Dumb customers....AGAIN!

[WillParkinson]

What's the dumbest customer you ever served?

I've had a lot of them but one of them sticks out in my mind and that would be Courtney Love from "HOLE" (and it's an apt description, believe me...)

She called down to Room Service once and asked, "Dover Sole...is that like beef?" When I explained to her it was fish she said, "But why is it so expensive? I figured it was a cut of beef."

Um....still no.

[BigMcLargehuge]

1. should have told her

it's the beef that tastes like fish!

[scarlet_owl]

2. I was waiting tables at Red Lobster a few years ago,

and this woman was pulling apart little pieces of biscuit for her baby to eat and putting them on the bare table. I asked her if she would like a plate or a napkin to put the pieces on because we used Windex on the tables. Her reply to me was "it's okay, Windex is anti-bacterial". I was stunned at her stupidity. That is screwed up on so many different levels.

[RandomKoolzip]

3. I got two of 'em.

I was working at a ice cream store in Hilsboro Village in Nashville. A lady returned the banana smoothie she'd just purchased because there were "little black specks in it." Apparently she'd never cut open a banana before.


A few months later I was working in a tonier area of Nashville, where a lot of fundie-conservative rich f%ckwads lived, and they were the haughtiest, stupidest, rudest bunch of fundies your mind can conjure up. Anyways, On the specials board of the cafe I was working, it said "Tortilla Soup." A rich, stupid, southern lady came up to the counter and asked, "Tortill-ee-ah? What is a tortill-ee-ah?" True story. I moved to the kitchen and became a cook so that I wouldn't have to encounter people like that (these are unfortunately typical of the kinds of freaks you meet in Nashville), and I've been a cook ever since.

[Aristus]

5. I've told this one before, but it bears repeating.

I was working in a bookstore, and a woman came up to me and asked me to help her find a book. She asked the right guy. I knew the whole store, inside and out.

"What's the title of the book?"

"Um. 'Watery Chocolate'? No, it's 'Chocolatey Water', no......"

" 'Like Water For Chocolate', by Laura Esquivel?"

"...........no, that's not it.........um, it takes place in Mexico, and it has these recipes........."

"Yes, Ma'am. That's "Like Water For Chocolate", by Laura Esquivel. We have it right over here."

".......no, that's not it.........uh......it has a blue cover........"

Well, you get the idea. She was determined that I was NOT going to find the book she didn't really want.

[BigMcLargehuge]

6. Wow... Hey, I have a dumb bookstore clerk story to share

I was at Walden books in North Dartmouth, MA looking for a copy of Normal Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead". Couldn't find it in classics, fiction, war, or anywhere else.

Clerk: Can I help you find something?
Me: The Naked and the Dead, by Normal Mailer.
Clerk: Oh, we don't have any books of that sort here.
Me: Books of that sort?
Clerk: Adult books.
Me: It's a story about World War 2...
Clerk: We don't have adult books...
Me: It's not an "adult book"...
Clerk: well any book by "Mormon Nailer" won't be found here...

I didn't buy anything that day.

[Aristus]

8. Good one.

Stupid bookstore clerks are even sadder than stupid bookstore customers. What the hell are they working there for? I don't know a thing about engines; you think I'm going to work at a repair garage? Sheesh!

[Guaranteed]

19. Morman Nailer LOL

Did that really happen? Sounds like it should be a joke. It's hilarious though.

[BigMcLargehuge]

21. Honest

It happened. I couldn't even make something that funny up, and I write fiction!

[flamingyouth]

4. I can't remember if I told this one before, but...

I was working on the phones for a gourmet seafood company. Much of our merchandise was perishable and was shipped with a gel-ice pack in a styrofoam cooler via FedEx.

One day I answer the phone, and this lady asks me (I KID YOU NOT, AND I SWEAR TO THE DEITY OF YOUR CHOICE) how to prepare the lovely item she received from her friends last month? I started asking her a couple of questions about the type of fish she may have received, but NO, she wanted to know how to cook the gel pack!

