notalwaysright.com/Your Work Stories

[Andrew]

For anyone looking for some light reading when insomnia strikes or you just feel like killing time, here's a website you might find entertaining: notalwaysright.com. I have my doubts about some of the stories, I feel some of them might be taking some liberties with the truth or embellishing certain elements for the sake of entertainment but if you've worked in customer service, you've probably had similar experiences with customers.

I thought this might also be a good opportunity to share our funniest, most infuriating and most bizarre work related stories. If you deal with the public, you're sure to have a few.

[Eich]

oh man that's sum funny sh*t

(An older woman comes in looking for flashlights, and I take her to that section.)
Customer: “Ok then, do any of these flashlights plug in?”
Me: “Yes ma’am, these few here use a built in battery that can be recharged with a power cord.”
Customer: “But I don’t want any batteries, just the cord. Flashlight batteries are always dead every time I need the flashlight!”
Me: “Oh, well I’m sorry, but all we have are these types of flashlights. Why did you want a corded model?”
Customer: “Oh, you know, in case the power goes out.”
Me: “…”

ahh.. cant stop laughing

[JaoSming]

From FYE, I am ringing up someone, there is a long line, it was the holidays, and there was a kid putting his face against the glass door and blowing on it. I had just barely cleaned it and said to the manager working the registers with me,

"Look at that friggin kid"

of course the lady who was next in line was the kid's mother and just stood there with her jaw dropped then demanded to see the manager. He said,

"I'm the manager, you need to keep control of your kid."

She demanded the store number so she could report us. So we gave it to her. The next day I was working again but with the store manager. Phone rings, he looks at me, pauses, puts the phone down, asked if it was true or not, I said yes, then he picked up the phone and said,

"It isn't our fault you can't keep your little brat under control" <click>




Only two real note worthy things from this job.

The new guy was in the bathroom and I taped a couple plans up to the bathroom door so he couldn't get out without going through them. I whipped out my phone to record his reaction and right as he was about to come out the office project manager walks around the camera and just stares at me. Knowing I was caught I just said,

"Shhh, wait, wait, watch this"


And before I started here there was a Jewish guy who worked here (who I actually ended up replacing) and the guys would just sneak in the word "Jew" into sentences while talking to him without him knowing. Evidently he had a huge issue with being called a Jew.



We are so hardcore

[Joe']

Me: “Thank you for calling [hotel]. How may I help you?”

Caller: “Yeah, I want to complain about these towels of yours. They’re really rough and scratchy.”

Me: “I’m sorry about that, sir… wait a second, are you calling from outside the hotel?”

(I double-check the incoming call info, and see that it’s coming in on our toll-free line.)

Caller: “Yeah, I’m at home.”

Me: “And you’re calling to complain about towels you took from the hotel?”

Caller: “Yeah, they suck. They’re not very soft.”

Me: “Well, I certainly apologize for that, sir. If you’ll give me your name and address, I’ll have Housekeeping send you some new ones.”

(Surprisingly, he actually gave me his info; not surprisingly, he called a couple of weeks later to complain about the bill we sent him for the towels.)

Thanks for the link, Andrew

EDIT:

(I was ringing up a old lady when another old lady in my line recognized the first lady.)

Old Lady #1: “Oh hey! I didn’t see you there!”

Old Lady #2: “That’s okay… I didn’t recognize you with clothes on!”

Me: “What?!”

[Andrew]

Funny I made this thread last night, the customer I had this morning fits in perfectly with some of those stories.

For those of you who don't know, my nine-to-five is currently my own local computer services business that I'm in the process of getting off the ground. So far I've been pretty lucky with customers being friendly and reasonable but today I ran into my first problem with a customer not paying which did not get resolved the way I would like.

I'd taken a look at this guy's computer on Monday on a referral from the place I used to work and got the problem fixed up. It was kind of something they take care of with their service (as an ISP, their computer repairs are pretty much limited to anything that is directly involved with their service) but I've dealt with him before when I worked there so I'm not surprised they referred him on to me so they wouldn't have to go out of their way and beyond their service to fix the problem (and they've been pretty cool about helping me out with business, too).

