So many tales, so little time...
So I won't be posting them all now and bore you to death.

I used to be a cashier at a small petrol station. We must have had every fuckwit from the inbred towns/villages nearby buy fuel from us. Here are a few morsels to entertain:

1. There is a big sign next to the till informing customers that we do not take cheques. There are also signs on the pumps so you can see them before/as you fill up.
Customer Twat: Pump #3.
Me: That's £20.36 please.
CT: (gets out chequebook) So who do I make this payable to?
Me: I'm sorry sir, we don't take cheques.
CT: You used to.
Me: We haven't since February 2006. (the date being March '08)
CT: (getting irate) Well, you haven't put any signs up.
Me: (points to sign) There are also some on the pumps.
CT: No there aren't.
Me: Yes, there are.
CT: (angry now) No, you're lying I would have seen them!
Me: (resisting urge to slap CT) If you don't believe me I can show you them.
CT: Yes I want you to show me where they are
Me: (sighs, gets other girl to cover till, goes out with CT and points out bloody huge notice on pump) That one.
CT: Oh.
Me: And as you can see ALL the pumps have them on.
CT: Oh I didn't see that.
(He could have redeemed himself by apologising, but oh no.)
CT: They should be bigger.
Me: (pissed off) Yes, A5 is a bit small I suppose.

2. "I'm a journaist, don't you know?"
"Oh right. But I still can't take this card as payment, sir." says I.
The PIN was blocked. Not just forgotten, or some cards don't have a PIN allocated and a little slip prints off to sign, but no this was locked, and the little machine was coming up with 'Do not accept card.'
In order to persuade me to over-ride it (no way) he had brought his Press Pass card as proof of identity, and was now saying:
"I'm going to put in an official complaint. And you'll be in the paper, and..." he ranted on and on, until some nice man (the only one in the area) told him to shut up, pay with aother card and fuck off.
Thank you, nice man for saying what I couldn't.
The journo promptly paid and scurried off. He did put in a complaint and my manager promptly told him to fuck off to as I had done everything right. Yay me.

And now as an engineer:
3. One of the best call outs I've ever been to.
The brief: A customer was complaining that his uninterruptible power supply was making a 'funny noise'. In I go with a colleague.
The machine is fine, nothing wrong. I ask the customer
"So what noise was it making?"
"It's doing it now."
"Erm... that's the machine running normally."
"Really? It's a bit noisy isn't it?"
"Uh... no. This is one of the quieter ones."
It seems the customer had put more load on the unit, and now it was working harder, the frequency had changed.
He wouldn't believe it was okay until we fired up the laptop and let him look at all the status reports. IDIOT!

If you like, I will post more. If not, I won't take up any more of your time ^_^
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Thu 4 Sep 2008, 19:44, Reply)