and to all a good night.
Sep. 5th, 2003 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gfrancieWell Well Well....
It is still warm out. Too warm and I suspect this is what is bringing the asshole out in many a customer.
I think we should title this asshole redux.
I had someone who wanted a blue book that was funny. Nasty German women who wanted books that had pictures of buildings in Seattle and nothing I showed them made them happy. I half expected them to shout, "SCHNELL" and beat me. There was the man who came up and told me why he didn't want a discount card (I never even asked him...) and people who threw magazines everywhere, left coffee on bookshelves (what the fuck is up with that?) and people whining.
I am kind of at the edge. I may hurt a customer if they don't get their crap together.
There is something I have been wanting to talk about with the Great American public for sometime.
It is about speaking clearly. I am not talking about the shy people. I know shy people and while they may be quiet, most are able to speak in clear sentences.
I can't understand a damn word you are saying if you mumble. I don't care if the cool kids at school mumble, when you speak to me, just speak clearly. I am not asking much. You don't need to shout or whisper, just speak in a calm, possibly polite tone. I don't like having to ask three times what you are looking for. I don't know how people got it in their head that talking like Marlon Brando on quaaludes was a good idea. They had better stop it, or I will start putting some marbles in some mouths pretty gosh-darned soon.
If you have to, go to speech therapy to get help.
Lord I am sick of trying to make out what people are trying to say.
And that's another thing
I don't know about the rest of you folk, but when I was a child, my mother told me it was rude to interrupt someone who was on the telephone. She said you wait until an appropriate pause and then ask your question, but only if it is an emergency. If it can wait a moment or two then you stand there patiently. You don't start talking like the person is just sitting there.
I wonder sometimes...
People are always interrupting me while I am talking to another customer. They don't say excuse me, they just launch into the conversation like the other person does not exist. They will try and grab me, while I am helping someone else.
I want this to stop as well. I may have to send many of you a copy of Miss Manners' book. That might help you.
Let's start with some simple phrases.
"Excuse me"
"Can you please help me?"
"thank you"
I am not that bastard customer service person who ignores you on purpose. Often I may be on the telephone with someone else. Or I may be helping someone else, but I will always acknowledge you, I will make sure someone will help you quickly. Hell I have gone sooooooooo far out of my way to make someone happy and yet most of the dumb-fucks out there don't even say thank you.
Is that sooooooooooo fucking hard? Am I asking you to do something that is on the level of complicated as say...oh I don't know coming up with a cure for cancer?
I may have a damn stroke.
I need to have a vacation.
Summer has taken its toll.
Okay, I think that is enough from the complaints department.
*takes a deep breath*
Okay in slightly more cheerful news, I visited the perfume fairies at Nordstroms and oh sweet mary they gave me tons of free samples and said my hair looks pretty. I love the perfume fairies can I take them home with me?
I bought some really beautiful nectarines. I am not quite sure what I should do with them, but somehow I think cream will be involved.
Another minor highlight of my day was having some fresh shrimp phad thai. Those lovely people at Cafe Saigon make a great lunch. It improved my mood considerably.
Another thing improved my mood. A new issue of Vanity Fair. My favorite guilty pleasure of the periodical world does so much for my tired and weary soul at the end of a long overly warm day.
I need to lie on the sofa for awhile with my swollen feet. Reading about the royal family of Monaco while eating chocolate.
Phew.
Oh yes...
Happy Birthday to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wankle He hates dumb-fucks too. So he rocks.
Amen
It is still warm out. Too warm and I suspect this is what is bringing the asshole out in many a customer.
I think we should title this asshole redux.
I had someone who wanted a blue book that was funny. Nasty German women who wanted books that had pictures of buildings in Seattle and nothing I showed them made them happy. I half expected them to shout, "SCHNELL" and beat me. There was the man who came up and told me why he didn't want a discount card (I never even asked him...) and people who threw magazines everywhere, left coffee on bookshelves (what the fuck is up with that?) and people whining.
I am kind of at the edge. I may hurt a customer if they don't get their crap together.
There is something I have been wanting to talk about with the Great American public for sometime.
It is about speaking clearly. I am not talking about the shy people. I know shy people and while they may be quiet, most are able to speak in clear sentences.
I can't understand a damn word you are saying if you mumble. I don't care if the cool kids at school mumble, when you speak to me, just speak clearly. I am not asking much. You don't need to shout or whisper, just speak in a calm, possibly polite tone. I don't like having to ask three times what you are looking for. I don't know how people got it in their head that talking like Marlon Brando on quaaludes was a good idea. They had better stop it, or I will start putting some marbles in some mouths pretty gosh-darned soon.
If you have to, go to speech therapy to get help.
Lord I am sick of trying to make out what people are trying to say.
And that's another thing
I don't know about the rest of you folk, but when I was a child, my mother told me it was rude to interrupt someone who was on the telephone. She said you wait until an appropriate pause and then ask your question, but only if it is an emergency. If it can wait a moment or two then you stand there patiently. You don't start talking like the person is just sitting there.
I wonder sometimes...
People are always interrupting me while I am talking to another customer. They don't say excuse me, they just launch into the conversation like the other person does not exist. They will try and grab me, while I am helping someone else.
I want this to stop as well. I may have to send many of you a copy of Miss Manners' book. That might help you.
Let's start with some simple phrases.
"Excuse me"
"Can you please help me?"
"thank you"
I am not that bastard customer service person who ignores you on purpose. Often I may be on the telephone with someone else. Or I may be helping someone else, but I will always acknowledge you, I will make sure someone will help you quickly. Hell I have gone sooooooooo far out of my way to make someone happy and yet most of the dumb-fucks out there don't even say thank you.
