lets face it… Anyone that works in a job where you have to deal with customers has a story to tell of mind bending stupidity by people you have to serve. this thread is for venting.
I work at a locksmith, I am not a locksmith myself but I spend my workdays cutting keys and pinning locks etc.
Every now and again someone hands me a key that I dont recognise, I will turn to my giant wall of key blanks and try to find the correct blank by comparing it to ones it looks similar to. if this fails I will ask the person “whats this key for?” because if its for a car or a security door or some kind of cabinet etc this will narrow down the amount of keys it could possibly be. Four out of five people will say “oh its for a locker” or “car petrol cap” etc. But one of those five will say “A lock…” and look at me like I’M the stupid one. I know its for a lock dickhead! I work at a locksmith and you just gave me a key!
I’ve recently been through the trying-to-save-money-on-replacement-transponder-keys adventure. Result: four keys that probably can’t be used, at an average of $18 each. It might have been possible to find the right locksmith to be able to program these (Toyota ignition) keys, but none of the ones I spoke to wanted to work with my keys. They would charge me a lot for the programming, or a bit more than that to do it with their own key and guarantee it.
Then I found some instructions online, not for the door-unlocking fob, finally, but for programming the actual key transponder! But upon further reading, I learned that the two Toyota years I was replacing keys for (04 and 07), there is no manual way to do it.
So finally I took my “cheap” keys, which I’d purchased through eBay, to my local hardware store, to have them cut to fit, and then try some manual programming anyway. Instead of cutting the key, the guy took it around behind their key machine and started doing something else. Finally I asked what he was doing, and he told me he was trying to “read” my original key. Seems my hardware store has a machine that can make transponder keys! Unfortunately, apparently it can only make it’s own (proprietary) transponder keys. Mine weren’t going to work. So finally I caved and ordered two copies of the key for our new 07 Sienna, for $69 each. Ouch, but still about half what the dealer would charge. The car came with only one key and it’s for company use, so we really needed copies, and soon.
Sorry, not a stupid customer story but at least it’s locksmith-related…
The sign in front of my house CLEARLY declares: “Piano Tuning”, along with my business phone number. Yet every now and then people will call and ask, “Yes, I saw your sign about your house for sale” or, “Hello, how much do you charge to move pianos”, or, “how much do you charge for piano lessons”. My all-time favorite is, “I saw your sign, and I need to get my accordion repaired”. Fortunately, these are rare occurrences.
Tell me about, thanks to my sign, I’ve had three open houses just this week alone and, have started taking an accordion repair class from a piano mover!
Maybe it is annoying for you but it doesn’t make the other person stupid. You can still do your job fully; they just aren’t being helpful. I also understand the reluctance to divulge information without knowing why.
I was in the post office today and heard the postal person explaining to the customer: “While the instructions say to fill out either the white or green form, I can only accept the white form”. The customer who had neatly filled out the green form answered, “All those years of school learning to read, wasted.”
I write copy for 30second radio commercials.
It’s a changing and developing industry and there is a big move to get away from the boring and ineffective ads that clutter up radio stations around the world.
One of the ways of doing this is by focussing on achieving one thing with a commercial.
Trying to get the listener to take one course of action as a result of hearing the ad.
Clients quite often want to include their location and phone number, when they actually want people to visit their website, and vice versa.
If you want peoploe to visit your shop, include your location. If you want people to phone you for a quote, include your phone number.
But don’t clutter up the ad (and use up a lot of my precious allocation of 75 words) by trying to be all things to all people. It doesn’t work, reduces the effectiveness of the ad and cause people to say “oh, radio advertising doesn’t work”.
Ugh.
In oder to “help” protect clients from themselves, we designed a new briefing sheet for clients to fill in before we start scripting a commercial.
on their we clearly ask:
"How ould you like the listener to interact with your bussiness? (PICK ONE)
Visit the premises.
Call you on the phone
Visit your website
Interact via social media
Send you an email
You won’t believe how many people tick two or more.
