What is something people you encounter at your job say that makes you want to scream? (Job, person & quote)
What is something people you encounter at your job say that makes you want to scream? (Job, person & quote)
Job: cashier
Item doesn't scan
Customer: "That means it's free, right?"
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Only about 4 weeks in as a cashier and I've heard this enough to last me a lifetime.
Im a locksmith.
Customer: Do you make duplicates? Me: Yes C: How much? M: Depends on the type of key C: The normal one M: -_-
Or, after opening a customers door who was locked out:
C: Why so expensive tho? It only took you five minutes! M: -_- (Thats exactly why you dumb fuck, and I told you the price beforehand)
I also hate when people tries to haggle the price because I know for a fact that Im the cheapest locksmith in the area.
Job: Welder
Customer: "Hey I need a welder to fix the railing at my business."
Me: "OK, I can start work after you close for the day."
Customer: "Oh no, I'm not staying late. I need you to fix it during business hours."
Me: "OK then, it's dangerous work so I'll need to rope off the area and erect screens to protect the general population from weld flash and grinder sparks."
Customer: "Oh no, this walkway needs to stay open for customers during business hours."
Me: "Again, this is dangerous work. Somebody is going to get hurt if they're permitted to walk through the work area."
Customer: "I don't know why you're being so difficult, just zap zap and you're done."
Me: "No, it's going to take a lot of work. The railing is rusted through so entire sections need to be replaced. It also needs to be level, up to code, cleaned for safety reasons, support the weight of an average adult human, and painted to prevent corrosion. We're talking multiple days of work and it's not cheap."
Customer: "Repairs are not in the budget, but I can spread the word and tell all my friends about you. I have almost two hundred followers on Facebook."
Me: (silently gets up and walks away)
Customer: "Look at that, another lazy Millennial who doesn't want to work. Typical. No wonder this nation is going down the crapper."
Me: Software developer. Other person: Sales guy.
Sales guy: Have you finally fixed the XYZ bug?
Me: What XYZ bug? Never heard of this before.
Sales guy: The bug that impacted our project A, B, and C! It is there for years!
Me: No, I have not fixed it. Because I just heard about this issue now. Nobody told me about an XYZ bug, or problems with projects A, B, and C.
Sales guy: What? Why didn't you know about such a bug? This cannot be possible! I'll talk to the boss about your incompetence!
Me: Because none of your team found it necessary to inform me? Maybe we should talk to the boss about this.
Can you change the report for this one customer who has a nonstandard completely fucking stupid set up that none of your collection points account for and goes against the entire point of this report?
Well, maybe not those exact words. It's more like:
- rep: customers XYZ doesn't like what they see on the report
- me: well tell them to clean up their shit and stop leaving orphaned systems in their environment
- rep: well can't you just exclude the orphaned ones
- me: the point of the report is to help you clean up your environment. If they did that it would show improvement week over week until it got to the levels they want to see.
- rep: they don't want to do that, they just want them excluded from the report
- me: no
Job: cashier. Not my current job, but definitely the one that racked up the most irritating quotes.
Customer: "Now, don't you try to double scan my items. I'm watching you."
I heard this one constantly when I was a cashier at a grocery store. At first I assumed that they were kidding. After all, it's such a stupid accusation to make. It was only after about 100 elderly people had said it while staring daggers at me that I realized they weren't kidding.
I assume there must have been a news report in the 1960s about store clerks charging you twice for an item and then taking the extra cash, and a certain kind of person had been paranoid about it ever since. Except this wasn't in the 1960s, it was the 2010s, and such a scam couldn't even work anymore. The cash register isn't just a lockbox like it was in the 60s, it's a computer and it knows exactly how much money should be in it. And if it has less than that in it when your shift ends, you're screwed.
Plus, you're paying with a credit card, Gertrude, how am I supposed to steal your shit when you're paying with a credit card?
I think the thing that made it so irritating was the fact that they are willing to whip out this assertive, domineering attitude at you based on information that hasn't been true for about forty freaking years. They have a mistrust of other people because they don't know how the world works anymore, yet they think they've outsmarted you.
From many years ago, in a previous career.
Job: IT
Issue: hardware of some kind is broken
Customer, incredulous: "...but it wasn't broken yesterday!"