Is that sooooooooooo fucking hard? Am I asking you to do something that is on the level of complicated as say...oh I don't know coming up with a cure for cancer?
I may have a damn stroke.
I need to have a vacation.
Summer has taken its toll.
Okay, I think that is enough from the complaints department.
*takes a deep breath*
Okay in slightly more cheerful news, I visited the perfume fairies at Nordstroms and oh sweet mary they gave me tons of free samples and said my hair looks pretty. I love the perfume fairies can I take them home with me?
I bought some really beautiful nectarines. I am not quite sure what I should do with them, but somehow I think cream will be involved.
Another minor highlight of my day was having some fresh shrimp phad thai. Those lovely people at Cafe Saigon make a great lunch. It improved my mood considerably.
Another thing improved my mood. A new issue of Vanity Fair. My favorite guilty pleasure of the periodical world does so much for my tired and weary soul at the end of a long overly warm day.
I need to lie on the sofa for awhile with my swollen feet. Reading about the royal family of Monaco while eating chocolate.
Phew.
Oh yes...
Happy Birthday to
wankle He hates dumb-fucks too. So he rocks.Amen
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-09-05 08:08 pm (UTC)Also, that's the Vanity Fair I recently bought! I have yet to read it though, and I was delighted to discover that it has international royalty and not just the one's we're most familiar with.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 12:03 am (UTC)But that is me.
It is a great issue, but then anything with George Clooney is great.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-05 09:12 pm (UTC)- 1 rearranging the bookshelves.
I don't mean alphabetization, or massaging, or facing books. i mean moving books in a humorous manner. some of my favourites included: moving self help books of questionable value into fiction, "invading" the eastern european bookshelves with wwII histories, starting with polish history, moving bibles (NIV only mind you) into mythology or christian fiction.
- 2 invoking dummy mode in customers.
this is a tact where you answer their questions in a manner which they don't understand, but also in a way that leaves them feeling like they *should* know what you mean. it's a balance. and it took me about three months to get it down right. (see http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html ... it's computer related, but it's a good primer on dummy mode)
- 3 flat out refusal to assist customers in finding a self help or "self improvement" book. stating that it's contrary to the spirit the section. (i did however tell them if we had the book in stock)
i have more, but i just got home from delivering pizza. so, i'm drowsy.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 12:04 am (UTC)I do like your suggestions, they made me laugh quite a bit and helped release a lot of the stress.
I will have to tell some co-workers about taking the NIV bibles and placing them elsewhere.
I like the idea of putting it in sci-fi/fantasy. Near the L. Ron Hubbard books.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 05:50 pm (UTC)that crap book of his about some b.s. detox program? doesn't he know that he sucks????
if i had tim travel capacity, i seriously, seriously would go back and trad his life for robert heinlein.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 06:08 pm (UTC)Mostly for what he has done to John Travolta.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-08 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-05 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 12:05 am (UTC)But I go back tomorrow for more fun.
Who doesn't?
Date: 2003-09-05 10:46 pm (UTC)Re: Who doesn't?
Date: 2003-09-06 10:13 am (UTC)I want to see that on a hallmark card.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 01:46 am (UTC)As for the customers, I can sympathise. I do a lot of user support in my work and, although my customers are nowhere as bad as your's, some do produce a level of rage.
You're not alone! :-)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 10:16 am (UTC)It is like people forget where they put their brains sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 11:56 am (UTC)I have a theory. Everyone has the same dose of intelligence, it's just that some people have it focused in some areas rather than others.
In the case of academics, all their intelligence is totally focused on what they're researching.. this leaves nothing left over for common sense. In general, academics are useless at normal things. If I take this into account it explains a lot of the stupidity they generate and allows such actions to be put into perspective.
2 things...
Date: 2003-09-06 07:19 am (UTC)2. Is your userpic something from an Edward Gorey book?
Re: 2 things...
Date: 2003-09-06 10:18 am (UTC)2.I stole it from the web like any good person. I think I found it through google web images. just type in Edward Gorey and you can find tons O neat things.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 10:55 pm (UTC)The bit about interrupting reminded me so much of the Mrs. Richards episode in Fawlty Towers. Mrs. Richards being the deaf old trout who gives Fawlty a run for his money. "Is this a piece of your brain?"
On the other side of the coin I remember being a customer at shops in France where I was convinced the assistants were being bloody-minded. E.g. I would enter a boulangerie, and ask for a baguette. "Des croissants?" would come the reply. So I'd ask for a baguette again. "Quoi?" the reply, as if I've asked for some weird English Plum Pudding. My French isn't bad, in fact my accent is half decent, for a Brit. So I'd ask again. This time I'd be almost shouting. Finally someone else in the shop would help me out: "Il veut une baguette". An expression of sudden intense enlightenment would fall across the assistant's visage. "Ahhhhhhhh! Une baguette!!!" she'd say. Oh please, like I'm asking for a bicycle tyre in a boulangerie.
And now I'm remembering the embarssing incident when I ordered "une poire", expecting a liquer, at the end of a good meal in a fancy Swiss restaurant, and being brought a peeled pear in a silver bowl.
Sorry to prattle on so in your LJ!
no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 11:18 am (UTC)I would like to throttle a few people, maybe to serve as a lesson to others.
I am equally sensitive to customers, because I have dealt with people who were lacking a few brain cells themselves, and maybe a few lessons in manners.
Typical French..*snorts* They do that just to show off some sort of novel form of superiority.
I like the French, but I don't like their customer service. I remember dealing with some of it when I worked for this online bookstore.
Fuckwits all around.
"une poire" *laughs* makes me think of a friend who was a stewardess and she was down in Mexico and her friend told her to order some pineapple juice, and when she went to ask for it, her accent made it sound like she was asking for penis juice.
Everyone found that quite amusing.
Prattle away.