Job: cashier
Item doesn’t scan
Customer: “That means it’s free, right?”
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Only about 4 weeks in as a cashier and I’ve heard this enough to last me a lifetime.
“Are you guys still serving breakfast?”
It ended 5 hours ago! It’s 3 in the afternoon and breakfast hours are clearly posted on the sign. What do you think??
me: “it’s all in the same fridge, right? and surely they must know that their lunch options are shite, so it’d be reasonable to assume they’d stretch breakfast a few extra timezones…”
Whats this movie called again!? Love it but its been a while.
Falling Down
Falling Down
Thats the ticket! Thanks! Gonna have to go sailing and watch it again!
Job: cashier. Not my current job, but definitely the one that racked up the most irritating quotes.
Customer: “Now, don’t you try to double scan my items. I’m watching you.”
I heard this one constantly when I was a cashier at a grocery store. At first I assumed that they were kidding. After all, it’s such a stupid accusation to make. It was only after about 100 elderly people had said it while staring daggers at me that I realized they weren’t kidding.
I assume there must have been a news report in the 1960s about store clerks charging you twice for an item and then taking the extra cash, and a certain kind of person had been paranoid about it ever since. Except this wasn’t in the 1960s, it was the 2010s, and such a scam couldn’t even work anymore. The cash register isn’t just a lockbox like it was in the 60s, it’s a computer and it knows exactly how much money should be in it. And if it has less than that in it when your shift ends, you’re screwed.
Plus, you’re paying with a credit card, Gertrude, how am I supposed to steal your shit when you’re paying with a credit card?
I think the thing that made it so irritating was the fact that they are willing to whip out this assertive, domineering attitude at you based on information that hasn’t been true for about forty freaking years. They have a mistrust of other people because they don’t know how the world works anymore, yet they think they’ve outsmarted you.
Sometimes the scanning technique can mean an item is accidentally scanned twice. It’s a bit of a faff around to have to go to the CS desk to get a refund, so I can understand them wanting you to not make any mistakes in the first place.
Why would they have to go to the CS desk? the cashier can just change it right there. It happens occasionally where they scan too many items and have to void some out, it’s really not a big deal.
Not if they don’t catch it then and there.
The way you described then makes me think of the “make sure your man double-bags” scene* in Shawshank Redemption.
*WARNING: Major spoilers for the movie if you haven’t seen it. In which case, you should really go see it. It’s one of the best movies in existence.
The movie’s 30 years old, I think we can relax the spoiler warning.
I don’t ever want to be the one responsible for spoiling such a good movie for someone who hasn’t seen it, even today.
I work retail. People walk up to me like I’m a robot.
“Duck tape??” They just… Bark at me. I have gotten to the point that I refuse to tell them where something is until they treat me like a human being and ask a very simple question, “where’s duck tape?”
You’re gonna hate me for this but since it’s your job you might want to learn it’s “duct” tape.
Not what they asked for. Duck tape is a brand, and is in my department. Duct tape is in plumbing which also does HVAC products, and is actual foil tape with a peel off backing, actually used for ductwork.
But that’s not what the customer asked for.
There is such a thing as duck tape though, It’s a brand of duct tape
Makes me think of this guy.
Me: Software developer. Other person: Sales guy.
Sales guy: Have you finally fixed the XYZ bug?
Me: What XYZ bug? Never heard of this before.
Sales guy: The bug that impacted our project A, B, and C! It is there for years!
Me: No, I have not fixed it. Because I just heard about this issue now. Nobody told me about an XYZ bug, or problems with projects A, B, and C.
Sales guy: What? Why didn’t you know about such a bug? This cannot be possible! I’ll talk to the boss about your incompetence!
Me: Because none of your team found it necessary to inform me? Maybe we should talk to the boss about this.
Open a goddamn ticket.
But tickets take too long.
I will go and open a ticket and I will put two words in it, and require you to contact me for
moreany information, and then I won’t answer the phone for 6 weeks. Oh and don’t bother leaving a voicemail message or sending me an email, because I never check them. However despite my complete unresponsiveness, I am nonetheless going to insist that it’s marked as high priority even though I don’t understand what high priority means - Every Employee Ever“please fix”
no bug report, only fix!
Literally nine tickets like this so far today. Nine.
It’s a good thing for them The purge isn’t real.
Indeed. And yes, they know how to do that.
“This is a business!”
