Uneducated clerks (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

Wal-Mart...who'd a thunk it?

Hey! Who's stealing my line?

 

[Andrew s wells]

How about this one? "You can change any pan and scan disc into widescreen by going to your DVD player menu." This same person also said "You can't completely finish an x-box game unless you have a memory card to save it"
Not sure wether to laugh or cry.

 

[Jeff Adams]

That really is some funny stuff. I wonder if the manager at that specific store has told there employees that they get higher quality discs than other stores.

 

[ChrisBEA]

Dude! Please tell us the story behind that. Slapped?.

OK, here goes, it was about 7 years ago, I was working as a computer salesman at a large national chain, a customer came in with a flyer from a distant competitor(don't remember what store but it wasn't local). She asked us to beat there price using our price match policy, normally not an issue, but the price was exactly the same as ours so there was nothing to beat. I politely explained that we we beat prices by 110% of the difference, in this case there was no difference, nothing to beat. At this point see kept insisting that since we do price match we should beat it, again I explained there was nothing to beat. She then slapped me across the face and told me I had a lot to learn about customer service. I then told here to get the hell out of my store. I was too surprised to really do much else and by the time I got my last line out she was halfway out the door muttering how she would go buy it at the other store(which was quite a fdrive away). Anyway during the conversation I was completely civil and polite, there was no excuse for what she did. I think it was a printer that she was looking for....

 

[David Galindo]

HA! You should have slapped her back. It would have been self-defense at that point.

Glad you told her to get the hell out...I would have been too shocked to do anything.

 

[Malcolm R]

I would have called the police and filed charges.

 

[ChrisBEA]

Co-workers mentioned the police thing, but in retrospect I probably wouldn't have done anything different, I think charges would have been frivolous. ANyway that is in my past

It does make for a great story huh?

Well, I'll be returning my as yet unopened Nemo today, then going to my BB of choice and buying it there.

 

[Jack Briggs]

And the first guy I've known to go by the name "Evangeline." You've no doubt seen all those billboards in Hollywood.

 

[TonyTone]

Co-workers mentioned the police thing, but in retrospect I probably wouldn't have done anything different, I think charges would have been frivolous.

How true--the sad thing is that had you "defended" yourself, you probably would have got written up, fired, and/or sued.

Reminds me of the story about the 7-Eleven clerk who got fired because he left the store to go after a robber who had already left the premises after taking the cash out of the register...

 

[Elvie]

What always gets to me about these rude clerks is that they seem to be the first to scream when they are the customer and get one of their own serving them

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

First thing I have to say is, that I as a customer would not want a salesperson to lie to me because someone else was rude to them. I did nothing wrong, and yet would be paying for the actions of someone else, that is why I agree. Don't let your bad day affect mine.

ChrisBEA, that was a great story and I would've been just as shocked as you probably were.

I myself, am perhaps a little more patient than I should be at these stores. I once waited in Wal*Mart's electronics section for what must have been half an hour because the only person they had working back there was swamped. If I had other things to do that night, I probably wouldn't have waited but I actually began to feel sorry for the lady.

 

[James Miller]

As satisfying as it would have been, and as accurately termed "self-defense" as it would have been, either both of you or neither of you would have ended up in jail. The cops arrest now and let the DA ask questions later.

 

[DaveGTP]

You know, I worked at a Meijer store for about 3 years (a cashier for about one). I got a good customer service award from our local paper (I'm that patient and nice, really diplomatic). But only if you are also polite. Rudeness gets you only proper service, not excellent service.

I will say, being polite gets you somewhere. I had a customer lying to me, badly, about misreading some duplicate coupons - I could see it in his expression when he gave the coupons to me. He knew it was for the wrong thing, I could tell. I politely pointed out the error when the coupon would not authorize, and asked if he wanted the right thing. He swore and hollered at me. If he had been polite, said, I really want that one, though, or anything nice at all, I would have just overidden it and let it go (not that you're really supposed to let people abuse coupons that way). Since he wasn't, I didn't.

Ditto for stuff without pricetags or "It said on the sign it was $5" - which is almost always (80% of the time) customer error. My response:
Polite - good customer service - I give the dept one ring/page, no answer, I give them the price on trust.
Not polite - do it the stiff and proper way by the book, 3 pages to the dept, call the supervisor to ask, etc etc etc.


I was never lazy or lied, though - and certainly not because of a bad day. Polite customers definitely got more timely service, though - above and beyond the call of duty stuff (you know, hurry for them, override the price for them, etc).

 

[Ricardo C]

I'm a smart guy

You go out of your way to lose sales for the company that pays your salary. Yeah, you're a damn genius, "Evangeline"...

 

[RISUG]

ChrisBEA:

Thanks for sharing. I confess that I don't exactly know what I would've done in that situation.

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

About that customer slapping you: could you have made a citizen's arrest?

 

[Randy A Salas]

I got an email from a certain chain store in New England that I sometimes shop at that said you'd get a free copy of "Love Is Hell" if you purchased "Rock N Roll" at the sale price of $9.99, but only on the first day of release, 11/4. There was a small disclaimer that the offer was valid while supplies last.

I'm guessing that the store had 20 copies of each CD that were actually bundled together. That doesn't excuse the lousy wording, but it does explain the clerk's contention that the supplies--of the specially bundled packages--were sold out.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I tell people we're sold out of stuff that I don't want to look for.

:rolleyes

Funny, I would do the opposite. When I worked retail I'd go in back and pretend to look for stuff I know we didn't have. It was an excuse to go hang in the stockroom for a moment and the customer went away thinking I went the extra mile for him/her. Half the time they would insist I go look in the back anyway.

Oh, and getting back to the original post.. I think I would have laughed the most obnoxious laugh right in that girl's face when she told me her disks were better.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

My other favorite thing that clerks do - I'm looking for a possibly lesser known dvd, and I don't find it. I ask the clerk (who has obviously never heard of it, and seems to think I'm making it up). Rather than enter it into their computer (which they are standing right next to) and checking in back, they go and look where I just looked on the shelf, don't see it, and proceed to tell me that they don't have it. Don't even look it up. I just looked there! I know it's not sitting right there on the shelf. Look it up! Wow! I feel a great weight has been lifted now that I got that out.

I hate that too! I swear, once I was in a store and I noticed they had a copy of the "sex, lies and videotape" DVD very, very cheap - it was less than Deep Discount DVD's price. I didn't buy it that day, but the next day I decided it was worth going back to this chain store to pick it up. I didn't see it on the shelf, but I didn't remember where I had seen it in the first place, whether it was in the drama section or indie section or discount section or whatever. So I asked the clerk, who did the same "Let me walk around the store and demonstrate that I'm less familiar with the place than you are" act, and he couldn't find it. I asked why he didn't simply just check the computer, and he said to me (no joking) that they had no way of looking up whether or not they had a certain item in their computer system. Can you believe that one?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think I would have laughed the most obnoxious laugh right in that girl's face when she told me her disks were better.

I've been having a hell of a good time telling all of my friends (as well as pretty much anyone else I came in contact with) about that story. Even the people who don't own DVD players laughed their asses of.