• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join freeLog in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Turn it around ... stupid customer stories.

I worked at my family's business at a small airport for most of my life. Dealing with the public is always interesting.

I pumped gas when I was a kid. This doctor used to fly up in a nice Cessna 210. His wife's parents would pick them up. You could tell her father didn't like him. The doc was a real weenie. Always made way more radio calls than needed. This was pre-GPS but he had a device that would tell him his distance from the airport and he always called his distance out precisely--"I'm 18.6 miles out...I'm 14.3 miles out...I'm 9.4 miles out..." Then a soon as he landed he got out and started cleaning the plane with a rag and a spray bottle.

He also had a fuel computer. He would land and tell me to fill it up. He would tell me how much he had burned and wanted to know how much each tank held. "It will take 18.6 in the left tank and 19.3 in the right."

Each time I would fill it and tell him and it was never as much as the computer said. He would always say "well you didn't fill it up all the way." I was about 13 or 14 and felt like I knew what I was doing. One day he came in told me what it would take. So when the tank got full and it wasn't what he said I kept pumping. He was wiping down the plane, talking the his wife's dad, and when fuel started going over the wing he went bezerk.

I explained to him that he always said I didn't fill it all the way so this time I was giving him what he asked for.

He was irate but his father-in-law was laughing. He didn't buy much gas after that but it was worth it.
 
ffutterman said:
At a warehouse for a certain large internet retail site, there were managers that were, of course, completely disconnected from the actual processes of the warehouse and saw only productivity numbers. On the other end of the spectrum were the maintenance guys who fixed the large machinery of the warehouse.

In other words, the maintenance guys really ran the show since they could always find other things to do if a manager wasn't nice enough when asking them to fix something in their department.

At one point, a new manager unfamiliar with this principle yelled at a maintenance guy to fix a machine that had broken down and all but stopped production in the department. Maintenance guy says "Sure, I can do that. But before we fix anything, you've gotta fill out an 'I-Dee-Ten-Tee' form."

Manager spent the better part of the day frantically trying to find an ID10T form.

Hahaha someone at my job did that to another employee... He frantically searched for an hour for this product that did not exist nor was in the system.
 
I was the stupid customer.

I was 19 or so, tired, distracted, in a rush, and nearly broke. In the Guitars Etc. in Seattle around '83 I was at the counter asking for a set of guitar strings. The salesman plops two sets on the counter and says "string sets are two-for-one today and tomorrow."

Not fully comprehending this simple message, I shove one pack of strings back to him and say "No, I can only afford one."
 
A few years ago, I worked in retail auto parts. I spent 10 years working various auto parts stores. Every day I would have new stories to tell with my buds at the bar as I drank my sorrows away.

I worked at a Ford dealer while I was in college. A couple of my favorites:

Idiot: Yeah, I need a glow plug relay.
Me: Okay, for what?
Idiot: A Ford.
Me: What kind of Ford?
Idiot: Truck.
Me: What kind of Ford truck?
Idiot: Diesel.
Me: :mad:

or:

Idiot: I need an EGR valve control sensor for an '88 F150.
Me (knowing that this is an emission control part): Ok, I'm going to need the calibration code.
Idiot: The what?
Me: The calibration code. It's on the tag on the inside of the door frame.
Idiot: Well, the truck's been painted; the tag's gone.
Me: Okay, well I may be able to figure it out just with the engine. Is it a 4.9L, a 5.0L or a 5.8L?
Idiot: Uh...well, I don't know.
Me: Okay, is it a 6-cylinder or a V8?
Idiot: Uh, I don't know. Well, it's red.
Me: :hmm: (keep in mind, that wasn't even the original color)

This isn't even counting the time I asked a guy for his VIN and he came back with his license plate number.
 
I work at a bowling alley. One day a guy came in and walked from one end of the building to the other, scanning all the lanes. He walked back to the front desk and looked around some more. Then he took out his cell phone, dialed, and said, "Hey where are you guys? I'm at Pizza Hut and don't see you."
 
i work at a collision repair center where the office used to be at one end of the building , and now is at the other end. in big bold letters on the door of the old office (at eye level) it reads that the office has been relocated to the other side. i have watched customers more times than i can count, try and open the door and ask if we are closed. i have yet to see one that actually reads the sign

it is either stupidity or people really are illiterate.
 
Hi,

I currently work in retail, in a large chain of office supply stores. The name is similar to Home Depot. I sell computers & stock the shelves, stuff like that.