I’m currently a medical student in my clinical rotations…
Me: “So it looks like we’re due for our (blank) month/year vaccinations. Have those been done already or do we need them today?”
Parent: “Oh, we’re not vaccinating.”
Me: screaming internally
I was going to say the EXACT same thing. People even are refusing the vitamin K shot in their newborns
I’ve heard the neonatologists say that they make the parents repeat back, write down, and sign a consent form that says “I understand that refusing the vitamin K shot significantly increases the chances of bleeding, including brain bleeds that can lead to significant disability or death.”
Not many people seem to want to sign that form for some reason.
All i have is OccupartionalFirstAid Level 1 and it drives me absolutely insane with frustration to think about what things real health professionals worst fears might be.
You must get that a lot in the Midwest.
Especially after Trump’s antivax BS during COVID.
Job: Welder
Customer: “Hey I need a welder to fix the railing at my business.”
Me: “OK, I can start work after you close for the day.”
Customer: “Oh no, I’m not staying late. I need you to fix it during business hours.”
Me: “OK then, it’s dangerous work so I’ll need to rope off the area and erect screens to protect the general population from weld flash and grinder sparks.”
Customer: “Oh no, this walkway needs to stay open for customers during business hours.”
Me: “Again, this is dangerous work. Somebody is going to get hurt if they’re permitted to walk through the work area.”
Customer: “I don’t know why you’re being so difficult, just zap zap and you’re done.”
Me: “No it’s going to take a lot of work. The railing is rusted through so entire sections need to be replaced. It also needs to be level, cleaned for safety reasons, and painted to prevent corrosion. Were talking multiple days of work and it’s not cheap.”
Customer: “Repairs are not in the budget, but I can spread the word and tell all my friends about you. I have almost two hundred followers on Tiktok.”
Me: (slowly gets up and walks away)
Customer: “Look at that, another lazy Millennial who doesn’t want to work. Typical. No wonder this nation is going down the crapper.”
You had me until that last part
Classic example of what would happen if we didn’t have standards and regulations.
“You didn’t teach us this.”
Job: Supervisor
Customer pays with a $50 or $100 bill and the till requires that I check it
Customer: “It’s good, I just printed it this morning.”
Some days I just had to pretend I didn’t hear them.
Pro tip: if you have a “go to” joke you always say in a given situation, guaranteed the person you’re saying it to has already heard it several times this week. Just don’t.
And before anyone responds with “they’re just trying to improve your day” they’re not. If I don’t find the joke funny they get offended, that means they aren’t doing it for me, they’re doing it to show off how great and funny they are.
Pro tip: don’t tell someone a joke if you’re going to be offended if they don’t laugh.
I used to reply to this on occasion, “Oh then I have to confiscate this. Got another one?”
So glad they don’t have us check the bills where I work, because if they did, I’m sure I’d be hearing this one all the time.
“X is down/broke.” No, Kelly, the internet isn’t “down.” You typed the URL wrong in your browser.
People will state it like the entire company has lost internet connectivity, or an entire department cannot access files or run a certain program, when actually, only a single user is having a problem.
Also people not knowing the difference between log out, restart, and shutdown. Even after explaining it to them.
At one point, I had to explain to my dad that we’re paying for internet access, not for all servers to be available and sufficiently fast. He was not happy about that.
Ive already said it on another comment here, and i no long work support so im a user myself now but, FUCK USERS!
It’s frustrating when you know there’s a huge gap between your comprehension and theirs, but they think you’re the idiot.
I can’t really sympathise with you here. You’re clearly an IT guy, so the difference between log out, restart and shut down is as natural to you as breathing. For the average person is not that intuitive. For many people the computer is “on” when they press the power button and enter their username and password. And the blurring of the distinction is increased by most people having a smartphone where just lifting it up to your face wakes it up and logs you in (technically) at the same time.
I know you’re explaining it to them, but if that’s not something that they live and breathe, they’re just going to forget the explanation. I’m a molecular biologist, so to me the differences between genome, transcriptome and proteome are bleeding obvious, but I have a colleague who’s not a scientist but needs to become familiar with these terms. I explained them to her last week in an meeting that lasted an hour, but this week I had to do that again. She’s not stupid, it’s just all very abstract to her.
I’m mean, it’s literally in the name. These are not concepts that require a degree to understand, much less an hour long meeting.