Yeah, no shit. That's how things break. They're fine, then become broken. Why is this even being discussed?
"X is down/broke." No, Kelly, the internet isn't "down." You typed the URL wrong in your browser.
People will state it like the entire company has lost internet connectivity, or an entire department cannot access files or run a certain program, when actually, only a single user is having a problem.
Also people not knowing the difference between log out, restart, and shutdown. Even after explaining it to them.
At my last job as a project manager, I had a director that I worked with that I absolutely despised. On a regular basis we would have this (abridged) interaction:
Director: I don't understand what this report is trying to say. Take out abc and include xyz. Me: Ok. includes changes in meeting notes next meeting Director: What is this? Why does the report look like this? I don't even understand why you would make it look like this. Change xyz and include abc. Me: But... Director: No buts, this is my team's project. Me: ...Ok. includes changes in meeting notes next meeting Director: What is going on with this? I don't understand what's going on. Why does this report change every time I see it? Me: ... Bruh.
This happened so many times that eventually I had to start including my manager in meetings with him, because this dude was insufferable and did not want to accept it when his ideas and changes were shit. He'd always deny he requested changes (even though I documented them in the meeting notes), and everything was everyone's fault except his. Luckily another director that I got along with really well requested me to work on their projects and I got transferred.
Job: Cook
Person: Manager
"No one wants to work anymore"
No one ever wanted to work motherfucker. That's why we're fucking paid to be here. If you weren't paying us we wouldn't fucking be here. But you pay us the bare fucking minimum and expect us to work like we're paid immense luxury wages.
Take a sandy brick and insert it as a suppository.
"Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later" ---> code that is hackish and will never be replaced.
"We need you to do this one time because of someBullshit" ---> congratulations, your team had to do this thing outside of your specialty, even though there exists a team dedicated to it, and now we're just going to make you do it over and over again (despite, again, a whole team dedicated to that existing).
Back from my IS analyst/reporting days...
Sends email asking for report. "Terminations from last year". I run it and send. The next day they reply...
Them: "are these from last calendar year or last fiscal year?"
Me: "Calendar"
Them: "I needed the last fiscal year"
Me THEN WHY DIDNT YOU FUCKING SAY LAST FISCAL YEAR!?!?!
"I come to work to get stuff done!"
Yes mate, but you're not getting paid enough to hurt yourself cutting corners.
I hear this all the fucking time from people who want to rush ahead and show off how productive they can be for a boss who has no idea they exist. Drives me mad.
Job: Software Dev
Internal stakeholder or C-Suite: presents nebulous idea for workflow/product/feature with no actual end goal
“We have a CRITICAL need for this product. It will REVOLUTIONIZE everything we do here. The stakes could not be higher. THIS MUST BE COMPLETED ASAP”
My boss: Okay. We will move heaven and Earth to get this done for you.
Me: Works 60 hours a week for two months to ensure the new product is successful
Also me: checking usage statistics six months later…last used by me during go live testing
I hate my life.
I do tech support on the phone.
When I can't take remote control, the person on the other side is not following instructions, and they just keep repeating "no, not working!" while trying multiple things one after another, that I can't see.
Like, I can understand not being good with technology, I'll be patient. But if I tell them to try loading the site in a private/incognito window and they're telling me "but I tried in Firefox and it's not working", it's not what I'm asking them to do. And if they're like "wait, I'll try again in Chrome" then repeat "nope, not working!", it's still not what I'm asking them to try!
Job: IT Support
New Outlook exists
Customer: "I hate change, can't you just put it back to how it was"
No, I can't. You can use Classic Outlook, but that won't have the features you want, and it's going out the door so you have to change. No, I can't program the Ribbon to look like it used to, that's just what Billy Microsoft decided.
I was working at a tool checkout in my shop for a while, and the sheer amount of ignorance and repetition blew me away.
People would come in, see signs stating things like "Don't throw your hazardous waste in this trash can!", and people would straight up ignore it. Things got so bad that we had to stop offering a trash can in our part of the shop.
A lot of people would also just repeat the same statements, day after day, week after week. For example, we have iPads that contain maintenance manuals. We have to update those manuals every week, on the same day. Without fail, the same people always forget which day Update Day is, and have to ask.
