Whenever I ask one of my 'customers' something like, "Where is he/she bleeding?" I generally get an answer like, "All over the carpet."

You ran into that guy too?

Over Memorial Day weekend we had a special at my store where you could rent three new releases for 9.99. They are 3.99 each normally. People would bring up two movies and I would tell them they could get three for 9.99 and the two they had would come up to $8.00. I had people say, "So if I just spend one more dollar I can get another movie?"

This has happened to me a few times but two times really stand out with me. The first time happened about 6 or 7 years ago when I was working for Pathmark Supermarkets in New Jersey and they still had the employees wearing these ugly blue smocks. In the store I worked in there was a Blockbuster in the same plaza and I would go over there sometimes during my lunch breaks. Well one night I go in there and this woman starts to ask me a question about a movie and I told her I don't work there. She apologized and said she thought I did because of the blue smock. I still helped her out because I knew what she was looking for.

The second time was recently. I was in Target looking at their PC games and this woman comes up and asks if "we" sell any Wheel of Fortune games. At first I looked around to see if their was an employee behind me. I then noticed she was looking right at me and so I told her I don't work here. I don't know how she could have even mistaken me for an employee. Target employees, which my mother is one, have a strict dress code. A red shirt and khaki pants. That day I was wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt, and black boots. This woman must have been on some major medication.

<b>I work at the movie theater.</b> Read to hear the other side of the expierence that people on this board always complain about.

I've had morons complain about the quality of the movie to me. Notably Lord of the Rings just ending. The stupid people actually wanted passes to come to see another movie. It happened even more often with The Royal Tenenbaums. People argue that we should only house 'good' movies (like the two I mentioned were crap???)!

I always answer the phone and get a "whats playing right now?" Well, moron, we have 24 screens and that means there's around 17 movies playing at any given time. So, I give them the automated AMC # and about 60% of people say, "I just called there and the line was down". No, it wasn't. You're stupid. You don't even know how to use an automated line do you? But now, I can get cocky with them now because I memorized the entire set of menus.
<b>
I hate getting up in the middle of the movie too, but if there are some really loud people ruining the movie for you, get up and tell an usher. All the ushers at the theater I work at are more than happy to kick out loud kids or parents with crying babies. Please DON'T come out and complain after the movie, because it's not like we could know that the kids were being loud. We do "theater check", which means checking for problems with sound/picture/temperature/blatantly loud kids. But often, when kids see an usher walk in, they'll shut up.
</b>
On Friday nights, the theater is like a child day care center. Clueless parents drop off their kids expecting them to see a movie then go home. But the kids rarely watch movies. They come in, make noise, get their tickets refunded, and then leave. I've had numerous soccer moms come in and complain about how we kicked out their kid. Because we kick them out for yelling in the theaters, or THROWING CHANGE (PENNIES) at other CUSTOMERS (happened last weekend) and the kids go home and lie to their parents and tell them that they weren't doing anything wrong. And the parents are so IGNORANT to the fact that their kid does lie and does other bad things. Some STUPID parent actually called the police once because it was like stealing from their child.

A manager is not the only person to complain to. I always have disgusted people come out to Guest Services and "Demand to see my manager" and complain about the temperature. That's just idiotic, because I can change the temp in any theater from where I stand. Also, once again, if there's talking kids, manager never kick them out. Service Staff/Ushers do. There's no point in missing another 2 minutes of your movie just to tell a manager, as opposed to a manager that kids are being loud.

Pay attention to the movie showtime listings in the newspaper. There are 5 24-screen theaters here in Phoenix and people always screw up by looking at old newspapers or flat out the wrong location. And then they assume that they know what they're talking about, when in fact I have to make them feel like an ass by taking out a newspaper photocopy.

Last, but not least, DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT THE PRICES. I hate IGNORANT customers who assume that know everything about movie theater economics. Most morons IGNORE the fact that we make virtually NO MONEY (approx .50 per adult night ticket) from ticket sales. AMC more-or-less does not control the ticket prices. It's distributors that have the most 'say'. That means that the entire theater must operate on the concession stand.

