I used to tell stories here and there of stupid encounters we had with customers. My favorites are still the people who walk into the store, look around and then ask what we sell.... Apparently the thousands of gifts hanging on all the shelves and hooks are misleading and we are in fact an some other kind of store.
Anyhow, I don't serve customers much anymore, I'm strictly back office now, trying, with no success, to find a new host and programmer for my website (we had promising leads, but no one came back with proposals). But on Monday mornings, the staff comes in later so I do my work in front and deal with the customers. As an aside, let me say that this store is in a suburban village setting, and there are only 3 retail stores on our side, flanked by banks on either end: us, a now-defunct pet bakery/grooming store and a hardware store. The pet bakery was only there for one year and mysteriously disappeared a month ago. They were there one night at closing and totally completely gone, not a trace left by the opening time next morning.
During the time that they were there, we did sometimes get customers walking into our store thinking that we were the bakery, because our logo does have a small cartoonish dog on it. However, the instant you set foot in the store, it's pretty clear that we are not a pet bakery/grooming store.
This morning, just a few minutes after opening, a well-groomed woman with a yapper in a purse walks in, full steam ahead, and MARCHES up to the counter, where she deposits Fifi (actually, that is the one part of the story I will make up, she didn't introduce me to her purse-dog) and says:
Stupid Customer: I *NEED* an appointment at 11 tomorrow morning. It *MUST* be at 11.
ME, a little confused and incredulous: An appointment? For what? (I was thinking maybe, just maybe, she was a rep of some sort)
SC: Grooming! (I'm pretty sure she said Duh!)
ME: Grooming? For the dog?
SC: Well, OF COURSE for the dog! What, you think it's for me? For the dog, God you're stupid!
ME: Actually, I think you have the wrong place. The groomer was in the bakery next door, but they are out of business now...
SC: WRONG! You are WRONG! You do grooming *HERE*! I've been bringing my dog for grooming here FOREVER! Maybe you don't do it personally. Are you new? Don't you know how to book the grooming?
ME, keeping very hard from laughing at her: No, I'm not new. I've been here since the day it opened, long before the groomer came and went. We are a gift store, we have a very small dog section, but we do not groom dogs.
SC: YOU DO! In the back! (screaming and pointing at the back store, where I guarantee you, the only dogs that have ever stepped paws in are Mortimer and Lucy)
ME: No no, you might have gotten the doors mixed up, but I assure you it was next door...
SC, interrupts me: Stupid girl! you are a stupid, stupid girl. I DEMAND to speak to your manager. Give me the number, I will call immediately (whips out her bejeweled pink phone)
I hand her my business card, point to the number and say:
ME: Here, call this number she's there right now, I'm sure she'd love to talk to you. Oh, by the way, SHE, would be ME. I own the company. I can ASSURE you we have never groomed a dog. That was next door. But call me, please, I'd love to have this stupid conversation with you over the phone as well.
She walked out. I don't know why, but I have a feeling she won't become a patron of my dog section any time soon....
PS: As an added bonus, I will tell you that Super Manager D recently overheard one customer tell another customer that we were a store from Sweden. When she interjected and said that in fact, we were locally owned and that the husband and wife team were both born in this city, the customer corrected her and said that the store was from Sweden, that maybe we bought the concept from there, but she was 100% certain that it was a Swedish store..... This lead to many funny emails about my need to stop furnishing the store with IKEA cabinets and my failure in the Swedish Witness Protection Program.
ROFL!!! You must share more of these stories. I have to say though, I really can't believe that any customer of any store would outright call someone stupid... now how dumb must she feel...assuming she ever noticed she wasn't in the pet shop!lol
Julie
Posted by: Julie | July 07, 2008 at 10:56 AM
Too funny! Next time, give her an appointment and let your girls take care of the "grooming". Just make sure you take pictures of her expression when she comes back to meet Fifi in a pink dress with sparkles in her hair... ;o)
Posted by: Nat | July 07, 2008 at 12:42 PM
It would have been hysterical if you had let her call the manager, so she could watch you pick up the phone and answer her questions again!
Posted by: MissPinkKate | July 07, 2008 at 01:45 PM
That's awesome. I am so impressed that you thought of your fab response on the spot instead of ten minutes later, like I would have!
Posted by: cat, galloping | July 07, 2008 at 01:57 PM
Hysterical! Stupid people can just be so damn stupid! Yes, stupid. Super D should have played along and told them that the store was from Germany not Sweden.
Posted by: Elizabeth | July 07, 2008 at 02:43 PM
Stories of retail customers are really the best, aren't they? I don't have much to say except thanks for the smile.
Posted by: Katie J | July 07, 2008 at 03:17 PM
The customer is always right! Haha. Perhaps you should have scheduled Fifi for some grooming then let Dumpling or BB give her cute wash and cut.
Posted by: wendy | July 07, 2008 at 05:58 PM
I knew it! All this time I've been thinking, 'this MM, she just doesn't quite ring true, I wonder if she isn't really a fugitive Swedish groomer of small and yappy dogs'. Secret identity unveiled!!!
Posted by: Elaine | July 07, 2008 at 11:05 PM
This is hysterical. thanks for the laugh!
Posted by: Jen | July 07, 2008 at 11:07 PM
I used to work retail, at a fancy pants kitchen store where people were also somewhat inclined to tell me (as I worked my way through med school) that I was stupid. Only, never quite so brazenly.
that woman is a real winner, though I am not sure what prize she deserves. Perhaps a flaming bag of dog poop and dog hair?
I love how you handled it. How did you make yourself pull the plug when you did, instead of letting her dial, then watch you answer the phone? I can only imagine that I wouldn't have had the self-control for that. I would have been way more immature. Way way more.
This is why I am a doctor and not a successful shop owner. From Sweden. Who grooms dogs on the sly... so sly even you yourself do not know that you do it. Perhaps it is a secret identity? Do you ever wake up really tired and covered with dog hair? There you are, sleep grooming in the back of the store!
Posted by: lizard | July 08, 2008 at 08:54 PM