Yes, kids, it's written very clearly, "Not for human consumption," or something like that. She was very shocked that she couldn't serve it to her husband's boss and wife for dinner that night. To this day, I don't know if she threw out the fish and kept the ice pack.

[skypilot]

7. Not necessarily dumb, but certainly WEIRD

For some reason I'm blanking out on all the dumb customers I've dealt with over the years. It's probably because of the fact that of all the people I've ever waited on the ones that stand out in my mind are the three people I waited on when I worked at Waldenbooks about 16 years ago.
At that time Waldenbooks carried a variety of "adult" magazines--gay and straight. One day a middle aged couple and their grown daughter come in. They go over the the adult magazines and start flipping through them while giggling. To make a long story short, Mom, Dad and their daughter each pick out a magazine and come up to the counter to pay. Dad chose a Penthouse, Mom chose a Playgirl and the daughter chose Playguy which is geared to gay men. Dad paid for everyone's magazine, the daughter tried to show Dad the centerfold from her gay skin magazine, Dad chuckled nervously and turned away, and eventually all three left--each with their own brown paper bag. True story.

[Aristus]

9. Okay, THERE'S a scene out of a David Lynch movie. Weird!

n/t

[skypilot]

12. REALLY weird

That incident is so burned into my mind that I still remember which magazines they bought. Remember, this was 16 years ago!!

[scarlet_owl]

11. Whoa. There are definately some "issues" in that family.

What a lame pun.

[skypilot]

15. I beg to differ

That was the best pun I've heard in quite a while. Thanks.:toast:

[ET Awful]

10. The dumbest I've ever seen?

Well, I wasn't the guy behind the register, but I observed. This was at an Arby's fast food restaurant in Visalia, California.

The guy in front of me in line has a brown grocery bag in his hands as he steps up to take his order:

Customer: How large is your regular roast beef?

Arby's Clerk: About this big (indicates with fingers forming a circle).

Customer: Oh. Well how big is the large?

Clerk: About like this (again indicates with fingers forming circle).

Customer: Okay well how big is the giant?

Clerk: (indicates again).

Customer: (reaches into grocery bag, pulls out his own bag of rolls). . . Well give me a giant, but can you put on one of these rolls instead?

[carolinayellowdog]

13. "Where was the universe created"

Hey,

This one's kinda poignant rather than irritatingly dumb. In a public library where I used to work, I got a phone call from an elderly man with a deep question. He said "I know what the Bible says about the creation of the universe, but what I want to know is *where* God created it." My first answer didn't satisfy him: "There wasn't any *there* then." Nor did my second : "No one knows." He was clearly disappointed and believed that I could look the answer up in a reference book, but was too lazy to help him.

As for a just plain dumb question, "Do you have any American novels?" takes the cake. Although we do regularly have people protest after faxes have been sent, wanting to know why we are giving them back their original when we were supposed to send it somewhere.

CYD

[BigMcLargehuge]

14. LOL! Fax machine = transporter

I remember how baffled my office mates were by our first fax machine.

"Scotty, beam this document to the home office!"

[corarose]

16. I was working at a Seafood Restaurant one time

We had Skate Wing on the menu and a customer asked me If she could have the whole bird because she didn't think that the wing would fill her up.

I also had one lady think that the crab legs came off of the lobster. I can't understand that one and I don't know what kind of drugs that she was on but that was damn stupid.

[MadHound]

17. Not really a customer per se, insamuch as she didn't buy anything, but...

Back in the early eighties back when video games were really starting to take off, I owned an arcade at a resort lake. My location was next door to a veeerrrrryyyyy fundementalist church(not sure the denomination but Yahweh was in the title). Never had much problem with these folk, I opened at noon on Sunday and about the worst I'd heard out of the church was what sounded like literal holy rolling.