Okay, one more last thing. IF you're in a busy theater, I would invite you to stay till the credits are over and the lights go up to see the disgusting messes that customers leave. I guess I was just lucky, but my Dad always taught me to pick up after myself. I can't believe that people around here are so hogish. I never in my life left the theater leaving a big mess of popcorn on my seat and trash laying around me. It's just flat out pathetic and pig-ish. Jerks who chew tobacco even let their courtesy cup with spit juice just sitting in the cubholder. Pigs.

<b>Why do I still work there, do you ask?</b>
Because it's nice to have co-workers as friends. And I usually pick up around $150 (for family, friends, and me) in free tickets per week.


I used to work at Hollywood Video

Customers constantly LIE to us, telling us that they brought the movie back by midnight, but they DIDN'T! You want to know why? Because what the public doesn't know, is that we would get the bins every morning at 10AM and check them in as though it was 11:59 the night before! That means that if your movie was due on Tuesday Night/Wednesday Morning at 12AM, and you dropped it off Wednesday Morning at 9:59AM, your movie would NOT BE LATE! I wanted to slap those morons.


I used to be a paperboy (for 3 years)...BEST JOB EVER! Everyone of my customers were really nice and actually appreciated me and that their papers were delivered quietly around 3-5AM on weekends and around 3PM on weekdays. It makes me wish that I lived in a small town still.

I hear ya there. There is nothing as moronic as people who cannot take responsibilty for their own actions and come up with lies to make it look like your fault. Working part time in a video store, I have seen and heard so many different excuses, some of them work and some of them not work. Here is a clue: if you are going to lie about your movies being late don't and I repeat DON'T change your story three times while you are arguing the fees because the clerk will know you are lying and leave the fees on there. And I've had people totally change their stories of when, who and how the movies were dropped off while arguing them and they would get nowhere.

Also, don't argue the times unless you know 100000% you are right. From time to time, the store slips up, the scanner scanning the movies messes up and your movie MAY get missed, but when they look at your history and see three movies being checked in all at the same time and on time and the other one found on the shelf four days later, they will take the fee off. But don't stand there and insist you dropped them all off on your way to work in the morning when you know full and well it was on your way home from work and they were late after noon. We can see on your history that they were all checked in at the same time by the same employee and that means they were in the drop box all together. And you know what else? We focus SO MUCH on checking in movies and running them. We often empty the drop box every ten minutes. Rarely does it pile up beyond that, but I guarantee you we never let somebody's movies sit for 24 hours then check them in.

I once had somebody who had all their movies returned on the same day at the same time and they were all checked in by the same employee. But they were one day late. She didn't dispute the time they were dropped off but the lady insisted up and down she returned them on the day they were due. After going on about it for a couple minutes I asked her (not sarcastically) if she thought we kept her movies behind the counter for exactly 24 hours and then checked them in. And she said yes. SHE SAID YES. We have better things to do than pull stuff like that, I assure you.

The people who also amaze me are the ones who complain up and down about their 1.99 or 3.99 late fee then get you to take it off to shut them up and then they whip out a fifty dollar bill for their one rental. Or pull out a wad of twenties out of their pocket. Do these people even have a conscience? And what makes them look worse is when we get people who come in who know they are late and don't argue twenty dollar or higher late fees and just pay them. I bet those people owning up to their responsiblity would just shake their heads at the people who keep arguing when they were the ones late.

One time I ended up dropping off movies at the wrong Blockbuster (there's two within a mile of my house). For some reason I rented from the one that isn't on my way to work, and the one on the way to work is where I dropped them off.

I offered to take the movies back to the right store, but the rep said, "don't worry about it", though I did end up calling the other store to tell them what happened.

They told you not to worry about it because once they scan those videos, even tho it's a wrong store return item, it becomes their responsibility. If they gave it back to you and you lost it or something happened to the video, the store is the one that would be responsible for replacing or paying for it, not the customer. They were the last ones to have it. And they print out a report each morning that shows the tapes that are returned to their store by mistake (for Blockbuster anyway, not for other stores) and then they call that tape over, and they check it into an account that knocks a day of fees off so if you had it back on time yesterday, you are good to go.

So I don't know exactly why this story is here, but I don't think anybody was dumb on either side. Maybe the rep could have explained how things work a little better to put your mind at ease. It's not like it's a Russian nuclear secret.

re: Blockbuster and late fees

It was always hilarious to me that when I worked in the "nice" part of town, customers would rant and whine about a $2 late fee. Then when I worked in a store on the "bad" side of town, customers would come in and pay a $40 fee without a word to be said.

