(A few weeks ago we were hit by Hurricane Matthew, and a lot of people are calling to make sure it is safe for their upcoming visit. The damage was fairly minimal and cleanup lasted only a few days, but of course news stations are hyping it up for ratings, so a lot of people don’t believe us when we say the city is fine. After dozens of calls repeating the same spiel over and over, I decide to have a little fun with people.)

Caller: *in a very thick southern accent* “Hi, this is [Caller] and I’m calling from Texas. We saw about the hurricane on the news and as we’re visiting your city in a few weeks I just wanted to call and make sure everything was all right for our visit.”

Me: “Unfortunately, we’re still under eight feet of water. I actually had to swim into the office today. On the bright side, we don’t have to worry about traffic!”

(She is silent for a moment, and I’m afraid I may have offended her, but then she bursts out laughing.)

Caller: “You are a Texas joker! You’re funny; you would fit in just fine down here, darling.'”

(She asked me a few more questions about her stay and then concluded the call. The whole situation was incredibly stressful, but that call made my week!)

(I am a cashier. Our clearance items have red barcode stickers that go over our store’s regular barcode stickers. We get a lot of people that try to switch the tickets around, so we always have to check to make sure that the item numbers match on both of the stickers. I get a customer who brings a bunch of clearance items to my register. Upon examination, nearly all of them have clearance tickets that don’t go with the item, and it’s obvious that most of them have been tampered with. Normally, if a customer comes up with tickets that don’t match on an item, it’s only one, maybe two items per order. This woman has about ten items with clearance stickers that don’t go with the items. I call over my coworker who works in the department the customer got her items from, and we begin to look up the items in our system to see if they are on clearance and just have the wrong ticket, or are not on clearance at all. Most of the items are not on clearance. The customer becomes furious when we tell her this, saying that we “should just give her the items for the price she found them at.” It is blatantly obvious that she switched the tickets around to get herself a better deal, not knowing that we must look at the clearance tickets and remove them if they don’t match. Finally, the customer leaves the store, leaving behind most of the “clearance” items that she brought up with her. Once she is gone, I turn to the coworker who was helping me.)

Me: “[Coworker], I’m pretty sure she switched most of the tickets herself.”

Coworker: “Oh, I don’t doubt it. And if today had been my last day, I would have let her know that, too.”

(I work in a call center that handles computer problems for a government agency, their contractors, and their business partners.)

Me: “Thank you for calling [Help Desk]. This is [My Name]. How may I assist you?”

(The customer describes the issue, which involves needing to remote in to the computer to see what’s going on exactly. I get the information required and remote in.)

Customer: “It’s not doing it now. I’ve been seeing this issue over and over, and now that you’ve logged in, it’s gone away. What happened?”

(Having seen no issue, I use a figure of speech common to computer techs while half-chuckling.)

Me: “Eh, you probably just weren’t holding your mouth the right way.”

Customer: *pause, then surprise* “Can that really affect it?”

Me: “No, ma’am, it’s a figure of speech meaning that sometimes issues arise, and correct themselves for no obvious reason.”

Customer: “Oh…”

(I work in a call center that handles computer problems for a government agency, their contractors, and their business partners. This story is from my supervisor.)

Supervisor: “Thank you for calling [Help Desk]. This is [Supervisor]. How may I help you today?”

Customer: “I’m having a terrible issue with my computer. Whenever I go to ‘googly’ and search for anything, all these nasty images come up of naked people.”

Supervisor: “I’m sorry, ma’am. Let me make sure I understand. Whenever you go to Google and search for a term, you receive p*rnographic results?”

Customer: “Yes, sir. Every time I go to that ‘googly’ site I get all these nasty pictures of [male and female genitalia]. Now, I’m a good, Christian woman and I don’t need to be seeing all that stuff!”

(My supervisor is stunned, as this is a government computer and all such items should be caught by the filters. The supervisor decides to remote in, verify the issue, and run a virus scan.)

Supervisor: “Okay, ma’am, please show me exactly what it is that’s happening.”

Customer: *opens a browser* “Like I said, every time I go to ‘googly,’ I get all these nasty results.”

(The customer then went to “googly,” not Google, which turned out to be an “adult-themed search engine.” The supervisor corrected the customer by directing her to Google, instead, and verified there were no further issues.)

Recently, our store’s trash compactor broke down. For the time being, management just had our clerks put the trash bags out in the rear lot on pallets next to the compactor until they could bring a dumpster in. This was all store trash, including things like scraps from our meat shop, sitting outside for two or three days in 90-degree heat.

Once they brought a dumpster in, they assigned two of the clerks to take all those trash bags and throw them into it to be taken away. One unlucky clerk went to throw a bag of meat shop trash in, and had it burst in his hands, splashing him from head to toe with rancid, raw meat and drippings.

That’s gross and unfortunate, but it got stupid when he asked to go home and change, and was told by the store manager to stay and finish his shift. The guy lived just down the road, probably would have been back within 20 minutes, and even offered to work past his shift to make up the lost time. But instead, they kept him working in those filthy clothes for another three hours. And he was told to do nothing but lot duty — something clerks are only supposed to do in half-hour increments in hot weather — the entire time so the smell wouldn’t offend customers.

He’s been one of our best and most reliable clerks — it says something that he followed orders there — but he put in his two weeks after that.

This story is part of the second Heatwave roundup!

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