So I fixed the problem, got his email working and showed him it was working. All fine, he saw it working and paid me for the job. At the time he asked what kind of guarantee there was and I told him that I couldn't give him one beyond the fact I'd just got it working, there shouldn't be any problems with his computer and since I didn't sell him the computer or provide him Internet service there was no ongoing guarantee. I'm a per-job sole trader, though it's certainly my aim to fix everything in one go, which I had.

Anyway he calls me up last night and organises for me to go out there this morning because he's having problems again. Who knows what he's done since then, he also had some billing issues with the ISP (which he disputed and I told him he'd have to take up with them, not me) but I fixed it up and then he started ranting and raving about how I hadn't fixed it up on Monday (when I had, and showed it to him working) and that I hadn't fixed it so that his latest emails came through on Monday, even though the emails he was referring to hadn't been sent until the following day, after I'd fixed it and he'd taken it home and done whatever to it. So he insists he's not paying etc etc and when I protest he accuses me of shady business practices and says if I want my money he'll take me to the Department of Fair Trading...even though it was two seperate jobs and I fixed it the first time and it was working fine.

So, after a bit of back and forth where he claimed I'd admitted I didn't fix it the first time when I told him it wasn't the same problem (the guy's 86 and knows nothing about computers, his computer runs like a dog though that's mainly because they sold him a system loaded with Vista with only 448 MB of RAM) and he just wasn't listening to reason so in the end I told him that as he could see the problem had been fixed, my job had been done (twice, thanks to whatever he did to stuff it up) and if he wasn't going to pay me, I was done and I left. I was pretty angry as you can imagine as it had definitely not been worth my while and because he's a pensioner I'd given him a discount on the first job, so it took all my energy not to tell the guy to go fuck himself, just on the off chance someone actually listens to him and he gives me a bad referral or calls up my old boss or something I don't get any future referrals.

After that, I went over to my old work and had a chat to my old bosses, partly as I hadn't spoken to them in a while and also to drop off some more business cards and flyers. I also wanted to clear up my side of the story in case the old son of a bitch called up and complained about me but they were completely on my side, having dealt with plenty of people whose problems have been fixed, develop new ones and kick up a stink claiming the problem was never fixed in the first place. One of the guys jokingly suggested I keep a virus-ridden thumb drive for such situations and we had a bit of a laugh (needless to say I won't actually be doing that) and I was able to chill a bit but man, I was really steamed. I guess I'm lucky it's only been the one customer who's been like that so far, so it's a learning experience. I won't be getting any more business from him but frankly I don't care, so long as he doesn't affect my future business.

So yes, a bit of a disappointing day but tomorrow's another day and he's the only one I've had trouble with so far so I have to keep things in perspective. Unfortunately in customer service, the bad always seem to overshadow the good.

And speaking of customer service in IT fields, some of the stories on notalwaysright.com mirror my own experiences at my old job so much it makes me a feel a bit better about it, since I know I'm not the only one to suffer through it. There's one about a computer illiterate woman being condescending to a tech because her son is doing something in IT at uni and thus her garbled understanding of what she's been told is unquestionably right. You get that a lot, people who think they know a lot more than you do and it always leaves you wondering "If you know so much, why the hell are you calling me for help?"

But you just have to put up with it when the public's involved. The alternative is to win big in the lottery and so far, that doesn't seem to be working.

[Fresh8]

Everyone at work chipped in for that 30 million dollar lotto draw from Saturday... I don't think any of them won.

As for your story Andrew, does everyone in Newcastle know eachohter?

[Andrew]

Well, it's kind of a small town at times with a bit of a six degrees of seperation thing going on but not so small that everyone truly knows everyone else.

[Fcuk Orlando]

http://www.pissedconsumer.com/

[Andrew]

They should switch their title to not the best buy since they have the worst refund policies.

Witty. "Worst Buy" would've been the more obvious parody.

It's fair enough that there's a site like that too though, terrible service is just as big a problem as difficult customers. I have to say though I've got more "horror stories" from behind the counter than in front of it, so to speak.