Why do you think those people are wealthy? It's because they penny pinch.

Another couple of Hollywood video stories:

1. A lady comes in and rents and X-Box game: Spiderman--The movie. She comments on how much more expensive movies are these days, to which my store director replied that since this was a video game, it was 2.50 more. She says, "oh. Okay." and leaves. I'm standing here listening to the whole thing. Well, next day, she comes in, throws the game at our store director (the pointy edge of the box hit her in the shin--left a hell of a bruise) and yells at her because it wasn't the movie!!! Finally, after the director said over and over that it was a game, not a movie, the lady left, but not before she says,"I didn't think you guys should have it yet, since it's still in the theater."


2. Next. When we help customers, someone still has to answer the phone. Usually, we politely ask the customer to hang on, and we catch the phone. Well, one of our new people does this, helps the phone person, then finishes the transaction. Well, the guy gets mad and wants a manager because she answered the phone in the middle of the transaction. The manager talked to him, and gave him the 800 number to call. So, he calls and complains. The complaint is forwarded to our district manager, who asks the following questions:

Was the employee rude? Answer: No. She was very polite.
Was your transaction completed in a reasonable fashion? Answer: Yes.

What if it had been you on the phone? Answer: Well, IT WASN'T.

Then the guy suggested that we get an answering machine. Corporate had to give him 3 free movies because we simply did our jobs. He's also a local psychiatrist in town--someone you'd think would be a little more polite.

Amazing. We get at least one really bad/hard to deal with customer daily. It's also sad to see people fight to get a 2 dollar late fee taken off thier account, just to have them pay for thier movies with a wad of 50 dollar bills.

In all honesty, this guy was in the right. The employee left him there to attend to another customer when in fact he was first. So what if you have a phone call, you should just ask the person to hold, help the other customer and then get back to the phone. Or just give the phone to someone else. It's not that hard to understand.

Regarding the phone call guy from Hollywood: I work in a bank full time, and the phone situation there is quite often similar. You HAVE to answer phones while there are customers. And the people on the phone do not realize you have people sitting at your desk/standing in your window and the people sitting at your desk/standing at your window do not realize the person on the phone has been transferred from voice mail to voice mail and ignored, put on hold eight times, and is genuinely pissed off when you pick up the phone. It's a no win situation.

In the end, it's all about perception. And who is the person you'd rather piss off. And while I hate to admit it, sometimes you have to cut your losses and piss off the person who may be less likely to complain or less likely to hurt your business by taking the business elsewhere.

I actually refuse to answer the phone anymore at the bank if I have a customer. My branch manager doesn't want us on the phone if we have customers because of the perception thing. But there are times you just HAVE to answer it. And sometimes you cannot please either Peter or Paul.

And regarding the Spider Man situation: I've seen people do that with the new animated DVD that's out, rent it and piss and moan that it wasn't the actual movie. For the love of God, we are not a store in freaking Malasia where bootlegs of new movies are available for 1.99. And this happens ALL THE TIME when new movies are released. I saw it with American Pie when American Pie 2 came out, Blade/Blade 2, Star Wars Episode 1, Planet of the Apes, and I could go on. It is inevitable we will get some idiot who has their head up their proverbial ass and not pay attention the movie they see commercials for is coming to the THEATERS and will rent something with the name of the movie on it. But the worst? THE WORST by far has been the sheer number of people who rent Matrix Revisited and think it's Matrix 2. MATRIX 2 is NOT out in theaters yet, how would we have it??????

I would agree, but the guy was pissed that the employee simply answered the phone, not that the employee helped the person. 99.9% of all phone calls are asking what is out this week, something that can be taken care of in about 10 seconds. When there is a line to the back of the store, it is difficult to get everything done, but we do it. When I answer the phone, I usually take it with me, finish the transaction, then talk to the person. The girl was new, so she did what she was told, which was to politely excuse herself, answer the phone, and come back. There was no dissention on the part of the customer until AFTER the trasaction was completed. He overreacted.

You guys make me laugh.

From my first job, Boston Market (its sort of fast-food for those not familiar):

We were situated less than a mile away from a retirement home. I saw every Millie, Agnes and Thatcher in the complex. One day corporate decided to raise the prices. This was not a picky thing; their food is usually expensive so they raised the price on everything. It was a Tuesday. This would have been fire, except for the fact that every old person knows exactly that their 1/4 dark with 2 sides is 4.57 NOT the new price. The terrible thing was the nice price was only 30 cents or so higher (say 4.84), yet I would get complaints all day (and for the next two weeks) that I was

1) incompentent with the AUTOMATED ring up
2) erred and hit the wrong button

When I explained our new price increases, some actually had the gall to say they weren't paying that price. Do they scoop the mash potatoes back into our serving bins? Of course not.

My managers and co-workers were more entertaining. There was a huge turnover rate.

Manager #1 left us unattended (most of us were 15 or 16 years old) to go to garage sales on Sunday. If his manager were to stop in, we were to say that he was at Kmart (nearby) buying a serving spoon we really needed.

Manager #2 told me one night that he used to drop acid and then sneak into his next door neighbor's house. They started a torrid affair even though she was married. His favorite pastime was dropping acid and watching NASCAR (in person).

M#3 used to get in knife fights when she was little with her brother. Thus all the scars on her face, hands, and neck. She was 24 and had just married a guy who was 42.

M#4 used to steal from us all the time. Of course as a manager, it wasn't stealing. He'd take #4's home (for those of you who don't know its Boston Market's largest meal -- feeds like 6-8 people) for his "pregnant wife". Every night. For months

M#5 once told a worker to do something. He was funny, so we used to joke around with him a lot. She said, "Bite me." He replied, "Get your clit up here and I will." (Hope that didn't offend anyone!)

M#6 told us how his TCBY (The Country's Best Yogurt) franchise was going so poorly that he got someone to burn it down and collected the insurance. The first time I met him, before he even said hi, he said to me, "It'd make you choke." I said (stupidly), "What?" and he replied, "My d*ck."

M#7 took valinum or perkaset on shift, depending on his mood. He hit on everyone of the females, and he once said to me (after a female exited from the basement): "Boy, what I wouldn't give to **** that ass of hers." She was 18, he was late 30's and married...with 3 kids.

Two guys I knew smoked pot on shift all the time. One cut the chicken. You ever shared a shift with a high chicken-cutter? It's entertaining as hell.

Next job: PNC Bank (East coast bank, based out of Pittsburgh)

The worst customers are the ones who are "teaching" their kids about saving money. One lady came in with a toddler, who could not have understood a damn thing about what was going on, and proceeded to try and get him to count money with her. Your f'n kid doesn't do addition yet, idiot. She counted out 16 dollars...in nickels. Alone. Asking him every time if he knew how much adding a nickel would be. Seriously took close to a half-hour.

Local sportscaster here in Philadelphia used to come through the drive-thru all the time. He was always twenty dollars short. I have no idea what he was doing. He either couldn't count or he wasn't paying attention. This easily happened 25 times, no joke. We always used to say, "Gary, you are twenty dollars short." It was too embarassing for him if we said, "Mr. ___, you are twenty dollars short" because then people would look up. Everyone knows their KYW3 Sportscaster. :)

Also, I was in Abercrombie the other day and someone asked me if worked there. I looked at my outfit: Eddie Bauer shorts, Birkenstocks, American Eagle shirt. No, I do not work here.

I worked retail in college at a large department store in Houston (Foley's). I had this jerk come in and try to return a pair of pants that we didn't carry without a receipt. After giving me a ton of grief, he made me call my supervisor.

This Dumass, proceeds to agrue with my supervisor for about 10 minutes. Finally my supervisor asks "Are you sure you bought these pants at this store?" The guy looks at us and says, "No, I got them at Sears, but I thought it was all the same. Don't the same Jews own everything?"

A short PSA--This is not the case anymore; at least, not universally. We get a lot of customers who apparently believe this to be true, but it is not.

If it's not checked in by 10 AM, it is late. Which, in most cases, means that if it's not returned by midnight, it's not getting checked in until the next day.

We've had a recent rash of customers complaining about movies being late when they turned them in before we opened the day after they were due. It's aggravating, and it's hard to tell who was honestly under that impression versus who's blatantly lying (except for the one woman who pulled the same scam two days in a row).

