A customer in his fifties or so with a giant white beard struts into the store with a half-smoked Marlboro in one hand. As soon as I see him walk through the door:

Me: “Sir, there’s no smoking in here.”

I point to the sign on the door. He ignores me, and I have to ignore him because there are other customers in line. I get through them, and by this time, four or five people have come in behind him. All the while, he’s still smoking, and I tell him again:

Me: “Sir, there’s no smoking in here.”

He absolutely ignores me. He comes up to the front.

Customer: “I want $20 on pump three.”

Me: *This time with gusto* “Sir, there’s no smoking in here.”

He ignores me and tries to slide his card without me having even rung him up for anything. Suddenly, this guy behind him grabs the dude’s hand, pulls the cigarette out of it, and crushes it in his fist.

Other Customer: “I don’t know where you’re from, buddy, but if I had been him, I woulda kicked your a** after the second time.”

The old guy turned a deep red and just stormed out of the store.

I’m helping to restock our items when our manager notices that we are short in the upstairs department, so [Coworker] takes a cart, stacks it up, and heads to the elevator. Going up is no problem. Coming back down, though, he gets stuck, and the elevator won’t open the doors. We have to wait two hours for the elevator service company to come over to see if they can get him out.

The first thing they ask when they get there is:

Service Staff: “Did you try pressing the ‘Open Doors’ button?”

My coworker is silent for a bit before the doors finally slide open and he’s standing there with a bright red face.

A little later, more of our group have shown up for work, and those that missed it are being told of the epic rescue, while [Coworker] is silently restocking and trying to ignore us.

When the story finally gets to the end, where all he had to do was press the button, he finally speaks up.

Coworker: “Come on, guys! You make it sound like I’m stupid!”

He then went to put an item on a lower rack, slammed his head on the upper rack, and fell flat on his back. This did not help his argument.

I ring up a customer and tell him his total.

Customer: “Okay.”

And he just stands there… expecting me to do something else. I wait a few seconds more.

Me: “Again, that is [total]. Is that going to be cash or credit?”

He looks at me like I have two heads. I wait again.

Me: “Uh, are you going to pay for all of this, or were you just wondering how much it costs?”

The man gets all huffed up and says in a loud voice:

Customer: “I WAS WAITING FOR YOU TO TELL ME THE TOTAL!”

I am stunned and really at a loss for words. Another customer behind him is fed up.

Next Customer: “She told you three d*** times!”

He scowled at us both but silently paid and stormed out.

I worked at an inbound call center in 2004 and took orders for dozens of different infomercial products. On one call, I went through the whole script of collecting contact information for the caller so I could send him a free information packet about an expensive exercise machine. I mentioned the name of the machine at least four times.

He gave me his name, his mailing address, and his phone number.

Me: “Would you like your informational video on VHS tape or DVD?”

Caller: “DVD would be fine.”

Me: “Thank you. One last question, sir. Would you like to provide your email address so we can send you some extra details and a coupon by email?”

Caller: “Okay. It’s… Y’know, I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions. I just want to know what room my daughter is in.”

Me: “I’m sorry, what was that?”

Caller: “My daughter! She just had a [surgical procedure], and I need to know what room she’s in!”

Me: “Sir, this isn’t a hospital. You’ve called the free information line for [Exercise Machine].”

Caller: “Well, why didn’t you say that?!”

And he disconnected the call.

I work in tech support.

Me: “I want you to open whatever Internet browser you normally use; for example, Firefox, Chrome… whatever it is you use to get online.”

Caller: “I just use my email. Should I open up Hotmail?”

I next make the mistake of explaining that the Internet browser is what they use to get to Hotmail and they should open that. After about five minutes, I finally have them inside of an unknown browser, looking at the Hotmail site, presumably.

Me: “Okay, now, at the top of your page you should have two bars. One is your address bar — which probably has ‘www dot hotmail dot com’ in it — and the other one is a search bar. I want you to delete everything in the bar that says ‘www dot hotmail dot com’, type in ‘[web address]’, and then hit ‘enter’.”

Caller: “Okay, I did it.”

Me: “Awesome. Now, on this page, you should see—”

Caller: “No, I see [lists off a page of BING search results].”

Me: “All right, it sounds like you did a search instead of going to the webpage. What do you see at the top of your page?”

They list off the search results again.

Me: “No, above that.”

They list off about five million different toolbars.

Me: “Okay… and above that?”

They finally see the address bar.

Me: “All righty. In that bar, I want you to type in ‘[web address]’.”

Caller: “Should I delete what’s already in there?”

Me: “…yes. Delete that, and let me know when you’ve done that. Okay? Now type in this…”

Caller: “It just brought me back to the same page! Are you sure that’s right? I don’t think that we need to do that anyway.”

Me: “Yes, I’m sure. Okay, let’s do this. Go back to your email. I’m going to just send you an email with the link inside.”

Caller: “Well, how do I get back there?!”

Related:
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 5
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 4
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 3
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 2
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet