2004 has brought around many revelations. Many things have come to light in the last few years since I informed everyone that customers do indeed… SUCK. Apparently, the only people that read this and totally understood it were my fellow retail slaves. Unfortunately, none of the customers were reading this because as this page is entitled, Customers Still Suck.
This is not a re-emphasis of the first list. That list is a classic and by no means should you ignore the original. Consider this the other half to the original. It’s not a sequel, because they both can stand on their own, but you really need to read both of them to get the big picture.
1. Why can’t you people read a sign? You see a sign that says 50¢ for tuna, but it just happens to be in the six-foot range of the five-dollar item you bought, and you come up and insist that the sign said 50¢. Apparently, you can read numbers, but letters and words elude you.
2. Speaking of signs, when you are up front near the service counter and you look at the sign that says they do not open up until 9 a.m. why do you turn to me and ask, so they open at 9 then? Um, no. That sign is outdated actually, they open at noon now. Dumb bastards.
3. The worthless parents that come into the store and let their kids loose while they shop need to go. I don’t appreciate your crotch dripping messing up a section in five seconds that took me two hours to condition, and then hearing you tell your child “Oh, come along don’t bother the nice man.” Oh, you’re about two seconds away from seeing psycho man.
4. On the subject of worthless parents, I also don’t appreciate your inability to discipline your kids while you are shopping. The woman with her new sober for two hours boyfriend and the three kids that aren’t his come down my aisle and when the kids are bad, they say “be good or this man will yell at you.” Yeah sure, “Hey there milkman Jr., and pizza delivery boy Jr., and paper delivery boy Jr… settle down before your mom miscarries UPS guy Jr.”
5. In Wisconsin whenever the weatherman predicts we will get over 2″ of snow there is a mad rush to stock up on groceries. Not necessities as if it were a real emergency, but just to fill the fridge up in case you are stuck at home for eternity. First you come in and buy $200 worth of food, then it snows six inches, and you decide to come in the next day just to prove you can make it out. When was the last time we had a snowstorm that crippled the town? 1865 I presume.
6. How the fuck do old people forget their canes? There are always canes behind the service counter that never get claimed. Somewhere I picture an old man lying on the floor in his garage because his cane is at the grocery store, and he didn’t realize it until it was too late.
7. When you do remember your cane and venture back for another visit, you seem to forget your glasses and suddenly I become your new best friend as you now expect me to follow you around and read all the labels for you. Yes grandpa, this is um, new Ortega Ketchup. Now one more question. How in the hell are you going to drive your Mr. Magoo ass home without the glasses?
8. Worse than the ‘I forgot my glasses guy’ is the person that is seemingly in their 30’s but has never visited a grocery store before in their life. They come in and you help them find one thing and suddenly you find yourself holding their list walking around the store literally shopping for them. I usually try to forget key ingredients on the list, accidentally crossing off eggs if it looks like they are making a cake.
9. Know what is in your wallet before you come into the store. I am not a loan officer so don’t ask me for anything. When you decide to buy the Hostess apple pie for $1.99 and you realize that you only have $1.24 in your pocket don’t even give me that stupid sad puppy look. What the fuck do you want me to do, squeeze the filling out and charge you 99¢? You should have learned money responsibilities like that in 3rd Grade.
10. Ladies, what’s up with the giant purses? First problem is you become a shoplifting suspect as soon as you walk in the door; you could sneak Mexicans over the border with that thing. If you spin around too fast, you could kill someone. The bigger problem is when you get to the checkout and it’s time to pay and you lug that big bastard onto the counter and start rooting through it like Carrot Top in one of his shows looking for the wallet.
11. When you walk into the store and approach me because you talked to someone on the phone, don’t assume I know what the fuck you’re talking about. We don’t tell each other what we discussed with customers on a normal basis. You walk up to me and say “I talked to Brad, or Brian or Jim, I don’t remember his name, but he told me…” Well, I’m not any of the three and I have no idea what you wanted so why don’t you go figure out who you talked to or, or… or you could just fucking ask me your stupid question without telling me a story first.
12. Unless you need a prescription filled, leave the pharmacist alone. He is not there to check out your groceries because you are too important to wait in line for the extra minute. If you had any idea the bullshit they have to go through with insurances and asshole customers combined, just consider yourself lucky to have never gotten a prescription filled with M&M’s.