Probably the most interesting case was this guy who insisted his movies were not late, no way, at all. We finally work out that he'd returned them on his way to work. He, feeling triumphant, insists:
"See? They're not late. They were due at midnight. You guys close at 10, so I couldn't have brought them back at midnight. They were there before you opened, so they're not late."

I pause, and then point out that we close at midnight or one am, depending on the day. He deflates, and then loudly proclaims:

"Well, that's BULL****." at which point the customers in line behind him start laughing.

The other people who confuse and annoy me are the ones whose stories evolve as they try to make themselves more convincing. One women went through the following positions in one conversation, over an unreturned movie: No, I specifically remember dropping that in the drop box. (husband arrives, she talks to him) We never rented it. (daughter arrives, they talk) Oh, wait, it's still upstairs in the VCR.

I mean, really. The only thing I hate worse than being lied to is being lied to by somebody who can't even pull it off.

I don't have any stories that are TOO horrifying. But I did have a funny woman at Sears with her grandaughter who spent hours and hours shopping for back to school clothes. When they finally got to the counter, the older woman, clearly exhausted, announced to the store, "Let's hurry up and get out of here before you drive me to the bottle."

As far as the phone situation, at Sears, if we were working with a customer, the protocol, and what I see as the most polite thing to do, is to answer the phone, politely tell the person on the other end that you're with a customer and then put them on hold until the sale is finished. Usually there was another clerk available who could take the call, but most of the time the caller realized that they weren't first and waited their turn as if they would if they were in line.

The worst question Ive heard working at Best Buy
Where is the Electronic's Department ?

PLEASE POST VIDEO STORIES
 

I can't wait to see some stories from the video counters. Sometime soon, please?
-eek-

Ahh yes, that question.

I love that question almost as much as the 10,000,000 times people asked me where the bathroom is at.

Do people at Blockbuster ask where the porn section is? ;)

I work at Best Buy in the DVD section and have heard my share of dumb questions.

1. Lady comes in and asks me where our Tire section is.

2. Not so terrible but an older lady tells me that she has a DVD player and asks what kind of movies she can buy. I tell her anything in the DVD section.

3. I wasn't that busy and I noticed that this old lady needed help in 13 inch TV's. So I give her a hand, set everything up, then she tells me that she needs it delivered. So I tell her all about the delivery charge and everything and she asks when am I going to be there. I tell her that it isn't me personally that delivers it, but they use a delivery service. She told me that it was store policy for the salesman to do the deliveries.

4. Mid-40 year old man comes in and tells me that his son bought him the wrong movie. So I ask him what movie did you have in mind and ask a few more questions. Turns out that he only has a VCR and his son bought him a DVD and he wants to know why he can't see any 'picture'.

5. A mom tries to return a Gamecube and Halo because they don't work on each other. I told her that they are completely different systems. Turns out that she thought you could buy any system and any game and it should 'work'.

6. Man asks me where Bruce Lee's Fists of Fury was. I checked the warehouse, checked the computer, spent about 15 minutes looking for that one DVD everywhere. Tell him that we don't have it in stock right now. He says fine, turns around, walks to a female rep and asks her the same question. She tries to look it up in the computer, but I had to tell her to look under Lee and not Fists of Fury, she says 'Oh' but never gets to it and tells him that we don't have it, and he said 'Oh really? Thanks anyway' and walks away.

I'm sure I'll think of some more later on.

:hscratch:

Well we had an interesting one one time...

An older man in his 60's came in one time and spent a while walking around the store. After about 10 minutes of walking the new release wall he came up and stood in line to be waited on. I called for the next person in line and he came over.

He said, "I was looking all around your store and I can't seem to find the, well, how should I say this, "Adult" titles. Where are they?"

I reply, "I'm sorry sir, we do not carry any movie that is Unrated or NC-17 or higher, Blockbuster is a family store and you'd probably be able to find them across the street at Video Update."

He says, "Okay, I'll try there."

He then proceeds to go outside and consults with his 60 year old wife that looks frailer than he did and we see them get in the car and head for Video Update.

Needless to say all of us got a really good laugh because if him and his wife were still looking for those kinds of movies in their 60's and looking the way they did (frail and slow walking) more power to them! ;)