Me: “Thank you for calling the [Store Name] online shopping assistance. How can I help you today?”

Caller: “You didn’t offer me a receipt!”

Me: “Did your receipt from your online order not get emailed to you?”

Caller: “I don’t know! All I know is that you didn’t offer me one! When I’m in your store in [City], there’s a sign at the checkouts that says if the cashier doesn’t offer me a receipt, my whole order is free. You didn’t offer me a receipt, so my order should be free!”

Me: “Sir… that only applies when you’re shopping in one of our physical stores. The staff there are trained to ensure every customer leaves with a receipt. For online orders, it’s different. The receipt is emailed to you after you’ve ordered.”

Caller: “But you didn’t offer me one!”

Me: “Sir… you got your receipt. We don’t need to offer you your receipt as you are 100% guaranteed to get your receipt through our online system.”

Caller: “But no cashier physically offered me a receipt, so my order is free!”

Me: “Sir… how would a cashier have physically offered you a receipt during an online order?”

Caller: “That’s not my problem to figure out! Your sign says that if the cashier doesn’t—”

Me: “—I know what the sign says, sir, but that only applies to the physical store.”

Caller: “Well, the sign doesn’t say that!”

Me: “It doesn’t have to, sir.”

Caller: “Why not?!”

Me: “Because most customers don’t assume we have cashiers physically existing on the internet waiting to hand receipts to customers ordering from their home computers.”

Caller: “I’m going to email your corporate office about this! This is very disappointing!” *Click.*

Manager: “What was that about?”

Me: “Some customer trying to get his $300 order for free because we can’t Tron one of our checkout clerks into his home.”

Commercial sewing machine needles are difficult to buy. Needles have both a family (the general shape of the needle) and a size. Most needle families have multiple names for the same family.

Needle family names are alphabet soup: DBX1, 135×16, UY 154. All needles use the same size system, so “size 20” does not narrow down the selection at all. Some needles will use the same family for different point types (DBX1 ball point, DBX1 regular point), and some will use different families for different applications (135×16 is the same as 135×17, except that 16 is a leather point and 17 is a normal point).

Also, despite different needle shapes not being interchangeable in different machines, to the human eye, it’s pretty hard to tell what needle family a needle is just by looking at one. Due to this, most customers need assistance in finding their needle. 

My store keeps the commercial needles in a small stock room that customers can’t access, to make sure they get help from an employee to get what they need. There are three rows of shelves stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes full of needles. We can look up the needle family if we know the brand and model of the machine. Sometimes, however, this is difficult.

A customer asks me for Juki needles.

Juki is a brand; however, many customers use “Juki” to refer to all commercial sewing machines. Juki currently makes about twenty models of sewing machines, and they have made many more in the past. Since many commercial machines are kept in use for 30-50 years, “Juki needles” isn’t helpful information.

Me: “Okay, what family of needle is that?”

Customer: “Juki.”

Me: “Do you know the model of the machine?”

Customer: “It’s a Juki.”

Me: “Is it a domestic or a commercial machine?

Customer: “It’s a Juki!”

Me: “Does it sit on a tabletop, or is it built into a piece of furniture? Does it zigzag or only straight stitch? Do you know part of the model number? Does it have a static foot or a walking foot? Do you have a picture of the machine? They all use different needles.”

Customer: *Now chanting.* “Juki! Juki! Juki! Juki!”

Seeing that we are getting nowhere, I walk into the needle room and grab six boxes of needles, which is the most I can easily carry. I go back to the customer.

Me: “These are for Juki.”

I go back into the needle room and get six more boxes.

Me: “Juki.”

I get six more boxes.

Me: “Juki!”

Six more. I gesture at the pile of twenty-four boxes.

Me: “Juki! Juki! Juki! Juki! I can go get more. Tell me what Juki.”

The customer pulls out his phone and scrolls through it for about five seconds.

Customer: “It’s a DDL-8700.”

Me: “What size do you need?”

Customer: “Eighteen.”

Me: “How many? They come in packs of ten.”

Customer: “One pack.”

Me: “I’ll be right back.”

He left with his needles, and the eight minutes that it took to re-shelf twenty-five boxes of needles was worth it.

A convenience store I frequent recently restructured its rewards app. With the old app, you typed in your phone number on the PIN pad, it gave you a “Yes” or “No” prompt to ask if you wanted to use any applicable rewards/discounts you had earned, and that was that.

With the new app, you type in your phone number on the PIN pad to verify that it’s you, but then you also have to open the app on your phone, find the right reward/discount, tap it to open a barcode, and then the cashier has to scan the barcode the same way they scan regular items.

The new app means that it’s actually MORE difficult to use your rewards/discounts, due to all the extra steps, than it was with the old system. That sets the scene for this story. 

I’m in line behind a middle-aged man who already seems grumpy. He’s been grumbling to himself about how slow the cashier is moving, how much time the customers ahead of him are wasting, and everything else. His turn at the counter finally comes, and he steps up.

Cashier: “Welcome to [Store], did you find everything you need today?”