Almost as harsh as the people who judge others for not understanding their business.
Think about it. You spend all day, every day, running a business, possibly for years. Your customer gets all of 30 seconds exposure to your business, can’t quite understand the limited amount of information you present to them, and all of a sudden they’re stupid?
It’s called compassion, people. If you ever want any yourself, you might consider showing some…
If I didn’t get people telling me how to run mine (and then proceeding to make every mistake in the book), I probably wouldn’t get quite as wound up about it.
I occasionally get people who want to sit down, talk it thru, and take professional advice.
What I mostly get tho, is a steady stream of people who didn’t install the airconditioning in their new offices - they got the aircon guy to do that - who didn’t lay their own network cables - they got the IT guys to do that - now, suddenly, they’re the radio advertising experts.
Not only are they “stupid”, they’re dangerous.
They insist on creating their own ads, do it badly, and then blame radio as a medium when it doesn’t work for them.
And all that, while the radio-advertising-guy is standing by to do it for them.
I used to work at a pet store. This happened to one of my co-workers:
A woman comes up to the counter and says, “I need some crickets.”
“Sure, how many?”
“I don’t know. A bunch”
“Okay. How about a dozen?”
“Yeah. So are crickets fish?”
It is important to note that the cricket bins are in full view as my co-worker was scooping them out.
I sell electronics. Mostly cameras, but other stuff too.
My least favorite person is the guy who won’t believe you.“which battery charger do I need for my camera?” And I can quickly and easily show them. And being an older box it doesn’t show their camera model, I explain this and tell them which battery model they use as well as similar model cameras using the same battery and they still won’t believe me.
Why do you ask a question if you won’t listen to the answer, or believe it. Look it up yourself if you are just going to contradict me.
I worked as a tour guide as summer employment during my high school years (a long time ago). I found that people on vacation, while seeming to be well clothed, employed etc. would seem to check the brain while on vacation. I was a tour guide at the “Mark Twain Cave” in Hannibal Missouri, and amongst the most common questions I would get where:
A. Did Mark Twain dig this whole cave by himself? This alone would not necessarily be to stupid except the first stop on the tour we talked (excessively) about when, how etc. the cave formed. So I usually answered yes all by himself with a teaspoon.
B. Are we underground? hmmm now that was a real poser … look up … do you see the sky?
I’m not going to say you need to show as much compassion towards someone who disrespects your experience or professionalism.
I was aiming my comment more towards our fellow locksmith. When you ask such a widely open-ended question to someone who has little to no knowledge in your domain, you shouldn’t place any expectations on their answer.
If I’ve learned anything about customer service, it’s that customers need to have their hand held at all times. Don’t leave them wondering, tell them what they need to think about. Don’t let them guess, give them their choices. Sad but true.
edit: I’ve only worked a couple months in customer service, some 16 years ago. Never again. God, please, never again.
I now work in IT, helping people with their computer problems in our office. In this case, you can’t tell people too much. It depends on the person though; some are interested in the technical details and background information. But they’re the minority. Most want me to fix it, and if I try to explain anything you can literally see their eyes start to glaze over.
You can’t teach someone something they don’t want to learn, or believe they can’t learn. I guess that’s what keeps unicycling down to such a small audience…
But give even simple technology to some shop assistants and they trust it implicitly, even when they don’t have a clue how to use it.
I usually mentally add up the bill when shopping. If just a few items I add up the bill exactly, if a large number I keep an approximate total as I put the items in the shopping trolley. Geeky, maybe, but it relieves some of the boredom of essential shopping.
Having bought 5 items one day from a small shop, the assistant used a calculator and then asked for £9.57. I told her the total was wrong and that it should be £5-62. ( amounts were something like that, I cannot remember the exact sums now).
She said, “No, you are wrong ,I just did it on the calculator.” and showed me the screen. Only when the manager intervened would she accept that the calculator showed an incorrect total. I wonder how many other times she has successfully charged the wrong amount?
