People Who Hate People!! (and various)

This is going to be a long one so bare with me...


I am convinced, and I know many share my opinion, that too many people on the customer side of the conversation in any service job think that the employee they are interacting with has the intelligence of a lump of moss. This is, of course, completely unfair. Most of the people that feel this way understandably have all the intelligence of people who have never seen the other side of a high school, sophomore level math class.(this may be an unfair statement, but in the experience I am about to relate I think it's being kind).

Who would have thought that working at Movie Gallery would provide me with so many experiences where I want to pelt people with safety locks...

I worked Saturday morning. I had an employee call in. So it's about 3:30-major rush hour (I guess 3:30 is the best time to get your movies), I'm alone, and a couple comes in. I look up their account. The have over $100 in late fees (how this happens, I don't know. I mean, you have to really be trying hard to piss someone off to rack up a late fee of that magnitude...maybe it's a terrorist conspiracy. Sorry... have 24 on the brain). They brought 3 movies saying that they want to return them to get some of the late fee taken off. This is, of course, possible if you bring back the movies you originally rented. But these people, with their amazing vocabulary of 15 words 10 of which are made up of four letters, have brought me movies that they purchased from another store. Price stickers an all.

For the next 20 minutes I said the same thing over and over again (switching up the word order of course) to try and explain that I couldn't do what they wanted me to do. They got upset, the man more than the woman, displaying their great communication skills used mainly to display anger while playing Grand Theft Auto. They decide to take advantage our lifetime guarantee policy that I mentioned somewhere in there. They now claim that the movies they have don't work and they want different movies (keep in mind that these movies are "XXX-State of the Union, The Amityville Horror, and (always a classic) Like Mike). I tell them that (because no one in the right mind would buy these movies) we have about 20 copies of both XXX-State of the union and The Amityville Horror. For some reason, we have no copies of Like Mike...apparently it really is a winner among the people of the world. So the best I can do is give them different copies of the movies we have and the only movie I can exchange is Like Mike. They don't understand this and I spend the 10 more minutes telling explaining why they cant have different movies for the other two.

By now the man is getting very loud and vulgar in his language. people are beginning to stare. They tell me that they don't want XXX or Amityville because they already have working copies of them at home (explain to my how this makes sense?). But eventually they give in. (I will mention that by this time, I have a line of about 4 people). They will exchange Like Mike for Rent(another winner) and just keep the other two.

I tell them that I need to see the receipt for their original purchase since they didn't buy Like Mike from us (Movie Gallery employees are required to tell people they have to provide a receipt when returning something). This is the log that breaks the dam(or the D@!# in the case of the customer). Now the woman is cussing me out. Apparently they don't have the receipt and they are angry at me because I insist they provide one.

Then the man decides to call me a "stupid cracker!" and tell me that I need to get a college education. At this point I turn to him (about ready to start yelling back at them) and say,
"Actually sir, I'm currently in my second year of college, that you very much."

Anyway, they finally start to leave and as they are going out I suggest that they call the district manager and complain about me and how I treated them (knowing very well that anything they would say about me, Doug would never believe). They say that they will...yeah right.

Sorry that this story was so long. I find it amusing that the reason people like this get angry and try to call me stupid is because I was smarter than them and they couldn't intimidate me into giving them money they didn't deserve.

Anyway in other news..

Who's ready to head back to the other people (not the others) in Lost? And who else thinks Kate needs to die already?

I am amazed how much like this season of 24 is like season 2. A bomb went off. They are trying to get de-seat the president, it's all about the muslims...and randomly the europeans make an appearence. Now all we need is Bill to sacrifice himself in a plane and Tony to be alive.

"24 is brought to you by Kay Jewlers...every kiss begins with Kay"

nothing says I love you like a drill in the shoulder

Okay, I'm done...have to go sing.