Anyway, I opened up at noon one Sunday, and shortly after opening up a little old lady came in. She started to peer intently at the screen of each and every machine I had. I was busy for the moment but was observing all of this and when I got free I walked up to her and asked if I could help her. Her reply was that no, I couldn't help her, she was looking for the number. What number, I asked. The number of the beast she replied. Apparently she thought that each and every video game was a machine of the the devil, and that as proof each machine displayed the number of the beast somewhere on the screen.

Well, after gently ushering the woman out the door, and getting a few giggles in the process I came up with a great idea. Why not build a box and board that when you put a quarter in it would display the number of the beast in all of it's glory, with different colors, rotating and movement, etc. Then I rethought that idea after I realized that such a move on my part would result in my getting shot and my business burned. The don't call it the buckly of the Bible belt for nothing.

[SOteric]

18. Not exactly a customer, but ...

I answered the phone at the office some time back and the caller was a fella whose only question was "You guys are located out there on the other side of the Space Needle, right?"

I had half a mind to say "Yes" and hang up.

[trof]

20. and the blonde shouts to the blonde across the pond

"How do you get to the other side?"
"You're ON the other side."

[Robb]

24. When I was at the restaurant

...I answered the phone once, and found myself in a knock-down, practically nasty argument with a freak who insisted that we were open on Mondays.

"Oh, yes you are."
"No, sir, I'm sorry, we're open Tuesday through Saturday."
"Since when?"
"I'm sorry, we've always been closed Sunday and Monday."
"We're a f*cking restaurant", I didn't add...
"You must be new. You're usually open on Monday. How long have you worked there?"
"Since we opened three and a half years ago."

Sigh....It went on for like five minutes. Amazing.

[arwalden]

22. When I Worked At Waldenbooks (Yes... Waldenbooks)

We had a woman who wanted a bible with photographs of Jesus. Not paintings... PHOTOGRAPHS.

Then there was this lady who wanted to return a book because it was possessed. On the "reason for return" she explained exactly which page was most possessed with an evil spirit and warned me NOT to sell the book to anyone else.

-- Allen

[WillParkinson]

23. HAHAHAHA...

Was it a book on 'exorcise'?

[peacefreak]

25. this must be the bookstore thread...

My favorite is the parent who comes in looking for books for Suzie's or Johhny's term paper. I spend a half hour dragging out books on the Nile or whatever. They look at the price of the book & ask where the copy machine is. HHHEEEELLLLLLLOOOO. This is a book store. We SELL books. And just where the f*&ck is your kid & why are you doing his work for him?

[scarlet_owl]

27. What ever happened to the library?

These people are fucking crazy. Don't they know about the place where you can take the books home for FREE, as long as you bring them back? Jeez.

[geniph]

26. I have a million of 'em

Got one just this morning...customer called to ask how she could email letterhead. I started to explain how to attach a file. She asked where to get the file? I asked her if she had the letterhead in electronic format. She didn't understand, so I said, "has it been saved as a file, or do you just have the paper letterhead?" "Just the paper." "Well, you'd need to scan it or have someone create an electronic form of it and save it as a file; then you can attach the file to an email." "Oh. I guess we'll send it another way." Did she think the email system could send a piece of PAPER?!

...there's been several who were irate that their computers wouldn't power up when they plugged the power strips back into themselves...

...people who want to know why nothing they send to the printer after their cubemate goes home ever prints (said printer being plugged into cubemate's power strip, which is turned off)...

...the lady who called in with "no signal" on her monitor, and after ten minutes talking her through tracing the video cable (and not the power cable, AGAIN), came to find out that she had no computer. "Oh, that box thingie? I have to have one of those?"...

...the patron who called in when I was working at the public library and wanted help connecting to the Internet (we served as a free ISP for the public). After 30 minutes of troubleshooting, finally figured out he had no modem in his computer...

...the many people who would call in for dial-up support, and when told the steps to test it, would immediately do so...when they were using their one phone line to call you. SQUEAL SHRIEK SQUEAL goes the phone in your ear...