I work in IT for a retail company. With quarantine stuff going on, our stores are closed, but we still have a massive online presence and the salespeople are encouraged to reach out to their customers and offer items, make sales, etc.

Because of this, we’ve had an uptick in the number of salespeople who are calling to reset their passwords for one of the selling systems. IT doesn’t have the ability, for various reasons, to reset this particular password; for this one, we can only walk the users through resetting it.

I get a call from a user who’s trying to do this on her cell phone.

Me: “If it’s asking you to register, you’re following the wrong path. You’ll need to go back to the sign-in.”

User: “How do I do that?”

Me: “Hit the back button on your browser.”

User: “I don’t have a browser; I’m on an iPhone.”

Me: *Facepalm* “Browser is how you access the Internet. So, the page you’re on is in the browser. Do you have a back button or an arrow?”

User: “Oh, I think I got it.”

Pause.

User: “I turned my iPhone on and off.”

Me: *Head-desk*

We supply high-accuracy equipment. The phone rings.

Caller: “We need something that can measure to 0.001 mm. Will [most basic equipment] do?”

Me: “I’m afraid not; the system you mentioned is an entry-level system for museums and art studios.”

Caller: “Well, what do you have? Our current system is overloaded.”

Me: “We have [higher-end models].”

Caller: “No! Too expensive and not accurate enough!”

Me: “With all due respect, there isn’t a system available on this planet that accurate, and if there was it would be very expensive.”

Caller: “Rubbish! We use [Model] and it is fine!”

Me: “I’m sorry but I have been in this business for ten years; what you need doesn’t exist.”

Turns out that the caller was a quality manager of a whole company and the magic equipment he was using was not only out of date but was never that accurate even on the day it was made.

A client comes up to our desk one afternoon looking very stern. She tells my coworker that she returned a printer and that we forgot to give her her cable back, not that she had forgotten to remove it herself.

As I am already heading to the back of the store, where we keep such items, I offer to look for it. After about fifteen minutes of looking and no luck, I look through our recycling bags to see if one is getting tossed. I find a printer cable still in its twist-tie!

I bring it back to the client, excited because it’s brand new. She immediately glares at me.

Client: “This cable is blue. I had a black one. It will not work with my printer.”

Coworker: “Ma’am, there is no difference from cable to cable. They’ll all work with a printer, as long as the ends are the same.”

Client: “There is a difference. Mine was black; my printer is black. I want a black cable, so I know it will work.”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I was searching and your cable wasn’t back there. This one is brand new and will work.”

Client: “I want to speak to your manager; you are obviously not listening.”

My manager comes up and we explain the situation.

Manager: “Ma’am, we ship all returns out every morning and I guarantee that the cable you brought in is gone. My associates inform me that they have provided you with a brand new cable. I don’t understand the problem.”

She says with an eye roll.

Client: “I want my black cable back, not this blue one that will not work with my printer. These two obviously know nothing about these things or they would know that you have to get the cable that matches your printer!”

Manager: “Ma’am, I have no idea who told you such ludicrous things, but printer cables don’t have that kind of distinction. As long as the USB ends are correct, it will work. Just do me a favor: take it home, try it. If it doesn’t work, I will figure out a way to fix it. Okay?”

At this the customer huffed off, taking the cord. We haven’t seen her back since.

I support routers for a fairly well-known company. Usually, customers are quite pleasant and trust that we know our devices well enough to know what they can and can’t do. Some people, however:

Customer: “My router isn’t giving me Internet over its Wi-Fi!”

Me: “Right, let’s check the cable, shall we? Is the Internet cable in the internet port?”

Customer: “No, this one doesn’t have a cable; it’s receiving Internet wirelessly. Are you stupid?”

Me: *Pause* “Your model does not come with that functionality. Either you put a cable in there, or you installed another software on there that does allow for that. Are you sure there isn’t a cable nearby that was unplugged accidentally?”

Customer: “Clearly, you don’t know your own products. You’re useless. You can’t even help me, can you?”

Me: “Evidently not. Have a lovely day.”

I hung up, because I’m not forced to deal with people like that.

Related:
Wireless, Clueless, Hopeless, Part 35
Wireless, Clueless, Hopeless, Part 34
Wireless, Clueless, Hopeless, Part 33

Before I tell this story, I will admit that I knowingly took advantage of an employee’s mistake, in the form of a loophole I found completely by accident.

I pre-ordered tickets for a four-day-long outdoor festival, and naturally, I printed the receipt at home, with barcodes for all four days of the festival. These tickets were non-refundable if any day of the festival was cancelled due to poor weather. The pre-order tickets cost exactly the same as if you bought tickets at the gate on all four days of the festival, with the only difference being that the single-day tickets purchased at the gates could be refunded if that day of the festival was cancelled.

The first day of the festival ended up being cancelled about thirty minutes after the festivities started. Despite knowing that the pre-order tickets were non-refundable, I decided to ask a cashier for a refund since I had paid exactly the same price for my day-one ticket as everyone who had purchased their ticket at the gate that day. The cashier ended up agreeing with me and agreed to refund the cost of my day-one ticket.

When I looked at my bank account that night to see if the refund had actually gone through, I realized that I had been refunded the entire cost of my tickets for all four days of the festival. I tried calling the festival organizers the next morning to point out their mistake, but nobody answered the phone.

Day two, the weather was perfect. I went to the festival and decided to bring my pre-printed tickets along just to see what would happen if I tried to show them at the gate. To my surprise, the barcode still worked! The barcodes for days three and four also worked!

In the end, I got to go to all three remaining days of the festival for free by showing the pre-printed tickets that had been refunded but not invalidated. I do feel slightly guilty about it, but not enough to do anything more than write this story.