» Customers from Hell

Customers who were wrong, wrong, wrong...
I have quite a few tales but i'll try a different tack of 'wrong' to begin.

I work in a CeX shop, one of those second-hand wonders which deal in electronics/movies/games/phones and so on.
Because most people pronounce the name like 'sex' (see newsletter a while back) we've had a couple of people misunderstanding the name a little bit.
Like the charming chav who came in and surreptitiously asked if we had any second-hand fleshlights.

There's a mental image that will stay with me forever.

In a similar vein, a smiling doddering old fellow came in, signed up, and handed us a digital camcorder to test so that he might sell it to us. Fair enough. I hand it to the fella on testing and continue working.

A few minutes later there's a choking, horrified exclamation coming from the corner.

This camcorder was fairly archaic and the only way to delete photos from it was selecting them individually. And the old fellow hadn't done this before he handed us the camera and we were treated to the most retina-burning images of an old man's grinning face, emactiated body, and wrinkled cocktail sausage. And it was neccescary to view them all in order to wipe the memory clean.
It was like he'd seen some really mucky porn and decided to try it himself, one geriatric, a poorly-lit room and a timer function.

That was before we got to the video files. Needless to say, none of us could look him in the eye when he returned.

More as and when I recall them.
(Thu 4th Sep 2008, 22:16, More)

» Food sabotage

The unfortunate victim of food sabotage. Sort of.
My dad's a jazz/blues musician and lived through the sixties so it pretty much goes without saying that he's fairly fond of a bit of green, as are most of his old musical-type buddies.

Anyway, the story starts with me joining my dad to see Baj, a bassist friend of his who had unfortunately developed Multiple Sclerosis and it was starting to take it's toll on him - as such he was perscribed medicinal cannabis to help alliviate the symptoms.

It goes without saying that he'd been smoking it on a regular basis for the last thirty years and this medication meant he could use some of his normal supply for something else.

So he baked a cake. Just a simple chocolate sponge, but absolutely laced with weed. An evil plan hatches in his mind and he gives my dad an enormous grin which transmitted the nature of the cake and his intent. My dad, bless him, gives a wry smirk and nods assent.
Baj offers me some cake.

Had I been a little older I might have been suspicious of it. Unfortunately for me, I was seven, and here I was, being presented cake! Chocolate cake no less! I had about half of it, greedy guts that I was.

So obviously in a short space of time you've got a stoned seven-year-old tearing around the house while the two guilty parties silently crack up into their tea. I came down in the car on the way home, and dad got a bollocking for allowing mother's little boy to get higher than a stratospheric kite.

I don't know about length, but it was about ten inches in diameter.
(Tue 23rd Sep 2008, 15:50, More)

» When Animals Attack

Appropriately named, I thought
Cats.
Normally, I love 'em. One part buzzing cuddlesome bundle, one part attention-starved leg-bumper, and occasionally, twelve parts malevolant screeching utter bastard.

This cat was called Spider. Adopted by my half-sister as a kitten and named due to it's tendancy to scale walls as a kitten. Or so i'm told.

Anyway. The upwardly-mobile kitten grew into a great big fat sneering ginger tomcat that radiated a permanent threat of imminent attack.
If this cat could grasp a bottle it'd glass you for looking at him funny.
Except in the presence of aforementioned half-sister, when it'd become a innocent ball of fuzz in return for being constantly plied with people food.

So! I am seven and visiting the aforementioned, with blond locks, blue eyes, and a sunny disposition towards kitties. I toddle over to Spider who glares at me with venomous slitted eyes. 'Just fucking try it', they say. I take absolutely no notice of this and reach out to stroke the nice kitty.
It hisses, yowls, and spits. Claws flex outwards, and it leaps up and attatches itself very firmly to my face like something from Alien, sinking all four claws into the back of my neck and head to the bone.

My folks who are having a quiet drink out in the garden are suprised to see their son run out with a sound of ARGHARGHARGHHELLLLLLLPP, arms flailing and an extremely angry cat for a head.
With a little help, the cat is detatched, bolts over the wall, and everyone shits themselves laughing.

I of course go and hide indoors and avoid the cat like the plague whenever I visit for the next eight years or so.

(Hooray, QotW cherry popped, length joke, hello all)
(Fri 25th Apr 2008, 13:26, More)

» Complaining

So I had a graphics card, a Sapphire HD4870
Which was a lovely little card and worked for slightly under the one year warranty before it started giving me graphics corruption and crashes all the time.
So I return it to Novatech, they check it and send it along to Sapphire to see if it can be repaired. After a month or so of pointless waiting it transpires that it can't be, so I am called and told a replacement is being sent out.

Oddly enough, it's not a HD4870, it's a HD5670 - which looks like it's better on paper. It's part of a newer range, but my old card was top-of-the-line when I got it whereas this 5670 was released as a mid-budget card. Long story short, Sapphire price-matched my depreciated card to a current model, and i've not gotten an equivilent replacement at all.

So I nip over to Novatech and explain my case, and am walking out within minutes with a brand-new HD5770 (slightly better than my original card and certainly more expensive). They were perfectly reasonable about it and joined me in slamming Sapphire for trying to rip me off.

So basically Novatech are pretty good when it comes to their customer service. I've not had cause to complain after dealing with them for a good few years now. I recommend them pretty highly.

Story not all that interesting, but then I don't return a lot of stuff or complain much.
(Thu 2nd Sep 2010, 19:36, More)

» My sex misconceptions

I used to read
My mum's biology books. I was seven or eight, I think. I understood pretty much everything except what an orgasm was as it's sort of hard to explain without experiencing.

That was fixed when I was ten.

So...no sexual misconceptions. I was too damn curious for this QOTW.
(Fri 26th Sep 2008, 22:03, More)