Customer: “Yeah, I did.”

The customer puts his phone number into the PIN pad while the cashier is scanning his items, but doesn’t say anything about wanting to use his rewards. The cashier finishes scanning, announces the price, the guy pays, and then snaps to attention.

Customer: “Hey, wait a minute! Where’s my discount?”

Cashier: “I’m sorry, sir, what discount would that be?”

Customer: “For my rewards! I put in my phone number, but it didn’t take off any of the discounts I have built up!”

Cashier: “I’m sorry, sir, the new app doesn’t apply discounts automatically. You have to show us the barcode in the app.”

Customer: “What’s this ‘app’ thing?”

Cashier: “It’s a mobile app, sir. Like on your cell phone.”

Customer: “I don’t have a cell phone! How am I supposed to use your stupid new rewards program if I don’t have a cell phone?”

Cashier: “You can also tell us what rewards you think you have available, and we can look for them on our end.”

Customer: “Nah, you’re discriminating against me for not having a cell phone! I’m going to sue this place for stealing extra money from me since I can’t use my rewards!”

The customer stormed out to his truck and screeched out of the parking lot. I stayed back from the counter while the cashier sighed and gathered himself, and then made sure I had my phone ready to use my own discounts since I normally forget.

Related:
It’s Just Not App-ening, Part 5
It’s Just Not App-ening, Part 4
It’s Just Not App-ening, Part 3
It’s Just Not App-ening, Part 2
It’s Just Not App-ening

I used to work on a customer support line for a video game company. This is back when PC videogames came in big boxes with multiple discs, manuals, and lots of other stuff.

Caller: “How do I install my game?”

Me: “What happens after you’ve inserted disc one?”

Caller: “I haven’t done that yet?”

Me: “Did the box not come with a manual?”

Caller: “You mean this book thingy?”

Me: “Sir… that “book thingy” is the step-by-step guide, with pictures, describing how to install the game.”

Caller: “Yeah, that thing had too many words. I’m not a computer guru, so you’ll have to fix this.”

Me: “Sir, just insert disc one.”

Caller: “How do I know which one is disc one?”

Me: “It will say disc one on it. And on the paper sleeve it comes in.”

Caller: “Oh yeah…”

He inserts the disc.

Caller: “Now what?”

Me: “Has the auto installer loaded?”

Caller: “Yeah.”

Me: “What does it say?”

Caller: “Press ‘OK’ to begin install.”

Me: “Press ‘OK’.”

The caller does so. It gets to the part where it asks permission to copy files to the drive.

Caller: “I don’t know how to do that. Can we skip it?”

Me: “You need to do that. You just select “OK” like you’ve been doing up until now.”

Caller: “Yeah, but I don’t understand the question. Can you come and do it for me?”

Me: “No, sir. I am available only to guide you on the phone. All we are doing is going through the exact same steps outlined in the instruction manual.”

Caller: “No. It’s your job to do it for me.”

Me: “Sir, when you buy a car radio you don’t expect the people selling you the radio to teach you how to drive. We are a video game company, and there is the expectation that a user knows how a computer works or can follow the guides we provide, which outline the steps or provide pictures. If you can’t follow these, you need to ask for help from a friend, family member, or even a computer technician to do this for you.”

Caller: “…so I just press “OK”?”

Me: “Yes.”

I hear a click.

Me: “Is it installing?”

Caller: “No.”

Me: “Did you press “OK”?”

Caller: “I pressed “Cancel”.”

Me: “Why did you do that?”

Caller: “I don’t know.”

Sigh…

That was a long call. When we finally got the game installed, he asked:

Caller: “So… can I go shoot stuff now?”

Me: “That’s the aim of the game, so… have fun.”

He called back an hour later, saying the game was too hard because the “things in the game shoot back,” and it wasn’t fair.

How do some people get this far in life and not get themselves unalived?

UPDATE: The OP has provided a rewording to the ending of this story.

I owned a computer repair business for a few years. A woman brings in a laptop slammed with viruses, spyware, etc. It was so bad it wouldn’t boot. I got it all fixed up, and she picked it up.

She’s back the very next day with the same issues.

Me: “I feel I need to ask, what websites are you visiting on this thing?”

Customer: “Oh, hmm, lemme see. My boyfriend spends most of our internet time on…”

She proceeds to list, totally casually, a long list of adult-oriented websites with names that would make most people blush.

Me: “Um, okay. I’ll go ahead and clean it again for free, but if you visit those sites, I can’t do it again without charging. Those sites are 100% the cause of all your computer issues.”

Customer: *All smiles.* “Okay!”

She picked it up the same day, and is back in the next.

Me: “Did you go back on those sites?”

Customer: *Laughs.* “Of course.”

Me: “Do you understand why this keeps happening?”

Customer: “Yup!”

Me: “And you go to those sites anyway?”

Customer: “Yup!”

Me: “I’m going to charge you every time you come in with the same issue.”

Customer: “S’all good!”

Those two and their choice of websites paid my rent for months…