Recently, I had a lady come in and ask for the least expensive manila folders we had. She then complained that they were so cheaply made.

Had a guy come with an Apple lap top, needed to change the name of a file, and could not figure out how to do it, even though he had already clicked on "Save As". So the manager called me, the Apple "expert."

One of my faves is when a customer starts "Do you know what I'm looking for?" and then pauses. As if I know.

On the other hand, I get customers like this 80+ year old guy who took his lap top to Mexico, visited Mexican porn sites and got computer viruses. TWICE. He was funny as hell, real embarrassed, took all the blame for what he did. But still.....

Who knows what stupidity today will hold.

edg
 
like with RC cars an stuff ... i can only imagine.

Exactly like that...r/c cars, boats, airplanes, and helicopters... :D

But my favorite of all time is...

Worked in a small engine shop and one day almost at closing a lady comes in holding a broken cable. She's clearly out of her element and has that deer in the headlights look as she lays a broken cable on the counter and says her husband sent her to get a new one for his lawn mower.

I ask her what kind of mower it's for and she brightens right up and says..."A red one".
 
(closer to the topic of bass/music/sound)

Running sound for a small festival last year, one of the acts (solo acoustic guitar/singer) comes up before he went on, & said he wanted to look at/set EQ. I suggested that we might want to give it a listen first, to which he replied, "Oh, I'm experienced!" I resisted the urge to say something like, "Experienced with this mixer, these speakers, this room, this audience, on this day?" Instead, I just put his name on an empty channel strip & let him have his fun. He was happy.
 
lowfreq33 said:
Sure, but it would have been nice for the doc to at least go to the other room to do it.
My doc uses the laptop in the room for that all the time. It gives her the chance to show me stuff (visual aid) and provide some teaching. Why do you want to believe the doc is some sort of know-it-all wizard?

Even with looking it up online, there are things the doc understands about the info that you wouldn't understand if you looked up the same thing on your own.
 
totallyfrozen said:
My doc uses the laptop in the room for that all the time. It gives her the chance to show me stuff (visual aid) and provide some teaching. Why do you want to believe the doc is some sort of know-it-all wizard?

Even with looking it up online, there are things the doc understands about the info that you wouldn't understand if you looked up the same thing on your own.

I'd like to believe that $150 for an office visit buys me some level of knowledge that exceeds my own. It's not like she went to some kind of medical database, she googled it.
 
I'm driving a taxi cab, guy gets in says "Take me to <someplace I'd never heard of, obviously this guy is so wasted on some pills he forgot he was on holiday>, here's 50 bucks". I figure what the hell, it's a slow night we'll figure it out along the way so I hit the meter and move off the rank.

Ten bucks worth down a left right straight ahead wild goose chase we have figured out he's from Western Australia and now he's in New Zealand so he says "take me the airport!". Now I could have taken him the airport and given him change but instead I was the good guy and grilled him for a couple of minutes until we jarred the name of his hotel from his drug addled brain and I took him back to the rank as it was just around the corner up a one way street from where I picked him up. Gave him 40 change.

It gets worse. I do a fare and come back and he's still wandering around the street after finishing his KFC, messily, right where I let him out before with direction to "go down there" to his hotel. I whistle him over to repoint him but he's lost his iPhone, which he had in the cab, so he turns it upside down looking for it when I tell him he had it on him in the cab. He's dropped it in the street somewhere, 30m from his hotel. I have no idea what drugs he was on, walking and talking fine, polite, but completely stupid.
 
I worked in a music store a few years back:

Guy came in to complain about the guitar tuner he'd bought - "this thing doesn't work! You sold me a faulty item!". I asked him what actually happened? Heh replied "I plugged my guitar into the tuner, and nothing changed! The guitar was still out of tune. Now, in case you think I don't know what I'm doing, just let me tell you that I left the tuner plugged into the guitar overnight and checked it again before coming back in here - the guitar is still not in tune!!"

Aaaaagh!!!!!!
 
I run a music store with my family.... isn't really a guitar/drum store, more like band, orchestra, sheet music, etc.... but I still get some doozies. Some of my favorites:

- I need the piano music for a song but I don't know what it's called. Can I hum it you over the phone?

- This version of Frosty the Snowman is too easy; do you have a more difficult one?

- Do you have any Taylor Swift for a flute and cello duet?

- Can you write out the chromatic scale for me?

- People that assume everything is in print and widely available just because somebody did it on YouTube.

- People who try to return used reeds (yes, this happens about twice a year)
 

Latest posts