13. The ATM is a service provided by an outside company. It is not ours. Do not ask me how to use it because it isn’t my job to know how to do that. If you are too stupid to figure out the ATM then perhaps you don’t deserve whatever spits out of the machine. If I do have a temporary lapse of memory and take mercy on you and attempt to assist you then don’t give me the death look when it comes time to punch in your PIN. Oh…now you can handle it from here… Mr. Big Man figured out which keys to punch, doesn’t need me anymore.
14. If it is Christmas Eve and you have just realized that you need to make dinner for 30 people tomorrow, understand that 1/4 of the town is in the same boat and are last minute shopping too. This means long lines when you get up to the checkouts and oh yes… out of stocks on some items. Don’t fly into a tizzy when you realize that we are out of Cool Whip. It isn’t like they just decided yesterday that we were going to have Christmas tomorrow. It’s been on the calendar for a year jackass, plan ahead next time. Please make sure to bitch loudly while in the long line and spread a little of your Holiday cheer around so the cashiers that are stuck working on Christmas Eve can know how much you appreciate all they do for you.
15. The asshole customers that come in and for whatever reason think you are smarter than us. If you ask for an item and we show you where we have those, don’t turn up your nose and say no… you must not have understood me. Oh well now it’s on. Since you are too stupid to look around the store, I’m just going to inform you that we don’t carry that item at all and if I find out we do, I’m going to discontinue it.
16. Once again we are bending over for the customers and getting flack for it. We put these, um, cripple carts in our lobbies to help our customers that can’t walk and then when the senior version of Mario Andretti gets in there, he is hot rodding all over the store almost crippling other customers. Then there are the extremely large people that can’t walk on their own, so they get in the cart. Trouble is they are rated for only so high a weight, so it is going extremely slow, and you swear you see smoke pouring out the back and Jumbo is bitching at you because the cart is going too slow.
17. Look, this isn’t the friendship club that you are at; you are at a store shopping. Why in the hell do you feel the need to act like my friend suddenly? I could see if I knew you before you waltzed in the door, but when I see you for the first time and you start telling me about your problems it’s time for a reality check. If you are that lonely, get a dog.
18. Ladies, I know that I work in the Health and Beauty department, but that does not give you the clearance to ask my advice about feminine hygiene products. If you want to know if we have a specific item, fine. If you come up to me and tell me the intensity of your flow though… well fuck it, you’re on your own.
19. Returns. Yeah, I saved the best for last. There are many problems with returns so I will do them separately. The first is you no receipt motherfuckers. Plain and simple, if you don’t have the receipt, you shouldn’t get the return. The first thing you do is get bitchy when we remind you of this, insisting you bought it here. Let me remind you why you need a receipt.
Stolen merchandise: I know you would never even think about stealing and then returning for cash, but a lot of people do. They don’t have receipts either, and they don’t get their money back, just like you. I once had a lady call me and tell me she had bought three tubes of Monistat and she had an allergic reaction to them, so she needed to bring them back for a refund. THREE! First, they cost $18 a piece and why would you get three? Was she fucking the Pillsbury Dough Boy or something? I told her that we would not give a refund since she conveniently lost the receipt to which she called back and asked the manager, who told her the same thing.
Not Our Product: I love this one. These people will bring back the industrial size tube of toothpaste that we have never carried insisting they bought it here just the other day. They actually have the nerve to get pissed off at you because you have never carried that size. The ones that try to bring back Wal Mart’s private label always gets me too. “Sorry, we don’t carry the Equate brand ma’am, that’s Wal Mart’s brand.” “Oh, then you can’t give me money back?” Um, only if you’ll use the money to buy some common sense.
Opened Videos and books: Look, if you buy a book and then bring it back five days later because it wasn’t the right one, too bad. Who knows if you didn’t take it home and read the fucker then bring it back. Does this look like a goddamn library to you? The videos are another thing. You can only return an opened video for the same title. This isn’t Netflix asshole.
So once again, there we are. It has been roughly two or three years since the first Customer page was put up, and since me and Lisa are still both in the same bullshit job, we figured we forgot a few things on the first list. Apparently, you people didn’t listen because you are all still pains in the asses, and we are here to inform you that the customer isn’t always right. Not today assholes. So, there you have it, from Wisconsin to Ohio and everywhere else there is a retail store; customers still suck.