from their tubes and I'm thinking "do you think cardboard mailing tubes are acid free???" after like the fifth time he says I should "learn to respect art" I want to scream at him that I am an artist and you're being a pretentious dick and I wash my hands frequently so touching them for five minutes isn't going to ruin their goddamn collectors value

Before I could finish ringing up the sale I just lost it, I was tired and hungry and the week had been stressful and I turned around and went into the shop and sat on the floor and cried. Thankfully the manager at the time saw me and came to ask if I was ok, and I told her just to finish up with him so he'd leave. He proceeded to give *her* a hard time about not knowing how to apply the sale properly so eventually I had to steel myself and come out and help her, though I refused to look at him or speak to him and went immediately into the breakroom after.

Thankfully she had my back about it and said he was being a huge jerk in...nicer words.

Just. I acknowledged I made a mistake. I apologized, I corrected my behavior, but he kept harping on me and trying to shame me in the most condescending tone imaginable and it was like. What the fuck else do you want me to do?? He didn't take the offer to take his business elsewhere because he was unhappy, and I knew it was because the sale was a better deal than he'd get anywhere else, because he'd initially complained about the expense of the place he usually went to.

 

*hugs* to all of y'all working today, I was fired and would have had the day off regardless but good luck and I hope everything goes alright!

 

Damn, witnessed. :(

 

@Enzel ugh that's the worst, i'm so sorry!! there's just this certain type of person who like... gets off on treating customer service employees like absolute garbage & literally nothing you can do is good enough for them. i've had a few and each time leaves me frustrated and crying, so i get it man.

 

Dear shithead:

If your checker is visibly exhausted, there are a number of potential responses that do not involve mocking them!

 

@OnnaStik hugs, that is fucking rude of them :/

 

I started a new job yesterday! First day went okay. I got a little training at the basic stuff, so that wasn't too bad.

What was bad was the fact that the owner's bitchy wife was there today and she expected me to be fucking perfect at a job I've been doing for one and a half days. She also liked to give directions, then get mad at me when I went to go do what she told me because I didn't read her mind and do the other thing she wanted on the other side of the restaurant. Also she has the same name as me. Fuck her.

 

No, ma'am, your cable black box, installed by the local cable company of a 5000 pop. town, is not a tool used to spy on you.
Also no, ma'am, we, the four employee computer repair shop, are not affiliated with the NSA or the cable company to ask them to not spy on you.

Ma'am, if the government wants to spy on you, they already have ways to do it whether you have cable or not. If you're that concerned, move out to a log cabin out in the goonies, don't use any infrastructure, deal solely in a barter system, and beware of government drones. Actually, move out the country, good luck.

 

Worked yesterday and rejoiced. The Christmas music mix is dead, long live the king!

 

man, lucky, most places around here don't kill it till new year's

 

Yesterday I was calling customers who had prescriptions that were due to be put back in stock, to find out if they were going to pick them up soon or not. One of them was not very happy.

Customer: "well this is the first I've heard I had a prescription ready! Why didn't I get a message saying it was ready before?"

Me: "i'm sorry about that, let's see what I can do. Hmm, looks like this prescription wasn't set up for automated alerts, I can fix that for you now."

Customer: "I talked to the pharmacist about this last time and he said the same thing! I still didn't get an alert for it!"

Me: "well, I'm not sure why that was, I'm sorry. It should be set up for alerts now."

Customer: "what number are you calling me from?"

Me: "I'm calling from (store phone)."

Customer: "is that the number the alerts come from?"

Me: "no, they come from an automated call center, somewhere in... Oklahoma?"

Customer: "well you need to find out what number they call from! If I get a call from a number I don't know, i block the number on my phone."

Dude that is hardly my fault. I literally don't know how to look that up, as I just said, it's a call center in another state. And if you block the number because you don't know what it is, that's your own fault.