Logout means ending your user session, restart means your computer turns off and then comes back on, and shutdown means it turns off and stays off.
The buttons are all in the start menu, they are clearly marked, and these concepts have existed for 30 years at least.
It’s like driving a car for decades and not knowing what the difference between reverse, drive, and neutral are.
I still think your promoting the view of “this is obvious to me so it should be obvious to everyone”. Even your explanation would be confusing for someone who’s not an IT guy - what does it mean “end my user session?” People rarely go to the start menu to deal with their computers’ “on-ness”, they just press the hardware button that has an incomplete circle with a line on top or often no marking or label at all. Or they close the lid and that makes them think of their laptop as “off”.
It’s not about being “obvious.” It’s about understanding the most basic concepts involved with using a piece of equipment that is central to their job and has been that way for decades.
I wouldn’t want ride in a car with somebody that couldn’t remember what the difference between red, yellow, and green traffic lights are, or couldn’t remember how to activate their turn signals or windshield wipers. And I certainly wouldn’t want them operating a vehicle as a core part of their everyday job.
Now I’ll grant that in general, a car is far more dangerous than a computer. But the principle still holds, these are not tough concepts to understand, takes literally 5 minutes to explain at most. Plus, they haven’t changed in at least 30 years, so it’s not some new fangled techno-babble.
People should know basic concepts about tools without which they can’t do any part of their job.
Your colleague will learn this terminology at some point. I’m sure her job isn’t litterally juggling these three terms all day every day, otherwise I’d expect her to already have come in with that knowledge too.
If people too stupid to use computer, their computer license should be revoked, because they clearly cheated on the test
Yes but you see if I close the lid, then it’s off. And that’s why my system has an up time of 208 hours.
208 hours.
Those are rookie numbers. I’ve had users that didn’t ever shut down. A power outage was the only relief that poor system got.
Job: tech support/warranty.
*spare part for repair gets delayed by delivery company by 1 working day (super specific part air post to another country) *
*Item ordered online arrives damaged by courier *
*Out of warranty product is not covered anymore by warranty (suprised pikachu) *
Customer: I did not expect this from a reputable company, like yours. I expect a refund, compensation and a kiss on the ass cheeks from your CEO. Also I will post this on social media and nobody will buy your product, because I am so important and have god like influence and power so better get me free stuff.
Where I used to work, the 1-star reviews were always about the company not accepting returns under certain conditions, even if the policy is clearly stated in the receipt and posted on signs at the registers.
While I agree with the sentiment, return policies on receipts is a pet peeve of mine. On registers is fine. Even better if they also post it at the entrances. But if it’s only on the receipts, and you can’t read the policy until after you’ve made the purchase, then it’s a fundamental power imbalance between the consumer and supplier.
This policy was specifically about live plants.
If you buy something and change your mind right then, you’ll get your refund.
If it’s a perennial shrub or tree, it falls under warranty for a full year from date of purchase, as long as there was no obvious neglect on the part of the customer.
But still they would come in 14 months later and get upset if they don’t get a refund, then leave a negative review about it.
“I’m trying to identify a source of truth”
As someone who had to work on syncing multiple databases of customer and order data this was actually very important for me to know. Turned out that it could vary on a field by field basis and could also depend on the type of customer and where they came from.
To sync up our new and shiny SAP CRM with several Access databases and our customer-facing software I ended up writing a script that would collect all data field by field with varying hierarchies and writing it back out to everything. Worked surprisingly well.
Is Access still in use?
I’m certain the access database living in a broom closet that someone setup 20 years ago is still going strong at my last job. It was also fed by mainframe dumps, I’m super glad I never had to go anywhere near the thing personally, different department and it was explicit that they owned it.
Access will probably be the laat thing to die before the heat death of the universe.
Even after things inappropriately hosted in Excel? Lol
Oh, yeah, forgot that.
What’s your job?
Process Manager
I googled “identify a source of truth” and was treated to a plethora of buzzwordy tweets and articles worthy of Deepak Chopra.
I’m so sorry.
Let’s put a pin in it, and we can circle back when we have more bandwidth. Hopefully it’s not too heavy a lift.
Hopefully it’s not too heavy a lift.
Well, that’s a new one (assuming it’s not referring to a physical object) to me
Oh Ffs kill me I hate this nonsense.
I used to work with enterprise customers at a SaaS company, and still have a lot of anger in how corporate types use this fluffy language. I think my “favorite” example of this jargon is “Please Advise.”, which basically just means “What the fuck?!”