The worst ones happen when people come to turn in their gear before end of shift. Most people are fine, but every toolbox has to be thoroughly inspected before being scanned back in. Often, somebody misplaced a tool, left garbage in the box somewhere, or there's some other undocumented discrepancy.
Most people are cool about it, and willing to make things right. But, some people act like you've purposely screwed them over, or react with total apathy and disrespect. I don't make the rules, man, I'm just trying to do my job.
Maybe a niche issue, but "that doesn't scale!" In the context of software development.
We're writing software for usually very well defined user groups, but so many of the architects and seniors want to build a second Netflix, which costs 4 times as much as the simple solution and in the end usually isn't even better, because those morons have no idea how to do that.
Currently, I'm in a project where I fought tooth and nail to avoid having a micro service architecture for a batch job that inserts less than a million entries per day.
When I was first starting as a server at this one restaurant, I swear every other phrase out of my coworkers' mouths when they saw me during the entire first 2 weeks was, "you having fun yet?". And everytime, I'd give a half-assed smirk and say "oh you know it". So dumb. That phrase still irritates the shit out of me to this day.
I’m an event planner. People won’t return my emails or phone calls about the most basic things. Oh, you want a full stage crew to be at your show? And you’re only telling me this the day before your event starts? Gee, it’s a good thing I’m good at my job, and already planned for your last minute request.
Because when I asked about your labor needs two months ago, a month ago, three weeks ago, two weeks ago, 10 days ago, 7 days ago, 5 days ago, 5 days ago, 5 days ago, 4 days ago, 4 days ago, 4 days ago, 3 days ago, and 2 days ago, you didn’t seem super enthusiastic about giving me an answer. But now it’s suddenly the most important thing in the world, and I’m expected to just pull an entire show crew out of my ass to have at your event. Believe it or not, those workers are people with their own lives, and they appreciate being told more than one day in advance if they’re going to be working.
We’re on the same side here. I want your event to go well. I don’t want to be bothered with off-hours phone calls because your event is a dumpster fire. So help me help you. My entire job is to help you get in the door, and make sure the (adequately staffed) crew has the right gear for the job. But I can’t do that if you won’t even tell me what type of event you’re planning, or what time it starts.
Open source business: we support free/open/ethical source software Also business: we use Slack, Google GMail, & Microsoft GitHub for our communication & collaboration Also business: we have a social media presence—which is limited to Instagram, Twitter, Google YouTube, & Discord
Job: Supervisor
Customer pays with a $50 or $100 bill and the till requires that I check it
Customer: "It's good, I just printed it this morning."
Some days I just had to pretend I didn't hear them.
Pro tip: if you have a "go to" joke you always say in a given situation, guaranteed the person you're saying it to has already heard it several times this week. Just don't.
And before anyone responds with "they're just trying to improve your day" they're not. If I don't find the joke funny they get offended, that means they aren't doing it for me, they're doing it to show off how great and funny they are.
Pro tip: don't tell someone a joke if you're going to be offended if they don't laugh.
Job: tech support/warranty.
*spare part for repair gets delayed by delivery company by 1 working day (super specific part air post to another country) *
*Item ordered online arrives damaged by courier *
*Out of warranty product is not covered anymore by warranty (suprised pikachu) *
Customer: I did not expect this from a reputable company, like yours. I expect a refund, compensation and a kiss on the ass cheeks from your CEO. Also I will post this on social media and nobody will buy your product, because I am so important and have god like influence and power so better get me free stuff.
When I used to work in a supermarket, I hated the stupid customers. This is a classic example. One of the soft drink companies fairly regularly gave away 50% free.
Therefore, for the same price, the bottle would be 3 litres in size rather than 2.
The amount of people who didn't like that.
"Excuse me, where's the 2 litre bottle?" "Oh, it's the same price miss, you get an extra litre for free." "But I don't want 3 litres, I only want two!" Sigh!
"You didn't teach us this."
"That's literally the first sentence in my email"
Whenever you raise a problem with a process or setup the general answer is "It is what it is". No! Your laziness can jump, you can fix the damn problem you are not going to get away with inaction with a platitude.
“This is a business!”
