» Customers from Hell

November 2004, Customer Service Desk.
"I'd like to see the manager please, you've sold me an out-of-date pack of plasters"

Having only moved over to the customer service end of things a few weeks previously, my faith in humanity was not yet crushed, something which has since been rectified, and knowing that the managers would be at lunch, I decided to see if I could resolve the matter myself.

"Are you sure, do plasters even have an expiry date?" I enquired. "Could it be the batch number?"

Customer insists that she is right, and that the plasters expired on the 8th of August, and she can prove it cause she has the box right here:

|                      |

| Expires  08    08    |

|         Mon.  Year   |

+______________________+

If "mon." and "year" hadn't have been there, I could have sympathised. I can't remember how I explained it to her without calling her stupid, insinuating she was blind, or laughing, but I presume that I assume that I did, as I kept my job for another 2 years.

Fast forward a year, I'm on the cigarette kiosk. A gentleman approaches, places his order for 20 of Marlboro's finest, pays with a card and leaves. For a while.

10 minutes later, he is back, and accusing me of stealing his card. Unlike a till, on the kiosk there are very few places a card could easily disappear to.

After asking him to make sure he hasn't put it in one of his other pockets, I call a colleague down and we start shifting some furniture and looking down behind it, and emptying the displays in front of the till of their merchandise.

Still no joy, gentleman is now being quite loud and shouty, as he has a meeting in 15 minutes. Shitting bricks at this point, as having customer property disappear in your presence is quite likely to be recorded on your employee record, I call down my manager.

The three of us then start searching places well away from the kiosk, in case it hit the floor and got kicked away. Still nothing. Gentleman is now mentioning compensation very loudly.

I look up to the heavens for divine inspiration, and find it. The entire kiosk is covered by CCTV. My manager, who by now is giving me the evil eye, goes out to the CCTV-watching-place to play back the tapes to see what I did with the card.

I walk back out the front to inform the gentleman that his card will be found momentarily, as my manager is off to watch the CCTV. I serve a few customers, phone through to the back office to see if manager has made any progress, when there's a tap on my shoulder.

"It was in my back pocket. See ya." and off he walks, not even an apology.

Rewind a year or two, it's 10AM sunday morning, the store is just opening, and I'm on a checkout. Chavette comes up with a loaf of bread, and hands me a 5. Till opens, I curse the fact that the last person to use the till completely emptied all the notes (important), and hand her the change.

"Oi, I gave you a 20 ya thieving git Get me my change before I call a manager"

I called one for her. Who tries that scam on a shop 2 minutes after opening. Really.

Shifting to yet another time, a customer starts pulling the barrier across my till lane and puts up the closed sign on the conveyer.

I ask what she is doing, and she says "Well you need to close after me, I have a coupon for free home delivery and I need it back home as soon as possible."

On many, many occasions, we will have customers who bring in coupons and use them regardless of what they buy. Sometimes, we're talking about 20-30 coupons taking £10+ off in total, none of the items they are for have been bought, and every time the conversation goes the same...

"I'm sorry, but you haven't bought any of the items these are for, I can't accept them"
"But the person last week did" (I only know 1 time anyone did actually accept this - they took £45 of luncheon vouchers, all with sequential serial numbers, still in the book - they got a written warning).
"Well, I'm sorry but that person was in the wrong, and was quite likely given an official warning. It's against company policy to accept them if you haven't bought the product"
"but the person last week..."
"Even if I wanted to I couldn't, the vouchers are scanned in and done automatically, I can't override it"
"but the person last week..."

I apologise for my unfunny writing style. Dammit Jim, I'm an engineer, not a comedian!
(Sat 6th Sep 2008, 2:28, More)