It’s supposed to be a good practice … in theory. In practice nobody knows what exists and who’s in charge of what and there’s exceptions and exceptions to exceptions.
Speaking for software engineering perspective. I see in other comment you’re doing process engineering, I assume the term is used in a similar way
Wait, do you work at my company?
I think that’s better than one department (with the clout to do so) going “this is going to be our source of truth” while completely unprepared for what it means.
They literally spent over a year in talks with the whole rest of the damn company about what that would mean and what level of responsibility that would entail, delayed the go live multiple months multiple times… and they still can’t do fucking basic data validation.
Leading and trailing spaces. Names randomly in all caps.
Oh, there’s a shit ton built off the requirement that this field is one of these options? Surprise, we silently added another option without telling anyone, after we agreed in planning that option was invalid. Not our fault, your fault for building shit based off the idea this was a source of truth and we actually took requirements seriously.
Why is everyone coming to us to correct this data? Why can’t you just correct it downstream like you used to? What do you mean we were warned? I wasn’t paying attention during that meeting that you held specifically to warn me about this in advance because I was too busy ignoring all the other warnings people were telling me!
What do you mean that the thing you warned us would be consistently be delayed until next day because of how our source of truth works can’t be done on demand on the same day? Huh, we signed off on it being okay, along with every other relevant department?
“Can we integrate AI into this app?”
“Can you do a browser version of this high-end VR training application?” somehow makes a browser version “Why isn’t this running on my iPhone 3GS?!”
To be fair, WebXR does make VR stuff possible in a browser. But I guess that wasn’t what they wanted.
I think their point was that it’s just never gonna run on a phone that came out in 2009.
Maybe a niche issue, but “that doesn’t scale!” In the context of software development.
We’re writing software for usually very well defined user groups, but so many of the architects and seniors want to build a second Netflix, which costs 4 times as much as the simple solution and in the end usually isn’t even better, because those morons have no idea how to do that.
Currently, I’m in a project where I fought tooth and nail to avoid having a micro service architecture for a batch job that inserts less than a million entries per day.
premature optimization is a root of all evil.
also when those morons decide to do ‘microservices’ but end up creating glorified SOA with one messy DB where half the tables are not even used by anything, updates in place are the standard and there is nothing like one team per service, but instead everyone is expected to navigate millions of lines of spaghetti code with poor documentation, barely any reuse and inconsistencies all across the board with this oh too-fucking-common entity service anti-pattern.
and so much fucking coupling that you better start deploying your dev cluster just right after waking up so it maybe is up and running by the time your daily is over.
Fun fact, I used to work at a company where a lot of projects use Elixir and a bulk share of my coworkers have been outspoken critics of microservices precisely because OTP manages to power fault tolerant and scalable systems but not by insane levels of complexity like kubernetes does but by CoC that rarely gets in your way.
Wow, Elixir and OTP. I envy you.
so many of the architects and seniors want to build a second Netflix
Good old Resume-Driven-Development
I wouldn’t even call it that. It’s a weird lack of a sense of scale combined with organizational hurdles.
They basically can’t estimate, how much resources a proper app would need and they don’t know how to manage teams to work on a common codebase. So they simply draw a diagram of the functionalities, spin out each block as a “Service”, assign that to a team and call it a day.
I’ve talked to several of them about this and I had to do very simple math directly in front of them to convince them. I’ve had to explain to a grown man, an experienced engineer, that 16 cores and 96gb memory are more than enough to handle a million simple inserts per day in a batch mode. He wanted to split the job into 4 services, each essentially running 10 lines of actual business logic, each using the resources mentioned above. Absolute madness.
“Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later” —> code that is hackish and will never be replaced.
“We need you to do this one time because of someBullshit” —> congratulations, your team had to do this thing outside of your specialty, even though there exists a team dedicated to it, and now we’re just going to make you do it over and over again (despite, again, a whole team dedicated to that existing).
You should tell them this is not 'Nam. There are rules.
These are older lessons and I’m generally pretty effective at pushing back on those now. I’m not a manager, though, so I can be overruled.
Do this as a temporary measure. We will code it properly later
I’m always blown away whenever someone says that they like some language or framework because it’s “great for prototyping.”
Like, what magical fairyland software company do you work at where your prototypes are not immediately put into production as soon as they kind of start to work?
